Page 30 of The Space Between

Jeanie has no idea whether Vicki and Hank will be a love match or not, and frankly, she's a bit preoccupied. Her eyes have landed on the doorway of the bar repeatedly since she sat down, and she doesn't want to admit to herself that it's Bill she's waiting for. She'd assumed on the way out of the meeting that he'd be joining them, otherwise she most likely would have begged off for the evening and just gone home to read with Miranda curled up in her lap.

"Hey," she says, trying to sound as off-hand as possible. "Is Bill joining us? I had something I wanted to talk to him about. Just thermodynamics and whatnot."

A slight flicker of amusement passes over Todd's face. "Yeah, of course. A little thermodynamics chitchat over beers." He picksup his mug and takes a long swig. The open-air bar is packed, and the only thing to cut the humidity are the ceiling fans and the cold drinks. "Uh, I'm not sure." Todd looks around, glancing back at the doorway over his shoulder. "I guess I figured he'd be here, but maybe Jo wanted him home." He shrugs noncommittally.

Jeanie drains her Greyhound and sets the glass on the table. "No problem," she says with a smile. "It can wait for work, I just thought while it was on the brain, you know?"

"For sure," Todd says with a lopsided grin.

"Thanks for the drink," Jeanie says, standing up and putting the strap of her purse over one shoulder. "See you guys at the office."

The other men are deep into their drinks and trading barbs about who knows what when Jeanie strides past the jukebox, eyeing a girl in a flimsy yellow dress warily as the girl leans one narrow hip against the jukebox. Jeanie pauses with a hand on the doorframe, watching as the girl makes eyes at a young pilot in aviator sunglasses. It's an intricate dance of wordless flirtation that passes between them, and for about the millionth time, Jeanie feels like an outsider. Where did other girls learn these tricks? How do they seem to inherently know the ins and outs of being appealing and interesting and romantically available?

The pilot takes off his sunglasses and stands up, making his way to the jukebox as if drawn there by an invisible rope. Before Jeanie walks out into the early evening heat, he's placed a hand on the jukebox and is standing far closer to the girl in the yellow dress than is necessary, both of their lips curled into questioning smiles. Jeanie turns and walks out of the bar.

The evening sun sparkles off of chrome bumpers and glares off windshields as Jeanie sighs, holding her keys in hand. She puts the key into the lock of her yellow Bug and twists it, nearly jumping out of her skin when she feels a hand on her shoulder.

"Bill!" she nearly shouts, turning around in a defensive pose. "Jesus. You scared me."

He holds up both hands in surrender. "Sorry about that. I called your name as you were walking, but I didn't think you could hear me."

She hadn’t heard him. The music from The Black Hole combined with the traffic on the street to block out Bill's voice, and, admittedly, Jeanie had been lost in her own thoughts. But now that he's standing right here in front of her, her heart begins to thump out a rhythm and she desperately wants it to stop.

"I didn't hear you," she admits with a smile. "Are you heading in?" Jeanie tips her head towards the bar. She's kicking herself for having left so early, and she instantly hopes that Bill invites her back inside for another round.

Bill shakes his head. "No, I was out here hoping you'd come out."

"Me?" The world nearly stops as Jeanie leans her back against the hot metal of her car. Her eyes search Bill's face. "Why?"

Bill shrugs and gazes out at the water beyond the parking lot. It's really quite beautiful in the evening light, and two boats criss-cross one another lazily with colored flags flapping from their masts.

"I wasn't ready to go home, but I didn't want to go in and talk about sports or politics or whatever," he says with a wave of his hand. "And it was you I wanted to see, anyway."

"Me?" Jeanie repeats dumbly.Polish up your conversational skills, girl, she says to herself, trying not to cringe at the sound of her own voice.

But Bill doesn't seem to notice. "Would you sit with me for a bit, or are you in a hurry?"

Jeanie pulls her key from the car door and drops it back in her purse. "No, I'm not. The only thing I'm going home to is a hungry cat."

Bill puts a hand on Jeanie's lower back and guides her towards the water, where a weather-worn bench faces the boats and the horizon. They sit, and Jeanie intentionally puts a two foot space between them.

"Things have been strange," Bill says. He's looking at one of the boats. It hasLady Luckinscribed across its transom, and a leathery old man chomping on a fat, brown cigar stands there, looking out at the water like he's just conquered a foreign land. "I can't go home right now."

Jeanie's attention is ripped away from the man on the boat and she turns her upper body to look at Bill. "What do you mean?" Immediately, she wonders if Jo has kicked him out for some reason.

"It's just hard to be there. The kids know about what happened, but it's like they expect me to be fine and just act like their old, dependable dad, and I can't. And Jo is worried about me, but she's also a little happy about Margaret being gone, and that's tough to process."

Jeanie doesn't say so, but she thinks she can understand Jo's position. "Right," she says, nodding in a way that she hopes is encouraging. "Okay."

"When I'm there, it's just: sit down, have dinner, play with the kids in the pool, watch tv with Jo, go to bed, wake up, do it all again."

Jeanie isn't sure how he wants her to respond to this, and she surprises even herself with the words that come out of her mouth. "It sounds like a pretty damn good life to me."

Bill's head snaps in her direction; he looks surprised. "Oh, it is," he says, leaning forward to put his elbows on his knees. "I don't mean to sound ungrateful, I'm just struggling, Jeanie. I'm having a hard time understanding how my life has traveled the roads that it has, and how I've ended up here."

The hot evening sun prickles against Jeanie's scalp and shins, and she shifts on the wooden bench. "Which roads are you wishing you didn't take?" She folds her arms across her chest and watches Bill's profile. She knows her line of questioning might sound forward, but he's the one who approached her and asked her to sit down to talk to him.

"I don't know if there are any that I regret," he says. "It's more that it's all gone so fast, and some of the things that happen in life are out of your control. I think I did everything I could for my first wife, and yet we still ended up here." He spreads his hands wide, turning his palms to the sky. "Or, rather, I'm here, and she's gone."

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