I am tired, but I need noise.
Anonymity is not an option around here, as we all know.
I need people around me I don’t know. I don’t want to talk.
I walk alone, my head is down, residual snow and ice on the sidewalk and all. Largely, though, I don’t care who I see.
I reach the Riverside and go in. It occurs to me that I’ve never been here alone, always with Carson or Bernie or lunch with someone from the office. Feels right.
I scan the crowd as I unzip my coat. I see Mildred holding court in a corner booth, a half-eaten steak in front of her. I have a vague recollection of her mentioning a dinner meeting this evening here and silently curse myself for forgetting. I can’t tell who she’s conspiring with across the table, but recite a silent vow in my head to lay low. I don’t need her interrogation this evening.
I select a stool with an empty on each side. I ask Cassie for a Chablis. She sees my face and doesn’t respond, except with the wine. She smiles.
“First time for everything, I guess,” she says. “Are you meeting Carson?”
I shake my head.
“Not tonight,” I say. “He’s busy with the new magazine.”
Cassie nods slowly. “Well, enjoy. I’m up here if you want some food.”
Bernie always said bartenders and barbers made better therapists than therapists because they knew when to talk and when not to. Cassie seems to have that sensibility.
That said, she certainly pulled the thread dangling in my brain this evening. Twenty years is quite an age difference. And, flattered as I am that it hasn’t stood in our way, an undeniable sense of dread has begun to build.
I’ve only taken my first sip and a woman comes in. She also takes an empty stool at the bar, leaving one between us. She asks Cassie for a glass of house red and turns to her right to catch my eye.
Cassie returns with the wine.
“Have you two met?” she asks, pointing in my direction.
I shake my head and the woman extends her hand.
“I’m Tracy, a friend of Carson Sigmund’s,” she says. “Just visiting for a few days. Do you know him?”
I nod. Clearly my contemplative time here has ended.
The woman begins to spew, and I hear half of it – first about her connection to Carson, then about Gordon, the business partner in California, then about her suspicion that she is somehow owed money from the sale of their company – then explaining that that is what brought her to Middle Valley several weeks ago.
She does not speak well of this man that has essentially inserted himself into all of our lives.
She came here, she says, to meet privately with him to discuss the matter, thinking a rational approach was in order. It didn’t work. It’s not like she needs the money, she says – she’s a very successful professor, apparently. Which is why, on her return to California, she’s meeting with a lawyer to see what’s what. Not being married to Gordon, certainly, is a roadblock, but that may be all it is – a roadblock, to a settlement, to some sort of payout. She toasts the air randomly and Cassie strolls down to fill her glass.
Cassie turns in my direction. “Another?”
I shake my head.
“Yes, she will,” Tracy says. “It’s on me.”
Cassie pours and I am increasingly uncomfortable. This person has nothing to do with me, nothing to do with Middle Valley or Cassie or Mildred in the back corner booth. Carson’s past life is sitting next to me, and I really don’t care.
“So, the interview,” Tracy says.
I am stunned. “How did you know about that?”
“Well, I saw it on TV, of course, but I was there when he did the interview. Were you there?”
And now she sounds like a troublemaker.
I signal Cassie. “Can I get a table for dinner?”
She nods. Just then Tracy stands up.
“Actually, I have an early flight. I’m going to head on.”
She leaves a twenty on the bar and, as she steps out, a cold gush of air hits my legs.
“Where can I set you up?” Cassie asks.
I smile in her direction. “Actually, as it turns out, this will work just fine. May I see a menu?”
Mildred’s steak looked delightful from a distance, and it was up close, as well – a quiet, contemplative medium rare piece of meat, a potato, and a welcoming stack of asparagus spears.
My parents love this man. The town has embraced him. He’s certainly invested – in me, in my work, in the community. He has made it a point to have an impact.
And, let’s face it, he’s not Bernie. He’s dynamic, youthful – young even – and isn’t that what I should be looking for in a mate?
I pay the bill and walk out into the evening, which has done little else but remind me why I’m not a fan of random evenings in bars.
Too much to think about. Time to stop thinking.
Jenny Page