This job was a large one. It was going to take a while.
To distract myself, I generally use the time to think of a working name for the project. I got up from my desk and a stream of random titles floated through my head as I made my way through the house in search of coffee. Avenger came to mind, as I mulled over the events of the day. Or Backstabber, I thought, picturing Roger LeBrock’s lying face. Maybe The Towering Inferno, looking ahead to AmeriTel’s inevitable fate. But then, when I reached the kitchen and saw a dirty mug Carolyn had left on the countertop, I had a flash of inspiration. Traitor. She’d always wanted me to name a project after her. What better time to make her wish come true?
I picked up Carolyn’s mug, uncertain whether to put it in the dishwasher or throw it in the trash, then I saw what was inside it. The dregs of black coffee. Normally Carolyn took her coffee white. She only skipped the milk when she was particularly stressed. Or if we’d run out. I looked in the fridge, and found two cartons. One was half full, the other unopened. Both were fresh. That meant she must have been really suffering as she waited for me to get home.
How many times had I come in and found her sitting on the stairs, overcome with anguish? It was always something trivial—a ding in her car, a disaster in the kitchen, buyer’s remorse over another extravagant purchase—but the words would come tumbling out so fast it often took a while to understand what she’d actually done. I never cared, though. Seeing her smile chase away the tears as she unburdened herself made anything forgivable. Until that day, when the mold had been broken.
I replayed Carolyn’s last words in my mind, wishing I’d been smart enough to say something before she’d walked out, and the idea of talking to her prompted another thought: After she left I’d gone straight to the study to start work. I didn’t take the time to switch my phone off silent. What if she’d been trying to call? Wanting to patch things up, but put off by my failure to answer?
I whipped my phone out of my pocket, terrified of finding a screen full of missed calls. And when I saw there’d only been one, I somehow felt even worse. I hesitated for a moment, then—like a wounded man desperate for the coup de grâce, even if it had to be self-inflicted—I hit the Voicemail key.
The message began with several seconds of silence. Had she called my number by mistake? I pictured her phone lying unattended in her purse, and her going about her business with no desire to speak to me and no knowledge that the line was even open. But then, as my thumb was reaching for the End button, I heard Carolyn’s voice. It was shaky, like she was struggling to keep her tone neutral, and her words were brief. She wanted to meet. To talk. To see if we could put things right. She suggested a time and a place, and I almost dropped the phone in my haste to check my watch, suddenly convinced I was already too late.
The restaurant she’d named was a half hour away. She was going to be there in twenty minutes. I headed straight for the door. And hoped there wouldn’t be too many traffic cops in the area that night.
Monday. Evening.
CAROLYN HAD PICKED A RESTAURANT WE’D BOTH BEEN TO BEFORE, but never together. It was French. Or had aspirations of being French, anyway. But as far as I could remember, the theme was set more by the decor—huge images of the Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe clumsily stenciled in wild colors across every inch of wall space—than by the menu. Or the standard of cooking.
If the place wasn’t too firmly wedded to its chosen geographic region, that suggested another possibility to me. It made me hopeful margaritas would be available. I wondered if that had factored into Carolyn’s thinking. And whether bringing the car was a mistake.
Maybe I should have risked the extra few minutes it would have taken to call a cab?
THE FIRST VEHICLE I SAW when I pulled into the restaurant’s parking lot was Carolyn’s silver BMW. There’s no way she’d have driven if she’d foreseen a heavy night’s drinking for the two of us. My sinking heart told me I’d gotten a little ahead of myself with the scope of my reconciliation plans. A nice meal together was a more realistic target. A glass of good wine. A shared drive home—we could leave the Beemer and collect it tomorrow—with maybe a stop at a liquor store en route. One that sold the right tequila. The kind they have at Zapatista’s.
I saw Carolyn the moment my eyes adjusted to the candle-fueled pseudo-Parisian gloom inside the cavernous restaurant. She was sitting in a booth diagonally opposite the entrance, about three-quarters of the way back. She never liked to sit with her back to the door, so she spotted me right away, too. She waved, and I set off to join her without waiting for a hostess to escort me.
My smile grew broader as the distance between us shrank, but when I came close enough to see Carolyn’s eyes it was clear that any warmth I felt would be more than canceled out by the frostiness of her stare. I slid into place opposite her. And despite everything I’d wanted to say since our last unpleasant exchange—and all the zingers I’d imagined myself unleashing in the car, driving over—I couldn’t summon a single intelligible word.
“Hi” was the best I eventually managed.
“You’re late.” Carolyn took a sip from a barely touched glass of red wine. “I was about to leave.”
“I’m sorry. I’m glad you waited.”
“Are you?”
“Of course I am. I didn’t keep you waiting on purpose. I jumped in the car the second I got your message.”
“You did? Why? Where had you been?”
She stormed out, then starts grilling me about where I’ve been?
“Nowhere.” I resisted the temptation to throw the question back at her. “I was at home. Working. You know how I get.”
Carolyn stared at me for a few seconds, then her expression softened.
“Sorry. Let’s start this over. First of all, thanks for coming.”
“No problem. Thanks for asking me.”
“And second, I think there are some things we need to talk about. No surprise there, right?”
“Not really. What’s on your mind?”
“You are, Marc. You and me. And whether that still adds up to us.”
“Of course it does. Why would you doubt that?”
Carolyn looked away. A waitress began to approach, but she scurried away when she caught my wife’s expression.
“I want us to make it, Marc,” Carolyn answered, facing me again. “I really do. More than anything. But that’s not going to happen on its own. It’s going to need a little help. There are going to have to be some changes.”
“OK.” I nodded. I was willing to negotiate, if that’s what it would take to bring her home. “What kind of changes?”
“Take working at AmeriTel as an example. When we were there together. Or supposed to be.”
“This again? I’ve already agreed, Carolyn. Your work is fantastic. I appreciate what you do. I see how everyone values you. I—”
“No. I’m not talking about work now. I’m talking about you and me. How we were.”
“How we were what?”
“Right. What were we? We’re supposed to be a couple, but we sure didn’t act like one. We weren’t like Alison in Sales, and Ian in Engineering. Or Imogen and Glynn. Or—Anyway, the point is, what did we ever do together? We didn’t drive to the office together. We didn’t even have lunch together.”