11. Sweater Weather #2
For the first time since school started, Rhode has a Saturday night free. Kent Wully and his wife, Ruth, are taking the kids on a field trip to the mall in Springfield. (Kent has confided that he and Ruth plan to down a few Tipsy Zombies at Applebee’s. As suburban as this sounds, Rhode is jealous.)
If the Wullys can go out for a cocktail, Rhode reasons, he can too.
An Uber delivers Rhode to the only bar in nearby Haydensboro, the Alibi.
It’s a dive bar, and not the cool kind, though there’s a jukebox and a string of colored Christmas lights that sag like a downed power line over the bar.
Rhode takes a beat before he steps inside.
He’d prefer not to bump into anyone from school.
Both Coop and Mav live in Haydensboro, and Rhode knows that Chef Haz frequents the Alibi.
Rumor has it even Audre makes an appearance from time to time.
Rhode suspects the real reason he’s apprehensive is because the last time he came to this bar, he was with Simone.
When he pulls open the heavy wooden door, he’s met with the smell of beer and cooking grease. (At the very least, Rhode thinks, he’ll be able to smash some loaded tater tots.)
The place is disappointingly empty for a Saturday night at eight o’clock.
There are three guys at the far right of the bar—one of them in a fishing vest, one in a Mad River Glen trucker hat, one of them a generation older than the other two.
They’re a father and sons, Rhode deduces, who probably spent the day out on Sweet Pond, just over the border in Vermont, and are now watching college football on TV.
Rhode might have to pretend to be interested in the game, but once his eyes adjust, he sees a woman in the corner seat at the left of the bar.
He only has a view from behind, but that much looks promising: She has long dark hair in soft waves; she’s wearing jeans and a white sleeveless T-shirt that shows off toned arms. When she raises her wineglass to her mouth, gold bracelets slip down her wrist.
The jukebox is playing Tom Petty, “Don’t Do Me Like That.”
The most important decision of Rhode’s night is which seat to take.
He’d like to plunk down right next to the woman—his whole reason for coming out tonight was to meet someone—but he has learned enough about red flags to give this woman some space.
He chooses a seat that leaves two stools between them, and he exhibits enormous self-control by not looking over at her as he sits down.
The bartender—Jefferson is his name, Rhode remembers this much and also that the guy is kind of a dick—is caught up talking Big Ten at the other end of the bar with the fishing trio.
The game is Ohio State–Indiana and appears to be a big deal, though Rhode knows embarrassingly little about college football.
(He went to Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, which wasn’t exactly an athletic powerhouse.)
Rhode tries to get Jefferson’s attention with a wave, a throat-clearing. But Jefferson is deep in conversation, talking now about the defensive coordinator for Ohio State, who is apparently also some kind of rocket scientist.
Rhode feels like he’s been left with his pants down. How can he not get a drink in a bar with only four other patrons?
He calls out, “Excuse me!”
Jefferson holds out a Heisman hand in his direction.
“Hold your horses!” This is something Rhode’s grandfather used to say.
Rhode is so offended that he nearly reaches over the bar and pours himself a shot of Jack Daniel’s—but this will only serve to get him banned from the Alibi forever.
He sinks back in his stool, resentfully envisioning the Wullys, by now happily ensconced in a booth at Applebee’s, drinking Tipsy Zombies.
(Teachers are obviously not supposed to drink on field trips, but Roy Ewanick is driving the van and the Wullys have more than fifty years of tenure combined and therefore can do whatever they damn well please.
They can have three Tipsy Zombies apiece!)
Rhode hears a soft laugh from his left—his impotence has been observed by the Woman with the Good Arms—and now his humiliation is complete.
When he turns to look at her, she holds her wineglass aloft and says, “Don’t let it bother you.
It took me thirty minutes to get this chardonnay.
That guy”—here she drinks deeply—“does not give a fuck about his Yelp reviews.”
It’s love at first quip for Rhode, who appreciates nothing more in a woman than a sense of humor, though it doesn’t hurt that the one beside him is also attractive and age-appropriate.
She may even have a few years on Rhode—right?
He’s terrible at guessing people’s ages (the third- and fourth-formers at Tiffin all look twelve years old, the fifth- and sixth-formers look twenty-five), but he would say mid- to late forties for his companion.
She has the well-preserved look that money provides (Pilates class, Botox), and although she’s wearing what Rhode thinks of as “married jewelry”—the gold bracelets, layered gold chains as thin as thread, diamond stud earrings—she isn’t wearing a wedding ring.
Is tonight his lucky night?
He says, “I’d leave right now and go to a different bar… except there isn’t one.”
This makes his new friend laugh and, incredibly, move over to the stool beside him. “I’ll keep you company while you wait.”
Rhode pivots toward her and offers a hand. “That’s very kind of you. I’m Rhode.”
She tilts her head so that her long hair brushes the beer-sticky bar, and Rhode clarifies. “It’s a family name on my mother’s side. Like Rhode Island.”
“Now, there is a state I never think about,” she says, shaking his hand.
The song changes to “Fool in the Rain” by Led Zeppelin.
“Did you feed the jukebox?” Rhode asks.
“The guy in the vest did,” she says. “Though I wholly approve.”
At that moment, Jefferson appears before Rhode. “What can I get you, Mr. Excuse Me?”
Rhode was planning on sticking with beer, but wanting to telegraph alpha, he orders a bourbon on the rocks. “And”—here he turns to the woman—“another chardonnay for the lady?” He nearly cringes at himself. What century is he from?
The woman slides her glass toward Jefferson. “Please,” she says, winking at Rhode. “And thank you.”
When their drinks arrive, Rhode says, “You didn’t tell me your name.”
“Well,” the woman says, spinning her wineglass, “that’s because I’m keeping a low profile.”
“Are you on the lam?” Rhode asks.
“No, nothing that exciting.”
“Tax evasion?”
“Quite possibly, though not intentional,” the woman says. “You can call me S.”
“S?”
“Just the letter S,” she says, and Rhode thinks, It’s official. We are in a movie.
“Well, cheers, S,” he says, holding up his bourbon.
They clink glasses, and Rhode takes a moment to study S’s face.
She’s carefully made up, and while Rhode prefers a natural look so that he knows what he’s getting (Simone wore very little makeup, Yardley none at all), he figures that S went to so much trouble with her brows and lashes and lips because she wants to meet someone. And here he is.
“So, Rhode, what do you do?” S asks.
Rhode nearly tells S the truth: I’m an English teacher at Tiffin Academy. But since they seem to be role-playing, Rhode says, “I’m an attorney.”
S visibly brightens, and Rhode congratulates himself on a strategic move.
“What kind?” she asks.
“Estate planning,” Rhode says. “I have a client in town who’s rewriting his will. Boy, are his kids going to be surprised.” He adds a callous little laugh and marvels how this just flowed out of him. But of course it did: He’s a fiction writer!
“Are you just in town for the night, then?”
“That I am,” Rhode says, throwing back his bourbon like someone who actually knows what probate court is.
“Well then,” S says. “Let’s make it memorable.”
They order another round of drinks, then shots, then, because Ohio State scores a touchdown and the men at the other end of the bar are happy about this, there’s a round of shots for the bar, then S puts quarters in the jukebox, playing “Break My Stride” by Matthew Wilder, which causes Rhode and S to put their heads together and sing out, “I sailed away to China, in a little rowboat to find ya…”
Then “Silver Springs” by Fleetwood Mac comes on, and S pulls Rhode to his feet and they hit the “dance floor”—the space between the door and the bar. When the song finishes, the three fishermen clap and Jefferson replenishes their drinks without being asked.
The night is charmed.
Rhode is starving. He asks Jefferson if the kitchen is still open—“Yup”—then orders the loaded tater tots.
When they arrive, S claps her hands. Rhode is now officially in love.
Along with a sense of humor, Rhode seeks women with healthy, even lusty, appetites.
S’s physique might suggest that she’s a vegan or that she deploys the loathsome phrase “cheat day”—but instead, she dives right in.
When the football game ends, the three fishermen exit the Alibi with a wave and a flurry of good cheer.
Now it’s just Rhode and S left under the chaperoning eye of Jefferson.
It’s time to make a move, Rhode thinks—but he’s hog-tied because he can’t offer to bring S back to his place (“his place” is a dorm room in Classic North!).
S thankfully hasn’t asked where he’s staying; he’d have to say the Hampton Inn in Capulet Falls, because what other option is there?
“Should we…?” Rhode says.
“Go to my place?” S says. “I live around the block.”
Ahhhh! Rhode thinks. Bingo.