“Do you want some of this?”
“I’m okay,” I said. I wasn’t in the mood. “If I were him I wouldn’t like me, either.”
“He’s not like you. He’s not jealous. He knows I love him.”
“He still doesn’t have to like me.”
“I swear sometimes you act like I should be grateful to him. It’s like you think most guys wouldn’t want me for a girlfriend.”
“That’s a stupid thing to say. Hey, do you want some of this?”
I had brought a bottle of champagne for us to drink on the drive. It was a Louis Roederer I had not tried before. But when Lisa climbed in the car and saw it she was immediately irritated. “We’re not celebrating anything, Bobby,” she had said.
I tried to hand her the bottle. She ignored me. I thought she could use a drink.
“It’s okay. I like it. I like how you think about me. You think something is wrong with me.”
She is trying to let me in by faking a little bit of vulnerability, I thought. Or even not faking it.
“You don’t know how I feel,” I said. “Or if you do, you don’t let me know.”
I hadn’t meant to be vulnerable back at her. But when I saw her face in the lights of the dashboard like that, with the cold champagne bottle between my legs, and the lights of my car on the highway, the truth just snuck up inside me and jumped out of my mouth.
“I’m sorry to be the one to give you the news, but you’re not all that mysterious, Bobby.”
I thought that through. I seemed plenty mysterious to myself.
I hated moments like this, but I noticed they were getting more common, in more than one of my relationships. It was like we were having two entirely different conversations, and each of us was talking only with ourselves. Yet along the way we managed to say enough to screw things up between each other.
“You should want me to break up with him. You should be afraid if I don’t.”
“Come on, Lisa. You know I would like it if you broke up with him. But I’m not going to ask you to.”
“You should, though. You would if you knew.”
I pulled the foil off the champagne bottle. Then I held the steering wheel with my knees and opened it. It was very good champagne and it did not bubble over. I took the steering wheel back and tried again to hand the bottle to Lisa. She waved it away.
“Maybe he’s angry with me,” I said. I took a swallow of the champagne. It was already much warmer than it should have been. I couldn’t really tell what it tasted like anymore. “It’s not like he hasn’t always known what was going on with us. Anyway, I think he would be angrier if he knew I asked you to break up with him.”
She was quiet.
Then it occurred to me that she was worried about herself.
I noticed what a small person she was, physically I mean, curled up in the car seat. Not much more than a kid, really.
“Afraid of what, Lisa?”
I looked at her but she wouldn’t look over at me. She was staring down the road.
I took the last swallow of the champagne.
The highway was dark and seemed to be getting smaller and smaller in the night, as the tall black trees gathered closer to its sides.
At the lake the fireplace in the cabin started easily. That was a good sign. The flue was not stuck and I could see which way was open and which way was closed. The smoke went straight up the chimney.
We drove into the little town and looked for a bar. “I need a beer,” she said. There were three of them, but two were already closing, because they were attached to restaurants. The third was a pool hall.
“Do we want to go in there?” I said. The men coming out of it looked like the men you see in small towns in Texas. Big men. I thought I noticed one looking at my car and laughing. He was drunk and was probably laughing about something else. But my car didn’t look much like a truck. It was the contrary of a truck, in fact.
“Come on, let’s play a game of pool. We need something fun right about now.”
I thought my success with building the fire in the fireplace had already done that work for both of us.
When we parked she said, “Wait one second,” and tapped out some more crank on that mirror of hers. I reached for it and did a couple of bumps myself. I figured it was about that time.
Inside, people were noisy and excited — it was Saturday night — and there were more men than women. I noticed the men looking at Lisa, first, and then the women, too.
I should have changed before we came over. I was still in my suit and tie from the store. I always made the salesmen wear a jacket and tie. Jim was the only man in the store who would wear a shirt and tie, or a jacket with an unbuttoned shirt collar.
“You want to play pool, little lady?”
A man about my own age in black jeans with a red bandanna tied around his hair was talking to Lisa. He had large dangerous lips. I was a few steps away, at the bar buying our beer.
“No, thank you. I am here with my boyfriend,” she said.
It was nice to hear her describe me as her boyfriend. Even if it was a lie. But maybe she truly thought of herself as having two boyfriends. I could be her second boyfriend, I thought. That’s one step away from being her first boyfriend.
“Hell, I bet he wouldn’t mind if you play a game of pool. Hey, buddy, you mind if this pretty gal of yours plays a game of pool with me?”
I turned around. I tried to smile naturally. Naturally but confidently. Or naturally but faintly aggressively. Cockily, maybe.
“That’s up to her.”
“I already said no, thank you.”
He took her by the arm. He had a pool cue in his other hand. She pulled her arm away. She looked at me for a second. There was something hopeful in the expression.
“One game.” He pulled at her arm. I was unsure what to do. I was still waiting for the beers. But I had to do something. Then the bartender put down our beers next to me. I picked them up, one in each hand, and started for Lisa. I thought I might even say, Here, have a beer, buddy. We’re not in the mood for pool right now, and give him one of them. That would settle him down, I bet. But as I elbowed my way out from the bar I saw Lisa struggle with the man — he was really tugging her arm — and when he turned to her with that same sloppy face she kneed him, as hard as she could, in the balls. If it had been any woman other than the woman I was with I would have admired it. She looked like she had done it many times before, like she was the blade of a jackknife folding up. He bent over and she pushed him to one side so that he collapsed, on his side and then on his back, onto the pool table. Then she took the pool cue he had dropped and poked it into his nose. She shoved the felt tip of the pool cue into his nostril and pushed. He was shouting. The ease with which she did it was almost comical. It looked like a kung fu move. She said, “You aren’t much of a listener, are you?” Then she gave the pool cue another push, but not as hard as she might have, and turned to me. The guy was still scrambling on his back on the pool table. I thought, Where do I find these violent, capable women? First the Polack and now this one. She stepped quickly over to me and took me by the arm — just like he had held her, I thought — and said, “Let’s go. We’re getting out of here.”
People stepped out of our way and no one tried to stop us. When we got to the car I realized I still had the bottles of beer in my hands. I didn’t know where to put them to get my keys. You couldn’t balance them on the roof of the car because it was a convertible with a cloth top and they would just fall over. I was trying to hurry because I imagined the guy and his friends rushing upon us outside the bar. I was not drunk enough to want that to happen. I put one of the beers between my knees and got the keys from my suit pocket. We climbed into the car and drove back to the cabin. Lisa drank her beer. That was good. But the whole drive back we did not say one word to each other.