After the End(91)

“Lars.” Tom looks awkward.

“Have you met him?” I’ve had fewer than twenty-four hours to adjust to the idea of Pip’s having someone else—now the guy’s hanging out with our friends. Maybe I should go.

I put down my mug.

But I can’t help myself. “What’s he like?”

“Dutch,” says Tom.

Alistair rolls his eyes. “Helpful.”

“Tall, blond, blue eyes,” Tom adds. “Pilot. I would.”

Alistair throws a cushion at him. “Your daughter is right there!”

“Hypothetically, obviously!”

They see my face and stop short. “Sorry,” Tom says.

“I’m just finding this hard to process . . . It’s barely been a year. I . . .” I rub my face vigorously, push my fingers through my hair. “I guess it’s tough for me to realize I meant that little to her.”

It hurts to be apart, she’d said. Clearly not that much.

“Ding dong!” Tom jabs at the air with his index finger. “Did someone order a pity party?”

“Fuck off.” Too late, I remember Darcy. “Sorry, guys.”

“That’s OK,” Alistair says, philosophically. “The speech and language therapist is logging all her two-word sentences, and fuck off’s as good as any other.”

Tom sighs, his face serious again. “You’re always going to mean something to Pip, Max.”

“Even now she’s got the Flying Dutchman?”

There’s a pause, before Tom and Alistair burst out laughing.

“Oh God,” Tom says. “I’m never going to be able to call him anything else, now.”

I watch Darcy transfer plastic vegetables from her kitchen cupboard to a shopping bag. “I’m being ridiculous, aren’t I?”

“Yes.”

Alistair is more conciliatory—but only just. “She’s moving on, Max, that’s all. Maybe you need to do the same.”



* * *





    The suitcase of belongings I bring from the storage unit stays untouched in the hallway at 912 North Wolcott. Books, clothes, a pile of records I haven’t listened to in years. It’s not much to show for a life.

“You could paint the basement,” Mom says. “Put a sofa down there, have your things out.”

She means well, I know, but it’s the final straw. I am not seventeen. This is not a teenage hangout. I cannot stay here.



* * *





So what’s your plan?” Blair stirs her coffee. She opens TripAdvisor on her cell and finds the restaurant we’re in. “Four?”

“Get a job, I guess. Let’s give them five—I like their music.” Every other Saturday, when Blair’s kids are with their dad, we check out some place given a shitty review in the Tribune, and give it our own review. It was never meant to become a regular thing. A friend of Blair’s got a stinger of a write-up, and she asked if I was free to have lunch there.

“I figure she could use the business.”

I read the review. The bone-dry steak was a welcome relief after the soggy swamp of my seafood starter. “You’re not really selling it to me.”

But Blair was persuasive, and I was at a loose end—hell, when was I ever anywhere but at a loose end, nowadays?—so I met her there. We had a great meal, agreed the critic had some unknown axe to grind, and that maybe we should give some of his other targets a bit of patronly love.

“Don’t get excited, Mom,” I said, when I told her I was meeting Blair for a second lunch. “We’re friends, that’s all.”

“You’ve already got a job,” Blair says now. She types in our review.

“I paint condos.”

“And you like it.”

“Yes, but—”

Blair raises an eyebrow. “What am I missing?”

“I was one of the most sought-after management consultants in the country.” I sound like a dick, but I can’t seem to stop. “I’ve supported the introduction of strategic change to hundreds of companies that would have gone under without my guidance. I won the MCA project of the year in 2011 and 2012. I—” I stop short. It’s like I’m reciting someone else’s résumé. “It was a good job,” I finish lamely.

“But you don’t have it anymore,” Blair points out, more gently than I suspect I deserve, after my verbal LinkedIn update. “So you need a new one. And right now, painting condos seems like a pretty good alternative.” I open my mouth to cut in, but she doesn’t let me. “Max, I get it—you miss your old job!”

“No, I—” I was going to say that I didn’t feel like a management consultant anymore. That maybe it was time to try something new. Maybe painting condos was as good a job as any other. I rub the beard that feels so much a part of me now.

“Before I had kids, I was a graphic designer. I worked on campaigns for Adidas, Coca-Cola, IBM . . .” Blair fixes me with a stare that reminds me of my eighth-grade math teacher. “Now, I file papers and make coffee for two lawyers, and help out once a week at swim club, because that’s what works for me and the kids right now. Life changes. Shit happens. Get over it.”