“Gawd, what a royal asshole,” Lisa muttered, referring to Weiner, just before taking her first a sip of the Junipero martinis. For the second night in a row, they were at their favorite restaurant. Neither wanted to cook, and moreover, Alex felt the need to get out of the house. The restaurant felt comfortable, a touchstone of normalcy.
Alex nodded and did the same, savoring the juniper botanical. “Nothing like Junipero.” He’d decided to hold off mentioning Reynolds’s phone call until she had a moment to relax from work. They had left the house soon as she returned home, and he’d just finished telling her of the embarrassment of being delegated, quite literally, to a broom closet.
She sighed and leaned back against the booth. “What do we do now?”
“For the moment, nothing. I need to scout around for a job. I was too upset to make any real calls. I thought about trying to set up a private practice so we wouldn’t have to move, but I just can’t bring myself to seriously consider it.”
She spooned a few ice cubes from her water glass into the martini, a trick they both used to dilute it some.
“I did get an interesting phone call shortly after I got home.”
“Oh?” She replaced the spoon on the linen napkin, the restaurant din and piped-in music making it a little hard to hear again in spite of being in a booth.
He told her of Reynolds’s pitch to fly there for a job interview.
She wrinkled her nose. “You said no, didn’t you?”
He spooned a few ice cubes into his drink. “Actually, I agreed to come.”
She sat back against the booth, hands in her lap. “Really? I’m surprised.”
“Why?”
“Well, for starters, it’s in the South. You’d seriously consider living there?”
“I know, I know … but the way I see it, I can’t be very choosy at the moment. Considering our finances, my highest priority is finding a job. The longer I stay unemployed, the deeper in debt we’ll be. Besides, there’s no harm looking. Chances are I won’t take it, but hey, who knows?”
She nodded. “Good point.”
“And say I do take it. Once our lives stabilize and the pressure’s off, I can start to nose around seriously for something more ideal. But you never can tell, maybe we’ll discover it’s our dream place. Neither one of us has set foot in a southern city other than New Orleans, and that was only a couple of days at a convention.” He picked up his martini. “Who knows? We might like it.”
“Okay, granted, but think about this: we’re both non-church-going liberal democrats. The place you’re talking about is the heart of the Bible Belt. We’d be surrounded by right-wing Christian conservatives. You ready to deal with that?”
Having already considered this, he nodded agreement. “Every word you say is true, but we may be getting ahead of ourselves. I haven’t even looked at the job. In fact, he was pretty vague about the details, so I’m not exactly sure what the job actually entails. After I hung up and thought about it, I got the distinct impression his intent is to get me down there and take a look at me before he decides what he wants to offer. But hey, it’s university-based and has a residency. From everything I’ve heard, Reynolds is a straight shooter and well connected politically. Might be a good temporary job. You never know, sometimes these things work out for the best. And as I said, what do I have to lose by looking? Besides, I’ll get frequent flyer miles.”
She laughed and spooned a few more ice cubes into her drink. “When are you going?”
“Day after tomorrow. My flight’s already booked.”