peach or how to befriend a tailor
by Tyler Dillow
I’m not too careful when I fall in love. I’ll drive my light blue Peugeot 404 for hours through the hills through the small towns and villages scattered across the country. These are the places I like to be. I think about the song my father’s friend used to sing. These are the places I belong. Narrow roads. Rolling hills. Green then yellow then blue then orange. All to purple. All to nightfall. Stuck between loving too much and fuck all. It’s always been this way. Some things never change. We guard them. We want them and without them we wouldn’t really exist.
***
At the Tailor’s house, the Tailor pours me a glass of wine. The Tailor asks me to stay for dinner. I’m not dressed for dinner. I’m in my afternoon clothes. My day clothes. He knows this. He is a tailor. I ask, what are we having, so I can dress appropriately. You must dress right when with a tailor. You must dress right on all occasions.
The waves wash ashore. The sun sets. Big trucks begin to, slowly, stop rolling down the road. Boats come in. The lighthouse rolls around us. Scallops cook in butter on the stovetop. The Tailor adds lemon, white wine, and salt. Freshly cracked. He rolls a cigarette and passes it to me.
“In a night-dream, you know what to do and how to do it. You know how things are supposed to be and they are that way. This is the best part. I’m sure you know this feeling, but you didn’t know what to call it. You see, I make nice clothes. Nice shirts. Nice pants. Fine pants really. They don’t give you this feeling though. Sometimes it comes close but it really depends on the person wearing them. The person comes first then the clothes. This is how you get the feeling. The person. Always the person.”
“The right food can make any moment worth living,” I say.
“You only say this because you can’t cook. Because before the food comes the person. If you were anyone else I would have prepared a different dish,” says the Tailor.
“What if I were a priest?”
“If you were a priest I would have given you red wine. Something deep and dark like chocolate. I’d caramelize onions, pan-fry potatoes in butter and garlic. No greens. Then I’d cook a bone-in filet on my worn cast iron pan. A bone-in filet is a humble cut with a luxurious taste. Priests are easy. They all tell you the same story. The story of their small upbringing in their small town. A mother who only knows how to love and a father who only knows how to work. This is why people like them. When they talk about themselves, it is like looking into the eyes of your father. Even if your father was nothing like them,” the Tailor says.
***
I eat a peach. I am lucky. It is warm. It is black out and I am in. A car drives down the road. It is the fisherman on their way out to sea. I suck the pit—clean. Throw it in the grass. Clean.
Tyler Dillow lives in Kansas. Other work by him can be found in X-R-A-Y and Hobart.