The People We Keep(81)



“Thanks,” I say, wishing I’d left my guitar case open a little bit longer. If he listened all afternoon, he should pay me something, but I hate taking money from a stranger’s hand. I hadn’t noticed him or the bench, which makes me feel a little sideways. I’m usually good at keeping track of what’s around me, but my mind keeps drifting away, trying to avoid thoughts about Justin.

“Hey, can I buy you dinner?” he asks, and he’s not nervous or awkward about it, but he seems intently hopeful that I will say yes and we will eat food and it will bring something to his life he didn’t have before. It doesn’t feel like he’s hitting on me. His eyes are sad in a way I recognize.

“I know a place that makes great gazpacho,” he says. “I think this is the first batch of the season.”

I probably look kind of rank. The offers to feed me come more frequently then. Although it’s usually a bagged lunch left in my case, not the commitment to sit across from me in public eating cold soup.

“Thanks,” I say, “but I need to hit the road.” My stomach is hollow and aching, but I have to be done falling for people just because they seem fine. I pick up my guitar case.

“It’s a short walk,” he says. “You have to eat anyway, right?” He does this little shrug of his shoulders.

I study his face, lines in places that tell me he’s smiled a bunch, but worried more. I try to picture him grabbing my wrist, slamming me against a wall. I can’t. It’s a ridiculous thought. He cares too much. Wears it on his sleeve. He put his feelings into asking me to dinner, trusting I’d be careful not to hurt them. I wonder if my eyes look familiar to him too, if that’s why he liked my music so much. Takes one to know.

“I could eat,” I say. Stupid, but hungry. Stupid, but lonely.

“Can I carry that for you?” Ethan points to my guitar. “It looks heavy.” His teeth are big and straight. He’s thin, but he has chipmunk cheeks.

“It’s okay. You have to hold it just so or the handle comes off.” I’m lying, but we lose something if he thinks I don’t trust him.

He’s my height and there’s a coziness to it, like we’re old chums. His eyes are right there when I turn my head.

He’s a painter at heart, he tells me, but he’s not poor because he teaches at the university, does freelance design work on the side.

“I’m too into creature comforts to starve for my art,” he says, flashing teeth.

I wonder if he’s trying to convert me.

The restaurant he takes me to wants to be bohemian, but it’s too clean and calculated. Each wall is alternately mustard and rust colored. Light fixtures wrapped in copper mesh. Everything on the menu has goat cheese or pine nuts.

Ethan orders two bowls of gazpacho as soon as we sit down, nodding for my approval after the fact. I nod back, smile sweetly. When the waiter comes with our soups, I order the same entrée Ethan does.

“I told you it was good,” he says, a chunk of green stuck in his teeth. He doesn’t notice that I haven’t tasted my soup yet.

“Mmmm,” I say. “Thank you. This was a good idea.”

He’s beaming. I understand now. I’ve seen this before. He’s clinging to that part of himself that would like to be me and have the guts or the stupidity to just go for it. Live in your car. Eatsleepbreathe for your art. As long as we’re together, he’s a painter who has the courage to let go of all the creature comforts, to feel like he’s living the dream without the bruises.

“I like your lyrics,” Ethan says. “You have an interesting way of saying big things with simple words.”

I wonder if he’s giving me credit for Dylan songs. I only played a handful of my own. “Thanks,” I say.

“How did you learn to play?”

“Taught myself.”

“That’s how I started painting. Funny what we’re drawn to, isn’t it? What it fixes. I knew as soon as I started to paint it was mine. Did you feel like that with the guitar?”

I smile, because I did, but no one else has ever described that feeling to me. I think I knew even before I started—watching my dad play—that this music was something I needed. “Yeah. I did.”

“It’s so uncomfortable until you find the right way to get that part of yourself out, isn’t it?”

As soon as we finish our last spoonfuls of soup, a tall man with perfect posture and thick brown hair pulled in a stubby ponytail brings us two heaping plates of greens. “Ethan, how goes it?” he says, switching our bowls for the entrées. The sleeves of his faded denim shirt are rolled to the middle of his muscled forearms. “Greg said you were here.”

Ethan stands. They shake hands and lean into a hug with back slaps that sound hollow, like their bodies are just skin stretched over drum frames.

“Robert, this is April.”

“Nice to meet you, April.” He reaches for my hand.

I’m the only one sitting, so I bunch my napkin next to my plate and stand up. “Nice to meet you.”

Now we’re all standing and it’s awkward. The smell of food makes my stomach rumble, even though it looks like some sort of meat substitute on a bed of fancy lettuce. I imagine thick strips of rare roast beef oozing rosy juice all over the plate.

“Robert, join us,” Ethan says, sitting down.

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