Chapter 17 #2
But he never stopped to ask himself whether he should make it work, just because he could . Or whether there wasn’t a difference—a whole world of a difference, even—between making something work and being…being…
There’s a knock on the door at this point, which is a relief. If Will had been forced to confront the end of that thought, he might really have lost it.
He’s surprised, and happy, to see Selma on the other side of the door. Still, suddenly suspicious of Alexandra, who he knows has never understood Selma’s continued friendship with him, he holds up his hands and says, “She told me we had a reservation! I was going to leave in fifteen minutes!”
“Oh, I cancelled it,” Selma says, scowling at him. “I wasn’t really going to make you embarrass yourself with the cutlery, I just wanted to know you would. ” She pulls him into a tight hug then, and, in his ear, mutters, “Ass.”
“Yeah. Sorry,” he mumbles back, and then, as they pull apart, opens his mouth to say more, but?—
“Ah,” Selma says, holding up a single finger to silence him.
“I’m so sorry to break this to you, William, dear, but when you ignore my calls for two entire weeks, you forfeit the right to any control over the evening.
What I would like you to do, now, is follow me.
On our journey, I will catch you up on my own last couple of weeks; you will listen, and nod politely, and ask no questions.
When we arrive, you will order some food and eat it immediately.
When it’s gone, and you have thus already run through all your likeliest avenues for deflection, you will answer every question I ask you to the best of your ability.
Do you understand the terms and conditions of this arrangement as I have presented them? ”
Will blinks at her, trying not to let his amusement show on his face. “You understand that this isn’t court, right? We’re at my apartment, Sel, and I don’t even own a gavel?—”
“Sass me right now,” Selma says, in a dangerous tone, “at your genuine peril,” and then she simply turns around and walks out of his apartment.
Will has been friends with Selma a long time; he sighs, and follows her, knowing that’s what he’s supposed to do.
She does, at least, deign to wait at the stairs while Will locks the door behind him, though she starts down them the second he finishes, making him scurry to catch up with her.
She does, as promised, spend the entire walk to the bar that ends up being their destination filling him in on the last two weeks of her own life.
It’s not particularly surprising stuff. Selma, unlike Will, has a rich and thriving social life outside of their tight, unusual little bond, and though the details change, the broad strokes stay the same.
Selma’s life, Will’s always thought, is a bit like a sitcom: there’s always some bizarre situation at work, an unlikely source of interpersonal conflict that would, coming from anyone else, sound made-up, and a love interest with energy that suggests the writing and/or casting department didn’t think things through.
This time, for example: At work, there’s a petty thief swiping office supplies and other things of little value but driving the already tightly wound lawyers to insane lengths to catch the culprit.
On the unlikely interpersonal-conflict front, an old nanny has reached out, some thirty years on, looking for Selma’s testimony to aid her in suing Selma’s mother for emotional damages.
And in the arena of love interests, she appears to be wooing a nonbinary theater technician who moonlights as a shock jockey, and is only available from midnight to 3 a.m. for most of the week.
To this last, Will can’t help but ask: “Where do you find these people?” But, because he wasn’t supposed to talk, this earns him only a glare and a slight increase in Selma’s volume as she walks him through the various emotional pitfalls of dating Riley, which is apparently the theater tech/jockey’s name.
Will doesn’t bother committing it to memory—Selma rarely settles down with anyone, and when things do get serious, it’s easy to tell, mostly because she stops wanting to joke about it.
Still, he listens dutifully as she leads him to the Rowdy Elephant, their local for so long now that Will can barely remember a time before it opened.
The drinks are good and the food is surprisingly solid, and even on a Saturday night like this, there’s always a table for the two of them.
At Selma’s insistence, Will orders chicken wings and fries along with his gin and tonic, and after a single bite realizes that he’s barely eaten today and is ravenous.
He devours the meal in short order, and it’s only then, holding her own cocktail in front of her like a talisman of strength, that she says, “All right, then: Spill it.”
Wincing, and in spite of her incredibly detailed and painstaking efforts, Will lets her down immediately and tries to deflect. “I mean, what do you want to know, exactly? It’s not… There’s a lot?—”
“I would like to know,” Selma says, a razor’s edge appearing in her tone, “ everything . I mean, please . Don’t act like you don’t know me—all of it. Right now. I’m not screwing around.”
“God, fine,” Will mutters, and, at last, tells her.
It takes him…a long time.
When he’s done, Selma is quiet for several minutes. She stares at him; she stares at the ceiling; she stares out the front window of the bar, grimy and smudged, and watches people walk past outside. She drums her fingers against the countertop. She narrows her eyes at him.
Eventually, silently, she stands up, walks to the bar, and orders two shots of good tequila in a ringing tone.
She accepts them when they’re poured, walks them back to the table without spilling a drop from either one, and then, without offering Will one or indeed speaking at all, takes them both herself, one after the other, as though they’re nothing more than water.
“Will,” she says, when she’s put the second empty shot glass down on the table. “I have to ask you a question now that I have wanted to ask you for many, many years. I don’t think you’re going to like it, but. I’m going to do it, anyway.”
“Oh, God,” Will says, grimacing, but: “I mean, I probably owe you that much, honestly, after vanishing on you like that, so. Shoot.”
“Are you aware,” Selma says, cocking her head like she genuinely wants to know the answer, “that you’re not a happy person?”
“What?” Will stares at her; this is not what he was expecting at all. Feeling uncomfortably pinned by her sharp stare, he adds, “Don’t be ridiculous. Of course I am. What are you talking about?”
Selma sighs, pinches the bridge of her nose, releases it, and says, “Will, look. You are, in many ways, a very irritating and stressful human being, but you are, for my sins, my best friend. And because of this, the advice I want to give you is to stay in Chicago forever so we can keep getting brunch and laughing at the drunk people falling asleep in their pancakes. I want to do that so badly , Will, but you’re not a happy person . ”
She holds up a hand to stop his protests as she continues, “You live this sad, miserable little life—no, shut up , okay, don’t argue with me, you do .
You never take vacations or mental health days or the afternoon off to see a movie , even!
You just work and work in that little lab, or sit in your apartment watching documentaries and reading, or, when I can drag you, you come out with me.
” Selma’s voice is climbing in pitch and intensity now, to Will’s mild shock; he hadn’t realized she cared this much.
“You date these guys who treat you like dirt, who let their animals loose in your apartment , who take your time and your money and your energy and then leave you in pieces for me to pick up, every time! Which I do, because you are my best friend, but I’d be lying if I told you I loved it. ”
“Oh,” Will says, after a long moment, because. Well. Because he’s not sure what else to say.
“ So ,” Selma continues, her tone taking on a dangerous edge again now, “even though I have watched one hundred Lifetime movies and thought, every time, that the stupid best friend who says, ‘Upend your whole life for someone you met two weeks ago!’ must be taking downers and uppers and getting confused in the middle, I gotta say—you sound happier and more engaged talking about this farm and this town and this guy than I have ever heard you. Look at you! You’re carrying yourself different, did you know that?
And this guy… Will, he sounds like he was nice to you.
Do you know how long I’ve waited for you to be into a guy who was nice to you? Even one?”
“I’ve liked guys who were nice to me!” Will protests, somewhat desperately.
Flatly, Selma says, “Name one, Will. Name one guy.”
“I mean,” Will says, floundering slightly, “there’s always—uh, Roger?—”
“Roger who filled your bathtub with Monopoly money for an art project and then left it like that for a week and insisted no one clean it up? That Roger?” Selma sounds incredulous, and Will can’t exactly blame her, because:
“Yeah, he did do that,” Will has to admit.
“Um, twice, because the first time he didn’t…
have any film in the camera.” Selma’s glare at this is so intense that Will feels compelled, in spite of knowing himself to be beyond the point of no return, to add, “What about Jake? Jake really wasn’t so bad, he?—”
“Will,” Selma says, in a pained voice, “wasn’t Jake the one from my office Christmas party five years ago? The guy who got his tongue stuck? To the ice sculpture? Because he wanted to see if the ice on the top of the sculpture tasted like the shrimp at the bottom of the sculpture? ”
Will blinks at her for a moment as the memory swims back to surface. Then, grinning a little in spite of himself, he says, “Do you know, I’d forgotten about that? The look on your boss’s face?—”
“Oh, God, don’t remind me,” Selma says, and then they’re both laughing, leaning into one another in that semi-hysterical way of two old, drunken friends who don’t really need to talk to revisit their shared past.
“See,” Will says, when they’ve both calmed down a little, “I can’t move to Ohio, what would I do without?—”
“Oh, don’t start any of that up,” Selma says, waving a hand.
“Nobody says you have to move , you know. Don’t do anything crazy, just take some actual vacation time, maybe?
A sabbatical? Go deal with your life and your real estate issue and see if this is something real, I guess, is what I’m suggesting. ”
Will groans. “Sel, I have no idea how to deal with my real estate issue.” Realizing it only at this moment, he drops his head into his hands and adds, “Jesus Christ , I can’t even keep track of my belongings—you know I drove all the way back here and I’m just realizing I never went back to my hotel .
My laptop is there! And my second-best duffel bag! ”
“Oh no,” Selma says, mock-solemn, “not your second-best duffel bag.”
“My point is,” Will says, ignoring this, “I should not be trusted, okay, with something as serious as a land deal. I am not equipped. I am not prepared. I am not suited for solving a problem of this nature. Also, I mean, I think it’s even odds Catherine Rose is going to roast me on a spit, so?—”
“Did you know, ‘I’m about to be roasted on a spit’ is one of those sentences that tends to just summon lawyers out of the ether,” Selma says, offering him a small and promising smile.
“And this Catherine Rose sounds… fun . Here’s another question for you: Have you ever found yourself with any interest in showing me your hometown? ”