RUTHIE ARRIVED AT the restaurant in a state of internal clamor so loud it was a wonder Joe couldn’t hear it. They sat at the smallest table at a noisy place in Greenport. Ruthie had to shrink into her chair so that her knees wouldn’t brush his.
“Let’s not talk about our ex-spouses,” Joe suggested as they looked at their menus.
“Or the past,” she said.
They sat, silent. Ruthie had felt like a new, more interesting person in Carole’s fitted dress with a silver zipper down the front. She’d been sure it meant she’d be able to have brilliant, brittle conversation. She would skim through the evening on raw clams and fast talk.
“This is not a good start,” he said.
“I’m sorry. I just think it’s smart not to talk about the past, since you dumped me,” she said.
Joe moved his fork, then his spoon. “Dumped is a terrible word. I thought I was too old for you.”
Their affair had lasted less than a summer. Joe had left near the end of August for Italy, a long-planned trip. When he returned he was involved with an artist named Sami LaGuerre, a rococo beauty with hair to her waist who had been born Samantha Bernstein in Montclair, New Jersey, and had never looked back.
It was fair to say that he’d broken her heart.
“I didn’t feel that comfortable with you, I guess,” Ruthie admitted. “I mean, the kind of places you brought me, in your fancy suits. I was always scrounging for the right clothes. You seemed so sophisticated.”
Joe grinned. “It was a pose, I promise you. We never really talked about our pasts, did we?”
No, they hadn’t. They had never progressed to that level of intimacy. They had never told their stories.
“I grew up in Brooklyn. Before it was cool. My father was a Jewish public defender, my mother was a Puerto Rican social worker. Then I fell for art. The way you do. For what it was, sure, but also for what it can do.”
“It took me a while to fall for what it can do,” she said. “Peter sort of messed that up for me. I thought I was learning about genius but after a while I realized I was learning about commerce. Then I got into museum work. I saw that regional museums are this giant bulwark against, I don’t know, non-culture? A place of ideas and beauty right smack in the middle of a town. Like a cathedral. But I mean the way it really was, with people crowding in and hay on the floor. Every day I walked into that building I thought, Okay, one more for the good guys. Things get more barbarous every day. We need some…exaltation. Connection.” She looked down at her plate. “God, I’m sorry. That sounds so stupid.”
“Do you know something? I think you’ve said ‘I’m sorry’ to me at least fifteen times in only three conversations.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, and they laughed. “It feels so stupid to have lost what I had to such idiots. Idiots with action plans.”
Joe sighed. He pushed his wineglass around. “Museum boards can either do the good work or turn it into some sort of Ionesco farce.”
“There you go again with the sophisticated references.”
“You always get my references, so shut up.”
“Let’s talk about you. So, there you were, a boy from Brooklyn with his own gallery.”
“I always felt outclassed. I used to read Louis Auchincloss novels in this pathetic attempt to pick up tips. Trying to learn Park Avenue syntax. I was an extremely careful person.”
“I remember when you told me about Sami, you kept saying what a brilliant artist she was. I think that’s why I dumped the wine on you.”
“I deserved it. Yeah. I got a little tired of the posing, though. You know what my son’s middle name is? Pocket. She wanted something elemental, she said.”
“A pocket is elemental?”
“It’s better than Ravine.”
“Not really.”
“We were not a good mix. We broke up, got back together for Henry’s sake. Moved to LA for a few years. Moved back. Now Henry’s in college.”
“So why did you move out here?”
“To be near my dad. He lives in Southold. And I got interested in restaurants. Food, not art. I’m not really a chef, I just cook, so a fancy place was out. But, man, I can open an oyster. I’m thinking in winter I could do chili. Not sure. Big decision.” Joe grinned. “I arranged my life so that the decisions are as simple as I can make them. You?”
“Oh, I make decisions as hard as I can.” Ruthie laughed, but Joe didn’t. “But at work, it’s different. Was different. A hundred decisions a day.”
“You look sad,” Joe said.
She looked down at her wine. “I loved my job.”
“This might be a get off my lawn thing to say, but the world is getting meaner,” Joe said. “You could be the only person I know who bothers to apologize.” He poured more wine. “Anyway, that sounded glib. I’m sorry about what happened. I’ll help if I can.”
Ruthie waited until the server had checked in and Joe had waved her away again. “You could do something for me, maybe. If I had something to sell—a luxury item, say—would you know the right way to go about it?”
“That’s pretty vague, but probably.”
“I’m not ready to do anything yet, I just wanted to know.”
“Letting go of things can be great,” Joe said. “Change is good.”
She impatiently shook her head. “That’s what the changers say. I mean, if you choose change, it’s good. If it’s thrust upon you, it sucks.” She picked up her menu, suddenly annoyed. “Should we order?”
“You do look exactly the same as I remember, by the way,” Joe said, picking up his menu. “Change looks good on you.”
“You just contradicted yourself.”
“What I mean to say is, you haven’t changed. Not the you you.”
“It’s the dress.”
“I didn’t notice the dress. Except for the zipper. It’s rather provocatively placed, if that sort of thing is in one’s head.”
“Oh fuck, don’t flirt with me, my heart will just explode,” Ruthie said. “Just buy me dinner and stay on that side of the table.”
“It’s a very small table.”
She felt his hand on her knee.
“You’re very handsy,” she said.
“I had to do something. I made you mad about the change thing.”
“I’m over it.”
“It’s because I threw my life up in the air to see where it would land, and I know what that’s like. I left out the anguish part. And it’s because I kept looking for you, planning how I’d ask you to dinner. You’re very hard to run into.”
“Why didn’t you just call me?”
“When the last time you saw a woman you were such an asshole that she dumped half a bottle of wine on you, you tend to be skittish. I wanted it to be casual, so that rejection would be easier to take. I heard the words ‘gorgeous Sancerre’ come out of my mouth and I wanted to knock myself out with the bottle. When I saw you at the farm stand, I practically pounced. I had to grab you when I could.”
“Under the table.”
“There was always something with the way we talk,” Joe said. “I always felt…”
“Randy?”
He grinned. “Understood. And now I have you in my grasp—”
“Literally—” His fingers on her leg, just resting.
“I am shamelessly flirting with you so that you will like me again,” Joe said. “But I’m rusty. Help.”
She wanted to put down her wineglass and run. That would be the sensible thing.
“Let’s eat first,” she suggested.
“First. That sounds hopeful,” Joe said. “Or maybe it’s the zipper.”