by Julia Kent
“No, you weren’t. You dropped the phone in the toilet.”
“No. Before that,” I tease.
“Before that, I was using a urinal.”
Intrigued shock changes his features. Normally, he wouldn’t be quite so loose in front of my sister, but the beer and the less-pressured conversation–with Mom over by the food, plating for the kids–lets Declan open up more.
“You took videos of men peeing?”
Carol catches my eye. In that nonverbal way sisters have, she agrees to jump in on the joke. “Oh, sure. It’s a thing. We help urinal designers with ergonomics.”
Dec sets his beer down and crosses his arms over his chest, settling in for one of our conversations. And by “our,” I mean weird. “Urinal ergonomics? Tell me more.”
Caught off guard, Carol quickly recovers, improvising on the spot. “It’s one of those design elements most companies don’t talk about.”
“This is top secret? Your customers have you sign an NDA about...”
“Arcs,” she says, as if that’s self-explanatory.
“Arcs?”
“Yes. It’s a complex physics issue. We even work with fluid engineers to maximize customer experience, cleanliness, and speed.” Carol may not have a college degree, but she earned her Ph.D. in Bullshit a long, long time ago.
“Fluid engineers?”
“Sure. Ocean and water specialists. You’d be amazed how you can apply calculus to, um,” her hands go up in front of her face, mimicking moving water. “Currents. Fluid dynamics.”
“You’re telling me that companies hire mystery shoppers to take videos of men peeing at urinals to analyze the urine arc, turn that data over to fluid engineers, and they apply it to urinal ergonomics?”
“Um, yep.”
“And the point of the ergonomics?”
“To lower splash rates, urinal-cake hygiene issues. You know. The standard.”
“The standard. There are standard urinal-cake hygiene issues?” Dec grills her.
She looks him right in the eye and lies. “The scent of the urinal cake affects trajectory.”
“Really? I’m fascinated. I assume there are scents to avoid? Scents that perform better?”
She shoots me a help me out here look.
And this is the moment I remember she wouldn’t let me go to Six Flags with her and her friends when they were in high school and had room in the borrowed minivan they took to Agawam for the day. It’s been nearly fifteen years, but now it’s payback time.
“Carol,” I say, her face relieved by the interruption. “Tell Dec all about the fascinating report you received from the Urinal Aromatherapy Team.” I nudge Dec. “This could change lives.”
We wait.
“Actually,” she says slowly, “the researchers thought that female perfume would help men to aim better.”
“It doesn’t?” Declan asks.
“No.”
“What does?”
“Having another man in the urinal next to you.”
“Really?” His voice drops.
“It seems to trigger competition.”
“Then if Declan and Andrew are peeing next to each other, I’ll bet their error rate is zero,” I crack.
Dec’s about to protest when Carol adds:
“Unless he’s a comparer.”
Declan shudders.
My turn to be confused. “A comparer?”
A long, disgusted sigh comes out of Declan, so relaxed and weirdly real, I find it surprising. “Comparers. The guys who look over while you’re peeing.”
“That’s a thing?”
Carol looks like the cat who ate the canary. I know she pulled that out of her ass, but she hit the jackpot.
“Right. They have the worst aim.”
“Makes sense,” Dec says, quickly morphing from a skeptic into someone who is literally falling into her lies like a lemming jumping off a cliff. Who is this guy?
“And coffee scents are ideal. Best flow rate, low splash, the whole bit. Speaking of coffee, how is your coffee chain going, you two?” She beams at Declan. “I want to hear all about it!”
“Nice pivot,” he compliments her. Okay. Whew. I didn’t marry a lemming.
“What pivot?” She bats her eyelashes furiously.
“Whatever my brother’s paying you, it isn’t enough.”
“Damn straight,” she says as Dad herds us to the food table. Tyler’s calmer now, Chuffy is in a little cage, sleeping on a dog bed, and Jeffrey looks like someone who’s been without food for seven days, two large steak bones littering his plate, digging into a third.
“Hollow leg stage, huh?” Declan says to him.
“I’m hungry all the time. Mom says it’s hormones and growth.”
“Like being pregnant,” Mom chirps.
“Uh, Grandma?” Jeffrey slowly lowers his fork. “You do know I can’t get pregnant, right? Maybe they didn’t have sex ed back when you went to school, but that’s not possible.” He gives my dad an alarmed look. “You guys do know men can’t get pregnant, right? Not even from anal sex.”
“JEFFREY!” Carol shouts, setting down her fork with a queasy look.
“What? It’s true. I’m just being factual, Mom. You told me that any time someone at school said something that is wrong about sex, I should arm them with the facts.”
“Anyone armed with anti-nausea medication?” Dad mutters.
“This isn’t school!” Carol shouts. Mom covers Carol’s hand in a gesture that says, I got this.
“Sweetie, I know men can’t get pregnant,” Mom says kindly to her grandson. “And women can’t, either, from anal sex.”
“MARIE!” Dad bellows.
“MOM!” Carol snatches her hand back like it’s contaminated.
“What?” Mom gives us all an ingenuous look. “It’s true. I’m just being factual.”
“Are you sure we want to have kids?” I whisper in Declan’s ear.
“Yes,” he whispers back, drinking more beer.
“Whew.”
“But I’m not sure I want to have a mother-in-law.”
Chapter 6
Shannon
* * *
We’re here.
The drive up from Boston to Portland was exceptionally boring. Not because my conversation partner is a dud, or because we’re in a swale, or because current events are particularly dull, but because I fell asleep.
That’s right.
Asleep.
I’m being shaken awake by a very handsome man with dark hair, green eyes, and a loving smile.
“Shannon? We’re here.” He’s parked in a spot facing the harbor, a small pier with sailboats stretching out into the water. An enormous cruise ship is to our left, old commercial wharf houses to the right, aged brick in abundant supply.
“What? Oh!” My head is cold in one spot, where I must have been leaning against the window, and my lips have that dry-but-sticky tactile sensation that makes the difference between being awake and asleep hard to discern, because the lines on everything are so blurred.
“Are we at our hotel?”
“Looking for it now.” He’s frowning at his phone. I stretch, limited by the passenger seat, then realize I can get out.
So I do.
“I slept the whole way?” I call back through the now-open window.
He nods.
“I’m sorry. You must have been so bored.”
“I put my earpiece in and handled some calls. Less work to interrupt us for these two days.”
As I inhale deeply, salt air comes right on in, invited and welcome. Yes, I live right in Back Bay in Boston and breathe in the same salt air everyday, but this is different. Vacation Air and Life Air have a chemical distinction that separates them. Our bodies somehow know when we are breathing in a soul-feeding gulp versus a rushed gasp of mindless oxygen in the hurry of the daily grind.
Declan is taking a long time inside the car, so I poke my head in. “Everything okay?”
He looks up and gives me a
wide smile. “Just fine. Digging up our reservations.” The smile fades as he goes back to the phone, then reaches for the window button–my window–and closes it, phone to his ear before the snick of the window cuts off easy communication.
Huh.
That’s weird.
I stretch my legs with a quick walk along uneven cobblestone streets, stepping up out of the roadway onto sidewalk. As I turn to catch Declan’s eye, I see his jaw tight, expression angry.
Oh, no. Some work-related problem is interrupting our vacation.
I knew this would happen.
Expectations are funny, and by funny I mean infuriatingly difficult to navigate. Adults should be flexible. Part of developing and maturing involves understanding that sometimes we have to adapt to circumstances beyond our control. The Rolling Stones say it in their song, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” right?
And yet human beings are planners. We look to the future. We assume we have a future and develop visions for that. Dec and I wouldn’t be planning a family if we weren’t part of the cycle of humanity that drives us to think ahead, right?
Expectations are a human feature. Not a bug.
Flexibility has to be paired with expectations, though, and when the two collide, we learn more than we want to know about ourselves and others.
I tap on the window with my middle knuckle. He glares at the phone, then pushes the automatic button for the window to drop.
“What was that about?” I ask.
“Milk supply issue.”
“In a year, that’ll be my line,” I joke.
He starts, looking at me with great consternation. “Huh?”
“Bad breastfeeding joke.”
It takes a few seconds, but he laughs through his nose. Whatever’s bothering him is big. Super big. “Dec,” I ask, hand on his cuff, “What’s going on? You’re agitated.”
“I am not agitated.”
“You are showing more emotion in your left eyebrow than usual.”
“Cut it out, Shannon.” His voice is pleasant, but there’s an edge to it.
“Are you hiding some Grind It Fresh! problem from me? I’m COO. Your equal, even if on paper you’re CEO. Please don’t start doing this.”
“Doing what?”
“Not telling me about issues with the business. I was afraid this might happen.”
“Afraid what might happen?”
“You’d shut me out from problems with the business.”
“I’m not.”
“Then tell me what’s wrong.”
“It’s nothing. Just, you know.”
“Milk?”
“Right.”
I yawn, the impulse taking over before I can stop it, a great big vulnerable muscle stretch that takes over my whole body, blood pumping everywhere even as I fight it, my anger overridden by the biological need to get more air inside me to let all the pieces of me do their job.
Dec’s eyes gravitate immediately to my breasts, which poke out at him, a little cleavage suddenly turned into a nice view of the Grand Tetons.
I take another breath, then say, “I need coffee.”
He looks up at me. “Me, too.” He points to a gluten-free bakery. “That place is on our list. How about this? You go get us two cups to go, and by the time you’re back, I’ll be done with this work issue.”
“Your milk issue.”
“Yes.”
He’s not going to tell me, is he? Anger bubbles up, his betrayal of principle hurting more than he realizes. “Fine,” I say, turning away, shouldering my purse and marching off to cross the street.
I am anything but fine, though.
No amount of careful control can stop tears from rimming my eyes. I’m not good enough to share info about a work emergency with, but I can be an errand girl and fetch coffee?
No.
I walk past the gluten-free bakery and head up a slight hill, turning right into Old Port’s main shopping district. There are two places that top my list to see: a specific coffee shop right by the tiny town common, and a salt and crystals store.
I snake my way, trying not to cry, furious that he would do this now, of all times. As I choke back my tears, I see the coffee shop. In a haze, I go in and order one–and only one–macchiato, my new favorite.
The coffee-chain owner in me should take notes, observe and analyze, check the place out and compare.
The woman and wife in me just needs caffeine and something to do while I process my emotions.
Two minutes later, the delightfully bright macchiato is gone, and I spot the sign for the salt and crystals store. The entrance is down a small set of steep stairs, literally into a cellar-like place.
And just like that, I’m charmed.
Bzzzz.
I know who that is, and I’m not answering his text. He can get his own damn coffee. I’m not good enough to share information with?
Then neither is he.
* * *
Declan
* * *
Damn it.
I know she’s mad, but I can’t tell her the truth.
While I watch that fine, fine ass head toward the gluten-free bakery across the street, I quickly call AlcheMyAssistant back, the on-hold music sending me into a murderous rage. All the reservations they were supposed to make are for hotels and restaurants that do not exist.
Not here, at least.
“Hello? AlcheMyAssistant hotline. How can I–” A man’s voice, with a cheeriness that makes me homicidal, answers.
“This is Declan McCormick calling. I need to speak to the highest person in your chain. Now.”
“Mr. McCormick, do you have your customer number?” His voice drops, the happy crap gone.
“1179.”
“Thank you. What seems to be the problem?”
“Your company booked me for a two-day trip to hotels and restaurants that do not exist here in Portland, Maine.”
“Excuse me, sir. Let me–oh, boy. I see it now. All of your reservations are for Portland, Oregon. Are you sure you’re not in Oregon?”
“Are you sure your company is going to make it past first-round venture capital? Because as far as I’m concerned, I’m about to personally get this shitshow shut down.”
“Uhhhh...”
“Get someone five pay grades above you on the line. Now.”
“I, uh... I am the highest pay grade, sir.”
“You?”
“We’re a twelve-person team.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No, sir. Our artificial intelligence program handles ninety-six percent of issues, leaving humans to fix the rest. I’m one of the developers. The customer service reps are all out with a bad case of food poisoning from our Sushi Thursday Bring Your Dog to Work town hall yesterday, and–”
“Fix it. Now.”
“Fix... what?”
“I hired you on the recommendation of one of my employees. You have exactly ten minutes to fix this.”
“I–I can’t. Our entire computer system is down.”
“Down? You have no redundancy?”
“We do, but only for the AI–oh, shit. Another call just came in.”
“Don’t you dare put me on–”
The sound of chanting monks fill my ear.
“DAMN IT!” If this were a business issue, I wouldn’t care. I’d dump it off on someone else and it would be their problem. But this is Shannon. This is our vacation. Promises were made and I have to keep them.
Think, Dec. Think, I tell myself, knowing I have limited time before she comes back. It’s not that I have an aversion to being wrong. I do. But it’s more about disappointing her.
And her being right about the whole assistant thing.
Assistant.
AlcheMyAssistant.
Hmmm.
I text Dave: AlcheMyAssistant screwed up. Booked everything for Portland, Oregon. They are useless. Got any ideas?
Three dots appear instantly.
You have a black Ame
rican Express card?
Of course, I text back. But I don’t have time to book all this. Shannon’s getting coffee and I don’t want her to know.
No problem. Is the info in your desk upstairs?
Yes. Grace had a book with everything in it. Black leather, left drawer.
Give me a few minutes.
What are you doing?
You have to trust me on this.
He’s right. I do.
Fine. You have ten minutes.
I’ll do it in nine.
I get out of the car, run my fingers through my hair, and start to pace. The look on Shannon’s face last month when the pregnancy test came back negative was the closest thing to mourning I’ve felt since my mother died. It’s not that I wasn’t sad about not being pregnant, too. I was, but not with the kind of depth I saw in my wife. Every bit of the XY in me lined up with arms out, muscles ready to get the job done, to fix it all, to make it up to her.
To stop her pain.
This trip is a gift to us both.
And I just made it all so much worse.
It takes me a minute to realize I’m right on a pier, the ocean lapping at the wooden joists holding up walkways. Across the street, she’s getting us twin macchiatos. If Dave can’t give me some ideas, I’ll have to admit the truth to Shannon. Not booking this the “right” way isn’t the problem.
It’s that she’ll connect it to not caring.
And the last thing I want her to think about me is that I don’t care.
Bzzz.
The new text says, Check your email.
I do, finding a pdf attachment from Dave’s work address. I open it and scroll.
Hotel reservations with breakfast room service already booked for two mornings.
Dinner reservations tonight and tomorrow at two places, complete with maps, within a four-block walk of the place. One of the locations is a private chef’s unofficial pop-up restaurant, featured in a Facebook video Shannon showed me a week ago.
How the hell did you do this? I ask him. Thank you!
Don’t ask my methods. Just enjoy.
You looking for a new job, Dave?
That a direct job offer, Declan?
It could be. Wait until I get back.
Why wait? Let’s negotiate now.