Not Perfect(15)

The place was mostly cleared out now. If only that man weren’t there, she could almost take it all. Why did she have to talk to him? But really, why did she care? She would probably never see him again. She approached the buffet. He had finally decided on one small burger and a handful of sweet potato fries.

“I don’t eat a lot of meat,” he said when he saw her. She jumped a tiny bit, which was ridiculous. “But this looks so good, I’m just going to do it.”

“Good for you,” she said, thinking about adding, You only live once, but decided against it.

“Mind if I join you?” he asked, turning and pointing toward her table. He saw the empty plates. “Oh, you ate that fast.” He must have been paying more attention to what she was doing than she realized, but at least he missed the dumping it into bags and stealing it part.

“Yeah, I guess. I really have to go. I want to get back to my daughter, and my son just texted that he’s starving,” she lied, “I think I’m going to bring a little of this home for him.”

“Good idea,” the man said, like it was no big deal at all.

She turned her back to him and loaded another plate. The new tray was full of grilled chicken, which might be just the thing for Fern. It looked plain and juicy. There were also some fresh rolls. When Tabitha turned around again, she saw the man sitting at her table. Who was this guy? She had to walk by the table to reach the exit, and she had to figure out a way to transport the new plate. She couldn’t just walk through the streets carrying it. Going to another table would seem strange. She walked over to him but didn’t sit. Instead, she pulled the second empty bag out of her purse and put the plate inside.

“You come prepared,” he said, but again, his tone was friendly, not accusing.

“I guess I do,” she said.

“Will you be here on Saturday?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said, even though of course she had no intention of coming.

“If you think this spread is something, you should see it on game day. They really go all out,” he said proudly. She thought back to that day she was here with Stuart. It was a game day. They must have had an incredible spread, but Tabitha hadn’t even noticed. She hadn’t been hungry, and she certainly hadn’t been desperate for food. But she remembered that night for some reason. The plan was to have an early dinner at the steak house on the ground floor of their building, one of the best in the city. Sam Soto, the restaurant critic for The Record, gave it three swans, and rumor had it he was considering upping it to four, his highest rating. Stuart wanted to get there before that happened, before it was impossible to get a reservation. But, and now she almost laughed to herself, she remembered that she didn’t even want to go. Did they have to have such a big dinner? There was always so much food left on their plates that they would end up taking home and never eating. If only, she thought to herself now. She noticed the man waiting patiently for her to respond to what he’d just said.

“Oh, well I will definitely try,” she said. She slung her bag over her shoulder, trying not to crush the food already in there, trying not to think about what she wouldn’t do to have a refrigerator full of leftovers from the fancy steak house. She held the covered plate in her hand. It was not a paper plate, and she worried someone might say something. “It was nice to meet you,” she said.

“Well, we didn’t really meet,” he said, sitting back and smiling. “I’m Toby.”

“Oh, right. I’m Tabitha.”

“I graduated from U of M in 1989,” he said. “How about you?”

She hesitated. She knew it was a big school, but that was one year before Stuart graduated. It was unlikely, but not impossible, that they could have known each other. She was getting in so much deeper than she meant to. She also graduated from college in 1990, though not from Michigan. She was taking too long to answer.

“I was class of 1994,” she said, quickly calculating that he would have already graduated, so there was less likelihood of any potential crossover.

“I loved Ann Arbor,” he said wistfully, like he was settling in for a long conversation.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, but I really have to go,” she said. “Go Blue!”

“Go Blue!” he said back, smiling.



Now she was lying and stealing. But once she was out the door, she felt better. She wasn’t really stealing the food—that was meant to be taken—but the plate? She probably shouldn’t have taken that. She could bring it back. She’d wash it and bring it back the next time she came to take more food. Okay, now she really felt better. And did it even have to be a Michigan happy hour? It wasn’t like anyone asked to see a card or anything, though there was the singing, which luckily she could keep up with, and that awkward conversation with that man. Another school’s happy hour might be better. She would be ready with a graduation date next time. She could come up with a whole story. Though finding another one might be complicated. How would she know when they were? She would have to just show up and hope.

She walked by Harry, the evening doorman. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t even seem to think anything. Nobody would ever suspect that she would steal this food. He probably thought it was from a friend. She smiled and let her shoulders relax a little in the elevator.

That feeling didn’t last long. She could hear it before she saw it or smelled it. Why didn’t they text her? She ran to the door, losing some of the items on the plate as she jostled it open. Inside she found Levi sitting on the bathroom floor with his head in the toilet, and a sweet, sweet Fern sitting behind him, rubbing his back.