Stash (2 page)

Gray flecks streaked Jude’s hair, along the temples and sideburns. He wore what Brian called an executive cut—trimmed, parted, gelled into place. Except Jude had these long straight sideburns that tapered below the ear. On someone else they would have been a mistake.

“I’m sorry I’m a few minutes late. I had to get my daughter settled at her swim camp.”

Jude waved off her comment. “It’s fine. Can I get you a drink? Glass of wine? A Bloody Mary?” He motioned to the bar.

“I’d have to take a nap, and it’s not even noon yet.”

The two remaining job applicants looked up, unsure whether Gwen had cut ahead of them in the interview line.

“Coffee then?”

“Coffee sounds good.”

“We’ll go to my office.” On the way through the dining room Jude stopped at a dish station where a fresh pot of coffee sat on a burner. He lifted two cups down from the shelf and poured.

“You must be asking hard questions on your job application,” Gwen said. “I saw one woman tear hers up and walk out.”

“We get a lot of response to our ads but it’s hard to find anyone who really wants to work. You ready to come back?”

“Your hostess thought so.”

“In your case I’ll waive the application.”

“I’m sure it would be fun, only now I’m in bed every night by eleven—about the same time the bars get busy.”

Jude smiled. “So much for the good old days. Let’s see, coffee black, right?”

She nodded.

Jude carried both cups. They passed double doors with porthole windows and Gwen glimpsed the kitchen where two cooks performed prep work while listening to music.

At the end of the corridor they climbed a staircase, traversed a hallway, and ended up in Jude’s office, which provided a second-floor view of the river, passing slow and gray in the direction of New York City. Jude settled behind a glass desk that held nothing except a laptop. There wasn’t a surface in Gwen’s house that clean, despite her constantly picking up and putting away. The credenza behind him was a different story, brimming with papers and folders and books—everything from novels to business books to cookbooks. Another shelf unit to the side held a stereo dock and a pile of restaurant magazines.

Gwen sat in a chair opposite the desk, holding her cup. She didn’t want to set it on the pristine desktop, although Jude had put his down. She turned to check that Jude had closed the door. This part made her tense, and she listened for footsteps, voices, anything to indicate someone approaching.

“You can relax, there’s no one else up here,” Jude told her.

“I’m fine,” Gwen said, her face heating. Was she that obvious? She sat up straighter, set her shoulders back.

“How are Brian and the kids?”

“They’re great. We’re going away this afternoon for a mini-vacation, so thank you for seeing me today. We have a house in the Adirondacks now. Tear Lake. I don’t think we had it last time I saw you.”

“No kidding? I have a place up that way, too, just an old cabin; it was in Claire’s family for years. I’m also heading north this weekend because Dana’s starting her freshman year at St. Lawrence.”

“Wow, that’s right. Be sure to tell her I said hi. I mean, if you want to. She probably doesn’t remember me.”

There was a photograph of Jude and his daughter next to the stereo on the bookshelf. They wore skis. Their arms and ski poles were tangled around each other. It looked like a recent picture, Dana tall but still much shorter than Jude, with dark straight hair flowing from underneath a ski hat. Her wide smile showed off dazzling teeth, the mark on her eye just a shadow from this camera angle.

“I’ve been thinking about you since last time,” Jude said. “I was wondering when you would call again.”

She had visited Jude for the same purpose over the winter, and then in April when she had to come downtown to serve jury duty. Gwen didn’t get picked for a jury, but she stopped at Gull and had lunch with Jude one day that week. Otherwise, she hadn’t seen him the past nine years, and although she didn’t respond to Jude’s comment that he’d been thinking of her, she had thought about him a few times as well. Not about their brief relationship years ago, but about Jude’s life now. She wondered if he was the only unmarried man she knew, which didn’t say much about the diversity of her circle. He was the only one who didn’t have the look of married men, like they were part of a whole, and when on their own came off as incomplete or inadequate, as if they hadn’t
dressed quite right or had gotten a bad haircut. Gwen also knew how married men looked at her, as if conducting a compare and contrast study: How did this woman stack up to my wife? Was she better looking, younger, smarter, thinner? Or just different—which may be the best attribute of all? With Jude looking at her right now, she sensed his appraisal was based more on a clean slate than a weighted scale: Is she desirable? A question that carried no qualifying conditions, just an eye of the beholder. A question whose answer made her fidgety. A question she’d rather not address because she also wondered if she might be rekindling a friendship with Jude, if such a friendship were allowed, no matter how casual—a married woman having an unmarried male friend, who also happened to be a former lover. Not against the law, but likely against the rules. She doubted Brian would welcome the news without suspicion.

“I thought you and Brian were coming in for dinner some night,” Jude said.

“We haven’t been out in months, he’s been so busy with work, but we will.”

A few seconds ticked off. “Or just come by yourself,” Jude said. “We’ll have lunch again.”

Gwen looked at the clock on Jude’s bookshelf. Ten minutes left on the meter.

“I meant some other time,” he added. “When it’s not business.”

“Okay.”

“You don’t have to call ahead, just show up. That day you came in, it was a nice surprise.”

Another thing about having a male friend: it would probably be okay if he was unattractive or unavailable, but in Jude’s case the
un-
didn’t apply. It definitely applied in her case, though, at
least the unavailable part. She was firmly married, entrenched, and fulfilled in her life and role as mother, wife, and volunteer. Her days of messing up relationships were distant memories, played out by her younger, less mature, and more experimental self.

Gwen reached into her purse and handed Jude a white business envelope, the flap unsealed. “I really appreciate this,” Gwen said.

“You’re one person I’m happy to make a call for.”

“Five hundred, right?” She was nervous and sure her voice betrayed her, although the risk seemed so low here with Jude.

“That’s perfect.” Jude placed the envelope on his laptop keyboard without looking in it. He opened a desk drawer and took out a brown paper lunch bag and set it in front of Gwen.

“Do you want to try it first?”

The question surprised her; he hadn’t asked her this last time. It was tempting, like the old days at the Patriot, but was Jude going to join her or leave her solo? Would she get stoned with him now upstairs in his office? That wasn’t a good idea.

“Actually, I’d better go,” Gwen said. “I have to get packed for the weekend.”

Jude shrugged his shoulders. She put the bag in her purse.

“I should get your number,” Jude said. He unsnapped a phone from his belt. “You have mine, I should have yours—in case it’s me who needs a small favor next time.”

“Oh, sure, of course.” She gave him her cell number and he keyed it into his phone.

Then Jude stood up. “Have a great trip, Gwen. Come see me when you get back. You don’t have to wait until you run out.”

He walked her downstairs and through the dining room, out to the bar and hostess area. A new applicant sat at one of the bar tables, filling in blanks.

“Oh, and one more thing,” Jude said, leaning close and lowering his voice. “Don’t tell anyone. I’m only doing this for you.”

“I promise,” Gwen said.

“I don’t want anyone getting the wrong idea.”

He pushed open the door for her. He followed Gwen outside and they were alone on the sidewalk in front. She turned for the good-bye hug but Jude reached for her, touched her chin and cheek, leaned in, and kissed her. Time slipped for the second or two that his lips found and pressed against hers, then pulled back and were gone. She hadn’t seen it coming. Her breathing halted, heart drummed. She stepped back and turned without meeting his eyes and walked quickly to her car. By the time she dared a look, he’d gone back inside.

Gwen drove along Route 157, the road curving in and out along the ridgeline of the escarpment, until she came to the start of the Indian Falls trail in Thacher Park. She turned into the lot and parked in back where there were no cars.

That kiss. What was that kiss about. He’d caught her 100 percent off guard, although now that she thought about it, Jude definitely had been flirting with her. Thinking about her since he’d last seen her, he said. Suggesting she come back again for lunch, alone. Asking her to visit him when she returned to town. That was his nature, she knew, and there was nothing wrong with getting a few strokes, as long as she let it pass, which she did, as long as she didn’t stroke back, which she didn’t. But then he kissed her at the end and ruined it all.

Now she wouldn’t be able to visit Jude again, for any reason.

It was just a kiss, one she likely misinterpreted, and she should put behind her, the sooner the better. This was her chance to relax. She had four hours of alone time before retrieving the kids from Marlene’s, and only a few more errands on her list. Jude had included a sheaf of rolling papers in the lunch bag, which also contained a plastic baggie holding four pungent, sticky, egg-sized buds with frosted purple hairs around the edges. Gwen held the bag to her nose and breathed in. Wow. She broke a piece off one
of the buds and crumpled it inside the bag, then pinched the loose flakes between her fingers to roll a thin joint she put into a stringed clutch along with her phone. She tucked the bag of remaining buds in the seat pocket behind her. She hung the purse over her shoulder and carried her sweater and found a remote picnic table along the fence near the edge of the cliff. The sun shone but a breeze blew and the air felt a few degrees cooler up here than in the valley.

From the ridge in the park Gwen looked out across the valley, the few taller buildings downtown poking up in the distance like toy blocks stuck in the ground. The sky blazed blue and she could make out the swells of the Adirondack foothills on the northern horizon.

She lit the joint and took a few hits and lay back on the plank top of the picnic table and let the sun warm her face. She closed her eyes. Hummed deep in her throat. Wet her lips. Four days at the lake house, just her and Brian and the kids. Hiking, swimming, canoe rides, fires at night. That’s how she imagined it would be: their family nested and spending every minute together. She and Brian had bought the house when Brian’s company was acquired, his stock tripled in value, and he received a bonus for staying on. But they’d hardly been up there because Brian had been too busy with work, long hours, traveling for days at a time. She thought of this trip as promoting a new lifestyle—less hectic, more simple. Breakfast and dinner as a family. No television. A bottle of wine on the couch with Brian after the kids were in bed, a little pot to relax. A lot of lovemaking. When was the last time they did that. Hugging. There would have to be a lot of hugging and holding, among all of them. Cuddling with the kids. They were still young and delicious and wanted to touch her. Nora would hold hands with her all day. Nate had stopped nursing but
still wrapped himself around her, would curl in her arms and press his face against her like a baby.

A few more hours and they’d be going.

Gwen wasn’t a stoner. She didn’t laze around all day with a bong by her side and the TV and stereo both on, too mellow to get off the couch to wash the dishes or get dressed. She didn’t order takeout day after day. She’d known plenty of people who did live like that—mostly when she was in college or working at the Patriot—but even back then Gwen didn’t fit the profile. She would take a puff or two off someone’s joint or pipe and stayed away from other drugs, stuck with wine as her drink of choice unless a bartender knew how to make a good margarita.

She was sixteen the first time she got high, in her junior year, hanging around the park after school with her friends one day, when a joint appeared in someone’s hand. It got passed around and ended up with her boyfriend, Mark, a senior. She watched him take a long deep inhale and hold it, like he knew what he was doing. He offered it, and Gwen took the smallest poke. It came around again and this time she inhaled deeper. The next thing you know she and Mark were goofing around on the kids’ playground, pumping on the swings, playing chase on the jungle gym. It was a cold November day and they had the playground to themselves. Later, before leaving the park, she made out with Mark. The past month they’d been moving closer and closer to doing it, rubbing through their clothes, hands in each other’s pants, and that Saturday night she went to Mark’s house when his parents were out. He’d gotten a big joint for them to smoke. She had sex for the first time and it wasn’t painful or scary like she’d been made to believe but exciting and sensual—maybe quicker
than she’d expected, but they did it a few times and she felt happy and full.

A few months later Mark broke up with her because she’d gone with someone else to the movies. He was too proprietary and she didn’t protest much. However, he’d been her source for pot and now she stopped smoking, didn’t think of it again until college when suddenly everyone had it. Gwen got high at parties and on weekends—but not before or instead of classes or as a daily ritual like some of her suitemates did. If she happened to be going out with a guy who liked to get high, she’d join him. She loved to have sex when stoned; it managed to be both soothing and intense at the same time. She had great orgasms.

Brian preferred vodka. Maybe once in a while if he had drunk enough he’d take a hit or two, get paranoid, and shortly thereafter pass out. Therefore, Gwen never encouraged him. He had no objections to Gwen getting high when they were dating, and then living together, and then married, although for the first seven-plus years of marriage she didn’t smoke at all; up until last year she’d been either pregnant or nursing the entire time. When Nate finally weaned—Gwen was the only mother she knew nursing a four-year-old, making her a target for clucks and stares from some of the other Morrissey moms—what remained was a much less intimate routine of shuttling, entertaining, managing school schedules, cleaning up after her kids, and cooking for her family. Chores and errands and bills. She hung out with other moms, volunteered in the PTA, found babysitters on weekends so she and Brian could do more than pass each other coming and going, and overall loved her life and her husband and children and wouldn’t trade any part of it, knowing how lucky she was. And one day when the kids were in school and Brian at work and her to-do list crossed off, she experienced a nostalgic craving while watching the wind blow the empty swings in her backyard. She
wondered where she could get a little pot, that would be fun; she didn’t know anyone like that now.