“Hey,” he said. “Could I ask you to—?” He nodded at his credit card and then pointed quickly at the bartender, who was all the way on the other side.
“You want me to give it to her?” she asked. She hadn’t expected him to speak to her.
“Yeah, I—”
“Oh, got it. You’re picking up the tab.”
“If one of my friends hasn’t beaten me to it. In a second they’ll notice I’ve been gone too long.”
“No problem,” she said, and slid the credit card toward her napkin.
“Tell the bartender to keep it and I’ll settle up later. They’ll catch on if I get up again to sign.”
“I’ll sign for you so she can close it out.”
He looked amused. “You will?”
“Sure. There’s probably a new bartender coming on soon.”
“She won’t care?”
“Nah, she’d probably prefer to close,” Jess said.
He was studying her face as if he’d noticed she was a woman and not just a person sitting in a convenient spot for his task.
“Okay, thanks. I’m Fred.”
“Frederick, actually,” she said, tapping his credit card.
He smiled, and she liked that his face was so open, that he wasn’t trying to hide the fact that he was enjoying talking to her. Something about his appearance, his bearing, struck Jess as careful. He was not Southern, she decided. Definitely not from the Northeast. Beyond New York and New Jersey she wasn’t good at identifying accents.
“Well, thanks,” he said, and as he turned back to his table, Jess noticed the wide column behind them and realized that was the reason he was standing so close, so he could be a little hidden from his friends.
Later, after the meet and greet, after the most boring dinner during which speaker after speaker made dark jokes about the end of print media, a bunch of people from the magazine went off to a dance place they heard about and invited her along. Jess had an immediate vision of Christopher from sales throwing his blazer over a chair, losing his mind when Flo Rida came on. She didn’t know them well enough yet, and she was technically senior to all of them so she’d have to buy rounds wherever they ended up. Buying rounds was not something she could do at the moment because even if Bloom reimbursed her, that reimbursement would take six weeks.
When she got back to the hotel, it wasn’t even ten o’clock, so she figured one drink, she’d charge it to her room. She checked her phone to see if Malcolm had texted, but all that popped up were photos of her friend Maria’s daughters in the outfits Jess had given them for their birthdays.
She chose a seat just a few down from where she’d been sitting earlier. The bartender, a different one, had just placed a vodka soda in front of her when a man’s voice said, “You tipped thirty percent.”
She startled, her hand shook, the liquid sloshed inside her glass and splashed her cuff. She lowered the drink to the coaster without sipping.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, laying a hand on her shoulder. With his other hand he grabbed napkins, wiped the drops that landed on the bar. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“I thought thirty was only fair,” she said, pressing a napkin to her wrist, “considering the drama you made out of paying.” She switched the way her legs were crossed. He leaned on the edge of a barstool, facing her.
“You’re with the magazine group? The conference?”
“Yes, but I’m in legal. I’m an attorney.”
“Named Jess,” he said, and she remembered she was still wearing her badge. “Short for Jessica?”
“Ugh. Yes. Awful.”
He made a wounded expression. “My mother’s name is Jessica. And my grandmother’s.”
Flirting was as she remembered, like smacking a beach ball back and forth, trying to keep it aloft. It came back like muscle memory, effortless, more fun the faster they played.
“Then they know,” she said.
He dropped his chin to his chest when he smiled, and as he did she had the strangest feeling, like the whole conversation was inevitable, like something had remained unspoken when they chatted earlier and the second part of that conversation was unfolding exactly as it was always going to unfold. He held out his hand for her to shake, and when she did, he shook it slowly, held on for longer than necessary. His group was there and seemed rowdier than they’d been earlier in the evening.
“Your friends are having fun. Bachelor party?”
“Ahhh, sort of the opposite.” He turned his back to them as if he were about to divulge a closely guarded secret.
“Divorce party. See the guy in the blue button-down?”
Jess craned her neck to see over his shoulder, as if it were important to her to know which one was divorcing, as if she hadn’t just been making conversation.
“Three out of six are in blue button-downs.”
“Okay, a beard.”
“Two of those have beards.”
“They do?” he looked over. “Okay, the one closest to us. The shorter one. His divorce just went through.”
“Sort of a sad thing to celebrate.”
“That depends.” He shrugged. “It’s been bad for a long time.”
Jess considered that.
“One kid. But he’s almost eighteen.”
“Ah.”
“Want to join us?” he asked. He was wearing a wedding ring, she saw. Just being friendly. She was wearing a wedding ring, too.
“No.” She shook her head. “I’m just finishing this and heading up. But thanks.”
He didn’t say anything.
“And I’m leaving tomorrow. Early flight.”
“Okay.” He paused. “Well, thanks again, Jess.” When he was a few feet away, he turned back. “My mother’s name is Elise, by the way.”
“Lucky her,” she said.
She watched him in the mirror as he fell into whatever conversation his friends had been having without him. Light-headed, she pressed all of her fingertips to the bar as hard as she could. He was watching her, she was certain of it, and out of nowhere she had a thought of Malcolm and how they used to sleep facing each other in a tangle of arms and legs. Part of her was relieved she no longer woke up three times a night because a limb had fallen asleep under Malcolm’s weight, but another part brimmed with sorrow that the period of their lives that burned brightest might be over. Last time they had sex she couldn’t focus, so she asked him to stand up, to stand behind her, to hold her tighter.
“Tighter,” she kept saying that afternoon. “I said tighter.” But Malcolm only drew away, put his hands to his head, annoyed.
“Pretend I’m someone else,” she said, hoping that would ignite something in him, throw him out of his routine. “Pretend I’m Emma.”
“What?” he said, looking at her with shock, reaching for his boxers. “What did you say?” But he didn’t actually want her to repeat it. “You’re really losing it, Jess.”
And then he got dressed, walked out of the room, and she was too embarrassed to go downstairs until she was sure he’d left the house.
Early on, when she was still in law school and he was the star of the Half Moon, the one everyone went there to see, she forced Cobie to come to Gillam for a weekend to meet him. They’d gotten together a few times by then, nothing serious, or so she told herself. The first time, straight from the bar, he worried he stunk of cigarettes, and offered to take a shower first. To think that someone as beautiful as he was could be self-conscious about any aspect of himself was a revelation. He said that her skin smelled like citrus and then he seemed so pleased with himself when she told him that he was the one who did that, his hands handling limes and orange slices all night, and then touching her.
Cobie, who hated the suburbs, who as a rule did not transfer from one form of transportation to another, made an exception for Jess and joked that this guy would have no power over her, that she was already annoyed at his existence, this person who was pulling Jess away from the city all of a sudden. Jess had to explain to her friend how it was that she didn’t know Malcolm growing up, because he was just those critical few years older than she was, and though Gillam was small in some ways, it wasn’t that small.