Beth pushes open the door to the restroom. She looks at me over her shoulder. “I have to pee. Wait for me?”
“Sure,” I say.
The door swings behind her. A whiff of her perfume wafts out in the hallway, that same subtle lavender scent she’s worn since I first met her. I close my eyes and inhale deeply, like I always do when a pretty woman who smells good walks by me. I leave my foot just inside the door, cracking it open. I can hear the faint trickle of my wife’s urine.
I think I’ve got a thing for women urinating. Not in a sick way. I’m not talking I want a golden shower or anything like that. But the image of a woman’s pale cheeks on cold porcelain makes me yearn to be a toilet seat. I picture the goose bumps starting to rise on Beth’s bare ass. The toilet flushes. I listen close to hear the elastic snap as she pulls up her panties.
Okay, maybe it’s a little sick.
“All done,” Beth says.
We’re attending our ten-year high school reunion. Beth had the idea to have a combined Ridge-Prep reunion. As Empire Ridge High School Class of ’89 president, I was tasked with doing much of the field work.
“Pretty big turnout,” I say.
“See,” Beth says. “I told you Prepsters weren’t snobs. We Ridgies are the ones with the chips on our shoulders and the inferiority complexes.”
Beth and I approach the bar. I raise two fingers.
“What are we having tonight?” the bartender asks.
“What do you got?” I say.
“Just Bud and Bud Light,” he answers,
Beth shakes her head. “I can’t do straight-up Budweiser.”
“Not in the mood for the Heavy, huh?” I say.“The Heavy” is a popular nickname for Budweiser. The judges will also accept “Diesel” and of course the standard “Bud.”
Beth places her hand on her waist and strikes a pose. “I have to watch my girlish figure, you know.”
“Is this the part where I’m supposed to say, ‘Beth, your butt’s not really that big’?”
“No, Hank.” She smacks me on the arm. “This is the part where you make an innocuous statement that has nothing to do with my butt, because by specifically singling out my butt, you reinforce my insecurities and subconscious belief that my butt is in fact big.”
“Uh, come again?”
“We’ve been married for four years,” Beth says.
“I realize that.”
“So you should realize when to talk or not talk about my ass.”
“There are times when I can’t talk about your ass?”
“Sir,” the bartender interrupts. “You know what you want yet?”
I place a ten-dollar bill on the bar top. “I guess make it two Butt Lights.”
“Excuse me?”
The joke escapes the bartender. At some point over the last decade Bud Light eclipsed Miller Lite in popularity, which is unfortunate because Bud Light tastes like plastic and gives me diarrhea to the point where I’ve taken to calling it Butt Light. I’d even settle for a Natty right about now.
“Bud Light is fine, and keep the change.” I slide the ten-dollar bill across the bar. The bartender slides two amber bottles back at me.
I hand Beth hers. She sips the beer, nursing the bottle and her ass-driven self-esteem. “Anybody interesting on the walk-in list yet?”
“Chip Funke is here,” I say. “You just have to get past his groupies.”
“Really?” Beth says, starstruck.
I’m still amazed at Chip Funke’s meteoric rise from McDonald’s third shift manager to teenage weekend warrior to NASCAR phenom. For about eighty years Empire Ridge has been home to the limestone quarries that built the Empire State Building, the Pentagon, the Biltmore Estate, the St. Anthony Society Chapter House at Yale, the entire University of Chicago campus, and the Washington National Cathedral—and yet the city was finally put on the map because one of its citizens possessed a high aptitude for making left turns.
“Chip had to attend a friend’s wedding in North Carolina this afternoon, but a friend of a friend of a friend told me he was going to bust his ass to get here.”
“Not bad for the bandie who always talked about his go-karts.”
“The what?” I say.
“Your words, not mine, when I said we should invite him to the reunion.”
“I never called him that.”
“You most certainly did call him that,” Beth says. “I asked if you knew Chip Funke in high school, and you said that he was quiet, pretty much kept to himself.”
“That’s not the same as calling him a—”
“And then you added, ‘I really just remember him as being a bandie who always talked about his go-karts.’”
“Fucking bandies.”
“Wasn’t your father a bandie?”
“Yeah,” I say. “But Dad didn’t cost me prom king.”
“After ten years you’re still sore about that?”
“I couldn’t get the hood or bandie vote to save my fucking life.”
“You’re a pretty boy, Hank. Always have been, always will be.”
“But I went to pig roasts, I got in fights with Prepsters for no reason. I had street cred.”
“Street cred,” a disembodied voice says from across the room. “That’s fucking hilarious.”
Like the parting of the Red Sea, the crowd separates, cleaved neatly in half by Elias Hatcher’s booming voice.
“What’s a guy got to do to get a ginger ale around here?” Hatch grabs me and Beth in a full bear hug. We haven’t seen each other in four years. His cutlass bangs against my leg. I can feel his hardened, sinewy body underneath his Full Dress Navy Whites, and I’m more than a little envious.
“Nice uniform,” I say.
“And how,” Beth adds.
Hatch stands at attention, salutes. “Petty Officer Third Class Elias Hatcher at your service.”
I grab Hatch by the shoulder. “Color me fucking impressed.”
“But wait, there’s more,” Hatch says. “Claire, you can come out now.”
The Hottest Girl I Never Tried to Sleep With comes around the corner. Beth screams, runs to Claire, and about knocks her over. They hug, scream a little more, make a couple quick excuses for why they haven’t kept in touch.
Claire comes up to me, winks, and gives me a big kiss on the lips. “I’ve missed you, Hank.”
Maybe it’s because I’m standing in a room of former classmates whose bald heads and multiple chins don’t seem to give a shit about life, but I think Claire looks better than she did in high school. A silver sequined cocktail dress accentuates legs I don’t remember being that long and an ass that’s as exactly as tight as I remember. I wink back, and I mean it. “Feeling’s mutual, Claire.”
“What the hell is that on your ring finger?” Beth says. “Is that what I think it is?”
Claire looks down at her left hand, smiles. “Yes, it is.”
“We got hitched in Vegas last night,” Hatch says.
Beth, Claire, and I have spent the last hour doing tequila shots. Not our best decision. I tried to talk Chip Funke into being our designated driver, but he said he needed to fly back that night to Charlotte. Something about wrecking his car in practice and being on “Bill Junior’s shit list.” Apparently Bill Junior is someone I should know, so I nodded and said, “That’s the last guy you want to piss off.” I had Beth take at least five pictures of us together. I’m pretty sure I was a total ass.
Depeche Mode’s “Somebody” starts playing on the dance floor.
“Where the hell is my husband?” Claire says.
“He’s walking around being Hatch,” I say. “You can take the guy out of Empire Ridge, but you can’t take the Empire Ridge out of the guy.”
“Still the social fucking butterfly, isn’t he?”
“Always,” I say.
“I love this song.” Claire grabs my hand. “How about a twirl with the new bride?”
I look to Beth. She nods. “Go on. I’m in no shape to dance.”
Claire and I are reasonably hip people. And given that we spent our formative years as drinking buddies in the late eighties and early nineties, it’s written in stone that we must worship Depeche Mode. “Somebody” is an awkwardly intimate song, a point of fact I fail to remember until I get on the dance floor.
Claire runs her hands through my hair, because she’s Claire. “You surprised?”
“That’s an understatement. You and Hatch? When did it start?”
“About six months ago. I had a layover in Heathrow. Hatch was in London on leave. We kinda just hit it off.”
“Kinda? What happened to Derek?”
“You know and I know he was never going to settle down.”
“True. But Hatch?”
“What’s wrong with Hatch?”
“Nothing. I just always thought of you two more as siblings than lovers.”
“Me, too.”
“Then what gives?”
“Things change. Feelings change. Plus, neither of us wants kids, and with him being a naval officer and me a flight attendant, our hectic schedules just somehow fit together.”
“That doesn’t sound like love to me.”
“It’ll get there,” Claire says. “I’m sure you know what I mean.”
“No, I don’t know what you mean.”
“Don’t play dumb with me, Hank. I remember that night at Mineshaft.”
“I wondered how long you were going to hold that over me.”
“Hold it over you? You know that’s not my style.”
“But Beth is your best friend.”
“And so are you. I knew the day you two got engaged you weren’t fucking ready. I figured you’d mess up along the way, but with a little luck you’d get there. Nobody’s perfect, except for maybe your father.”
The DJ grabs the microphone, stumbles through a contrived segue into Richard Marx’s “Right Here Waiting.” It’s another overly personal love song, but Claire and I keep dancing, unfazed.
“Claire, my dad was far from per—”
“What’s it been now, six years?”
“Seven years in October.”
“I miss him, Hank.”
“Take a number.”
“I sense a little resentment. You okay?”
“My dad had his faults. Why can’t people just love him without fucking canonizing him? Did you know he was a draft dodger?”
“What?”
“Back in the late sixties, Dad got his draft notice for Vietnam right after he and Mom got engaged. He ended up failing his physical for the military.”
“Flat feet?” Claire looks down at my feet, remembering my own personal deformity.
“No, smart gal.” I roll my eyes. “A hernia.”
“Easily fixable.”
“Exactly! But guess what? The government can’t order you to have the surgery. Dad refused to get the operation until he was too old for the draft.”
“So you have your dad’s weak groin to thank for being alive?”
“I guess you could say that.” I laugh, but only a little. I’m struck by the role Dad’s balls have played in my life. A cough here, a snip there. Gaming the system. Learning how to be a man after someone has lost the instructions or else read them to you in fucking Spanish.
“Speaking of fathers, congratulations. Sasha, right?”
“That’s right,” I say. “Sasha Grace.”
“Two years old?”
“Just turned three.”
“Any sisters or brothers planned?”
“One or two more, depending on what Beth can handle. Sasha was a C-section.”
“Ouch.”
“And my wife might be the meanest pregnant woman on Earth.”
“On behalf of all past, present, or future pregnant women, go suck a dick.”
“I’m not kidding. Hitting, screaming, cursing—you name it. If my wife were a dude, I could’ve had her arrested.”
“And yet you kept coming back for more.”
“Of course I did.”
“Why?”
“Because I love her, Claire.”
“I can see that, Hank.” A wistful, almost envious look from the ever-guarded Claire Sullivan Hatcher. She runs her hands through my hair again. “You’re very sexy when you’re in love—have I ever told you that?”
I smile at Claire. She positions herself closer to me, my knee now firmly between her legs. I place my hand on the small of her back, maybe even a little lower than that. Low enough to know she’s not wearing any panties. If her hemline were any higher, my knee would be buried in her bush right now. Tanned a soft gold and rock-hard, Claire’s calves flex with every step she makes.
Claire and I have always had great chemistry. But in lieu of attempting anything that could be deemed a relationship—sexual, casual, or otherwise—we long ago settled into a flirty but harmless cat-and-mouse game.
At least this is what I keep telling myself. What Claire and I engage in is definitely flirty, but hardly harmless. A failed relationship or lost love is a maypole of life, for a brief moment the absolute unyielding center of everything but in time dismissed as something not worth getting that excited about. Far harder to escape the semi-permanent shadows of an affair that never was.
“Mind if we dance with yo’ dates?”
The combination of the Animal House reference and Richard Marx giving way to Poison’s “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” snaps me back to reality.
“What?” I say.
Hatch and Beth stand in front of us on the dance floor. “May we cut in?” Hatch says.
I step back, bow. “Be my guest.”
Claire winks at me again. “Thanks for the dance, Hank.”
Not only do I not wink back, I don’t even make eye contact. “You’re welcome.”
Beth reclaims my empty hand. She straddles my leg, more obvious with her dry humping than Claire was, being my wife and all. “You two looked pretty cozy,” she says.
“You know Claire is like a sister to me.”
Beth shakes her head. “In West Virginia maybe.”
“She’s your best friend.”
“That’s never stopped her from hitting on my boyfriends—or my husband apparently.”
“What do you want me to say, Beth?”
“How about ‘I love you, honey’?”
“I love y—”
Beth puts her hand on my mouth. “It doesn’t count if I have to prompt you.”
I take her hand away. “It seems like it doesn’t count regardless.”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that maybe I’d enjoy dancing with Claire a little less if you showed more interest in me.”
“More interest? We had sex last night.”
“Yeah, for the first time in eight weeks.”
“I’m sorry. Apparently you’ve been living in a cave for the last three years. Have you seen my stomach? Ever since the C-section, my abs look like a fat old person’s ass. I don’t feel pretty.”
“But you are pretty. You’re fucking hot. We’ve had this conversation before. I’m a very vain guy. If you get ugly and fat, I’m divorcing you.”
“You really know how to make a gal feel special, Hank.”
“That’s what you don’t seem to get. You’re still in twice as good a shape as almost any twenty-eight-year-old woman I know, let alone tonight’s episode of The Bald and the Bloated.”
“Except for Claire.”
“Fuck Claire! She’s got her high school body because she’s never been pregnant, and she’s too self-absorbed to ever get pregnant.”
Beth leans in, kisses me on the lips. “You really think that?”
“Hell yes, I think that.” I lick my lips, tasting both Claire’s and Beth’s lipstick on my tongue. I’m pretty fucking turned on right now.
“You’re just buttering me up.”
“No I’m not,” I say. “The butter comes later tonight.”