The Girl He Used to Know(5)
“You want me to make you a grilled cheese? I made one for Joe earlier. I had everything in the fridge to make chicken Florentine, but that’s what he wanted. And you said you had nothing in common with him.”
“He didn’t take me seriously.” Jonathan had made the mistake that others who’d come before him had frequently made: he’d discounted my abilities while being overconfident in his own. I would soon learn that it would be the first and last time he ever made that mistake with me.
“Next Sunday, you’ll play with Eric.”
“I’m too tired to eat.”
“I have no idea what the two of you are saying to each other,” Joe had said the first time he witnessed one of our conversations. To be fair, it wasn’t only because I suspected he was high at the time. Janice had had three years to learn how to communicate with me, and to her credit, she’d mastered my native language like an expert linguist.
Unable to sustain further conversation, I wandered down the hallway into my bedroom, face-planted onto the bed fully clothed, and slept straight through until the next morning.
4
Jonathan
CHICAGO
AUGUST 2001
My phone rings and the caller ID flashes an unknown number as I walk down the street on my way to meet Nate for an after-work drink. I’ve been stuck in meetings all day and the only thing I’m interested in at the moment is an icy cold beer. August in Chicago can be brutal, and my dress shirt clings damply to my back under my suit jacket. When I hear the chime indicating that whoever called has left a voice mail, I figure I might as well find out what it is so I can put out the fire now and enjoy my beer in peace.
Annika’s voice stops me in my tracks. The odds that she would actually call were only marginally better than my ex-wife and I seeing eye-to-eye on anything now, so they weren’t that great. I move out of the flow of pedestrian traffic, holding a finger against the opposite ear so I can hear her better, and start the message over from the beginning.
“Hi. I was wondering if you might want to meet for breakfast on Saturday or Sunday morning at Bridgeport Coffee. Whatever time is convenient for you. Okay, bye.” I can hear the tremble in her voice.
There’s another message.
“Hi. This is Annika. I should have mentioned that in the other message.” The tremble is still there, along with an embarrassed sigh.
There’s one more message.
“I’m sorry for all the messages. I just realized I didn’t give you my phone number.” Now she sounds frustrated as she rattles it off, which is unnecessary because I can retrieve it from my incoming call log. “So just call me if you want to meet for coffee. Okay, bye.”
I imagine her slumping into a chair after leaving the messages, spent, because I know how difficult these things are for her.
The fact that she did it anyway tells me something.
* * *
The dark bar smells faintly of old cigarette smoke and men’s cologne. It’s the kind of establishment newly single men go to to unwind before heading home to the underfurnished apartments that have never seen a woman’s touch. I hate places like this, but Nate is still in the daily-drinking phase of his divorce, and I remember all too well what that’s like. He’s sitting at the bar peeling the label from a bottle of beer when I walk in the door.
“Hey,” I say as I sit down beside him, loosen my tie, and gesture to the bartender to bring me the same.
Nate points toward the window with the mouth of his beer bottle. “Saw you out there. You better shut that phone off if you want to enjoy your beer in peace.” Nate and I don’t work for the same firm, but their mission statements are identical: All work and no play makes this company a shitload of money.
“It wasn’t work. It was a voice mail from an old girlfriend I ran into the other day. She said she’d call. I wasn’t sure.”
“How long’s it been?”
“I was twenty-two the last time I saw her.” And if I’d known there was a possibility I wouldn’t see her again for ten years, I might have handled things differently.
“How’d she look?”
The bartender hands me my beer, and I take a long drink. “The years have been very kind to her,” I say when I set the bottle back down on the bar.
“So was it serious or just a fling?”
“It was serious for me.” I tell myself it was serious for her, too, but there are times I wonder if I’m lying to myself.
“Think she wants to rekindle?”
“I have no idea what she wants.” That part is true. I don’t even know if Annika’s single. I don’t think she’s married, because she wasn’t wearing a ring, but that doesn’t mean she’s not in a relationship with someone.
“Still hung up on her?”
Every now and then, especially right after Liz and I split up, when I was lying in bed alone unable to sleep, I would think of Annika. “It was a long time ago.”
“I know a guy who never got over the girl who dumped him in eighth grade.”
“That’s probably not his only issue.” Though it has been a long time, it sometimes feels like it was yesterday. I can hardly remember the names of the girls who came before her, and after her there was only Liz. But I can recall with unbelievable clarity almost everything that happened during the time I spent with Annika.