The Bureau of Holiday Affairs

by Andi Marquette

  “Hi,” Jill said behind her.

  Robin turned. “Hi, back.”

  Jill wore baggy faded jeans, her combat boots from the gallery opening, and a thick tan cable sweater under her leather jacket. She’d wrapped a scarf around her neck and covered her spiky hair with a plain gray knit cap. She looked somehow adorable and sexy at the same time, but Robin buried that thought quickly.

  “I was just—” Robin motioned toward the river with her coffee. “Admiring the view. No mountains, like Seattle, but sort of pretty. In a blighted urban landscape kind of way.”

  Jill laughed. “It has character. I enjoy it.”

  “You always did like being near the water. Glad that hasn’t changed.”

  “Neither has your coffee habit,” Jill said with a glance at Robin’s cup.

  “You can take the girl out of Seattle, but you can’t take Seattle out of the girl,” Robin said with a smile. “It’s extra good on days like this.”

  “Nothing beats a good cup of coffee in those circumstances.” She looked toward the river. “Thanks for doing this,” she said without looking at Robin.

  “Yeah. Of course. Did you want to eat? The blighted urban landscape will be here when we’re done. If you still want to, we can go check out the pier.”

  “Sounds good. Lunch first. Pier second.”

  Robin held the door for her, and they were seated at a small table by a window, much to Robin’s approval. Jill requested a small pot of tea, and when the server brought it, they ordered—Robin spring rolls and udon, Jill hot soba. The server took their menus and left. Jill poured herself a cup of tea.

  Robin waited, a little nervous about where Jill would want to take the conversation.

  “You look really good,” Jill said.

  “So do you. I like the—” Robin motioned at her hair. “Art girl is definitely a good look for you.” Any look, actually, would have been amazing on her.

  Jill smiled. “Thanks.” She stared into her cup. “This is probably really weird for you.”

  “Maybe a little. But I’ve been through weirder.” Like the past few days, which left her unmoored and unhinged.

  “I’ve thought a lot about trying to contact you, but I wasn’t sure you’d want to hear from me.” She raised her gaze to Robin’s, and Robin remembered how she’d always loved Jill’s eyes, as much for what they didn’t say as what they did. Now she saw in them the passage of time, and a sense of maturity and confidence that hadn’t been there in college.

  “Probably a safe bet,” Robin said. “I was pretty fucked up after you left.” Jill had always brought out the honesty in her. Apparently she still did, even after all these years.

  Jill sipped her tea, still holding Robin’s gaze with her own. “I wanted to contact you to apologize.”

  “Accepted. Except maybe I should’ve tried a little harder to make you stay.”

  Jill looked down into her cup again. “I don’t know. The truth is—”

  The server placed a small plate of spring rolls between them and set two more empty small plates next to it. He retreated quickly but Robin didn’t move. She waited for Jill to finish her statement.

  “The truth is,” Jill said, “I hadn’t fallen out of love with you when I left.”

  Robin didn’t say anything, but it hurt a little, to hear that. Lost possibility? Regret? She wasn’t sure what she should be feeling, so she just listened.

  “I left because my family disapproved of our relationship and my parents threatened to withdraw my college funding and possibly worse.”

  Robin knew some of this. She’d seen and heard it a few nights ago, but hearing it from Jill now made it real, like a bucket of ice water to the face.

  “I was a coward,” Jill said. “And I spent a long time regretting it.” Her eyes filled with tears.

  “Thanks for telling me.” Robin meant it, and she automatically wanted to make Jill feel better—a reaction from their past, mixed with burgeoning good intentions, perhaps. She started to reach over to squeeze Jill’s hand then caught herself. That might make things even weirder. Instead, she handed Jill a tissue from the little packet she always carried in her coat pocket. “I wish I had been a little stronger myself and gone after you. But I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I had other stuff that I wasn’t dealing with very well, and everything just kind of hurt. I carried that around for a while.” A long time, she realized, staring across the table at her past. Her past stared back, and Robin felt a tug in her heart, and wondered how it was that she could still be drawn to Jill, after all these years and after all the things that had changed.

  “I know. And I’m so sorry. If I could go back in time and make different decisions, I would.” Jill wiped at her eyes.

  Robin smiled. “Don’t we all wish for that?” She took a spring roll and dipped it into the sauce. Jill did the same.

  “These are pretty good,” Jill said after her first bite.

  “Yeah. Not as good as that place in Eugene we used to go, but it’ll do.”

  “That was the best place,” Jill said after she finished the roll and took another. She caught Robin’s gaze again. “You don’t seem as pissed at me as I thought you’d be.”

  “Oh, I was pissed at one time. I had all these scenarios about what I’d say and do if we ever met again. They all involved me making you feel really bad.” Robin took the last spring roll.

  “What changed?”

  A really fucked up day, Robin wanted to say. The kind of day where you time travel or something like it and you don’t know how the hell you’re doing it and your guide is a butch surfer chick from the eighties, and she dumps you right in the middle of a epiphany-inspiring revelation. “I’m not sure yet,” she said instead. “Maybe I stopped thinking about myself and tried to put myself in your shoes. I knew the pressures your family put on you. But I guess I didn’t really get it.”

  The server removed the empty plates and left as unobtrusively as he’d come.

  “I thought you’d probably want to say a few choice things to me.” Jill picked up her cup. “So I was actually pretty shocked when I bumped into you the other night, and you came to my opening like, no big deal. It was really great, how that happened.”

  “Yeah. It was. Maybe I was too surprised to be mad.” Robin smiled again. “And I guess I really wanted to see some good art.” She wasn’t sure why she’d gone, but she knew she had to, so she’d followed that instinct, though she still wondered why it had been so comfortable for her to do.

  “Well, I’m glad you did.”

  The server returned with their main dishes and Jill dug in before he left.

  “Look, we can hash out the past if you want, but…” Robin trailed off. Sort of like a business deal. Sometimes the other party had to say some things before moving to the next part of the negotiation.

  “Okay. I’m not sure I’m in the space to go there, either.”

  Robin relaxed. “Maybe down the line. Right now, I’m glad to see you. So let’s just go from there. Sound good?”

  “Yes.”

  “So how are things with your family?”

  Jill didn’t answer right away, and Robin took a few bites of her own meal. Jill took a drink of water and took her phone out. “Things with the family are tense, but that’s a normal state with them since I decided to divorce my husband and live my lesbian life.”

  The spoon stopped halfway to Robin’s mouth. “Husband?”

  Jill smiled. “You should see your expression. Yes, husband. I tried to be what my family expected, and I found a nice man. But I couldn’t even do that right. He’s not Chinese.”

  Robin chuckled. “You rebel, you.”

  “Maybe that was part of it.” Jill swiped her fingertip over her phone’s screen. “So we got married right out of college, and I got pregnant and here is Madison now.” She handed the
phone to Robin.

  The photo showed a girl with long dark hair pulled back into a ponytail. She was about twelve in the picture, and she was holding a soccer ball, grinning. “Wow. She’s beautiful. She has your eyes.” Robin looked up at Jill. “Did you bring her with you?”

  “No, she’s with her dad and stepmom for the holidays. They live in Seattle, too. Drew and I have a very good relationship, and for that I will always be grateful.”

  “I’m glad that worked out.” Robin handed the phone back, still a little shocked that Jill was a mom. “So do you have anybody sharing your lesbian life now?”

  Jill laughed. “No. Madison spends half her time with me, so if I date, it had better be with someone I’m pretty interested in. I don’t want people cycling in and out of her life. I find that the older I get, the less time I have for bullshit.”

  Robin smiled. “You didn’t have much time for it back in the day, either.”

  Jill shrugged. “And you? Hitched? Shacked up? Kids?”

  “Not at the moment, no. No kids. And yes, still gay.” Robin had thought, before she entered business school, that she might want a child, but then things changed and there wasn’t room for thoughts like that. She’d fallen into some kind of corporate ethos, where she thought the only thing that was important was working and getting ahead. She’d like to meet Madison some day, though. She wasn’t sure why.

  “Tell me about your work, then.”Jill took another bite of her noodles, and Robin’s stomach clenched at the thought of her job. For the first time, Robin didn’t feel that internal thrill of being a shark of the corporate world. She was embarrassed by how gleefully she’d circled at the smell of blood in the past.

  “Not much to tell,” she said.

  “Executive director of sales at a multinational sounds like a lot more than not much.”

  Robin laughed. “I forgot how you are about remembering things. But seriously. Not much to talk about.”

  “I’m getting the feeling that you’re not entirely happy there.” Jill continued eating, and her intonation left a lot of room for Robin to either follow up or not.

  Robin shrugged. “I guess…I’ve had some weird stuff happen recently and I’m not sure what it means.”

  “Are you still doing art?”

  Robin moved the bowl to the edge of the table. Suddenly, she didn’t want the rest of her noodles. “Not like I used to.”

  “Are you okay with that?” Jill finished and put her bowl next to Robin’s.

  “Last week, I might’ve said yes. Now, I don’t know.” She smiled, but it felt forced. “You caught me at a strange time.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with questioning things or changing careers.” Jill poured the last of the tea into her cup.

  “Did you continue on the art road right after we broke up?” It didn’t hurt anymore to say those words, Robin realized. It was a statement of fact about the past, and the past had no power if she didn’t give it any.

  “No. My family was not supportive of that, so I worked in banking for about four years. But I kept doing art on the side, getting pieces in local cafés and places that liked to feature local artists. I started getting commissions here and there, and suddenly I realized I was doing okay as an artist. Drew and I were already divorced when I started doing art full-time and yes, it was hard at first, but it was good for me and expanded my career in different ways. It hasn’t been easy, but it is who I am and it makes me feel alive. I spent too long trying to please everybody else not to do this.” Jill took a breath and placed her napkin on the table. “And that was pretty deep for a lunch conversation.”

  Robin grinned. “I enjoyed it. Want to freeze your butt off on the waterfront?”

  “Sure.”

  The server brought the check and they split the cost. Robin bundled up before she stepped outside, but Jill didn’t zip up or put her hat on until they were already walking toward the river.

  “So how’s Frank?” Jill asked when they arrived at the railing.

  “Married now. I think he and his wife are trying for a baby.”

  “That’s great news. Do you see him a lot?”

  Robin stared out at the water for a few moments. “Not as much as I should.” She leaned over the railing a little more and looked down at the water’s surface, choppy in the afternoon breeze. “The truth is I’ve been fucking up.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve developed some not so great qualities.” She looked at Jill. “And I’ve done some really shitty things.”

  “We all do.”

  “Yeah, well, I keep doing shitty things. And the worst part is I haven’t seemed to care about the effects. At least not until recently.” Robin thought then about jumping into the river. Maybe the icy water would knock the bad out of her…before the pollution in it made her grow another hand or something.

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know.” Robin shifted her gaze back to the water. “Maybe it’s armor.”

  “If that’s true, then it’s on backwards.”

  Robin looked at her again. “How do you figure?”

  “Because the only purpose it’s currently serving is to keep all the good things about you trapped inside.”

  “How very poetic of you,” Robin said with a touch of sarcasm.

  “You’re talking to a woman who dumped the love of her life because she didn’t have the guts to stand up for what she wanted, and to a woman who married a perfectly nice man who found out she was having an affair with another woman two years after their daughter was born.” Jill turned her gaze to the river. “So, yes, I know a few things about armor.”

  “Sorry for sounding snippy just then,” Robin said. “I’ve only just diagnosed my new asshole status. I’m not sure what the cure is. Or even if there is one.” And then it occurred to her that Jill had just referred to her as the love of her life. And it made her feel even worse about who she’d become.

  Jill smiled at her. “The cure is to forgive yourself and then find a way to like who you are, flaws and all. Everything else kind of falls into place after that.”

  “I’m going to try to believe that, because I’m actually a little worried that I got my dad’s bad qualities and I’m doomed to be a dick.”

  Jill laughed.

  “Hey, I’m serious.”

  “I know. But you reminded me so much of when we were in college. You said that then, too.”

  “I did?”

  “Enough times that I used to think maybe you should track your dad down and just have it out with him so you’d stop thinking you were becoming him.”

  “Why didn’t you ever tell me that?”

  “I did, a couple of times. But your dad was a sensitive subject.” She pulled her cap lower over her ears. Though it was sunny, the wind was cold and the tip of Jill’s nose was red. It was totally cute, and Robin felt another little tug at her heartstrings.

  “Maybe I should find him so I could thank him for having such a bad influence on me.” Robin sounded less bitter than she expected.

  “The only way that could have happened is if you let it. Because the woman I fell in love with in college had the soul of an artist, with all of its messy, beautiful, passionate elements. I think you’re still that woman. You just took a few suspect turns.” Jill adjusted her scarf. “And sometimes you have to backtrack before you can move forward on the road that’s the better fit for you.”

  “Now you sound like we’re back in college,” Robin said with a smile, and she remembered how she and Jill would sometimes talk for hours into the night and then somehow still have time and energy to make love until dawn, both of them exhausted in class but loving all of it. The memory left her sad at what they’d lost but glad for this moment, reminiscing out here in the December cold.

  “Some things don’t change. But I try to work on the thin
gs that I should. And, no, before you ask, I haven’t been successful with all of them. I’m a work in progress.” Jill hunched her shoulders, as if she was trying to burrow deeper into her jacket.

  “It’s a bit brisk out here,” Robin said. “Feel like going with me to have a look at the giant tree and Christmas decorations at the Center instead?”

  “Sure.”

  “You can get some photos to send to Madison.”

  Jill smiled. “She’d totally love that.”

  “Then we’d better go. Plus I’m pretty sure there’s coffee on the way.” Robin started walking away from the water.

  “Ah. The ulterior motive.”

  “It’s a perfect day for another cup,” Robin said as she waited for Jill to catch up.

  “I’d have to agree.”

  “And I’m buying, since I’m trying to overcome my asshole streak.”

  Jill laughed again, and for the first time in over a week—hell, maybe longer than that—Robin felt at ease, flaws and all. As they went down to the subway, she hoped she could keep that feeling a little longer.

  CHAPTER 6

  “Do these people not have somewhere else to be?” Jill asked as she jockeyed for a position at the railing that overlooked the ice rink and the gold statue of Prometheus, who reclined opposite her, dwarfing the skaters.

  “You’re seriously asking that in this city four days before Christmas?” Robin maneuvered herself to the railing, reached back, and pulled Jill next to her. “Boom. Done. Awesome photo position for Madison.”

  Jill laughed. “I see you’ve lived here long enough to be able to deal with crowds in these circumstances.” She snapped a few photos with her phone.

  “Here. I’ll take one of you.” Robin held her hand out, and Jill gave her the phone and leaned back against the railing. Robin stepped back a few feet and took a couple more photos before people got in front of her, Jill in the foreground but the rink and Prometheus clearly in the background. She handed the phone back, and Jill grabbed her arm.