Page 12 of A Night to Remember

“Do you think you’ll see anything of him while he’s here?”

“I doubt it,” I reply, truthfully. “We never really knew each other that well, and now so much time has passed…”

“Yes, you’reso old,” she retorts, making herself laugh. “From where I sit, you both just look like kids. Take some time to be a kid, sweetie. You don’t have to fuss so much over me.”

I smile, but inwardly I’m annoyed. I’m not a kid. And I worry that Mom is not sufficiently alarmed about our financial situation. Practicality has never been one of her strengths.

When Iwasa kid, I was the one who made sure that balanced meals made their way to the table. That the lights were off and the doors locked before we left the house. As soon as I learned about A Thing You Are Supposed to Do—install smoke detectors outside each bedroom door, create an emergency-preparedness kit, save 20% of your income—I would pester my mom until itgot done. I kick myself that I left her alone as much as I did when I was in college. Would we be in this predicament, finance- or health-wise, if I had stayed home?

One of the thousands of reasons why I could never, can never, let Gabe Wilson more fully into my life is that he would never understand any of this. If he falls on his face in life—as he likely has, if he’s back here—someone will always be there to catch him. People like my mom and me just don’t have that. Roadside rescues aside, I know that ultimately I can only rely on myself.

“Well,these tests are all going in the right direction,” Dr. Lim informs us at Mom’s appointment. “I think we can start seeing you every six months, instead of every three.”

Mom beams. “I’ve been taking my medication, exercising some, eating better…”

“It shows. Keep up the good work, and I’ll see you back here in six months. Brenda will make you an appointment,” he says, gesturing to the receptionist as he walks us out.

Dr. Lim is delightful, but I kind of hate Brenda. Smallish and squatish, she lurks behind her dual monitors like a bitterly non-magical Dolores Umbridge. She obviously relishes asking us if we want to pay any portion of our bill today, as if we were capable of paying any portion of our bill, ever. She seems to think that being unemployed (like Mom) and underemployed (like me) are some kind of character flaw.

“Do you want to pay any portion of your bill today?” she coos on cue with fake friendliness.

“Not today, just the next appointment, please,” I reply, trying not to clench my teeth. Not for the first time, I kick myself fornot having found better-paying jobs. Thanks to Allison, I now make $3 an hour more at the library than I did back in high school, and I earn decent tips at the café. It’s not much to show for a college education, but opportunities are pretty limited in Kentwood, particularly given my caretaking duties. I wonder how much Brenda makes as I enter our next appointment into my phone’s calendar. Then I sigh, lead my mom back to the car, and drive the hour and a half home so I can work the dinner shift.

Fortunately,Sunday mornings at the café are slow—the Catholics don’t show up until around 10:00 and the various Protestant denominations roll in between 11:00 and 12:00—so this is when I write. I shut myself in my childhood bedroom with a big cup of yerba mate tea (a habit I picked up in college) and put Kentwood out of my mind to focus on people with bigger, better problems far away.

Government agents have just given Lydia, my protagonist, an alien computer to hack. She’s at the top of her field, but this is something she’s never encountered before. I’ve decided she does need a colleague, so she can work out her ideas through dialogue. I’ve made him a man, not an obnoxious one, like her boss, but someone understanding, who respects her intelligence…

My mind strays to Gabe. We were frequent partners in calc and eventually studied together after school. I had more of a knack for it than he did, but I always felt we were good collaborators, and that we had more insights together than we would have had apart. Not that we were always completely ontask. He seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of calculus-related pick-up lines that he would pull out at any opportunity.

“We're supposed to find the area under the curvey= 2x3fromx= 0 tox= 2,” I’d start innocuously.

“I’d love to get the area under your curves,” he’d reply, giving me a mock-lascivious grin. I’d suppress a giggle and forge ahead.

“So we need to integrate the functiony= 2x3with respect toxover the interval [0,2].”

“If we integrate,” he replied, scootching closer, “I won’t have to use my left-hand summation method anymore.”

Again I ignored him. “Once we integrate 2x3with respect tox, we get ∫ 2x3dx, which is 2x4/4 = 1/2x4… evaluate this fromx= 0 tox= 2… get the area… then plug in the limits.”

“I’d like to plug?—”

“This is totally working, by the way.” I finally turned to him with a smile. “I’d go out with any guy who used one of those lines on me.”

“Really?” he replied with an eyebrow raise. I laughed, thinking we were still joking around, until he slipped his hand around my knee. He swept a thumb lightly, not lasciviously, over my knee cap, while his fingers rested gently in the hollow behind it. I could feel the warmth of his hand through the thick denim of my jeans. All the blood in my body seemed to rush to the surface of my skin. His new-best-friend smile still hovered on his lips as he looked me intently in the eye, then let his gaze flick down to my mouth. I may have leaned towards him slightly, but caught myself in time.

“Unless he’s too much of a math genius,” I said. “I do know my limits.”

He’d grinned wider, seemingly pleased that I’d made a math pun of my own, then withdrew his hand and moved on to the next problem.

My heart beats a little faster at the memory, and I wonder, in spite of myself, if he ever really wanted to go out with me and if he still does. I push the thought away and lend Gabe’s playful smile and goofy sense of humor to Lydia’s colleague.

Should she be attracted to him, I wonder? That might make editors more likely to publish the story. Though admittedly I have no idea how to move their relationship past flirtation. My own experiences aren’t much help. I dated a little in college, mostly doubles with Allison, mostly in an effort to keep her out of trouble. Sometimes those dates ended in unsatisfactory sex, but more often not. The most erotic experience I’ve ever had is still dancing with Gabe at Steven O’Connor’s graduation party. I let my thoughts drift back to him. It’s dangerous territory, but how else am I going to create a believable interpersonal problem for my protagonist? I try to stay objective, sifting through my memories for realistic details that I can incorporate into my story, but desire unfurls uncontrollably inside of me. It doesn’t help that, on the rare occasions I touch myself, this is the memory I turn to. Usually I imagine Gabe’s hands, Gabe’s shoulders, Gabe’s hips, and, you know, Adam Driver’s face, but now that I’ve seen Gabe so recently, I can’t force his likeness from my mind. I squirm uncomfortably in my desk chair. I could lock my bedroom door briefly, and just take a second for myself…

But no. I slap my laptop shut. I donotwant to think about that man. I do not want to think about that night. I will think about taxes. Brain cancer. Puppy dogs squashed by cars. Not Gabe, not Gabe,not Gabe.

Finally I go into the kitchen for a glass of ice water.

Mom has apparently been doing a little cleaning. The stacks of junk mail, magazines, and catalogs that usually blanket the kitchen table have been reduced and rearranged slightly. Thesight cheers me up until I spot Mom sitting at the table holding a letter in one hand and covering her mouth with the other.

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