This Angel on My Chest

by Pietrzyk, Leslie

  The bar was dim with a buzz of voices, and she stood for a moment, trying to remember why she was here. It was a mistake. When she and Roger had bought the new house, they had talked about how great it would be living a five-minute drive to Old Town, to be able to eat at all these restaurants. Here she was. Roger, who loved fish, probably would have ordered the catch of the day. She would have gotten something she wouldn’t cook at home: rabbit, maybe, or lamb. Or something complicated and richly seasoned. Negotiate the appetizers so they could try the two best. Share a dessert. She hated, now, going out and having to order a whole dessert to herself.

  “Nicole!”

  Roger. Roger’s voice calling her. Her heart thumped heavily in her ears.

  Not possible. She caught her breath and scanned the bar until she saw a waving arm toward the back. Again, that familiar voice, “Nicole!” and she understood immediately why she had thought of Roger: it was Roger’s brother, and why had she chosen this ridiculous restaurant of all places? Never choose a place that was just written up in the Washington Post. Quick anger flashed through her, though anger directed at whom? Mostly at Ben—why had Ben agreed to meet here? He should have been the one to pick the place.

  Several people turned to stare at her, so she lifted one arm at Wyatt, who stepped forward, away from his little group at the bar. He hurried toward her and leaned down to kiss her cheek. “I was going to call you this weekend,” he said. “I’ve been meaning to call. We must be on the same psychic vibe because here you are.”

  “Here I am,” she said.

  “It’s great to see you.”

  “Great to see you, too.”

  Their eyes met, and Nicole instantly looked away. Wyatt was the oldest of the three boys in Roger’s family, a lawyer married to another lawyer. He lived in a McMansion in McLean. He was the one always arriving late to family functions, bringing better wine than anyone else brought or contributing a platter of expensive Scottish smoked salmon to a simple Fourth of July potluck, always saying, “I’ve been meaning to call.” This past Thanksgiving, she had gone to Roger’s parents’ house (a mistake; she spent much of the afternoon crying in the guest bathroom and left before the pie was served, something rude and unforgiveable in her mother-in-law’s book), and Wyatt and his mother got into a huge argument about making gravy, with Wyatt waving around a glossy magazine as his mother kept repeating in a stony voice, “My gravy’s been good enough for the past twenty-five years.” That was the last time she’d seen any of them.

  There was eight years age difference between Roger and Wyatt, and they were never especially close, though Wyatt had spoken memorably at the funeral about teaching Roger how to throw a football. She remembered watching tears rise in his eyes as he spoke and how they quivered but didn’t spill over. Same brown eyes as Roger. Still. She forced herself to look at them, to smile brightly.

  “How’s it going?” he asked.

  She spoke too fast: “I’m meeting someone.”

  “Oh, sure,” he said, and he waved his arm again, a sweeping gesture. “Don’t let me hold you up.”

  “I mean, they’re probably not here yet,” she said. “You know me, always early.” How carefully she had avoiding saying “he” . . . he’s probably not here yet.

  “Sure,” Wyatt repeated, and he kept standing there, as if he expected something more. A confession! She remembered how he often said that silence was a negotiator’s best tool. She had to break the silence:

  “I don’t want to keep you,” she said.

  “Just work friends of Lisa’s.” His wife. “Actually, we’re waiting on her; she got trapped in a meeting and is the late one, leaving me stuck.” His laugh was like a bark.

  “Tell her I said hi,” Nicole said.

  “Tell her yourself,” Wyatt said as the door opened, and he pointed. Nicole turned to face the door, but it wasn’t Lisa. It was a brown-haired man of Roger’s height, balding but cute—yes, a little like a teddy bear; Andrea was right—with a quick smile. Gray sweater over a white T-shirt, jeans. Not wanting to try too hard, either, Nicole thought. He stood for a moment as she stared at him, startled that he wasn’t Lisa, then he strode forward with his hand out.

  “Are you Nicole?” he asked.

  Wyatt tilted his head, shifted his eyes from her to the man and back to her.

  “Um, yes,” she said, and remembered to stick out her hand. They shook; her handshake felt to her fishy and horribly sweaty, but he smiled, so maybe not.

  “Ben Roberts,” he said. “Good to meet you.” He looked at Wyatt.

  Wyatt looked at Ben.

  Nicole looked at the exit sign above the door as she mumbled, “This is—this is Wyatt,” and the two men silently shook hands like world leaders waiting for a translator to fill in the gaps.

  Nicole couldn’t guess which would be scarier, Ben’s questions or Wyatt’s, so she jumped in abruptly, hoping to prevent either from asking anything: “We should grab a seat,” she said, and for a horrified moment it looked as though Wyatt thought she was including him as he spun around uselessly, surveying the bar. So she quickly pointed to where a couple was settling up their check and said, “There’s two over there,” babbling on, “I’m really dying for a good drink.” Probably not the right thing to say on a date, but true. And given how rapidly Ben headed over to claim the vacated stools, possibly true for him, too.

  She and Wyatt stood for a second, their arms crossed. His eyes like Roger’s. That illusion that he was seeing her as Roger did when she was nothing more than his dead brother’s wife.

  “Say hi to Lisa,” she repeated.

  “Will do.” He backed away, returning to the group of lawyers, but those eyes felt like something cold pressed up against her back.

  “Good to see you,” she called, but he didn’t hear. She took in a deep breath, let it out slowly.

  And there was Ben. He pushed back her bar stool so she could clamber up into it—not a graceful seating arrangement for tight jeans and heels—and said, “I got you some water.”

  She drank it slowly, mostly because as long as she was drinking it, she didn’t have to talk or explain anything. And then the bartender approached and recommended the sidecar, the drink special of the night, and she said yes to that, and he ordered a Grey Goose and tonic.

  “What’s a sidecar?” he asked after a moment.

  Did she want to date a man who didn’t know what a sidecar was? Nicole said, “You can try mine if you’d like. Cognac, lemon juice, Cointreau. Or regular brandy instead of the cognac, which is also good and usually what you find in a bar like this one. Served up with a sugar rim. Maybe a little girly, but it’s actually a classic cocktail from World War One-ish.” Roger had made perfect sugar rims. She probably sounded snobby, and she struggled to think of something pleasant to say about vodka tonics.

  One of Ben’s eyebrows lifted, perhaps a response to her little sidecar lecture. “How do you know Andrea?” Ben asked.

  It was like they were at the dud singles table at a wedding.

  “Work,” she said.

  “Where do you—”

  “That guy,” she started, then stopped because the bartender set the drinks in front of them. Her martini glass glistened with a rim of sugar, and she said, “The trick is to rub a tiny chunk of lemon around the rim. Then roll the edge of the glass through sugar heaped on a plate.”

  “So you’re kind of a sidecar connoisseur,” Ben said. The eyebrow again. She couldn’t tell if he was flirting or if he was annoyed. Probably annoyed. She was annoying herself.

  “Look,” she said. “Can we just go right to dinner?”

  “Of course,” he said. “Because this is going so well,” and he signaled the bartender for the check. Again, she couldn’t be sure: was he sarcastic-mean or sarcastic-funny? Or serious? Maybe this was a good date and she just didn’t know it. Or maybe this whole thing was a terrible idea.

  As she stood up—as awkward getting off the stool as she’d been climbing up onto it—she
glanced down the bar and there was Wyatt, his head radiantly illuminated by a track light that seemed askew. The people he was with were talking around him, but he was silent, staring right at her, not bothering to pretend that he wasn’t. He held a glass of amber liquid loosely in one hand, as if he might lift his glass to her, though that wasn’t a gesture typical of him. At family gatherings, in fact, it was Roger who always proposed the toast. The youngest child, but somehow the one who wove them into a real family, she had noticed, bringing up old stories from growing up and being the first to commemorate occasions with a heartfelt toast. It wasn’t a close family, but Roger had made it seem so. At that Thanksgiving there had been no toasts, until, finally, she stood up and, losing her nerve, chirped, “To the cooks!” downing her drink quickly before anyone could add more. It somehow felt like a moment of immense betrayal, but no one commented on what she had done, or even on Roger’s glaring absence, at least not in her presence. As if the sound of his name would immediately avalanche into uncontrollable tears and loose, sloppy emotions.

  Wyatt’s eyes met hers, and she couldn’t look away, until finally he turned, putting his back to her as she walked by his group of chattering lawyers—still no Lisa—followed closely by Ben, who carefully carried both drinks, as they headed to the hostess stand to get a table in the restaurant. She wasn’t sure if she was supposed to say something to Wyatt, and she didn’t. After she went by, she realized that Wyatt had been watching her pass in the mirror behind the bar. She looked back at Ben and smiled, her teeth feeling awkward and horsy, then turned so she wouldn’t have to see if he smiled in return.

  The restaurant was clattery and noisy, studiously decorated like an old-time diner with Formica and linoleum, lit a little too brightly. In one corner was an old-fashioned revolving case of various cakes and pies. She and Ben sat in a booth along the wall, facing each other, having to lean in a bit to be heard as they perused the menu and debated choices. It turned out that Ben liked to cook—perhaps that’s why he’d seemed put off by her little lesson on the sidecar, he was actually annoyed at himself for not knowing what one was—and so he was happy to discuss whether she should get the asparagus with poached egg, fried oysters, or the beet salad. He didn’t mention sharing, and Nicole thought it might be weird to ask, so she ordered her own appetizer—the beets—and got the bison hanger steak. He settled on chilled English pea soup and the whole roasted fish. Then she realized that her bison was the second most expensive entrée on the menu.

  That worry left her mind once she recognized that with the menus whisked away, they were now on their own for conversation. Her sidecar was two-thirds gone, the sugar rim licked away, and she wanted another one, but had to be mindful that she’d have to drive herself home. Or somewhere. That condom in her purse. What was she thinking? This strange man, with his unfamiliar brown hair and brown eyes . . . she couldn’t imagine herself naked in front of him. She should have worn the skirt—easier; no undressing. She blushed.

  It was Roger saying, “How about over there?” But it was actually Wyatt, on the other side of the restaurant, pointing to the empty table kitty-corner from where she and Ben sat; if Wyatt and his group ended up there, she would face him directly, while Ben’s back would be to them.

  The hostess nodded, and the group—now including Lisa—trooped over to the empty table and settled in, chattering about traffic on 395. Wyatt positioned himself in direct view of Nicole. Lisa, her back to Nicole, apparently hadn’t spotted her, and if Wyatt had mentioned her presence, Lisa surely would have said hi and come over to nose around. Wyatt gestured at his glass, looping his index finger in a tight circle that encompassed the table. Another round, she guessed. He reached for the wine list. Even as she saw him work his way through the pages of that, she felt him watching her.

  She focused on Ben who poked at his drink with the stirrer straw. “So,” she said.

  “So.”

  “How do you know Andrea?” she asked, embarrassed.

  “Look,” he said. “I know this is awkward.”

  This was where she was supposed to offer a quick, easy, even untruthful explanation of Wyatt: My ex. A college crush. That horrible former boss. Two or three words, tops. Easier, instead, to natter on about the sidecar, how it was invented at Harry’s Bar in Paris, how it was named for a regular who came to the bar riding in a motorcycle sidecar.

  She smiled again. Her face felt brittle in the silence between them.

  Finally he said, “Andrea and I were engaged, but that was in college. She broke it off. It’s no big deal now—we’re friends—but I’m guessing she didn’t tell you that. She’s weird about it, and I don’t have to go into it or anything, but you should know.” His face was terribly earnest, and she got the sense that Ben Roberts was a very nice guy. He would never fuck a heels-wearing, condom-carrying widow in the car in the parking garage or in a restaurant bathroom. She was disappointed to realize this, and then suddenly angry, as if he had just verbally turned her down for something she didn’t even want or ask for.

  From the corner of her eye, she watched Wyatt order a bottle of wine, hand the oversized menu to the waitress. She wrenched her attention back to Ben and said, “Andrea told me that you’d gone out a couple of times.”

  He laughed. “That’s her. She’s oddly secretive like that. Not fun. But still, she’s great. And I’m glad we’ve got that in the open. I have a thing about honesty.”

  “Oh, me too,” Nicole lied.

  The big confession seemed to relax him—or could be it was the vodka—because he stopped with the Twenty Questions and started telling stories that actually were funny about teaching history at a private high school and coaching debate. She could listen and laugh at appropriate moments, ask the right questions, and seem engaged, even as she felt her mind floating free of her body, her mind watching Wyatt swirl the red liquid in the glass, then sip it with his eyes closed. He was so fucking pretentious. That’s what Roger always said, when people asked about his family: “I’ve got one brother out in Austin, and another, the pretentious one, who lives around here, in McLean.” He would laugh, but that was why Roger wanted kids so badly, to create the family he didn’t have, to do it right. If Wyatt’s kids were old enough for high school, they might very well attend the school where Ben taught. She tried to imagine Ben and Wyatt in a parent-teacher conference, Wyatt looming, overflowing the student desk, Ben desperate to hold his ground from the adult-size oak chair behind the teacher’s desk, Wyatt listening to about one sentence before butting in to tell Ben how wrong he was about whatever he was saying. The way he’d give the classroom an eye-rolling once-over before leaving, signaling to Ben how puny this kingdom was.

  She watched Wyatt throw his head back in laughter, watched him reach across the table and bop Lisa’s nose with one finger, watched him point at something on the menu as the waitress stood next to him: What word on the menu had he not been comfortable pronouncing, what technique was he unfamiliar with? Veloute? Sauce soubise? Funny to think of Wyatt intimidated. He told the group a story that involved many hand movements, swinging both arms as if holding a baseball bat. Suddenly he narrowed his eyes and looked straight at her. She wanted to be casual and hold his gaze, but couldn’t.

  “And so then he was like, ‘Hell yeah I’m from Brooklyn.’”

  Ben. She looked at Ben. He seemed to sense her attention had shifted—even though she managed to laugh at this punch line—and he said, “Have you been on many blind dates?”

  “Not for a while,” she said. “It’s . . . interesting.”

  He gave a half-laugh. “Usually blind dates come about because some married woman knows exactly two single people and decides it’s her duty to push them together. Married people always want to drag others into their misery.”

  “Misery?” she asked. “Is that how you feel about marriage?”

  He held up his hands in mock horror. “Oh, no, the marriage talk already! ‘Is he a man who will commit? When can I get my baby?’” When she
didn’t laugh, he said, “I mean, of course not. It’s just a joke. I’d love to be married, you know, to the right woman and be a dad. Like I told you, I was engaged before. I can be serious.” He sounded defensive. “What about you?”

  “I can be serious, too.” No way was she going to utter Roger’s name out loud. Her sad story. I’m not supposed to be doing this, she imagined saying, I was all set; I had Roger. Goddamnit. Instead, it was this, date after endless date, eating her lonely appetizer, her never-the-most-expensive entrée, swapping answers back and forth to questions like it was a test, which it was. If she’d been fifty, she could have given up, been fine with the cat and the TV. But who gives up at thirty-eight? Not Ben! Not her! She took a deep breath. “But we don’t have to be serious tonight,” she said. “Let’s just be fun. What’s your sign? Capricorn?”

  She had picked at random—no, actually, she had picked Roger’s sign—but it turned out that Ben was a Capricorn and he seemed to think that she had amazing insight. So there was that to talk about. Then the appetizers arrived. He didn’t offer a taste of his soup. So she ate all of her beet salad, which was pretty on the plate and quite delicious. It had been mentioned in the Post review.

  Wyatt’s appetizers showed up. Beets for him, too. Probably because of the newspaper.

  Ben loved to talk. At some point he said, “It’s great when someone knows how to be a good listener.” “Because you’re a teacher,” she said, but really because he liked to go on and on. He seemed content with minimal responses from her—murmurs and nods—and she felt sorry for him, for his low expectations. At least he was funny. And no rope bracelet despite the warning. He had a thing for honesty. Who could complain about any of this? At another point he said, “You know, Nicole, you’re fun.”