You pick up on the first ring. “Well, hello there!”
“Is this a bad time?”
“I just got home but I have a couple seconds… What’s up? Everything okay?”
“Well, that’s what I was gonna ask you…”
“You mean lunch? Oh Joe, Melanda lives to debate and she liked you, she did.”
My muscles relax. “Phew, because for a minute there it felt like she didn’t… but if you say everything’s okay…”
“Joe, seriously. You were fine. Melanda… Well, yeah, she gets fired up. But she’s very passionate, very smart and you know…”
Your daughter is home. I hear cabinets slamming and you tell me that you should probably go and I do the right thing. I let you go. For a moment I consider walking to your house. But if I go and spy on you, I open myself up to busybody neighbors who might “warn” you about a “strange man” lurking in your yard. (Dear Bainbridge: Get a life.) Things are supposed to be different with you, Mary Kay. I am supposed to be different with you. If I watch you from afar, I am transforming from a person who is in your life to a person who is on the outside, looking in. I don’t want that for us and I know you don’t either.
I do the right thing and go home, I don’t feel at home in my home because the fecal-eyed family is out there, throwing bean bags into holes—yawn—so I grab a coffee and head downstairs to the place that makes my house special, the reason I chose the property over all the others. It’s called a Whisper Room. You turn on the lights, you close the door and that’s it. The world is gone They can’t hear me and I can’t hear them—long live soundproof spaces—and Love thought this room was creepy when I showed her the pictures. She saw padded walls and she called it a cage. But you get me, Mary Kay. You know this house. When you realized where I live, you said you’d had wonderful times in this Whisper Room. You knew the guys who owned the place. You hung out down here and I take a deep breath—maybe I’m breathing you in right now—and I have to be patient. You really are one the one. I just have to fight harder.
I do sit-ups and watch a little fucking Succession. Your boy Kendall has weak shoulders and basset hound eyes. I bet he never read Empire Falls, let alone Last Night at the Lobster, another selection for our Quiet Ones at the library. The endorphins kick in—Shortus is right about some things—and I don’t want to sue Marta Kauffman anymore. I want to send her flowers because she and her Friends also taught us that real relationships take time, that sometimes you make a baby with the wrong person, you fall in love with the wrong person, but eventually, you get with the right one.
You.
4
It’s been two days since you ambushed me with your fraternity siblings and I didn’t “stalk” you. I’ve been good. I went against all my best instincts and joined CrossFit to make nice with Shortus (a.k.a. to keep an eye on that fucker just in case) and I’ll admit it, Mary Kay. I did judge you a little bit. This adolescent cliquey side of you is not ideal. You’re a woman. A master of library science. But you’ve been hunkered down on Land’s Fucking End for your entire life. I tear the tag off a brand-new black cashmere sweater—my gift to you, for us—and tonight you’ll see the light.
It’s date night, motherfuckers!
You were so cute when you asked me out. You were smoothing a sticker on Dolly Carton and I bent over to look at the sticker—THE FUTURE IS FEMALE—and you stayed low, close. I leaned in closer. “Did you get permission to vandalize Ms. Carton?”
You staggered upright and flattened your skirt. “Haha,” you said. You looked at your phone. “I should probably get going. I have book club tonight at the wine bar…” I smiled—oh Bainbridge, you need to see Cocktail—and you wanted me to know where you’re going. “Eleven as in the winery,” you said, so nervous, so fucking cute. “But we’ll be outta there by ten.”
You waved goodbye and you scratched your tights, drawing my eyes to your legs.
Invitation received, Mary Kay, and I RSVP yeah as in yes.
I’m waiting for you in a recessed mini-mall across the street from Eleven and finally your Book Club winds down and there are credit cards and hugs, false promises about getting together soon and why do you women lie to each other so much? I slink around the block—and I slow down—and you spot me.
“Joe? Is that you?”
You jaywalk to me—no RIP Fincher to issue any tickets—and I meet you halfway, across the sky. Do we hug? We don’t hug. I nod toward the bar I chose for us, not a fucking winery, just a pub. “Come on,” I say. “One drink.”
You shift your purse. “I should probably go home. We ran late tonight.”
I expected a little pushback and I know all about your shouldprobably disorder. Shel Silverstein should probably have written a poem about the shouldprobablies and the female need to express her awareness of what a good woman would do right now. But you’re still hesitating and what the hell is there to think about? You’re my neighbor. You live right around the corner and the pub is right around the corner and your daughter isn’t six—there’s no babysitter to relieve—and your shoulders are tense getting tenser—“I don’t know, Joe…”—and did you learn nothing from Lisa Fucking Taddeo? Stop feeling guilty, for fuck’s sake.
I am the man you need me to be right now. Chill. Cavalier. “That’s too bad,” I say. “This could have been my very first Book Club.”
Your shoulders drop. “Well, I’d hate for you to miss out on your very first Book Club. One drink. One.”
No one means that when they say it and I open the door to the Harbour Public House and you walk in and we are a couple now. We make our way to a table and I tell you how much I really did like meeting your friends and you are puffed up. “Oh good! See, they’re nice, right?”
You sit in a booth and I sit on the other side. “And you were right,” I say. “Melanda isn’t mad. She followed me on Instagram…” White lie. I followed her first but she did reciprocate. “And she made me think about a lot of stuff…” Ha! “And her incubator sounds incredible…” As if her posters are doing anything for anyone but her. “You gotta love that, ya know?”
You gotta love me and you do. I’m in your circle, at your table. “Yeah,” you say. “She’s great, she has a powerful voice…”
“Extremely. Your people are good people.”
You smile. I smile. The heat between us is palpable and you look around and remark on how empty it is and it’s just us and a couple of guys in wool hats. Sailor types. Our jackets come off and it’s obvious you’ve been drinking and the barmaid approaches, a soft and pear-shaped pre-Mothball. I ask to see a menu and you look at me. “Oh,” you say. “I ate. I should probably just have a water.”
I smile, undeterred by another shouldprobably. “I don’t mind eating alone.”
You end up asking for a glass of tequila—frisky—and I order a Southern fried chicken sandwich and a local vodka soda and you promise to steal French fries again as you lace your fingers together as if you’re on a job interview. “So,” you say. “How’s the house coming along?”