by Mia Caldwell
“And who’s this?”
“This is Nick,” said Zoe, wondering if her mother would allow her to remain as vague about the details as her father had – she thought probably not. “He’s a friend of mine.”
“A friend?” Parenting for Olive Blanchard, as with all the best mothers, did not stop when the child left home. To her mind, finding her daughter a husband remained as much her job as burping her and changing her diapers.
“Yes Mom, a friend,” said Zoe, hoping the emphasis would save further elaboration.
“Funny you’ve never brought any friends back home before.”
“And this is why,” said Zoe with finality.
“Owns a bar,” Davis contributed. “Works there too. As a man should.”
“Zoe’s sister Karina worked in a bar,” said Olive. “And her brother Byron.”
“Pleased to meet you Mrs. Blanchard,” said Nick – it was the first chance he had had to speak.
“Call me Olive,” Olive took the proffered hand and shook it. “Mrs. Blanchard makes me sound so old.”
“It’s just a number!” Davis called from the pick-up, where he was collecting Zoe and Nick’s luggage.
The conversation continued in a rambling fashion throughout the afternoon as other Blanchard’s and Carey’s (Olive’s side of the family) turned up well in advance of the main party that night. It occurred to Zoe that it was things like that that you missed – the little things. In the city, when you held a party, you expected people to turn up about half an hour late, because that was polite – guests were a hideous burden and the less time they inflicted their company on you the better.
A party was a show, and the curtain went up when it went up and not before. But out here, a party was held out of a genuine desire to see people, and why wouldn’t you want to spend the maximum amount of time with them that you could? Besides, if you arrived early you could help set up – that was just good manners. There were no rules beyond the basic one of respect to the host and respect to your fellow guests. No one frowned if the wine you brought was an inferior vintage. No one cared if your dress was just so last year. It wasn’t a party at which to be seen, it was a party at which to see people.
And Nick thrived at it.
When she had initially invited him – via some weird subconscious blip – Zoe had thought that a weekend in the country would do Nick some good because she thought that a weekend in the country would do everyone some good.
He was clearly stressed over some unspecified issues with his brother, and some wholesome food, fresh air, and open space was just what he needed. If nothing else, it would take his mind off his own stuff for a bit. After she had made that initial offer, and most especially during their journey here, she had had some serious second thoughts about what good it might actually do him.
How would a man like Nick fit in here? Not well at all, she suspected. He would be at best uncomfortable and at worst would end up offending people, looking down on them, saying things that were mildly offensive, and thoroughly ruining the Blanchard family weekend, as well as wasting his own. The best case scenario seemed to be that he might keep himself to himself and shut the hell up. If pressed, she might have admitted the possibility of him enjoying himself because, frankly, her family were lovely, the food was good, the music was toe-tapping, and who wouldn’t enjoy themselves in that atmosphere? What she had not anticipated – what she had never even dreamed as a remote possibility – was that he might fit in.
A barman has to fit in everywhere, has to be a shoulder to cry on for everyone from the richest to the poorest, and treat both their very different sob stories as equal. But that was work, this was life – the fact that Nick fit in at the Blanchard barbeque had nothing to do with what he did, it was not an ‘ability’ to fit in or a skill he had learned. He genuinely fit in. He might come from a completely different background and have completely different life references, but he was a decent person at heart, even if he bumbled a bit, and when you were at the Blanchard’s that was all that mattered. More importantly, they were decent people, and that was apparently all that mattered to Nick.
In a strange way Zoe felt oddly short-changed by this. Nick had spent the last week convincing her that what was important was what you knew, how you looked, how you dressed, how you walked. Now it seemed that he had known all along that that was bullshit compared to the stuff that links us all as people – simple decency. Why had none of that come up when he was teaching her? It seemed grossly unfair that he should turn out to not care about all the fripperies of sophistication when he had been ramming them down her throat as if there were was something badly wrong with her for not knowing them in the first place. Zoe had half a mind to take him to task for this inconsistency, and when she had had a few more drinks (her cousin’s home brew had a wicked kick) then that half a mind swiftly became a whole one.
With this resolution firmly in mind, Zoe strode up to Nick, ready to lay into him for all the crap her had put her through. Nick looked up as she approached, and smiled. He had a great smile, but Zoe hardened her heart against it.
“Hi,” said Nick.
“Hi. I…”
“You having fun?”
“Yeah,” Zoe said dismissively, anxious to get to her point. “Nick, I want to…”
“Me too,” said Nick. “I’m having a great time.”
“I can tell. But…”
“I wanted to thank you for bringing me here.”
“No problem. Now…”
“You don’t know how much it means to me,” Nick shook his head a little drunkenly (Zoe’s cousin’s home brew had found another unsuspecting target).
“Well I’m glad I could…”
“You go through life,” Nick went on, barely noticing that Zoe had spoken, “thinking everything’s okay – acting like everything’s okay – and then one thing comes along and… and you realize that everything wasn’t okay to start with. And the whole thing – the whole… tissue of your existence starts to unravel. If tissue unraveled. Which I guess it doesn’t. The wooly pullover of your existence. And you realize it was mostly held together with spit and bubblegum. And hope and prayer.
He paused, and Zoe could have interjected there with her diatribe. But instead she sighed and said, “Do you want to talk about it?”
Zoe was more or less resigned to being a good person, a decent person, a person who would always do the right thing no matter the circumstances. It was one of the things that she most hated and loved about herself.
“No,” Nick shook his head. As he had been in the office earlier, he was unwilling to discuss personal problems – they were his issues, he would overcome them himself. But of course, in the office earlier, he hadn’t had a head full of Zoe’s cousin’s home brew. “No,” he reiterated before continuing. “The bar’s losing money. I mean losing money. And I mean money. Not really big money - not to someone like me. Probably HUGE money to someone like you.”
There he went being mildly offensive again. Zoe clenched her jaw.
“…but not to me. But…” He seemed to struggle for a second to decide which aspect of this was most upsetting to him. “It was my thing. You know? The bar. I didn’t step up and take an active role as CEO of RothCo cause… you know? That’s no life. I saw what it did to my dad. That’s not cool. That’s not for someone like me. But a bar – that’s cool. That’s laid back. That’s something I could do.” His face fell. “But apparently not. Apparently I’m not good at that either. And it makes you question – you know? Why did I leave the CEOing to Adam? Cause I didn’t want it? Cause I was taking a stand? Or cause I was afraid? Afraid I would suck. Maybe not afraid I would suck as much as know I would suck. I can’t even a run a bar to a profit! People will buy alcohol no matter how expensive and Nick’s isn’t the most expensive bar in town. I didn’t want that, I wanted a place where people go, somewhere friendly, where everybody knows your name. How did I screw this up? How is that even possible?”
“Is th
at what you and Adam were arguing about?” asked Zoe, tentatively.
Nick nodded. “He has never liked my bar. He doesn’t like the idea of a Rothberger being in the service industry. I mean,” Nick clarified with a drunkenly careless wave of his hand, “he drinks in there. Which you’ve got to respect. He’s a good brother that way. He supports my bad life choices financially by being probably my best customer (which isn’t saying much, but still). But he’s never liked it. And then he found out it was losing money. Money’s everything to Adam. I don’t think it matters so much. You know: money - who cares?”
“People who don’t have it,” suggested Zoe.
“Exactly!” said Nick, who clearly hadn’t understood her answer at all. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t live for money. I live for the moment. You know? I run a bar, I meet real people, I get laid, like all the time. Like constantly. He’s just jealous of me. Of my life. You think? You think he’s jealous of me?”
Zoe considered this. “No, actually,” she finally replied. “To be honest it sounds more like you’re jealous of him.”
“Whaaaat?!” Nick scoffed. “Me jealous of him? That’s crazy – you’re crazy. Why would I be jealous of that paper-pushing, pencil-pushing geek?”
“Because he’s good at what he does and you suck at it?” suggested Zoe.
“I run a bar,” Nick emphasized. “That’s way better than what he does. I slept with like three different girls last week. Who I met in my bar. Three! You think he slept with three girls in the last year? I did. That’s the dream!”
Zoe nodded at him skeptically. “I really hope it was a dream, because if it was reality, then that’s just a little sad.”
Nick scoffed again. “Sad? More like awesome! Do I seem sad to you?”
Zoe watched him with pity. “Yes, Mr. Rothberger. You really do. And I think you’re doing everything you can to hide just how desperately sad you are. Because you’ve done everything right. You followed your heart, you didn’t worry about money or the corporate ladder, you got your dream job – and yet you’re still unhappy. And you don’t know why. And I think now you’re scared that if you can have everything you ever wanted and still be unhappy then maybe you never will be happy. So you’re doing everything (and apparently everyone) you can to force yourself into a happiness you don’t feel because otherwise it’s just one more thing you’ve failed at.”
Perhaps Zoe wouldn’t have said as much as that or used those words exactly if not for her cousin’s home brew, but they were out now. Certainly Nick’s reaction would have been different if not for the home brew. He would have shouted or fired her on the spot. Instead he just stared.
“For what it’s worth,” Zoe continued, taking a deep breath, because once you’d started saying something like this you had to see it through, “I don’t think you’re unhappy because you turned out to be bad at your dream – although you clearly are – it’s because you’re still trying to be something you’re not. And that can be tempting – believe me, I know. This last week I’ve been enjoying more and more all the things you’ve introduced me to. It’s easy and comfortable and, dammit, it’s actually sexy to be someone else. It’s thrilling. But there’s a void at its center. It’s weird – I’m enjoying it, and yet it doesn’t make me happy. I don’t know if you wanted to own a bar, but I’m pretty sure you never wanted to run one – it’s not you. What you wanted was to work behind one. That’s who you are and it’s something you’re good at. But you’re a Rothberger, and however much you think you might have rejected your family’s legacy, there’s enough of it in you that the idea of interviewing for a job in a bar never even occurred to you as an option. You had to own the bar, you had to run it, you had to have your name on the front. Then you could just work there occasionally and enjoy those snatched moments of freedom. And that was a plan doomed to failure because, like I said: you suck at it. You’re not a businessman. I get that being a Rothberger who’s not a businessman can’t be easy, but the sooner you accept this basic truth about yourself, the happier you will be.”
Again, Zoe had said more than she had initially intended, but there wasn’t a word of it she would take back. She waited to see how Nick might respond.
He looked at her and it was hard to tell if he was dead serious or dead drunk. “I am still your boss, you know?”
“I know.”
“Just saying; most people don’t talk to their boss like that.”
“Well, I think the world would be better if more people did.”
“It’s not as easy to be the boss as it sounds you know.”
“I know.”
“Rothberger isn’t just a name or a family, it’s a lifestyle into which you’re born.”
“I get it.”
“And you’re wrong -- sort of. I do want to own a bar and I do want to run it and I do want it to make huge amounts of money and prove what a business genius I am because I’m a Rothberger and that stuff is coded into my DNA. That stuff is my life blood. That stuff is oxygen. That stuff…”
“Doesn’t make you happy?” suggested Zoe, as kindly as she could manage.
Nick deflated. “It might. I don’t know. I’ve really no way of knowing, cause none of it is happening. I’m sort of working on the premise that financial success will make me happy cause financial failure has been a bit of a bummer, to be honest.”
“Well,” Zoe admitted, “I suspect you’d rather make money than lose it. And it might get Adam off your back. But I don’t think that’s what’ll make you happy.”
“It’s weird,” slurred Nick, who had – against all good advice Zoe tried to give him– continued to swig home brew throughout their conversation, “how you can enjoy stuff but it doesn’t leave you feeling happy. Take sex.”
“Maybe we should leave the conversation there?” suggested Zoe, who was happy to get closer to her employer but preferred to draw the line at discussions of his rapacious sex life.
But Nick had gone back to tuning out her responses. “I definitely enjoyed myself with those girls last week…”
“Nice to know, but let’s not dwell on…”
“But I’m happier right now, here with you,” Nick concluded.
Zoe had been about to say something but found herself oddly short of things to say.
“And we’re not even having sex!” Nick laughed.
“No,” Zoe agreed, her skin oddly hot and prickly. “No, we’re not.”
“Weird huh?” said Nick again.
Their eyes met, and for a moment the bleary drunkenness seemed to go out of Nick’s and they refocused, sharp and clear on Zoe’s.
“Don’t ever change,” he said. “I mean there’s so much about you that needs changing. So, so, so much. So much that’s wrong. But it all works together. Somehow. All your imperfections make a perfect whole. You’re better than Vanessa. Actually you’re even better than Sabrina.”
“Who’s Sabrina?” asked Zoe. Her heart was in her mouth at hearing these words.
Nick stared at her a long while, his eyes drifting back into glassiness. “I’m sleepy,” he declared. He looked at his empty glass. “I’m starting to think that there might have been some alcohol in this.”
And with that insightful observation, he slumped into a drunken stupor and began to snore.
Zoe stared at her boss: an inebriated, snoring mess who was now starting to drool from the corner of his mouth.
He had been right: it was weird what sort of things could make you happy.
Chapter Six
The train of thoughts that passed through Nick’s head when he awoke made for a little Odyssey all of their own.
Where was he?
Why was he here?
Was there a glass of water nearby?
But chief among these thoughts was: what was I drinking last night?
And this thought was accompanied by a hangover that bored into his skull and proceeded to apply a pneumatic drill to his nerve endings. He lay very still and hoped that the room would stop
spinning. As he did this he tried to piece together the rest of his life; starting with his name and working his way up from there. He seemed to have woken up alone – always disappointing, but you couldn’t win ‘em all. Despite this, and despite his current fragile state, he found an odd sense of well-being suffusing those bits of his body that were not stricken with related agony. He had no idea why that might be but apparently he had had a good night.
Perhaps the girl had left already. That was considerate. He liked girls who left before he woke, thus avoiding the awkwardness of finding out their name and getting them to leave without seeming rude.
As the jigsaw pieces of his brain gradually fitted back together he started to remember that he was at Zoe’s parents’ house, and that there had been a birthday party last night, and that there had been some deceptively delicious drink that had taken him by surprise and then thoroughly kicked his ass. He had a vague memory of talking to Zoe but no more than that. He hoped he had not done or said anything stupid – he had enough problems to deal with.
He would have liked to remain there in bed for another hour or so at least but his bladder was full of home brew and there seemed no way to remedy that other than going to the bathroom (or at least not one that would have left any good impression of him as a guest).
Slowly and gingerly, Nick went through the process of getting up, visiting the bathroom, drinking his bodyweight in cold water, dressing and heading downstairs. He found the rest of the family in the kitchen, far more noisy and boisterous than he would have liked them to be given his current state. No one else seemed to be showing any effects of the festivities from the night before.
“Morning,” he said, his voice grating slightly over his sandpaper vocal cords.
“Morning,” Zoe smiled pleasantly at him. Being in the country seemed to take the anxious edge off of her for some reason.
“You had a good night’s sleep,” said Olive Blanchard, ushering Nick to a chair and setting a cup of thick, coffee in front of him, black as tar.