He said, “Yes. I am happy.”
Eve’s hand slipped off his, and settled back into her lap. There were circles of sweat under the arms of her mauve jacket. On the pocket she wore a rhinestone pin of an owl with glittering green eyes.
Suddenly the waiter was back with her water. He placed it in front of her with a flourish, then winked at Jim. Jim realized his heart was pounding, but he wasn’t sure if it was from how close he had come to finally telling her the truth, or from the closeness of this blond man whose nametag read RANDY.
“Thanks, Randy,” Jim said, pronouncing the name with great care.
“Ugh,” Eve said, spitting water back into the glass. “What’s in here?”
Randy’s face clouded. “Lemon,” he said.
Eve slumped back into her seat, defeated.
“Maybe we could just take the check?” Jim said.
Randy nodded. When he returned with it, he slipped Jim a note written on a napkin. Their eyes met for just an instant. Jim’s hands shook slightly as he read the note: “Call me?” and Randy’s name and phone number. Jim looked up. His mother was staring at him. He glanced away from her, his eyes seeking out Randy. He saw him, across the patio, waiting. Jim gave him the slightest nod.
“Ready?” he said to his mother.
“What’s on that napkin?” she said.
The sun had shifted and seemed to be boring right through Jim’s skull. It made him slightly light-headed. He shrugged.
Eve frowned at him. “I waited forever,” she said.
“No, you didn’t,” he told her. “You were in the wrong place. I was right where I was supposed to be.”
“No,” she said. “You weren’t.”
EVE WAS SUPPOSED to stay for five days. But after three she told Jim she wanted to go home. “I don’t like it here,” she said. “A person can’t even get a drink of water that tastes right. You can’t walk anywhere. Always in the car. Drive, drive, drive. And everything seems wrong, smaller or something.” She was disappointed in the stars’ homes he drove her past, disappointed in the Hollywood sign, disappointed in the Ramos gin fizzes at the Beverly Hills Hotel. They saw Mel Gibson in a restaurant and she was disappointed in him too. “Even he’s smaller than he seems,” she said. Jim was afraid she was going to cry.
On the night she announced she was leaving on a flight the next day, Jim said, “Then we’ll go out somewhere special for dinner.”
But Eve shook her head. “We haven’t spent any time together.”
“Ma,” he said, “we’ve been together constantly for three straight days.”
“Not really. You’ve been keeping me busy all the time. So we don’t have to talk.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Jim said.
“Remember when your father left?” his mother asked him. Eve patted the couch beside her. Reluctantly, Jim went and sat there. She had on the mauve pantsuit again. Jim caught a slightly sour smell coming from her. “He sent us up to the lakehouse for a weekend and when we got back he had moved out.”
“I remember,” Jim said. He remembered how hot it was that night, how the crickets seemed to sing extra loud, cracking through the summer air. They had walked inside and found most of the furniture gone, the refrigerator empty, and a note. His mother had sat down on the yellow and green linoleum and sobbed. Jim was seven.
“In some ways,” Eve said now, “you’re like him.”
“Thanks a lot,” Jim said. “That’s a real compliment. Especially knowing how you feel about him.”
Instead of getting angry, his mother smiled at him, a small, sad smile.
“I’m not like him,” Jim said. He had not seen his father in over ten years. Once, his father had taken him camping. To Jim, that was the last time they were together, although his mother told him he was wrong. Jim had refused to go to the bathroom in the woods and his father had yelled at him, taken him home early. “You disgust me,” his father told him in the car. When they got to his mother’s, Jim ran out of the car and up the walk. “You run like a girl,” his father shouted after him.
“I said in some ways,” Eve said. “The way you avoid talking about things, for example.”
“Fine. I’ll talk,” Jim said too loudly. He jumped off the couch and stood before her, fists and jaw clenched. “What do you want to know?”
“Well,” she said, “for instance, are you dating anyone special?”
“No,” he said. That was the truth. He had been dating a man whose name, strangely, was also Jim. But they had broken up a few months back and the man had moved to Tucson.
“Are you dating anyone at all?” she said.
“Yes,” Jim said, truthfully again. Last night, after his mother went to sleep, he had called Randy, the waiter, from the phone in his bedroom. They had talked for an hour and set up a date for Monday night. Jim was going to cook him dinner here.