Time Flies (7 page)

The next morning I tucked a branch of flowering crepe myrtle into the chalkboard bottle sitting on the kitchen island to make it less conspicuous. Every time I looked at the bottle, I practically blushed, but I still couldn’t make myself put it out with the recyclables. I mean, acting out a harmless little fantasy was progress, wasn’t it? Before I knew it I’d have a sparkle in my eye and a spring in my step.

Either that or I was totally losing it.

I added some water to keep the branch alive, possible evidence that I was both lucid and compassionate. Then I woke up my laptop to check my email. I’d gone from checking it once or twice a week to checking it fairly often. Okay, a lot.

My cell phone rang, distracting me from the disappointing absence of a new message from Finn Miller. I didn’t recognize the number.

“This is Melanie,” I said.

“And this is Ted Brody, who bought a sculpture of yours at the Art in the Park show.”

“Oh, right,” I said. “Hi. And, well, thank you.” I’d been thrilled to hear
Endless Loop
had sold, on the first day of the show, no less. As much as I loved my work, I only made money when somebody bought something. The house was paid off and the property taxes weren’t high, but since Kurt had left, I was paying the utility bills myself. And crazy food and gas prices on top of that. I was okay for now, but I was really feeling the lack of a paycheck I could count on. The sale of
Endless Loop
gave me a little bit of breathing room while I figured out what the hell I was going to do next.

“Don’t thank me yet,” Ted Brody said. “I’ve got a restaurant to run here, and when a hose breaks loose on a busy night and sprays a courtyard full of diners, and their
food
, I think you’ve got to find a way to make that up to me.”

“Oh, shit.”

“My sentiments exactly.” Ted Brody’s voice was rich and deep, and totally pissed off.

I closed my eyes. “I am so, so sorry. If you tell me where you’re located, I’ll come over and weld the hose on permanently for you. And in the meantime, if you take two wrenches and turn one in each direction, really hard, it’ll hold. And maybe wrap some duct tape around it for extra reinforcement, not that I think you’ll need it. Wait, maybe you shouldn’t turn it on again until I make sure it’s okay.”

“Ya think?”

I scrunched my eyes shut as if it might ward off some of his anger. “Again, I’m really, really sorry,” I said.

“I’ll text you the address of the restaurant.”

“Okay, and well, I’ll get there as soon as I can, but if anything else happens in the meantime, not that it will, feel free to call me back.”

“Count on it,” Ted Brody said.

When I powered off my MIG welder, I noticed Ted Brody standing behind me with his arms crossed over his chest, probably keeping an eye on me to make sure I didn’t cause any more damage. Lunch was over and dinner hadn’t started yet, so up until now I’d had the restaurant courtyard all to myself.

I put the MIG down carefully on a low brick wall, tucked one of my heavy AngelFire gloves under my armpit, and pulled out my sweaty hand. I flipped up the visor on my helmet. Over Ted Brody’s shoulder, I could just make out the restaurant’s bright-green-and-white sign through the glare of the merciless late-afternoon sun.

“Sprout,” I read. I wiped some sweat off my forehead with the sleeve of my T-shirt. “Great name for a restaurant, by the way.” More proof that I was a brilliant conversationalist, but at least it was better than adding another babbling apology to the stream. I had to be approaching double digits by now.

I’d white-knuckled it the whole way here, winding along the back roads and hoping the MapQuest directions I’d printed out as backup to my GPS hadn’t lied to me and I really could avoid Interstate 75, which I could just
feel
snaking along beside me as I drove. While I sat in my Element waiting for red light upon red
light to change, I promised myself that if I could fix
Endless Loop
without Ted Brody asking for any money back, money I hadn’t even received yet since the check would come from the art show minus their commission, then I’d use the proceeds to break free from my own endless loop. Somehow.

“Thanks,” Ted Brody said. “Glad you like the name. What does it make you think of?”

I took my time pulling off my helmet while I rewound our limited conversation far enough to remember what he was talking about. I gave what had to be a serious case of helmet hair a fluff, not that it mattered. He’d been polite but cool when I arrived, but so far he hadn’t handed me a bill for water damages. I gave him the friendliest smile I could muster in a trillion percent humidity.

“Let’s see,” I said. “Sprout. Green and tender and really, really fresh. Like a baby beanstalk. And healthy and maybe a little bit trendy. Not that I’m an expert, but I really do think it’s a great name. It would make me want to eat here in a second.”

I closed my eyes as soon as I said it. Now he was probably going to expect me to hang around and buy some food. The last thing I needed right now was a solo meal in a restaurant to remind me how alone I was. All I wanted to do was get the hell out of here.

“My father used to call me Sprout.”

“Aww,” I said.
Aww? Really?

When Ted Brody grinned, the light hit his eyes just so and I could see that they were hazel, not brown. He had a nice smile when he wasn’t glaring at me. “There were six of us, three boys and three girls, and he actually called all of us Sprout because he could never get our names straight. And he also used to say,
‘If you kids keep sproutin’ up like that you’re going to eat your mother and me out of house and home.’ ”

His accent shifted when he said the last part. “Where did you grow up?” I asked.

He tilted his head and ran one hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. “A little town on Lake Michigan. Great place to live until winter hits.”

“Do you still have family there?”

“One brother. One sister. How about you?”

“I grew up in a little beach town near Boston. My sister’s still there, not that I ever see her. I’m working up to visiting one of these days. When I can find the time . . .”

“Hmm, I think I might have a brother like that.”

“Ha,” I said. “I mean, she’s not that bad.”

“Every time I hang up the phone with him I feel like I just got sucker-punched. The money he made last year, his new vacation house, his seven-hundred-and-twenty-two-inch 3-D TV—”

“Wow, seven hundred and twenty-two inches. They make them that big?”

“Apparently so. Unless you think he might be exaggerating?”

I laughed and Ted Brody joined me. I tried to remember the last time Kurt and I had laughed at something the other one said, but I couldn’t. I could remember us laughing at things the boys said, and even things our couple friends said. But I couldn’t recall us laughing when it was just the two of us. Had we ever? We must have, but I honestly couldn’t summon up a single example.

Ted was still talking. “And let’s not forget his fancy Cuban cigars, and the fact that his kids—”

“—are better than your kids.”

“Exactly. The thing is, I wouldn’t change lives, or kids for that matter, with him for all the 3-D TVs in China, so it’s not that.”

I nodded. “I hear you.”

Ted Brody smiled again, just as a big white truck rolled past the courtyard toward the back of the restaurant.

He followed it with his eyes. “Can you hang on for a second? I’ve got a delivery.”

Despite myself, I checked him out as he walked away. He was in good shape for a guy his age, especially one who owned a restaurant.

I waited for a few minutes, baking in the sun, before I realized how ridiculous it was to just stand there. It took me two trips to carry my stuff out to the Element. On my way back from the second trip it occurred to me that maybe I should have done a leak check first.

Belatedly, I traced the hose from the back of
Endless Loop
behind some wooden latticework stained a rich shade of terra-cotta, and used the opportunity to finally take a good look around. Three courtyard walls were covered in rough latticework and dotted randomly with clay pots overflowing with succulents and herbs. About a dozen iron tables with mismatched chairs dotted the paved courtyard, each one shaded by a bright red market umbrella. Even though it was tucked behind a row of stores just a stone’s throw from a busy road, once the candles were lit, I could imagine the courtyard feeling off the beaten path and practically romantic.

I shook my head and bent down to turn on the spigot. My knees cracked as I stood up again. I pulled my T-shirt away from my sweat-soaked body and watched the old rain showerhead I’d
found at the dump begin to spit. As it built up to a patter, I actually shivered. It really did look as if a summer rain was falling on the rusty circles of metal.

A rainbow appeared in the watery mist like a vision.

“Wow,” I heard Ted Brody say behind me.

He stepped up beside me, and we watched together in silence. He smelled like rosemary, or maybe it was one of the pots on the wall.

“Amazing,” he said.

“You picked the right wall,” I said.

“You’re really talented.”

“Thanks,” I said. “You have a nice courtyard.”

He laughed. “That’s right. You haven’t even seen the restaurant yet. Let me give you a tour. Do you have anyone you need to get home to, or can you stay and have a bite to eat with me?”

I looked at him.

He looked at me, waiting for an answer.

“No,” I said finally.

We looked at each other some more.

“Which part?” he said.

I could feel my face going from red to redder to reddest. It had to be about a million degrees out here. A blob of sweat broke free from my bra strap and rolled down my back.

“No,” I heard myself say. “No, I don’t have anybody to get home to. And it really, really sucks.”

I was halfway to my Element before I realized I hadn’t even said good-bye. I kept walking, horrified by the way I’d acted, too horrified to turn around and go back. I mean, what could I say?
Excuse me, but can I try that answer again?

It wasn’t until I pushed
GO HOME
on my GPS that I started to cry. Ted Brody had hit the nail on the head: What was the point of going home when there was nobody waiting to notice if you got there or not? Out of the blue and with a force that tore me apart, I missed Kurt, the old Kurt, the one I used to come home to.

I wiped my eyes with an old take-out napkin I found in the glove compartment and put on my sunglasses for camouflage. As I rolled slowly out to the road, I suddenly remembered sitting in the courtyard of a different restaurant with Kurt a long time ago. We’d splurged on a hotel room with a water view on St. Simons Island for our anniversary. Even though they’d argued that they were old enough to stay home alone, Troy had a tendency to get so engrossed in a game of Nintendo that he’d miss the smell of a burning bag of microwave popcorn, and Trevor had a new girlfriend. So we’d left the boys with a babysitter.

It was a five-hour trek, but we were both on our best behavior. Kurt tried to tone down his driving, and when he forgot I distracted myself by scrolling past the surplus of country music stations to find songs from our own personal memory lane. Van Morrison’s “Moondance” from our wedding. Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’,” which I played nonstop for two whole melodramatic days after our first big fight. Jimmy Buffett’s “Margaritaville” from our favorite vacation. Joni Mitchell’s “The Circle Game,” which always made me cry when I was pregnant.

We checked into our hotel, made love, walked the beach. We found an old gas station that had been converted into a restaurant, complete with a big gas tank out front turned into a wood-smoke barbecue.

“What’ll it be, sugah?” the waitress asked Kurt, completely ignoring me.

Over the red-and-white-checked oilcloth-covered table, Kurt grinned at me to acknowledge the waitress’s slight.

Then he smiled up at her. “Two glasses of Chardonnay, please.”

She turned and yelled over her shoulder. “Two glasses of the white stuff. Make sure it’s the good jug. They’re from
Bahston
.”

We laughed and laughed until the whole restaurant was looking at us. When one of us would start to wind down, the other one would get us going again. I leaned across the table and wiped a tear from the corner of Kurt’s eye.

Kurt reached for my hand and held it between both of his. “And here I thought we were starting to pass.”

We cracked up all over again.

CHAPTER 8