“Yes,” he mumbled. “It’s been awhile, though.” For everything, he thought. And then: I shouldn’t have come here.
“I’ve found a lot of bartenders don’t even know how to make one of these,” she said, cracking ice cubes against her palm with the back of the heavy spoon. “But they’re supposed to be a lot more hangover-proof than most after-dinner drinks.” She cracked ice into each snifter, then sliced off a scrape of lemon peel and squeezed the rind side over the ice, filling the air with the pungent smell of citron. Then she poured equal measures of the liquors and passed one snifter over to him. “Here you go,” she said. “Long life.”
He tipped snifters with her and then they both sat there, holding their drinks, facing each other on the sofa, with the fireplace flickering nearby. He sampled the drink and pronounced it perfect.
“Thank you,” she said. “It’s been a lovely evening. Thanks for dinner, even though it was supposed to be my treat.”
“Your company was treat enough, and it has been very nice,” he said. He tried to ignore the tightness in his chest, then found himself nodding absently as if to confirm what he’d just said. He looked into the fire.
Hey, look at her, he thought, not at the damned fire. He caught a glimpse of her out of the corner of his eye as she crossed her legs slowly, letting the expensive silk rustle suggestively. He felt the skin on his face tighten just as his chest had, and he knew, just knew, he was going to lose it. It made him so damned mad, but he couldn’t help it. He shouldn’t have come back to her house; it was too soon, much too soon. And then the tears came, and he felt like a perfect goddamned fool as he put the drink down on the table, trying not to drop it or spill it, and lowered his chin while tears streamed down his face. In a moment, she was there, her perfume filling the air around his face. Her arm was around him and she was saying in her soft voice, “It’s all right, all right, let it come. Don’t be afraid, just let it come.” And then he folded into her and cried his heart out.
After awhile, he took a deep breath, sat up, and muttered an apology. He was afraid even to look at her. He wanted to wipe the tears off his face, and his hands fumbled, looking for a Kleenex.
“For what, Ev?” she said, handing him some cocktail napkins. “For feeling awkward about being here? Unfaithful to her memory? For getting ambushed by memories?”
“For spoiling the evening,” he said. “And for watering down this great Rusty Nail.”
She laughed quietly and handed him some more napkins. He wiped his face and blew his nose, then tried to figure out what to do with the napkins. Finally, he stuffed them in his pants pocket. He looked over at her. She was sitting back now, both hands wrapped around her snifter. Her eyes were enormous.
“I can’t get it right,” he said, “this getting-over-it business. It’s been almost two years, and you’re the first woman I’ve spent any time with since…since-”
“Since she died,” Liz prompted.
“Yes. Since she died. I can’t even say it unless someone else says it first. Kind of pathetic, isn’t it? And you are so very attractive. You’re smart, fun, beautiful, and yet I kept asking myself all evening, what are you doing here? I mean me, not you. What am I doing here with someone like you? I should be home in my hole, feeling sorry for myself.”
“Instead of out here in the world, feeling like an interloper?”
“Yeah, exactly. I think Julie would be really upset if she knew I was here, for instance.”
“Why? Does she think life is off-limits for you now that your wife is gone?”
“Something like that. She wouldn’t say it, but she’d let me know it.”
“You know, I doubt that. She seems more mature than that. Besides, life alone is a dreary proposition.”
“So I’ve discovered. And it’s not like-well, I mean, it wasn’t as if marriage to Joanne had been heaven on earth all the time, either. We had a good, solid marriage. With all that entails in real life.”
“You apparently did better than I did. And I got two shots at it.”
He sipped some of the drink, resisting the impulse to gulp it down. “We used to keep score on that,” he said. “Joanne and I. Like we were somehow superior to people who got divorced. Joanne would tell me some couple was splitting up, and we’d shake our heads. Like it was such a pity that other people couldn’t manage what we’d managed. And then that little devil voice would say, What would it be like, I wonder, to split up, to start over with someone new?”
“Ever say that out loud?”
“Oh, hell no.”
“I did, you see. Worked like a charm, actually.”
He smiled. “Julie changed after it happened. Grew up a little. Seemed more like an adult young woman than a college kid. And I saw less of her. She’d go out of town on weekends instead of coming home. After the first six months, I felt sort of cut out of her life. I’m guessing she got close to a guy and preferred to lean on him rather than on me.”
“You probably reminded her of what she’d lost,” Liz said.
“Probably,” he said. “And I wasn’t the best of company, as I just demonstrated. And now she’s about to graduate and leave. I think that’s what’s been getting me spooked these past few weeks. And poor Julie, trying so hard not to show how much she’s ready to go, as if that’s somehow disloyal to me.”
“I haven’t met all that many midshipmen,” she said. “But the seniors, the firsties? They all seem to have this look of desperation about making it all the way through and getting out of there. Is it that unpleasant?”
“It’s not so much unpleasant as it is long,” he said. “As we used to say, it’s a four-hundred-thousand-dollar education, shoved up your ass a penny at a time.”
She raised her eyebrows at that. “They all compete so hard to get in, I’m surprised they’d think that way.”
“It’s hard on purpose, and it gets harder throughout the four years. I’d say half the guys would be willing to drop it and go somewhere else, except that it becomes such a point of honor to beat the system and make it through. They make it a four-year challenge and they never let up. You end up feeling superior to your civilian college brethren, because you have the rigors of the academic program as well as all the military stuff.”
“That explains Julie’s attitude about this Dell case,” she said. “She’s angry more than anything else.”
“Exactly. Some plebe’s mistake might screw up her chances to finish, graduate, and get her commission.”
“A plebe who’s dead,” she reminded him.
“And she’s sorry about that, but it had nothing to do with her, and that’s why she wants to march into the front office and have it out with anyone who thinks it did.”
Liz was silent, and he wondered if he’d said something wrong. They’d agreed, after all, not to talk about the Dell case, and this was why. The good news was that he was over his waterworks. He sensed that it was time for him to leave.
“Thanks for inviting me out,” he said. “I needed it, even if I didn’t know it. You’ve been very patient.”
She gave him an amused look. “Nobody’s ever called me patient before,” she said. “But I’ll happily accept all those other nice things you said. On one condition.”
“Name it,” he said, hoping suddenly that he knew what she was going to say.
“That we do it again. Go out. Do something together. Soon.”
“Yes, please,” he said, suddenly happy that he’d anticipated her. They got up and walked to the front door.
“I meant that,” she said. “I like you. I like the fact that your wife’s memory can still unhinge you. It shows you’re human. I spend most of my time with lawyers. The occasional human is refreshing.” She stepped in close, stood up on tiptoes, and kissed him gently on the cheek. He didn’t know what to do, so he was grateful when she opened the door and said good night.
He walked back under the streetlights along College Avenue, past the Naval Academy’s Alumni House, and then turned left onto King George Street to get home. The blocky brick buildings of St. John’s College, almost as old as the town, were on his left. Across the street were the high brick walls of the Academy, and the backs of the captains’ and commanders’ quarters, which lined the Worden Field parade ground. He kept his mind in neutral, not wanting to dwell on his evening with Liz or the prospects of seeing her again. But he knew he would. He’d embarrassed himself tonight, but in a good way, he supposed, if that were possible. He recognized that tonight had been something of a turning point, because it was becoming perfectly clear that his breaking down like that was not about Joanne, but, just as the chaplain had suggested, all about him. And if this lovely woman wanted to help him climb out of the valley of self-pity, he’d be a fool to turn her down.