It’s not what but who waits for William beyond the old restaurant’s fake Tuscan exterior. Had the soles of his shoes been made of sandpaper, they might have scuffed his long strides into the cement, he’s been pacing that long. If colleague or competitor, friend or foe could see the layers of indecision riding the few lines on his face, they would forever mock him. Thankful none of them can bear witness to his current state, he peeks through the streaked window like a kid spying on a naked neighbor: it’s 1969 inside. Wurlitzer jukebox. Bowed plastic dieffenbachias. Checkered tablecloths and red pleather booths. The lone woman sitting in one of those booths near the jukebox catches his eye. Her back to him—the familiar curve of her long neck melting into shapely shoulders, fingers tugging at her pixie cut—the impatient gesture he’d witnessed a thousand times. It’s her.
Last week, the first bars of Tears of a Clown broke the silence of William’s office. Connie’s ringtone. Back in the day, he would have recognized the number without the Motown riff, and his heart would have, yes, skipped a beat. Back in the day, he craved the sound of their voices commingling like cinnamon and nutmeg in his favorite sweet potato pie. After ten years, he thought he’d deleted everything about Constance Aileen Montgomery-Anderson and their time together from his contact list, his memory, and his heart. He didn’t want to hear Smokey’s voice or his ex-wife’s “Hello” lilting on that greeting’s final syllable, sending him back, back, back. Smokey crooning songs of lovers’ joy and pain. Them on the dance floor, dipping and scrunching to every note. Grinding their bodies this way and that into positions he knew his no longer could. Back then, nothing had been better.
William counted to four, then poked the phone. “You sure you’ve got the right number?” Humor had always worked for them.
“Some things are unforgettable.” Connie went on, chatting as if phone calls between them were still part of their daily routine. Would he meet her at DeLuca’s?
In the three, maybe four, times they’ve seen each other since signing the final divorce papers—her father’s funeral, a random fundraiser, the thirtieth anniversary party of friends who didn’t see any reason not to invite them both—they maintained a cordial distance.
She needed a favor.
“Go ahead, Connie. Shoot.” William glared at the computer’s screen, half-listening, half rereading the description of a multicolored chart for what seemed like the thousandth time in hopes of adding a poetic edge to the boring document. “Say whatever you have to say, I’ve got a lot on my plate.” He had to meet his client’s looming deadline. He needed to get home. He wanted the past to stay where it belonged.
“Well, I always said we’d be friends forever, right?”
William snickered. He wanted to say friends never cheat on friends. But then, they were both guilty on that count. Instead, he reminded himself, and Connie: “That was a long time ago.”
“It was, and right now, I need an old friend.” One way or another, this woman was a mistress of urgency, insisting he return to their old stomping ground.
After all this time, was it possible she could still get him to do what he knew better than doing? He pressed his fingers against his temples quelling the twinge of the oncoming headache her request had triggered. Dropping his hands back on the computer’s keyboard, he realized they were damp. If he said no, they’d go round and round in circles until one of them gave up. Or, maybe she’d changed, and that would be interesting to see. Two could play her game, and he supposed he owed her a decent conversation.
He countered, without committing: thirty minutes, no walks down memory lane—neither the romantic nor the guilt-riddled ones. He disconnected before she could change his terms, then slammed his desk with both fists felling the framed picture of his now-wife and his stepson in the aftershock.
Go in or go home.
Like his parents, William believes in a higher power, but avoids religion and most of the ten commandments. His personal rules of behavior, devised during his college days to separate himself from CP-Time clichés and angry Black man stereotypes, guide his actions and words. And yet, here he is dilly-dallying, the man who prides himself on his ability to stay cool, forgetting his cardinal rule: be punctual, no matter what.
Behind him, two little kids escape their parents’ grasp and join a covey of giddy teenage girls. Together they scuttle past William and jerk the restaurant’s door, releasing a rapper’s strident remix of You Really Got a Hold on Me into the street. William steps away from the mother and father who generously apologize for the boundless energy of youth, then follows them inside.
Signore DeLuca spots William and blocks the impatient teens who complain, nearly knocking over the owner on their way to the jukebox. The elderly man hobbles the short distance. His hairline has traveled well past receding, and his belt barely contains his girth.
“Benvenuto a casa!” His customary loud greeting for regulars prompts cooks, servers, and diners, including Connie, to applaud. These days, no matter how often William eats at the same restaurant, shops at the same store, or meets the same clients, no one has ever made him feel so welcomed.
Once he and Connie became official regulars, Signore confided the reason behind his boisterous greetings: he never wanted his customers to feel small and alone as he had when he’d first arrived in the United States. Friends helped him realize, big or not, this was where he belonged. He wanted his regulars to feel big and part of a special place, too.
The elderly man wraps his arm around William. “I knew when your Constance came in, you would not be far behind.” Questions spout from his mouth almost in rhythm to the bad rap blasting from the jukebox. What has taken them so long to return? Where are their bambinos who surely must have bambinos of their own by now? The same interrogation, coated with disappointment, still spouts from his parents’ mouths. William doesn’t have the heart to burst Signore’s bubble.
From across the room, Connie signals to William and waves to one of the girls now crowding around the jukebox. The girl steps to Connie’s booth where they hug and exchange a few words before Connie hands her money. Connie looks so at ease with the girl, he wonders if she ever regrets their decision.
In the beginning, they teased each other, imagined what a child of theirs might look like and the kind of parents they would like to be. Him leery of inheriting his mother’s uneven interest and his father’s critical eye. Her tottering on a tightrope, afraid of failing her parents’ encouraging, yet high bar. They eventually tilted toward none and moved on.
As if he doesn’t know the way, Signore walks William to the very booth he and Connie claimed as their own at least twice a month in their first years of marriage. They pass a mature couple seated shoulder-to-shoulder on the booth’s bench. The gold bands on the couple’s fingers are dull with age. They beam at each other as if this is their first date. William looks away just as the husband bites a drooping triangle of pizza then holds it to his wife’s open mouth. William doesn’t remember when he and Connie stopped sharing the same side of a booth. More than anything, he supposes separate seating was for the sake of his comfort. The pizza slice sharing stopped when the gesture felt more like messy obligation than romance.
As soon as they reach Connie, she stands, tugs at her hair, and smooths her dress.
“Hey, Willie. You look good.”
“Hello, Connie.” He wonders what they are to each other in this moment. She’s not the woman he’d lived with for close to eighteen years, different and the same all at once. Thinner. Heavier makeup. Long hair trimmed down to a scanty do. The same lovely smile lets him know she’s pleased he’s come. Her eyes show she’s uneasy.
Muscle memory kicks in, and they close the gap between them with a brief, virginal hug.
Signore grabs their hands, presses them together, inspects their faces almost bursting into tears. “Lovebirds, still. You broke my jukebox, playing Mr. Smokey Robinson so many times.” He hums a generic riff that could or could not be Smokey’s. “See? I remember. Tonight will be like old times.” Signore grins, leaving them with the promise to return.
Connie sits, stretches her hand across the space beside her, a Black Vanna White showing off the booth’s decrepitude, and beckons him to her side. There is something to be said for the sight of her seated in their old booth, challenging the sturdiness of the nether region where his love for her settled. He doesn’t bother asking how she garnered this booth, suspecting Signore DeLuca had a hand in creating this trip down memory lane. If his knees weren’t bothering him, he would’ve checked under the table curious about what was still there. A picture would be easy if he used his cell phone to see if his carving had outlasted their marriage. What would Tina say, or throw, if she discovered the photo of the heart encircling the initials, WCA + CAM-A?
“You’ve got thirty minutes, Connie. Let’s get to it.” William glances at the middle-aged couple they could have been, then sits opposite his ex. “But I’m telling you right now, if this is about money, you can forget it.”
“If this was about money, William, I would’ve asked for a check. Is the little woman still protesting my alimony?”
“Low blow, Con.”
“But of course, she is.” She cocks her head, looks him in straight in the eye as she had the first time they met. “What was I thinking?”
“You never did catty well, Con. So stop.” It’s him, not his new-wife, who resents the alimony the State of California requires him to pay until Connie remarries or cohabitates or wins the dang-gone lottery, along with an unequal division of various art and objects collected from their travels, and their timeshare in Mexico where they’d spent warm evenings on the terrace practicing Spanish, drinking lime-infused Tecate, and sometimes...
“She has absolutely nothing to worry about you know.”
After Connie’s phone call, he’d slammed his laptop shut and told his secretary he was leaving early. On his way to the house he lived in with his new-wife and eleven-year-old stepson, William couldn’t shake the guilty feeling. His guilt was unearned. It was just a phone call. Nothing more. Women Tina’s age didn’t take things in stride as well as some older women. No reason to stir things up. At least, that was the conclusion he came to by the time he reached the fancy market on his way up the hill and bought a bouquet of yellow roses for Tina. Just because, or so he rationalized; red roses were Connie’s favorite. The three heirloom rose bushes planted in front of the house they once shared had filled spring nights with their sweet scent. The imported ones in his hand were fragrance-free. No sense in bringing that memory home.
So. Life is good, yes?”
She’s trying too hard. Not brazen. Just Connie, persistent with a timing of her own. He scans the face he can’t read any more for clues. Nothing.
“Look, Con, I don’t have time for whatever you think is going on here.” He speaks, just as the rap song ends its second round and a different song starts—too loud, too bouncy, too girly-pop. It sucks the punch from his words.
“Hey. Dance—” Connie clears her throat. “S’cuse me.” She clears her throat a second time before taking a calming breath. “Dance with me.”
William has no intention of taking Connie in his arms. “C’mon, Con.” He wants to go home; he wants to stay. Frozen in his seat like a chump who needs to get his ass up and out of this musty old restaurant whose pizza was never that good anyway.
“Chicken.”
Connie sings along with the pop melody. Her voice hits a raw note. The old Connie would never have liked the offkey beat or the simple lyrics. Time has done what time does. What else about her has changed that he refuses to track on social media or allow gossipy friends to repeat? He wonders if his changes are as obvious— hair more gray than brown, rounder face and stomach, glasses. The impatience has always been there.
Connie rifles through her handbag methodically tossing items on the table, reminding him of the beautiful Pandora who opened a chest expecting treasure and instead released evil, leaving only hope behind. There’s no treasure in Connie’s purse. Nothing evil either. Only Kleenex, lipstick, a notepad, a heart-shaped pillbox, and a host of miscellaneous whatnots. William wonders what Connie hopes now, after luring him to this place so loaded with yesterdays, while his new-wife and boy wait for him. She pulls out a small coin purse, then drops her handbag onto the bench.
“What are you doing?” He checks his watch—ten minutes feel like thirty have already passed.
Connie ignores him and heads for the jukebox as the pop song ends. Leaning close to the glass shell, she slides money into the machine. Tap. Tap. Tap. Smokey’s voice eases out the speakers. Arms shoulder high, dancing with an imaginary partner, Connie two-steps back to their booth. Even this way, she still looks good. Some things divorce and a new-wife can’t change.
“Now will you dance with me?” Eyes shut, she sways to the music, sings with Smokey, her voice nearly matching his. You really got a hold on me. She’s a goner.
He shakes his head no as his phone pings. He reads the text, then quickly pecks a response. They have a thing, he and Tina. If he’s working late, she puts his dinner aside, helps Mario with his homework, and watches spoiled TV housewives run amok until he texts he’s on his way. Once home, he shares the highlights of his long day. How will he explain this one?
“Con, be serious. Sit.”
“I’m not a dog, you know.” There’s a hint of anger and her irresistible playfulness, offset with a touch of something new. She sits, back straight looking like she’s ready to throw a punch. “I’m…I not well—”
“What are you saying, Con?”
“I’m saying I’m sick, Willie. Serious sick.”
A sharp puff of air escapes William’s lips along with the chip on his shoulder. The Connie he knew was the picture of health. Maybe one cold a year, two at most, and a little arthritis in her right big toe that predicted, sometimes, rain was on the way. This is the last thing he expected to hear, asking him for money would have been clean and easy. “What kind of sick, Con? Flu sick? Cancer sick? Heart—”
The voice arrives first. “Benvenuto a casa!” Signore and two waiters appear at their table. “Allora! Tonight is like old times!”
Connie and William flinch at the loud greeting. William raises his hand as if their words were floating around them, as if he can grab them and create one easy answer.
The shortest server sets a carafe of wine on the table, while the muscular server places a large pepperoni pizza between their wine glasses. Proof positive Connie was certain William would show up.
He can’t decide if the pizza covering the distance between them is a life jacket or an anchor. Cheese pizza is Mario’s favorite. Tina claims it’s easier, given her social and volunteer schedules and the boy’s afterschool activities. At least that’s what she says when he asks for a homecooked meal, maybe a big Sunday dinner and sweet potato pie. Connie was never a great cook, but those were the days he didn’t mind sharing a few domestic responsibilities.
“Mangia! Mangia!” Signore grins, waiting for them to bite into the thick house specialty. They beg him to please take a slice, it’s too much. Signore looks at the pizza like a lost love and explains he’s eaten so much of his favorite food that his doctor swears he’ll have a heart attack if he doesn’t stop.
William frowns at the circles of the fatty meat swimming in red oil and figures pizza might take him down, too. He offers his hand, re-teaching Signore the soul-brother handshake. Connie kisses Signore’s cheek. They stare at Signore DeLuca. Neither wants to tell him divorce has sent them their separate ways. That this is the first time they’ve been together in ten years. That only one of them knows why they’re here, and she’s on the verge of telling, if Signore would only leave them alone.
Tighter. Even Smokey wants Connie to finish what she started before Signore surprised them.
“How sick?” William’s heart pounds.
“Once upon a time this was our song, Willie. I’m getting mushy just hearing it.” Connie pours wine in their glasses, downs hers like water, then refills her glass. She stretches her arms to him. “Back in the day, you’d dance with me anywhere.”
“Don’t tease, Con. Cut to the chase.” William whispers, not meaning to be mean.
“Be nice, please. I’m not doing so good these days.”
Sour words ruined their marriage. Toward the end, neither of them could find anything nice to say or any way to say things nicely. William folds a pizza slice, bites into the pepperoni and cheese, then stretches his arm until it’s close to Connie who giggles before leaning in for a small bite. “I thought you hated this.”
“Tell me what’s making you sick?”
“Does the label really matter? I’m sick enough to have called you after all this time. There’s your clue. I need your help.”
William’s gut aches and he wants to ask if, if she is dying, but he can’t make the harsh possibility cross his lips. Instead, he shakes off the feeling that whatever she has, whatever else she says will change his life. Almost like seeing her that first time at a party too many years ago to count.
One of Smokey’s hits filled the rec center that night. A fast and easy song. A song a girl wouldn’t mind dancing to if a guy asked. The serendipity of Smokey’s song synched with what went through William’s heart the moment Connie entered the room. …If you feel like giving me a lifetime of devotion, I second that emotion. Good ole Smokey. Hair slicked back. Green eyes on that Black man made the girls fall madly in lust. William doesn’t favor the famous man or have his seductive eyes. He believed they had a connection of spirit and poetry. His name made him feel like Smokey’s soul brother. William Carter Anderson and William “Smokey” Robinson. William’s ordinary eyes connected with her upturned ones so hard, so fast, he’d turned from her to his frat-boys’ camaraderie, not wanting her to know how quickly she’d got a hold on him, and there was no letting go.
I’ll explain. I promise.” She rubs her hand across her hair, stopping before it makes its way to the nape of her neck as if she’s trying to control this habit. “Let’s talk for a minute. You know, act normally.”
“Normal? You and me?” He laughs. “Think about it. This is as far from normal as we’ve ever been.” William’s heart pounds. His stomach gurgles, his right knee aches. “Let me help, Con? What do you need?”
“I need you to talk to me.”
He takes a deep breath and releases it counting to five in his head. He wants to settle into her need, maybe make up for cheating. Even if she no longer cares. Even if she cheated, too. He remembers the days they depended on each other. In sickness and health. In the scheme of divorce and time and a new spouse, helping her through whatever is the cause for her slight body, her thinning hair, and a pallor on her lovely brown skin is something he can do. This time with his ex-wife will not their marriage break. If Tina can’t understand, he’ll find a way, like he always does, to fix it.
They fall into light-hearted repartee, as Connie used to call the quips that provoked endless laughter. Like a game, they’re ready to play catchup. Boxers sizing up their opponent. William throws the first punch, if for no other reason than to win.
He’s at the top of his game. His Silicon Valley business is growing. Her days of hustling real estate have slowed to occasional sales—aging clients downsizing, their children looking to upgrade, the occasional referral. He, Tina—they hit their ten-year anniversary a couple of months ago—and Mario her son, his now, vacation in mountains and beaches around the world. She can’t believe he’s taken to nature. She’s short on creative ideas. He’s trying but failing at meditation. She’s succeeding at tai chi and meditation. He can’t believe she’s able to sit still for more than five minutes.
“I’m happy for you, Willie. You deserve to be forever happy.”
“You, too.” He bites his tongue; hopes she understands what he means. “I’m sorry. You know what I mean.”
“Don’t apologize. I’m happy in moments.” Connie cuts her pizza slice with a knife and fork. A droplet of oil lands unnoticed on the bodice of her dress. The old Connie would have paid more attention. She pushes chunks of pizza around the edges of her plate using the food as decoration rather than nutrition. “I’m happy in this moment.”
“Go ahead, Con. If you can take it, I can too.”
“Well, it’s not contagious, that’s for sure.” Connie makes a face and, like a smart-aleck kid, sticks out her tongue. “This is where we fell in love…over a damned double pepperoni pizza.”
“I know. I was here.”
“I want that back. For a little while. Even if—”
“I’m married, Con. Mario. . . I’m his role model, a good dad. I can’t dip into those moments.” He’s dipping in one right now. The first time he told Connie he loved her he’d awakened from a wet dream. Somehow the dreamy release made it easier for him to speak the words. He loved her energy as much as her body, her willingness to take risks and encourage him to do the same. He never recalled the whole dream. Only the part where Connie was walking away, and he had to stop her. That was then. Now reality feels like a nightmare stirring up old feelings a married man shouldn’t have for someone he used to love. It has him considering his rules in the way he should have when they were married. Love or respect or simply one old friend to another: “I’ll do whatever I can to help. In home care. Assisted living. I’ll research specialists. Pay for plane tickets. Whatever—”
“—We didn’t do so bad, did we?”
It’s senseless to think of all the things that went right and wrong with their marriage. Is it possible for a marriage to fall apart over a bruised ego or was it merely the last straw?
Together William and Connie were physically and mentally compatible. More often than not, it seemed they disagreed. Insignificant challenges, at first. Definitions: the correct use of words like accept or except, regardless or irregardless. Directions: she said right, he turned left, and vice versa—each one wrong or right fifty percent of the time. (Now every car he shares with Tina has GPS.) Eventually, the challenges turned serious: kids or no kids, church or no church, fidelity or not.
Subtext weighted their differences. Discontent. Betrayal—his, then hers. Eighteen years later, on the day they ended the dream of a forever life together, Connie stood in the garage of her lawyer’s building, and he found himself driving toward her, toying with the idea of grazing within inches of her designer-clad body not to kill, to spook her. In that same second, she caught his eyes and spit on his car. He’d zoomed away spittle and all.
I think you wanted to be friends forever, too.”
“Divorce changed that.” Love for his first love nudges a corner of his heart. He wonders if it’s wrong for a man to compartmentalize his feelings, only to resurrect them so effortlessly.
“Divorce and Miss Tina didn’t conveniently come along as soon as you were divorced, now did she?” Connie’s eyes rest on William’s, the intensity strikes hot as lightening.
He cannot hold her gaze. What brought them to this point he has no idea, he has too many ideas. Love, the arguments, the tension, the betrayals, love—all ancient history. For sanity’s sake, for the possibility of future love, he’d moved on.
“I released your…let’s call it indiscretion, a long time ago.” A war is simmering in the lines around her mouth, in the corners of her brown eyes. She searches the room for a distraction before looking at him again. “It’s why I can think of you as my friend. And I need a favor from my friend. A big one.”
“How much?”
“A favor isn’t always about money.”
“But that’s the nature of our current relationship. Remember?”
“I remember we made love listening to Smokey. You were a little crazy. Does your wife even know who Smokey Robinson is?” Connie laughs.
“My wife?” William wants to laugh, too. His new-wife knows Smokey from You Tube and thirty-second jingles. He holds back knowing Connie is laughing at her own private joke, and he is no longer privy to her thoughts. “Connie Con. Still a little crazy.” He’s still a little crazy, too.
He scans the room: the middle-aged couple exchanges quick kisses, the girls at the jukebox complain about Connie’s selections, the crash of dishes in the kitchen. Connie tugs at her hair. Anyone in the restaurant looking their way might think she’s adjusting wandering strands. William pats his stomach knowing the reverse is true. Anyone in the restaurant looking their way might think he’s eager for more pizza. After their years together, she’s the only person in the room who understands when he’s under pressure acid churns in his stomach. He knows her. There’s more coming.
“No. I don’t want money.” She releases a long breath as if she’d completed a difficult yoga move, as if she’d been holding the breath the whole time they’ve been sitting in DeLuca’s. “I want you to spend one night with me.”
He wiggles the third finger of his left hand. The gold band gleams in the overhead light. “You’re crazy, woman. I’m married.”
“Oh, I see your flashy wedding band. I heard you say, ‘my wife’, and I know it’s not me. I need this one last favor from you, Willie. I don’t want to hurt your wife. I pray she’ll find a way to understand.”
“No.”
“I’m not a homewrecker.”
“Unfaithfulness is a bridge we’ve crossed.”
In the middle years of their marriage, he’d apologized for dabbling—his version of flirting without sex. Toward the end of their marriage, he took his dabbling all the way. He apologized many, many times for his one indiscretion, Later, some of the disappointment disappeared from Connie’s eyes; purged, in part, by a tryst of her own. He couldn’t cope with the image of her body rising and falling beneath a body that wasn’t his. That knowledge cracked his ego. He couldn’t take knowing his woman’s lips, her body, the twin moles on the inside of her thighs, had been touched another man. He said he loved her; she said she loved him, and then they didn’t.
Tell her. Don’t tell her. If the circumstances were different, I’d ask for her forgiveness. I mean her no harm.”
The muscled waiter stops at the table, slips the nearly whole pizza into a takeaway box and waits expectantly. William hands him money and tells him they’re fine for now—the white lie slips out so easily.
“Stop, Con. This isn’t you.”
“Ah, my dear, once-upon-a-time husband, it is.” She drags the carafe towards her and pours wine into her glass until the container is empty.
“Dammit, Con, if you’re sick, why are you drinking?” He reaches for her glass and drags it to his side of the table. “Or are you lying?” His words drop on the table like heavy weights.
“What would be the point?” Connie punctuates her sentence with air-exclamation points. “Look at me.”
“I’m sorry, Connie. I’m so sorry. But this favor, this is coming from someone I don’t know. Isn’t there anyone else you can ask?” He wants to say: How about that guy you slept with with? But all reasons to twist the old knife are gone. He tries to think of one of Smokey’s lyrics to covers his question, but his words put a smile on her face.
“I’m not looking for new experiences. I want the comfort of good memories with someone who loved me when—”
A siren screams from Connie’s purse stopping her stream of thought. The sound reminds William of World War II movies where Morse Code dots and dashes morphed into urgent musical notes. Connie pulls out the phone, lets the alarm go on while she removes the heart-shaped pill box from her purse and opens it. The container is filled to the brim with multi-colored pills.
“If I stop the alarm, I’ll forget to take these.” She lines three tiny, yellow pills, in a row. Connie pops one pill, swallows hard, then pops a second and third, and swallows hard again.
He silences the alarm, wonders how many other reminders are set for the blue, white, orange, and gray pills. He stares at her hands: the speckling of pinpoint bruises, the short, natural nails. When he knew her, Connie called her hands her best feature, though he thought her legs were. Rainbows of colors suiting her moods or outfits were a must. The day he proposed, her fingernails were bright red—for love, she said as he took her left hand into his before slipping the diamond ring on her finger.
William moves to her side and stretches his arm around her. He sees Signore DeLuca giving him a thumbs up. The well-meaning Signore has probably mistaken this tenderness as proof they are still the couple he knew. He turns away, hoping the man doesn’t stop by their table again. Connie’s truth and her request are tough enough for his brain to accept, let alone explain to a stranger-friend. She rests her head on his shoulder, humming softly along with Smokey. He hums, too.
No conversations, emails or voice mails passed between the two during the entire year they worked through the details of their divorce. Then, one month after the divorce was final, six months after she spat on his car as if she knew what he was thinking, he showed up at her door. She slapped him with her right hand, wiped her tears with her left, called him every vile name she knew. They cursed each other, their words commingling like cinnamon and nutmeg. Her for his leaving, for not trying. Him for her messing up their good thing. The two of them in the doorway, fighting tears. Her frustrated with his decision. Him saying there was no other way. She took his hand, called it closure and nothing more. The roses were blooming. She pulled him inside, leaving the front door to their old home wide open.
Their final night together confirmed William’s belief that make-up sex was the best sex. Except they didn’t make up. No champagne. No shredded divorce papers tossed in the air. No plans to get back together. Without GPS, they lost their direction. He went left, she went right, and they were done.
If I’m…going out, I don’t want it to be with the memory of just anyone’s touch.”
“So, this is payback.” Forget what men should and should not do. Every head in the restaurant turns when William laughs. Humor always worked for them. “You’ve been in her shoes. You know what that would do to my marriage.”
“Things change, Con.”
“One night. One crazy night. I like having a friend’s arms around me.”
“You’re dredging up a past that doesn’t fit our present. This music, this place—”
“—You agreed to come.”
“Maybe I just wanted good pizza.” He smooths her hair. “That’s not who we are anymore.”
Over the past hour, he’s focused on his rumbling stomach, the life he should return to, Smokey’s lyrics, and what they once meant to him. He holds Connie close. Wanting for a second to be the couple behind them, dawdling over the last slice of pizza.
So here he is, William Carter Anderson, wading deep in the present and past’s pools, the water soaking through his shoes, his socks and the cuffs of his pants, cradling his ex-wife, his first and maybe only real love, listening to Smokey Robinson. Flashes of their years together merge with the beat: her smell, sex, all-night conversations, Sunday brunch in bed, time together without words, the decision not to have kids, the day they signed divorced papers.
His phone pings again. How curious would Tina be if he told her he was with Connie? What if he told her Connie is ill? Very ill, judging from the pills in her little box. Does Connie see the tug of war on his face? The struggle between can and can’t? He is no longer the man who betrays his wife. Not the man who dabbled because the dabbling felt good. He wishes for a little Smokey poetry, right now; the lyrics saying what he can’t. Damn that man. Damn his songs. Damn love.
“‘Out of all the men in all the places, you picked me.’” Quoting who, he can’t remember, is much better than anything he can say. “I can, and I will help you, Con. I promise. But not in the way you want.”
“Just asking an old friend for a favor.” Connie pulls away from William, brushing the wrinkles from her dress.
The overhead lights have dimmed. He ignores the text. For once this evening, he has no idea of the time, or if cold food and an annoyed woman are waiting for him at home. William stares at the nearly-empty restaurant. The middle-aged couple is gone. So are the girls. The place is quiet. A waiter mops the floor. Signore DeLuca counts money in the register. No one pressures them to leave or lets them know it’s okay to stay.
William glances at Connie, afraid to look her straight in the eye. This dillydallying is new because he prides himself on his ability to think fast, to stay cool, no matter what. He kisses her cheek, stands, and turns to leave. Behind him, Connie inches her way out of the booth and heads for the jukebox. She punches a button, and a different ballad begins. Drums tap out the first notes, then Smokey slides in. Ooo baby, baby. Ah, Smokey, Smokey. How many days, good and bad, had they found comfort in his lyrics and melodies, their connection of spirit and poetry?
I’m just about at the end of my rope, but I can’t stop trying. I can’t give up hope.
And now, Connie is beside him. “Dance with me.”
If colleague or competitor, friend or foe saw the layers of indecision lining his face, they would forever mock this second time William is completely out of sorts.
“That’s one hell of a favor, you know.”
Contributor Note
After leaving the corporate world, Jacqueline Luckett took a creative writing class on a dare, from herself, and began writing short stories and poetry and never looked back. She is the author of two novels, Passing Love (2012) and Searching for Tina Turner (2010). Her essays have appeared in the Huffington Post and The Best Women’s Travel Writing anthologies. Jacqueline received her MFA in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts from the University of California Riverside/Palm Desert. The Bay Area native lives in Oakland and travels frequently to nurture her passion for photography, good food, and to find another city that mesmerizes her as much as Paris.
