Broken Enagement

by Gage Grayson

  “I’ve got lunch right here,” Ryan announces loudly, since he’s still too far to talk like a normal person.

  I’m a bit impressed with the way he moves one hand out from under the tray while sliding the other into position to support it entirely. After all that work, he uses his free hand to bafflingly point to the top of the tray.

  “We see it, Ryan,” I shout at him over Carina. She turns around to give me a requisite look of embarrassment, but she doesn’t care enough for it to last more than a fraction of a second before we’re both watching Ryan balance the tray on one arm like he’s a busboy who got lost and wandered from a diner ten blocks away.

  This is what it must’ve looked like to Maddie and Lauren when I carried those two armfuls of hastily purchased souvenirs across the nightclub five years ago—except Ryan’s much more graceful, probably thanks to his post-college years in the restaurant game.

  I wonder what happened to all those gifts. I hope somebody at least ate those pounds of chocolate.

  Ryan makes, as far as I can tell, his first sensible decision all day by stopping at the two long, empty benches next to him and placing the tray down cautiously. Carina and I take the prompt to start walking over as Ryan sits down and examines his haul.

  “You’re not dumpster diving again, are you, Ry?” I ask when I get to a conversational distance.

  “Again? Have I ever?”

  I can’t accuse Ryan of not having a sense of humor, since mine’s probably off today.

  I take a spot on the bench next to Ryan, realizing that I’m even more tired than usual this weekend. I leave space for Carina to sit next to me, farther from Ryan, but she chooses to settle down on the other side of his gigantic tray.

  “Wherever you got it, I’m frigging starving.” Carina’s not shy about poking at the cardboard takeout box closest to her, although she’s still not opening it.

  “I spent the last twenty minutes building a smorgasbord of the best the Greenmarket has to offer. Although there are people who make a point of not letting food go to waste, and they know what they’re doing...Ethan.” Ryan glares at me with mock anger.

  “Freegans,” Carina comments. She’s opened the takeout box, at last, to reveal half a dozen deep-fried rice balls, and she probably missed Ryan’s sarcasm. No, she’s giving me her own mock-angry stare-down. “Ethan.”

  Well, I guess she’s in an okay mood, considering.

  “Those are from this place on Essex. They’re all different flavors. I’ve got spinach ricotta, Philly cheesesteak, roasted beets with goat cheese...most of them don’t have rice. I think that’s actually the Thanksgiving one you’re eating now.”

  As Ryan rambles about his rice balls and Carina digs in, I stare absently at the Metronome, a public art installation on the building across 14th, essentially a giant digital timepiece.

  “Oh, it’s delicious,” I hear Carina exclaim with her mouth full, which is strange for her. “That’s real cranberry sauce. Ethan’s always liked the canned stuff.”

  One-half of the display on the metronome—the clock—is counting upwards into the microseconds as the day wears on, while the other half is counting down, backwards, the time left in the day until midnight.

  “I find that hard to believe,” Ryan blathers on with his own mouth full. “You should try this pizza from Artichoke. Quick, before I eat both slices.”

  Is the countdown feeding into the clock as it greedily drains the time away from everything? Or is it feeding from the clock, a reminder of what those hours, minutes, and seconds actually mean?

  “You don’t really prefer that canned crap, do you, Ethan? Because I may prefer it myself.”

  “What would Thanksgiving be without it? Hey, I think this is the spinach one.” Carina’s still eating ravenously.

  Whatever. I have no clue what I’m talking about with this shit. All I know is that right now, it doesn’t seem to be getting easier for anyone as the Metronome ticks on.

  “Come on, Ethan, I’m buying lunch for once. If you’re too good for this stuff, could you at least stop staring and tell us what kind of fucking cranberry sauce you like?”

  “Oh,” I say, looking back at Ryan slowly, acting like he just snapped me out of some spacey meditation, which I guess is close to the truth. “Look...I’ve got a lot on my figurative plate, so I’m not that hungry. Jeanette’s wedding is coming up soon.”

  I make eye contact with Carina, who stops chewing for a moment to give me an empathetic look.

  “You mean, your mother?” Ryan grabs one of the rice balls and eats half of it in one bite.

  “Yeah...our mom. She’s marrying again, now.”

  “So fucking what?” Ryan pulls a bottle of water from his jacket pocket and takes a gulp. “She’s an adult, and she’s happy, right?”

  I can’t help but look at Carina again. She’s suddenly lost her interest in lunch.

  “I hope so. I don’t know.” Carina’s voice is cracking a little. She’s carrying the full weight of this, and I can see how heavy it is for her.

  Ryan shakes his head. This subject is messier than he thought it would be.

  “It’s her decision, though. Isn’t it?” Ryan looks questioningly at Carina, then at me, as if he won an argument and we should realize that everything is fine now.

  I change my posture on the bench to address both my best friend and my sister more directly. Just like Carina, its weight is holding me down today, and I need to express why for them and for me.

  “I always thought that getting older, problematic as it is, would also make things easier—that it would bring rationality and wisdom—that you could break out of your patterns. Now that I’m feeling...I don’t know…I just don’t see it happening.”

  “Is your mom not acting wise?”

  “It doesn’t seem that way,” Carina answers, prompting Ryan to turn towards her. “I don’t think I’ve seen her make a decision like this. I mean...Gerald. Jesus.”

  Ryan looks to me for confirmation.

  “Is it really that bad?” he asks.

  “Gerald is...it could be worse, always. But...”

  “He’s kind of a prick.” Carina snatches the other slice of pizza after finishing my thought.

  Ethan

  I swear I feel the air conditioning kick on for a few seconds while walking down the Monday morning corridor to my office.

  “Are you fucking serious?” Phil, one of the senior partners, is audibly complaining from behind his office door. “It’s still, like, sixty fucking degrees outside.”

  Yeah, not my imagination, I guess.

  Things are back to normal, as they’re inclined to be, at the start of another week. Most people at the firm had the weekend off from working, and even I took most of it off to catch up on sleep and think about my lunch with Ryan and Carina—plus all the rubbish that’s coming with the persistence of days marching by and life continuing.

  People want for things to be normal, to have a comfortable routine to come back to—so naturally the SEC investigation is on the back burner of most people’s minds at this point, even mine.

  It feels like old times—as in a couple weeks ago—as I walk into my empty office, retrieve my tablet from the corner of my desk, and ready my work phone for the day/week/eternity ahead.

  I think about staying in the office for the next twelve, fourteen hours or longer, about basically living here again for a few days. I notice how comforting that plan feels.

  I don’t when or how this happened, but I realize it’s been this way for a while. It’s nice to have something, at least.

  Maybe one day I’ll buy one of those condos at the top of the Woolworth and just move my office up there. I can charge tourists thirty bucks a pop to look at the view—that’ll take care of the property taxes and the loneliness.

  My tablet’s taking forever to boot up, that’s not helping, and there goes my damn desk phone with another intraoffice ring. This is it—it’s happening like it’s supposed to. Because nothing�
��s going exactly like it’s supposed to.

  The fucking phone stops before I have a chance to pick it up. Damn it. I get it, though: no matter how low-key I am with everyone here, people are still going to be afraid of me.

  Then my door starts opening. I didn’t see that coming. It was closed, but I do make a point of telling people they can just come in if they need anything.

  “What is it, Greg?” The heavy door is slow to open, but it must be Greg. Anybody else here who interacts with me has a preternatural feel for the best times to talk. Greg hasn’t developed that yet.

  “Not Greg, I’m afraid. He’s been very nice to me, though.”

  Oh, fuck.

  Okay, another unexpected direction, albeit one I should absolutely be expecting at this point.

  Before I even see her face, Maddie’s voice has a way of collaborating with the room’s acoustics like nobody else’s I’ve talked to in here. I here every word in high resolution Surround Sound.

  “You have better elocution than possibly anyone I’ve ever met.” That’s all I can think to say as Maddie emerges from behind the door.

  She’s not donning her usual business suits. She’s wearing a pale blue cardigan over a light pink top...and a pencil skirt. She sure pulls it off well.

  “I’ve long had a knack for diction.”

  Maddie’s wearing her hair partially up, letting it fall just to her shoulders. She’s wearing some sort of formal Mary Jane black leather pumps, which echo as she walks with the same Surround Sound fidelity.

  “That’s a fantastic asset to have.” I regret that comment immediately, nearly cringing in my chair, but Maddie doesn’t flinch. She doesn’t waver even slightly as she pulls an old-school wooden office chair sitting off to the side of the room—which is pretty much a decoration—and wheels it over on her way to my desk.

  Now she’s sitting across from me like she’s done this a million times.

  “Please, take a seat.” I have no idea if I’m joking.

  “Thank you.” I don’t know if she is, either.

  “I suppose I should’ve been expecting you this morning.”

  I think I’m getting used to Madeline’s eyes now. Or at least their power doesn’t seem to hit me out of nowhere anymore.

  Yeah, I’m not fooling anyone with that. I’m still blindsided by it, but it’s not a terrible feeling, and I can’t let it distract me with so much at stake.

  “Greg was about to call you. I asked if I could just go in...” Maddie leans slightly over the desk, her sweater brushing up against the solid oak. “I don’t think he’d even know how to say no,” she whispers, immediately followed by an adorable, comical cringe.

  Equal parts goofy and sexy, with the sexiness soon overtaking everything. It’s inimitable, something that I’m convinced only Maddie can do, and it used to drive me fucking crazy. I thought my memories of that feeling were gone, faded with time to nothing, but now I know I’ve been carrying every part of them in brilliant detail.

  But for Maddie, it passes in almost the literal blink of an eye. I feel like she’s doing me a service by snapping back into business just as the trickle of memories is about to become a flood.

  “I’ll instruct him not to bother you from now on. He’s not technically a receptionist, anyway. He’s...”

  “I get it, Mister Barrett. And that’s the last time I’ll call you that, Ethan.”

  I watch for what’s becoming Madeline’s famous hint of a smile, but her face stays sober. The only thing slightly off is that her eyes seem just the tiniest bit too wide, as if she just made a point and her face froze.

  She’s maintaining the expression very well as she stares at me, and I quickly spin in my chair to look out the window—this time, I need to look away to keep from laughing.

  “I don’t think it’s supposed to rain today. I forgot to bring an umbrella.” That’s my lame comment, looking out at the partially cloudy sky and the hint of Madeline’s reflection, which I see now has more than the hint of a smile.

  The smile’s gone by the time I spin back, and so is her staring-contest face.

  “Do you expect me to believe that you couldn’t get an umbrella if you needed one? Do you want me to get one from Postmates for you? Or we could send Greg...”

  “Ah, you got me. I just like showing off my view. I worked hard for this office.”

  “Hey, I understand, I wouldn’t have noticed if you didn’t point it out to me like that.” There’s a flash of a hint of a smirk, followed by Madeline’s face dropping instantly into an incontestable professional-mode.

  “How good is your record keeping?” She throws the question out with perfect timing, and just the right near-subliminal suggestion of menace.

  “I don’t know how to answer that.” I also don’t know if I’m playing along, or what I’m doing.

  “Try.”

  “If you mean the firm, we do everything by the book. I know about the omissions, since you told me, but those were probably errors by the individuals involved with that process. I wasn’t around for that part.”

  “How about the audit we did last year?”

  “What? Were you here last year?” I don’t know why that’s the first question to come to mind after Maddie’s bombshell. I didn’t even know there was a fucking audit. “Uh, fiscal or calendar?”

  “Calendar, Ethan. Don’t you remember?”

  “Maddie, I had no idea. Were you here?”

  “Not personally.” Fuck, that shouldn’t make me feel so much better. “You really are in your own little world in here, aren’t you?”

  “I spend a lot of time working, but not usually with that stuff.”

  “A pure numbers man, all about the markets, no time for the boring legal and bookkeeping junk.”

  There’s Maddie’s smile from the reflection—not just a hint, not just a fleeting spark, but a look that I never thought I’d see again, first after Hawaii, and today after that phantom of a reflection in the window.

  This is big fucking news. Audits aren’t necessarily a big deal, but there’s no way I wouldn’t know about one unless somebody, likely a group of people, kept it hidden from me.

  That is a problem, or it should be, but Maddie’s smile is still there, and I can’t get myself to care about much else.

  “You’ve got me, Madeline. That’s an internal issue, and I’m learning about it now. For me, I do stick to my job. It’s what I’m good at, and I try not to dilute it.”

  Madeline’s smile fades naturally, but her expression stays affable.

  “Hey, I believe you. Between you and me...” Fuck, she’s leaning over the desk again, and she whispers, “We’ll figure this out, okay? I promise. This is what I’m good at.”

  Okay, now I’m leaning towards Madeline, and we’re closer than we’d ever need to be for this meeting. But she stays close, and her electric green eyes are still on me, and good Lord, her smile is coming back—but with a mischievous edge.

  I still couldn’t care less about the audit.

  “Are you having trouble hearing me?” she whispers, softer than before.

  “It’s much better now, but it’s a little too loud. Can we start whispering quieter?”

  Maddie’s grin becomes an asymmetrical smirk, and she gently rolls her eyes.

  “Mister Barrett,” Maddie listened to my request, and her whisper’s become barely audible, “and that is the last time I’ll call you that, I promise, I think this is becoming something for another time and place. As much as it pains me to say it, let’s get back in our seats.”

  I fall back as if someone shoved me and slump back into my chair. Maddie resumes her sitting position with much more dignity.

  “So, what now?” I think I’m asking about the investigation.

  I also think I seriously fucked up. I ruined my chance for...what?

  It’s not happening. There’s no way I shouldn’t know that by now, and it’s ludicrous that I haven’t accepted it.

  But the metronome ticks
on, and the time for me to grow the fuck up is now.

  But did she say it was something from another time and place, or for another time and place?

  “I have a feeling, and not just from today, that we may get this wrapped up faster than I thought.”

  Ah. If there was anything, I fucked it up, and there’s no undoing that.

  “However,” Maddie’s voice has effectively snapped me out of my wallowing before, and it throws me right back into the present moment as she continues, “I can’t promise anything.”

  Maddie nods at me pleasantly, like she’s asking me to acknowledge I understand her.

  I try nodding back, but it’s like the signal gets lost somewhere.

  “For another time, you said?”

  Fuck, what the fuck am I doing? Is this really so hard for me to handle?

  “Another time, another place. Conceivably.”

  Conceivably.

  “Speaking of the weather, seriously, it’s finally supposed to warm up this weekend. Like into the eighties, maybe,” I start.

  “That’s nice, if it’s accurate this far out.”

  I’m not sure where I’m going with this myself, but Maddie’s listening.

  “Have you been to Coney Island?” I ask.

  “Coney Island? Is that still a thing? Is it the twenties again? I mean the nineteen-twenties?”

  “It shouldn’t be too crowded this time of year, and if it’s warm, it’ll be perfect. Drinking on the beach...and they do burlesque shows there regularly.”

  “That sounds like something I may want to check out sometime. Thanks for enlightening me.” She gives a tiny smirk.

  Do I give up now, or...

  “You can check it out this weekend. With me, to be clear, but totally separate from the investigation.”

  I don’t know why I threw that in there, and it’s not like she’s going to agree to...

  “Okay.”

  Okay.

  That was unexpected.

  Let’s see where this goes.

  Ethan

  Whether we hail a yellow taxi or order a Town Car from the car service, the ride from lower Manhattan to Coney Island takes about twenty-five minutes. Maybe thirty to forty if there’s a Saturday traffic jam in the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel.