The Ramblers

by Aidan Donnelley Rowley

  “Never,” he says. “I didn’t even know enough to hope. And maybe that’s why it worked out the way it did. It’s funny, but I remember the day I had the idea. My buddy and I bailed on work and went surfing. It was a particularly rad day and the sky was insane and I took all of these photos on my phone and my mind filled up with all of these words . . . words from college, from things I’d read, my favorite poets. And that was that. I was jazzed, but I didn’t know. I remember feeling alive.”

  Smith nods. “I got my MBA and worked as an organization consultant for a while. I did the whole traveling-Monday-through-Thursday thing. And I enjoyed it. I liked my colleagues and my clients, but it was a similar thing. I was at a client’s office and I sat there mindlessly sorting through her stuff and she was so thankful, went on and on about how I had helped her. And it just clicked. That I wanted to do that, to work with people, but in a very different way. I returned to New York and gave notice immediately, began to brainstorm my business. In retrospect, I’m amazed at how confident I was about it all.”

  Confidence. That’s it. She’s confident even though she’s seeking. It’s what Olivia always lacked. She was smart and beautiful and had every reason to be confident, but she could never muster it, and despite his efforts to convince her, she was woefully insecure, and that insecurity was there even in her e-mail last night, a sense that she had made the wrong move, that characteristic backpedaling she did again and again. He didn’t even realize how exhausting it was, how much his efforts depleted him, how unhealthy it all was.

  “I think it’s great,” Tate says.

  “What’s great?” Smith says.

  “That you knew what you wanted and fucking went for it,” he says.

  “You have quite the mouth on you,” she says, sipping her drink.

  “Apologies.”

  “No need,” she says, smiling. “I’m not quite as delicate as I look.”

  A loud, chipper sound carries toward them and they both pivot on their bar stools. A toddler sits with his parents in one of the little bar booths. He plays with an iPad and his mother scrambles to turn down the volume. The mother and father are a hip duo, smartly dressed.

  “See?” he says. “You can have a kid and still live your life. Look at them drinking their wine while he techs out and builds a French fry fort.”

  “That was my favorite book as a kid,” she whispers, pointing over to the family’s table. “Goodnight Moon.”

  Sure enough, a copy of the famous children’s book rests near the edge of the table, its green cover a familiar, happy sight. Is she serious? Tate thinks. This was his favorite story, too. He has so many memories of sitting on his mother’s lap, flipping through those colorful pages.

  “Mine too. Not making that shit up. I loved that little tiny mouse on the green carpet and that bunny grandma in the rocking chair.”

  “So, you want kids?” she says, her smile faint, her eyes shining.

  “I do. A bunch. Though I would probably make a piss-poor father at the moment,” he says. “How can you not want kids?”

  “Clio doesn’t want kids,” Smith says.

  Tate nods. “I guess there are probably valid reasons to forgo parenthood, but hell, I want a little one of those to take to the diner.”

  “Well, you better get to work on that. You’re not getting any younger,” she says, mock-lecturing him.

  “Again, my mother. Are you her special agent or something?”

  “You never know,” Smith says, seeming melancholy all of a sudden. “I just found out that Asad and his wife are having a baby,” she says. “I wish I could say that I’m cool with it.”

  “Wife?” Smith mentioned Asad several times during their late night out, making it clear that she was on the rebound too.

  “Yeah, he got married just a few months after he left me. A quasi-arranged thing. A nice Pakistani girl. And now they’re pregnant. Feels awesome.”

  “Shit. That sucks,” he says. “I would probably lose my shit if I found out Olivia was having a kid.”

  With Olivia, he was the one who brought up having children. It seemed strange to him that all these years were ticking by and they weren’t taking this step. Did she not have a biological clock? Did she not notice that all of their friends were beginning to post pictures of babies on Facebook, babies with fat cheeks and ridiculous preppy names? He began to wonder whether this was something she really wanted. She always said she did, that it was just a matter of timing, that she wasn’t in it to play Stepford Wife, that she had legit career ambitions, wanted to establish herself at the firm, wanted them to establish themselves financially. You can’t just bring a kid into this world, she said. And Tate nodded because this was what he had learned to do, to listen, to cave, but his head roiled with questions, with counterpoints, with concerns. Isn’t that exactly what you do, he thought, bring a kid into this world and then figure it out? Isn’t it always a leap? But each time they talked about it, he pussied out and kowtowed to her logic, a logic that seemed flimsier and flimsier each time they revisited it.

  He looks up and sees Smith watching him in the mirror above the bar.

  “You’re thinking of her,” she says.

  Caught. “Just a little. Fucking settlement bullshit. But I’m thinking of her far less than I was a few days ago. Thanks to you.”

  “Glad I could be a distraction,” she says.

  “A pretty hot distraction, mind you.”

  She blushes. “Do you believe in second chances? Would you give her another shot if she asked?”

  Tate thinks of the e-mail but doesn’t mention it. There’s no need for Smith to know about it. “I haven’t heard from her in a while. It’s over. No second chances. What about you? If he came crawling back, begging for another go at things, what would you do?”

  “I’d let him grovel, but then I’d send him packing back to his pregnant wife. I’d try to get a little more of an explanation out of him, though. To this day, I’m not sure what happened. Everything was great and then it seemed to combust overnight. I’m thinking maybe you’re lucky on some level that you have an explanation. I really don’t.”

  “I do and I don’t. The cheating was the final straw, but I can see now we were incompatible in a lot of ways. She’s pretty linear, you know? Not in a bad way, but she just likes things to be a certain way and I’m realizing I need adventure, a little kink.”

  “Kink?” She blushes even more.

  He nods. “Want my take?” he says, motioning to the bartender for another round of drinks. “I think we both loved people and had our hearts shredded, but in my ignorant opinion, it’s good that we felt so deeply. I mean, fuck, there are some people walking around who don’t even know what it is to love someone. And, hell, it’s torture to be burned like we’ve been, but maybe it’s good to be rattled like that. We’re still young. We have time to figure it out. And what surprises me is that it doesn’t scare me away from doing it again, even though perhaps it should. I just want to feel it again, you know? Does that make me crazy?”

  “Maybe so,” she says, laughing. “But I feel the exact same way.”

  Shit, what is this? What’s happening? It’s been days and all he wants is to take her home and ask her a million questions. A few hours of crash-coursing in each other’s lives and then they’d spend the afternoon fucking in his bed, emerging only to pee and answer the doorbell for their delivery food.

  “You’re not thinking of her anymore, are you?” she says, flashing a naughty grin, stealing a sip of his beer.

  “No,” he says, smiling. “I’m not.”

  Her phone buzzes and she reaches for it. She reads the screen and then looks up.

  “It’s Clio. She wants me to come by the hotel and see the apartment Henry designed, the one that caused all of the drama. Come with me?”

  6:31PM

  “They had an epic sex life.”

  The bartender at the hotel, a young white-haired guy, refills their beers. Henry takes a sip, smiles. “C
ome,” he says to Tate, standing. Tate follows him through the restaurant into the hotel’s lobby and out through a door into a small garden.

  “There’s no Guinness that comes close to the ones brewed back home. Oh, do I miss the pubs—the Crown in Belfast and the Anchor near Oxford and Toners in Dublin near where Mum grew up. I hate to be the snobbish fuddy-duddy, but most of the pubs here are cheap copies. A few are tolerable, thank God. Have you been to the Dublin House down the way?”

  Tate shakes his head, sips his beer. “I haven’t.”

  “We’ll all go one night,” Henry says. “The bartender was my only friend on this side of the pond for a while. I’d go there, drown my sorrows, talk to him and get through to the next day. I was such a lonely bloke.”

  “And now look at you,” Tate says, smiling, kicking the blue stone bench.

  “Smoke and mirrors, my lad,” Henry says, grinning. “I’m still that melancholy, scruffy thirty-year-old, but I’ve learned how to fool people and rub a few pennies together.”

  “You miss Ireland?” Tate says.

  “Sometimes,” Henry says, casting his gaze up at the sky. “Sometimes I feel as if I’ve lost my roots. My accent’s nearly gone, I’ve been here almost twenty years. These young spuds in the hotel world call me Irish and years ago, I would have corrected them and told them I was Northern Irish and given them a talking-to about the Troubles, regaling them with stories about being stopped and checked for IRA bombs in the city center, but I’ve softened, which I suppose is good in a way. But I do miss it. I miss the pubs. I miss rugby. Every St. Patty’s day, my brothers and I would go see the two top school teams play for the Ulster Schools’ Cup at Ravenhill Stadium. I actually started playing again this past spring after I met Clio. On Sundays while Clio and Smith do their thing. It’s been good for me. You should come play. We could use some young blood.”

  “I don’t know the first thing about rugby,” Tate says.

  “Ah, you’d be a quick study. Far tougher and better sport than American football.”

  “I’m not sure how tough I am,” Tate says.

  “We’re all plenty tough,” Henry says. “Gotta be in this brilliant, messy city.”

  “I love it here,” Tate says, sipping his beer. “San Francisco was a good town, but I never had that feeling of walking through history, you know?”

  Henry nods.

  “The architecture here is nuts. Smith and I popped out from the subway earlier and we stopped in front of the Dakota and it hit me. John Lennon was shot here. There were all these tourists with cameras and people walking by, pulling their dogs on leashes, pushing their strollers, yakking into their phones, and that’s why I love with this city, which is so fucking strange because I lived here after college and never saw the appeal. None of it made sense to me then. It was smelly and noisy and crowded and even though I was living the finance-dude-expense-account life, I just wasn’t sold,” Tate says, sipping his beer.

  “It is smelly and noisy and crowded,” Henry says, straightening his tie. “But it’s also the best bloody place in the world. I’ve been here nearly twenty years and it still amazes me.”

  “It is, right?” Tate says. “The last year has been hell, but it got me here. That’s something.”

  “A big something, bloke. Cheers!” Henry croons, lifting his glass to clink Tate’s.

  “I’ve spent all these years fretting over appearances, my résumé, worrying about what my parents think, and I feel like I’m starting not to care. It’s bizarre.”

  “Let me tell you something, and I can only say this because I have a few years on ya, but the day you stop caring is the day life really begins. My old man had it all figured out for his Kildare boys. We would go to uni and then settle in Belfast and work with him at the bank. Coming here was the best thing I ever did, but shit, was it hard. I came here with nothing. I didn’t know a soul. I worked my bloody tail off, but you know what? It was fine. It was worth it. Shit, I could go on and on about all of this, but let me ask you something, Tate, before the ladies get back,” Henry says, the quality of his voice changing. “You and Smith? Tell me.”

  What’s he supposed to say?

  “Smith means the world to Clio,” Henry says. “Been like a sister to her. She has a bloody heart of gold, and this is between us, but Clio’s worried that Smith is fraying with the wedding and all, but I told Clio that we are all fraying, quietly or not-so-quietly fraying and patching; that’s life for you. You were married, I understand?”

  “Yes,” Tate says, suddenly getting the impression that he’s being interrogated. “Ironing out the settlement. Trying to figure out how much I care about the money I never thought I’d have in the first place.”

  “Ah, the money dance,” Henry says. “None of my bloody business, but let me tell you something, okay? I’ve only known Smith for a short while, but she’s something special, and she puts on a good show, a near-flawless one, but I can see it myself, she’s as fragile as the rest of us. And you know what? In my admittedly ignorant opinion, she’s scared, because if things work out as I’m hoping they do, her dearest friend in the world will be moving out. And her kid sister is getting hitched. And she’s soft. And maybe this is inappropriate—I suspect it is—but I’m feeling protective.”

  “I get it, man,” Tate says, nodding, sipping his drink, staring up at the sky. “What do you know about this Asad guy? It seems he did a number on her.”

  “I never met the bloke, but apparently he was a good one. Wickedly smart doctor, and from what Clio says, he was bloody head over heels for Smith, but then something switched and it all crumbled. Clio said he was very Westernized but in the end, he talked a lot about his family and his culture, how the marriage just wouldn’t work. It remains something of a mystery, I suppose, as to what really happened, but what I do know is that they had an epic sex life; my poor Clio caught them in a number of compromising positions over at the San Remo flat and I’m not sure she’s recovered. Anyway, it’s old news. He lives in Boston now. Apparently some hotshot neurosurgeon at Mass General.”

  Tate sips his beer, nods. A highly sexual neurosurgeon. Tough act to follow. “What about you and Clio? Pretty serious, I gather?”

  “I think so, yes,” Henry says, but his words are edged in discernible doubt. “I hope so anyway. We’ll see.”

  Tate looks up and he sees Smith and Clio on the other side of the door.

  “So, what’s the verdict, Andy?”

  “Andy?” Tate says.

  “My diminutive for the lovely Ms. Anderson here,” Henry explains, smiling. “Get with the fine program, lad. So, did I do a passable job per your expert opinion, Andy? Do the aesthetics pass muster?” Henry asks as the girls walk into the courtyard.

  “It’s stunning, Henry,” Smith says. “Truly.”

  Henry grins, raising his glass to clink Tate’s.

  “What have you two been chatting about?” Smith says.

  “Rugby and beer and having the balls to say ‘piss off’ to our parents,” Henry says. “You know, the basics.”

  Tate smiles.

  “Thanksgiving plans, Tate?”

  “My plans are pretty nonexistent. Flying solo this year. Maybe I’ll take my camera out and shoot all the despondent, lonely folks on Thanksgiving Day.”

  “Nonsense,” Henry says. “I think you should escort this lovely young lady to the Hamptons and ply her with enough liquor to stumble through the prewedding thicket. I’d do it myself if I didn’t have to stay here and tend to the holiday rush.”

  He squeezes Clio. She buries her head in his chest.

  “What do you say, Pennington?” Smith says. “The gift of Emersonian solitude or deep Tolstoyan Anderson dysfunction?”

  “Tough call,” Tate says, but he knows just what he will do.

  9:28PM

  “Onward.”

  Back home now. Tate is buzzed but not drunk. In fact, he’s far clearer than he’s been in ages. He opens his laptop and reads Olivia’s e-mail again and w
rites his response.

  To: Farnsworth, Olivia

  From: Pennington, Tate

  Time: 9:30 p.m.

  Subject: I do not despise you

  Liv,

  I do not despise you. I could not despise you if I tried, and let me tell you, I’ve tried. I’m happy to be back here. I think New York City might be my place after all. When we were here, I don’t think we knew how to love it. I think it was too overwhelming for us. It still is, but I find myself welcoming that. The material is endless and as a rookie photographer, I’m a kid in a candy shop.

  It’s hard to believe that it’s Thanksgiving again. I look back to this time last year and realize things were falling apart. I didn’t see it, but I wasn’t looking to see it either. Why would I? I think about how quiet you were in St. Louis, how you offered little in conversation with my parents, how you barely touched your food. You were beginning to slip from me even then.

  I’ve been barely holding my head above water, Liv. I finally feel like things are looking up, but none of this is easy. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done, forging a life without you. I’m just now beginning to remember what it is to have fun, to laugh, to be me. I know you know this, but you are fine. You do not need me to be fine. You have proven that to me.

  I don’t think I can see you when you come to New York. I don’t think that would be good for me, or for us. I’m not sure what the point would be. I trust that you’re sorry. I don’t need to see you to believe you. I don’t need to see you to forgive you. I’m not sure, but I think I’ve already forgiven you. Maybe I’m too quick to forgive? Maybe that’s just another weakness of mine.