On Thursday, Garner frittered a midday hour away making small talk with his mother’s friends while they constructed a quilt and monitored a tropical storm that was making its way up through the Caribbean. He listened to reports on all the women’s children, one a kid named Lucas, now a guy named Lucas, whom Garner had been buddies with when they were younger. Lucas’s mother had taken them to Atlanta once when they were little. They’d gone to the Coca-Cola Museum, the Professional Wrestling Museum. Lucas was around, his mother told Garner. She knew he’d love to get together. He was a tutor over at the college. They gave Lucas the important cases, the athletes and the exchange students. Lucas knew a little bit about everything, his mother said.
“Yeah, hopefully we’ll get a chance to catch up,” Garner told her, knowing he’d make no effort to make that happen. He really didn’t care to be engaged in tales from the old days, or to hear about Lucas’s band or whatever. He had a date that night to see Ainsley Thomas, and she was the only memory lane he wanted to walk down.
Garner accepted compliments from his mother’s friends about his making time to come home for a nice long stay, endured their declarations that he was a fine young man. We know the area isn’t real exciting for young folks, they told him. He managed to smile, though his face was hot and he was sweating under his clothes.
After a while he excused himself and retreated to his room. He put a decent shirt on and drove his mother’s car downtown to a dim bistro that, as far as he knew, was the nicest restaurant in town. He was early. He picked through the car’s consoles and compartments looking for gum or a mint, then gave up. He stayed in the car until he saw her walking toward the restaurant, and then hopped out to meet her before she went inside.
Ainsley Thomas. She and Garner had dated off and on through high school, and had somehow never had a bad breakup. When Garner had left to go to Atlanta, Ainsley insisted he do it a free man. She didn’t want to hold him back, didn’t want him to resent her, didn’t want calling her to become a chore for him. And Garner hadn’t put up much of a fight about parting ways. He’d wanted a clean break from the coast, from everything he knew.
Ainsley was wearing a simple sundress and flip-flops. Parts of her looked the same as ever. Her ankles. Her pointy chin that always made it seem like she knew more than she was saying. She looked clean somehow. She was a nurse now, Garner knew. She was divorced.
They sat at a small table next to a window. It was between mealtimes and the place was empty. They ordered croissants and some shrimp and Ainsley got a glass of wine and Garner a beer.
“You drink now?” Ainsley said. She was smirking at him, or at least it seemed like she was, because of her pinched little chin.
“Sure,” Garner said.
“You never used to. In high school. You used to walk into parties with coffee. People thought you were weird.”
“I’m still weird,” Garner said.
“You were always lousy at vices.”
“Self-destruction isn’t my strong suit, I guess.”
“Lousy at getting attached,” Ainsley said.
She hid her face behind the bowl of her wine glass. She seemed calmer than before, either comfortable or resigned. Garner didn’t want to have to talk about himself, didn’t want to lie to Ainsley’s face, so he asked her questions. He already knew most of what she told him, from second- and third-hand accounts his mother had provided. She’d gone to Coastal and held out as long as she could in graphic design before switching to nursing. She’d started dating a guy from one of the other marsh towns who played football at Coastal, a reserve linebacker. “He was slow,” Ainsley said, “but nobody ever broke a tackle on him.” After graduation she took a job at a rehab hospital a ways inland while the linebacker started a mortgage company. They’d gotten along well, had done small kind deeds for each other, had gotten married. For a time, the mortgage money had been rolling in. Then it stopped rolling.
“You broke a tackle on him,” said Garner. “He had you and you slipped away.”
Ainsley shrugged. “The short version is he couldn’t stomach living off my income. ‘Being kept,’ he always said. I had no problem with it.”
“You can’t blame him for that,” said Garner. “That’s how they raise them around here. To make an honest living and support their women.”
“Well, that wasn’t the only problem. It’s always more complicated than you can explain. Close to the end, we just quit trying. We’d hollered enough for a lifetime, so we just quit.”
Ainsley swirled the last splash of her wine vacantly. She told Garner she’d been renting the third story of a house right out on the channel. In the mornings she watched the charters putter out toward the open water, or if she got up late, the real fishing boats coming back in.
The waiter came over offering more wine, which Ainsley accepted. Garner could see the wine was already getting to her; her neck and ears were flushed.
“And how’s the nursing racket?” Garner asked her.
“I like the patients. My coworkers, not so much.” Ainsley made a little sandwich out of a shrimp and a piece of croissant and bit it in half.
“Any interesting cases?”
“Interesting?” she said. “Let me see. A couple months ago we had a guy who fell out of a helicopter. Fell into water, so it wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been. We had a lady who was delusional from dehydration. She kept calling me Delia and she thought we were in Texas. Never did figure out who Delia was. What else? A Coastal player got brought in this afternoon, if that’s considered interesting. A fullback, I think they said.” Ainsley stopped chewing and glanced behind her. “We’re not supposed to tell people this stuff. HIPPA.”
“What’s HIPPA?”
“It’s the rules. You can’t go around talking about people you’re treating. Everybody does, though.”
Garner sipped his beer. It wasn’t cold anymore. “What’s wrong with the fullback?”
“Took too many pain pills and fell asleep in a drive-through. They started giving them to him last season because something was wrong with his shoulder. I guess he got a taste for them. We’re going to hold him for a few days. The coaches are keeping it hush-hush. I don’t know how they kept the cops from giving him a DUI, but they did. Oh, and down the hall from him we got this guy on vacation from Africa. Something’s wrong with his stomach. He says he’s a prince in his nation and women aren’t permitted to look upon him disrobed. I guess it’s not the dullest job, at least.”
“Number 41? That’s the fullback?”
“I don’t know his number. Regular-looking white kid, except he has a mohawk.”
“Huh,” said Garner.
The waiter was back again. He didn’t have any other tables. He dropped off a couple more napkins. Once he was gone, Ainsley reached across the table and took Garner’s hand.
“I didn’t know I was missing you until I saw you,” she said, her voice placid but a touch raspy.
Garner’s throat went dry. Sitting here with Ainsley was making him feel grateful, an unfamiliar feeling of late. He drank the better part of his beer and signaled for the bill. He made sure to put down the single credit card he had that wasn’t maxed out. He could float this meal on credit and maybe a couple more, and then he’d be making a last stand with the cash he had left in the bank.
He and Ainsley left the bistro, pushing out into the salty, still air of the evening. He walked her to her car and she invited him to sit in the passenger seat. He started to say something and she interrupted him and said she just wanted to kiss him for a while, like back when kissing in a parked car was all they needed.