Closer Than They Appear (3 page)

Zach

ON SATURDAY NIGHT
Zach had a blind date with his coworker Cindy’s old college roommate. She’d been trying to set them up for months. “I’m not sure it’s such a good idea,” he always said, finding one reason or another to decline, but this time she’d called in a favor, and he did owe her one, because she’d switched prime vacation days with him twice in the last year.

“She’s really pretty,” Cindy told him. “You’re going to thank me later. Would I steer you wrong?” Zach wanted to believe her, but Cindy routinely wore PajamaJeans to work and once had her identity stolen after paying $100 for a vial of “healing miracle water” from some TV evangelist, which “was totally a joke!” Cindy insisted. Still, it made you wonder about her judgment.

He had some time to kill before leaving, so he flipped open his laptop because while brushing his teeth an interesting line popped into his head (
It had taken only sixteen months for their relationship to degenerate from “I can’t believe we both love Steve Buscemi and pho!” to Googling “How to fake your own death”)
, and he wanted to write it down before he forgot it. Whose relationship would this even refer to? He wasn’t sure his last girlfriend, Andrea Wallace, knew who Steve Buscemi was, and the closest they ever came to Vietnamese street food over the course of their four-year relationship was when
The Deerhunter
was on Turner Movie Classics at his grandmother’s house during Easter dinner. And he’d never Googled “How to fake your own death,” though he thought the kind of person who did would make a great character in a book.

He wondered what the girl in the Kia Rio was doing tonight.

“If your date turns out to be a butterface, shoot me a text,” Josh said, eyes glued to
Call of Duty: Black Ops 2
. “Cocksucker!” He hammered the controller, and gunfire and explosions filled the room. “We’ll be at Oblio’s. Maybe around eleven.” The apartment sounded like a war zone and smelled like dirty gym socks.

“I don’t know,” Zach replied. Even if his blind date turned out to be more disappointing than the film adaptation of
The Stand
and ended early, he was afraid he’d run into Andrea if he went out later. She’d ended their relationship four months earlier, and his heart still twisted painfully whenever he saw her face. He was surprised how often that accidentally happened in their city of 65,000. He’d finally deleted all the photos of them as a couple from his computer, and she’d unfriended him on Facebook, but with a confusing message that was practically an invitation to her back pocket:

One day I know I’ll regret this. I already do, actually. I miss you. I miss how you just ‘got me.’ I even miss how you used to laugh at
Futurama
. But until I figure things out, learn to love myself first, I don’t know if I can be with anyone. One day, we might get another shot at this. You are my lucky star, my sweetest, dearest (and most handsome!) friend, and I don’t ever want to lose your friendship. Thank you for being patient with me. I am so lucky to have you. I’m so sorry.

He could hear the country song now: “Please Darlin, Won’t You be my Plan B?” It was hard to believe this was the same girl who used to trace patterns on his back and whisper things like, “Promise me you won’t die, ever.”

So she’d unfriended him, but he couldn’t bring himself to unfriend her brothers. As a result, he still knew far too much about her life. In fact … he braced himself and pulled up Facebook, and there she was, laughing brightly at the photographer: dimples, mischievous smile, long, dark hair tucked under a blue newsboy cap, knees tucked up against her chest, slender arms wrapped around her shins. Her nose curved slightly to the left, and he remembered how she used to absently press a finger against the bridge while she read, as if she could push it into symmetry. Her latest status update read:
Shiny new job… terrified, but excited!
It had fifty-four likes. There was already so much happening in her new life without him. At least she hadn’t posted any photos of herself with Derek recently.

He didn’t visit her page often, only when his curiosity and loneliness got the best of him. It felt a little masochistic; like donning a pathetic (wavy, brown, jasmine-scented) hair shirt. But he was still trying to find his way out of that murky post-relationship wasteland where you pray for a head injury for the memory loss alone. Time had faded the bruise somewhat, but every so often he still binged on memories. He couldn’t help himself, even if it always made his heart feel like the runt of the litter. The ugly puppy nobody picked.

The plan was to go with Cindy, her husband Ted, and Cindy’s former college roommate Nicole to a group cooking class at eight, which almost sounded like the punch line to some joke. “So … a cooking class?” he’d asked Cindy, trying to sound enthusiastic despite the queasy burble of doubt rolling around his stomach.

“Yes! Doesn’t that sound like fun? You know, not your typical thing to do on a Saturday night. It’s on campus. Ted’s sister teaches in the dietician program.”

It was a hands-on class in which they prepared their own dinners—part of the Healthy Classics series. It sounded like the enemy of fun.

But first, they were meeting for a drink at Friar Tuck’s, a Merry Old England/Sherwood Forest-inspired pub that Josh (and most people he knew, now that he thought about it) liked to call, “Try our Fucks.” It turned out Nicole actually
was
pretty, though the lighting in the bar was so dim every woman looked pretty. They could all pass for a poor man’s Jennifer Garner, or at the very least, Emily Blunt’s aunt. It took his eyes a full five minutes to adjust after they’d walked in. Nicole chewed fruity gum and wore long, dangly earrings that swayed and sparkled below her short, wispy blond hair. She extended a hand when Cindy introduced him, and Zach shook it. She had a surprisingly firm grip, and was nearly as tall as he was. Which, let’s face it, wasn’t hard to do, since he was only five foot eight.

They slid into a booth near the swinging kitchen doors, and a waitress in a short brown friar’s tunic, nylons, and Birkenstock sandals stopped by to take their order. Nicole ordered a dirty martini. “With Grey Goose, extra olives.”

“Whoa, Nicole, go for the jugular!” Cindy whooped, and ordered one, too. Ted ordered a whiskey seven and began to fiddle with his iPhone. Ted was quiet, uncomfortable in group situations, and rabidly followed every sport played by a major Wisconsin team, regardless of season: the Bucks, the Brewers, the Admirals, the Packers, the Badgers, even the Timber Rattlers, a minor-league baseball team most people in the state probably weren’t even aware of. Zach ordered a beer, wondering if anyone would find it amusing if he asked for it in a flagon.

“So Zach,” Nicole asked, “Got any good plumbing supply stories?”

He shifted uncomfortably in the booth. He wished he hadn’t majored in English or graduated without a teaching license. “I don’t think an interesting answer to that question exists.”

“Sure it does!” Cindy said. “Tell her about the time all those long pipes fell from the back of the truck onto the highway.”

Nicole smiled politely. “Is that what you went to school for? Did you always want to do this?” The kitchen doors swung open as a waitress barged in, and the sound and smell of something crackling in a deep fryer temporarily filled the air.

Even a
mortician
. He paused to consider that a mortician probably made a lot more money and had practically guaranteed job security and a certain kind of satisfaction from providing essential community services and comforting the bereaved. It seemed like a peaceful gig, if you didn’t mind the smell of formaldehyde. “I always wanted to be a writer,” he finally said. He remembered Andrea reading a short story he’d written in college, looking at him with soft wonder after she’d finished, saying,
You’re going to be published one day. I know you will
. “What do you do?”

“I work in an office.”

Did she want him to ask a follow-up question? There were lots of things a person could do in an office. “Oh?” he said, to be polite, but she was waving—actually
waving
—at someone she knew at the bar.

“Sorry, I went to school with that guy.” She turned her attention back to him, but she seemed like she’d rather go talk to the guy at the bar. Cindy was nagging Ted to turn his phone off. At that moment, their waitress appeared with a tray full of drinks and passed them around. He poured his beer into a frosted mug and began to pick at the label on the empty bottle.

Nicole lifted her martini carefully to her lips with both hands and took a long sip. It looked like she was drinking out of a bowl. “So what do you write?”

Cindy beamed. “He wrote a novel called
The Last Summer of Beetles
. He has an agent and everything!”

Nicole wrinkled her nose. “
The Last Summer of Beatles?
Like the band?”

“Kind of,” he heard himself saying. “It’s a play on words.”

“Oh. Okay.” She took another sip of martini and her eyes wandered back over to the bar.

He turned to Ted. “Hey, what’s happening with the Brewers game?”

The last time Zach had been to Friar Tuck’s, he’d been with Andrea. They shared a basket of deep fried mozzarella logs and she’d said to him, “Long-term relationships can be so hard.”

He’d laughed, suddenly nervous. “Should I be worried about where this is going?”

But she smiled gently and shook her head, her dark eyes reflecting the light from the candle flickering on their table. “No. Because anytime I feel myself drifting, I think about what you must have been like in high school. Shy, always with your nose in a book, and you played baseball and made a mix tape for Jenny Sherman.”

He put his hands over his face and peeked through his fingers at her. “Not Jenny Sherman!”

She reached across the table to pull his hands down, took his right hand in her left. “Yes, Jenny Sherman. Against whom all other girlfriends will be measured, from now until the end of time.”

“No! Not true!”

“And you had that ridiculous skater boy haircut, and those glasses. You were so cute and serious.”

“I also liked Creed back then. Does that ruin everything?”

She laughed, running her thumb over his knuckles. “Well, I smoked clove cigarettes and listened to a lot of Morrissey. I think we might be even.”

Cindy was saying something to him.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“I asked if you’re in for another round. We still have time to kill before the class.”

She was right about most things, but Andrea had been so wrong about Jenny Sherman.

Kia Rio
, he suddenly thought. It felt like an incantation. Something you might say before you blow out your birthday candles or when the clock strikes 11:11. Make a wish.

Harper

HARPER’S PHONE RANG
at three thirty on Sunday morning. Eyes still closed, she groped for it. She knew who it was without looking. “You have to stop calling me.”

He didn’t say anything for a moment. “Then stop answering.”

“This isn’t good for me.”

“Yes it is. I’m always good for you. Can I come over?”

Her body still ached for him, and she hated the fact that one of her first thoughts was whether her legs were too hairy to see him. “You’re drunk.”

“No, I just miss you.”

“You only miss me after bar time.”

“I miss you all the time. Baby … come on.”

It would be so easy to say yes. So easy to slip back into old habits. But then he called her “baby,” and she remembered why she’d stopped letting him come over in the middle of the night to begin with. “I’m sorry. I can’t do this anymore.” She hung up before she lost her nerve and hugged her body pillow close, which was a poor substitute for a human being with arms that could hug you back. She braced herself for the phone to ring again, but it didn’t, and she felt disappointed in herself for wanting it to, on some level. She laid awake the rest of the night, watching the apartment grow brighter as dawn approached. It was hard to say no when she felt like a tiny bean rattling around the place. But wasn’t it funny how something as simple as green eyes and a smile could remind you how much
more
there was, out there in the whole wide world?

Natalie called Harper on Monday morning at 8:30 sharp and greeted her with, “It looks like we’re taking a trip to Disney World next year. Kill me now.”

“Last week I couldn’t fall asleep because I had ‘Zip-a-dee-doo-dah’ playing on a loop in my head, but not just the song—it was the soundtrack for the Disney commercial from a few years ago where the kid says about his parents, all gee-shucks, ‘I’ll never get them out of here!’
Zip-a-dee-ay
!”

“That’s awful. Why would you remember something like that?”

“I also know when Stephen Hawking’s birthday is. Wow, the traffic is horrid today.”

“I would hate to be a pathogen that took a wrong turn and ended up in your brain. It must be terrifying in there.” There was the sound of water running, and Natalie covering the receiver to murmur
No, you already had three today
to one of her children. “So how was your weekend? Any late night calls from He Who Shan’t be Named?”

Harper sighed heavily. The question felt like a cloud passing over the face of the sun.

“You didn’t answer, did you?”

Harper sighed again.

“I’m not going to say anything, because I’ve already said it all before.”

“I hung up on him.”

“You did?”

“Yes. And now I’m going to change the subject.”

“Okay, what have you got?”

Harper felt a swell of love and gratitude for Natalie. “Did I tell you Aunt Ginger found me a new client?”

“Are they the broccoli lickers who pray to the Lord God Vegan?”

“They’re really nice. Dick and Sally Westfield. You should see their house.”

“Why, do they have more money than God?”

“No, but almost as much as the Pope. When we had our first meeting Sally said she wanted my meals to be ‘the weirder the better! Expose us to new things. Seaweed for example!’”