“Take it easy,” he hears himself saying.
“Peter and Max,” Oliver says, naming his two grandsons. “Max looks just like Tobey did at that age.”
The conversations have all started to blend together.
“I’m just trying to talk to you.” Jack.
“Really, the spitting image.” Oliver.
“Back off, Jack. I’m not playing.” Miranda.
“Tobey looked older than I thought. Did he seem old to you?” Oliver.
“You used to like playing with me.” Jack.
“Go easy, man.” Silver.
And all the while, Lily’s voice is filling his ears as she sings about talking to angels. It is, he thinks for reasons he doesn’t fully understand, the perfect song for her to sing.
“Shut up.”
“Two boys. Nice-looking kids.”
“Fuck you.
“Whatever.”
Silver can’t follow the various threads of these conversations anymore. He’s always been something of a lightweight when it comes to drinking, has often thought of alcoholics with a certain wistful admiration. He could never get there. Dizzy after three drinks wouldn’t really bode well for binge drinking. Whatever problems alcoholics might have, commitment isn’t one of them. And in this respect, he feels inferior.
Up onstage, Lily starts to play something that he can’t place right away. A light, dragging bass line is integrated into her strumming. It’s only once she starts to sing that he realizes she’s playing “Rest in Pieces.” He has never imagined the song this way, and he is stunned by the simple elegance she has brought to the silly pop song he wrote. Was it always there, waiting to be discovered, or has she imbued it with new properties it never before possessed? It seems to him that this is a profoundly important question, one with far-reaching implications, but he is too addled and buzzed and keyed up and lost and found and in love and terrified and tired to figure it out just now.
Lily finishes playing and stands up to a warm round of applause. It was the last song of her set. He wonders what, if anything, that means. He is waiting for her when she comes down from the stage, carrying her guitar. She doesn’t seem surprised to see him waiting for her, which he decides he will take to be a positive sign.
“That was really beautiful,” he says.
She smiles and looks down at her boots for a second. “I thought you might get a kick out of it.”
“So, you know who I am, then.” For some reason, he is momentarily thrown by this idea.
She looks at him like he might be joking, sees that he isn’t, and she smiles. “You’re humble,” she says. “I didn’t see that coming.”
“Not really.”
“That’s exactly what a humble person would say.”
He looks at her and thinks she is beautiful in a way that goes beyond her looks. She is weathered but somehow unbowed, or barely bowed, or maybe she is bowed, but has a sense of humor about it. Time will tell. But she is possessed of an innate kindness that he sees almost like a color coming off of her.
And she is just so pretty.
“You seem like a very kind person,” he says.
She laughs, surprised. “You don’t have much of a game, do you?”
“No. I guess I don’t.”
She meets his gaze and holds it, and he holds hers, and it’s an effort for both of them, and he feels a thrill building. The air shimmers between them like fairy dust. He wonders if she sees it too. Something is happening here. There are words he can say right now that will elevate them from strangers to something more, and he would give anything to know what those words are. And then they come to him, and he smiles, knowing that he will say them, and she will hear them, and the universe will change in a profound and permanent way.
And that’s when Jack sucker-punches the muscle-head at the bar, and a minor fracas breaks out.
* * *
No one has patience for another stupid bar fight, and the whole thing fizzles fairly quickly. The guy Jack hit has youth and size going for him, but Jack has Silver, who steps in, looking to break it up, and ends up being knocked off balance and falling down against the bar in a fuzzy haze. There follows a good deal of shouting and jostling, and then, suddenly, in the midst of the chaos, he sees Lily’s face, hovering above his, the hint of a wry smile at the corners of her mouth.
“That was fast,” she says.
“The good fighters always finish fast.”
Her laugh is instant and lovely. Silver looks up at her in a way that makes her look at him funny. “What?” she says.
“I want to kiss you.”
She grins. “This doesn’t really seem like the right time.”
Behind them, he is vaguely aware of Jack cursing a blue streak as management drags him out of the bar.
“It will after the fact,” he says. “When you tell the story.”
“So there’s going to be a story? That must be some kiss you’re planning.”
“It might be my last one.”
“What, are you dying or something?”
“I might be. It’s not clear yet.”
She looks at him, really looks at him, trying to understand the things about him that he himself doesn’t, and he finds himself smitten anew by her simple sincerity.
“Well then,” Lily says. “I guess you had better get to it.”
She offers him her hand, and he climbs to his feet. The room wobbles around him for a minute before becoming completely still. He looks at Lily. She has been lonely. He recognizes this as only another lonely person can—that small, almost invisible edge in her expression that comes from too many solitary meals and movies, too much time spent in worthless introspection, too much time spent regretting a past that can’t be undone. This is someone who is ready to be loved, he thinks.
“I like you,” he tells her.
“It’s your funeral,” she says with a grin.
“You have no idea.” He pulls her close exactly the way someone with confidence would, and he kisses her mouth. Her lips collapse against his in a manner that feels like surrender and conquest simultaneously, and he is flooded with a sweet desire he hasn’t felt in years. When it ends, the room wobbles around him for a minute before becoming completely still.
And then he does it again.
* * *
He loved a girl once; for no particular reason, just a lot of little ones thrown together. Isn’t that what love is, anyway? The sum of a million intangibles that all come together in just the right way at just the right time? Like conception. Or the universe. He loved her before he met her, which isn’t as romantic as it sounds, because for some people, loving at a distance comes naturally. And then they did meet, and when she smiled at him through the shimmering air he felt it in his belly. He took her home with him—they didn’t discuss it, it just became their presumed destination—and the sex was sex: exciting, intimate, and awkward. These things take time. But afterward, after they had dispensed with it like a formality, they lay in bed speaking in low voices, confessing any sins that came to mind, absolving each other the way only near strangers can. Then it was morning, and she was dressing to leave, and as he kissed her good-bye, he was overwhelmed by the notion that they were, in fact, still strangers to each other, and he couldn’t for the life of him see how to get from there to somewhere else. The whole notion of building a relationship from scratch seemed like a vast and complex enterprise, the thought of which was instantly exhausting. And yet . . .
In spite of the strangeness of it all, of the way they seemed to find even small talk a strain in the harsh light of day, of her quickness in leaving and his desire to be alone with his fears, in spite of all of that, he felt something he hadn’t felt in years, a warm energy spreading across his chest, filling him. It seemed equally possible that he might love her f
orever or might never see her again, but that energy was incontrovertible proof, long overdue, that there was still some juice in that creaky, battered heart of his.
CHAPTER 50
Sad Todd is going home.
They sit in the lobby, Silver, Jack, and Oliver, as Todd moves back and forth, overseeing the two porters who are moving his possessions out to the small U-Haul he’s got idling in the driveway. A number of the other men have come down to watch the proceedings. They are all similarly cynical and awestruck.
Reconciliation. The impossible dream.
“So she took him back,” Jack says.
“It happens,” Oliver says.
“She doesn’t need her husband back. She needs reinforcements. I mean, you’ve seen those kids, right?”
“Maybe she missed him,” Silver says.
Jack looks at Silver and raises his eyebrows archly. “You’re just not seeing things clearly because you got laid last night.”
Silver smiles. He can’t really argue. He is still seeing Lily’s smile every time he closes his eyes, can still smell her and taste her.
“And you got your ass kicked.”
Jack is sporting a nasty laceration under his eye and a bandage across his knuckles.
“Hey, I gave as good as I got.”
“How was it with that girl?” Oliver asks him.
“It was good.”
He doesn’t want to admit, even to himself, that he has no idea how good it was. It was something, and whatever that something was, it was better than the nothing that’s been his default for the last seven years.
Sad Todd rolls a cart with his computer supplies across the lobby. Silver pictures the den that will be reclaimed, can feel the sense of renewal that will permeate Sad Todd’s house, and he’s happy for him.
“He’ll be back inside of a year,” Jack says.
“Shut up, Jack,” Oliver says. “Let’s give him this moment.”
“Guess we can’t call him Sad Todd anymore,” Silver says.
The loading is finished, and a handful of men gather around to say their good-byes. Silver, Jack, and Oliver join them, shaking Todd’s hand, wishing him well. Stay in touch, Todd says. He does not take a last look around the lobby, doesn’t take a sentimental pause, a last breath in these sad environs. He just heads out to the driveway, throws the U-Haul into gear, and drives off.
Sad Todd has left the building. They will never see him again. And in no time at all, he will be largely forgotten. Life swallows people up like that.
CHAPTER 51
Things are starting to speed up. He is losing time. He feels lightheaded more often now, and sometimes finds himself in the middle of a room, or conversation, with no recollection of how he came to be there. He knows that this has to do with blood flow to his brain, with the little clots breaking off in his aorta and shooting up to his brain like microscopic bullets, scarring it like the side of a building after a gunfight.
One minute he is saying good-bye to Lily, and the next he is in the lobby watching the formerly sad Todd take his leave. Then he’s in the shower, and now he’s out to dinner with Casey. They are at Carlucci’s, a family-style Italian place a few blocks over. He doesn’t remember making the reservation, doesn’t remember the walk over, but here they are, finishing their soups. His is minestrone, hers potato leek. Casey’s hair is freshly blown and down, and she looks heartbreakingly beautiful to him.
“So, Dad.”
“Yes.”
“That woman. The singer.”
“Lily.”
“Lily.”
“How’d that go?”
“Hard to say.”
“You going to see her again?”
“I hope so.”
“Well, keep me posted as events warrant.”
“Will do.”
Casey sits back and considers him for a moment. “You seem sad.”
“I’m not.”
“So what are you, then?”
He thinks about it for a moment. “Waiting,” he says.
“What for?”
“Whatever comes next.”
Casey spoons her soup thoughtfully, clearly debating whether or not to say something. “You know,” she says, “there are some people out there who don’t wait for what comes next. They decide what should come next and they go and make it happen.”
Silver smiles sadly. It occurs to him that what he has failed to impart through wisdom, he may well have imparted through stupidity.
“You’re right,” he says. “I think things would have turned out differently if I were one of those people.”
“I’m just like you.”
“You’re nothing like me.”
“No, I am. I keep waiting for the universe to decide things for me, and the thing is, the universe has better things to do.”
“When did you get so smart?”
She shrugs. “Broken home. You pick shit up.”
It occurs to him that there is something wrong with his soup. He takes another few spoonfuls, concentrating. It takes him a minute, but he figures it out. He can’t taste it. He leans forward and takes a spoonful of Casey’s soup. He eats a piece of the garlic knots the waiter had put out with the soup. Nothing. He can taste nothing.
“What is it?” Casey says, alarmed.
He shakes his head. “Nothing.”
He is dying. Bit by bit. He can feel it happening inside of him, small things inside of him starting to call it a day.
“Dad?”
She calls him Dad now, thoughtlessly. And it never fails to bring a lump to his throat.
“What, baby?”
“Are you going to get that?”
“What?”
“Your phone. It’s ringing.”
He almost never carries his phone, which almost never rings. He reaches into his pocket and pulls it out. Sure enough, it’s ringing, on a pitch close to the ringing in his ears, which is why he didn’t hear it. He looks at the screen and sees a number he doesn’t recognize.
“Aren’t you going to answer it?” Casey says.
“I don’t know who it is.”
“You push the button and you find out.”
Silver nods and picks up the call. “Hello?”
“I like you too,” Lily says.
* * *
And then he is in the hospital, sitting in a small room with Jack and Oliver. Oliver is on a leather recliner, the IV needle in his arm delivering his last chemo treatment.
“I still can’t believe you’ve been coming here all this time without us,” Jack says.
“Sad Jack hates to be left out of anything,” Oliver says, winking at Silver.
“Fuck you, Cancer Boy,” Jack says.
They’ve been calling him Sad Jack ever since Sad Todd left the building, and it drives him crazy.
“When’s the surgery?” Silver asks him.
“Next week,” Oliver says. “You know, you could have yours then too, and we could get ourselves a private recovery suite upstairs.”
They both look at him expectantly. He isn’t ready to talk about this yet. “Denise is getting married tonight,” he says.
“Oh, shit,” Jack says.
“The wedding day of an ex-wife is always traumatic,” Oliver says.
“Even your third ex-wife?”
“Fuck off, Sad Jack.”
“Keep calling me that and I’ll put an air bubble in your drip.”
“Are you going to the wedding?” Oliver says.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“What do you mean, why not?” Jack says. “Did you go watch your many ex-wives get married?”
“No, but they all hated me.”
“I can’t
imagine why.”
“I’m not invited,” Silver says.
They both look at him, and the way they do it makes him feel he has revealed more than he meant to.
“There are plenty of reasons to stay away from your ex-wife’s wedding,” Jack says. “But that is not one of them.”
Oliver nods sagely. “Sad Jack is right.”
“Sad Jack is going to jam that chemo bag up your ass and make your shit glow.”
Silver laughs. He feels a surge of warmth for these men who have kept him company these last lonely years.
There is a noise behind them, the clearing of a throat. They turn to see Oliver’s son, Tobey, standing in the doorway.
“Hey,” Tobey says. “I hope I’m not interrupting.”
The expression on Oliver’s face is something they’ve never seen before. He opens his mouth to say something, but nothing comes out.
* * *
And then Silver is opening the door to his apartment to find his father standing there in his best suit.
“Come on,” Ruben says. “Get dressed.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The wedding. I can’t be late.”
“I’m not going to the wedding,” Silver says.
“Of course you are. One of every life-cycle event. You agreed to it.”
“I’m not invited, Dad.”
“That’s never stopped us before.”
“This is different.”
“No, it’s not,” Ruben says, leaning against the doorframe. “If anything, she’ll be happy to see you.”
“I think your understanding of women is fundamentally flawed.”
“Says the divorced man to the man coming up on his fiftieth anniversary.”
Silver grins. “That only means you understand one woman.”
“And that’s one more than you. So put on that ridiculous tux of yours and let’s get moving. I’m on the clock here.”
* * *
And then he is standing outside Renni’s, a large restaurant with an enclosed courtyard. The restaurant has been rented out for the affair, and he can see the guests through the windows, milling about inside. Casey steps outside, wearing a rust-colored gown and heels, looking so much like a woman that when, after a moment, he registers that it’s her, there’s no choice but to feel old.
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