Ryan’s phone appeared, and he swiped through his calendar. “I need to be downtown by noon tomorrow.”
“Maybe we just shouldn’t drink.” But oh, after the tingles, she felt that a drink might be essential.
“Yeah.” Ryan rang the doorbell. “Just let me know when you’re ready to bolt. They’ll understand.”
“I hate doing that,” Jennifer sighed heavily. “Do I look okay?”
Ryan nodded.
“You’ve got something…” She pulled a fuzz off his lapel. “Got it.”
The door swung open, revealing Barbara Watkins in all her hostessing glory. Tall and slender, clinging to the last scraps of her thirties, Barbara looked every inch the sort of woman who drove an impeccably clean white SUV, sunglasses on, black hair pulled into a ponytail. Her cocktail dress, midnight blue, was far showier than it needed to be, of course, but what should one do with money but spend it? “I’m so glad you guys could make it! Wouldn’t be a Christmas party without the Lamberts! But what about that other thing you had?”
“Got canceled,” said Jennifer, dismissing their excuse. She breezed into the house.
“Great! Well, not great, but, you know what I mean.”
Ryan’s smile appeared genuine when he told her they were glad they could be there. Jennifer marveled at his ability to do that. He was always able to seem at home, even when uncomfortable. Able to seem happy, even when—
“I’ll take the food.”
Jennifer snapped out of her momentary melancholy and realized what was missing. “Do you have the wine, honey?”
“Crap, it’s in the trunk. I’ll get it.”
Ryan relished the momentary opportunity to vanish from the foyer and walk, all on his own, back across the massive front lawn. Moments alone weren’t infrequent, but he hesitated to take them lest it be thought he didn’t want to spend time with Jennifer. Rarely did he find himself able to stroll. Tonight he strolled, because Jennifer was with her friend, and while she might be thinking about how long his trek back for the wine was taking, she’d be at least partially distracted by some discussion of Christmas shopping or the Watkins’ children. Surely something more interesting than Ryan Lambert.
“What’s the plan?” The question drifted to Ryan’s ears from a few feet distant, where a handsome man walked towards the house with his companion. Dark hair, very roguish, mid-forties, he had a woman of spectacular grace on his arm. Ryan had always felt that Barbara and Noah Watkins, while lovely people, were posers of class. Never sure quite how to do it right. But this couple, strolling up the walkway instead of cutting across the grass like a cad, exuded worldly class, and Ryan couldn’t take his eyes off them.
He closed the trunk and hung back so he could observe, staying a moment behind in step.
The woman tightened her grip on the man’s arm and rested her head on his shoulder, bunching her wavy cascade of strawberry-blond hair against him. “I don’t think we need a plan, darling.” Her voice was deep, velvety, almost having a weight of its own.
“Gotcha,” said the man. “All vanilla tonight, right?”
The woman smiled, devilish, and bit her lip. “Unless someone surprises us, yeah.”
The man laughed.
She swatted him. “Remember, I work with her! So—”
“I will be on my absolute best behavior.”
She laughed hard at that. “Yeah, I know what that’s like.”
Re-entering the foyer, Ryan stood behind the man and woman as they removed their coats. Barbara returned with Jennifer.
“Oh!” said Barbara, a strange cautiousness in her words. “I didn’t realize you knew each other.”
It was only then that the classy man and woman turned and noticed him. Ryan Lambert lifted his hand in a weak wave. “I was just behind them.”
“Were you?” the woman asked, making eye contact with him, as though she were asking a much more important question.
“I was getting the—” Ryan lost his train of thought in the woman’s crystal blue eyes before his own fell just enough to begin to appreciate the expanse of bare skin below her neck, plunging line downward into spectacular—
“Wine?”
He looked back up. Jennifer waved at him. Ryan swallowed hard.
“And now here it is, and here you are, and I’m Bruce Shepard.” Bruce Shepard extended his hand, exuding the sort of confidence Ryan had only ever seen in men to be cautious of: sales folk, convention speakers. But somehow, as he took Bruce’s warm hand to shake, he didn’t feel the same concern. While holding Ryan’s hand in his, Bruce made eye contact and smiled, dipping his head into a short nod, then relaxing his grip.
“Ryan Lambert,” Ryan announced, and pointed with the bottle toward Jennifer, who took it from him. “My wife is—”
“Jennifer,” she said, and gave them a wave Ryan felt must have been eerily similar to the one he’d provided moments before. “Hi.”
The woman turned back to Ryan. “I’m Paige, and she is gorgeous.”
Jennifer blinked, then coughed back a laugh.
“And lo, in my foyer came Shepards, keeping watch over my flock by night.” Noah Watkins appeared, a touch wider than he’d been before Thanksgiving, neat Scotch in one hand, the other open for a high handshake that always became a half hug and a clap on the back. He delivered one of these to both Bruce and Ryan.
The women each received a kiss on the cheek, then Noah suggested that the four of them “join the festivities.” He led the party as though out of Hamlin, with Ryan lingering behind, suddenly uncertain about whether or not they belonged here. Surely they did, their friends had invited them, but they didn’t have the money, the class…
Bruce, at the end of the pack, looked back. “That man may have already had his limit.”
Ryan laughed.
“Now that we’re old friends, shall we?” Bruce raised his hand and led the way into the party.
3
Ryan sat, nursing his second Jack and Coke of the evening, at the cherry wood wet bar in Noah Watkins’ basement man-cave. He stared past Noah, playing bartender at the mirror-backed shelf across the bar. Between the top tier bottles of Noah’s newfound Scotch obsession, he saw the reflection of a young man who looked exhausted. How could that be? How could life have run so roughshod over him, extracting the jubilance and joy he’d had as a young man? Now, a not so much older man sipping a drink he didn’t really like, declining every time his giddy friend offered him another Scotch while explaining where it was from and how ungodly expensive the bottle was, with a world weariness that originated from no identifiable source.
Good job. Stable. Not wealthy by any stretch, certainly nowhere in the same ballpark as the new money Watkins, flagrantly spending anywhere and anyhow they could, recession be damned. Envy maybe, then? Was that the reason for the weariness in the eyes in the mirror across the bar that must have cost more than his car? Fabulously long, with seating for ten, and magnificent flat screen televisions on either side, both running a high definition broadcast of that Christmas staple, The Yule Log.
Perhaps envy at the fact that Noah and Barbara had seemingly figured It out, where he and Jennifer had not? The indefinable It eluded him. Was it their relationship? Their money? Their jobs? Their family? Again, Ryan felt the internal assurance that he was content with the income arriving bi-monthly in the Lambert bank account. His job was perfectly fine. Both he and Jennifer mostly regarded children as an inconvenience that they would have to ship off somewhere whenever they wanted to go out for the night, however rare that desire manifested.
Maybe they’re having sex, suggested something deep within Ryan.
There it sat, perhaps, the crux of the problem. Content everywhere, but with this little canker festering and exhausting the both of them on all topics non-sexual, so they couldn’t even see the stem. “Petrillo really should’ve noticed that,” Ryan told his Jack and Coke, now very nearly through.
Noah finished up with two loud drunkards at the opposite end of the bar and slid down toward Ryan. Ryan kept his head down toward his glass, so Noah stared at the top of his head for a while, then grabbed his small bar towel from his shoulder and began to wipe down a glass in a most theatrical fashion. “Long day?”
Ryan smirked. “What’re you doing back there?”
“You kidding?” Noah threw out rhetorically. “This way everybody has to come see me, none of that mingling crap. ‘Where’s Noah?’ ‘At the bar downstairs, if you want to get a drink.’”
“Makes perfect sense.”
“Sam!” Noah bellowed, lifting his finger of Scotch up in a salute to Sam Morton, who slid onto the stool next to Ryan.
Sam, slender, his retreating blond hairline and sallow expression suggesting an age far greater than thirty-eight, wearing a thick, ill-fitting, and likely home-knit sweater sighed before asking for a “Blind Russian.”
“The fuck is a Blind Russian?” demanded Noah, eyes squinted at Sam.
“Same as a White Russian, only with Bailey’s instead of cream.”
“Nicely done, Sam, found a way to remove the only non-alcoholic portion of your drink and replace it with more alcohol.” Ryan tipped his glass. “Cheers.”
Sam gave a dramatic sigh as he folded his hands on the bar. “It’s a constant now,” he told them gloomily. His demeanor spoke volumes and told Ryan and Noah what “it” was without their asking. Sam had, for the last few months, had a recurring problem with the dreaded erectile dysfunction, something that the three of them had hesitated to actually refer to as ED, for that would give it name, and this was something that should not be named. Ryan and Noah exchanged solemn nods as Sam continued. “She said, ‘No, don’t worry…’ and all that ever does is make you worry!”
“Yeah,” returned Noah. The flaw in this bartender impression was, as always, his inability to empathize when occasionally Ryan or, far more often, Sam spoke of difficulties in his bedroom.
“And once I start worrying about it,” Sam continued, “it’s all I can think about. And nothing says limp quite like worry. It’s like trying to push a fish into a garden hose.”
The simile hung in the air between the three men as each reflected on what it meant to them. Ryan stuck his finger in his almost empty glass and shuttled the ice about.
Noah cleared his throat. “Okay, now, I know I’ve suggested it before, and…”
“I don’t want Viagra.” Sam was firm, punctuating the sentence with a heavier than usual clink of his glass on the bar top. “It’s psychological. I can beat it.”
“Well…” said Noah with a sigh. “Godspeed.”
“When did it stop being fun for you guys?” Ryan asked.
Sam looked up from his drink. “Oh, god… years?”
“Too much worry…” Ryan finished the Jack and Coke and held it up for Noah.
Sam gave a soulful nod. “Way too much worry.”
“We’re talking sex, right?” Noah slid the finished Blind Russian over to Sam. “You poor bastards. It’s still fun for me. You know, do new things. New places. New… And when you do it, you gotta just slide it in, don’t ask permission first or you’ll get knocked down. Got very close last night. Very close. Like more than just the tip.”
“Adventurous isn’t simply sliding your dick in her ass when she’s not expecting it, Noah,” Ryan snorted.
“It’s an adventure,” he returned.
“It’s all about the attempt for you?” asked Sam.
“Sure.”
Sam raised his glass in toast. “In that case, I’m doing spectacularly. We attempt daily.”
Ryan sucked the last of the Jack and Coke off one of his ice cubes and spit it back into the glass. “You’re having sex with Patti daily?”
“Well, I can’t—”
“Sam!” Noah slammed his hand down on the bar and his voice took on the baritone of too much drink again. “Knocking it out time and time again. And you were implying… well… less.”
Ryan stared at Sam in disbelief. Sam, married six years longer than him. Sam, balding, almost skeletal, was having sex every single day. “All that sex.”
“Well,” Sam argued, “it can hardly be called sex, can it?”
“Are you putting your penis into her vagina?”
“A little.”
Noah poured himself another Scotch. “Let’s drink to this wonderful revelation!”