Epilogue
A FEW YEARS LATER…
Sam had been disappointed the first time he visited the Arcade as a child, a fact that he chalks up to the name.
He had been expecting a low-ceilinged room full of Skee-Ball and video games, not a long, multi-story indoor shopping center with enormous, vaulted windows where there would, typically, be a roof.
If it had been called “The Big Bright Hallway” or, indeed, “A Place Where You Will Be Allowed to Run Around Freely While Your Parents Study in the Tiny Food Court,” he might have taken to it more immediately.
Even so, after only a few minutes, his sense of loss wore off, and from that point on it had been one of Sam’s favorite childhood places.
He’d spent hours exploring it, popping in and out of various shops, getting to know the owners—often elderly, at least back then, and settled in their old family businesses.
Deb used to take him sometimes, too, the deli being only a few blocks away, and talk shop with the owners in the way only two proprietors of an old family business can.
It’s almost a shame, Sam thinks, that the place is closed today for the wedding, for all the decorations have made it sparkle and shine.
He’d like to have some of those conversations for himself, now that he, too, has earned a place in those highly selective ranks.
He resolves to come back another day and, setting down a stack of covered hotel pans, reaches up to straighten his bow tie—
“Stop!” Jake lets this bellow out like a war cry, descending on Sam as if from nowhere and gripping each of his wrists in one hand. “Don’t touch that, Sam, oh my God!”
Sam, used to this sort of thing by now, raises an eyebrow. “Is there a bomb wired to it, then? Or was it just soaked in deadly neurotoxins?”
“You,” Jake says, looking accusingly from one of Sam’s hands to the other, “are soaked in deadly fabric toxins, actually.” This, while dramatic, is not exactly untrue.
Sam looks down and winces to see that his hands are indeed lightly coated with oil, which must have dripped down the side of one of the pans he was carrying.
“Have a heart. Think of the—well, I guess there isn’t any way to make ‘think of the children’ apply to fabric, is there?
Think of the smaller fibers, Sam!” Making his eyes round, he adds, “Think of how sad everyone will be if this wedding is ruined by a well-oiled bow tie—”
“I really don’t think anyone would notice or care,” Sam argues, although he doesn’t resist, just smiles, as Jake grabs a kitchen towel off the nearest counter and begins wiping Sam’s hands clean.
“Especially not at this wedding. I mean, remember that pool party last summer? This is basically the same guest list, and I can’t imagine there was anyone there who didn’t see today’s bride and groom—”
“La la la,” Jake says loudly, “I’m not listening; I’m not remembering that! I saw nothing!” Fixing Sam with a stern look, he adds, “It’s our duty as Joanie’s best men to have seen nothing. And it’s your duty as my boyfriend to support me in my delusions.”
Sam grins. “That doesn’t seem right.”
“So long as they are within reason and for the overall health and sanity of all,” Jake finishes smoothly, setting the cloth down and releasing Sam’s hands.
“Which, I promise you, this is. My brain is feeble and riddled with holes and will collapse under the weight of those memories; they’re too horrible.
No one saw anything and nothing happened! We can all agree!”
“All right,” Sam says, amused, and puts a hand on Jake’s back.
“We can all agree.” He looks Jake up and down, taking in the perfectly tailored fit of his tuxedo, which, despite complaining for weeks about having to wear a “penguin suit,” he looks much better in than Sam does.
Speculatively, he says, “How much time do we have before the ceremony? I should really be letting the staff do this anyway.”
“Something I’ve said ten times already this morning.”
“I mean, I am in the wedding, and it would be stupid to mess up my clothes.” Sam affects his most innocent expression.
Jake meets it with a roll of his eyes. “Again, I think I was probably saying that in my sleep last night, but sure.”
“And so if we have an extra twenty minutes, we could—”
“Not that I don’t appreciate the spirit of that offer,” Jake says, his grin a sudden, sharp slash across his face, “and not that I don’t very much intend to take you up on it later, but: We don’t have twenty minutes, Sam. We have six.”
“Six?!” Woebegone, Sam tries and, for obvious reasons, fails to look down at his own bow tie. “God, I was going to try to fix it properly before the ceremony; I’ll never manage it in six minutes.”
“Oh, here,” Jake says. He rolls his eyes, but fondly, as he reaches up, undoes Sam’s tie in one quick movement, and begins re-tying it from scratch. “You could have just asked me, you know. I’m practically a professional bow-tiest.”
“Is that a profession?”
“Obviously should be,” Jake says. He’s standing, Sam is pleased to note, rather closer than he thinks is entirely necessary for securing the tie in place, his arms against Sam’s chest. “You’re proving there’s a market for it literally right now.”
Sam opens his mouth to say something frankly filthy about what he’s really in the market for just at this moment, but he’s interrupted by Deb approaching them at speed.
In a purple dress and spiky heels, she somehow looks more terrifying than she does in her usual ensemble these days, which typically involves at least one frightening gardening tool hooked to her person.
Jake steps back, not seeing her, and pats Sam twice on the chest as if pleased with his own work, only for his face to fall in comic shock when Deb grabs him by a sleeve and starts dragging him away, barking, “You too, Sammy!” over her shoulder.
“Do you think,” Jake says, his cane thumping ringingly against the floor in a way Sam’s almost certain is done on purpose and to make a point, “maybe the wedding planning has gone to your head, Deb? Just a bit?”
“I think I told you two to leave the catering to your staff,” Deb says, glaring at Sam, “and to meet us up front fifteen minutes ago,” but she does, at least, let go of Jake and slow down to a strolling pace.
“They’re not my staff,” Jake says, too innocent, while Sam makes an apologetic face at Deb, who shakes her head, looking more amused than angry. “I’m in an entirely different business! Just because that business happens to have offices upstairs—”
“Oh, save it,” Deb says with a laugh. “I have a dozen friends I want to introduce to you tonight; you can do the pitch for them. I’ve heard it, frankly, enough for one lifetime. Do an old woman a kindness in her twilight years—”
“You’re sixty-one.” Sam rolls his eyes, more entertained than he wants to let on.
Deb and Jake’s half-joking argumentative vibe isn’t the sort of thing he wants to encourage, even if he does find it funny, and think they both must be getting something out of it.
“So I think ‘twilight years’ is pushing it.”
“This doesn’t concern you, kid.” Deb says this breezily, even though this conversation started with an argument about the Silverman’s staff, and, as such, technically only concerns Sam, of the three of them.
Deb might still pop in occasionally with her Emeritus Proprietor nametag on, but she’d realized quickly that retirement bored her, and so most of the time, these days, she’s either running her farmstand on the west side of town or off on a dig site somewhere with Talya.
And Jake, of course, doesn’t work for Silverman’s at all.
It’s true enough that they turned the old apartment above the deli into an office after Jake insisted, as a condition of moving in with Sam, that they find a place that would allow Sam to develop even an iota of work-life balance.
The location of his office does, certainly, mean that Jake is at Silverman’s much of the time, often drifting downstairs with his laptop or to take a lunch meeting in the dining room.
And yes, if pressed, they would both have to admit that Jake does still make a number of the social posts, and regularly discusses strategy with Sam, and sometimes jumps in to help at the counter if they’re really in the weeds.
But Jake’s real job, the one he turns out to be so good at that Sam’s fairly certain it was his true calling all along, is teaching dance, and guiding young dancers looking to work in the space.
He’s basically taken over for Madame Louisa at the dance studio and will be stepping up into her role officially when she retires in the fall, but the offices above Silverman’s aren’t for teaching.
Up there, Jake holds career counseling sessions for older students, and seminars about boundary setting and healthy versus unhealthy standards in the professional dance world, and stage-safety clinics so comprehensive he’s started to get bookings with local theater programs and school districts.
He also offers free sessions for dancers experiencing what he calls path-altering events—changes, whether through accident or illness or injury or mental health issues or whatever else, that affect a dancer’s ability to perform.
Sam’s pretty sure that’s Jake’s favorite part of his job; certainly, it’s the part that connects the most with others and has driven a large following on professional social media channels.
His numbers rival Walt’s these days, but for doing something good, not ghoulish.
Sam knows Jake takes a slightly petty kind of pleasure in that, but he, himself, thinks it’s kind of beautiful.