It's all in the details...

Eva waited at the table, absentmindedly picking at the soft white tablecloth that draped over the corners. A red carnation stood in a delicate white vase in the middle of the table while the flame of a dripping candle reflected in a set of sliver salt and pepper shakers.

God, this is so stupid, she thought.

She checked her watch and picked up her glass of merlot, swirling it around several times before taking a large swig. She clicked her tongue and picked up strong tannins and hints of raspberry and cinnamon.

She flagged the waiter—a young man in a tight black vest over a white button-up shirt—and asked for another.

As she waited her hands crept up to her neck and began twirling the long chain of pearls that fell to her chest. She fought an urge to chew them.

The restaurant was busy; servers bustled around and diners spoke over one another until it was a hot muffled blur. It was making Eva sweat, and she was grateful she’d worn a black velvet shirt and a black silk skirt to hide the stains.

This is just humiliating, she thought. What an old fool I am.

Last week her grandson Daniel had signed her up for a dating app, much to her chagrin; old widows don’t go on dating apps.

He’d used some decade-old photos of her travels to Rio de Janeiro, Cairo and Hoh Chi Minh City to illustrate her brazen worldliness, as well as one of her at a podium to demonstrate her academic prowess as a professor of organic chemistry. Lastly, he’d used a photo of her in the garden, telling her she looked pretty.

“Daniel that’s so trite,” she’d told him. “Besides, I have so many wrinkles I’d send a dry cleaner screaming.”

To her surprise, however, within an hour she had a match: Benjamin, a 69-year-old with a neat white beard, a full head of silver hair and a sailboat.

“Sounds like a scam,” Eva had said, waving off Daniel’s excitement.

Inside, however, she felt a tiny spark of excitement. She promptly drowned the feeling with the image of David, her husband of 49 years, smiling as he looked over his plate of waffles.

You ate too many sweets, she thought. Now I’m here in a restaurant, alone, stood up like an idiot.

She closed her eyes, leaned back and exhaled through her nose. Damn, she missed him. It had been five years since he’d passed from a massive heart attack; he was gone before the paramedics arrived. He’d always been like that, once he had an idea he ran without hesitation.

Why’d he have to up and die? She was still mad at him for it.

“How can you be mad at me for dying?” his voice rang, clear as a clink of wine glasses beside her.

Her eyes sprang open and there he was, sitting across from her. David’s half-bald head gleamed, white tufts of hair hanging neatly over his ears and circling around his head. His wireframe glasses circled his bright blue eyes, which sparkled as if holding in a joke. He had full rosy cheeks and a clean-shaven face beaming with mirth. He wore the same blue and white checkered shirt he’d worn when he died, though over it he wore a blue blazer.

“What are you doing here?” she asked. For some reason that was all she could think to say.

“I’m here for a date,” he said. “A first date.”

“With who?”

“With you, of course.”

“We’ve had many dates,” Eva said.

“Yes, but this is your first date with a ghost, I would imagine.”

“Is that what you are, a ghost?”

David shrugged.

“I guess so. Though, maybe I’m a figment of your imagination. Who’s to say?”

Eva looked around. No one around her seemed to notice David’s sudden appearance, and if they’d heard her talking to him they paid no mind.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “How are you here? Why now? Where have you been? Can other people see you?”

David’s belly rolled with laughter.

“Oh Eva, you haven’t changed, you always need to know everything.”

“Those seem like very relevant questions,” she huffed.

David opened his hands in a vague gesture, looking up at the ceiling, or perhaps beyond it, before interlacing his fingers and resting them on his belly.

“Darling, I honestly don’t know how to answer all your questions. I’m not quite sure how I got here, but I came here now because I wanted to go on a date with you. Where have I been? I can’t describe it in a way you’d understand-- not that you don’t have a brilliant mind, but I simply can’t describe it with the senses you experience. As far as if other people can see me –”

The young waiter appeared with Eva’s second glass of merlot, handing it gently over, though she was too dumbfounded to move.

“Would you like to wait for your guest to arrive before ordering, ma’am?”

Eva looked across the table and saw David, smiling.

“You should order,” David prompted. “You get so upset when you’re hungry.”

“I’ll take the soup,” she said without opening the menu. “Whatever today’s soup is.”

The waiter nodded and shuffled away.

“I guess they can’t see you,” Eva said, to which David smiled.

They stared at each other and said nothing.

Slowly, warm memories of their lives began to flow between them as though on a movie screen: they’d met in high school during biology class when Eva had forgotten a pencil and David lent her his—mangled with bite marks and all.

They married shortly after graduation and bought a camper van so they could drive across the country, breathing in awe at famous sites and private cathedrals of mountains and forests. Their van always smelled of coffee and fried onions due to countless breakfasts at their fold-out mustard yellow vinyl table, door wide open to whatever view awaited them.

They welcomed their son, Jonathon and their daughter, Audrey and decided to settle into a less mobile home.

They moved into a cramped brick building, the heart of which was a small kitchen the colour of buttermilk. Orange and brown floral curtains framed the window around the heart of the heart: their vinyl yellow kitchen table which they’d repurposed from the van, both for sentimentality and frugality.

In that home and in that kitchen the family ate every meal; it was where the children did their homework, where David drafted his businesses propositions and where Eva sat buried under books and wrote her dissertation.

Jonathon got into Cornell and studied law, while Audrey studied clothing design and launched a label in Los Angeles, New York and Madrid.

Eva and David eased into retirement, taking more trips around the world together for longer and longer periods. They welcomed their first grandchild, Daniel, and spent even more time away from work.

They picked their next destination by throwing darts at a map; Greece was next when David had a heart attack.

That day Eva’s world disappeared in a vacuum so quickly she had vertigo, swinging hopelessly in a boundless dark. After that her soul ached with loneliness, pain, fear, anger and guilt for feeling angry.

Plans changed; no more trips, no more restaurants. Just long nights in a bed too big for one person, and long days in a kitchen where the sound of the fridge and the clock became unbearable.

The light and warmth of the memories stopped so abruptly the air seemed to hum, as though their consciousness had run into a metal pole. How long had they been reminiscing?

“I’m so sorry,” David said after a long pause. “I never meant to leave.”

“I know,” Eva said, hesitantly reaching for his hand. She was half surprised when she felt the warmth of his fingers against hers.

They stayed that way and time felt still. Maybe for a moment it was. Then, David shifted.

“Eva darling,” David said. “I know I’m the one that died, but you’ve hardly been living since I left.”

Eva shook her head as time resumed, drawing back her hand and sitting up. She didn’t know what to say.

“When was the last time you travelled anywhere? Laughed at a funny movie? Tried a new restaurant?”

Eva turned her gaze, staring at nowhere specific.

“David…”

How was she supposed to laugh with a gaping hole in her chest?

“I know I’ve broken your heart, and it’s the worst thing I’ve ever done,” David said. “But seeing you float along in life like debris in a stream is breaking my heart, too.”

He again grabbed her hand and she turned her eyes back to him to find his eyes brimming.

“Darling, you’re still here and you have the opportunity to see the beauty in life, even in the smallest details,” he said.

Eva paused, looking sheepishly up at her husband.

“Does it hurt to die?”

“No,” David said. “Though it hurts to live sometimes, doesn’t it? Especially if you’re not sucking the marrow from the bones of life.”

He paused a moment, looking around as if trying to find the right words.

“Darling, you don’t need to feel guilty on my behalf. In fact, you’d do me a great favour to do the opposite.”

“Live guiltlessly?” Eva asked.

“Exactly.”

Eva took a sharp inhale and felt as though a vice she didn’t even realize had been around her chest had finally cracked open; warmth expanded out from her heart and flooded out into the rest of her body, right down to the tips of her fingernails.

She clutched at David’s hand and he smiled. His smile, however, faltered with a betraying twitch of sadness.

“You can’t stay, can you?” Eva asked.

“No.”

“When do you have to go?”

“Pretty shortly now,” David said, squeezing her hand. “But you know, I’m never really gone gone. Just… out of sight.”

Eva let half a smile escape her.

“I love you, darling,” She said.

“I know. I love you, too.”

David stood and placed a gentle kiss on her lips before turning as though to walk through a door. He began to fade, but before he did he turned.

“You know, he really does have a sailboat.”

Eva shook her head, confused.

“Who?”

“Benjamin. The date you’re waiting for.”

Eva scoffed and waved her hand as though sweeping away a fly.

“Oh please, that schlub who stood me up?”

“Well,” David said with a grin, “To be fair he did have some very mysterious car troubles this evening.”

He leaned back in, grabbed her hand and gave it a kiss.

“Remember, enjoy every detail of life."

He faded away.

Eva reached out for him, knocking over her glass of merlot.

She jumped in alarm, frantically grabbing her napkin and soaking up the spill with one hand while using the other to grab the end of the table cloth and fold it up to stop the spill from falling to the floor.

As she did so something caught her eye and she stopped and began to laugh. Once it began the laughter took over like bubbles trying to rise to the surface. She laughed until tears streamed down her face before sitting down and finally letting out a content sigh.

Underneath the tablecloth in the upscale French restaurant sat a table coated with mustard-yellow vinyl.