The Last Time I Saw You (13 page)

He laughs. “Great name. Great-looking dog. I like bulldogs, they always put you in a good mood.” He leans closer to Candy to say, “
You
look fan
tas
tic!”

“Thanks. You do, too.”

The elevator comes, and Pete holds the door for her and Esther, then steps in after them.

“You play golf?” Candy asks, as they lean on opposite walls of the elevator.

Pete looks down at his yellow knit shirt, with its little embroidered golfer teeing off at nipple level. “Well, yeah, I do; but I don’t usually wear golf
clothes
. This was just… I spilled something on my clothes at the airport, whole cup of Coke, some kid knocked into me, so I had to quick buy a change of clothes. I was wearing jeans and a blue Zegna shirt. You know. These pants don’t even fit me.” He pulls with some pride at the waistband to show her the pants are too big, and Candy nods. They are also a bit short, she sees.

“I’m going to try to quick buy a suit somewhere,” he says.

“Your suit got wet, too?”

He looks confused. “Oh. No! That, I… Would you believe it, I forgot to pack it!” He smacks his forehead. “Left it hanging in my closet!”

The elevator doors open, and Pete looks to the right and the left before he exits. “You seen anybody yet?” he asks. “’sides me, I mean. Course,
I’m
all you
need
to see!”

She smiles. Same old Pete. She tells him, “Just Pam, when I registered.” But now she sees a couple standing outside, about fifty feet from the entrance. “Is that anybody?”

Pete squints. “I think that’s… Oh my God, I
think
that’s Lester Hessenpfeffer and Mary Alice Mayhew! Isn’t it?”

Candy looks again. “I think you’re right!”

“
There’s
a match made in heaven!” He shakes his head.

Candy starts to say she always liked them both but felt inhibited in the old days from showing it, and why had they all been like that? But Pete’s in a hurry and steps briskly down the hall, and Candy decides the people to talk to are Lester and Mary Alice, not Pete. She suspects if she asked Pete about why they marginalized people in that awful way back then, he’d say, “Well they were
nerds
.” And then he’d look over at them and probably say, “Still are, come on.”

But Lester and Mary Alice are engrossed in what appears to be a rather personal conversation, standing there with their heads bent close together, and she decides not to bother them. She’ll tell them tonight, one way or another, that she regrets not having gotten to know them better in high school. She’ll ask Lester for a dance. If she drinks enough, she may ask Mary Alice for one, too. It comes to her that she’d like to tell her the News, that Mary Alice would be the kind of person you’d want for your friend, if things got bad. Or even if they didn’t. How can she feel this way, when she has not exchanged a word with Mary Alice in all these years? She never talked to her much when they were in school together, either. Still, she has this feeling about her.

Candy goes out the far door of the hotel and into the sunshine. She’ll walk Esther for as long as there’s time. Then she’ll come back and get ready.

She takes a few steps, then suddenly stops and says, “
Essie!
” The dog looks up at her. She reaches down to pet her, avoiding touching her abdomen. “Good girl,” she says. “You’re a
good girl
! You ready?”

A snort.

“You
ready
?”

A few steps backward, and she barks.

“
Okay!
” Candy says. “Me, too. Me, too. Let’s go.”

FOURTEEN

A
FEW MINUTES BEFORE THE DINNER IS SCHEDULED TO
start, Pete Decker gets off the elevator and runs smack into his wife and that nincompoop, Fred Preston. Fred is wearing a suit you’d wear to a funeral: something muddy-colored and plain, with no style at all, and his tie is a nightmare. What is that,
cats
on there? Not that Pete should talk. Damn it. He was not able to find a suit, and so he’s stuck wearing these stupid golf clothes. His shirt is untucked to disguise the fact that the pants are so loose at the waist. He, Pete Decker, Mr. GQ, looks like hell. That’s right. He looks worse than Fred! But to put a new spin on an old axiom, even in tacky golf clothes, tomorrow morning he’ll still be Pete Decker and Fred Preston will be the dickwad that he is, no matter what he wears. Nora has stopped in her tracks to stare at Pete, and he raises his hand in a little wave. “Hey,” he says.

“Pete! What are you doing here? Why aren’t you in the hospital?”

He shrugs. “Yeah, funniest thing. Right after you left, the doc came in and sprang me after all.”

God, Nora looks good. She’s wearing some blue-green dress with a short skirt that shows off her legs, and her shoulders are bare. She looks beautiful. She has on a necklace he didn’t give her and hopes Fred didn’t, either; he hopes she bought it for herself. It’s blue-green, too, something made of glass or crystal or some such thing, and it has a very classy and contemporary look, like the jewelry Hillary Clinton wore when she was running for president. It’s a youthful look. He remembers how Nora used to comment on how swell Her Hillaryness looked every time she spoke on the campaign trail, and he would think,
Yeah, well, maybe you should pay attention to the content and not the costume
, but the truth was that Nora did pay attention; she retained more about what the candidates said than he did. Another thing he’ll do when he moves back in is give her the respect she deserves.

Fred reaches out his hand, and Pete reluctantly (though
graciously
!) shakes it. “Nice to see you, Pete,” Fred says, and Pete says, “You, too,” and aren’t they both full of shit.

“Play a few rounds today?” Fred asks, smirking, and Pete looks down at himself and says, “Yeah, the airline lost my bag, what can you do.” He feels himself blushing and tightens his buttocks as though that might stop it.

“Well, we’d better get going,” Nora says, and there is—is there?—just the softest hint of regret in her eyes. Pete guesses that she wishes she were with him, that she has begun to feel exactly what he wanted her to, on account of all the memories being stirred up. He stares back at her, his high school sweetheart, the girl who wore his letter jacket, his wife, the mother of his children, his
friend
, and he feels two parallel lines in his throat begin to ache.

“Hey, Nora,” he says. “Can I just… Can I talk to you in private for just a second?”

She hesitates, and Fred takes her arm and says, “We were just going in, Pete.”

And God bless Nora, she pulls her arm away and says, “It’s okay, Fred. You go ahead, and I’ll be right there.”

“I really don’t know anyone, Nora,” Fred says. “This is, after all,
your
high school reunion.”

Right
, Pete thinks.
Hers and mine. Not yours
. He wonders how Fred got a ticket, anyway. That damn Pam Pottsman. She probably just told him he could come for free, giggling the whole time.

Nora’s right eye twitches, which it always does when she’s getting annoyed. Not that Fred knows this. Or anything else. She says, “Well, could you just wait for me at the entrance to the ballroom? You might try speaking to someone. They’re all friendly people.” Her tone softens, then, and she says, “Just give me a second, okay? I’ll be right there.”

Oh, man, this is suddenly the happiest day of Pete’s life. He won’t take her from Fred right away. Let them have dinner, then he’ll request that the DJ play “The Way You Look Tonight,” which was the first song he and Nora screwed to, and then he’ll walk right over and ask her to dance. She might get weepy, that would be good. But in any case, they’ll dance a little and then he’ll say, “Why don’t you dump the excess baggage and come upstairs with me?” and maybe she will. He bets she will.

Nora comes over to him and he says softly, “How you doing, babe?”

She crosses her arms and sighs, and he sees that the scenario he just imagined is not going to happen. She’s with another man. She’s wearing a dress he’s never seen before. A new scent.

He blows air out of his cheeks. “Okay, well, I don’t have anything, you know, special. I just wanted to say that you look so beautiful. You really do.”

“Well… Thank you. Thanks, Pete.” She starts to walk away.

This can’t be it! There’s got to be something he can say that will get to her! He gently takes her arm and says, “Nora? I also wanted—” The cellphone in his pocket vibrates, making a buzzing sound, and he tries to ignore it, but she hears it, too.

“Better get that,” she says, and there is something in her tone that makes him think she’s pretty sure it’s Sandy. He wants so much for her not to think that. He points to the phone and says, “Bet that’s one of the kids.”

Her eyebrows rise to the
Oh?
position.

He takes the phone out and looks to see who’s calling. Damn it, it
is
Sandy. “I’ll call them back,” he says, but Nora knows. She smiles, turns away, and walks down the hall toward Fred, who’s probably going to act like he’s saving the damsel in distress. Asshole. He can’t even play touch football. He doesn’t
like
sports. Or cigars. Or
cars
! He “kiddingly” referred to Pete’s Porsche as generic Viagra. And what does Fred drive? A
Nissan Cube
, an absolute joke of a car, and in the driver’s seat he has some sort of wooden-beaded
orthopedic
device for his
back
.

Well, Nora is still his wife. They’re not divorced yet, she is still his wife. He opens his still-buzzing cellphone and says, “What.”

“Okay,” Sandy says. “I have to do this while I’m feeling strong enough to do it, so please just listen. Okay. I want to say something. Which is: I don’t think we should continue our relationship. It is too damaging to my esteem.”

He pulls the phone away from his ear, looks at it, tries to think of what to say, and then just snaps it shut. It buzzes again, and when he answers, Sandy says, “Did you hear me?”

“Sandy,” he says.

There is a long silence, and he hears her snuffling. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I know this comes as a shock. I’m sorry to hurt you. But I just don’t know if we can work this out.”

Pete rolls his eyes. “I understand. We’re done. Be happy. Goodbye.”

“You
always
hide your
true
feelings,” she says.

“Not this time,” he says. “Take it easy.”

He stands in the hall and watches his classmates come out of the elevator and head for the ballroom. He calls out to some of his football buddies, wonders who some of the other people are. There goes Pam Pottsman in her triple-X-size emerald green dress and her hair ratted up real high. She’s wearing blue shoes. Women used to get their shoes and purses dyed so everything matched; now they seem to pride themselves on these outrageous color combinations. You have to pay attention to women; they’re always shifting things around, always
changing
things. A guy can never trust that the chair that he has positioned perfectly for watching television will be left alone.

Dorothy Shauman gets off the elevator with her two girlfriends who always hung with her like she was the Queen of Sheba and they were her slaves. They’re all still okay looking; the brunette, especially, what was her name, Jennifer, he thinks, something
J
. Anyway, he made out with her but good one night at a Homecoming bonfire. And the blonde, Linda, he had a session with her in the bathroom at a party he brought Nora to on their first date. He still feels kind of bad about that. The J woman and Linda say hi, but Dorothy hardly looks at him, what’s her problem? He made out with her, too, one time, and it actually wasn’t bad, she was most accommodating. Maybe she forgot. It’s possible. He doubts it, but it’s possible.

He recognizes Ben Small, who gets off the elevator alone, talking on his iPhone. That guy had been a really good actor.
Really
good. Pete watches him walk to see if he turned out queer. Hard to tell; Ben’s got an easy, long-legged stride that could go either way. Same with the clothes: elegant, casual, expensive looking, but not sissy. He’ll buy Ben a drink, see what’s up. He might have become some Broadway star, who knows? The last time he saw Ben Small, it was the August before most of them left for college and Ben was mowing the lawn in front of his little white house. Pete had driven by with a handful of buddies and they’d all called out, “Hey, Small!” and Ben had waved and then stood still, watching them go. Everybody wanted to be in Pete’s crowd in those days. Everybody did.

He looks at his watch and starts for the ballroom. Coming around a corner near the opposite end of the hall, Pete sees a woman in a blue dress pushing some old geezer in a wheelchair. The guy’s all decked out in a suit Pete wishes he had on, nice blue tie, too. As they get closer, he sees it’s Mary Alice Mayhew. God damn. She actually looks kind of nice! She recognizes Pete and smiles, waves. He waves back, then goes over to meet her and what he presumes is her father. He’ll ask if he can sit with Mary Alice for dinner. She’ll be a safe haven from where he can watch the crowd. Well, not the crowd. Nora. Nora Jane Hagman Decker, born September 9, 1952, at 7:07
A.M
. via cesarean section. Favorite color: green. Favorite movie:
All About Eve
. Favorite food: sauces, the woman loves sauces, always asks for extra sauce on the side. It will be good for Pete to sit with Mary Alice Mayhew. If Nora sees him, she’ll know he’s
behaving
himself.

“Hey, what’s up, Mary Alice,” he says when he’s beside her.

“Hi, Pete.” She leans over and gives him a little kiss. She smells good, like just-cut grass. “How are you?”

“I’m fired up!” he says.

Mary Alice puts her hand on her father’s shoulder. “This is my friend Einer Olson.”

“Nice to meet you,” Pete says, and thinks,
Hmm, not her father. Is he her
date
?

He always did feel sorry for Mary Alice, but this takes the cake.

“Bet
you
were a senior superlative!” Einer says, looking him up and down. The dude’s glasses must be three inches thick.

Pete smiles. “Pardon?”

“Senior superlative! Didn’t you people have them? When I was in school, we had senior superlatives. They were the young men and women who truly excelled in one way or another. We had one guy, Cecil McIntyre, oh, that guy could throw a football, I’ll tell you! Good friend of mine.”

“Yeah, I played football,” Pete says.

“No, he’s been gone for years now,” Einer says.

“No, I said, ‘I played football,’” Pete says, loudly.

“That so? What position?”

“Quarterback.”

Einer tilts his head back to scrutinize Pete more fully. “Well, the girls always like the quarterbacks, don’t they?”

“Yes, sir, they do.”

“I was a track man, myself.”

“Nothing wrong with that.”

“I could
play
football, just wasn’t my strong suit.”

“Einer, I’m starving,” Mary Alice says.

“Move along, then! I’m not the one driving!”

Mary Alice pushes him slowly into the ballroom, and it seems to Pete that she’s carefully scanning the crowd.

“Looking for someone?” Pete has to raise his voice to be heard over “Crimson and Clover,” which the DJ is playing a little too loudly.

“Oh, no,” Mary Alice says.

“She is, too,” Einer shouts. “She told me on the way over that she really wants to talk to Bert Small.”

“
Ben
Small?” Pete says. And then, pointing, “He’s right over there. Let’s go and sit with him; there’s room at his table.”

Now Mary Alice speaks quietly. “That’s okay, Pete.”

“Aw, come on!” Pete smiles the old killer smile. Let this be his good deed of the night: get Mary Alice Mayhew and Ben Small together. He doesn’t remember ever seeing her with anybody in high school. In fact, now that he thinks of it, he recalls that kids were kind of shitty to Mary Alice. Oh, not Pete—he had bigger fish to fry. He picked on other jocks, especially those from other schools. Put a little spray paint a few places it shouldn’t go, that kind of thing.

Pete takes over pushing the wheelchair for Mary Alice, and when they get to Ben’s table and ask if they can sit there, he says absolutely, and seems happy. Pete sees in one instant that Ben Small is not gay. Sensitive, maybe, but not gay. He’s not sure Mary Alice can see it, though. She’s looking in another direction altogether. She’s looking two tables over, where Candy Sullivan—Jesus,
gorgeous
in that white dress—is sitting with none other than Lester Hessenpfeffer. Mary Alice is probably worried about Candy moving in on Ben. All the girls used to worry about Candy Sullivan.

The dance floor is empty but for a couple Pete doesn’t recognize—a couple of white-haired people dancing to “Proud Mary.” The music isn’t quite so loud now; Pete thinks maybe the couple asked them to turn it down.

“I had a lot of fun in high school,” Einer says, and Pete moves closer to him. He’ll make do having conversation with the old man during dinner. It’s fine. The guy’s kind of funny—interesting, too—and Pete has a clear view of Nora, who is engaged in intense conversation with another woman at their table—Gloria Gelman? Is that ancient-looking woman the formerly sexalicious Gloria Gelman?—while Fred sits there like some kind of stick-in-the-mud. That’s because he
is
a stick-in-the-mud, a total loser, a namby-pamby, pissant girlyman, which, if Nora hasn’t learned by now, she soon will. All Pete needs to do is take his time and play it cool. And oh, baby, he knows what cool is.