A handyman in his sixties and a writer in her fifties each evaluate their relationship during a dinner date.
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| Image generated with OpenAI |
“Who are you looking at?” she asks when his gaze shifts to a woman walking by their table.
“Nobody.”
“Hmmm. Really?”
“Really. I’m just checking the place out.”
“What are you laughing at?”
His eyes are tearing up. “I don’t know, you’re just funny.”
“Good funny?”
“Yeah, mostly. And paranoid funny. Like now.”
She’s staring at him.
“Is it hot in here?” It’s like the restaurant is moving in slow motion.
“You’re so stoned.”
He is a little stoned. It takes the edge off when he’s riding and it’s five degrees out. But he never rides after drinking. He didn’t make it to 61 just to end up as roadkill on Route 7. But he thinks, “Wouldn’t that be funny? Splattered brains frozen into a blood and gore popsicle.”
“Go on with your story.” She puts a gin-soaked olive into her mouth.
“I was talking about that time Ray nailed all the boards to the house the wrong way, a whole day’s work gone. What an idiot!”
“I thought he was your friend?”
“He is! I fucking love him like a brother. But he’s still a dumb ass sometimes.”
She has a confused look that reminds him of Arlo; he’d cock his head to the side, a crease in his forehead. He took that white shepherd everywhere, just put him in the back of the truck. He misses his dog so goddamn much. “Woah, what’s happening?” he thinks. “It just got all serious in here.”
“How about another drink?” The last sip of bourbon in his tumbler has turned almost clear from the melted ice.
“Are you trying to get me drunk so you can have your way with me?”
He would like to have his way with her. Of that he’s certain. And he thinks she’d like that too.
“I’ll get the waitress.”
“I think you’re supposed to call them servers now, old man,” she teases. She’s still getting used to the delay in terminology between Brooklyn and Vermont, where it seems they’re stuck a decade behind.
He orders a Jim Beam, two ice cubes and a dry Sapphire Bombay martini, three olives. He notices the alcohol flush creeping from her cheeks down her neck and chest. Her light blue eyes stand out against her reddening skin. He sees some gray at her roots; she is a fine-looking woman still. Not much different from her profile picture.
His stomach rolls over his belt, straining the black t-shirt he has meticulously tucked into his faded jeans. He is tall with excellent posture and straight silver hair that he wears long to hide a hard tumor, not visible in his picture, that protrudes slightly from his lower right jaw. It started growing when he was ten. Fifty-one years later he still knows it’s there but he’s mostly agnostic about it.
The first night she slept at his place, which was also their first date – has it really been five weeks already? – she touched the smooth lump. He jerked his face away. Otherwise, that was a fun night, a raucous start, to what though, she’s not exactly sure, but he doesn’t think about those things. They met at his favorite bar, drank a few Moscow mules, and when the bartender announced last call at 10:30, he invited her back to his house. “I just want to be alone with you,” he said. He got a sense that she dug him and he definitely was into her, certainly enough that he didn’t want the night to end with just a hug.
She had been admiring his large hands, his talk about building houses, the technical language he slipped into that she pretended to understand. She was flattered and found his directness appealing. “Why not?” she thought. She had been in Vermont for a short time, lured by the hope that the offer to teach a month-long winter creative writing class at Middlebury College would turn into something more. Though she made sure to tell each one of her students that their stories were interesting and arranged a public reading for them, the college did not renew her contract for spring because of budget cuts they called “workforce planning.” She decided to stay in Vermont anyway despite warnings about mud season when the lovely white snow and damp earth blend into what someone described as a “shit smoothie.” New York had become so expensive and maybe she could write without distraction here, she thought, like many city dwellers before. Vermont was an idea she hadn’t fully worked out. She was very lonely.
She was fascinated that he never thought to leave his hometown, that he lived in the house he grew up in, remodeling it in pieces after his mother died of throat cancer. He wanted to show her his “abode,” he said, a funny word choice that she appreciated. She liked his attention and was trying to be more spontaneous because “there’s not much time left,” she would often say. “No, no,” her friend Julia insisted, “we’re not getting old, we’re just presented with fewer chances to say yes.” So, she said yes and when he pushed her against the wall in his house, gave her a very tongue-forward kiss, she thought she liked it. She could get used to this.
Now they are involved in something. When he is on a project site and work is slow, he’ll text her several times a day. They meet late when he’s done. She usually goes to his house where they drink beer, he smokes weed and they fuck. They do like fucking each other. When she sits in front of her computer struggling to write, the beep of the incoming message excites her. She lets herself imagine being cozy in his house, writing next to the wood stove, finishing Tourniquet, her fictional account of the inventor of the bra, while he swings a hammer, saws wood. She’s not exactly sure what he does. But because this domestic scene sometimes appeals to her, she’s feeling an itch to “know where this is going.” So, she asks him.
He tells his brother Ray he met a writer online; he describes her as sexy, smart and maybe too neurotic. He doesn’t know what exactly she writes, she did mention a book, but it’s not like she even cares how to lay a concrete slab-on-grade so he figures they’re even enough. And who wants to talk about work all the time, anyway? But this one, he’s not going to lie, this one’s a challenge. There’s a way she turns her face to the side, raises her head and looks down on him though she’s almost a foot shorter. It’s like she just doesn’t approve of him or something. He can’t figure it out but there’s a part of him that likes it; her judgment makes him up the ante, like he’s playing a hyped-up version of himself and that’s fun for him, different too. He’s used to dating a familiar type, now more a circling back to past lovers putting their lives together after divorces. He never married: He doesn’t like to be alone, but he also doesn’t like to be the one backed up against a wall and none of these ladies gave him the chance to come around on his own.
He proposes a fancy dinner out, “my treat,” so they can see what they’re like out in the world; a proper date to discuss their future. Tonight started out fun. Drinks at the bar and now oysters at the table. She has a nice figure and he can see the top of her tits peeking out over the neckline of her sweater. He does like that. She’s talking, smiling at him. He smiles back.
He sees her mouth move but isn’t following too much what she is saying, and becomes aware that the night is starting to feel off. It’s like he’s looking at her through a telescope. He feels his body there on a date, in the wooden chair, in the restaurant with the white tablecloths and silverware. He hears the clinking of glasses, the hum of conversations. Jazz, not his favorite, is coming through the speakers. But it’s as if his body isn’t responding the way he wants it to, or his mind; he wants to be more excited. Maybe he got too cold riding here. That could have been a dumb idea. But he likes cruising down the road in the Vermont winter knowing that people are wondering if he’s fucking nuts. Maybe it is the weed. It’s like they’re going at two entirely different speeds.
“This gin is going straight to my head! I was writing all day and forgot to eat,” she says.
“Oh, that’s not good.”
“They’ve asked me to write an article about neural prosthetics.”
“Okay.”
“Have you heard of that?”
“I have not.”
She looks at him with a downturned mouth. He can see she’s expecting something. This is historically where the problems have started for both of them.
“So, what is it?”
“Well, if someone loses like, an arm, let’s say, they have these things they can implant in the person’s brain.”
“Their brain? It seems like the missing arm is a more pressing problem. I’d be shit out of luck without mine!” He laughs.
“Yes, it is. I’m getting to it!” She is feeling like they’re edging somewhere more intimate, by telling him about this new project, her work. “So, they attach a prosthetic arm which takes care of the missing piece but, and here’s where it gets fascinating – it’s connected to these electrodes they put in the brain which send signals to the fake arm and the person can actually feel something in that arm!”
“That’s some serious sci-fi Frankenstein type shit.”
“It’s weird, but very cool too! So, these signals send a sign to the fake arm and then the person can feel the fake arm as if it’s real. I mean, you’re not supposed to refer to it as fake. But anyway, they call it ‘sensory feedback loops.'”
“The brain is talking to the fake arm?”
“In a way, yes. But the person has to be into it, like when you want something to be true, so you make it true.”
“You mean, they convince themselves they feel something and then they do?”
“Yes, pretty much.”
“Why would they do that? It seems to me you might as well face shit as it is. Pretending isn’t going to change a damn thing.”
“I don’t know, really. I guess they have no other choice? It’s this or accepting the fact that they have a missing arm and there’s nothing they can do about it.”
“And you write about that kind of stuff? Is this for your book?”
“It’s how I make money. I translate scientific discoveries into something like a press release so people like you can understand it. And me.”
“People like you and me.” He nods slowly then adds, “Why does someone like me need to understand this anyhow?”
“People want to read about the way the world is changing so they don’t lose track, but they need someone to explain it. That’s my job. And medicine is amazing when you really get into it. They can pretty much fix anything now. Doesn’t that interest you?”
He instinctively shakes his hair forward and reaches for his right jaw.
“But it’s true that not everything needs to be fixed,” she adds. “So that’s where it can be problematic. Complicated. It becomes, like, more of a moral issue than a scientific one. But I don’t get paid to write about that.”
“You know,” he says, “I’m kind of like one of these mad scientists you write about. I mean, I make stuff, build things. But my stuff is all useful. If I made a pretend house, well, someone would be awful cold with no roof over their head. That seems like a lot of money and time spent to just play.”
“Well, I can see that, except that the play could lead to something real. They experiment and then get to a thing that works, that can fix us, help us live longer. Certainly, you can see the value in that,” she says though she’s not entirely sure of this herself. Or their conversation. They are not moving in the direction of figuring their relationship out.
The entrées arrive. They both have ordered the pork special, with roasted garlic and fresh rosemary. It looks and smells delicious. He foregoes the cutlery beside his plate – he grabs the large chop and starts chewing on it. She is looking at him.
“What?” he asks, going in for another bite.
“Nothing.” She also picks up her chop with both hands, between her index finger and thumb, and leans in for a bite, taking a mouthful of the savory meat. He notices the lines around her oily lips as she gnaws the just tender flesh.
She takes a sip of her martini and pushes her hair forward. He sees her grimace; she looks at him and cocks her head to the side. She’s watching him like it’s his turn in a game for which he doesn’t know the rules. He just wants to eat his meat.
He’s looking at her as she grabs her chop with a determined expression, like eating is some kind of chore. Her eyes look tired and he notices her makeup, no longer matching her reddening skin, caking into the grooves under her eyes.
It’s her turn: “What?”
“Nothing,” he answers. “I don’t know.”
“Nothing and I don’t know aren’t the same thing,” she answers.
He can’t tell her that even though she’s eight years younger than he is, she’s too old. Too serious. He can’t tell her that he will go home with her and fuck her for the last time. That, after she drives him to the restaurant in the morning to pick up his bike in the icy parking lot, he won’t return her increasingly caustic texts. He can’t tell her this because he’s eleven hours away from realizing it himself. But he will have an inkling when he sees the grease from the pork settling into the wrinkles leading to her mouth. When she tries to share a smile, he will look down at the almost clean bone on his plate. He will look down to avoid her cautious gaze that, if they were at the same speed, would tell him then that she, too, has more than an inkling.
