The Overdue Life of Amy Byler

by Kelly Harms

  She tilts her head at me ever so slightly. “Anything you like with malt whiskey can be made with rye.”

  “Oh yeah? Like a whiskey sour?”

  “That’s pretty good, actually. The original way it was made. Which rye?” she asks.

  I shrug. “Surprise me.”

  She pulls down a pretty bottle and a shot glass and pours me a tiny taste. “WhistlePig,” she tells me.

  I sip it, try not to cough, and nod at her. “Tastes good,” I lie. It tastes like a cross between nail polish remover and caramel sauce. “This your bar?”

  “Yep.”

  “Open it in 2010?”

  “. . . Yep. How’d you know.”

  “It’s called the Dead Author. Salinger wasn’t dead until 2010.”

  She points to a sign. “Just saved yourself four bucks,” she tells me.

  HAPPY HOUR: 50% OFF FOR NERDS UNTIL 7 P.M., reads the sign. I laugh. “How do you know if someone’s a nerd?” I ask her.

  She puts a drink in front of me. “They always make themselves known. Want to start a tab?”

  Daniel walks into the bar just that moment. My heart stumbles. “Yes, I do. And make another one of these for that good-looking dork,” I tell her.

  She winks at me. “My, but that’s a sexy nerd,” she says. “Have fun.”

  Daniel pulls up a barstool next to me. He’s wearing a pair of jeans and a plain brick-red T-shirt and carrying a large messenger bag across his chest. His shirt pulls just a bit across the shoulders but is loose around the waist. He looks like the dad from a diversely cast CW show. In short: dreamy.

  “Sorry I’m late,” he says, as I try to figure out if we’re going to hug or kiss or something in greeting. Maybe not kiss. I reach an arm toward him, but the barstools are too far away. In the end we share an awkward high five. I laugh nervously. He is awfully good looking.

  “Your timing is perfect,” I tell him when I recover. “I was earning us the fifty percent off.” I wave to the happy hour signage.

  He smiles and nods his head. “Good work. As I was walking up here, I thought maybe I should have told you about that in advance so you wouldn’t go incognito nerd, but then I realized there was little danger of that.”

  “Ha! Thanks a lot.”

  “You’re the one who was seduced by a day at the bookstore.”

  “I wasn’t seduced,” I say. Then I think it over. “Ok, maybe I was seduced a little.”

  Daniel smiles at me with the corner of his mouth. “Amy,” he says.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s great to see you again. I’m glad I tracked you down.”

  “Me too.”

  “And I’m glad you said what you did, about our situation being impossible. It’s good to just have that out there. You have a life in one place, and I have a life in another. Romance isn’t in the cards.”

  “Well,” I say. “Yeah. Wait, it isn’t?”

  Daniel looks at me strangely. “You are going back to PA at the end of the summer, right?”

  I nod. “Right. Yes. But that’s a couple months away.” I suddenly feel foolish. “So I was just sort of thinking . . .” What was I thinking? That we’d have a summer fling and then shake hands goodbye when I went back to my real life? That doesn’t sound very flattering to him.

  “I mean, I don’t want to just be a summer fling,” he says, eerily reading my mind. “That would be hard on me.”

  “It would? I mean, yes. Right.” I am pretty lost in this conversation. “Except, you know, I think you’re the one who initiated our very flinglike one-night stand. If we’re going to be historically accurate.”

  “Obviously, historical accuracy is of the utmost importance,” he says playfully. He doesn’t seem to be the slightest bit uncomfortable in this labyrinthine discussion. “The difference then, though, was I didn’t know you were on momspringa.”

  “Oh. For that matter, neither did I.”

  He smiles, and even in the midst of all this forthright conversation, it is so overwhelmingly charming when he smiles. “And, if you’ll forgive me for being indelicate, I also didn’t know we’d have such good chemistry . . .” He makes a weird little slow-motion coming-together gesture with his hands. “You know, horizontally speaking.”

  I feel my face get hot. “That was above average, right?” I don’t have much to compare it to lately.

  He tips his head back. “That was way above average. That was some Exceeds Expectations–level sex.”

  “E sex?” I ask, catching his Hogwarts grading-rubric reference.

  “E. Possibly O,” he volleys back. “Anyway, if you ask me, there’s no use in trying to ‘casually date’ someone you have Outstanding sex with. It has to be all or nothing.”

  I sigh. I guess that means it will be nothing. “But then why did you message me on Facebook?” I ask.

  He frowns. “To keep in touch, of course.”

  “As friends?” I ask.

  “Right. Exactly. Hang out with a cocktail.” He raises his glass to me. “Talk books. Enjoy each other’s company.”

  “But that’s what we did last time,” I say. “And look what happened.”

  He nods emphatically. “Good point. We will have to make an effort to keep our clothes on in the future.”

  “Or . . . ,” I say, already surprised at what’s about to come out of my mouth, “we could just see what happens . . .”

  Daniel sobers a bit. “No, really. I don’t meet a lot of women I have so much in common with who also are so . . .” His voice drifts off. “When you went home, back to your family, I’d be left in the lurch. I think I’d get hurt in that scenario.”

  I can tell he means it, so I back off, disappointed as I am. “Ok. Then it’s clothes on. For sure.”

  “Can’t have me slinking out of every hotel in New York City this summer,” he jokes.

  Can’t we? I think. “That wouldn’t be good,” I lie. “Besides, I still want your ideas for my reading program.”

  He grins. “You do? I am so, so glad, because I have so many ideas. I brought my laptop, and it’s bursting with suggestions. Should we go snag a table and dig in?”

  I think about the pretty, lacy underthings hiding beneath my casual knit dress and sigh inwardly. “Sure. Let’s dig in,” I say in as “just friendly” a voice as possible. “Let’s . . . talk about literacy.”

  We take our drinks and move to a bar-height two-top between the bar and the pool table. Daniel pulls out his laptop to display an impressive spreadsheet of titles, copyright situations, grade levels, and central themes. For an hour we talk about teaching and reading levels and book canons. And the entire time, two of my brain cells are having a little private argument in the back of my brain. Brain Cell One is definitely the devil. What the hell? She’s supposed to be having sex with this one! it keeps shouting.

  And Brain Cell Two says, Shhhh. This is perfect. A romantic relationship would be dead in the water in months. He might not be the only person getting hurt.

  And then Brain Cell One says, in a huff, What a waste. Look at him. He’s like a high eight. Maybe a nine. A New York eight and a half. That’s a PA four thousand.

  Brain Cell Two remains firm. He’s too attractive. And too smart. And too thoughtful. She can have a fling with anyone. This one it’s better to enjoy as a friend.

  A friend! I believe it was Shakespeare who wrote, “’Tis better to have sexed and lost than never to have sexed at all,” says Brain Cell One.

  And you call yourself a librarian, says Brain Cell Two. You need to get your butt to the eight twenty shelves stat.

  “What I need,” I hear myself say out loud out of absolutely nowhere, “is a book on neurology.”

  My two guilty brain cells shut up. Daniel looks at me quizzically. “Sorry,” I say. “I think I’ve hit a wall in my contemplations.”

  He nods knowingly, though, thankfully, he has no idea what I’m talking about. “I hear you. I’ve been absolutely piling it on. But believe it or not, I think we
have a starting place here. Look at this: five different graduated-level Flexthologies, covering all of your theme areas. If we can somehow get free permissions for these or find money to buy them from the publishers, we’d have enough to run a larger-scale pilot program. We put out the word, and charters and privates will line up to be in that pilot.”

  “The problem is,” I say, challenged but not defeated, “we’d be asking schools to pay for e-copies of books of which seventy-five percent or more of the students would read only a chapter. It’ll never fly. To say nothing of the fact that very few schools have enough e-readers to institute this. That pigeonholes us with the wealthiest schools. If we don’t run the pilot program at less affluent schools, how will we know if it can really reach kids in need?”

  Daniel frowns. “Maybe . . .” But then he falters. “You’re right. Urban schools are poor, and we already own a hundred copies of The Scarlet Letter.”

  “Fat lot of good that does anyone,” I say. “I hate The Scarlet Letter.”

  Daniel smiles. “Careful who hears you say that. In some pedagogical circles you would be forced to wear a red H for heretic on your dress.”

  I smirk. “Daniel, you may look cool, but deep down you’re a book dork like the rest of us.”

  He perks up. “You think I look cool?”

  “I do,” I tell him.

  “Would you like to do something cool with me?”

  Like sex? asks my brain. “Like what?” asks my mouth.

  “It’s summer in New York City,” he tells me. “The options are endless. But I was thinking . . .”

  “Yeah?”

  “Ta-da!” he says with a flourish, and then out of his breast pocket he presents two tickets. “How do you feel about baseball?”

  My eyes go wide. Baseball was probably the last thing on my mind when I thought of tonight. And yet now that I’ve had time to contemplate it, I cannot think of anything more perfect for this gorgeous, sunny summer evening than sitting next to this smart, interesting, and very attractive man having a light beer and a hot dog in Citi Field. My better angel must be getting through to me, because I start to see the reason of having this thing with Daniel be just friends. I’m not divorced yet, and a tiny, stupid, useless part of me doesn’t want to be, so I have a steamer trunk full of husband baggage. I could have casual sex with anyone. With a decent human being like Daniel, friendship really does make sense.

  “I feel like baseball is a wonderful reason to sit outside in the sunshine with a new friend,” I tell him.

  “You’re going to look dazzling in a Mets cap,” he tells me. I beam. “Amy, I’m so glad we met.”

  My mouth goes a little dry. “Me too,” I say.

  “I know I’ve been needing to make new friends for a long time,” he tells me. “But single parenting a teenager and working long hours with my students have left me low on social opportunities. And then here you are, on your momspringa—”

  “That’s not a real thing,” I tell him. “It’s just a word my friend’s magazine coined to sell copies.”

  “Here you are, on your momspringa,” he repeats, as if I haven’t spoken. “And you love your kids and your books, and you are so freaking easy to talk to. And you like baseball!” he adds.

  I shake my head. “I do not like baseball. I mean, I might like baseball, but I have no idea if I do or not, because I’ve never seen a game before. I like doing new things, though. And I like doing them outside on a day like today.”

  And I like doing them with you, I think to myself.

  “Good enough for me!” he exclaims. “I’m gonna buy you some peanuts and Cracker Jacks. Well,” he admits, “either peanuts or Cracker Jacks. I’m a public school teacher, after all. Let’s not get crazy.”

  “We wouldn’t want that,” I say with a smile.

  —

  In the basement of a department store on Fifth Avenue, there is a teahouse where ladies go to lunch on forbidden rice-and-shrimp balls and arugula dumplings and other tasty yet unsatisfying foodstuffs. Thanks to the magazine expense account, Matt and I have come here three times since I got back to New York. It is chockablock with media people who are happy to pay a dollar for every ten calories. Sometimes on the walk back to the magazine, I eat one of those giant street pretzels with mustard to fill up.

  I am munching on twenty-four dollars’ worth of seven-grain porridge and seaweed when Matt tells me he’s made a private Pinterest board full of dating options.

  “Ooooh!” I exclaim, because I am getting to know Matt well enough to know that there is no point in wasting time discussing what an insane thing that was to do. “Can I see?”

  He hands it to me. It’s a sea of very nice-looking guys, but they are ranging in age from thirty-five to fifty.

  “Matt,” I say solemnly. “You can see that these men are all way too old for you, right?”

  Matt chokes on the microscopic sea cucumber pickle he’s nibbling. “Those guys?” he coughs. “For me? No. Besides, I’m seeing someone. I’m talking about for you.”

  “Uh . . . ,” I say. In my head I am recalculating the sheer quantity of good-looking guys Matt showed me. A couple of them were downright hot. Would going on a date with one of them be that bad?

  But come on, Amy. Be serious. “That’s a pity, because I am not interested in going out with complete strangers who were selected for me by someone I’ve known for two weeks.”

  Matt shrugs and puts his phone away. I feel my heart sink a little when he gives in so easily. Maybe I do want to see a few of those cute guys’ pictures again? Just in case? “Ok,” he says. “What’s the plan for the summer, then? That librarian guy you were telling me about?”

  I level him a look. “The plan for the summer is house-sitting for your boss until she gets back, making some book choices for my reading program, and reaching out to authors about using selections from their books for free. And I’m going to read these.” I open my Litsy app and show Matt the huge TBR shelf I have going.

  “That’s, like, thirty books,” Matt says.

  “You’re right. I may need to add more,” I tell him with a smile.

  “You know, when you have that many books, you’ll probably need someone to help you shelve them. Someone like . . . a hot librarian?”

  I shrug. “If you must know, I went out with the hot librarian. We decided to be ‘just friends.’”

  Matt tilts his head. “Is he less hot up close?”

  “Oh my stars, he just gets hotter the closer you get. He is tall, dark, and handsome; a Korean Heathcliff; a librarian sex god; a dad I’d like to . . . you know. He looks as good as a champagne truffle tastes.”

  “Wow. Then why on earth aren’t you ‘you know’-ing him?”

  I sigh. “To be honest, I’d really like to ‘you know’ with him, like ASAP. But he suggested we have a friendship because of where I live, usually, and my momspringa and everything. And he is probably right. Because he is much more than a pretty face. He has just the loveliest way about him, and he enjoys books almost as much as me, and we share a lot of the same passions and values . . .” I think about how easy Daniel is to be with, the quiet way he elicited so much of my history from me over the course of the ball game. How I found myself telling him about John’s leaving and the hardest moments afterward, and how he turned away from the batter with a full count to look at me warmly and say, “Amy, you are one tough cookie to live through all that,” and the way some combination of that little bit of praise and the tenderness in his eyes made me feel so understood.

  It was a dangerous bit of magic that zipped between us. “The end of the summer would be a killer blow if we let things get carried away.”

  Matt frowns. “Hmm. So you’re trying to protect yourselves?”

  I nod.

  “But you still plan to hang out with him socially and spend time together?”

  I nod again.

  Matt makes a face.

  “What?” I ask him.

  “I think you’d better
look at that Pinterest board I made.”

  I shake my head. “I don’t need to date. I’ve got a full schedule of good stuff, and now I have two new friends in town to hang out with whenever I want a buddy.” I tip my head to him, new friend number one, warmly. “Plus, I loved that yoga-Pilates combo class you sent me to, so I’m definitely going back there a few times a week. And I was thinking I’d add a spin class too. Do they still have those? I used to love indoor cycling before I had Joe.”

  Matt reaches across the table and grabs my hand. He looks me in the eyes and pauses dramatically. “Flywheel,” he tells me somberly, as though he is telling me the secret of eternal life.

  “Is that what they call spinning now?”

  He scoffs. “Flywheel is so much more than spinning. It’s music and lights and competition and challenge . . . it’s a fitness revelation that will change you on the inside and out.” His voice has gotten quiet and reverent, but then he almost shouts: “There’s a class tonight. Six thirty p.m.!” There is a momentary pause, and then he snaps his fingers. “We need to go buy you the shoes.”

  “I don’t need special shoes. I can just wear sneaks.”

  “And padded gear.”

  “Is this contact stationary cycling?”

  “Quick. Eat your gruel,” he tells me. “I have to be back in the office by two, so we only have an hour to shop.”

  I wolf down the generous half teaspoon of avocado on my plate and then the wild rice. While I eat, Matt’s thumbs work furiously on his phone.

  “What are you up to over there?” I ask him.

  “I’m live tweeting your momspringa,” he tells me blithely.

  I roll my eyes. “No one wants to hear about my fitness regimen.”

  “Oh no?” he asks and shows me his phone. “Click the hashtag.” I do, and I see it: people are talking about #momspringa. Specifically, about how badly they want one.

  “Huh.”