by Joe Coccaro
***
At about eight that night, long after Rose had left, Gil took a seat on the customer side of the bar, happy to turn the shift over to Lil, and happier to be off his feet. As usual, Jill wasn’t here. She was proud of Gil’s, but had never been much of a drinker or liked the bar scene. She made it in occasionally to help, but preferred to stay home to sell fish-skin earrings on eBay. Still, everybody teased about Gil, Jill, and Lil. They called them the Ills, mostly because all three complained—a lot. Running the tavern was like farming: There was either too much rain or not enough, and patrons either drank too little or too much and were antisocial or obnoxious.
Carter had just finished some wings and was cleaning his fingers with a scented wet wipe when Gil settled onto the barstool next to him.
“Wings were awesome, Gil. I like the bourbon sauce. Messy but good.”
“Did you get any in your mouth or just on your hands, you moron?”
“Both,” Carter said. “Fingerlicking good.”
Gil leaned over and kissed Carter on the cheek. “And you’re such a nerd—and a wuss.”
“Will ya stop doing that,” Carter said as he wiped his cheek. “I swear, Gil.”
“Just expressing affections. Jill says I need to be more affectionate, but she didn’t say to who. So, there ya go.”
“Save it for Jill.”
***
Gil and Carter had met years ago at a brokers’ conference.
Carter was in his early thirties at the time, about ten years Gil’s junior. He was working at a small firm based in Norfolk, Hogan and Wynn, finance specialists that orchestrated media company buyouts. The firm essentially hunted for newspapers or TV stations that could be bought and found a buyer and arranged financing for the deal through brokerage firms, like the one Gil had worked for.
Carter was at the conference trolling for seed money for his firm when he and Gil were taking a break, watching Syracuse in the Final Four of the NCAA tournament at a hotel bar. The two alums, cheering on the Orangemen, started talking and drinking. Their team won, and the two newfound friends stayed out all night celebrating. Once a year, they met at Madison Square Garden to watch Syracuse in the Big East Conference.
The two men were diametric opposites. While Gil was a jokester who could make conversation with a snail—and a blend of sarcasm and compliments that was a perfect balance of balsamic vinegar and olive oil—Carter was shy, quiet, thoughtful, and sincere. He could be witty and trade barbs when challenged, but he preferred the sidelines, which made meeting people, especially women, challenging in a bar setting.
When the two first met, Carter had donned a mustache—a wispy patch of light-brown hair that looked more like an eyebrow. One day, while at a New York hotel bar, Carter lost a sports bet and Gil made him down a flaming shot. The blue blaze ignited a few hairs, and Carter was left with a hole in his mustache. The next morning, he shaved it, and Gil nicknamed him Sparky.
“I did you a favor, Sparky. If you kept that thing on your lip, you never would have gotten laid again. You looked like a twelve-year-old. My grandmother had a bigger ’stache than yours.”
Carter and Gil’s friendship thickened when Jill introduced the shy Carter to her sister, Sophie, on a trip Carter had taken to the Big Apple to catch up with Gil. Sophie liked that Carter came off as mellow, attentive, and a great listener. She saw him as great fatherhood material. Carter liked that Sophie was independent, sassy, and smart. She also seemed to hang on his every word and found time for his calls and text messages.
After about a year of long-distance dating, Sophie moved from her native New York to Virginia to marry Carter. To this day, Gil credited that wedding to his and Jill’s discovery of Cape Charles.
“I’m in this shithole because of you,” Gil often said when Carter had crossed the Bay to visit his friend.
“Well, I’m divorced because of you—so we’re even,” Carter had countered each time.
Carter had double majored in journalism and business at Syracuse—and a good thing too. He had tried news reporting for the Chronicle paper in Rochester, New York, but hated it. Professors hailed journalism as a noble profession, but Carter quickly discovered newspapers to be glorified factories that churned out content like widgets. The more sensational, the better. The only thing high-minded about daily-grind journalism was the egos of those in the news business.
“They all think they’re geniuses or the pope,” Carter once told Gil. “One dipshit I worked for told me journalism was his religion. The slimy old fart drank on the job and got fired for bonking an intern.”
“If he was a priest, it would have been wine and an altar boy,” Gil had said.
Carter had hated the daily news grind. His quota: two full stories a day and at least two news briefs. He worked nine to nine trolling for anything to fill space. He covered cops on weekends—accidents, fires, shootings. He always dreaded calling the parent of some high schooler killed in a car wreck on a Saturday night to ask for a comment. He had to pretend to be empathetic, even supportive. He felt like a whore.
The tipping point came one Friday when a three-year-old drowned in a neighbor’s pool. A storm had blown over a section of the fence two neighbors shared, and the toddler had wandered into the neighbor’s backyard.
Carter’s boss, the lecherous weekend city editor, insisted he go to the house and interview the parents and neighbor. Carter tried calling first, hoping to avoid a face to face. But no one answered in either household, so he went out. He knocked on the door, and the two parents answered, hysterical. The father, tears in his eyes, his voice cracking with emotion, ordered Carter to leave. As Carter retreated to the sidewalk, a TV news truck pulled up.
“Great!” the father said. “Isn’t it enough that my daughter is dead? You people.”
Carter hustled next door and knocked. No answer. Through the front window he saw people sitting inside a dark den, the TV blaring. Perhaps they hadn’t heard him knock. Carter went around back to see the pool and take a picture with his newsroom-issued Nikon. At least he’d have something to show the city editor.
The neighbors saw the intruder pointing his camera at their pool and unleashed their Rottweiler from the back door. The dog bolted over the fallen fence and charged. Carter received three stitches on his arm and then a summons for trespassing. The newspaper got the charges dropped by offering an apology and a small settlement.
Carter was sick of the “blood beat,” as he called it. Profiting from other people’s pain seemed exploitative and undignified. He had noticed that the guys and gals from the advertising department seemed happier. They left work by six each day and had weekends off. They drove BMWs. People in the news department drove Toyotas. The ad people wore pressed suits; newsies wore wrinkled khakis. So Carter made the switch. He tried selling advertising for a year, but sucking up to furniture store owners and car dealers seemed as prurient as writing about drowned children.
Carter read in the Syracuse alum magazine about an apprentice program for a small media firm in Norfolk. The owner was a Syracuse grad and school benefactor. Norfolk was the South, but South-lite, not redneck country. Plus, it was warmer, and Carter was sick of upstate’s long, gray, cold winters. He’d had enough of lake-effect snow, frozen fingers, and sliding on ice. He had skidded and crashed his Corolla twice.
Sidney Hogan liked the kid from Rochester; sharp, good-looking, Northern, but not Yankee. Polite, sensible. Hogan knew the upstate market well; he had sold a few small newspapers to the owner of the Chronicle. The Rochester people spoke highly of Carter and would be sorry to lose him. One of the business school professors whom Hogan admired provided Carter a four-star reference. That was good enough for Hogan.
What Hogan especially liked was having someone in the firm he could call a journalist. That gave the firm street credibility with the family-owned small newspaper owners who worried that selling out would sully the journalistic heritage of their forebearers. Hogan himself couldn’t have cared less about
journalistic and blueblood traditions. Newspapers and TV stations were commodities to be bought and traded like pork belly futures and fast-food franchises. The Fourth Estate and First Amendment stuff—nothing but sentimentality.
“These are businesses, and we keep them alive with fresh blood and money. Nostalgia doesn’t pay bills,” Hogan would say. “No margin, no mission.”
At least Sidney Hogan is honest, Carter had thought, and probably right.
***
Carter had been lonely in Norfolk and started inviting down his buddy Gil and his wife. They liked the city, especially in the fall. And after Carter’s wedding, when they found themselves stranded in Cape Charles, Gil and Jill opened Gil Netters right after 9/11.
Gil was a conservative, and in Cape Charles, this played well. Whites on the rural Eastern Shore were mostly farmers, real estate agents, watermen, or lucky spermers—the offspring of old families with land and money like the Savages. They reviled taxes and loved guns. Blacks were okay to them as long as they were polite and didn’t complain or date whites. Hispanics were necessary for harvesting crops and roofing houses. Come-heres like Gil and Jill were tolerated as long as they respected the established order. As long as Gil understood his place as a server, he’d be fine.
***
“There was a cute one in here today,” Gil piped to Carter while sipping his second whiskey. “Just your type: skinny ass, perky tits, pretty eyes. I’m guessing thirty-six, maybe thirty-eight. I was gonna text you.”
“Little young for me. Besides, I’m not lookin’,” Carter said. He finished his draft. “Last time you hooked me up resulted in a disaster. Remember Sophie?”
“Quit being a wuss. You’re forty-six, and I presume your johnson still works. Use it or lose it. Get over it, for Christ’s sake. It’s no fun living vicariously through you.”
“Vicariously. Big word. Learn that in anthropology class?”
“Moron. At least I’m not afraid of girls.”
“Go home, see Jill, and excavate your backyard. Go study some jawbones,” Carter chided.
Gil laughed. “I love this guy,” he called to Lil.
Lil rolled her green eyes. “You’re both so freakin’ immature. Want another Blue Moon, Carter?”
“Give him one and another Maker’s Mark for me.” Gil gave Carter another kiss on the cheek.
“Will ya stop that Mafia boss kissy shit! You’re not my brother-in-law anymore.” Carter wiped his cheek. “They’ll be calling this place Gay’s instead of Gil’s.”
Lil laughed and handed Gil his whiskey.
“Gay bashing is non-PC, my friend. Come on,” Gil said. He sipped his bourbon. “I’m the politically incorrect one, remember? And you’re the Hillary pantywaist liberal.”
“I wasn’t gay bashing, and slobbering on my cheek isn’t PC either, you Trump Nazi,” Carter said. “I’m going home to take a shower.”
CHAPTER 4
CARTER GRABBED HIS coffee mug, stirred in creamer, and settled in his recliner with his Kindle to read the morning news. He then checked for overnight messages. The morning looked calm and sunny, so he headed for the back deck.
Carter, please call me when you’re up, a text read.
Sophie. Shit! This can’t be good, Carter thought. He dialed his ex-wife.
“Thanks for calling. You up?” Sophie asked.
“Of course I’m up. I called, didn’t I? Either that or this is a bad dream. What’s the matter, Sophie?”
Carter had spoken those four words thousands of times, because something always seemed to be the matter with his now ex-wife. Sophie was dramatic and pushy, a drama queen in spades. There were no easy problems or lighthearted conversations between them. She had expectations, and when troubled she needed to be heard.
Carter braced himself, gulping coffee so that his mind wouldn’t be trampled by the ensuing assault at dawn. I’ve only been in Cape Charles a few weeks, and Sophie’s still hassling me with her drama.
“Carter, I’m leaving Virginia Beach. There’s nothing here for me anymore. In fact, I hate it here.”
“Moving? Okay, sounds good to me. Where?”
“Do you really care where? And you should know where. Christ, Carter, we were together fifteen years.”
“Okay, Sophie, how many guesses do I get?”
“Screw you, Carter.”
“Enough with the love taps. Tell me what you need.”
“I’m moving back to New York, and I’m moving in with a friend.”
“A friend. And who might that be?”
“Carter, it’s serious. I just wanted you to hear it from me before big-mouthed Gil or my sister tell you. I owe you at least that.”
“I appreciate the courtesy, Sophie, and I hope Mr. Whomever makes you happy.”
“Carter, it’s Miss Whomever. My college roommate.”
Carter almost dropped his phone. After a few seconds, he recovered. “Great. You’re a lesbo. Perfect. Just perfect, Sophie. Gil will never let me live this down.”
***
Sophie and Carter’s marriage had bobbed on stormy seas for many years. Then it capsized after Sophie caught Carter in flagrante delicto with a hooker in their home on a weekend she was supposed to be away. Sophie had suspected something was amiss for a while. For several months, about $500 had been going unaccounted for in their checking account. And she’d found wads of cash stuffed in an athletic sock in Carter’s dresser. At first she thought her husband might have a drug habit, most likely cocaine. This was worse—hookers.
Sophie viewed men as little more than hormonal apes, and now her anthropologic hypothesis seemed unassailable. “Of the ten most important things to men, sex takes up the first nine spaces,” she would tell Jill. When they’d first met, Carter had seemed more civilized to Sophie. He actually read books, subscribed to National Geographic, and genuinely strived to make sex mutually inclusive. She liked receiving oral sex, and he was very accommodating.
“Sometimes, in the middle of the night, he would wake up and stroke my hair,” Sophie told Jill toward the end of her marriage. “That got me hotter than a pistol. On Sunday mornings, he’d bring me orange juice, coffee, and turn on the news. Then he’d rub my feet. Now, all I get is slippers for Christmas.”
Carter could take a punch in his verbal spars with Sophie and gently return one. Sophie had liked that too. She had also liked Carter’s body. He stayed in shape, hitting the gym several times a week, running, playing beach volleyball, skiing, always active.
Not long after they were married, Sophie and Carter bought a townhouse in Virginia Beach. She’d quit her guidance counselor job in New York and didn’t look for another, figuring she’d get pregnant. They tried almost every night for more than a year. They tried so much, in fact, that intercourse became revolting. Sophie decided, unilaterally, to undergo in vitro fertilization. She paid $15,000 to a local fertility clinic.
“No way,” Carter had insisted. “People who do that wind up with a litter. The kids are born premature and wind up with all sorts of health problems. No way, Sophie!”
“Selfish bastard! Just give me your sperm. I already cut the check.”
After two brief pregnancies that terminated naturally, Sophie gave up and started visiting friends in New York. She hated Virginia Beach even more.
Carter was swaying in that direction too. He had become bored with suburbia and his seemingly mundane life as a broker of small-market media deals. His bosses were nice enough, but they were culturally conservative and far too pretentious for their mediocre social status. Big fish in small ponds are really just medium-sized fish everywhere else, Carter often thought.
Once they quit trying to procreate, Sophie saw no point in having sex. Carter’s penis was useless as an empty revolver—inert and hard. Carter still had needs, hence, the hooker and the ensuing generous divorce settlement.
***
“Damn you, Carter, you really don’t give a shit about me, do you?” Sophie huffed over the phone.
&
nbsp; “Well, I thought we established a mutual disinterest years ago,” he quipped.
“Asshole. I say I’m moving back to the city to live with a woman, and you act like I’m calling you with a grocery list to fill before coming home.”
“Well, those grocery lists were sort of a pain,” Carter said.
“Asshole!”
“I am an asshole. Point taken. Sorry. Look, I am happy for you, Sophie. You should move on. I have. It doesn’t matter that it’s with a woman. Whatever floats your boat. I obviously didn’t. The only question is whether I tell Gil and Jill that you’re a lesbian or do you?”
“They already know, asshole. They’ve known for years.”
CHAPTER 5
CARTER’S BACK WAS as tight as a banjo string after weeks of unpacking, moving furniture, and painting. No amount of stretching or squats at the gym had prepared his hips and lower spine for the grinding and twisting of painting ceilings and moving queen-sized beds. His small foursquare was starting to feel like a reality-show fixer-upper house project, one where the new owners discover that minor problems are major and structural catastrophes lurk beneath the floors and between the walls. Crevices crept along the plaster walls like veins on the back of a painter’s hand. The kitchen looked World War II vintage from a bombed out French village. Bathroom crud and mold made Carter wear flip-flops when he showered, and the pine floors he loved so much bowed and creaked. Sure, the house had a lot of charm and potential. But it was now clear those sales buzzwords the real estate agent had bombarded him with were euphemisms for money pit. It was going to take patience, cash, and lots of Advil to make this 1925 hag a beauty.
***
The morning was warm but with a south breeze just brisk enough to keep the bugs down. Carter sat on his front steps drinking coffee and chewing on a breakfast bar as he listened to the leaves rustle on the massive sycamore.
“Dammit!” he yelled. “Get!” A tabby with a tail as thick as a raccoon’s and hateful green eyes scurried across the street and under a porch.