Beverly cried then. She didn’t mean to cry, maybe. At least Bill didn’t think so. Bill thought once she began articulating things she wanted she might be able to work through some stuff. He didn’t expect her to have an epiphany. He didn’t even expect her to make any decisions. He thought in speaking it out loud she might simply begin to get some clarity.
Her crying was tender. She didn’t bawl or weep. Tears rolled softly down her cheeks. Bill thought she looked wholly vulnerable. He also thought she looked positively beautiful.
So he just sat back and looked at her. He did not reach out for her, did not offer her a hanky. He simply sat and watched. He saw her makeup smear, saw her eyeliner run. That was sexy.
“What?” she asked.
“What?” he said.
“I miss my baby.”
“That why you’re crying?”
“No. I’m crying for everything. Because it’s all messed up. I’m sad and happy and worried and relieved. I’m all mixed up.”
“You don’t have to do anything now. You don’t have to do anything today. Sometimes if you don’t do anything, something will get done. You never know,” Bill said. “You never know anything except what you really know.”
“What do you know?” Beverly asked.
“For sure? Not much.”
“That helps a lot.”
“Yeah. Doesn’t it?”
“Really,” Beverly said, “what do you know for sure?”
“I know I never thought about being a cook, ever in my whole life. I know I needed a job so bad that when Robert came for me that day in the probation office, I would have done anything as a job. Anything. I know I wasn’t looking for a wife the day I met my wife. I simply went to a party that she was at. I didn’t even want to go to that party. I had a car…I told you.”
“Yup, you did,” Beverly said. “But you can keep on.”
“Nothing much else to say about that. She told me later the only reason she was at that party was cause of her friend who wanted to meet boys. My wife told her she’d go with her, help her meet someone.”
“Chance. Fate?”
“What do I know about fate? What do I know about anything?”
“You know stuff,” Beverly said.
“I know I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was fifteen. I know I didn’t do anything wrong, not really, at that demonstration. I wouldn’t even have been there if the professor I was meeting hadn’t wanted to see what was happening.
“I know I got railroaded by the system, entrapped by an undercover agent who tried to sell me weed out in the street some six weeks later. I know sure as hell we are sitting here and I have no clue why we are sitting here other than to be having this conversation.”
“I initiated it,” Beverly said. As she said this, she turned the extra earring in her left ear.
“Yes you did.”
“Well,” Beverly said, “sometimes you just need someone to talk to who is outside of everything else in your life. Sometimes you just need a free shot.”
“Yes,” Bill said. “And I’m a free shot for you just as you are for me.”
“What about the sex?”
“What about it?”
“You and the others.”
“I told you,” Bill said. “I take half the responsibility. Just like I never thought about being a cook, I never thought about cheating. I never thought about other women. There just came a point where it was easier to say yes than to fight it every day.”
“You never initiated anything?”
“Only with one woman, Mary P. And I loved her, sure as I love my wife. That’s something I need to look at. Me. Just me inside myself.”
