Kathryn Ward

"How would you kill him?"  Omer asked. 

  

The waiter cleared their breakfast dishes and rushed away, his energy matching the occupied cabs that sped through the green light right outside the window. Isobel stared at the expressionless rush hour crowd carrying coffee cups and work bags as they passed on the midtown sidewalk. The bell above the diner door rang, again, causing cool air to rush in and around her legs. It would be December soon.

 

Omer waited, as he always did, for her answer. His patience and composure, both as soothing as a bottle of Bordeaux, were part of the sorcery he commanded.

 

Isobel sipped her tea. She'd recently become the kind of woman who enjoyed a hot cup of tea. "What?" she asked when she realized he was watching her.

 

"The husband who cheated and gave his wife herpes."

 

Isobel shuddered from the memory of the crying woman who'd randomly sat in the salon chair next to her the weekend before. The only things Isobel knew about her were that she wasn't a natural blond and she deserved better than an incurable reminder of her husband's infidelity.

 

"You said you might offer to kill him. How would you do it?"

 

"Oh." She'd spent forty minutes under the dryer with silver foils in her hair considering it. She'd landed on hitting him with her car because accidents happen all the time. A foot slips off the brake, legs cramp, coffee spills. "How come you texted me Saturday morning?" Isobel asked instead of answering his question.

 

"I couldn't have texted you. I don't have your number." He waited for the waiter to take the check. "You were uncomfortable when I gave you mine, remember?"

 

Every time she messaged him, she used the archaic group app that Brunswick House had installed on all their employees' phones. She'd thought of giving in and just texting him instead, but that would be breaking one of her rules. "Then how come you messaged me? On a Saturday morning?" she asked.

 

"Was that odd?"

 

"I was at the hair salon. And yes. In the year that we've been friends, you've never contacted me on a weekend."

 

"Which made it noteworthy?"

 

She resisted the urge to respond immediately having learned patience from him.

 

"Friends message on Saturday mornings." He raised his eyebrows and tilted his head. "Friends text, too."

 

She checked her watch, a twentieth anniversary gift from the company. "I'm too old for you to be spending your time with, and too married to give you my number."

 

"You're far from old."

 

"You're twenty-eight." She lowered her voice. "I'm fifty. While you're drinking your coffee and eating your egg white omelet …" She swirled her finger around. "… I'm squinting to read the menu, wondering if I'm hearing you correctly, and wishing I could still wear stilettos."

 

The waiter returned with their change, which they left on the table.

 

Omer wasn't getting her number because she couldn't stop talking to him, about anything. Boring Ed in human resources could text her. Greg in accounting could call her all he wanted, but Omer would have to use the app because he asked a million questions and followed up with more, drinking in every word she said in a way she'd never experienced. She couldn't remember the last time someone had really heard her.

 

They walked east on 34th street, next to a woman who hobbled along in heels and a squat man who wore a Columbia University backpack. He smoked a cigarette and yelled, "Yesterday. I told you yesterday!" into his phone. Isobel inhaled the smoke she'd given up when she'd become pregnant with her first and let the familiar fog invade her. Omer scrunched up his nose, repulsed by the carcinogens in the air.

 

The woman's hair, smushed in the back, and her stale makeup suggested that rather than waking up early, she was just ending the night before. Isobel considered high fiving her but held up her hand to Omer instead.

 

He awkwardly clapped her hand. "Why are we doing this?"

 

"I just wanted to see if people still high five."

 

"What people?" he asked, but she didn't answer.

 

He followed her lead as they crossed Sixth Avenue, dodging a pedicab and Honda Accord with rusted wheel wells blaring Nirvana's "Teen Spirit" to which Omer had no reaction.

 

"So, has your marriage recently opened?" She raised her eyebrows in a half-teasing way, broaching the topic she was most curious about. "Or is pursuing other women some Eastern European custom that moved with you to The States?"

 

"I hate that word."

 

"Which one?"

 

"Open." Even walking alone with him seemed to cross a line that Isobel and her husband had never formally established. "It implies some new trend in contrast to the ridiculous American preoccupation with monogamy."

 

"What do you call it then?" She stopped. "Your freedom to message me on Saturday and ask me to breakfast even though you're married? What would you tell your wife?"

 

"I would simply say, 'I met someone interesting.'"

 

"Oh. Right." She nodded, mocking the simplicity of it. "Of course."

 

"Have you ever met anyone interesting?" he asked.

 

"My marriage is the opposite of open."

 

 

By the time they reached Seventh Avenue, the heavy smell of weed, which Isobel also inhaled fondly, filled the air. She peered up at the blue November sky and wished she could stay in Manhattan until spring instead of Friday. But her daydreaming came to an abrupt halt as they approached their hotel. The sight of the man standing by the front entrance to the lobby nearly paralyzed her.

 

Calvin Dare stared at his phone, scrolling, and rolled his neck. His hair was thinning and gray at the edges. His still broad shoulders sloped to a softened chest that hinted at a previous fit. Isobel imagined a knee replacement or torn rotator cuff had kept him from the gym. Surely a youth filled with football had left him in permanent pain and in need of repair.

 

She froze in place, watching him, remembering running down the dark road to his waiting car after she'd snuck out to meet him. Her bedroom's high windows left bruises on her hips, and nights in Cal's back seat left her sore the next morning.

 

Realizing she'd stopped, Omer put his hand on her back. He glanced towards the hotel entrance to see what caught her attention. Three bikes were parked in front of the café two doors down. A pregnant woman rushed past a man who was staring at his phone and oblivious to the city swirling around him. She stopped at the crosswalk as the fiery orange numbers counted down to the light turning red. Five, four, three—

 

Calvin Dare looked up and saw Isobel. "Iz?"  He approached her without any of her own hesitation. "What are you doing here?" He leaned back, taking her in. "My God, you look amazing."

 

"Hello, Cal," she said, her voice flat. He wore a 1996 Gators National Championship ring on his right hand, a simple gold band on his left.

 

"This is incredible," he said, but she felt only dread about what seeing him would mean. "Wow." He shook his head as if fighting a cobweb he'd just walked through. "Let's have dinner tonight."

 

"I have plans."

 

Cal smiled, undaunted. "I'm here until tomorrow. I'd love to catch up."

 

"I'm leaving now."

 

Omer cleared his throat, prompting Isobel to acknowledge him. "This is my friend, Omer."

 

"Nice to meet you." Cal barely turned his head. "Isobel and I went to high school together."

 

Omer stared at her. "Really?" he mouthed. Isobel read his lips because the beeping horns of the cars stuck behind a double-parked truck drowned out his voice. She was trapped between her prom date and her line-blurring friend from work.

 

"It's been years." He took her hand, which she immediately pulled back. "Let me take you to dinner."

 

"I said I'm leaving."

 

"Yes, but I know you're lying." He pissed her off. "I think about you all the time, Isobel."

 

She sighed. "I never think of you, and I'd like to keep it that way."

 

Cal glanced at Omer and then returned his gaze to Isobel. "Is there someplace we can talk? Privately?"

 

She pointed at Omer. "He's the other person here who doesn't care what you have to say."

 

Cal stepped closer, shaking his head and smirking. "I know you still think about how things were. It's not just me." He had always been cocky.

 

"Let me guess, your marriage has flattened, perhaps even soured." She watched him steel his expression to not give anything away. "Maybe you've been to counseling… twice."

 

He stood straighter, still the worthy opponent she'd first been drawn to. "My marriage has nothing to do with us."

 

"You're getting older, and you resent your wife, as if it's her job to make you feel young. You're drowning in middle age and reaching for a lifeline you mistakenly think exists in the memory of the two of us naked in the back of your car."

 

"And on the beach and in my bed and in the deep end of Jack's pool and the bathroom at the—"

 

She held up her hand to silence him and his ridiculous invitation.

 

Omer took a step toward the hotel. "I'll meet you inside," he said.

 

She watched him enter the hotel and turned back to Cal. It had been his idea to break up thirty years ago. "I'm not going to ruin my marriage so that you can feel young again. You peaked too early, and every minute since college has been a letdown. You're like a balloon, Cal, deflating after a party."

 

His eyes blazed. "If we were alone, I'd throw you up against the wall right now and make you remember what it was like." He leaned in close. "How wild we were."

 

Isobel was done with this conversation. "If I recall, it was my wildness that broke us up back then."

 

He rocked back on his heels as if enjoying himself. "This is me, too." Cal's eyes lit up as he pointed at the hotel's door.

 

Clusters of fluffy clouds blew past the tops of the skyscrapers, reminding Isobel that time had not stopped. "Of course it is."

 

"Come to my room so we can talk." He held up both hands in front of him. "Just talk, I promise."

 

She rolled her eyes. "You're not dying, you're bored. Go home. Hold your wife's hand, wink at her from across the room, grab her butt or something."

 

He reached into his pocket and pulled out his business card. "My meeting ends at four." He placed the card in Isobel's palm. "Call me," he said and left her on the curb.

 

Isobel studied the card. Chief Operating Officer, Conway Gaming & Hunting. She turned the thick card stock over, half expecting to see memories from 1991 printed across the back -- "Welcome to the jungle" or Cal's '85 Audi 5000's license plate number, FTBL Playa. She put the card in her pocket and met Omer in the lobby. They stood in front of the poster listing each meeting in the hotel's conference rooms. Isobel and Omer were on the third floor. Conway Gaming & Hunting's Annual Planning Meeting was in the Afterglow Room on two.

 

"Do you love him?" Omer broke through her daze.

 

"No," she answered too fast.

 

"Did you love him?"

 

She'd asked herself the same question for three decades. Was it Cal or sneaking out at two in the morning to make love to him that she desired? Had she been in a relationship or on the run? She wasn't even sure if they liked each other.

 

"I loved being with him." She gritted her teeth at the truth in her words. For the first time, Omer's questions annoyed her.

 

"Then why are you so angry?"

 

"Because that entire conversation was a mistake. I should have just ignored him. Getting a rise out of me is exactly what he wants."

 

"That's not all he wants."

 

"You're right. He wants the seventeen-year-old who couldn't keep her hands off him. The rebellious girl who wasn't afraid of anything or anyone." She checked the time. They had ten minutes before their meeting started.

 

"He seems to think you haven't changed."

 

"Yeah, well I can't remember the last time I had sex standing up."

 

"I could help you with that."

 

 

It was Creative's day to unveil visual merchandising for the new launch. Thank God Omer was presenting instead of Elizabeth, with her love of sport sandals and muted colors. Once, Isobel had told her that the "soothing" mauve Elizabeth was so fond of didn't sell watches. No one purchased a Brunswick House timepiece for comfort. The passage of time, strapped to your wrist, was like a true crime documentary you couldn't fast forward. The campaigns needed to be alluring, sexy. Royal blues, polished silver, bright whites, and gold. Elizabeth had acquiesced on mauve, but still wore the sandals.

 

Omer stood at the front of the frigid, third-floor room, explaining the merchandising concept to twenty-three of New Brunswick's brightest for forty-five minutes. Several were jet lagged, uninterested, or hungover, but they all nodded accordingly. Isobel loved to watch Omer almost as much as she cherished their conversations. He ate no meat, never drank, and claimed he went to the gym six times a week, but Isobel knew all of that just from the curve of his shoulders beneath his button down.

 

Her mind wandered to a time when she could escape, when she'd tiptoe past a sleeping dog to break free from her controlling parents and their ridiculous rules. When she was flying through life, dangerous and beautiful. Cal knew the girl whose strong body easily scaled the wall at the town pool for a midnight skinny dip and ran through the woods when the cops broke up a party. Back when she could see without readers and her feet didn't hurt the minute they touched the floor after getting out of bed each morning. The sound of Cal's voice brought it all back.

 

 

Are you okay? Omer messaged her when his presentation was done.

 

Yes.

 

Why did you lie to him about when you're leaving?

 

He doesn't deserve the truth.

 

Do you ever lie to me?

 

No.

 

Are you lying?

 

 

The rest of the day, Isobel managed to hear nothing except that they were due back at nine the following morning. She and Omer lingered in the conference room until they were the only two left.

 

"Are you going to dinner with everyone?" she asked, knowing his answer would be no.

 

"Are you?"

 

"I should, but I need you to repeat everything you said this morning."

 

"You weren't listening?" He didn't fully appreciate the gravity of her curbside reunion. How could he?

 

"I'm sorry," she said and slipped her laptop into her bag.

 

He crossed his arms and rested on the conference table. "What were you thinking about?"

 

"How old I am."

 

"I don't believe that."

 

They walked to the elevator and waited in silence. When the door opened, Cal stood behind it.

 

"We'll wait for the next one," Isobel said before Omer moved.

 

Cal laughed a little. He loved a challenge. "I don't bite."

 

"That's not how I remember it," she said, and the elevator doors closed.

 

"You're blushing," Omer said.

 

She reached up and touched her cheeks. "That was a mistake."

 

"Your second, according to you."

 

*

 

Breakfast, dinner, gawking at Omer's body—she'd broken many of her own rules on this trip, but after seeing Cal, Isobel could do without the drain of her coworkers at a Spanish restaurant on the Lower East Side. Plus, Omer was always willing for the two of them to be alone.

 

"Isn't this better than tapas with Greg from accounting and Lily from global?" Omer waited for her answer.

 

The Italian restaurant on fortieth was small, eight tables and a bar with only four stools. The eighties' music perfectly drowned out the few conversations other than their own.  Isobel found herself relaxing, finally free from being trapped in a windowless room instead of exploring the city. "It feels like it's been three days since this morning's breakfast," she said.

 

"I enjoyed that very much." He ordered a Greek salad without romaine. When her glass of cabernet and his glass of water arrived, he took a sip, then paused a moment. "Are you going to call him?" he asked.

 

"No."

 

"Is his marriage monogamous?"

 

"According to him or his wife?" It annoyed her how callously Cal toyed with the trust in his relationship. Isobel was determined not to do anything that would implode her life, and Cal walked around New York City handing out his card and dinner invitations. "He doesn't want me. He wants the person I was a million years ago."

 

"And who was that?"

 

The young couple next to them held hands across the table. Seeing their fingers intertwined, how they gazed at each other, Isobel fought to remember when she and her husband had done the same.

 

Omer waited.

 

"Back then, Cal had nothing but freedom and I was clawing my way out of the house. My mother was controlling. She had a ton of rules, every single one of which I was hellbent on breaking. I was more than carefree. I was reckless and it was a game to him. Exciting, I'm sure, but I'm not that person anymore."

 

He stared at Isobel so intently that she feared he could peer into her soul. "You don't see yourself clearly," he finally said.

 

"I've changed." She placed her napkin in her lap. "I adopted a dog. The dog died. I've had three kids." She pointed at Omer. "Children will suck the life out of you. Do you even know what a palate expander is?"

 

"A what?"

 

"Exactly."

 

He laughed at her.

 

"Ten jobs and twenty new friends." She waved her hands in the air, and Omer couldn't look away. "I totaled a rental car in Reno, watched planes fly into the World Trade Center from a hotel room in Rome." She took a breath. "I've witnessed Kilauea's lava lumber to the ocean and buried my mother by the sea. I am not who I used to be."

 

"But were you happy back then?"

 

"No," she answered without hesitation. "I'm happy now." She sipped her wine and sighed. "But back then, I was alive."

 

Omer leaned on the table. "He wants to stand near the fire that is you. It's what attracts us to you, and he just wants to feel it again."

 

She rolled her eyes. "Is this you creating my image, like a new brand to be launched?"

 

"This is me seeing you. I suspect he was able to see you too, but it intimidated him." She didn't want to talk about Cal anymore. "And you learned that to get what you want, you'd have to play by someone else's rules." Omer's voice was quiet, the signature of his thoughtfulness. "It changed the way you view your power, forced you to embrace some version of discipline that is not sustainable. I'm surprised you've made it this long." He took his time sipping his water, leaving Isobel feeling like a child, scolded for not sitting up straight. "I'd almost say you should be with him. He remembers who you are better than you do."

 

"Almost?"

 

"If he couldn't handle you then, he definitely can't handle you now."

 

This conversation was not helping. The events of the day had left her dazed. "Can we delve into your life for a while? What was it like being a child in the nineties?"

 

"Don't do that. I'm not young and you're not old."

 

"What are we then?"

 

"We're having dinner. Would you like more wine?"

 

 

When they reached the high-glossed marble floors and large-scale dahlia wallpaper of the hotel lobby, Cal sat watching her from a corner seat at the lobby bar. She'd been expecting him to stop her from going to dinner and then to show up at the restaurant. The only surprise was she'd avoided him this long. She wasn't going to react this time. She wouldn't pour gasoline on the flame that Cal was determined not to let burn out.

 

"Isobel," Omer said when he noticed Cal.

 

It was like falling backwards down a well, but never hitting the ground. There was no final thud, just Cal walking toward them. "I'm going to have to finish this," she said and felt the heat rise to her face.

 

"Finish it." Omer smiled slightly. "Is that what you're calling it?"

 

"I'll see you tomorrow morning."

 

"Message me if you'd like to have breakfast." He touched her hand. "Or text me." He winked before she turned to squarely face her past.

 

Cal closed the distance between them, completely ignoring Omer. "Come have a drink with me," he said.

 

"One."

 

"Whatever you want." He led her to the bar and pulled out the stool in front of his glass of bourbon. The bar was packed, its dim lighting a stark contrast to the bright, pristine lobby.

 

"I'll have what he's having," she said when the bartender came over.

 

"I'm sorry," Cal said when they were alone again.

 

"No, you're not." She closed her eyes and shook her head, mad at herself.

 

"I'm not talking about earlier. I'm not sorry about that. I'm sorry for how I acted thirty years ago," he said. It was impossible to believe they had existed thirty years ago. Most days it felt like three.

 

She said nothing. When her drink arrived, she swirled the bourbon in her glass, happy to be preoccupied with it.

 

"You were right," he said. "I was scared, scared every day that I was going to lose you."

 

She finally faced him. "And I just wanted to be lost."

 

"Do you remember when—"

 

"Don't do this." She put down her glass. "I don't want to remember anything that doesn't already haunt me. I meant everything I said this morning."

 

He brushed his fingers across her knee. Even through her tights, his touch was like the pressing of a piano key triggering waves of the past that resonated through her body. "You'll never convince me that you don't still think of what it was like." His palm rested on her inner thigh as heat rose from his hand to her chest. Was she blushing? "That you don't wonder what it would be like just one more time."

 

She was afraid to speak, unsure of what she might say.

 

"Do you remember when you told me not to fall in love with you?"  he asked.

 

She couldn't remember to order the turkey for Thanksgiving, but when it came to Cal, she hadn't forgotten a thing. They'd been lying on her parents' living room floor only a week after he'd first called her.

 

He swiveled her seat to face him. "I was already in love with you. That's why we didn't work. You were willing to let it go—to let me go—but I wanted you more than anything, so I kept holding on tighter."

 

His words crashed against her. "You should have said this back then."

 

He shook his head. "It wouldn't have mattered. You'd have done anything to be free."

 

"Would you have wanted me any other way?"

 

"I wanted you in every way." His fingers drifted across her skin. "One night could get us through the next thirty years. No one would ever have to know."

 

Isobel closed her eyes and pushed his hand away. She would not lose everything. Not like this. "I would know." She downed her drink and stood. "Goodnight, Cal." She walked to the elevator and pressed the button with a click. The lobby was deathly quiet, as if holding its breath. When the elevator slid open, Isobel stepped inside with Cal behind her.

 

"You're worse than the hiccups," she said, the doors closing behind them. "I'm not hooking up with you in the elevator."

 

He moved directly in front of her, so she had to look up to face him. "It would be a first for us."

 

"You're really enjoying this. Aren't you tired of chasing me after all these years?"

 

The elevator stopped on the nineteenth floor and Isobel stepped off. Cal followed her. They marched through the hall in silent resignation of the mistake they would make. At her room, she turned on Cal. "Is this what you've wanted? To get me alone so you can kiss me and try to convince me to climb on top of you?"

 

"That mouth." He roughly grabbed her face and pressed her back against her door. "You know it's exactly what I want." He kissed her.

She pushed against him, but he didn't budge, and without her permission, her body responded. Touching him took her back to spaghetti straps and car rides with the windows down, to dancing under the moon and diving into the dark ocean.

 

Cal threaded his fingers in her hair and pulled her head back, kissing her still.

 

She reached behind her and grabbed his hand, remembering the people they'd loved since each other. "Do you pull your wife's hair like that?"

 

"Nothing is the same with my wife as it is with you."

 

"Was," she said, and let go of him. "It was with me. I can't do this."

 

He stared into her eyes, searching for someone Isobel had buried decades before, someone she wasn't willing to revive.

 

"I'll go," he said, kissing her on the cheek. "I'll be awake for a while—probably days." He laughed, the sound of which enchanted her. "Call me."

 

She took out her room key, avoiding his eyes.

 

"Do you still have my card?" he asked, stepping back to give her space.

 

"No."

 

He laughed a little. "I don't believe you."

 

 

Sleep had evaded her the last three nights. Her room was too cool, the air vent made a rattling noise, and the lights from the city that never sleeps slipped through the curtains she hadn't closed tightly enough. She should have been exhausted, but her heartbeat raced as she ran her fingertips over the edge of Cal's business card.

 

She tapped it against the dark wood of the nightstand, then dropped it into the wine glass that held her diamond ring and wedding band. She fell back against the mattress and stared at the ceiling, trying to block out the invitation in his words. How could someone who was such a small part of her life know Isobel better than she knew herself?

 

She dialed his number.

 

When he answered, she said, "It's Isobel. I hope it's not too late."

 

 

He rolled over and draped his arm across her chest. She rested her hand on top of his and pushed it down between her legs.

 

"What are you thinking about?" Omer whispered, his lips near her ear. She tilted her head toward him to stop the chill racing down her neck.

 

"That I have to schedule my shingles vaccine."

 

"You're lying." He rolled her onto her back and held himself up above her.

 

Isobel rested her hands on his biceps. "I think I'm attracted to controlling men."

 

"Hmm." He dipped down and kissed her. "Well, as someone who likes things a certain way, I can tell you that I am definitely attracted to you." Omer rolled over and rested on the pillows piled against the headboard. "What will you tell your husband?"

 

"He won't ask."

 

"If he does?"

 

"I'll tell him the truth, that I ran into somebody I used to know."

 

"Ah, the ex. Why didn't you call him last night?"

 

"That's not who I meant." Isobel kissed Omer, letting her hand fall to the muscles of his stomach. "And I didn't call him because I'm not trying to recapture my youth." She kissed him again, lightly this time. "I'm stealing yours."