“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I . . . I couldn’t deal.” She crumbled the rest of the breadstick onto the tablecloth.
“Well, you’re going to have to deal with this,” he said. “We’re going to have to deal.”
“I know,” she said. “I know this makes no sense, but I don’t think I’m pregnant. I don’t feel pregnant.”
Sam studied Lorraine for any physical differences. He took a quick peek at her boobs and they appeared about the same.
“Are you checking me out to see if I look knocked up?”
Yes.
“No,” he told her.
The waiter came around.
“Uh, yeah, we’re going to split the ziti and the . . .” Man, he definitely wanted meatballs.
“Sausage and peppers,” she finished.
“And a glass of merlot,” said Lorraine. She pulled out her driver’s license.
“I guess you really don’t feel pregnant, huh?” he asked, once the waiter had left.
Lorraine rolled her eyes. “French women drink up until the very end,” she said.
“French women also eat horse,” said Sam under his breath.
“What?” Lorraine asked.
“Nothing.”
“I take it you’re not drinking lately?” She leaned back into the booth.
“No,” said Sam, leaning in. “Haven’t since all of this happened,” he said, stirring the sky with his forefinger.
“Understandable. The smell of gin still turns my stomach.” Lorraine shuddered.
Shameful scenes from their breakup slammed into Sam’s head. The two of them screaming in the street after his debit card stopped working. She’d called him a “bum like his father” and he’d called her a “duplicitous bitch.”
“Lorr, why’d you ask me here?”
“Well, you picked the restaurant,” she said, smiling sweetly.
“Lorraine . . .”
“I don’t know,” she said, averting her gaze. “I thought it would be nice.”
Lorraine snapped another breadstick into ever smaller pieces and arranged them on the table.
He braced himself for the news that they were having twins. Or that she was engaged to someone else.
“That’s it? Really?” he asked. “No news?”
She shook her head.
Sam couldn’t believe he’d had to ask for an advance on his paycheck for this.
“You know what?” he said after a while.
She glanced up at him.
“Let’s create a pact.”
“A pact,” she repeated. Lorraine reached for another breadstick to pulverize. He took it from her. Wasted food made him crazy.
“Yeah,” he said. “The pact is we’ll table everything serious for the duration of the meal, and you and me, we’ll catch up.”
Lorraine’s wine arrived.
“We don’t have to talk about the other stuff.”
“Deal,” she said. She raised her glass in a toast and took a sip.
Sam wanted to excuse himself to look up fetal alcohol syndrome statistics but couldn’t in the spirit of the pact. Stupid pact . . .
“So,” said Lorraine. “What I want to know is . . .” She paused.
“What?”
“Never mind,” she said.
“No, tell me.”
“Where have you been living?”
Sam blinked. “Near campus,” he said.
“Where near campus?”
“Off Guadalupe,” he said. A partial lie at worst. “Why the Spanish Inquisition?” he asked, trying to keep his tone light.
Their pasta dishes landed on the table with a thud as Sam decided he wasn’t hungry. The ziti looked dry.
“Eat and switch?” she asked. “And don’t worry, dinner’s on me.”
Sam nodded and handed her the sausage first. She inevitably wanted the sausage first so she could pick out the crispy ends. The best parts.
“Well.” Lorraine tried again. “I know you’re not living in your car, unless you’re sleeping out of Fin’s. Which I obviously don’t envy.”
Sam’s cheeks burned. Lorraine had a habit of kidding in a way that made you want to walk off a bridge.
“And I talked to Gunner and Gash, so I know you’re not living with them.” Sam used to see Gunner and his cousin Ash (a.k.a. Gash) five nights a week.
He fell silent.
“How’s school?” she asked after a while. Sam shoveled a forkful of pasta into his mouth to mull over the answer. He nodded while he chewed.
Why was Lorraine on a fact-finding mission?
“Good.” He swallowed. “I’m taking a film course at ACC and it’s fine. A lot of freedom. I’m shooting a documentary.”
“Finally,” she said, picking at her meal. “Isn’t it expensive?”
“It ain’t cheap,” he said. “But you can borrow gear, and if all else fails, I’ve got my phone. I’ll shoot it fast and dirty.”
“Well, that suits you,” she said.
What the hell did that mean?
They ate in silence.
“Your turn,” said Sam, working to keep his tone even. “How’s the job?”
“Job’s good,” she said. “I got a raise. Nothing to write home about. Hopefully a promotion’s next. I’ll probably be a junior account manager by next year, which is what I want. I’ll get to travel to LA.”
“That’s great,” he said. He realized he meant it. Traveling for work was the height of glamour as far as Lorraine was concerned.
“And I love the people I work with,” she said. “They’re young and fun to hang out with. You’d think they’re corny.”
Sam immediately thought about Paul again. He had no idea what he looked like. Not that it mattered. Sam could imagine his type exactly. He envisioned Lorraine celebrating her promotion over eighteen-dollar cocktails with some douche-bag with a big shiny watch and buffed square fingernails. He probably plucked his eyebrows and bleached his enormous capped teeth. He thought back to when he and Lorraine met, when she described herself first and foremost as a DJ. He’d since learned most DJs or comedians or musicians were artists by the grace of their parents’ financial support.
“Sausage?”
Sam nodded. The plate of oily meat and tangles of peppers and onions made him queasy. Or perhaps it was something else.
“Lorr, what happened to us?”
Lorraine laughed dryly and took another sip of wine.
“So much for the pact.”
“Well,” he said. “We make up and break up without talking about what actually happened.”
“What are you asking me, Sam?”
“It doesn’t make sense to me,” he said. “Why we’re not together.”
Lorraine put her fork down and sighed.
“We don’t make sense,” she said. As if that explained anything.
“How can you say that?”
Sam suddenly wished he’d ordered a glass of wine. Or a box.
“We’re not friends,” she said.
Sam felt the dull thud of her words in his sternum. It took all of his composure to maintain eye contact. He scrunched his napkin under the table.
“We were these lunatic hotheads that fought and made up,” Lorraine continued. “You’d scream and cry. I’d want to get it over with, and that was that.”
Sam couldn’t stand the way she distilled their relationship to the plot of a formulaic rom-com. Or as if she were wearing a white coat and chuckling about the mating lab rats she kept under observation.
“You say that like there weren’t truly beautiful moments,” he muttered into his food. “We loved each other.”
“I know we did,” she said. She took his hand in hers, with a tender smile playing on her lips, as though she were bargaining with a child. “I still love you in a way. I swear to God, Sam, sometimes you were so good at literally reading my mind.”
Sam pictured Lorraine cracking his skull open and reading his brain grooves literally like braille.
“But we were together for four years,” she continued. “And you didn’t make an effort to get to know me or my family.”
At the mention of “family,” Sam stiffened. He wasn’t big on the Mastersons. He recalled the abysmal Easter when he’d had dinner with them at Chez Jumelles.
“Oh, you mean the time your racist dad asked me if I had any Middle Eastern blood so he’d have a real reason to hate me?”
Lorraine removed her hand from his. “No, he didn’t,” she said.