Behind The Mirror

I took T back to the Savoy tonight as I felt we needed a night out and that place always makes for a relaxing evening. My only regret for it is that I can no longer indulge in the wonderful concoctions Sylvester mixes up behind the bar. He makes a martini the likes of which no one else will ever be able to match and despite the fact I have not had one in sixty years, I can still recall the taste as if it were yesterday.

We talked initially of the Council and I told her of my visit to Dusty and Leo and that I had officially turned it over to her to run. T needs me now far more than the Council needs Louie present and accounted for at all times. I knew that would get a frown from her and I was right. She is afraid of becoming a liability, that she is why I am giving up my responsibilities. She needs to understand that she is my primary responsibility now…her, and us. It’s a matter of priorities. It’s also that I have little patience for politics. I don’t mind it as long as I am in the mood for it but I do not want to be so tied to it that we cannot pick up and go as we desire. Now we can. If I were leading the Council and traveling about as she and I wish to do it would be no better than Lavi and the previous Council, a mistake which we do not want to repeat.

Talk then turned to the subject of Djivan. I felt it was time T really understood his part in our lives, what he truly means – how he has kept up with T a long time, how he has always known what she means to me, how he keeps my secrets… I did not have to say it for her to understand that he knew my feelings and kept them from Lavi all along. She asked me finally just how long he has been watching, and I knew what she was asking. I told her the truth: that he’d been looking out for her since I first met her, first realized how I felt, how much she meant to me….sixty years. He always knew, always kept watch from the shadows at times I could not be around to do it myself, at times I was around and could not, during the Lavi times especially.

Wasted time? Perhaps, but then things were not always so simple as they are now. Lavi clouded me, life distracted me. The road called, especially after Lavi. It was easier to be away than to face the constant ache of loss I felt behind the ties to Lavi, seeing T and knowing how I used to feel, how I knew I was supposed to feel and instead finding myself drowning in Lavi. It was too much. At those times, Djivan was there.

Now? Now T knows, knows the truth, and I am here.