Chapter 28 rire dans sa barbe #2
“I just—I should’ve known,” she said with a sigh. “I left New York to escape all my bad decisions, but they just seem to follow me.”
“That can’t be true.”
In reply, she pointed to a guy at the other end of the bar and said, “Jerry, thirty-seven. Refuses to compromise on anything—and I mean anything.” Then she pointed over at the two men playing pool.
“And that guy over there in the red beanie is Mike with the Mustache, not to be confused with Michael with the Mustache, but both of them pretty much want the same kind of girl.”
“Oh?”
“The kind that doesn’t exist,” she intoned dryly. “Good at cooking and small talk, bad at caring when they slip up on the whole monogamous thing. I guess all the Mikes—even the y’s—have that in common,” she added bitterly.
All three of the guys looked about the same—tall, broad shouldered, white, smelling vaguely of lumberjack plaid and art school debt.
And the ones who weren’t smelling like oil paints and 35-mm film came from fishing families, and when the catches dried up in the sea they learned how to fish on land.
There were only about five hundred people in the town limits, and most of those townsfolk were proud card-carrying AARP members and delighted in early-bird specials. So I couldn’t blame Juliette for absconding to a place like this; it was the perfect haven for someone with men-adjacent troubles.
Except, of course, there were still men.
“I’m open to poly, you know? But just, like, tell me,” she said with a disappointed sigh.
“Well, that’s unfortunate for them,” I said. “You’re a catch.”
“I’m gullible, and easy to trust, and naive.” She counted them on her fingers like they were faults.
“And you’re hardworking and brilliant and competent—things people wished they could be,” I pointed out, glancing back at the men playing pool.
They didn’t look remarkable at all. But Juliette didn’t seem like the type of person to cry over a man after two dates.
“You’re not just upset about the dentist, are you? What’s wrong?”
She took a gulp of beer, as if to steel herself for the answer. “He’s getting married.”
“Um. Myke?”
“Rob. My ex,” she added, quieter. “We’d been on and off for the last few years until I finally …
told him I couldn’t do it anymore. Date him until he got bored, just to be there for him again when he missed me.
I moved up here to escape all of that, but even hundreds of miles away, I can’t escape him.
And now seeing that he’s getting married …
” She pursed her lips together tightly, as if the word were bitter. “I wonder if I’m, like, the problem.”
“You aren’t.”
“You’re sweet,” she replied. “I wish I could be more like you.”
I gave a start, turning on my barstool to her. “What—why?” I was a mess. A wreck.
“Because, like, you’re so cool. Nothing bothers you, not even the goose!
I feel like all I ever do is talk about men to you, and I feel so silly.
It’s, like, obsessive, you know? But you’ve never talked about anyone.
” As she said it, her eyebrows fur-rowed and she frowned. “You actually never talk about anyone.”
I shrugged, though my chest felt tight. I hoped the discomfort didn’t show on my face. “I don’t have much to talk about.”
“That can’t be true.”
I forced a laugh. “Why not?”
“Because you’re too brilliant, and sometimes you look too sad.”
“Wow, too sad?”
On the mic, Wykofski introduced their next song—“Story of My Life”—which felt a little on the nose for the moment. He turned the pop song into a sort of bluesy introspection. In another life, I’m sure he could’ve made a pretty great folk musician. I wondered why he hadn’t in this one.
“You know, I’m a great listener,” she went on with a kind smile, one that made me feel ashamed to hide so much from her. “I’m, like, really good at it, actually. Some say I’m the best.”
“The best listener?”
“I’ve honed my ears through years of audiobooks on my jogs through Central Park,” she replied seriously. “I was born for this.”
I laughed. It was a real one, light and fizzy. “I’ll keep that in mind. And I just want you to know—you’re not the problem. Your ex sounds like someone who never appreciated you. I’d rather spend the rest of my life alone than with someone like that.”
“I know you’re right. It just still hurts.”
“Good. That means you’re not a serial killer.”
She threw her head back with a laugh and then shook herself out. “No, I guess I’m not. But, like, you know what? Fuck men! I don’t want to waste any more breath on them tonight. How was your day? Anything exciting happen that has nothing to do with the bicentennial?”
I began to vent about the vines again but realized that was part of the bicentennial.
So was the soggy Wildflower Garden, and weeding the beds around the old oak tree in the Central Garden, and the goose.
God, what were we going to do about the goose during the party?
Never mind my preoccupation with Rus, but I’d run away from Rus.
I wanted to kick myself every time I thought about it.
I should have just talked to him. I should have made him understand.
Or I at least should have apologized for being such a coward.
But Juliette was just venting over her boy problems. She didn’t need to hear about mine.
“I’m trying to figure out why the Mingus dahlias in the Central Garden don’t want to”—I made a motion upward with my hands.
“To Mingus?” she suggested.
“To Mingus,” I agreed, and we laughed.
Juliette wiped the tears out of her eyes. “Oh, you’re the best. Thank you—oh no, is that Oliver?” she asked with a gasp, and I turned to the front door.
It was Oliver, and he was about to drunk-strip right in the middle of the Wharf to Ned Wykofski and the Heat Wave’s immaculate rendition of “Best Song Ever.”