2. Mark
2
MARK
T he swoosh swoosh of the saw cut a steady rhythm through the twilight air as I worked to get as much done as I could before I lost the light. I was in my grandmother’s backyard, prepping wood to repair her back porch tomorrow. I squinted in the darkness, trying to line the blade up correctly, and cursed.
It really was too dark to see, but I didn’t want to go back inside. I didn’t want to stop working. If I stopped working, I was liable to start thinking. And that was something I was avidly trying to avoid.
“Mark, honey, you’re going to hurt yourself if you keep working out here in the dark,” my grandmother, Gigi, called from the kitchen door behind me. I set the saw down on the table and turned, the grass tickling my ankles. Gigi was staring at me, arms folded, with a doubtful look on her face. “Why don’t you throw in the towel for the night?”
“I’m almost done,” I said, wiping the sweat off my brow. “Just a few more minutes and I’ll come inside and get to work on the wallpaper in the northwest bedroom.”
“Mark, I wanted you to stop working, not just switch to a new task. Rome wasn’t built in a day; you don’t have to get the entire house fixed in a week. It’s a long to-do list. Don’t wear yourself out.”
“I don’t mind,” I protested. “I like working.”
It was a long to-do list, but wearing myself out was exactly what I was hoping to do. When Gigi had called my parents and told them she was hoping to sell her house this year and move out to Arizona, I’d jumped at the chance to come to Savannah and help her fix it up. Anything to get away from my life back in Chicago.
Though if I kept it up at this pace, I might just finish the list of repairs in a month. And then where would I be? Stuck facing the same problems, with no distractions. Maybe I’d get lucky, and we’d discover a termite infestation. Black mold. Something to keep me busy for the foreseeable future.
“Honey, I know you came out here to...” Gigi paused, probably fishing for a delicate expression, “to get some space and clear your head, but I’m beginning to get a bit worried that you’re planning to stay holed up in this old pile the whole time you’re here and never leave the house.”
I shifted my feet in the grass, not quite knowing what to say. That had, actually, been exactly my plan. Which I knew was a bad idea—isolating myself probably wasn’t going to help matters. But somehow, I hadn’t quite worked up the nerve to go into town and meet anyone.
As a kid who'd always felt a little odd, I’d gotten great at reading people and learning how to fit in. I knew I wouldn’t have any trouble making small talk with people. It was what came after the small talk that made me nervous.
“Look, I’m going to Gladys’s house for bridge night,” Gigi continued. “Why don’t you go into town and get some dinner on me. I left forty dollars on the table.”
“You didn’t have to do that!” I exclaimed, noticing for the first time that my grandmother was dressed up to go out and clutching her purse. “I can buy my own dinner.”
“And I can spoil my grandson who happens to be out of work at the moment,” she replied tartly.
“Maybe I should come to bridge night with you,” I said, forcing a grin that turned into a real one at the thought of spending the night with a group of women almost fifty years my senior. “Might be the most fun I’ve had in weeks.”
“And it might end with Gladys trying to seduce you.”
“Hey, if she wants to give me cash for dinners too, I might be on board with that.”
“Be careful what you wish for,” Gigi said, hoisting her purse over her shoulder. “Better for you to go meet people your own age. Make a bad decision or two. I’ll be back late, so there’s no need to wait up, but I will expect details in the morning.”
“You’re a terrible role model, you know that?”
“And you’re a terrible excuse for a twenty-nine-year-old. You should be enjoying your youth before you wind up old and decrepit like me.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
I put away the tools, boards, and sawhorses I’d been working with in the detached garage at the end of Gigi’s gravel driveway. Its roof leaked—another thing I’d volunteered to fix—but it was better than leaving them out in the open. I liked working with my hands and I liked taking care of my tools. Take care of them, and they were more likely to take care of me over the long run.
Wandering inside the empty house after Gigi left, I was confronted with the fact that for the first time since I’d come to Savannah, I was truly at loose ends. I didn’t like the feeling, but I didn’t know what to do about it. The only way to bridge that gap would be to reach out to someone. And yet somehow, that felt like a lot of effort.
I glanced at my phone, which I’d left lying on the coffee table while I’d been outside, and saw that I'd missed a call from Gabe earlier that afternoon. That was odd. We were work friends—well, we had been, before I’d quit my job—but we weren’t the sort to chat on the phone. I stared at my phone for a moment, deciding, before I finally picked it up and called him back. Maybe it was a sign from the universe or something.
“M-dawg! Mark! Markorino! How’s it going, man?” Gabe’s voice sailed across the line, pitched just above the noise of what sounded like a crowded bar.
“Uh, good,” I said, already feeling stupid for calling back. Who called someone on a Friday night? Of course he was out. I was probably the only person sitting around with nothing to do. “How’re you? I, uh, saw I missed a call from you?”
“Yeah, man,” Gabe said. “Hold on a sec, let me just—No, Brian, I said two, not three!” He interrupted himself to yell at Brian, one of his friends, for God only knew what reason. “Sorry, just let me get outside.”
I waited, listening to Gabe bump and squeeze his way out of wherever he was, until he finally spoke again, sounding slightly out of breath.
“Whew, it’s a mess in there.”
“Where are you?”
“O’Malley’s. Some of the guys wanted to go out. Pitcher specials on domestic beers.”
“Ah.”
Gabe had moved to Chicago after college for work, along with a bunch of his other college friends. They hadn’t actually been in a frat, but they still retained a sort of bro-y vibe. I’d hung out with them a few times after I’d met Gabe at work, but I found him a lot easier to talk to than most of his friends.
“So how are you, man?” Gabe asked. “I haven’t heard from you in a while. Everything okay out there?”
I blinked. Gabe was calling to check up on me? That was…unexpected.
“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, everything’s great.”
“But?”
“But what? No buts. Really, everything’s fine.”
“Dude, there was definitely a but in your voice when you said that. Come on, what’s up?”
For a bro, Gabe could be confusingly perceptive. But he was also, somehow, easier to talk to about these things than people I was ostensibly closer with. I sighed.
“I don’t know, really. I mean, everything is fine. It’s just…I guess I just realized that I don’t know anyone out here. And my grandma’s throwing me out of the house tonight, insisting I go out and get my kicks like the young whippersnapper she insists I am, and I just, I don’t know, it feels like it’s gonna be this whole thing, and I just kinda want to not bother.”
“Hah,” Gabe said, barking a laugh. “Well, that’s not surprising. That you’re a bit gun-shy, if you’ll pardon the expression. Considering.”
“Yeah.” I was quiet for a moment, flashing back to the last time I’d seen Gabe. Our office’s conference room, the middle of a staff birthday party, when I’d basically had a complete mental breakdown. “Yeah, I guess not.”
“Are you seeing anyone?”
“Like, dating?” I asked, confused for a second. “Oh, or like, for appointments.”
“For appointments.”
“Yeah. First one’s tomorrow, actually.”
“That’s good.”
“Yeah.” I paused again. “And I bet they’re going to tell me the same thing as my grandma.”
“Go make bad decisions?”
“I was thinking more the ‘ go make friends and connect with people on an emotionally honest level ’ sort of thing. But hey, you never know.”
“Dude, I’m not saying I know what it’s like to be going through what you’re going through, but it sounds like pretty decent advice, don’t you think?”
“Ugh, probably. Dammit, I knew I should have just wallowed tonight and not called you back. But here I am, talking to you, and one bit of human contact is going to lead to another until it snowballs—”
“And you end the night holding hands with a circle of strangers, singing kum bay ya ?” Gabe finished for me.
“Something like that.”
“Come on, you don’t have to propose marriage to anyone you meet tonight. Just make five minutes of small talk, have a beer, and leave. Easy peasy.”
“Easy for you to say,” I grumbled. “You’re not the weirdo who freaks out in crowds and never knows when he’s gonna have another panic attack.”
“I’ve got a secret for you: we’re all weirdos. You’re just more honest about it.”
“That’s comforting.”
“You’re gonna be fine,” Gabe said. “You’re nowhere near as awkward as you think you are. Besides, you’re a strapping young specimen of a man. People will put up with a whole lot of awkward if it comes in a hot package.”
“Aw, you’re so sweet. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were flirting with me.”
“Nah, man, just speaking from experience. You know how I roll,” Gabe said with a laugh that I ended up succumbing to. I could practically see him buffing his fingernails on his sweater as he said that.
“I guess one drink wouldn’t kill me,” I said as I wandered into the kitchen to peer into the fridge. “All Gigi’s got is boxed wine, and once that runs out, we’ll be down to the sherry.”
“Hey, don’t knock sherry till you’ve tried it,” Gabe said. “But sure, I like that attitude. Confidence. That’s the key.”
“Small goals is more like it,” I said, shrugging. But the more I thought about it, the more it did start to seem like a good idea. Or maybe it was just Gabe’s infectious attitude putting me in a better mood. But I was suddenly filled with a desire to go out there and achieve something. That feeling was so rare these days, so fleeting, that I figured I’d better capitalize on it.
“Small goals are good,” Gabe said. “Remember. No marriage. Just one drink.”
“No marriage,” I repeated. “Got it.”
“Well, in that case, it sounds like I’d better let you get on with it,” he said. “Besides, the guys are gonna finish both pitchers without me if I don’t get back in there.”
“Heaven forbid I deprive you of that,” I snorted. “Have fun with your bro crew.”
“Haters gonna hate, bros gonna bro,” Gabe said. “I’ll talk to you later, man. Glad you’re doing okay. Now go get ‘em, tiger.”
“Will do.” I paused for a second. “Hey, Gabe?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for calling.”
“Any time, man. Really.”
I jumped in the shower after getting off the phone with Gabe and then stood around looking at the clothes I’d packed in the single suitcase I’d brought with me to Savannah. Nothing was particularly nice. I’d packed thinking about manual labor, not night life.
I made a face in the mirror as I pulled a tight green t-shirt over my head. It had a rip in the bottom hem and a hole on the back by the tag, but it did outline my torso nicely, which made it the best of my options. Who was I trying to impress, anyway? The denizens of Savannah were just going to have to be happy that I was clean.
“You can do this,” I said sternly to myself in the mirror. “This is eminently doable. Not a big deal. You’re just going to go out there, talk to some strangers, and charm the pants off of them.” I snorted. “Probably not literally,” I added, raising an eyebrow at my reflection. “So don’t go getting any ideas.”
It had been a long time since I’d gotten any action. But I wasn’t really in a position right now to try to break my dry spell. Too much work to do on myself, first.
And much as I might wish otherwise, I wasn’t a one-night-stand kind of guy. Way more of a ‘ lock it down after the second date ’ type, if I was being honest. What could I say? I liked stability.
But I was too much of a hot mess to foist myself on a girlfriend right now. Wouldn’t be fair to them. I could barely deal with myself. How could I ask anyone else to?
That was fine, though. Gabe was right. It wasn’t like I was going to ask anyone I met tonight to marry me. This was as low-stakes a situation as they came.
Maybe I’d go to that one bar I’d passed on my way back from the hardware store last week. The Flamingo, I was pretty sure it was called. It had looked loud and tacky and utterly weird. I’d seen a chandelier made of My Little Ponies dangling in the front window, and I was pretty sure there was a real, taxidermied beaver that served as a doorstop.
Not my usual type of spot, but that was probably good insurance. If I had a meltdown in public, I’d never be able to go back. Much better to pick somewhere I wasn’t likely to go to in the first place.
And it could be fun, right?
I grimaced. Did I even remember what fun was? I tried to remember the last time I’d felt carefree and relaxed, and failed—which was probably a sign that it had been too long.
If I didn’t go out tonight, all I’d do instead was lie in bed, wondering when I’d fall asleep and if I’d have nightmares again. In the nightly war between my insomnia and the shit my subconscious coughed up when I finally passed out, I was never sure who I wanted to win.
If I went out, at least I got to avoid that for another hour or two.
I gave myself a final nod in the mirror. I’d run away from Chicago to figure out how to get my old self back. My old self might have felt a little nervous going out, but he’d have known how to hide that, how to put people at ease and make them like him. And eventually, he’d have felt at ease himself.
That was what I was going to do tonight. It was time to get back on the horse.