From down the block, Cate could see Bridget sitting at an outside table at the restaurant, wearing sunglasses and a shawl. Cate could tel that she thought she looked like a movie star. Her face was tilted back toward the sun and she had the happy little smile of someone who is perfectly content. As Cate got closer, she saw that there were two glasses of white wine on the table and immediately she felt relieved. This lunch would be much easier to handle with alcohol.
Bridget shrieked as soon as she saw her, causing everyone to turn and stare, which embarrassed Cate to no end. “Caiiitliiin! Oh, how are you?”
Bridget opened her arms wide for a hug, and then kissed both of Cate’s cheeks. This would have been a little pretentious for anyone, but Bridget was from Pittsburgh, which just made the whole thing absurd.
Bridget pushed her sunglasses up on her head in a theatrical way and leaned back to laugh. “It is just so damn good to see you! I can’t believe it.
You look wel ! I ordered some wine for us. Now, I know it’s a school day for you, but I thought we needed to celebrate. A little day drinking never hurt anyone, no?”
As always with Bridget, Cate barely said a word. Bridget rattled on about her job, and revealed that she was working on a memoir in her spare time. “I’ve always been a great writer,” she said. “There’s a lot of people interested to see it when I’m done. So we’l see! Maybe I’l have a fabulous book deal by the end of the year,” she said and then laughed. “So, how are you?” she asked. But before Cate could answer, Bridget started describing how she’d redecorated her apartment, how she seemed to have a gift for choosing color palettes and antique pieces that just seemed to fit.
They ordered a second glass of wine and Cate drank while Bridget fil ed her in on the cooking class she was taking. Then she told her about the trip to Italy she was planning. “I just feel so lucky,” she said. “To have a job I love that pays me enough that I can do other things that I love. Do you know how rare that is?” she asked.
“I do,” Cate said.
Bridget sighed, and took a sip of her wine. “Caitlin,” she said. “There was something else I wanted to tel you.”
“Real y?” Cate asked.
“Yes,” she said. “I wanted to tel you that I’m dating Jim.”
“Jim?”
“You know, Jim from col ege. Turns out he works near my building in Boston and we ran into each other at a happy hour. And you know, trouble!”
Bridget raised and lowered her eyebrows and pursed her lips, then laughed out loud.
“Oh, now, don’t look so shocked! Look, I wanted to tel you because I know you and Jim had that thing in col ege,” Bridget said and took a sip of her wine. Her face suddenly grew serious. “But, I mean, col ege was about a mil ion years ago! And I knew that you wouldn’t real y mind, but I stil wanted to tel you myself. You know how funny girls can be about these things.”
“Yeah,” Cate said. “I do.”
“Oh, I knew you wouldn’t mind! I told him that you’d be fine with it. Boys are so sil y, aren’t they?”
“So, how long have you two been, um, together?”
“Almost a year. Wel , about nine months. And I wanted to tel you earlier, but we’ve both been so busy that we’ve barely spoken!”
“I know,” Cate said and raised her hand to the waiter for another glass of wine.
“Oh, you are so bad,” Bridget giggled.
“So is it serious?” Cate asked. Her head felt light, and she struggled to keep her voice steady.
“Yes,” she said. “It is.”
“But it’s only been nine months, right?”
“Wel , yes. But he’s already looking at rings.”
“What?”
Bridget made a big show of clamping her hands over her mouth and making her eyes wide. “Look at me,” she said. “I can’t keep a secret to save my life! But between you and me? This is it.”
Cate picked up her glass of water and drank the whole thing down in one swal ow. She was afraid that if she stopped, she would throw the glass on the floor. Jim. Jim? Jim and Bridget? This didn’t make sense. She was making it up in her head. Maybe Bridget was even crazier than Cate had ever known. The waiter brought over a new glass of wine, and Cate picked it up and started drinking it like it was water. She was so thirsty al of a sudden.
“We’re going to Italy together, and I just know he’s going to do it there,” Bridget said.
“Real y?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Isn’t that romantic?”
Jim was the person Cate stil thought about, the person that her mind went to when things got bad. It was stupid and she knew that. It was obvious that they’d never get back together, but stil she liked to think, “What if?” She knew that he would date other people, she’d even thought that maybe he’d be married soon. But to Bridget? No. Not to Bridget.
“Caitlin,” she said. “Caitlin, does this bother you? Oh, that’s not what I meant to do.”
Cate shook her head. “No one cal s me Caitlin. Did you know that? Not one other person on this earth cal s me Caitlin.”
“I know,” she said. “That was always our thing. I love the name Caitlin!”
Cate left the restaurant in a hurry. Al of a sudden, she needed to get out of there. “I have to get back to work,” she said, throwing some money on the table. “My boss is on the warpath.” Bridget was saying something but Cate wasn’t listening. She stood up and her chair hit the table in back of them. “Sorry,” Cate mumbled. “Sorry, sorry,” as she wove in and out of the tables. She took a left on the street and walked quickly for a few blocks before she realized that she had no idea where the subway was.
Cate stopped for a second, just outside a little park, and leaned her head against the fence to gather her thoughts. There was a man in there feeding pigeons, and Cate watched him throw the seeds out at the dirty birds. They gathered al around him, pecking at the ground. How gross, she thought. How gross to let those disgusting creatures get close to you.
And then it happened. Cate hadn’t noticed, but there was a net on the ground, and the man bent down and in one swoop had gathered al of the pigeons inside. He picked up the bag of pigeons, walked to a white van, got in the back, and drove away.
Cate looked around, waiting for someone else on the street to react so that they could stop this man. What was he doing? He was stealing pigeons! People walked past Cate on the sidewalk, and she tried to catch someone’s eye, but they al kept walking. No one cared. No one had even noticed. “Didn’t any of you see him?” Cate wanted to scream. “There’s a thief in our midst!” But she didn’t. No one would have listened anyway.
Cate went back to work, sweaty and disoriented. Isabel a looked up as she ran to her desk. “What happened to you?” she asked. Cate shook her head and picked up a bottle of water she’d left on her desk. She unscrewed the top and held up one finger while she chugged most of it.
“You won’t believe me,” she said when she was done. “But you have to believe me.”
“Are you drunk?” Isabel a asked.
“No,” Cate said. “I had some wine. But listen, I have to tel you something. And you have to believe me.”
“Snowy is going to freak out if you aren’t ready for the meeting. It’s in twenty minutes, you know.”
“I know, but just listen to me! Listen.” Cate told her about the pigeons. She described the man who’d scooped them up and taken them away.
Isabel a listened, raising and lowering her eyebrows as the story went on.