by Cara Bastone
“She’s a wily little trickster is what she is.”
Mary laughed that gem-on-the-beach laugh again, and John raked the back of his knuckles over the window screen. The night air was a touch cooler than inside and ambient voices from the bus stop three floors down floated up to him. He absently moved toward his cabinet and pulled out a can of Ruth’s cat food, smiling down at her when she galumphed off the table and then jammed her forehead into his ankle bones.
“So, should I tell her the jig is up?” Mary asked. “I was thinking that she was choosing men who were too young anyway. I’ve been meeting older guys on this dating app and was thinking I should put my focus there.”
John frowned, a little taken aback by that information.
I was expecting someone younger.
He pictured Mary on a date with some rich retiree in a swanky Manhattan restaurant with a wait list half a year long. He pictured a cigar in the guy’s shirt pocket and a Maserati glowing like an ember in whatever lot the valet had parked it.
“Oh. Right. Sure.” He had no idea what else to say to that. If she wanted to date older guys, that was her prerogative. He just hoped that the dumbest five words he’d ever said in his life hadn’t impacted her decision on who she was trying to date. “Well, if you wanted to tell her, you could. But I was also thinking it might be fun to make her sweat a little bit.”
“How so?” There was reticence in her voice. “I should let you know right now that I am terrible at tricking people. I can’t even stay hidden during hide-and-seek. I always get too panicky and jump out and forfeit.”
John chuckled. He could picture that very clearly. “Been playing a lot of hide-and-seek recently?”
“Actually yes. I babysit for my friend’s kid a lot. He’s way better at it than I am. Anyway. What did you have in mind for your mother?”
“You should tell her that you changed your mind about one of them. Well, not Maddox. Pick one of the other guys she suggested and tell her that you want to go out with him next weekend. Make her sweat a little bit.”
“But what if she actually takes me up on it? Then I have to go on a date with a bully or a drug dealer? How did he bully you, by the way?”
John ignored her question about Elijah Crawford. “I want to see just how far she’ll go. And if she follows through with a place and time, you can always cancel at the last minute.”
“Not my style. I don’t stand people up. Even if they...tied your shoelaces together?”
He chuckled. “Not even close. If you end up having to go on the date, then do you have someone who could go with you?” He thought of the two pretty women he’d met at Mary’s shop. “A girlfriend you could pretend to bump into at the bar? Something like that?”
“People have lives, John. I’m not going to tear one of my friends away from their Friday night just so you can see how far your mother will take this thing.”
An offer to be the one she bumped into trembled at the tip of his tongue. He almost, almost volunteered to be her In Case of Emergency. No. Terrible idea. She’d see right through it immediately. He was positive that the second the words left his mouth, a mystical spotlight would shine on him and somehow, across town, she’d be able to see the stupid smile on his face right now, his undershirt and boxer shorts and studio apartment and lack of air-conditioning. No way. If he offered her that, he’d show his ass. And she’d know everything.
“But maybe you could be there?” she asked after a second and successfully stopped the world from spinning, like she’d firmly pressed a finger to a twirling globe. “You’re the one who’s curious about this after all.” She paused and he could practically hear the trepidation start to creep into her voice. “I mean, unless you’re busy. Or you think that the guy would recognize you and blow the whole operation—”
“No, no,” he said quickly. Blow the operation. Like they were spies. So cute. “I could be there.” He couldn’t believe that she’d been the one to suggest it. “We can choose a place where I can sit at the bar and not be too noticeable. If you need to pull the rip cord, I’ll be right there. I’ll, I don’t know, pretend to run into you and invite myself to sit down to dinner. I’ll be your buffer. And then you can go home. Or whatever else you’d want to do on a weekend.”
He immediately felt like a nerd for suggesting that she’d head home. Just because he packed it in and spent the night in his boxer shorts after a bad date didn’t mean that Mary would. He could picture her dancing the night away in some red-cushioned basement club, or strolling along the glittering water at Brooklyn Bridge Park, a slim cigarette between her fingers. No. Strike that. Something about that image was wrong. He mentally replaced the cigarette with a big red sucker. That was better.
“Okay. That sounds good.” She paused for a second. “Do you have any time constrictions or neighborhood preferences?”
For one semi-dizzying second, John felt like they were arranging a date between the two of them. She was asking him where and when they should meet. He cleared his throat. “I’ll be free anytime after seven. I can meet you anywhere.”
“I’ll set it up with Estrella, then, and text you when I know what’s what. You’re sure you want to do this? Trick her like this?”
“The woman deserves it.” And John really wanted to see Mary dressed up for a date again. Though he didn’t say that last part out loud.
CHAPTER SIX
“WEIRDLY, I’M ACTUALLY free right now. Via’s getting Matty from basketball practice and the two of them are going on a date. Wanna grab a drink?”
Sebastian Dorner leaned against the cashier counter at Mary’s shop, one eye still on the gorgeous dining room table he’d just dropped off. He was a furniture maker, mostly custom, but every once in a while, he built something on spec and let Mary take a crack at selling it.
“Jeez, I can’t remember the last time you were spontaneously free,” Mary mused. “If ever.”
Sebastian had been a single dad since Cora had died five years ago. Any time that he spent with friends was carefully orchestrated with babysitters. And considering that Mary and Tyler were usually those babysitters, it was often a thing of great difficulty to go out on the town with Seb.
“One of the wonders of having a live-in girlfriend,” he said with a small smile on his face.
Though Mary had been best friends with Cora since they’d met in undergrad, she’d never been particularly close to Sebastian while Cora was alive. Always just known him as the guy who’d accidentally knocked up Cora and then married her a few months later. After college Cora and Mary had visited back and forth between Mary’s hometown in Connecticut and New York, always making sure to keep in close contact even though they were a state away. Cora had begged Mary to quit trying to make her mother happy and just get the heck out of Connecticut already. But Mary had never quite been able to pull the trigger on the move. It had been Cora’s death that had ultimately spurred Mary’s move to Brooklyn; she’d found herself unable to turn away from Cora’s bereft husband and three-year-old son. She’d inserted herself into their lives, feeling like it was the last real gift that she could give to her best friend. It hadn’t taken long for Tyler, Sebastian and Mary to become a tripod. The three adults who kept Matty’s life running. Who kept Sebastian’s life running if they were truthful about it.
But the help hadn’t been one-sided. Mary would never have been able to get Fresh up and running if it hadn’t been for Sebastian’s handiwork around the formerly dumpy shop. If it hadn’t been for Tyler dropping off late-night food and helping her go over the books, charming the pants off of any female customer who happened to find her way in.
They’d become a family. One that, if she was being truthful, Mary missed very much. She knew it was the proper way of the world that Sebastian would fall in love and find a partner who could help him raise Matty, and Via was truly the jackpot of all jackpots. And Mary had been beyond thrill
ed for Tyler and Fin’s budding love. But she also had more nights to herself lately than she was used to having.
And thus, she was grabbing her purse and shouting to Sandra in the back room that she was cutting out of work early. If Sebastian had a free evening, Mary fully intended to occupy it.
Mary bobbled her small leather purse and Sebastian bent down to grab it off the floor. “Hey, somebody left an ID down here.”
He straightened up and handed it over.
Mary laughed aloud when she saw whose ID it was. And the absolutely terrible picture of him. Of course John Modesto-Whitford wouldn’t smile in his driver’s license photo. Of course he’d glower at the camera like it had just hit him with a your-mama joke. What must it be like to live inside his surly mind?
She pictured the flustered way he’d ripped bills from his wallet the other night. It must have fallen out in the scuffle.
“What a doof,” she murmured to herself, eyeing the glowering image of him one more time before sliding the ID into her purse.
“You know him?”
“Yeah. Have you met Estrella? He’s her son.”
“Ohhhh. The one who called you old on your date?”
They stepped out onto the sidewalk and into the sticky air. There were always one or two days in June that portended the dog days of August. When the humidity opened its mouth around you and the cigarette butts and banana peels sweated in the trash cans. Mary picked up her pace, leading Seb to her favorite bar in the neighborhood where they had plenty of cold beer and plenty of A/C.
“How’d you know about that?” she asked with a quirk of her brow and a smile on her face.
“Tyler has a big mouth.” Seb shrugged his big shoulders, towering over Mary as they strode down the sidewalk. “And it really bothered him that someone would say that to you. Especially since you haven’t been dating much since Doug. Or before Doug.”
She felt Seb’s gray eyes on the side of her face. Neither of them had to explain to the other how much time had been required after Cora had died for the two of them to get back on their feet. For a long time, Mary just hadn’t had the energy to date. And then, after the Doug debacle, maybe she’d just realized that she didn’t even know how to go about it without Cora in her corner. Cora had been her true north for so many things. Without her, it had just been easier to stand still instead of trying to regain her bearings.
“Tyler’s worried you took the age comment to heart.”
Mary glanced up. “It’s the kind of thing that gets under your skin, you know? When someone pokes at an insecurity like that.”
“But, Mary, you’re not old. Not by a long shot.”
“Oh, I know.” She waved a hand in the air and smoothed her hair down. “But I’m definitely too old for him.”
Seb held the door open for her at the bar, and they both sighed into the air-conditioning. At 5:00 p.m., it was still early enough that there were seats at the bar, and they collapsed side by side onto the tall stools.
Mary ordered a shandy and a water, and Seb ordered the same.
“And you’re...bummed to be too old for him?” Seb asked carefully. It wasn’t the first time they’d talked about their dating lives with one another, not by a long shot, but still, Sebastian always dealt with these matters with a ridiculously endearing delicacy.
Mary considered his question with surprise. Was she bummed that John thought she was too old for him to date? “No. Not at all. We’d never have worked out. He’s too judgy. He’s growing on me as a friend, though. I like him.”
“You like everyone, Mary.”
She laughed as she and Sebastian clinked beers. “True.”
“So, if it wasn’t a love connection, then why did you let his comment get to you?”
Mary sighed. “I think it was kind of John in one ear and my mother in the other.”
“Ah. The root of the problem.”
“Exactly. She’s been even more on my case lately. Depressed because my thirties are over.”
Sebastian scoffed. “Over? You’re thirty-seven. My God.” He scowled into his beer. “What a warped sense of reality.”
“Well, that’s my mother. Warped. She still wears her beauty pageant tiara every once in a while.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“I wish I was.”
“Like, around the house?”
“Only in her bedroom with the door closed, but I’ve caught her doing it three separate times.”
“Somehow that’s way, way worse than wearing it where people could see it.”
“I know.”
Sebastian thought for a second. “If she’s so stressed about you being single in your thirties, then shouldn’t she be thrilled that you’re getting back out there and dating again? It’s been a long time since Doug.”
“Shh!” Mary clapped a hand over Sebastian’s mouth. “Don’t say his name in this bar! It’s like Beetlejuice. He lives around the corner and might show up!”
She had less than zero desire to see her cheating ex tonight in this bar. But she also had less than zero desire to let the ghost of his infidelity chase her away from one of her favorite bars in Brooklyn. She made it a point to come here at least once a month.
“And to answer your question, I have not mentioned to my mother that I’m dating again. First of all, she’s horrified by the idea of me dating anyone younger than I am. Oh, the indignity of it.” Mary rolled her eyes. “And second of all, she’d give herself a heart attack finding me acceptable suitors. She’d have me on the train up to Connecticut every weekend for stodgy dates with men who have roman numerals after their names. Pass.”
“Yeah. That sounds...not fun.”
“I’m headed there tomorrow for the night, though.”
“In the middle of the week?”
“It gives me an excuse to get back here faster. I have to mind the shop.” Mary sighed. “Which is just another thing my mother refuses to understand about my life.”
“What does she have against your shop?”
“Oh, it was Aunt Tiff’s before it was mine, and she never approved of Aunt Tiff living alone in Brooklyn and running a ‘hippie store.’” Mary rolled her eyes. “She doesn’t like the decor that I stock either. She thinks I’ll get wrinkles working there. She thinks men aren’t attracted to women who work for a living. She thinks it pulls my attention away from finding a husband and making babies. Take your pick. The list goes on.”
“And I thought I had problems.”
Mary laughed and raised her eyebrow. “What problems do you have, Seb?”
He opened his mouth, thinking for a second while he caught a few metaphorical flies, and then clapped it closed. “Actually, now that you mention it, all’s good in the hood.” He sat back, looking a little bemused. “Wow. I honestly never thought I’d be able to say that again after Cora died.”
Mary was grateful that Sebastian was at a place where he could bring up Cora in a casual way. There’d been a long time when they’d barely been able to say her name aloud. The best friend and the husband, both of them feeling like half of themselves had been beheaded after Cora’s death. So many things had changed in Mary’s life after that. They’d never really gone back.
It encouraged her to see that though Seb’s life hadn’t gone back to the way it had been either, he was happier than ever. He’d become a more dynamic, kind, thoughtful person because of the pain he’d endured.
Mary only hoped the same could be said for her.
* * *
IF HE RAN, as in sprinted, he’d have time to grab a falafel sandwich from a halal cart before he had to jump on the F to the Q100 to make it to Rikers. Technically, if he took a cab, he’d be reimbursed, but public transportation was just as fast, and this way he didn’t have to worry about the fossil fuels he was wasting.
John bounced on the balls of his fee
t as he waited in a crowded elevator of the Supreme Court building, resisting the urge to shoulder past his colleagues and various anonymous jury members whose time was apparently sweeter than his. Finally, the way was clear, and he sprinted in his dress shoes across the lobby, nodding to his friend Carlo, who worked the long, snaking line of security that all visitors had to pass through to get in.
John had his cash in hand and soon had a falafel sandwich in his life. He attacked his lunch like a raptor pouncing on a wounded triceratops as he strode back into the building to grab his bag and paperwork from the meeting room. He’d just met with an ADA for a blistering three hours, trying to slog their way through plea deal negotiations.
“Jeez, John, give it a chance to defend itself,” Richie said with a laugh as he jogged to catch up, his messenger bag bopping his hip and his ramen knotted up into a neat take-out bag.
“No time,” John said through an entire falafel ball, scraping food off his mouth with a napkin. “Gotta make it to Rikers by three. Got a client on limited visiting hours.”
“Shit, man, you gotta run!”
John raised his eyebrows and turned to do just that when a sunny laugh echoed down the visitors’ section of the security line, sounding very familiar.
John craned his head around to look as he flashed his clip-on ID to Marguerite, the security personnel member who handled the staff line. He’d taken three more steps when he saw her. Richie careened into John’s back when John abruptly came to a halt.
Lettuce and tomato and hummus slopped to the ground with a wet splat from John’s wrap.
“What the hell, John?”
Just then, Mary looked up from her conversation with Carlo, who was looking like a man who was exactly where he wanted to be at that particular second, and spotted John, mouthful of falafel and all.
“Look! There he is!” she crowed, pointing a finger at John and looking utterly delighted. “John! Come over here and prove you know me.”