“But didn’t you like that part?” the kid asked, sounding a little desperate. “Raising kids and all, with somebody you loved?”
“Don’t let Steve get to you, he’s bitter,” Brett said. “See, the thing of it is, son, you’re young. Real young, from where we sit, and too young to be getting tangled up in all that. Live a little first, huh? You got years before you gotta settle down. Marriage changes a man. Derails all your plans.”
Exactly, I thought. There’s nothing a woman could do for me that I couldn’t do for myself, not even a woman like Carmen. The future I glimpsed in her bed was a dream, an illusion, and not one that I had ever wanted for myself.
The kid shrugged. “I never even had any plans till I met her. I was working in a warehouse, getting jerked around on my hours, living with my parents. She came along and all of a sudden I’m demanding a promotion. I never would have done that without her.”
“That’s what they do!” Steve said, almost shouting. “Roust you out of your comfortable life, tell you to make something out of yourself, change your socks—”
“Use a washcloth!”
“Take a shower!”
“Eat a vegetable!”
“Nag, nag, nag. Clip your toenails, walk the dog—”
“Change the oil!”
“Call the plumber!”
Everyone around added their own example, and the kid at the center of the conversation looked more and more dubious.
“So, hold on,” he said, squinting. “You’re upset because they want you to take care of yourselves and your pets and your houses? Isn’t that, like, what adulting is?”
“C’mere,” Charlie said, gesturing exaggeratedly and putting an arm around the boy’s shoulder. “Lemme tell you a secret, kiddo. That’s exactly it. Exactly. Who wants to be an adult, anyway?”
“So you’re projecting your dissatisfaction with adulthood on your wives. Makes sense,” the kid said wryly.
Charlie jerked back and twisted his mouth. “Psych major?”
“Sociology.”
“Pfft. Let it go, guys, kid’s not drunk enough for this,” Charlie said, shoving the boy away. He laughed, and the conversation moved on to other things.
Me, I cursed the universe for calling me out like that. It was completely uncalled for, and it completely ruined a perfectly good evening. I caught myself thinking about alternate futures, and every time I did, I got a little more resentful. There was absolutely no reason why I should be thinking like this. Not now, not when I was so close to getting everything I wanted.
I canceled my date with my client that night. I was in no mood for it, and I wouldn’t have been at my best anyway. Part of me even felt guilty for having the date set up in the first place, which only made me feel worse. I spent the night taking out my frustrations on the gym’s punching bag instead.
Chapter 11
Nick
Days later, I was still in a funk. My mood seemed to affect the bar’s atmosphere, and the old-timers cut their nightly drinking short, leaving me with the young and the rowdy. After breaking up two bar fights, I tried calling the bouncer, who usually only worked weekends.
“Bill, the crowd’s in a bad mood tonight. Can you come in?”
“Sorry, man. My girl’s not feeling so good, might be going into labor. I’d call my brother in for you, but he’s working the concert tonight. Want the agency number?”
“I got it, man, thanks. Hope your girl feels better.”
“She will once these kids come out,” he said, sounding exhausted. “Twins, man. Brutal.”
“I’ll take your word for it. Let me know if you’re coming in tomorrow as soon as you can so I can cover for you.”
“Thanks, man.”
“Hey, Bill—” I cut myself off. What was I doing? Asking Bill how he felt about his marriage and impending children would only kick off another brooding session, and the bar clearly required my full attention tonight.
“Yeah?”
“Never mind. Take care.” I hung up just as another fight broke out.
The rest of my shift was spent alternating between serving drinks and kicking people to the curb. In the end, I had to call the cops twice, had to write off two broken tables and a dozen smashed glasses, and made less than half of what I usually made in tips.
It was my night to close, and I had never been more relieved to shout “last call.” I was done with this place, with this mood, with these people; I was over all of it. All I wanted was to lose myself in something. The gym, a drive, a run, a date; I didn’t much care, as long as I could turn my brain off and blow off some steam. I needed to feel like myself again. After cleaning up as much as possible, I turned off the lights and left, locking the door behind me.
“Hey, Nick! Is that you?”
I turned around, and was surprised to see a familiar face grinning back at me.
“Bradley? Hey, man! I haven’t seen you since Kuwait, what have you been up to?” I took his hand, embracing him and pounding a fist on his back. Nostalgia lifted my mood, and I was grinning when I stepped away from him again.
“Oh, man! So much, so much. Can’t believe I ran into you. You know I’ve been trying to look you up online for months now?”
“Really? What’s going on?”
“I’m getting married, man! You gotta be there, I want you to meet her. She’s amazing, completely amazing. She helped me start my business, and it’s taking off because of her. She’s so great.”
He pulled out his phone and showed me a picture of a pretty woman with flowers in her hair and steel in her eyes. She looked like a feminine personification of Bradley’s personality. It was strange, to say the least.
“Can’t believe you’re getting married,” I said, shaking my head. “She’s absolutely gorgeous, but what happened to playing the field forever? I mean, all those women you’ve been with, don’t you feel like it’s too early to call it?”
“Spoken like a true man-ho,” Bradley said with a cheesy grin. “Nah, bro, it’s different. When it’s real, there’s no contest. I’m not just chillin’ with her till someone better comes along. There isn’t anyone better, and I’m not even looking. Don’t have to.” He smiled at the picture with a tenderness in his eyes I didn’t even recognize, and it made me uncomfortable.
“So what’s this about a business?” I asked, desperate to change the subject.
“Oh, yeah! So you know how I was always screwing with memos and stuff, turning them into memes and such?”
“Officially, no,” I said with a grin. “But yeah.”
“Yeah, yeah, well turns out I’m really good at graphic design, and there’s a huge market for it. I didn’t even know, like it was just something I did to blow off steam. But then Catherine saw some of my stuff, and she’s like this is really good, why aren’t you doing something with this? And she’s in TV production so she had connections… Took a few years, but now I’ve got a whole crew under me.”
Bradley grinned proudly at me, but something in his eyes still sought my approval. I’d been ahead of him in the chain of command back in the day; it was gratifying to see that he still valued my opinion.
“That’s great, man, good job,” I said, clapping a hand on his shoulder. “Looks like you’re really taking off.”
“Yeah, you know, gotta get it, gotta make it happen. So what are you doing these days?”
“Livin’ the dream, man, livin’ the dream.”
“Yeah?” He looked at me expectantly.
“Well, you know, getting there. Working at Frankie’s, living it up with the ladies.”
He nodded slowly, his eyes computing. “You been working at Frankie’s since your contract expired, haven’t you?”
“Yeah, it’s a good gig,” I said, feeling suddenly defensive.
“Oh. Yeah, I guess so.” Something faded in his eyes. I could almost taste his disappointment. “Still running around with a bunch of girls too, huh?”
“They can’t get enough of this,” I said,
forcing some cockiness into my tone. “I can’t deprive the majority, you know. Gotta spread the love.”
“Yeah, you do! Get it, man, get it.” He grabbed my hand again and we bumped chests, reviving some of the joy that had been there a few minutes ago. “So, hey, let me get your number so I can send you an invite. If you want to come, anyway. I know how you feel about being witness to a man losing his freedom.”
There was disappointment in his tone and tension in his smile, but I gave him my number anyway.
“Plus one,” I added with a sleazy wink. “Of course.”
“Just one?” Bradley said, elbowing me. “All right man, I got you. Better get home. She’s cooking my favorite tonight.”
“What, macaroni and cheese with hot dogs?”
“Can’t grow all the way up all at once,” Bradley said with a grin. “See you, Nick.”
“See you.”
I watched him leave with a rock in my chest. Bradley had always looked up to me, ever since basic training. It was something I’d taken an immense amount of pride in; more than I had even realized. Not just Bradley, but our whole unit. I’d been the Man. I still was, wasn’t I? I mean, hell, I wasn’t the one who changed.
I hadn’t changed at all, come to think of it. Years later, I was still the same guy, doing the same stuff. Still had honeys flocking to me. Still mixed a mean drink. Could still turn a whole room in my favor, men and women alike. I was still the Man, damn it.
“Living a boy’s dream,” I muttered to myself.
Irritated at the direction my thoughts were taking, but tired of fighting it, I decided to go for a walk and work it all out with myself. I’d been in a crappy mood all week, and frankly I was over it. I needed some perspective.
“The question is,” I said as I kicked a can down the street, “Is there anything inherently wrong with what I’m doing? No. No, there isn’t. Legally gray, maybe, but not necessarily morally wrong.”
I walked a little faster, propelled by my directionless indignation. “Giving back, making people feel good. So what if I’m still working in the same bar? I like it there. The regulars like me. I’m networking. Can’t open my own bar without a solid customer base, not in this economy. Charlie’s loyal to me, and he’ll bring the rest of them with him. That’s all I really need—customers. I’m networking.”
It was a weak argument, so I made it again. Scowling, I walked through narrow streets crowded with old colonial buildings filled with families. In the silent night, I heard a kid wake up crying. Lights went on. Silhouetted in the window, the mother and father both went to the kid and cuddled him between them. I wasn’t really watching, not on purpose; but I saw it, and it twisted something in my gut.
“That’s not for you,” I said bitterly. “How are you going to be the top-rated male escort in Boston and raise kids? The answer, you’re not. Not gonna happen. There’s no possible balance that would make that acceptable.”
And I certainly wasn’t about to give up the first part of that equation. That was the dream, wasn’t it? To have women literally begging for my attention? Paying me for it? I didn’t know a man alive who wouldn’t want that. At least I didn’t think I did. But the look on Bradley’s face shook me. It reminded me of the kid who had been arguing with Charlie and his cronies earlier that week; that expression that said, “You’re missing out.”
“So what if I am? What am I supposed to do, just give up everything I’ve built so that I can spend the rest of my life getting bitter? Yeah, no thanks. I’m not going to end up like Steve. I’ll buy my own damn boats if that’s what I want. I do what I want. That’s key, here.”
Nobody to nag me, nobody to spend my money, nobody to make me macaroni and cheese with hot dogs.
“I don’t even like macaroni and cheese,” I snapped into the darkness.
That wasn’t the point, and I knew it. The point was, there was a whole potential reality out there that everybody seemed to choose; even people like Bradley, who were as good with the ladies as I was. Steve didn’t have to choose Mary; he could have left whenever he wanted to, before or after the kids, and got back to doing whatever he wanted to do.
So why didn’t he? Why did Bradley choose a woman over his freedom? I wasn’t stupid. I knew the answer. They’d met their match, and didn’t want to let them go. So what did that mean for me, and why the hell was it bothering me so much?
I stopped at a pier and looked out over the dark, glittering water. Waves rose and crashed, rocking the boats. Boats that Steve had metaphorically traded for a lifetime of living with a single person. Of taking care of her. Of being taken care of by her, I realized. It wasn’t a one-way street.
The boat nearest me in the harbor was named Barbara’s Revenge. My mother’s name was Barbara. My parent’s tense, revenge-filled marriage filled my mind, twisting my gut in that familiar way. I knew why my dad stayed: my mom had given him the security he needed to be irresponsible. No matter how he screwed up his personal life outside the house, he knew he could come home to her.
Until he couldn’t. The year they had separated had been the worst year of his life. I could see it all over him; he’d aged five years in one and had spent the latter six months of their separation groveling to come back to her. She eventually caved.
At the time, it had solidified the idea that she had been in the wrong. If she hadn’t been, why would she let him come back at all? Later, though, after I knew everything that really happened, it shook me to my core. Wasn’t that the exact kind of thing that women left men over all the time? Eventually, I’d worked up the courage to ask her about it after I had been deployed to the other side of the world; far enough away so that I wouldn’t see the pain in her eyes when I asked.
“A woman’s role is to understand the nature of men,” she told me. “A man has needs and impulses. Nobody expects men to control that.”
“Then why did you kick him out at all?” I’d asked.
“Because he embarrassed me,” she said. “He spent our savings on some woman in the city, and I had to ask my friends for favors just to make ends meet. I will not put up with being embarrassed in front of my friends. I rely on his discretion. We agreed to it.”
“So you agreed that he would do whatever he wanted, as long as he didn’t embarrass you.”
“It’s the unspoken agreement in any marriage, dear.”
That was the moment, right then, when I had decided that I would never get married. If cheating was the nature of men, then I just wouldn’t put myself in a position where it was possible; and I certainly wouldn’t bring any kids into a disaster like that.
I had accepted my mother’s truth as reality without question, I realized as I looked out over the water. I let her tell me who I was, and how I would inevitably behave. The more I thought about it, the angrier I became. I was no animal, chained to my impulses; I was a man, a fully formed human, and I decided how I behaved.
“But why change everything just because I can if I’m comfortable?” I asked myself.
Carmen’s face, slick with sweat and contorted with passion, rose in my mind’s eye. I shook it away. If there was one thing that seemed consistent with every marriage I had ever encountered, it was that sex eventually becomes mundane or nonexistent. I couldn’t, or wouldn’t, change everything about myself just because of something as inconsequential as mind-blowing sex.
The ball game. I saw her laughing, cheering, groaning when something went wrong. I had never had that much fun with a woman at a game, never been that comfortable. Hell, most of my clients wouldn’t have even bothered to come. The late-night conversation. Her eyes, the sympathy and understanding in her face when I bared my soul to her.
There was so much more now. Being with her, specifically her, would be like spending every night with a friend. That’s what I wanted, I realized; someone I could bond with on the same level that I had bonded with my brothers in the military. Somebody who would ride with me, no matter what we faced. Me and her against the world.
&nbs
p; “Nothing’s inevitable,” I murmured as I pulled out my phone. “And nothing’s set in stone.”
I dialed her number and held my breath. I hadn’t been this nervous about a phone call since middle school. I waited for it to ring, then my heart sank.
“The person you have dialed is not available,” the message said.
Swallowing hard, hoping it was just a glitch, I called again. Same thing.
Maybe she was just broke and had her phone turned off? Holding tight to that hope, I walked to the corner store, where one of the last pay phones stood. It was covered in graffiti and smelled like a urinal, but it was still just about functioning. I slipped my money into the slot and lifted the receiver.
I dialed. It rang. I hung up.
“Well,” I breathed around the steely hunk of disappointment in my chest. “That’s what’s up.”
She’d blocked me. I couldn’t blame her. She must have taken my words to heart. I should have known that she would; she was a very literal, analytical kind of person. She probably knew exactly where my mind was when I left her that morning and didn’t expect me to change it.
I hadn’t expected it either. Now I didn’t know what to do about it.
Chapter 12
Carmen
“Carmen, do you have those reports ready?”
“Not yet, I need at least an hour.”
“You’ve had an hour.”
“Okay, I need a total of two hours. If you want it sooner, maybe assign it to me sooner.”
“I gave it to you as soon as I got it. I swear.”
“Then you’ll get it as soon as I have it.”
“Okay, but pick up the pace, would you?”
“Yes, Paul,” I said sharply.
Jeez, if you want me to go faster maybe try not harassing me? I glowered at my screen as my fingers flew over the keys. We had acquired a new client; several new clients, in fact. An entire medical complex had decided to fire their current record clerks and had transferred all of their accounts to us, which meant that the very second I had completed the last massive project, there was a whole new one to start on.
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