Richard Lange - Sweet Nothing

“I’m supposed to have a drink with a friend. He’d probably get a kick out of meeting my son-in-law.”

“You mean now?” I say. “I’m kind of—” I put my fingers to my lips and mime a joint.

“You’re okay,” he says. “A drink will straighten you out.”

A church bell rings somewhere, and I lift my foot to warn away a strutting pigeon that’s getting too close. This is the first time David has referred to me as his son-in-law, and I feel I owe him something. It’s a feeling I’m not sure I like, but nonetheless I say, “Yeah, cool, let’s go.”

I WAS NERVOUS about meeting David and Marjorie that first time, at our wedding. They were Jewish; I wasn’t. They had money; I didn’t. Claire had gone to Yale; I hadn’t. “Relax,” Claire said. “They’re not like that.” She and I had been dating for a year, and she’d visited her parents only once, flying over to spend a week in Switzerland with them. I hadn’t seen my own mother in ages, but I’d always thought rich families were different.

Marjorie was great, a little ditzy but sweet. As long as Claire was happy, she was happy, and will someone please bring me one of those crab things being served right now, and another glass of wine while you’re at it?

David, however, was a different matter. I sensed disapproval, but he didn’t actually say anything disapproving; I don’t know if he’d been told to keep it to himself or if he’d decided on his own that he shouldn’t comment on his daughter screwing up her life when he’d pretty much checked out of it years earlier, when she’d left home for college.

Our one extended conversation was about Clint Eastwood. David had met him at a golf tournament and been very impressed. “You should make a film with him, ” he said. When I went to shake his hand after Claire and I exchanged vows in a friend’s backyard, he put his arms around me, hugged me tightly, and said, “Give love to get love.”

“Is that a song?” I asked Claire later.

“A sucky one, if so,” Claire said.

I went over it in my head for weeks, wondering if that was the best he could do or if he wasn’t even trying.

THE BAR IS called the Alps. It’s shoehorned into a crowded mini-mall at Sixth and Berendo, between a dry cleaner and a tofu restaurant. David parks his rental in the lot and checks himself in the rearview mirror. He’s wearing a black polo and pressed khakis. I asked if I should dress up, and he said a shirt with a collar would be fine.

We’re the only non-Asians in the place, which is decorated to evoke a mountain cabin, with skis and poles and snowshoes hanging on the knotty-pine paneling next to large photos of snow-covered peaks. A fire is burning in the circular fireplace in the middle of the room, surrounded by couches. The air conditioner is turned all the way up to compensate for the heat of the flames.

The place has lots of customers for so early in the afternoon, mostly well-dressed middle-aged men drinking in groups of three or four. They watch warily out of the corners of their eyes as David leads the way to the bar and motions for me to sit. The bartender is a beautiful Korean girl in a tight red dress. She ignores us, polishing wineglasses until David calls her over.

“What’ll you have?” he says to me.

“I’m not really drinking these days,” I reply.

“Get something so you don’t stand out,” he whispers, then turns back to the bartender. “Two Johnnie Walker Blacks on the rocks.”

While the drinks are being poured, he nods to a little man with a complicated comb-over who is sitting by himself in a booth. The man nods back ever so slightly, then pulls out a phone and makes a call. Signals are definitely being sent and received in here. I can hear them whizzing through the air around me. Some kind of work is getting done.

The bartender sets the scotches in front of us, and I take a big sip and try to look hard. David downs half of his in a gulp and says, “I should remember, I know, but how did you and Claire meet again?”

It’s a filler question, one he presumes I’ll have a long answer to that’ll eat up the next few minutes. He wasn’t even looking at me when he asked it; he was watching the man in the booth. Him thinking I’m such a chump that I can’t see right through him should make me angry, but it doesn’t. I get the idea that he’s counting on me to play my part in whatever he’s got cooking, and I don’t want to let him down.

Of course, the story I give him about Claire and I being introduced by a mutual acquaintance and gradually growing closer during a series of dinner and movie dates is complete crap. In reality, we met at a downtown bar, and I fucked her standing up in an alley two hours after I bought her a drink.

A couple of buddies who’d done her and dumped her in the past warned me that she’d get too serious too quickly, but I was coming off a string of psychodramas starring women who’d left me feeling like I’d been beaten and robbed, and a bit of stability sounded appealing.

Turned out Claire was as sick of her life as I was of mine, and that’s where we connected in the beginning. We teamed up to build our own thing, us against the world, carving out a new space and tossing aside any junk from our pasts that didn’t fit. We lost friends, we burned bridges, but we told ourselves it was the price of progress.

And now, here we are. Mission accomplished. Married, baby on the way, cool apartment in a cool neighborhood, eating right, no more binges, no more soul suckers, no more morning-afters, yet I still wake terrified some nights and spend long, lonely hours in the dark conjuring up demons and disasters and torturing myself with the knowledge that everything we have could be snatched away from us as quickly as the wind blows out a candle.

David says, “That’s how it usually goes, I guess,” when I finish giving him the sanitized version of how Claire and I came together. Then he continues: “Marjorie and I fought like wild animals for the first few years. We almost killed each other before we learned to get along. I’m glad you two had an easier time of it.”

He finishes his scotch, bouncing the ice off his teeth. I’m halfway through mine, and it’s gone to my head. This is dangerous because I’m a mean drunk. A few belts, and I get a mouth on me. The mirror behind the bar is covered with that spray-on snow you use on Christmas trees, and someone has scrawled something in Korean on it. I have to stop myself from calling the bartender over and asking her what it says.

“How do you like teaching?” David asks, another question he’s not interested in the answer to. Before I have a chance to respond, the man in the booth stands and walks over to us.

“Hello, Mr. Song,” David says.

“Hello, Mr. Friedman,” Mr. Song says in heavily accented English. “So nice to see you.”

“This is my son-in-law, Haskell,” David says.

“Pleased to meet you,” Mr. Song says to me.

“Pleased to meet you ,” I reply, feeling like we’re reciting a dialogue from a language class.

“Can I buy you a drink?” David says.

“No, thank you. I must attend to some business,” Mr. Song says. “However, I do have the information you requested.”

He passes David a slip of paper with an address written on it.

“Thank you very much,” David says. “Are you sure I can’t get you something?”

“I’m sure,” Mr. Song says. “I must be going.”

We finish up with handshakes and bows, and Mr. Song takes his leave, waving to the bartender and shouting something in Korean on his way out.

“What was that?” I say to David after another sip of scotch.

“What was what?” he replies.

I tell myself to slow down, think things through, but, as I mentioned, I get mouthy. “I’m not an idiot,” I say.