Martha waits in the courtyard of the coffee shop. She’s at our favorite table, under a tree. I suggest we move closer to the fountain, into the sun. It’s freezing out here by Charleston standards, not even fifty degrees.
She nods and gathers her things: sunglasses, orange Bic, a soft pack of cigarettes. She seems to have completely forgotten about Bruno, who, still leashed to the table, scrapes his nails against the concrete. He’s balding like Tito: pink patches of exposed skin dot his snout and ears.
Martha doesn’t budge. “I’m going to get your dog.” I walk across the patio, slowing for the little ground finches who subsist off muffin crumbs. Bruno jumps to his hind legs to greet me, his neck straining against the leash. When I rub his back, chunks of gummy fur stick to my palms. He smells like an aging bachelor: moldy laundry and tobacco smoke. One eye drips clear mucus. I unfasten him. “Come here, buddy.”
Martha’s hands tremble as she lights a cigarette, and I wonder if she hasn’t already had a few cups of coffee. When she exhales, two dirty plumes tunnel down her nostrils. Brown roots sully her once-raven hair. When she crosses her legs, I spot a rip in her skirt. She looks as bad as Bruno. I consider delaying the breakup.
“I’ve missed you, Simons.” She takes a big gulp of coffee. How she hasn’t burned a hole in her mouth is beyond me. Even with a generous splash of oat milk, mine’s too hot to sip.
“I miss you, too, Martha.” The good parts of you, I think.
“Yeah, but it’s more than that for me. I miss my old life. It was simpler. You have a simple life. You know?”
Simple? I try not to feel insulted. She is not wearing her standard huge sunglasses, but it’s still hard for me to read those opaque eyes.
“Look, can we just go back to the way things were?”
“The way things were when?”
“Can we just move on and forget about the whole Harry thing?”
“I don’t know what—”
She wraps her hands around the chair rails, squares her body with mine. “Jesus, Simons, you don’t have to pretend you don’t know. Be real for once. You’re mad at me because I was fucking Harry.”
I’m not shocked. I don’t know what to feel at the moment, but I definitely don’t feel shocked. I had my suspicions.
“I never even really liked him,” she adds.
I rub my temples, trying to make sense of her calculations. “So, you knew I liked Harry. You didn’t even like him, and you slept with him anyway?” Saying goodbye is going to be a whole lot easier than I thought.
“It just happened. We were on tour. When you share a tent . . .”
“No. It didn’t just happen. That night, when you brought Harry to my apartment, I think you got jealous.”
“You’re crazy.” Her face is wreathed in the coffee’s rising steam.
“Maybe you felt like we were in some sort of competition.”
“Seriously, Simons. Shut up.”
“We couldn’t survive a love triangle.”
“I wouldn’t call it that.”
What genuine friendship can be unraveled by a man? I see more clearly than ever that Martha and I are terrible for each other.
“Oh shit. Don’t cry, Simons.” She rolls her eyes.
“I’m not crying,” I say plainly. I can speak plainly because it all feels so simple: it’s time for me to move on, to be intentional about my relationships, like Weezy said. I need to invest in people who are honest with themselves and who care about me, and to let others go. “I’m over Harry,” I tell her. “I don’t care about him anymore.”
What I do care about is Laudie’s past, the passion for ballet that she traded for security. I care that she gave adventure a chance and that she guarded a secret that powered her through a lifetime of compromises, concessions, and criticism. I care about my family. I care about the people of Charleston: the independent store owners, the people excluded from Battery Hall, the women who aren’t believed. I care about our great city, slowly sinking, and the floodwaters and king tides and the disappearing land. But I don’t care about Harry. I care for Martha; I want her to be okay. But it’s time for me to let her go.
“Oh, good,” she says, relieved.
I stand. “Goodbye, Martha.”
“You’ve got to go to work?”
“I don’t work weekends anymore . . . ,” I start to explain, but realize she never paid attention to my schedule in the first place. “Martha, I care about you. I wish you well. But I can’t do this anymore.”
She scrunches her face, looking at me like I’ve gone out of focus. “What are you talking about? Do what?”
“I think we need some time apart. I think it might be best for both of us.”
She laughs mirthlessly. “Simian, are you breaking up with me?”
“Yeah. I am. At least for now.”
Martha leans back in her seat. She studies me for a long time, tapping a finger on her lips. “I respect that.” She smooths her hair to the side, revealing the beautiful curve of her jaw. My knockout ex-friend. “Do we get to have makeup coffees?”
“Ha. We’ll see.”
“Where are you going?”
“To D.C. For an interview.”
“D.C.? Why?”
“I’ve just got to get out of here. See what’s out there.” I bend down to say goodbye to Bruno, perhaps for forever. He lunges at me, ready to smother my face with frantic licks. The poor guy. I want him to smell better, look healthier, and not have a chronically leaking eyeball. I dig in my purse and pull out the gold-and-pearl necklace that’s been zipped into a side compartment for weeks now. I fasten it around the dog’s neck, which is about the same circumference as mine. It’s a ridiculous look for a ridiculous animal, so it somehow works. I press his head firmly in my hands and hope to confer my well wishes onto the little beast.
I have a goodbye gift for Martha, too. I take a button out of my purse and place it on the table in front of her. It reads: “CURIOSITY DOESN’T KILL EVERY CAT.”
* * *
Rounding the corner, I head north toward my apartment and into the heady scent of burning wood—someone at the end of the block is tending a fragrant oak fire. A handsome couple crosses the street toward a row of old, sherbet-painted single houses. I see the elegant steeple of St. Sebastian’s in the distance. Overhead, a solitary gull cries, flying east toward the ocean. I live in an achingly beautiful city.
But if I want to protect it, to keep it from sinking, I must leave. Instead of writing the local stories about miscreant politicians or arts festivals, I need to help change the narrative. Sprawl must come to a full stop. We need to rethink our car culture. With multimodal transportation for everyone, we could turn parking spaces into bike lanes. We need to build more densely, more vertically. And the citizens must use all their creative energy to find a solution to save our sinking city. Instead of erecting a massive seawall, cutting off our access to the element that makes our home so special, we must find a way to work with the rising water, and in a way that’s fair to all communities. And that’s just for starters.