I realize I’m just standing there, looking at the baggage claim while Lola and Chris move away without me. I hurry to catch up.
“Do you remember where you parked?” Chris asks Lola as casually as anyone would ask that question.
Lola unfolds the pink Post-it Note on which she has written the space number and sticks it to her forehead.
“Very funny,” Chris says and takes the note off. “I’m sure Nina would have remembered.”
“Nina’s in la-la land,” Lola says.
“What?” I ask, in that stalling sort of way people do when they know what you said, but they’re buying a few more seconds to think about how to reply.
They ignore me.
We get to the car and Chris loads his bag. Lola hands him her car keys. I ride in the backseat and listen to the rest of their conversation. It takes my mind off people on conveyor belts.
“So, what did you tell you me you did when we met?” Lola asks Chris. “What were you out here for anyway?”
“My cousin’s wedding,” Chris says, circling through the parking garage, looking for the way out. “I figured I’d never get to see you again. It was amazing talking to someone who didn’t know me. Who didn’t see me as ‘that guy from the commercials.’ So I didn’t tell you what I did. I was afraid you thought I was being evasive because I kept changing the subject.”
“You were acting strangely,” Lola says. “Good thing you’re so good-looking.”
Chris reaches over and touches her face. “I figured I’d get one evening with you and then fly back out and never see you again.”
“Seriously?” I feign insult on Lola’s behalf. “One date and then you’d get back on a plane to California with an ‘I’ll call you, babe’ as a good-bye?”
“No,” he says and looks at Lola. “I knew there was no way I was going to get that lucky. Not with someone who looked like you. Not to mention that you had already been introduced to me as the artist who did the mural at the gallery where the reception was being held.”
Chris had been the best man and Lola was a friend of a friend of the bride. Since she had done all the art at the reception location, she was pretty much asked to attend as a name that could be dropped. Local fame has its benefits.
“Why didn’t you try to play the Hollywood actor card?” I ask.
“Clearly, you hadn’t seen the commercials,” he says to Lola. “And that would have been a spin job worthy of D.C.”
“They’re not that bad,” Lola says.
But they sort of are.
“You have to say that because you’re dating me,” he says. “Anyway, I just wanted a fresh start. Then you gave me your number and when I called the next morning before I got on the plane, you answered. I was amazed that the number wasn’t a fake.”
“That could have gone either way,” Lola says. “I must have really wanted you to call if I remembered my number without looking.”
“You’re not that bad,” he says.
But she sort of is, sometimes.
“You’re just saying that because you’re dating me,” she says, mirroring his comment.
We stop at a red light. “No, I say that because I love you.”
I hear Lola inhale sharply. The light turns green, but Lola and Chris are kissing. Horns blare behind us, and I have to tap Chris’s shoulder to get him off Lola and back on the road.
I find myself surprised that Jack crosses my mind when I watch Lola and Chris. We used to be like that. I guess all couples used to be. I feel a pang of confusion that I push aside as fast as thoughts of Oliver will allow.
I realize I need to talk to Oliver and I need to do it quickly. After Lola and Chris are home and I’m set free, I head to Oliver’s house. After a few unanswered knocks on the door, I determine he’s not home. Taking a chance, I head to the nursing home to see if he’s at work.
I tell the front desk attendant that I came to see if all my father’s affairs have been settled, all bills paid. Truth is, I’m like a desperate teenager trying to pull the “I can’t believe I bumped into you here” game with Oliver.
I linger in the hall longer than necessary, trying to see Oliver without being seen. Nothing seems to have changed since Dad was here. Except that I don’t belong. I’m like a character who has wandered into the wrong play. The players look familiar and the set design is the same, but none of my lines match any of the cues.
In a room on the opposite side of the hall from Dad’s, a man in his early fifties is talking to an older woman in a wheelchair. He’s kneeling in front of her like he’s proposing—down on one knee, his hands around hers. He tilts his head at an awkward angle, searching out her eyes buried in wrinkles and unfocused on the present world.
“I just wanted to stop in and see you before we move,” he says very loudly, overpronouncing each word. “It was good to say hello, Aunt Millie.”
What he’s really saying is good-bye. She’s being left behind, put on the shelf of memory like one already gone.
“Hello, Nina,” Mr. Cole says from the doorframe behind me.
I turn toward my dad’s old roommate. He motions me inside and wheels himself back to his corner of the world.
“Hi, Mr. Cole.”
“Cricket,” he corrects me.
I nod and sit on the edge of his bed. Dad’s bed has been stripped, sterilized, and remade with fresh linens. He’s been removed so someone new can take his place.
“How have you been?” It’s a stupid question to ask someone in a place like this but it’s out and I can’t reel it back in.
“Still got
