Window Seat

WINDOW SEAT Sitting beside him in the window seat as they taxied for take-off at the end of the day, she was nubile and pretty, as young as his daughter, nearly perfect in the way of a late-autumn sunset distributing itself over olive-brown skin, coffee-colored eyes, an unmistakable aura of the concept of duende that interpreted the mysteries of twilight and flight and the challenges of life through the lyrical cadences of Andalucia, Castilla-La Mancha, and Castilla-Leon He remembered the first time that his beautiful wife, the renegade rose in a botanical garden, kept company with him on a visit to Spain: She was apprehensive on the plane, excited in Madrid, underneath him in Sevilla; she misbehaved in Barcelona, and was full of questions in Granada that he answered in Toledo while she replaced her scarlet lipstick standing naked in the mirror Philadelphia to Madrid takes six-and-a-half hours at six-hundred miles per hour, the big Airbus jetliner navigating the darkness beneath the fingernail crescent of a waxing harvest moon, yet its running lights flashing and its reassuring roar, were simply dissipating signatures like the fragrances and curves of the sleeping girl beside him, swallowed along the route by altitude and distance, by the perpetual fluctuations of the unruly sea below, by the unexpected pleasures of a marriage that really matters – like with that red rose renegade who’s often naked in the mirror, always present in their bed, and every day a guiding essence for his aging, restless soul! Duende (Spanish): (1) in flamenco - a spiritual or emotional bond between performer and audience created by the performer’s intense concentration and passion; (2) in general – authenticity of emotion and expression – soul!