by Jeff Gomez
As Ashley puts down her menu, Craig notices the rings. Something inside of him deflates.
“You’re married.”
For a second, Ashley seems embarrassed.
“Oh, this.” Her thumb begins turning her wedding band around and around. The engagement ring, vintage-looking with a big diamond surrounded by smaller ones, stays in place.
“How long?”
“Going on eight years.”
“Wow.” He knows he should leave it there. It is, after all, all the information he needs. She’s married. She found someone else. Any additional bit of information is just a needle that’s going to cause him pain. But he has to ask. “To whom?”
Before she can answer the waiter returns with their wine. Ashley orders pasta and Craig, panicking, orders a steak salad even though that’s not what he wants. As the waiter’s walking away, Craig means to call him back, to change his order. His mouth opens but no sound comes out. He turns back to Ashley.
“To whom?” Craig repeats.
“What?”
“Your ring. You said you’re married. I asked, ‘to whom’.”
A few seconds go by before she answers. Finally, she speaks. When she does, it’s barely above a whisper.
“Andrew.”
“Andrew? From twenty years ago, Andrew?”
“Yes, Craig. Yes.”
“Why, that fucking little rat. I knew he was into you. But you always swore—”
“Stop. I just—don’t. Just, stop.”
When neither of them speaks, the background noise of the restaurant fills the space between them. Craig clenches his fist, his palms feeling hot and moist. He wants to ask whether she was seeing him while they were going out, or how soon after they broke up did she and Andrew get together. But he figures none of that matters now. He pushes all of those thoughts aside and, when he does, the only thing that’s left is the regret that he let her go.
“What about you?”
“Me?” Craig says. “What do you mean?”
Ashley smiles.
“Married, silly. You’re not wearing a ring.”
Even though Craig knows that he’s not, he raises his left hand and looks. Even though he didn’t wear it for long—just a couple years—every now and then he can still feel it, the way amputees can still feel limbs they’ve lost. The same goes for Gemma herself. Some nights, in bed, he could swear that she’s still there.
“No,” Craig says. “But I was.”
“For how long? To whom?”
“It was years ago. It didn’t last, obviously. Her name was Gemma.”
“What happened?”
Craig stares out into the parking lot, thinking for a few seconds. He watches as the Range Rover he parked next to pulls out of the parking lot.
“We wanted different things, I guess.” He stops for a second to take a sip of his wine. “We weren’t happy, and I couldn’t make her happy. We finally decided we might as well end it while we were somewhat young.”
“Where is she now?”
“DC. She moved there to get into politics. I never really asked which side.”
Ashley reaches for her wine and, when she does, the sunlight hits the diamond in her engagement ring, causing it to shine.
“Do you have any kids?”
“No,” Craig says. “We never—that is, Gemma didn’t—”
A busboy comes by to refill their water glasses. When he approaches, Craig stops speaking. He takes another sip of wine. The busboy finally leaves.
“How about you and Andrew?”
Ashley answers with a small shake of her head, no.
The waiter returns and wordlessly places Ashley’s plate of pasta in front of her. As he puts down Craig’s salad, he says, “Here you are, sir.” But Craig’s too depressed to feel old.
As he pokes at his salad, Craig wonders whether Ashley’s happy. He thinks about Andrew. He wonders what he’s like after all these years. Craig didn’t like him much back then, so he doubts he’d like him much now.
Pompous little prick. Always talking about obscure books and foreign movies. Who was he trying to impress?
The Faulkner novel catches Craig’s eye. He quickly picks it up and puts it on the floor.
“So,” Ashley says. “What are you up to these days?”
“I work at one of the new startups downtown. It’s called Seatr.”
“Cedar? Like the tree?”
“No, Seat-er. S-E-A-T-R.”
Craig finishes his wine and flags down the waiter for another glass. The waiter asks if Ashley will have another, but she just shakes her head.
“Crimes against grammar aside,” Ashley says, “what does the site actually do?”
“We sell plane tickets. Or, actually, we resell them. When people can’t use them.”
“How does that work, exactly?”
“Let’s say you bought a ticket to go from Los Angeles to New York next week, but something’s come up and you can’t make it. The ticket’s nonrefundable and to change it to a later date would cost a few hundred bucks. What do you?”
Ashley considers this.
“I don’t know. Forfeit the ticket, I guess. Lose the money.”
Craig grins.
“Not anymore. Go onto Seatr and list the ticket for sale. You set the price, and we’ll match you up with someone who wants to buy your ticket. We send whoever bought the ticket the confirmation code, and we send you the money. After, of course, we take a cut.”
“Let me get this straight. You’re scalping airline tickets?”
“We provide a valuable service for people who have a need and for other people who want to pay for that—need.”
The waiter delivers his wine and Craig takes a sip.
Ashley says, “But is that even legal? Like, what happens when some guy gets to the airport and has my ticket? I can’t image the airlines would ever—”
“Beta,” Craig interrupts. “We’re in beta.”
They both cross their legs, accidentally brushing against each other under the table. This sends a shock through Craig. He looks for recognition on Ashley’s face—that they’ve touched after all these years—but there’s nothing.
He says, “What happened to us?”
Behind him there’s the noise of the restaurant, more intense than before now that people are finishing their lunch and leaving. Craig can hear the same cheery hostess at the front telling everyone to have a good day.
“You know what happened to us,” Ashley says. “You had big ideas, all these dreams. You were going to conquer the world and, when it looked like it wasn’t going to happen, you blamed me.”
“Ash, that’s not fair.”
“Don’t call me Ash—”
“Ash, please.”
“Fine, then it just didn’t work out, that’s all. And why are you putting me on the spot like this? It was mutual.”
“It wasn’t mutual. You asked me to leave.”
Craig figures there’s no reason to pursue this, so he stops. He had only asked because he thought it’d invoke fond memories. Maybe even some longing for the old days, when they were young and belonged to each other. He hoped Ashley would give a wry smile and Craig could pretend that she was the one that got away. Instead, it just led to the old anger.
Changing the subject, Craig says, “Tell me about your job.”
“God,” Ashley says. “I don’t want to talk about that.”
“Okay. Then where do you guys live?”
She tells Craig about their house, all the crap in their garage, and Andrew. How he’s teaching and working on a novel. Craig listens, nodding his head, trying to see if the woman talking to him across the table is somehow still the girl he fell in love with all of those years ago.
After another half hour of small talk, the check comes.
“Let me get this,” Craig says.
Ashley doesn’t protest.
As he’s dropping some cash on the table, Ashley picks up her purse from the ground and pull
s out an iPhone. Craig wonders if she’s texting Andrew and, if so, what? Surely she’s going to lie about lunch. He grabs the Faulkner from the floor and sticks it into one of the pockets of his blazer.
Ashley stands and Craig follows her through Nolan’s. Outside, it’s even hotter than before. Craig walks next to Ashley as she heads to a corner of the parking lot. He’s tempted to try and hold her hand, but doesn’t have the nerve. She finally stops and pulls out a set of car keys from her purse.
She turns to face him.
“Thanks, Craig. Despite everything, it was good to see you.”
“Could we—do it again sometime?”
“We’ll see.”
Ashley leans in and gives him a hug. Looking down at the top of her head, Craig can tell that she dyes her hair. He tries to stretch out the hug, to have it turn into something else—his arms begin to move down her back—but she pulls away.
Craig watches as she gets into the car, starts it, and slowly exits the parking lot.
Gary stops the song halfway through by taking his hands off his bass and waving them in the air. Mark stops first, glad to have the break. Steve, his head down and in his own world, takes a few more seconds before he notices he’s the only one playing. When he finally stops, the drums continue echoing throughout the room.
“Steve, dude,” Gary says. “You’re coming out of the choruses way too fast. Slow down, okay? Take it down a notch. Seriously.”
Steve nods while breathing heavily. He took his sweatshirt off hours ago and is now wearing a white Haverkamp Motors T-shirt, soaked with sweat.
“And Mark, you’re slowing down a bit. Are you getting tired?”
Mark wipes sweat from his forehead with his sleeve.
“I’m fine. It’s just been a while since I played for this long.”
“Maybe we should take another break,” Steve says.
“Fine.” Gary walks over to where a blue Dickies jacket hangs on a microphone stand. He fishes around in the various pockets and pulls out a pack of Marlboros. He lights a cigarette with a Zippo lighter.
“You still smoke?” Mark says.
“Yeah, why?” Gary exhales a cloud of smoke. “You?”
“Quit years ago.”
“Fucking Boy Scout.”
“Guys.” Steve looks at his watch. “It’s getting late. I should be heading home.”
“Late?” Gary glances at his wrist. “It’s four.”
“I’m thirsty,” Mark says. “Maybe I’ll run out and get a few bottles of water.”
“Shut up, the both of you.” Gary points at each of them with his cigarette. “We’re going to practice for a few more hours and then we’re going to get a pizza and eat it here. We’ll get some beer, too. That way we can practice after we eat. But we’re not going anywhere.”
“Come on,” Steve says. “It’s sounding good.”
“It’s sounding okay.” Gary tunes up his bass, the cigarette dangling from his lips. “But we have a lot more work to do before next week, so let’s all put in a full day, if you don’t mind.”
“Oh, I don’t mind. It’s Robin who’s going to mind.” Steve pulls out his phone and begins writing a text. “And by the way, put out that cigarette. You’re edgy, we get it.”
Gary laughs as he drops the cigarette into a coffee cup. It goes out with a fizzle.
“Before I forget, guys, Dave texted me earlier.”
“Yeah?” Mark sits down on his amp. The tips of his fingers are numb and his back hasn’t hurt this much in years. When he swallows, his throat feels like sandpaper. “What’d he have to say?”
“A guy from DISContent got in touch and wants us to do an in-store this week a couple of days before the show.”
“That old record store’s still around?” Mark says. “I would have thought it went out of business a long time ago.”
“Dave thinks he can get some local media to cover it if we play. Maybe a TV crew or something like that. Would be good publicity for the show.”
Steve says, “When does he want us to do it?”
“Well, it’d just be Mark and me. They want us to do a few songs ‘unplugged.’ Acoustic.”
“There’s also that story the guy’s writing for the Times-Dispatch,” Mark says. “Won’t that be enough publicity?”
“Come on, Mark,” Gary says. “The songs sound great on an acoustic. Remember when you used to give us cassettes of demos? I still have all of those, and they sound great.”
Back when they first became a band, Mark wrote all the songs on an acoustic guitar, most of them in that apartment he revisited the other day. Whenever he finished a new song, he’d record a simple version of it—just his guitar and his voice—onto his four track. Then he’d make cassettes of the new songs for Gary and Steve so they could work out their parts ahead of their practices.
“Let me think about it.”
“Yeah, well, don’t think too long. I’m sure they’ll want an answer like yesterday so they can do some advertising and get the word out on social media.”
“Look at you,” Mark says. “Mr. Professional.”
Gary grins.
“This isn’t my first rodeo.”
“No,” Mark says, “at your first rodeo you fell off and the bull kicked you in the head.”
“At least I got back up and tried again.”
Mark’s about to respond when Steve says, “Guys, let’s stay focused, okay?”
Gary and Mark nod.
“Okay,” Gary says. “Let’s keep going. From the top.”
Steve wipes the sweat from his forehead, counts off, and they start again.
Grace comes down the stairs carrying a hamper filled with clothes. Charles is on the couch doing two things Grace doesn’t like him to do: working on the weekend and sitting on the couch in dirty clothes. He mowed the lawn earlier. She can smell the cut grass from across the room.
“Now, sweetheart.” She gets to the bottom step and places the hamper on the floor. “This is our time. You promised me you weren’t going to bring work home on the weekends anymore, remember?
“Did I?” Charles runs a hand over his head. He has practically no hair left so he keeps it short, just a few centimeters or so where it still grows around his ears and above his neckline. As he rubs, he feels the oily slickness of sunscreen. To prevent skin cancer, his doctor advised him to put on sunscreen whenever he went outside. It was yet another indignity foisted on him by the loss of his hair.
“Yes, you naughty boy. You did.”
Grace joins him on the couch.
“Sorry. It’s just I—there are just a few things I need to get to before Monday.” This is a lie. He’s just doing busywork and waiting to receive word from Tom about his talk with O’Brien, to see if Dylan’s promotion can be stopped. “Maddie still in the backyard?”
“She and Zoe and Ellis are playing princess.”
“Are they taking turns, or are they all princesses?”
“They all are, of course. Speaking of which, I invited the Nearys over for dinner.”
Ellis is Roy and Ronnie’s daughter.
“When?”
“Next Saturday.”
“Just them?” Charles says. “Because I also kind of invited the Hendersons to a barbeque.”
“When did you do that, silly?”
“The other day. I asked John while we were taking in the recycling bins. Are they bringing the kids?”
“That’s odd. Elaine just texted and she didn’t say anything about it. No, not the kids. They’re getting a sitter.”
Charles read an article recently about how most people couldn’t tell you the names of their neighbors. It said that people live in isolation, and not just in the big cities. Even in the suburbs, supposedly, people keep to themselves. That’s not the case in Tiger Bay. That’s not the case for Charles. He can tell you the names of pretty much everyone on his street. He runs into them constantly. Working in the yard, taking out the trash, or out for walks with Maddie. They’re not just
neighbors; they’re friends. In the summers there are barbecues, play dates, game nights. Inflatable pools are set up on front lawns and families just drift from house to house chatting while the kids leap from pool to pool with never time to get dry, the toddler version of that Cheever story.
“Well, maybe they’re waiting for a better offer,” Charles says. “Or maybe they already have an offer out to someone else, so Elaine doesn’t want to commit to us.”
“Do you think it’s that new couple down the block? The one with the twins? Elaine let it slip that they’d been over there for brunch.”
“Brunch whores.”
“You’re the worst.” She slaps him playfully. “But I guess we can push John and Elaine to Sunday.”
Charles stops typing for a second as Maddie and the girls erupt into laughter in the backyard. There’s not a sound he loves more than that laugh.
“You looking forward to seeing Randy tonight?”
Charles smiles. “Yeah, actually. But it’s weird.”
“What’s weird about it?”
“We had a lot of fun, and we were good friends, but that was a long time ago. I’ve changed a lot since then.”
He looks around the house.
“What is it?” Grace says.
“I don’t know. I don’t want him to think I sold out.”
“Why, because you live in a house?”
“Because we live in Tiger Bay. And we have nice cars. And a daughter in private school.”
She says, sarcastically, “You should be ashamed of yourself.”
“You don’t understand. We used to make fun of the people who lived around here. Who lived in these big houses and worried about their lawns and their careers. And now that’s me. I guess it just goes to show—”
But he stops talking.
“What, darling?”
“I don’t know.” He hears Maddie again in the backyard. He smiles. “It’s just funny. It looked bad then. It doesn’t look so bad now.”
“Well, however it looks, I need to finish the laundry and get started on dinner. And you need take a shower. I’ll feed Maddie early and she can watch TV upstairs while we’re eating. Okay?”