The Confessors' Club

ONE

Amanda called me two days before what would have been our fifth wedding anniversary.

‘Happy almost anniver-’ I said, before I slammed my mouth shut on words that bubbled up from nowhere. I hoped.

My remembering had caught her off guard, too. ‘Dek, how sweet of you,’ she said, after an awkward beat. Then, ‘I’d like to have dinner.’

We hadn’t spoken in months. ‘Surely not to celebrate?’ I asked.

‘Our divorce?’ She managed a little laugh. ‘Of course not.’

‘I’m good all next week, after Monday.’

‘Business has come back so well you’re not available until then?’

I hesitated for an awkward moment of my own. ‘I’m headed out of town.’

‘Not business, then,’ she said.

‘A mini-vacation.’

‘Today?’ She knew I’d never taken a vacation in my life.

‘Not for a couple of days.’

She paused, then said, ‘How about tonight? It’s important.’

I paused too, but only for a second. ‘I’ll pick you up. You’re still on Chicago’s tony Lake Shore Drive?’

‘Did you get shock absorbers yet?’

‘They diminish the aged Jeep experience.’

‘I’ll meet you at Petterino’s,’ she said. ‘Afterwards, we’ll go to the theater. My subscription tickets are for tonight.’

It was going to be like old times, for whatever reason.

‘A play afterward?’ I managed. ‘Surely you remember that’s over my head.’

‘See you at Petterino’s at six.’ Her voice softened. ‘And Dek?’

‘Ma’am?’

‘Little is over your head.’

Little was over Jenny’s head as well, though her calling ten minutes after I’d clicked off with Amanda could only have been coincidence.

‘I can’t wait to show you Fisherman’s Wharf,’ she said.

It was going to be our first time together since she had taken the San Francisco television job eight months earlier. They’d been long months, those eight, and we were set to celebrate the wonder of making our new relationship work at such a long distance.

‘Picturesque, is it?’

‘Just your cup of Twinkies,’ she said.

‘Real and authentic, old-time San Francisco?’

‘You can get a picture of Elvis on black velvet to hang above your table saw.’

‘Black velvet would also nicely complement the white plastic of the lawn chairs,’ I said, of the turret’s first-floor conversational grouping. ‘I’m also in need of a really wide refrigerator magnet, maybe of the Golden Gate Bridge.’ The avocado-colored refrig-erator I’d found in an alley was rusting from the inside out, and I was looking to slow the loss of semi-cold air.

‘I’ve got four days off, time enough to take care of all your needs.’ She laughed, hanging up, leaving me with the promise of unspoken naughtiness.

And grateful that I hadn’t had the chance to tell her I was having dinner with my ex-wife that evening.