The normal duo was directly in front of her, the stolid girl with her nodding head and her chatting companion. She was always there and she always saw them, close by in the corner where she always stood, tapping the soles of her flats against the thin cedar lip that ran around the walls, cut away by the open space of the archway that broke in on her right.

There was some light that filtered down from the back hall that housed the billiards table, dirty, thick light, with dust dancing in it, that silhouetted the chatting girl’s face. It was all movement. Bounce up and bounce down, constant sway, and flopping, never mind the chin, and her cheeks, it was all of her. In the corner, peering out at the two of them, she could never really figure out what the one had that the other didn’t, what it was that always had them together, but she thought it must have had something to do with a lack of a better something else. All of that talking, and it was just one of them. There were not many people there usually.

She went there all of the time. It was just down the block from her place, a way of going out without going too far, having settled on her favorite rendezvous and hangout spot with the help of a post office courtesy map a few days after moving in. The people and everything inside became so agreeably familiar she could hardly consider going anywhere else, such that even pub relics took on a kind of charm, as with the disused popcorn machine on her other side, opposite the normal duo, which the regulars regarded as an antique of questionable, but captivating, value, a sign on the wall above the green release handle reading Widmark and Sons, Townhaven, ‘22. The sign looked as if it might have been inked with a hand stamp on a torn slip of notebook paper and darkened for an aged effect with a brick of charcoal, an offhand element of an offhand place.

It was also one of the places she hadn’t seen him in before, but there he was, down the other end, by the door, with the draft coming in. She decided almost immediately that it was him, his shoulders slouched as if in mimicry of the curves of his glass, which was at least twice as big as anyone else’s, as though the bartender had run out of his proper supply. Her purse thudded against the bar as she said hello, happy not to have had it land on the floor.

“That’s quite a glass.”

“Oh my....”

“I haven’t seen one like that here.”

“Ah, yes. I guess it is. But how have you been...I didn’t really expect...”

“Well enough. And you?”

“The same. Probably. Okay.”

“And the glass?”

“Oh, some drops left. Sorry. Not the best joke. You ask for the best you get the biggest it seems.”

“That might be worse.”

“I’ll just make some room.”

A cribbage board was nailed into the bar between their stools, shim slivers standing in for long displaced silver pegs, and as he talked, she wondered where they might have gone, sticking her nails beneath the end of the board in a halfhearted attempt to pry it loose, listening to how he had spent the better part of the day helping a friend of his move, in her neighborhood as it turned out.

“I was just heading back and I saw this place so I figured I’d stop in for a quick drink. Didn’t know what a surprise I’d be in for.”

“Good or bad?”

“I didn’t mean it like that. Not at all. Everyone likes a surprise. From time to time.”

Her eyes followed his as he took notice of one scene upon another unfolding around them, their attention continually returning to the women clogging the center of the bar. They were hard not to notice. Some were taller than others, and some were certainly bigger than others. And even though there wasn’t much range from the tallest to the shortest and the thinnest to the thickest, there was a disturbingly ecumenical sense to her succeeding thoughts as she wondered if some people might be as interchangeable as others are not. The bartender struck a cowbell behind the bar for last call. The bartender’s voice was loud and it filled the room. “I got pens, I got paper, who wants them!” Some of the women in the middle fidgeted and looked around, and when one of their lot yelled out a hastened cry of “hey handsome!” ten or twelve reciprocating looks went up with a flurry that blitzed the room into a surge of hopeful maneuvers as everyone started to make their way towards the door. They were almost the last to leave, with him straggling along. Just outside the pub, he tapped her on the shoulder and watched her turn around, waiting for him to say something. He had promised himself he’d ask before they left. The coolness in the wind seemed to dry the air. She had gloves and he didn’t, but he looked warm, and his cheeks were even red.

“So have you talked to ‘our friend’?”

“So that’s what you’re going to call her?”

“Yes. Do you have a less awkward term?”

“No.”

“I think she’s somewhere in Maryland.”

“California now.”

“Better yet.”

She laughed a little too long for her liking. A last group made their way outside, as the bartender followed, jangling keys.

“Would it be alright if we got together sometime? I mean, I always kinda thought...”

“I don’t see why not.”

“Well, allegiance and all.”

“It’s not like she’s the flag. It doesn’t bother me if it doesn’t bother you.”

“Isn’t there a sort of line, I don’t know about these things you all have...”

“It doesn’t bother me if it doesn’t bother you.”

“It doesn’t.”

“No? Well, why let it.”

“So I’ll call you?”

“Sure.”

Despite his own preparations and how precisely he had rehearsed everything in his head, he still found his voice a bit off on the phone. Once she’d agreed, he set down the receiver, his confidence in the qualities of an open mind restored, the phone flickering a glassy electronic green as a prerecorded message reminded him to hang up once more.

***

He met her at her place just a few blocks from the pub, standing outside on the curb as she came tumbling through the door, practically besieging the street, claiming her apartment an awful mess but that no one was on the roof deck if he’d like to sit up there for a bit before heading out.

She was especially pleased to be up on the deck at night, how much it could seem like a postcard sighting in three different directions. The city skyline marked the view to one side, with the harbor opposite, its muddy shoal water and blackened boat husks a thick swab of pitch for the skyline lights to intrude upon at indiscriminate points. Behind her building was the church, its hold on the imagination slightly compromised in daylight, when its steeple was laced with pulleys and men fashioning the sounds of biannual refurbishment. The airport was across the water. She always assumed that it must have been very loud over there with all of the planes landing and taking off, and didn’t quite understand how she could hardly ever hear them at all.

They had never spent much time alone together. When it was the three of them, she remembered that she had laughed a lot. Sometimes she had even laughed when there was no need to laugh. But he was a clever sort, that’s what everyone said. And sometimes when he wasn’t really all that amusing, she had laughed anyway, thinking that something better, something funnier, was just all the more likely to follow. When it was just the two of them, waiting for her friend to return, or to finish getting ready for the evening’s date--which he had arrived slightly early for, as always--she swore it was as though he said her name as if reminding himself of something, or chasing out an ideal, or reinforcing some kind of contract--“K- was saying,” “K- was just telling me,” “K- said that when you were a kid...”--utterances that struck her as quite grave at the time. On the deck, with the wind and some of his hair in his eyes, he looked over the edge and down a side street. There was a little mew-style building crammed between a restaurant and an apartment complex. He asked her what it was, and she said it was a coffee shop.

“The Glaswegian.”

“I don’t see a sign.”

“Well, all the same, that’s what everyone calls it.”

She’d been out of touch with her for about a year. She didn’t hear her name much anymore.

“Why?”

“A Scottish guy runs it.”

“Ah. Remember when we....”

His voice trailed off. He glanced at her now, and he saw her staring back. There was no light coming off of her. It was dark. He could just make out her mouth when it moved.  

“I feel a bit nervous, do you know what I mean?”

“I think I do.”

“So you as well? That’s good at least.”

“I didn’t say that. It just doesn’t bother me anymore. I don’t think it should. It’s been a long time, yeah?”

“It has. But it’s still not the most normal situation.”

“I guess.”

“You guess?”

“Fine. It’s not. Either way we’re here.”

“Indeed.”

“We could just call it the circuitous route if you like.”

“Probably should come up with something better than that.”

They went down the stairs and onto the street, crossing through an alleyway because she said it was quicker to the pub and he looked cold, his hands buried so deep in his pockets that he wasn’t able to get them out fast enough when they got to door so she opened it for both of them. He ordered red wine for her, remembering that’s what she had been drinking the last time, and red wine for himself, hoping to suggest a polite complicity. She arched an eyebrow, just one, as the bartender poured the house selection in his glass, and motioned toward the popcorn machine when he asked if she was hungry, laughing softly when he came back.

“Find it?”

“I found it.”

“Nothing?”

“No.”

“I’m sorry. Look at you! Smile. We can get something later. You look...”

“Off?”

“Confused. Like….”

He caught her look when she said that, the way her mouth stopped abruptly, and her tongue seemed to lag behind her laughter. There were less people in the pub than usual, and without other voices to drown hers out, the chatting girl, there as always, seemed louder than ever, her nodding companion, as ever, by her side. They didn’t talk about much save for a few complaints, how so and so was such a this and that, how the neighborhood was changing, it was always changing, and how everyone should have known what, clearly, was known to them alone.

After a couple of drinks, she began to laugh like she had before, when they first knew each other, and then he noticed how her head began to sag, and her eyes became a little dimmer in the smoke. Vaguely motioning to his watch, he resolved to walk her back to her place, finishing his drink and what was left of hers as she put on her coat. Standing outside, she asked him upstairs again, making a bad joke about repetitive ventures. 

“If you’re not in a hurry...”

“I’m not.”

As bright as the skyline was, the city might well have been on fire. His hand felt clammy in his pocket as they leaned against the railing, and he thought it was with some ingenuity that he had the presence of mind to casually run it across a plasticine cherub, cradled in a flowerless flowerpot, that was the deck’s lone, ill-fated concession to decorative invention. She just stood there, ten feet from the bulkhead door, by the edge, staring out. There was an opening in the rail of the deck where someone had kicked in a patch of weather-beaten spindles, and he moved to pass through, positioning himself behind her back, then at her side, straining forward a bit, trying to walk onto the roof itself.

“I don’t think we should. Being near the edge makes me nervous. Heights and all that.”

“I see.”

Even as a conciliatory gesture he was shocked into some sort of shame to discover his arm creeping around the small of her back. She jumped a bit at the touch. As he coughed, he could hear the shuffle of her shoes on the planking of the oak wood deck, and his hand went to the top of his head.

“Sorry.”

“No I’m....”

“It’s alright. You can put it back.”

You could see the airport across the water. A plane landed. A plane took off. Two hundred yards. Three hundred yards. Not much more than that. He measured in football fields. More accurate that way. It was hard for her not to say something. Just to stand there staring off.

“If you’re...”

“I’m not.”

“You don’t even know what I was going to say.”

“I do and I’m not. It just doesn’t affect me anymore. It really just doesn’t. Maybe it should, but no. It just doesn’t affect me anymore. It just doesn’t. And I know that each time I say that you’re taking it as some sort of sign that it really does.”

“Yes.”

“We’ll I’m not. I just knew that you’d be.”

“I am.”

“So there you go.”

“I wonder what she’d think. That probably shouldn’t make you laugh.”

“Sorry.”

“I’m thinking another time would be better. For drinks. Almost for sure.”

“Whatever you say.”

“You understand?”

“I do.” He didn’t sigh when he said it, just stood there looking out.

A plane landed. A plane took off. You could see the airport across the water. Two hundred yards. Three hundred yards. Maybe more than that. Five hundred yards. It was all roughly the same from the distance. Some boats looked bigger than other boats, but they probably weren’t much bigger.