Mrs. Fletcher

by Tom Perrotta

  I have a porn habit, Eve thought, trying on the word for size.

  There were definitely some upsides to it. She was having a lot more orgasms than she used to, which was helping her sleep better, and improving her complexion. Several people had commented on how good her skin looked. She was also picking up some techniques that might come in handy down the road, if she ever did find a partner. For example, she’d learned that her blowjob skills were seriously out-of-date. When Eve was young, a can-do attitude—really, just making the effort—had been more than enough to earn a passing grade. These days the bar was a lot higher.

  But there was a big downside to porn, beyond the feminist objections that still made her uneasy. The real problem was spiritual: it made you feel like you were wasting your life. This wasn’t so much a matter of lost time—though that was part of it, all those hours you squandered clicking on video after video, trying to find the one that would light up your brain—as it was a matter of lost opportunities. Watching too much porn made you feel like you were out in the cold with your nose pressed against a window, watching strangers at a party, wishing you could join them. But the weird thing was, you could join them. All you had to do was open the door and walk inside, and everybody would be happy to see you. So why were you still outside, standing on your tiptoes, feeling sorry for yourself?

  Thank God, she thought, when her lasagna finally arrived.

  * * *

  It only took a minute for Amanda to reactivate her Tinder account. Her old matches were gone, but she didn’t care about that. She used the same profile photos as before—they’d never let her down—and stuck with her tried-and-true tagline: If you’re nice, I’ll show you my other ones. She set the match distance for fifteen miles and the age range for 35–55. That was the key, in her experience. The older guys were out there, checking their phones every two minutes, just itching to be called out of retirement. And they’d happily drive through a blizzard with a flat tire if a woman in her twenties was waiting on the other end.

  Amanda understood that this was a bad idea, not to mention a blatant violation of her recently instituted no-hookup policy. Tinder was like tequila—fun today, sad tomorrow—but sometimes you didn’t have a choice. That unexpected reunion with Trish Lozano had really messed with her self-esteem. The thought of going home and eating a salad in front of the TV had triggered a wave of self-pity that bordered on rage.

  That’s the highlight of my day? A fucking salad?

  It would have been fine, or at least marginally tolerable, if Trish had still been Trish, a grown-up version of her teenaged self, cute and predictable, flaunting a tacky rock, bragging about her fratboy stockbroker boyfriend. At least that way Amanda would have preserved her sense of intellectual superiority, the illusion that she was an adventurous bohemian who’d chosen the road less traveled.

  But Trish—Beckett—was a completely new person, living the kind of life Amanda had always imagined for herself. My fiancé’s a cinematographer! How the fuck did that happen? It just seemed so unfair—the girl who’d been deliriously happy in high school was the one who’d reinvented herself, moving to a glamorous city and falling in love with an artist who loved her back, while Amanda, who’d dreamed of nothing but escape, had ended up right back where she started, with only a few stupid tattoos to show for all her trouble.

  I work at the Senior Center. They have a pretty good lecture series.

  She’d felt so stupid saying that, she’d wanted to die. And then Trish had had the gall to hug her, to fucking apologize for her happiness, which was way worse than bragging about it.

  I am so getting laid tonight, Amanda thought, before they’d even let go of each other.

  *

  Her match arrived in less than an hour, knocking furtively on the front door. She studied him through the peephole, amazed, as always, that this was even possible, that you could swipe at a photo of a stranger, and the flesh-and-blood person would show up on your doorstep. This one was a little heavier than she’d expected—he claimed to be an avid cyclist—but he bore an otherwise reassuring resemblance to his profile pic, which had been taken in an apple orchard on a sunny day. It showed him standing beneath a fruit-laden tree, squinting into the camera, smiling in a way that made him look worried rather than happy.

  His name was Bobby and he seemed charmingly ill-at-ease in the living room, like a teenager picking up his prom date. He wanted to know if it was all right to keep his shoes on, and asked permission before sitting down on the couch. He said no to her offer of a beer, then changed his mind a few seconds later, but only if it wasn’t too much trouble. Middle-aged men were often like this, tentative and overly polite. The guys her own age had more of a swagger, as if they were stopping by to pick up a well-deserved award.

  “How was the traffic?” she asked.

  “Piece of cake,” he said. “Only a problem at rush hour.”

  “Well, thanks for making the trip.”

  “Thanks for hosting.” He surveyed the décor with a skeptical expression, taking in the matching gray furniture, the gas fireplace, the vases and baskets full of dried flowers. “This your place?”

  “I’m house-sitting. My parents are on a cruise. They’re coming home tomorrow.”

  This was the lie she always told, because she didn’t want any Tinder dudes ringing the doorbell at two in the morning, drunk and looking for company. Besides, the real story was too complicated—her mother’s unexpected death from a heart attack at the age of sixty-two; her own return from the city to make the funeral arrangements and deal with the legal and financial crap (she was the only child of divorced parents, so it was all on her); and the fact that she’d just stayed, because life in the city had gotten complicated—she’d broken up with her boyfriend and was living in a temporary sublet—and here was a whole house that suddenly belonged to her, though she couldn’t bear to redecorate or even clean out her mother’s closet. At some point, if the opportunity arose, she’d tell Bobby that her dad was a retired cop, also not true—her dad wasn’t retired, wasn’t a cop, and in any case was no longer in touch with Amanda—but certain precautions were advisable if you were going to invite strangers into your home and have sex with them.

  “I went on a cruise once,” he said. “It wasn’t that great.”

  “You couldn’t pay me enough,” she told him.

  When he finished his beer, they went out on the back deck to smoke the joint she’d asked him to bring. She wasn’t a big pothead, but weed worked faster than alcohol, and had the added benefit of making everything seem a little more unreal and a lot funnier than it would have been otherwise, which was definitely helpful in a situation like this.

  “Nice night,” he said, nodding at the sky. “Moon’s almost full.”

  Amanda didn’t reply. She wanted to keep the small talk to a minimum. That had been her mistake with Dell—they’d talked for an hour before taking their clothes off, and it had ended up feeling a little too much like a real date, which was probably what caused all the confusion when they ran into each other at yoga class.

  “I’m divorced,” he said. “In case you were wondering.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  At least he could take a hint. They smoked the rest of the joint in a strangely comfortable silence, as if they’d known each other a long time and had exhausted every possible topic of conversation. For a moment—it coincided with the realization that she was very high—she imagined they were a married couple, committed to spending every remaining night of their lives together, until one of them got sick and died.

  Me and Bobby, she thought. Bobby and me.

  It was a ridiculous idea, but just plausible enough to make her laugh.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Nothing.” She shook her head, as if it wasn’t worth explaining. “It’s stupid.”

  “You have a nice laugh,” he told her.

  They went back inside, into her childhood bedroom. The walls were pale pink, with ghostly recta
ngles where posters used to hang, but it all looked the same color by candlelight. He sat on the edge of her narrow bed and watched her undress.

  She made a little striptease out of it, undoing the buttons on her dress one by one, very slowly. He was a good audience.

  “Oooh yeah,” he said, more than once. “You are fucking gorgeous.”

  The dress fell to the floor. She stood there for a moment in her black bra and panties, along with the knee-high boots she’d tugged on for the occasion. He nodded for quite a while, as if something he’d long suspected had turned out to be true.

  “You’re killing me,” he said. “You are totally fucking killing me.”

  As far back as she could remember, Amanda had had mixed feelings about her body. She was shorter and heavier than she wanted to be, with big, full breasts that weren’t great for yoga or running, but made a very positive impression in situations like this.

  “Oh Jesus,” he muttered, as she dropped her bra on top of the dress. “Look at those fucking tits.”

  Standing next to Trish Lozano in the harsh light of the changing room, Amanda had felt the way she had all through high school, chubby and dull and hopeless. But right now, shimmying out of her panties in the trembling yellow light, with Bobby studying her like a painting in a museum, she felt like something special.

  “Want me to keep the boots on?”

  “Whatever’s easier,” he told her. “I’m good either way.”

  * * *

  Eve wasn’t sure a Manhattan qualified as a “Fancy Cocktail,” but it was close enough that she felt entitled to check off a second box on her Going Solo checklist. And besides, even a simple Manhattan seemed plenty fancy for the Lamplighter Inn, which was the hands-down favorite dining spot of Haddington’s senior citizens, who’d been holding their annual banquet here since time immemorial.

  Eve would have been fine with never eating another iceberg wedge or fillet of sole at the Lamplighter for as long as she lived, but she had a soft spot for the bar, a cozy hideaway with red leather stools and a half-dozen booths that would have been perfect for a romantic nightcap, if there’d been any romance in her life. At eight o’clock on a Wednesday evening, it was pleasantly uncrowded without seeming desolate, only four other people at the bar—a grimly silent older couple who looked like serious drinkers, and a pair of blue-collar guys watching a ballgame on the muted TV. One booth was occupied as well, by two women engaged in an emergency heart-to-heart discussion.

  “Do I know you?” the bartender asked. He was a nice-looking guy around her own age, with close-cropped gray hair and an appealing residue of boyishness in his face. “Aren’t you Brendan’s mom?”

  Eve admitted that she was. The bartender held out his hand.

  “Jim Hobie. I was his soccer coach way back when. He must have been in kindergarten or first grade. Our team was called the Daisies.”

  “Oh my God,” Eve laughed. “I forgot about the Daisies. They were adorable.”

  In the earliest phase of youth soccer, all the teams were coed and named after flowers, and nobody kept score. That lasted for two years, and then things got cutthroat and stayed that way.

  “It was pure chaos,” Hobie told her. “Brendan was the only kid on our team who knew what he was doing. A couple of times we had to tell him to stop scoring goals and give everyone else a chance.”

  Eve studied the man’s face, trying to place him on the sidelines of those long-forgotten Saturday mornings.

  “I thought Ellen DiPetro was the coach.”

  “I was her assistant,” Hobie explained. “I had more hair back then, and a little goatee, if that rings a bell.”

  Bells were not ringing, but it was a long time since Brendan had been a Daisy.

  “You had a kid on the team?”

  “My daughter. Daniella.”

  “Daniella Hobie. That sounds familiar.”

  “She was salutatorian,” he said proudly. “Gave one of the speeches at graduation.”

  “That’s right.” It was a very long and boring speech, if Eve remembered correctly, about all the wonderful lessons she’d learned from participating in the model U.N. “How’s she doing?”

  “Great. She’s a freshman at Columbia. Seems to love it.”

  “Wow. An Ivy Leaguer. Good for you.”

  “She didn’t get it from me,” Hobie assured her. “I barely squeaked through Fitchburg State.”

  “Maybe she got it from her mother.”

  “I don’t think so. Her mom—my ex—didn’t even graduate. Though I guess that was mostly ’cause I got her pregnant.” He shrugged, like it didn’t really matter. “I just think Dani was born smart. I could see it in her eyes when she was a little baby. Like she was just taking it all in, you know? Figuring it out. Our son—her older brother—he was nothing like that. He spent about a year trying to swallow his own fist. That was his big project.”

  “They are who they are,” Eve agreed. “All we can do is love them.”

  Hobie glanced down the bar, toward the older couple. The man was holding his arm in the air, like he was trying to hail a cab.

  Hobie sighed. “Excuse me.”

  While he was attending to his duties, Eve took out her phone and texted Brendan.

  Do you remember Daniella Hobie? I just ran into her dad. Your old coach from the Daisies.

  “What about Brendan?” Hobie asked. “What’s he up to?”

  “He’s at BSU.”

  “Still playing lacrosse?”

  “Not anymore.”

  Her phone dinged and she picked it up.

  Ugh she gave that brutal speech the daisies were so gay

  “Speak of the devil,” she said, slipping the phone back into her purse.

  “It’s nice that he stays in touch,” Hobie observed. “I don’t hear much from my kids these days. Their mom and I got divorced about ten years ago.”

  “Same here,” she said. “It’s tough.”

  “Irreconcilable differences.” Hobie laughed sadly. “She hated my guts.”

  “Mine was a cheater,” said Eve. “Nice guy otherwise.”

  “Can I ask you something?” He looked a little shy, like he knew he was broaching a delicate subject. “Does Brendan have a girlfriend?”

  “I don’t think so. He had one in high school, but they broke up over the summer. I wasn’t crazy about her, to be honest.”

  “Only reason I ask is because Dani never mentions boys. Never. If I ask her straight up, she just says she’s too busy for a relationship. But then you read these stories in the paper about the kids binge-drinking and hooking up at parties and friends with benefits and all that stuff, and it sounds like a nonstop orgy.”

  “They’re adults,” Eve said. “They get to make their own mistakes, just like we did.”

  “Friends with benefits.” Hobie shook his head in rueful amazement. “I don’t even have a job with benefits.”

  “Good one,” Eve said, toasting him with her almost empty glass.

  He asked if she wanted a refill. Eve said what the heck, it was still pretty early. She was enjoying the conversation, which had confirmed the value of simply getting out of the house, and elevated the status of her night from small experiment to minor accomplishment.

  Hobie mixed the drink with his back turned, giving her an opportunity to admire the snugness of his jeans and the tailored fit of his tucked-in white Oxford. He was in good shape for a man his age.

  A man my age, she reminded herself.

  “You’re a nice surprise on a Wednesday night,” he said, placing the fresh cocktail in front of her as if it were a trophy. A trophy just for showing up, like the ones they gave to the Daisies.

  “I went to a wake. Didn’t feel like going home.”

  “Sorry to hear it. Somebody close?”

  “Just an acquaintance. Guy I knew from work. He was eighty-two.”

  “Oh.” Hobie seemed relieved to hear it. “What can you do?”

  In the mirror, Eve watched as the the
rapy session in the booth came to a conclusion, the two woman friends putting on their jackets and heading for the door. A few minutes later, the baseball fans made their exit as well. Only Eve and the old lushes remained.

  “Slow night?” she asked.

  “About average.”

  “I guess you make up for it on the weekends.”

  “Saturdays are pretty busy,” he said. “But that’s not my shift.”

  Eve made a sympathetic noise, but Hobie shook her off.

  “My choice,” he assured her. “Weekends are sacred. That’s me-time. Necessary for my mental health and well-being.”

  He told her about the pickup basketball game he played on Saturday mornings, a bunch of Haddington High alums, former varsity players of all ages. Hobie was one of the older guys, but he could still keep up.

  “Can’t jump as high as I used to,” he conceded. “But I still have a decent outside shot.”

  “Sounds like a good workout.”

  “The best.” Hobie grinned. “Sundays I do a group bike ride with a few buddies. Usually thirty or forty miles. We did a big charity ride this summer.”

  It was easy to imagine him on a fancy bike, decked out in spandex like it was the Tour de France, breathing hard as he crested a steep hill, his face glowing with cheerful determination.

  “My ex-husband did that a couple of times,” she said. “You gotta really be in shape.”

  “I try,” Hobie said with a touch of false modesty that Eve did her best to ignore. “What about you? What do you like to do on the weekends?”

  “This and that,” she said, wishing she had a sweaty and exciting activity of her own to boast about—rock climbing or kickboxing, even tennis. But all she ever did was read and watch movies and go for slow walks around the lake with Jane and her arthritic bichon frise, Antoine. In the summer there was yard work, cutting grass and pulling weeds and watering her little garden, meditative tasks she would have enjoyed a lot more if she wasn’t so worried about ticks. These days she was looking longingly at the trees, waiting for the leaves to change so she could go outside and rake on a chilly autumn morning, pathetic as that sounded. “I just like to relax, I guess.”