Page 38 - Vol. VII #1

Breakfast (continued from preceding page) “I’ll miss them when we go,” he said.
“I heard the good news,” Debbie said.
“What?” Veronica pulled her damp, sweaty blouse away from her skin.
“Denver,” Debbie said. “My ex, Larry, lives out west— you should visit him. He’s a riot.”
“Saint Larry of the TV set,” Veronica said. She hated how people talked about their “ex’s” when they hadn’t married. She thought only marriage allowed the dramatic gesture of the X.
“Larry’s no saint....” Debbie said. “Does that thing still work?”
“Good to see you, again,” Veronica said. “Thanks for coming.”
“Yeah, great to see you,” Carl said to Debbie. He squeezed Veronica tight as if trying to make some point in their odd game of no rules.
“You too,” Debbie said. She hugged Carl awkwardly while he was still squeezing Veronica.
Veronica detached herself —she felt like she’d spent the whole night fleeing. A couple of small lamps glowed dimly from the corners of the dark room. Bod- ies bounced to the music in the living room cleared of furniture while, in the party tradition, those interested in talking or uninterrupted drinking gathered in the kitchen. The groups began to blend a bit. Jack was hunched over her friend Iris. Veronica wanted to warn her, but Iris was an adult. They were all adults.
~
Veronica spent two more nights at Carl’s in the week after the party. Still, she had not told him. After a night at the bars, they sat in the large round booth in the window at Pamela’s. She usually ordered light, but this morning she was going for the morning-after: your choice of meat, two eggs, toast, pancakes, hash browns, coffee.
“I’ve been meaning to tell you,” Carl said. “They de- cided not to offer me the Denver job after all, so maybe we should step back a little....But keep on go- ing forward,” he added.
“What, did your friends take a vote on it? I didn’t get a vote,” she said. She dumped the runny eggs on top of her pancakes. She broke the yolks and smeared them around.
He looked like he wanted to protest, his mouth open, his hand clutching his fork, poised in the air to make a gesture, but he lowered it to his plate and shoveled in another mouthful.
“Look,” he said finally. “The older you get, the messier life gets, the less things seem right and wrong and you just start weaving in some in-between zone.”
“What?” she said, her voice rising with anger. “You....”
But he was just getting started. “And all these little vapor trails behind you of all the people who touched you along the way—they never totally disappear, and sometimes the wind shifts and sends them back into your life and all the dramatic stuff you got so worked up over...You’re not listening...”
“I wasn’t going to Denver with you,” she said. “I was thinking we’d have a clean break—you’d go away, and that’d be it.”
“Oh, Veronica,” he said. “There’s no such thing as a clean break. Besides, you love me too much.” He showed his teeth in a rehearsed smile.
“I’m not this little naïve waif just because I haven’t fucked every friend I’ve ever made,” she said. Her head hurt. Her knees ached from the wet, cold rain. “Here we are on a cloudy day, and you’re not asking me to marry you, are you?”
“But you’d say no. Are you messing with me?”
“What, suddenly ambiguity doesn’t suit you, Man of Many Contradictions?” She gave him a tight smile back. “The shoe salesman with a gun?” She’d been saving that one. “Why did you lie?”
“You wanted me to lie,” he said.
“Was it a lie about the job? About getting it, or not getting it?”
She didn’t want an answer. The waitress poured them more coffee from a dirty glass carafe. Veronica couldn’t get enough of it—she wanted to stay up for- ever. “I don’t think there even is a Pamela,” she said. “It’s just a name somebody liked. They probably did market research.”
She jerked the cup to her lips, and coffee dripped down onto her jacket. She swiped at it with her shredded napkin. She knew he was right, at least a little bit. “You’re messing with me,” she continued. “It’s like there’s a wall of crutches and you’re picking out each one and trying it out to see what holds you up the best.”
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