Page 42 of Winter in Paradise
“What?” Cash says. “You can’t ask her out. You’re married.”
“I…” Baker realizes he hasn’t told Cash about Anna, so he most definitely sounds like a world-class jerk. “Anna and I have separated.”
“What?” Cash says.
Baker can’t explain right now. And he can’t wait another twenty minutes for a drink. And he can’t sit and eat a meal with his brother, who has seen Ayers two of the past three days and now has his own private jokes with her.
Baker stands up. He sets the Jeep keys next to Cash’s beer. “I’m out,” he says.
He expects Cash to protest, but all Cash says is, “Good.”
Baker weaves between tables as the guitar player croaks out “Thunder Road.” Baker scans the restaurant and sees Ayers taking an order out on the deck. He stands a few feet behind her until she finishes and then he whispers her name.
She spins around. “Oh, hi,” she says. “Are you leaving?”
“I only came for a drink,” he says. He squares his shoulders. “Listen, turns out I’m here for a couple more days. I’d love to take you out.”
“That’s sweet,” Ayers says. “But I’m pretty busy. I work two jobs and I have…”
“When are you free?” Baker asks. “I can do lunch, I can do dinner…”
Ayers chews her bottom lip and peers into the restaurant. Is she looking at Cash? he wonders. That’s just impossible.
“Seriously,” Baker says. “I can do breakfast or late drinks. Or late dinner. How about tonight, after you get off?”
Ayers looks hesitant. She’s wavering. There’s no way she’s into Cash; Baker rejects the very idea.
“Please,” he says. “Just tell me what time.”
“Ten o’clock,” she says. “I’ll be done by ten and we can go to De’ Coal Pot. They serve Caribbean food.”
“Perfect,” Baker says. “I’ll be back at ten.”
Ayers nods and hurries inside, and Baker watches her go.
Just please don’t invite my brother, he thinks.
IRENE
What is she doing?
What is she doing?
What is she doing?
She is throwing away the rule book, she thinks. And it feels okay.
For the first fifty-seven years of her life, Irene stayed on script. She was a dutiful daughter, a good student in both high school and college. She got married, had children, took a job that was suited to her.
She had been a good mother, or good enough. The boys were fine.
She had been a good wife.
Hadn’t she?
It’s only at night, after Irene has taken one of the pills that Anna prescribed, that she allows herself to indulge in self-doubt. Where did she go wrong? She feels like she must have done Russ a huge, terrible injustice somewhere along the way for him to engage in a deception so wide and deep.
But she comes up with nothing.
