Big Swiss(16)

And he hadn’t gotten any. He’d finished building the shed the following day and driven back to wherever he’d come from—Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, one of those—and she never saw him again, not even at Seymour’s funeral six weeks later. Poor Seymour had died in his sleep, alone in his saltine box.


Dear Mom,

I was needlessly cruel to an old man. His name is Seymour, and he told me he had feelings for me, and I was too grossed out to be gracious about it. I behaved like a child and ratted him out to his mother. I mean daughter. In other words, I treated him like a pedophile, even though we’re both adults. Now he’s dead. He died alone, like you, and I feel terrible. There were only four of us at the memorial and we all looked guilty as sin. Anyway, if you see Seymour, don’t be unkind. Let him hold your wrist when you light his cigarette, and tell him you’ll read his novel.

PS: Take a quick peek into the future, if possible, and let me know if I’m getting some any time soon.





3


Until last year, Greta had been engaged to Stacy. Most engagements last a year, maybe two. Although Greta couldn’t imagine herself with anyone else, she’d felt incapable of making plans for the weekend, let alone a wedding, let alone the rest of her life, and so their engagement had lasted ten years. In the meantime, she kept catching the bouquet at other people’s weddings. The bouquet was never tossed into the air, it seemed to Greta, but rather hurled directly at her head, and she had no choice but to catch it and then quickly pass it like a football to the woman standing next to her, who always dropped it. “Fumble!” Greta yelled each time. The woman would then pick up the bouquet and pass it back to Greta, and Greta would feel like dying.

Stacy was twelve years older than Greta and originally from Cape Cod. No, he wasn’t a woman. But, his name being Stacy, he’d obviously been bullied as a kid, especially since he’d worn Coke-bottle glasses and spoken with a slight lisp. This was why you’d never want to fuck with him as an adult, because—well, buried rage, etc. By the time Greta met him, he wore contacts, his lisp was long gone, and he had muscles. Not huge, stupid muscles, but you could tell that he had abs, and not just in his ab region but, like, all over his body.

They’d met in Los Angeles while Greta was waitressing at a restaurant called Sylvette. Named after a portrait of a blond French woman by Picasso, the restaurant did not serve French, or even Spanish, food, but rather rustic Italian. It was family owned, which was nice, but the family was Indian. Until Greta came along, spaghetti was served by an exhausted woman wearing a sari. If you poked your head in the kitchen, you saw half a dozen Indian dudes in dhotis. But the family had lived in Rome for many years, and the food was authentic and delicious, and the restaurant, though tucked away in a strip mall surrounded by rehab centers, had a loyal, if mostly alcoholic, following. In fact, most of their customers were either on their way to one of these facilities or just getting out.

On the night they met, Stacy pulled into the parking lot in a grandma car from the seventies. Greta watched him step out of the car and sling a messenger bag over his shoulder. He was accompanied by a tall guy wearing a Red Sox shirt and hockey hair. The tall guy weaved rather than walked, and his face was shiny and red, but not from the sun. He had what Greta called a drunk tan.

Stacy, on the other hand, had a regular tan. He was thirty, maybe forty, maybe older, and dressed, unforgivably, in fleece. His gray fleece pullover reminded her of a giant lint trap, and his pants had weird cuffs, drawing attention to his long feet, which were stuffed into stiff black dress shoes. He looked like he might tap-dance his way into the restaurant.

They seated themselves, one of her pet peeves, choosing the small table by the window. Greta delivered menus. Drunk Tan, she imagined, was having a last meal before checking into Bridges to Recovery, and Stacy was his chaperone. Sponsor? Second cousin. He asked if she wouldn’t mind stashing his bag in the back.

“My cah doesn’t lock,” he explained.

She dropped the bag at the waitress station and returned to their table. It was her eleventh day without a cigarette, her eleventh month without sex. She’d been smoking her feelings since she was fifteen, and now, at age thirty-three, her real self was beginning to emerge. Unfortunately, her real self was horny, easily enraged, and no longer interested in making money.

With some effort, Stacy pulled the fleece over his head and deposited it on the floor, where it belonged. When she noticed his T-shirt, she immediately forgave him everything, even the Gregory Hines shoes. It was an old concert shirt for her favorite post-punk band, the Birthday Party.

“Nice shirt,” she said.

He looked surprised. “You like the Birthday Pahdee?”

An accent. A speech impediment. Which?

“Big fan,” she said.

“We just saw Nick Cave in consit,” Stacy said.

“Me too.”

“You were there?” Stacy said.

Greta nodded. “In the balcony.”

“We were up front,” he said.

Drunk Tan seemed on the verge of tears. He wasn’t drunk, she decided, but rather newly sober. He coughed, and then kept coughing. She thought he was faking at first, but he coughed with his entire body, arms and legs included. His eyes bulged and he turned away, but she caught the helpless look on his face.

“Pahdon me,” he said. “God!”