EPISODE 4 - AT HIS TABLE

Enzo
Dec 31, 2025
6 min read

SONG

LYRICS

We sat and drank, just water, clear,

Your eyes were calm, your laugh sincere.

You said, "I drink a lot, it’s true."

And smiled the way the sunlight grew.

I watched the glass reflect your hand,

The quiet pulse I’d come to stand.

You spoke of apples, trees, and land,

And roots that knew this earth was planned.

You’re steady ground beneath my feet,

A calm the world could not defeat.

I see your life in earth and grain,

And still, I feel that gentle flame.

You said your cat won’t leave your side,

She curls where warmth and peace reside.

I moved to stroke her, soft, discreet.

My head a breath from where you seat.

I felt your heat, the stillness near,

The moment slow, the meaning clear.

The cat was home, the night was kind,

And I was lost, but didn’t mind.

Not face to face, but at your feet,

I found a place both safe and sweet.

Your quiet strength, your steady tone,

Made me feel found, though all alone.

You’re steady ground beneath my feet,

The calm that makes my heartbeat meet.

No word was said, yet I could see.

That place was home, where you would be.

STORY

We sat at the table.

The jug of water stood between us, a few drops sliding down its side and leaving dark rings on the wood. I held my glass with both hands, as if I had to keep it steady so I wouldn’t reach for him instead.

Giorgio drank. A lot.

Again and again he lifted the glass, as if there was a heat inside him that only water could tame. His Adam’s apple moved with each swallow, and I caught myself following the water’s imagined path through his body, as if I could see it flowing inside him.

“You really drink a lot of water,” I said eventually—more to say something, anything, than because it mattered.

He grinned, tilting his head slightly. “Yeah. And accordingly, I have to pee all the time.”

We laughed. A simple, warm laughter that seemed to settle comfortably in the small kitchen, as if the walls were used to it. I pictured him standing somewhere outside—legs apart, rooted like a tree—when everything had to leave his body again. The thought made my face heat up, but I only lowered my gaze briefly and pretended to inspect the water rings on the table.

“I’m an apple and olive farmer,” he said after a moment, as if this somehow explained all of it. “I have the best apples in the world.”

I smiled, grateful for every sentence I could hold on to. “Doesn’t everyone here say that?”

“No,” he said calmly, without a trace of irony. “Just me.”

We laughed again. His laugh was deeper than mine, steadier. It filled the room. Mine sounded like something that still had to practice being allowed to exist at all.

“You know why my apples are so good?” he asked then, and for a second his eyes sparkled like light on water.

“Because you work so hard?” I guessed.

“Because I pee so much,” he said flatly.

I almost choked on my water. “What?”

He shrugged, as casually as if he were talking about the weather. “It has to go somewhere. And what’s easier than watering your own trees when you’re outside all day anyway?”

I stared at him. For a moment I wasn’t sure if he was joking. Then he laughed—that open, unashamed laugh—and I couldn’t help but join him.

“That can’t be a serious fertilizing strategy,” I said.

“Oh, it is.” He braced his forearms on the table and leaned a little closer to me. “Your Nonno used to say: ‘One man, one tree, and nature does the rest.’” His voice softened slightly. “He told me that once when he caught me relieving myself right there in the field. Said that if you’re already a man, you might as well be practical about it—water, feed, and strengthen the trees instead of wasting it where no one needs it.”

I looked at him. “My Nonno said that?”

Giorgio nodded. “He was a wise man. Spoke less than others, but when he did, it was never pointless.”

Something quieted inside me. The thought that my grandfather had seen him out there in the fields, had given him almost intimate advice, settled over my uncertainty like a warm blanket. The connection I had only sensed before suddenly gained shape. A picture.

“Maybe that’s why I have the best apples,” Giorgio added. “A mix of good soil, water…” He lifted his glass and gave me a small toast. “…and a man’s bladder.”

I shook my head, laughing. “That’s… very efficient.”

“Sicilian,” he corrected. “We waste nothing.”

His words were half joke, half truth. And yet they dug deeper. He spoke of water, of trees, of the simplest way to relieve oneself—and still there was something in it that felt like life. Like a cycle. Like a man who knew his body belonged to the earth rather than standing above it.

He took another sip, set the glass down, and leaned back. His chair creaked softly. I watched the rise and fall of his chest. Everything about him felt grounded, heavy, sure. As if nothing could easily throw him off balance.

I didn’t know whether he liked me.

He was so different from me. So effortlessly a man. So comfortable in his own skin.

Someone like him—he couldn’t be like me, wasn’t allowed to be. And yet there was something between us that existed without dividing us. Like a table that doesn’t separate, but turns distance into a kind of closeness.

The cat brushed against my calf and then slipped under the table toward him. I felt her rubbing against his feet, heard her soft purring.

“This one… she’s always at my feet,” he said, bending down to stroke her briefly. “When she decides to show up.”

I watched his hand move in the dim light under the table—soft, unhurried strokes.

A simple gesture. And still, my heartbeat quickened. There it was again—that pull downward. Away from the chair, away from eye level.

I saw my moment. And I took it, as if it were nothing.

“She really likes you,” I said, standing up slowly and moving around the table as naturally as I could. My knees felt weak, but I kept walking.

As I passed behind him, my hand brushed against the back of his chair. Just wood—but in my mind it was his skin.

I crouched—casually—and stroked the cat, who immediately pressed herself into my hand. Directly beside his feet. So close that I could feel his warmth even through the fabric of his trousers.

My head was only a hand’s breadth from his leg.

I breathed in the faint scent of dust, earth, and something I couldn’t name. Something that was simply him.

The cat purred as if she belonged there.

And I… I felt the same.

The tiles were cool beneath my knees. His foot stood firm beside me, brown from summer sun, the tendons visible, the ankle strong. A man who knew exactly where he belonged—among his trees, his earth, his water. And I, the boy returned from New York who no longer knew where he belonged, suddenly felt a place inside me settle.

Not in the center.

Not opposite him.

But at his feet.

I let my hand rest on the cat’s fur longer than necessary, just millimeters from his skin. Every breath he took was a soft, warm rhythm in my proximity. He said nothing. He didn’t move his foot away. He simply remained. And that alone softened something inside me.

His presence was enough to make me want to stay exactly there.

I thought of his trees, of the water he drank, of the laughter about his “fertilizer.” Of my Nonno, who had told him that sentence. Of men who gave back to the earth what they didn’t need, and received fruit in return.