The first night that he came into the bar, Joy had noticed him right away. He’d been tall, lean, and wearing a suit that fit beautifully; his hair was gray at the temples. Joy had looked at his hands—you could tell a lot about a person from their hands—and his were long-fingered, strong. He looked a little bit like President Obama, if President Obama had been so sad that he sought refuge in the bottom of a bucket of gin martinis.
When Joy came on duty, it was the late shift, and she was the only staff in the lounge—it was cheaper to train the waitresses to mix drinks and lock up for the night than to pay additional employees. She refilled the nuts for a gay couple drinking Negronis and printed out the tab for a woman whose flight was being called. Then she went over to the man, whose eyes were closed. “Can I get you a refill?”
When he glanced up at her, it was like looking into a mirror.
Only someone who has been there—trapped in an invisible prison, desperate to escape—can recognize that expression in another. When he nodded, Joy brought him another drink. And another. Three more customers came and went, while she kept an eye on the man at the high-top. She knew he wasn’t in the mood to talk; she had been a cocktail waitress long enough to read those clues. There were some people who wanted to pour out their troubles as you poured their spirits. There were some who texted furiously on their phones, avoiding eye contact. There were the handsy ones, who grabbed her ass as she walked by and pretended it was an accident. But this man only wanted to lose himself.
When he had been there for three hours she stood beside his table. “I don’t mean to bother you,” Joy said, “but when’s your flight?”
He knocked back his drink past the fence of his teeth. “It landed. Four hours ago.”
She wondered if Mississippi was his starting point or his destination. Either way, there was something outside this building that he couldn’t face.
When it came time to close up, he paid with cash and gave her a tip equal to the amount of the bill. “Can I get you a cab?” she asked.
“Can’t I stay here?”
“Nope.” Joy shook her head. “What’s your name?”
“Can’t tell you,” he slurred.
“Why? You in the CIA?”
“No, ma’am,” he said. “But this is not appropriate behavior for a representative of the court.”
So he was a lawyer, Joy thought. Maybe he had lost a big case, something he’d been working on for months. Maybe his client had perjured herself on the stand. There were a hundred scenarios, and she’d seen them all on Law & Order. “Lucky for you, this isn’t a courtroom,” Joy said. “Although there is a bar.”
He smiled at that. As she turned away to close out the cash register, he tapped her arm. “Joe,” he said after a moment.
She held out her hand. “Joy.”
He peered at her with pale blue eyes, so arresting in the face of a Black man, some historical, genealogical evolution that was more likely due to a moment of force than to passion. He wore the scars of his past on his face, Joy realized. Just like she did.
“Y’all don’t look very joyous,” he remarked.
That’s when she made the decision that would change the course of her life. Joy, who never invited anyone to her apartment, decided that this man needed to sleep off his drink, and start over tomorrow. She decided to give him the second chance she never had gotten.
She locked up, and by then, Joe was passed out, his cheek pressed to the polished wood. Rolling her eyes, she found a wheelchair three gates down and half-lifted, half-dragged Joe into it. That was how she got him to her car, too. By the time they collapsed in a tumbled heap onto the couch in her living room, she was sweating and exhausted. Joe started to snore immediately.
When she tried to extricate herself, though, his arms tightened on her. He stroked her hair. He pulled her against him.
Joy did not even know his last name, or what had brought him to Jackson. But it had been so long since she’d been held, just held. And it had been even longer since she’d felt needed. And so against her better judgment, she’d lain down to sleep with her head on his chest. She made his heartbeat her lullaby.
It was sometime in the dead of night that she woke up to find herself being watched. They were pressed together on the narrow couch and Joe’s eyes were soberly focused on hers. “You are a good person,” he said after a moment.
He wouldn’t say that if he knew how she had grown up, what she had done to survive.
When he kissed her, Joy wanted to believe that her conscience would cause her a moment of hesitation, yet that wasn’t true. She was on the Pill for period cramps, but even so, this was a stranger. She should have used a condom. Instead, she grabbed on to his shoulders and made him the center of her storm. And even though it was grief he poured into her, it was better than being empty.
Afterward, they were both wide awake and dead sober. “I shouldn’t have—” Joe began, but Joy didn’t want to hear it. She couldn’t stand being someone’s mistake again. She went to the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face. When she came back out, Joe was dressed in his suit. “I called an Uber,” he said. “I, uh, got your address off an envelope.” He handed her an electric bill that had been on the coffee table with yesterday’s mail. He gestured awkwardly toward the bathroom. “Could I … ?”
Joy nodded, stepping aside so that he could pass. She told him where he might find aspirin, and he thanked her and closed the door.
Joe returned to the living room. He was tall, she realized, something she had not seen when he was slumped over a table. “I’m not the kind of person who—” she started, but he interrupted.
“I’ve never done this before.”
“Chalk it up to the alcohol,” Joy said.
“Temporary insanity.”
A car horn honked twice.
“Thank you, Miz Joy,” Joe said formally. “For showing me a kindness.”
Joy felt like she had shown him her very soul, disfigured as it might be. She looked away as he shrugged into his jacket and presumably out of her life. As she showered that morning, she tried to convince herself that she wasn’t the slut her foster mother had always called her; that she was entitled to creature comfort; that they were both consenting adults. She went to her classes, and then to her afternoon job at the college library, and then to her shift at the Departure Lounge, where she found herself looking for Joe although she knew he would not be there.
Until one night he was. That night, he hadn’t gotten drunk. He had waited until Joy’s shift was over, and accompanied her back to her apartment, where they made love and then shared a pint of ice cream in bed. She learned that Joe was not a lawyer, but a judge. He told her how his favorite moments on the bench were adoptions, when a foster kid got a permanent home. He stroked her hair and said he wished she’d been one of them.
He came back two more times, admitting that he was inventing business in Jackson just to see her again. Joy couldn’t remember a time that someone had run toward her, instead of away. She let him quiz her before one of her midterms and cook her a big breakfast before the test.
When you are used to fending for yourself, being taken care of is a drug. Joy became addicted. She texted Joe funny signs she passed on the way to work: the Baptist church with the live Nativity that advertised COME SEE OUR ASSES; the gaily flashing STOP—THREE WAY!; the Taco Bell billboard that said IN QUESO EMERGENCY, PRAY TO CHEESES. Joe wrote her back with daily Darwin Awards, anonymously describing the memorable defendants in his courtroom. When he showed up unexpectedly, she called in sick to work at the library so that she could spend as much time with him as he could spare. He was fifteen years older than she was, and sometimes she wondered if she was compensating for her lack of a father, but then she would realize there was nothing paternal about their relationship. She guardedly began to wonder if this was the moment that her terrible luck turned.
She should have known better.