arnold

Arnold was no catch. He had a pear-shaped body that never did respond to running or weightlifting, much less a pilates class with Estelle at the “Fit Factory,” who had to tone it down after three people in her first week needed hospitalization. He had a bit of a lisp, which he hid rather well, and walked with a touch of a limp, not from an old football injury, but from getting his leg caught in a service elevator when he loaded bread trucks, downtown, while he was in high school. (Surgery should’ve been done, but wasn’t required.) Arnold wasn’t excessively bright and no one had taught him the finer points of satisfying a woman, nor had he learned on his own. But he was this: he was patient and kind and had a wonderful, calming air of gentleness about him. Not gentility, which is different, but gentle-ness. In a few hours, he would meet a woman driving a green Camry in the parking lot of the Rick’s True Value Hardware. He would fall in love with here, right there. On the spot. Like that. Like he’d sometimes imagined, if not dreamed. And he would spend the rest of his life loving her.