Eight October 20, 2023
THE RESTAURANT is crowded with the lunch-hour rush, the tables jammed together.
Elsie searches for Marcus’s familiar face, his mop of hair and goatee, but doesn’t recognize him until he stands and waves.
She walks sideways through the row of patrons, excusing herself as she bumps into chair after chair.
When she reaches Marcus, they try for an awkward hug, but there’s little room to maneuver, so they end up patting each other’s back.
“Isn’t this place great?” Marcus asks, raising his voice as they take their seats.
Elsie sets her wallet and phone on the table where she can see them.
“A bit noisy,” she says. Another person would love the energy of the room, but Elsie finds the din of voices and music overwhelming.
She’s boxed in on all sides by other diners.
The next table is only inches away. And there’s so much movement and distraction competing for her attention.
The overhead fans. The many servers weaving through the maze of tables with plates and baskets of bread held high.
The lower walls are stuffed with framed and signed photos, celebrities who’ve dined here.
Above them there’s a mural of a nighttime city landscape, the stars above. Elsie finds a moment’s escape up there.
“You’re looking good, Ziz,” Marcus says. There are those blue, blue eyes appraising her.
“I go by Elsie now,” she says.
“Elsie. I like it. More grown up than Ellie or Ziz. You look more grown up too. More mature.” She has regained the weight that she lost following her mother’s death, and in the process added curves.
He appears more mature too, but so very different from what she remembers, from what she saw of him during her trip to the past on Thursday.
It’s a little startling, actually. The goatee is gone, and his hair is cut short and slicked back.
He’s whitened his teeth. In that sports jacket, he could be an investment banker.
“I didn’t recognize you at first,” she says.
“I knew it was you the moment I saw you.” Marcus’s gaze travels from her unicorn T-shirt to her space buns. “I remembered this outfit, or one just like it.”
Elsie tugs the neck of her T-shirt. “I guess I’m not dressed for this. All I have are work clothes and we dress pretty casual at the office.”
“Where are you working now?”
“At Dad’s consulting firm, making maps.”
“Still?”
Elsie looks down, slides her little bundle of cutlery back and forth. “How about you? You start up your own business yet?”
He pulls out a business card, offers it to her. “I’m a digital marketing and communications specialist. I write website and social media content, help companies establish a brand. Gig work. Non-profits, mostly. But at least I can still work from home, schedule my own time, be my own boss.”
A server appears at their table in a white shirt and black pants, water jug in hand. He lays the menus before Elsie and Marcus, then fills their glasses as he rattles off the lunch specials.
“Do you have chicken fingers?” she asks.
“Sorry, no.”
“Oh.” She scans the menu. “Spaghetti?”
The server points with his pen at a menu offering, some kind of fancy spaghetti, which comes with salad and bread.
“I’ll have that, but no salad,” Elsie says.
The server scribbles on his pad. “No salad.”
“I’m sure it’s very good,” Elsie says. “It’s just that salad has too many ingredients, and chances are there’s one I won’t eat, which taints everything else in the bowl.
I would hate to see it go to waste. We waste way too much food as it is, don’t you think?
So many people go hungry. Is this restaurant part of a food donation program? ”
The server stares down at her a moment. “Do you want the bread?” he asks.
She looks back at the menu, to check. “I’ll pass on the focaccia too. Focaccia is the salad of breads. Too many things intermingling on top. Oh, and no parmesan on the pasta. I don’t like cheese.” She beams up at the server. “Thanks so much.”
Marcus chuckles, shaking his head. But the server doesn’t even crack a smile. “And for you, sir?”
“I’ll have the same,” Marcus says, closing his menu. “But with the salad and focaccia. And the parmesan.”
After the server collects the menus and leaves, there’s a long awkward pause where Elsie can’t think of anything to say. She takes a sip of her water, then puts the glass down carefully and turns it so it reflects the light onto the tablecloth.
“I’ve missed you,” Marcus says.
The message he’d left on the drink fridge at Joe’s Café.
“I’ve missed you too,” she says. She reaches into her coat pocket for the magnetic poetry box and slides it onto the table. “I didn’t find out you’d left me this until much later.” Yesterday, in fact.
“The staff at the café took it off the table?”
“Something like that.”
“Did you see the message I left for you on the fridge that day?”
“No.” Not at the time.
Marcus plays with the box, pushing it from hand to hand. “No wonder you didn’t call, then. You thought I just left you.”
“Like you said you were going to.”
“I’m so sorry, Elsie. At the time, I just didn’t know how to handle what you were going through.”
“No. It was me. I withdrew, pushed you away.” Over and over.
“How are you doing now?”
“Better.”
“You do seem better.”
Finally, they’re talking. But then the server arrives carrying their meal and with their plates in front of them, and in the noise of the restaurant, it’s almost like their conversation never happened.
They eat. Murmur about the food, the weather.
Marcus asks after Bailey, and Elsie tells him about her sister’s upcoming wedding to Travis on November 12.
“Have you seen Amy recently?” Elsie asks.
Marcus takes a sip of his water, puts his glass down. “You?”
“No. Not since the day you left.” She pushes her plate to the side. “Did you stay friends, I mean after—” After he left, and she didn’t hear from either of them.
“For a while,” he says. He mops up the spaghetti sauce with the last of his bread. “Think you’ll look her up again?”
“It’s been years. I doubt we have anything in common anymore.
” Though at one time they had been nearly as inseparable as she and Marcus, staying up all night in the dorm they shared, dancing to the music of indie bands.
They had crammed for exams together. Swapped plans for the future.
Amy, with her psychology degree, would offer therapy and support to people who were unhoused.
Elsie would start her own business, providing GIS services to non-profits.
Elsie had nursed Amy through her breakup with a prickly, black-haired theatre student named Brittany, whom Elsie had never liked.
Amy had held Elsie’s hand through the whole of her mother’s funeral and cried with her after.
Now, in this restaurant in 2023, Elsie and Marcus both look down at the box of magnetic words, the past sitting there between them.
An uncomfortable silence falls on their table.
Around them, the clank of plates, the thump of music Elsie can only barely hear over the bubbling voices.
That’s it, then, she thinks, there’s nothing left between them. She can finally let go.
But then Marcus picks up the magnetic poetry box and dumps out the words and letters. He finds the ones he’s looking for and arranges them on the table.
I loved you, you know.
In response, Elsie strings together a sentence of her own: I loved you too.
Maybe I still do.
Elsie’s heart skips a beat. She looks up at him, but he’s focused on the letters, arranging a new line starting with the words, I would like to—.
But then the server comes by to take their plates and offer them a dessert menu, and Marcus is forced to push the words and letters into the empty box.
“I’d like to continue our conversation,” he says, scanning the desserts.
“Me too,” Elsie says, keeping her eyes on the glossy pictures of cheesecake, baklava, tiramisu.
“Perhaps we could hang out together this afternoon?” Marcus asks.
Elsie puts down her menu. “I can’t. I have an appointment.” With Zander. She’d booked a session to talk about the next chart in the atlas, the fourth house.
“No dessert, then?” Marcus asks. He’s still looking at the menu, but a grin plays up one side of his face.
“I don’t think so,” she says, smiling shyly.
Or should she indulge? It’s a strange thing to be here, in this place with Marcus after all this time.
She’s been longing for this moment for years.
But now Marcus seems so different, at least from how she remembers him.
He’s much more confident, even cocky. She’s not sure she likes it. Then again, she’s not sure she doesn’t.
Marcus holds up his credit card and the server brings over the card machine. When he’s done paying, they both collect their things and work their way through the crowd to get outside.
Clouds hang low. A light veil of rain drapes over them as they stand on the sidewalk. The car and city lights sparkle in the wet. “I should go,” Elsie says, looking down the street at her car. “My appointment’s at two. It’s kind of important.”
But then she lingers there with him, in the mist. She could cancel her appointment with Zander, rebook.
Marcus tips his chin down and eyes her as if he knows her mind. “We could meet again later.” He takes her hand, swings it. “Come on, stay.”
But his insistence decides it, for now. (Even small demands, like her daily chores, make Elsie anxious, and this is a big one.) “I can’t,” she says. “Not today.” She needs to work up to this.
“I really would like to do this again,” Marcus says.
“Me too.” And she would. She thinks she would.
“Soon,” he adds.
With his hands in his pockets, he leans in so close she thinks he’s about to kiss her, but he scans her face and, after holding her gaze a moment, spins on his heels. “Text me when you’re back in town,” he says, lifting a hand before ambling away.