The Leftovers (34 page)

*   *   *

THERE WAS
a candle between them and Nora’s face looked younger than usual in its flickering glow, as if the tension lines had been erased from the corners of her eyes and mouth. He hoped the soft light was doing him the same favor, giving her a glimpse of the handsome fellow he used to be, the one she’d never had a chance to meet.

“This is a nice restaurant,” he said. “Really down-to-earth.”

She glanced around the dining room as if seeing it for the first time, taking in the rustic decor with an air of grudging approval—the high ceiling with exposed beams, the bell-shaped light fixtures suspended above rough-hewn tables, the plank floor and exposed brick walls.

“Why do they call it the grapefruit?” she asked.

“Grapefruit?”

“Pamplemousse. It’s
grapefruit
in French.”

“Really?”

She held up the menu, pointing to a big yellow orb on the cover.

He squinted at the image. “I thought that was the sun.”

“It’s a grapefruit.”

“Whoops.”

Her eyes strayed toward the bar, where a festive crowd of walk-ins was clustered, waiting for some tables to open up. Kevin couldn’t understand why they all looked so cheerful. He hated that, killing time on an empty stomach, not knowing when the hostess would wander over and call your name.

“Must’ve been hard to get a reservation,” she said. “Eight o’clock and everything.”

“Just good timing.” Kevin shrugged, as if it were no big deal. “Somebody canceled right before I called.”

This wasn’t precisely true—he’d had to call in a favor from the restaurant’s wine supplier, who’d started out as a salesman for Patriot Liquors—but he decided to keep that information to himself. There were a lot of women who would’ve been impressed by his string-pulling abilities, but he was pretty sure Nora wasn’t one of them.

“I guess you’re just a lucky guy,” she told him.

“That’s right.” He tilted his glass in her direction, suggesting a toast without insisting on it. “Happy Valentine’s Day.”

She mimicked his gesture. “Same to you.”

“You look beautiful,” he said, not for the first time that evening.

Nora smiled unconvincingly and opened her menu. He could see that it was costing her something just to be here, exposed like this, letting the whole town in on their little secret. But she’d done it—
she’d done it for him
—and that was the important thing.

*   *   *

HE HAD
to hand it to Aimee. Without her encouragement, he never would’ve forced the issue, wouldn’t have had the courage to nudge Nora out of her comfort zone.

“I don’t want to push her,” he’d said. “She’s a pretty fragile person.”

“She’s a survivor,” Aimee had reminded him. “I bet she’s a lot tougher than you think.”

Kevin knew it was an iffy proposition, taking relationship advice from a teenager—a high school dropout, no less—but he’d gotten to know Aimee a lot better in the past couple of weeks and had come to think of her more as a friend and a peer than as one of his daughter’s classmates. For someone who’d made some pretty bad decisions in her own life, she actually had a lot of insight into other people and what made them tick.

It had been awkward at first, the two of them alone in the house after Jill left for school, but they’d gotten past that pretty quickly. It helped that Aimee was on her best behavior, coming downstairs wide-awake and fully dressed, no more sleepy Lolita in a tank top. She was polite and friendly and surprisingly easy to talk to. She told him about her new job—apparently, waitressing was a lot harder than she’d thought it would be—and asked a lot of questions about his. They discussed current events and music and sports—she was a pretty big NBA fan—and watched funny videos on YouTube. She was also curious about his personal life.

“How’s your girlfriend?” she asked him almost every morning. “You guys getting serious?”

For a while, Kevin just said,
She’s fine,
and moved on, trying to let her know that it was none of her business, but Aimee refused to take the hint. Then one morning last week, without making a conscious decision, he blurted out an honest answer.

“Something’s wrong,” he said. “I like her a lot, but I think we’re running out of gas.”

He told her the whole story, minus the meager sexual details—the parade, the dance, the impulsive trip to Florida, the rut they’d fallen into when they got back home, his sense that she was pushing him away, that he wasn’t really welcome in her life.

“I try to get to know her, but she just clams up on me. It’s frustrating.”

“But you want to stay together?”

“Not if it’s gonna be like this.”

“Well, what do you want it to be?”

“A normal relationship, you know? As normal as she can handle right now. Just going out once in a while, to the movies or whatever. Maybe with friends, so it’s not just the two of us. And I’d like to be able to have a real conversation, not to have to always worry that I’m saying the wrong thing.”

“Does she know this?”

“I think so. I don’t see how she couldn’t.”

Aimee studied him for a few seconds, her tongue pressing against the inside of her cheek.

“You’re too polite,” she said. “You have to tell her what you want.”

“I try. But when I ask her to go out, she just says no, she’d rather stay at home.”

“Don’t give her a choice. Just say, ‘Hey, I’m taking you out to dinner. I already made the reservations.’”

“Sounds kinda pushy.”

“What’s the alternative?”

Kevin shrugged, as if the answer were obvious.

“Give it a shot,” she said. “What have you got to lose?”

*   *   *

NICK AND
Zoe were going at it pretty good. They were kneeling on the rug, close enough for Jill to touch, Zoe purring happily as Nick licked and nuzzled her neck in what looked like a vampire’s idea of foreplay.

“It’s heating up, folks.” Jason spoke into an imaginary microphone, using a sports-announcer voice that wasn’t as funny as he thought it was. “Lazarro’s totally focused, working his way methodically downfield…”

If Aimee had been there, she would’ve made some clever, condescending remark to break Nick’s concentration and remind him not to get carried away. But Aimee wasn’t playing—she’d dropped out of the game a month ago when she started up at Applebee’s—so if anyone was going to intervene, it would have to be Jill.

But Jill kept her mouth shut as the kissing couple toppled onto the floor, Nick on top, Zoe’s fishnet leg wrapped around the back of his knees. She was surprised by the depth of her indifference to this spectacle. If it had been Aimee beneath Nick, she would’ve been sick with jealousy. But it was just Zoe, and Zoe didn’t matter. If Nick wanted her, he was welcome to have her.

Knock yourself out,
she thought.

It was almost embarrassing to remember how much time and emotional energy she’d squandered on Nick in the fall, pining for the one boy she couldn’t have, the prize Aimee had claimed for herself. He was still beautiful, with that square jaw and those dreamy lashes, but so what? Back in the summer, when she’d first gotten to know him, he’d also been sweet and funny, so attentive and alive—she remembered laughing with him more than she remembered the sex they’d had—but these days he was like a zombie, all grim business, just another jerk with an erection. And it wasn’t just his fault—Jill felt clumsy and tongue-tied in his presence, unable to think of anything to say that might disturb the blankness on his face, make him remember that they were friends, that she was something more than an obliging mouth, or a hand with some greasy lotion on it.

But the real problem wasn’t Nick, and it wasn’t Jill or Zoe or any of the other players. It was Aimee. Until she stopped coming to Dmitri’s, Jill hadn’t realized how important she was, not just to the game, but to the group as a whole. She was the one essential member, the sun in their little solar system, the magnetic force that held them all together.

She’s our Wardell Brown,
Jill thought.

Wardell Brown had been the center on her brother’s high school basketball team, a six-foot-six superstar who had regularly scored more points than the rest of his teammates combined. It was almost comical to watch them play together, four average-sized, perfectly competent white guys hustling to keep up with a graceful black giant who played the game on a whole different level. During Tom’s senior year, Wardell led the Pirates all the way to the final round of the state tournament, only to sit out the championship game with a sprained ankle. Deprived of his services, the team fell apart, losing in a humiliating blowout.

“Wardell’s our glue,” the coach said afterward. “He’s not there and the wheels come off.”

That was how Jill felt, playing Get a Room without Aimee nearby. Inept. Unglued. Adrift. Like a small planet wobbling through deep space, cut loose from its orbit.

*   *   *

THE ENTRÉES
were taking forever. Or maybe it just felt that way. Nora wasn’t used to eating in restaurants anymore, at least not restaurants in Mapleton, where everyone did such a bad job of pretending not to stare at her, sneaking sideways glances and peering over the tops of their menus, directing sly beams of pity in her direction, though it was possible that this was just her imagination, too. Maybe she just wanted to think she was the center of attention so she’d have an excuse for how conspicuous she felt, as though she were up onstage with a white-hot spotlight shining in her face, trapped in one of those bad dreams where you had a starring role in the school play, but had somehow neglected to memorize your lines.

“What were you like as a kid?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Like everyone else, I guess.”

“Not everyone’s the same.”

“They’re not as different as they think.”

“Were you a girly girl?” he pressed on. “Did you wear pink dresses and stuff like that?”

She could sense some scrutiny coming from a table slightly behind her and a little to the right, where a woman she recognized, but whose name was escaping her, was sitting with her husband and another couple. The woman’s daughter, Taylor, had been a student at Little Sprouts Academy during Nora’s stint as an assistant teacher. The girl had a wispy, barely audible voice—Nora was always asking her to repeat herself—and she talked obsessively about her best friend, Neil, and all the fun they had together. Nora must have known Taylor for six months before she figured out that Neil was a Boston terrier and not a boy from the neighborhood.

“I wore dresses sometimes. But I wasn’t a little princess or anything.”

“Were you a happy kid?”

“Happy enough, I guess. I had a couple of bad years in middle school.”

“Why?”

“You know. Braces, acne. The usual.”

“Did you have friends?”

“Sure. I mean, I wasn’t the most popular kid in the world, but I had friends.”

“What were their names?”

God,
Nora thought.
He’s relentless.
He’d been grilling her like this ever since they’d sat down, as if he were a reporter writing an article for the local paper—“My Dinner with Nora: The Heartbreaking Saga of a Pathetic Woman.” The questions were benign enough—
What did you do today? Did you ever play field hockey? Have you had any broken bones?
—but they annoyed her nonetheless. She could tell they were just warm-ups, stand-ins for the questions he really wanted to ask:
What happened that night? How did you go on living? What’s it like to be you?

“That was a long time ago, Kevin.”

“Not that long.”

She spotted the waiter moving in their direction, a short, olive-skinned man with the face of a silent movie idol and a plate in each hand.
Finally,
she thought, but he just floated by, on his way to another table.

“You really don’t remember their names?”

“I remember their names,” she said, speaking more sharply than she’d meant to. “I’m not brain damaged.”

“Sorry,” he said. “I was just trying to make conversation.”

“I know.” Nora felt like a jerk for snapping at him. “It’s not your fault.”

He glanced worriedly toward the kitchen. “I wonder what’s taking so long.”

“It’s a busy night,” she said. “Their names were Liz, Lizzie, and Alexa.”

*   *   *

MAX STARTED
undressing as soon as Jill shut the door, as if she were a doctor who didn’t like to be kept waiting. He was wearing a wool sweater over a T-shirt, but he removed both garments in a single hurried tug, the static electricity causing his wispy hair to crackle and float up into a boyish halo. His chest was narrow compared to Nick’s, smooth and unmuscled, his belly taut and sunken, but not in a way that made you think of sexy underwear models.

“It’s been a while,” he said, unbuckling his pants, letting them slide down his skinny thighs and pool around his ankles.

“Not that long. Just a week or so.”

“Way longer than that,” he said, stepping out of his jeans and kicking them against the wall, on top of his shirt and sweater. “Twelve days.”

“But who’s counting, right?”

“Yeah.” His voice was flat and bitter. “Who’s counting.”

He was still mad at her, offended by the eagerness with which she’d pounced on Nick the moment he became available. But that was the game. You had to make choices, express preferences, cause and suffer pain. Every now and then, if you were lucky the way Nick and Aimee had been lucky, your first choice chose you as well. But most of the time it was messier than that.

“Well, I’m here now,” she told him.

“That’s right.” He sat down on the edge of the bed, pulling off his socks and tossing them onto the pile of discarded clothes. “You get the consolation prize.”

It would have been easy enough to contradict him, to remind him of how willingly she’d just surrendered the alleged first prize—on Valentine’s Day, no less, not that any of them cared about that—but for some reason she withheld the kindness. She knew it wasn’t fair. In a more logical world, her disappointment with Nick would have made her more appreciative of Max rather than less, but it hadn’t worked out that way. All the contrast had done was highlight the shortcomings of both guys, the fact that the sexy one wasn’t nice, and the nice one wasn’t sexy.