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“Your stomach sounds like two wolves fighting in it. Go get some food. Sit outside in the sun. You don’t officially start until two,” she scolded with the adorable authority of the very young. She plucked my purse from below the glass case, grabbed my arm and shoved me towards the door.
“Return when you are well fortified, missy. And take your damn time.”
“Fine,” I said, still seeing stars.
Next door I nabbed the last empty patio table at Ignatius’s and ordered a hot bowl of gumbo. The Sunday shoppers seemed frantic, or maybe it just felt like that because this was early spring and the first time in a long time that I’d been outside, around people, instead of holed up in my store dealing with inventory. I had also been skipping breakfast, skipping mornings altogether. Maybe that’s why I was losing weight, something I was contemplating when I noticed him—him him—Mark Drury—the lead singer of the Careless Ones.
I’d never seen him with a beard before; I liked it. His band had a regular, early-evening slot on Saturdays at Three Muses. And Mark’s voice was a husky, alt-country dream. Every once in a while, he’d sing a cover of an old Hank Williams song that would make me swoon. He was all limbs and black hair and pale blue eyes. His stooped shoulders were those of a man with an instrument perpetually strapped to his back. And there he was strutting by my patio table and heading inside. He and some of his band mates would hit up the Funky Monkey for T-shirts, jeans and even outlandish wigs if they were doing a show during Mardi Gras. But I always shoved Elizabeth in front of them, too shy to help them myself. The Careless Ones was the only local band I’d go see alone, time spent listening to music being the only time I could really let go and be in my body. Music was the opposite of me. That’s why I was mesmerized by performers like Mark, who could stand on stage in front of everybody and give himself permission to let go.
Talk to him, I thought to myself. Just go up to him after the show and tap him on the shoulder and say, Hey Mark, when I feel like drinking alone, I watch you.
Smack. I’d sound like a crazy person.
I love watching you in the dark when I’m by myself.
Ew.
I like to watch you move.
Wrong. All wrong. I truly was turning peculiar.
I tried not to stare through the glass too long as Mark Drury took a seat at the bar inside. I cursed Elizabeth for telling me to leave the store. I cursed myself for wearing a dark blue dress on a hot spring day. But my gumbo had arrived, so I was committed. Plus, what if he had a girlfriend? You’re just talking to him. You’re just saying, Hey, love your work.
A few minutes later, the bartender handed him a takeout coffee and a wrapped sandwich. Bag pinned between his lips, newspaper held in his armpit, he pulled several napkins from a stainless steel dispenser near the door and headed straight for me. In my head, I was screaming, Here! Sit with me! But my eyes were shaded by my giant sunglasses. I was like a fish, mouth opening and closing, pressed up against the silencing aquarium glass.
Then, before I knew it, he was sitting at the table next to me, joining some dark-haired woman who had an empty seat at her table. They introduced themselves and fell into an easy banter as they ate. Watching him grin at her, making her laugh, hurt my stomach. I regarded my imaginary rival as discreetly as I could. She was pretty and fit, but I bet she didn’t know that Mark had chosen the band name the Careless Ones from The Great Gatsby, a book she’d probably never read, having cribbed notes in junior high from people like me. Bet she wouldn’t even like Mark’s music. Minutes later I watched him say goodbye to her by punching his number into her phone, imagining that he was giving it to me.
What happened to me? Where did I go?
“Are you okay?”
Had I said that out loud? I had said it out loud … directly to the dark-haired woman who’d been talking to Mark Drury and was now sitting alone. She stood, picked up a glass of water from her table and moved in slow motion towards me. She placed the glass in front of me, a concerned look on her face.
“Are you okay?” she asked again.
To this day, I have no idea why I said yes when she asked if she could join me; I so rarely spoke to strangers. But as my mother would say, “Some things are fatefully divine and some are just divinely fated.”
CASSIE
IT WAS INEVITABLE. Will and I both tried to avoid being alone, but the Café Rose was small with narrow hallways and dark corners.
“Thanks for staying late, Cassie,” Will said, the night the drywall got delivered. He’d asked me to watch for the truck.
“I wanted to.”
“Wonder if you could do me one more favor.”
“Sure,” I said. “What is it?”
“You know what it is,” he answered, his voice barely above a whisper. Crossing his arms, he leaned back on the cool glass door of the fridge.
“Is it this?” I asked, loosening the clasp on my apron and letting it fall to the floor.
“Yes. That’s it. Can you do me another favor?”
“I can,” I said, my voice so choked with longing I sounded underwater. I slowly lifted my shirt over my head, my hair cascading through the neck hole. I threw it down to the tiles. I wasn’t wearing a bra.
“Is it this?”
