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At five-thirty, Hank knocks at my door. I grab my jacket and we walk down the hill toward Lola’s. I show him her text.
“So, are we there again? Is it time to revisit the Great and Terrible Demise?” I can hear the ironic capital letters in his voice. Hank has great listening skills, but he is never going to be called sympathetic. Maybe it’s how he swaggers across the lawn. It’s a completely unsympathetic swagger.
I nod. “We are there again.”
Hank makes a gesture that I take to mean I should go ahead and unload. By the time I’ve gone through the piece where we met at Columbia, she acted thrilled for me when I landed a part on Broadway, I heard her talking to her roommate about how it was time for me to grow up and get a real job, I recommitted to my master’s program, and she made it clear that teaching high school was not the real job she’d had in mind, I run out of both bandwidth and stories, and Hank and I arrive at Lola’s.
We push the heavy door open, and Hank calls out “Hello, Lola darling. My boy here needs something smothered in melted cheese.”
“Your lucky day.” Lola doesn’t smile, but I’m sure I see her wink. “Fondue.”
Even buoyed by the word fondue, I slide into the booth and prop myself in the corner. Sitting up straight is such hard work on a day like this.
“Need a few minutes to wallow?” Hank asks.
“I’m not wallowing,” I say, but I can hear the whine in my voice cancelling out my words.
“Right.” Hank jumps up from the booth and walks over to the drinks cooler. He brings back an imported Swiss water and a bottle of lemonade. I hear them clink on the table.
“All right?” Hank asks.
I nod at him.
“Well, then. What is it that you’re doing with your life, mate?” He asks it without judgment and as though he doesn’t know the answer.
“I’m teaching things I love to overprivileged teenagers in a beautiful place and getting paid for it. I’m pursuing a chair on the academic council. I’m working with a beautiful woman to produce a play that I wrote.” Having said it, I feel marginally better.
“And?” Hank does a lazy gesture around the nearly empty dining room of Lola’s.
“And I’m being treated to dinner by a fine friend. Who, by the way, really ought to give up the beard.”
“You don’t like the beard?” Hank strokes his chin.
I almost laugh. “I forget it’s there until the light hits it just right.”
Hank gives me a look that defies translation into words. Lola walks over and slides a salad in front of each of us. We thank her as she moves on. “Back to the point at hand,” Hank continues. “What about Joey Harker?”
I look up, startled. “What about Joey Harker?”
He tips his head. “You like her.”
“And so what if I do?”
“You might think about her instead of—” He breaks off and gestures to my phone.
I almost laugh. “Sure. I should pursue a relationship with a woman I’m in direct competition with to take my mind off the past. Easy.”
He shrugs. “Not so difficult.”
“Except I don’t think she likes me. At all. And she definitely won’t like me after I get the chair position. Not to mention, there are rules.”
Hank’s eyes roll. “Are we going to begin obeying rules now?” he asks.
“It’s not like I can just choose to feel or not feel something.” I say. Which is almost funny if you consider all the positive affirmations I say in any given day.
“This is like a boil, isn’t it?” Hank says. “You’re not getting over this Candace moment until we lance it and let the poison out.”
“You’re disgusting.”
