40

“It’s the Fulwilers!” The hostess and two waitresses descended upon us as soon as we pushed through the swinging doors to Guero’s. “What have you been up to?”

Joe and I looked at each other, holding back laughter. “Let’s see,” Joe said, “We started a business, shut it down, and became hardcore Catholics.” He turned to me. “Does that cover it?”

“We also moved to the ‘burbs, where we have three kids under age three,” I added.

“That’s a story I gotta hear”, the hostess said, leading us to the waiting area. “But first, margaritas!”

“We can’t right now,” I said, scanning the tables in front of us. “We’re on our way to church, actually.”

We were downtown for the Red Mass, a seven-hundred-year-old tradition where bishops hold a special blessing Mass for local attorneys, judges, and other legal professionals. Afterward, the bishop was hosting a reception and dinner at a private club near the cathedral. It happened to be the same day as our fourth wedding anniversary, so we thought it would be the perfect way to celebrate.

But first, I wanted to take a detour to South Congress. There was something I had been meaning to do for a long time now. “Is Clifford Antone around tonight?” I asked. His usual table was empty, and I stood on my toes to scan the bar area. Our party-throwing days were on hold for a while, but for the longest time I’d wanted to touch base with him. I often thought of his own plans to start his life fresh, and I wanted to say hello and see how that was going.

The hostess studied our faces, her brow wrinkling in concern. “You didn’t hear? It was all over the local news.”

“Hear what?” I eased down from my tiptoes. I knew from her tone that I wasn’t going to find him here.

“I’m sorry, honey, but Clifford Antone is dead. He died last year.”

“What? When?”

She told me the date, and it was within days of my DVT diagnosis. Things had been so crazy for us that we’d missed the news altogether. I searched the restaurant, my mind unable to process it. Surely she was mistaken, and he was about to saunter through the double doors any second now.

“I’m sorry you didn’t know,” she said, her voice distant. I hadn’t known him well, which somehow made it all the more surreal that he was gone.

We drifted out of the restaurant. Joe held the door for me, and before I stepped out I turned around and looked for him one last time, just in case.

Joe offered to bring the car around so I didn’t have to walk, and I stood on the edge of the raised restaurant porch, looking down Congress Avenue as if it were a scene from a long-ago dream. I reached into my purse and slid open the zipper on the interior pocket. Under the change and keys that had accumulated over the years, I could see a glimpse of white. I pulled it out, smoothed it in my hand, and looked at the napkin where Clifford Antone had written his phone number.

He wasn’t Catholic, and wasn’t a practicing Christian that I knew of, but I took comfort in the possibility that he had made it to purgatory, the great refuge of well-meaning sinners, and if he wasn’t in heaven, he was close. And hopefully, one day, I would meet him again.

I closed my eyes and said the Our Father for his soul. The wind rose and fell like respiration as I prayed, the gusts rushing past me like a great exhalation. My hair danced around my face like flames, then settled down as the air stilled. When the wind started building once again, I slid my fingers across the weathered paper one last time. And as a deluge of warm air rushed passed me in a crescendo, I released the napkin, and felt it disappear from my hands.