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But an hour into waiting, Anne grew restless. She’d tried to pep herself up with the self-help book Eliza had given her a while back, but that was equally depressing. Marguerite Hill, the author, was all about seizing control of one’s life, and Anne had never felt less in control. So she dialed the one woman she knew who could take charge better than anyone else.
“Eliza,” Anne said once her friend answered. “Are you free tonight by chance?”
On the other end of the line, Eliza hesitated. A low chatter sounded in the background, along with the clinking of dinnerware.
“Oh, are you out with Roman?” Anne asked. “We can meet a different—”
“No, I’m just finishing up dinner at the country club with my in-laws,” Eliza said. “I can meet you after. Same place, thirty minutes?”
“I need an hour,” Anne said. “I have to clear my head.”
Anne hung up with Eliza, then stepped outside the car and into the fresh night air. It had an instantly sobering effect. She walked toward the apartment complex, surprising herself, no doubt buoyed by the booze. Then she stopped. Turned around. Climbed back into the car and waited some more. Even whiskey from a flask didn’t make her invincible.
Finally, once she was confident she was under the legal limit, Anne pulled away from the curb and pointed her mom van filled with empty car seats and the carcasses of juice boxes toward the usual place. A place she hadn’t gone for years.
_______________________________
The usual place was a local dive bar just off Wilshire. Anne and Eliza had discovered it during their younger years when they’d shared an apartment down the block. The two girls had met during their freshman year of college when they’d been paired together as random roommates. It took one semester of bonding before they agreed to ditch campus, find part-time jobs, and get a regular apartment.
At the time, Eliza had been a fresh-faced, hopeful grad. Anne had been focused on her relationship with Mark, planning their upcoming nuptials, anticipating children and a full life together. Their friendship had blossomed over the trials and tribulations of an otherwise happy, uneventful college career.
Garbanzo’s Bar and Grill had been the only digs close enough to walk to from their pinprick of an apartment. As neither college student could afford the cost of a cab, the dive bar had been the logical option for all their moaning and complaining needs.
They’d met at Garbanzo’s when Anne’s brother had died and again when Eliza’s family had come over from Beijing, leaving her battered and hurt after their visit. They’d met there after Eliza’s shotgun wedding, and they’d planned Anne’s extravagant nuptials over glasses of cheap red wine. Though both women had long since outgrown the dismal charm of sticky floors and slimy tables, neither could give up the dirty, trusted locale that housed their deepest secrets and grandest desires.
Anne pushed open the door, pleased to see that nothing had changed in her long absence. The same tarnished gold bell tinkled lightly as she entered, a necessity, since most of the time, the bartender, Joe, sat on a stool in the back, smoking with the chefs. Health department be damned.
This evening, however, Joe was out front, his focus on the television where he was screaming obscenities at a wrestling match. A few figures sat hunched over the bar, two men, one woman. It smelled like flat beer and grease. The biggest difference Anne noted was the bald spot on Joe’s head that had increased in circumference over the last few years.
“Annie!” Joe called as she entered. “Long time, no see. I thought you forgot about Uncle Joe!”
Joe Garbanzo was the only person in the world allowed to call her Annie. Mostly because Anne had been too timid to correct the oversize man the first time he’d nicknamed her. Decades later, and it just seemed rude to mention it. He’d also deemed himself an honorary uncle to the girls, though why, Anne could only guess. The only words they usually exchanged were a greeting by name and then, “The usual?”
Joe winked at her. “The usual?”
“That would be fantastic. Same table,” Anne said. “Eliza should be here any moment.”
Anne slid into a booth tucked along the back corner, as far away from the television screens, the restrooms, and the kitchen doors (from which the faint scent of cigarette smoke was never quite extinguished) as she could manage. She tried to unfold the paper napkin over her lap and simultaneously peel her jeans from the upholstery. Neither worked, and she forfeited the napkin on the table in a pile of something she hoped was ketchup.
Five minutes later, the cheese curds and beers arrived—tap Coors Light with four olives each. Anne wrinkled her nose, wondering how old the olives were and if Joe had scooped them into the glasses with his bare hands. It was funny, the things she noticed now that she was nearing forty. Things she hadn’t thought twice about when she’d been twenty-three and invincible.
Eliza arrived a few minutes later, looking wildly out of place in the dive bar. She wore a trim, professional skirt, stockings, and a blouse that buttoned up to her neck. Her thin legs rose out of cute pumps that clicked across the floor. Eliza was forced to stop once en route to unstick her heel from a particularly grimy patch on the floor.
“Sorry about that,” Uncle Joe called from behind the bar. “Had a fight in here earlier and beer went everywhere. Haven’t had a chance to clean it up yet.”
Joe went back to lounging against the counter, thick arms folded across a protruding belly, and studied the match on television. He’d never clean it up, and everyone knew it.
“I’m so sorry to make you drive all the way over,” Anne said as Eliza slid into the booth, her eyebrows knitting as she tried to scoot along the vinyl fabric and found herself stuck in place. “You look like you’ve just come from, well, I dunno—the Ritz. Some huge business meeting or something.”
Eliza waved a hand, a caginess evident in her movements. “Let’s talk about you. By the way, did that girl work out? The babysitter? Roman said he emailed you some names.”
“She’s wonderful. Penny’s with the kids now actually,” Anne said. “Lifesaver.”
“What happened to Olivia?”
“She got too nosy.”
Eliza looked at Anne’s purse with a calculated stare. As Anne glanced down, she saw the flash of metal from the flask that she’d forgotten to tuck underneath her scarf.
