“He was a good guy. Still is. He’s very smart, goes to Dartmouth. He hates me. I cheated on him with this jerk named Ian Coburn.”
“I know Ian,” Bart said. “And you’re right. He’s a jerk. He drove that red Camaro.”
Allegra had a mussel suspended over the bowl. “I learned my lesson with Brick. I hate myself for what I did to him. I won’t ever cheat again.”
Bart nodded. He hadn’t been a saint either, although in his case, he’d never committed seriously enough to anyone to have his extracurricular activities count as cheating. “I had a sort-of girlfriend named Savannah Steppen. She was more like a friend with benefits. That was really it, Savannah and the nameless, faceless conquests I made as a young Marine.”
“I remember Savannah,” Allegra said. “She was beautiful.”
“You’re beautiful,” Bart said.
They grinned at each other, holding hands across the table.
And then the chicken arrived.
Allegra says, “Oh, this looks good.”
Bart stands up. His fault: he wasn’t listening. If he had been listening, he would have steered her toward the lamb or the gnocchi.
“I have to step outside,” he says.
Allegra looks more surprised than affronted, although certainly she is both. It’s unspeakably rude: their food has just arrived, it’s hot now, appetizing now, and if Bart leaves, then Allegra can’t politely start.
“Is it… do you…?” Allegra says. She must not know what to think. Maybe Bart has to make a phone call, maybe he smokes and can’t hold off his craving for nicotine one more second. Maybe he found the story of Allegra cheating on Brick Llewellyn off-putting.
“I don’t feel well,” Bart says. “I need air.” He strides for the door and steps out into the cool night.
He hears Centaur screaming, WHAT ARE YOU DOING? IT WAS GOING SO WELL!
It’s chicken, man, Bart tells him.
He’s not a real man after all. He has issues. He’s a mess. His parents tried to get him to see a therapist. Mitzi had an appointment all lined up, and Bart agreed to go, but at the last minute he detoured to the beach instead, where he waited out the hour in his car, radio blaring.
Chicken.
He’s afraid of the chicken. No, afraid isn’t the right word. He can’t be in its presence. He can’t look at it or smell it, and he certainly can’t eat it. Even the word chicken makes him ill.
The door to the restaurant opens and Allegra steps out.
“Bart?” she says. “What is it?”
He turns his eyes to the street. He is blowing this date. He has blown it already. Bart feels Allegra’s hand on his shoulder. She’s touching his new blue cashmere jacket.
“Tell me what’s wrong,” she says.
Can he tell her? If he tells her, will she understand? She’s outside without her coat. He wants to send her back inside, but he can’t banish her and he doesn’t want to go back to the table.
“When I was… while I was captured… ,” he says.
She moves her hand to cup his elbow and sidles her body up to his. When she speaks, her voice is in his ear. “Yes, tell me. It’s okay, Bart. You can tell me.”
“We ate potatoes,” he says. “Every day, every night, potatoes—no butter, no oil, no salt or pepper. Just the potatoes, either boiled or roasted in the ashes of the fire.”
“Yes,” she says.
“And then, one day, we had chicken. There were chickens scratching around the camp. They produced eggs, which the Bely ate; we were never given any eggs. But then there was spit-roasted chicken and we all got some, and it was, I kid you not, the most delicious thing I’d ever eaten, that piece of chicken.”
“Yes,” Allegra says.
“And then, the morning after we ate the chicken, one of us was chosen. The first day it was Private Jacob Hiller. And we thought, ‘Okay, J-Bear’—that was our nickname for him—‘is a big, burly guy, maybe they need him to help with digging a hole or fetching water or chopping wood or whatever.’ But J-Bear never came back. They marched him to this place called the Pit and they killed him.”
“Oh… ,” Allegra says.
“And it went on like that. We eat potatoes for days or weeks, then there’s a chicken roasting, and the next morning another soldier is taken away and marched to the Pit.”
“No!” Allegra says. She’s crying softly.
“We never knew when it would happen,” Bart says. “Until they roasted the chicken. Then you knew it was coming, but you didn’t know who they were going to pick.” Bart takes a deep breath of the night air and squeezes his eyes shut. “I’ll tell you what, Allegra. I loved the rest of those guys so much that every single time I wished it would be me.”
“No!” Allegra says.
Bart shakes his head and snaps back to himself. “I’m sorry.”
Allegra says, “I’m going back inside. I’ll have them take the chicken away and I’ll get the scallops instead.”
Bart bows his head. “Thank you,” he says.
Allegra disappears through the door, and Bart takes another moment under the black sky and the stars.
He told her.
He told her and she understood. She still likes him, he thinks.
He hears Centaur’s voice: GET BACK TO YOUR GIRL!
“Okay, okay,” Bart says. “I’m going.”
AVA
It’s a Tuesday afternoon, a week after Bart’s party. Ava emerges from the subway, goes to pick up her laundry, and considers Vietnamese food for dinner. She can either get takeout or go to the place on Second Avenue and sit at the bar. A warm, fragrant bowl of pho is what she needs, along with a roasted pork banh mi.
She climbs the four flights of stairs to her apartment, unlocks the knob and the deadbolt, and steps inside to experience the ecstasy of her own place.
Her phone rings. It will be Margaret, not Potter. Potter teaches until seven. It’s quarter of six, though, which is too close to broadcast time for it to be Margaret.
Her mother retires at the end of the week. She will finally be free at the dinner hour!
When Ava checks her phone, she sees an unfamiliar number, a 650 area code—what is that?—and it’s not a phone call, it’s a FaceTime. Who could this be? It’s not Shelby’s number or any of her siblings’. It’s not Nathaniel Oscar, thank goodness, or Scott Skyler. Could it maybe be Kelley, using the phone of one of the hospice nurses?
There’s only one way to find out. Ava accepts the FaceTime request.
“Hello?” she says. She hasn’t given one thought to how she must look after a full day of teaching, her evening commute, and climbing all those stairs.
The screen on her phone shows a dark-haired man in a yellow polo shirt. There is someone sitting beside him.
“Ava?” the man says. “Ava Quinn, is that you?”
“Yes?” she says. She smiles at the screen, squinting, trying to figure out just who this is. The voice is accented, British, sort of familiar, someone she has spoken to recently—but who?