Chapter Eleven
Sam
By the next morning, I'm pissed off. Mostly at myself. Autumn gets some of it too. She could've called. The thought shows up while I'm making coffee and sticks around long enough to make the first sip taste like ash.
She knows me. She knew exactly who she was getting involved with.
I never pretended to be a guy who could sit on a couch and pull the right words out of his ass because somebody needed them right then.
We were good. We were more than good, and months of that got reduced to one conversation where I couldn't say what she wanted me to say.
Maybe that's bullshit. Doesn't make me any less angry.
Now she's leaving.
The thought hits ugly and familiar enough that I don't bother fighting it. I knew she'd leave eventually. Maybe not London. Maybe back to New York, another assignment, some job too big to turn down. But Autumn was always going somewhere. I knew that from the beginning.
It doesn't make it any easier.
She never even told me she was leaving. She told Summer, though. While I was sitting here with the Working. Talk soon text on my phone, stupid enough to believe it meant exactly that.
She could've told me.
The text to her is still sitting unsent on my phone beside me.
Can I see you?
I stare at the four words.
Then at the list of things I'm blaming Autumn for not doing.
"Fuck."
I lock the screen and leave the phone where it is.
The Detroit troupe cancels before I've finished my coffee.
That, I know what to do with. Within a couple of days, I've replaced them with a group out of Milwaukee Bex has been trying to book for a year.
Two of them were already coming to Chicago that weekend, one has a sister in Logan Square, and after a couple of calls I get the whole group for less than Detroit was costing us.
I can get six performers from Milwaukee to Chicago on forty-eight hours' notice. I can't send four fucking words to Autumn. Later, I eat lunch behind the bar with my phone beside my plate. Her thread is still close enough to the top that I don't have to look for it. I open it.
Can I see you? is gone because deleting something once wasn't enough.
Now I type: I know you're busy. Can we talk before you leave?
Better. More honest, at least. I read it twice.
Then before you leave starts bothering me.
It makes the whole thing real in a way I don't want it to be yet, so I delete those three words.
I know you're busy. Can we talk? My thumb hovers over send.
If she says yes, I have to do more than send a sentence.
I erase the message. What I send instead is:
Me: Hope the tour stuff is going okay.
She reads it before I finish lunch. Nothing comes back. I leave my phone beside the plate for another ten minutes anyway. Still nothing. By the time I put it in my pocket, I'm pissed off again.
At her.
At me.
Mostly at the fact that I can't seem to keep those two things separate.
The next afternoon, I leave Vibes and walk to Autumn's building. There's no errand over there. Nobody I'm meeting. Nothing I need to pick up. I'm going to see her. That decision lasts all the way to the corner across from her building. Then I stop. Her front door is right there.
I've walked through it enough times. I know how long the elevator takes, which floorboard near her kitchen makes noise, where she throws her keys when she's tired.
All I have to do is cross the street. I get as far as the curb. If she opens the door, the same questions will still be waiting between us, and I won't have the bar between us this time. I stare at her building.
Showing up days later with I should have answered you feels pretty fucking thin.
So I stand there trying to come up with something better.
Nothing comes. A car turns onto the block behind me, and I step back from the curb.
I could step forward again, but I don't. Instead of crossing the street and letting Autumn decide whether what I have is enough, I decide for her that it isn't. Then I turn around.
On the way back to Vibes, I stop at the hardware store so I can fix a light in the storeroom that has been flickering. Twenty minutes later I'm on a ladder with the old ballast in my hand. I replace it, flip the switch and the light comes on the first time.
By the end of the week, I've convinced myself Autumn will come to Vibes before she leaves. She hasn't told me that. She hasn't answered my message either.
But Bex is here. Marisol is here. Lucia still thinks Autumn owes her a drawing of a dog-cat. Autumn has been part of this room for months. She'll come. And when she does, I'll be behind the bar. I know how to talk to her from behind the bar.
That's the excuse I'm going with.
Behind it, I know who needs another drink and who needs water. I know when Bex is getting close to done with somebody's shit and when Tony needs me to step into a conversation. I know how to read a room without anybody explaining it to me.
The night comes.
Autumn doesn't.
Bex catches me before she leaves. She's got her coat on and her bag over one shoulder, keys already in her hand, but she stops in the office doorway.
"Sam."
I'm halfway through an invoice. "Yeah?"
"Are you going to do anything?"
I look at her. I know exactly what she means.
I could tell her I walked to Autumn's building yesterday.
I could tell her I stood across the street and stared at her front door like an asshole.
I could tell her I've typed three different versions of please talk to me and managed to send the one that asks for absolutely nothing.
Instead I say, "She knows where I am." The sentence sounds worse once it's out loud, like that's enough, like she should still be the one coming to me.
Bex looks at me long enough that I almost start explaining. She doesn't ask me to. She just nods once. "Okay." Then she leaves.
For the rest of the night, I keep thinking she could've said more. That's probably the point.
It's Autumn's last night in Chicago.
The knowledge follows me downstairs in the morning and stays there all day without needing much attention from me.
It's there while I check deliveries, fix a problem with the reservation list and argue with Tony about a late delivery.
By the time we open, the room is busy enough that I can work around it.
That is usually enough, but not tonight.
The first time the front door opens, I look. Not her. A few minutes later, it opens again. Still not her.
Around eleven, I get busy enough that I forget.
Twenty minutes go by. Maybe forty. Then I realize I haven't looked at the door in a while.
My eyes find it immediately. Autumn isn't there.
The stupid part is that I still expect her.
Even after last call. Even while we start closing tabs.
Even when the crowd gets thin enough that I know exactly who's left in the room without counting.
She'll come in. She'll sit at the end of the bar. Maybe she'll be pissed. Fine. At least she'll be here. The door opens once more. A guy comes in looking for a phone he left the weekend before.
Near close, I wipe down the back bar and have to move the envelope. It's still sealed. My thumb touches the flap, then drops away.
At two fifteen, Tony locks the front door. I move the envelope back where it was and start counting the drawer.