Emma Rathbone - Losing It

I leaned back. I had no idea what to do. Everything was noisily bobbing right there. “Hi,” I said.

Something was off. Not just because he’d brought a dog into the restaurant. He looked different. He was older than his online photo by at least ten years. His face seemed to have sunken in and bulged out at the sides.

“I just wanted you to meet him. Say hi, Henry!” He held up the dog’s paw. I waved tentatively. “Okay, I’ll be right back,” he said.

He walked out of the restaurant with the dog and disappeared from view. I sat there, embarrassed, aware that people were still looking my way, and stared at the menu.

He returned and sat down in front of me. He acted like we were still in the wake of some previous joke or bout of laughter. “I know, I know,” he said, a little out of breath. “He’s the best, he’s a character. So.” He looked at me. “What are we having?” He picked up the menu.

He was wearing creased khaki pants, a T-shirt that had a cityscape on it and read “St. Louis,” and a navy blue blazer that was too small. On one of his fingers was a large, bulging, golden class ring. He looked like he’d just come off a three-day bender on a friend’s yacht. He was fidgeting under the table, shaking his knee up and down. He glanced up and smiled at me in a distracted way and went back to the menu. He shifted in his seat, sat forward, sat back. He cracked his knuckles, coughed a kind of preliminary cough. He craned around and looked toward the front of the restaurant. He leaned forward and picked up a saltshaker and scrutinized it and put it down.

“He’s great,” I said. “Henry. He seems really friendly.”

“Oh yeah, he’s the best. The best.” He rubbed his hands together, raked them through his hair.

“You been here before?” he said.

“No,” I said. “Are you from”—I pointed at his shirt—“St. Louis?”

“What? No,” he said. “But I’ve heard it’s the greatest. Just the greatest.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“You’ve been there?” he said.

“St. Louis? No. But, yeah, I’ve heard it’s pretty good. It’s got that arch.”

“What?”

“That arch?” I pointed to his shirt. “That arch there. The arch?”

“Ah,” he said, smiling, vaguely perplexed.

We went back to the menus. The waitress came and we ordered drinks. I ordered wine and he ordered beer.

“I guess we’re not challenging any gender conventions,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean with our drink orders.”

“Oh, right.” He regarded me briefly with what seemed like a touch of annoyance. He shook his head quickly as if trying to straighten everything out.

“So, Julia,” he said, once our drinks were delivered. “Julia Greenfield.”

I nodded. Took a sip of my wine.

“Tell me about yourself,” he said. “Tell me three things. That’s right — I went to a job interview the other day. The guy said, ‘Tell me three things about yourself, or, describe yourself in three words!’ I said”—he started counting things off with his fingers—“I’m loyal, I’m a people person, I get along with just about anyone, that’s true, I’m really friendly, and I’m also punctual. I could have punched myself. ‘Punctual’? What a knucklehead.”

“Well, also you said four things,” I said.

“What?”

“Loyal, a people person, friendly, punctual.”

I had meant to say it in a joking way.

“I guess you’re right,” he said.

He looked bleakly out the window. His face had fallen. On the street, a man wearing a sandwich board with stars and stripes on it walked by. Bill played with the sodden paper coaster under his water. This was terrible. How had this happened? Why had I said that? What was going on here?

The waiter came and took our orders.

I had to get back — I sensed there was some sunny territory just above us on which we could connect. I had to change my whole bearing, ramp it up to match him.

“I’ve been asked that, too,” I said, laughing. “On a job interview. It’s so stupid. No one tells the truth. I mean, what are you supposed to say, ‘I’m obsessed with spreadsheets!’”

“My mother,” he said. “She’s a great lady, a really great lady. But she’s a handful. I was— We were at her house, trying to fit a sofa through the doorway. It’s at one of the new places, out there up Route 29? Really nice, and she keeps saying, ‘It fit through the breezeway at Delmarva! It fit through the breezeway at Delmarva!’ And there we are, with this huge green sofa, stuck in the door. I was like, ‘Mom!’” He put his hands up in a helpless gesture. “‘Mom! What am I?’” He shook his head in disbelief. “‘What am I?’”

He looked at me for a reaction. I cleared my throat. “Yeah,” I said. “So, are you close with your mother?”

“Yeah,” he said glumly. “I would say so.”

Next to us were a couple of lawyer types, working on a case, fountain pens poised, the lady’s hair tied back in a classy French twist. I watched as she flung her head back and laughed, and the man looked hungrily at her neck.

“Does she live around here?” I asked. “Your mom?”

“Emmitsville.”

“Oh, that’s not far from where I’m staying, with my aunt.”

“You live in Emmitsville?” he said.

“Well, between here and there.”

“Isn’t that where the new drive-in theater is?” He was flipping a coaster over and over in his hand.

“Oh, really?” I said. “That would be cool. I haven’t heard of it.”

We picked over a few more topics of regional interest and then our food came. I kept trying to decide if he was handsome or not. He had dark blond hair that was swept back with a fair amount of gel, and there was something about him that suggested a high-school heartthrob gone out to seed, or a golden young actor past his prime. He was good-looking, I decided, but it was also as if the surface of his face had become unmoored and drifted ever so slightly off-center. Still, he had a kind of antic warmth. I imagined us in a cabin, or a room with wood paneling, in bed, and he’s propped up on his elbow and walking his fingers up my chest. Then he maniacally kicks off the sheets and decides to make a crazy omelet. Then he’s goofing around in the kitchen with a skillet on his head and we’re both in stitches. I was starting to be able to see it, the way it would be with him, everything hilarious and spontaneous and slightly unhinged.

With the arrival of our second drink, we started talking about a man in town who we had both encountered, who may or may not have been homeless, and who sat on a pail on the downtown thoroughfare and played the same tuneless melody on his harmonica day in and day out. The sound had become synonymous with that area.

“Every freaking day!” said Bill.

“I know,” I said. “He’s like some background extra in a computer game.”

“It would be one thing if he knew how to play the thing.”

“It’s terrible!”

“And look”—he put his hands up in a defensive gesture—“I like zydeco.”

I laughed. “Oh, so that’s what it is?”

“Yes,” he said, with an air of authority, his eyes suddenly stern. “It’s zydeco.”

“Okay.”

“But this is getting out of hand. Learn a different tune!”

It was all-encompassing, when he was animated — his flashing eyes, his large face and golden hair.

We looked at each other, a little too pleased by this burst of agreement.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said, his eyes gleaming.

“Now?” I said. “But what about… We have to pay.”

“Ah.” He produced a crumpled ten-dollar bill and threw it on the table. “Here,” he said, “you talk to the waiter, I’ll go get Henry.” And before I knew it, he was walking out of the restaurant.