The Last Romantics(57)
But before I could begin, the man leaned forward, his head nearly touching mine. “Really?” he said. “A strong love line? You see that?”
I straightened. On his face I saw the faintest, brightest tremor of hope.
“Oh, yes,” I said. “I do.”
Chapter 9
Joe lived in Miami for fourteen months before he met Luna. Later he would consider those days a series of trials, like the stories of a besotted knight who must first steal a horse or battle a horde of ogres or spin a hundred spindles in a day before the king would allow him to marry his daughter. That was what Joe had been doing: suffering through the trials of his days without Luna.
On the day he first met Luna Hernandez, Joe left work early. He walked with the goal of putting sufficient distance between his drinking and the office. It hadn’t been a bad day; he just needed out. That grinding-of-teeth feeling, the sweat rising along his hairline and inside his shoes, the headachy drone of too much talking. Outside, the sidewalks heaved with people, and a car with its stereo volume turned way up sent its gut-thumping bass line straight into the space between Joe’s eyebrows. Some days Joe yearned for New York in a way that before he’d associated only with sex, but today he lifted his gaze to the Miami sky, the Miami sunshine. They felt familiar and nice. They felt almost like home.
Joe slung his jacket over his shoulder and crisscrossed block after block until the stream of tourists thickened, seagulls circled overhead, and he tasted the saltwater tang. He’d been walking for about twenty minutes when he saw a discreet, low-hanging sign: revel bar + restaurant. Joe stopped. He’d never noticed the place before, never heard of it, but he stepped inside.
A long, darkly polished bar faced a half bank of windows that looked out toward Biscayne Bay. The floors were black, the couches black, too. Beyond the bar Joe glimpsed a vast restaurant area with shiny glass-topped tables, all empty at this hour. The place had the feel of a deep crevasse lit by a slash of sun glittering far above.
“Tanqueray and tonic,” Joe told the bartender, and he pulled out a stool. The man worked fast, a flash of bottle, the sharp patter of ice. Then the glass set before Joe, the bitter spill down his throat. One swallow, another.
Better.
Yesterday Joe had played baseball, and his body hurt in the most satisfying way. He rolled his head and massaged his right shoulder, then the left. After thirteen years away from the game, Joe was starting up again. Center field had always been his position. The length of him, the reach and stretch of his arms with those extra two inches of webbed, stinking leather, transformed him into an unbreachable wall of grace and muscle. Now he played on a team of middle-aged men with bellies and mortgages, but still Joe could reach. He’d felt it again, the delicious tension of the pitcher’s preparation, head snapping at ten-degree angles, staring down the hitters at first and third, shake, shake, nod to the catcher. And then the ball itself, a blinking blur of white speed, and crack? Would the batter hit? Joe’s legs springing, arm reaching before his mind registered an answer. Thunk into the glove, and the ball’s trembling weight thrown immediately away. Second base. Out.
Sip, swallow. Sip, swallow.
Why had he ever quit? He remembered pressure, the taste of vomit at the back of his mouth. That coach at Alden College, every at-bat like a goddamn audition. His throwing arm would have come back. After college Renee had told him to start again. It’s never too late, she’d said. Not with something you love. At twenty-two, at twenty-five, at thirty, he had not believed her. But on that field again, now, thirty-two years old and slack in every single way, Joe realized that Renee had been right. It wasn’t the same. Of course it couldn’t be the same, but it was still something.
“One more?” came a woman’s voice, and he looked up. The bartenders had changed. Dark eyes, long black hair, a pea-size mole high on her right cheek. Her gaze was impatient and closed, not even a suggestion of helpful or nice or sympathetic, nothing to generate a tip.
Joe nodded, and he watched her, watched her ass, as she made the drink. He felt that at-attention kick of interest—his own, certainly not hers. The drink landed on a napkin, her back turned again before he could even mumble thank you. Charming? Maybe once. That had been a long time ago, too.
*
Luna got to work late and shook out her hair. Rodrigo the restaurant manager was always telling her to wear it up, but she liked it long, liked to feel the swing against her back. Dima was out there already, pouring for a man who seemed gray and sad, hunched over on the stool, not looking at anything. Luna tied her apron, squinted into the small mirror she kept in her purse, and rubbed a mascara smudge away from her lash line.
Dima passed her on the way to the kitchen. “More limes,” he said.
The man drank fast, three swallows, maybe four. The ice rattled.
“One more?” Luna asked, and he raised his head. His face was puffy, pink around the edges, the eyes a clear blue. Their brightness took her by surprise. He didn’t strike her as a drunk, not a true drunk, but he looked tired and habitually sad, or perhaps ill. A depleting illness, Luna thought. Or a poisoned diet. She’d been reading recently about pesticides, BPA, the casual infiltration of chemicals into organs and muscle.
The man nodded, and Luna turned to make him the drink. He was eyeing her up and down, she could see him reflected in the mirror behind the bar. Luna knew men looked at her like that, they always had.