“You look cute,” Leonard said to Whitney, sizing up her shirt and jeans.
Whitney smiled politely and leaned into Leonard’s kiss as Will and Jack shook hands. Whitney moved her mouth to Leonard’s other cheek. Will always ribbed her for it at home. The way it’d catch people off guard. But it was natural here. Leonard took the second kiss like a pro, had in fact pushed it there herself. She’d spent the year in Paris, after all. Whitney moved to Jack and he bent over to receive one cheek and another. It occurred to Whitney in the instant she leaned toward him that she’d dreamed of Jack last night. She searched his face to see if he’d had the same dream, if he’d in fact shared in their shared experience. She kept tocking her head in strange ways on approach, trying to make knowing eye contact, to see if he remembered what they’d done together. From a few feet back, Will wondered if the moves weren’t just a ploy to graze noses with Jack, to catch a corner of his mouth.
Leonard told them she’d been at the airport all afternoon, doing her best to get on a plane. But nothing had gone out. Not one flight. “It looked like a refugee camp,” she said. “Some families had already been there for two full days. People with tickets were at least let into the terminals so that security could clear out the check-in and give the stranded folks access to bathrooms. The restaurants expanded their hours to stay open twenty-four-seven. Military guys were bringing in cots and water.”
“What did they say?” Whitney said. “Did they have any guesses?”
“Now that it’s at least stopped erupting, they just have to wait on the winds. It sounds like the week prediction is less likely, but it still may be a few more days. All they could really say was almost certainly not tomorrow. But I may go back again anyway.”
“They changed my flight to Wednesday,” Jack said. “But I have my apartment as long as I need it. I realize that’s more than you all can say, so if anyone needs a place eventually…”
Leonard smiled without baring any teeth. It was a smirk that Whitney read to mean that she had already been there, that though she might be an anyone at this table, she’d already taken him up on the offer.
“We didn’t even try today,” Will said. “Which was maybe stupid. I got an email when we woke up that said our spot was still being held in line. That we’d be notified when there was anything new to report.”
“Probably a smarter way to spend your time,” Leonard said. “I just, well, you know…I’m ready to get out of here. I need to get home.” Jack shifted his weight weirdly from one leg to another. “But!” Leonard bit at the silence. “In the meantime…”
She explained how the menu worked. There were forty items in two columns on a single laminated sheet. You placed orders at the counter and they prepared the dishes on the fly right in front of you. Toasts with cream cheese, brined salmon, and honey. Toasts with canned anchovies and peppers. Salted tuna. Sardines and urchin. A squid-ink something, black as a chess piece. The three behind the counter poured wine and prepped dishes and recorded orders in a dog-eared leather-bound book without looking customers in the eye. Everything was served cold.
“They ever screw up the tab?” Will asked, returning with wineglasses for himself and Whitney, and nodding with his head toward the vicinity of the bookkeeping system.
Whitney shook her head, and leaned into his ear, and slid him a big bill: “It’s on me.”
“Since everything’s cheap, maybe nobody can tell when there’s a mistake?” Jack said.
“Who likes what?” Whitney said. They pointed. They all pointed to the salmon, in particular. It was poppy-bright and looked to be the only fish that didn’t come canned.
“Even though Jenna and I went to a sushi place for lunch,” Jack said.
“Jenna?” Whitney said, looking at Jack, looking at Leonard.
“Well,” Jack said, smiling at her patiently, “which is it tonight?”
“Today is a Jenna day,” Leonard said.
“Well, pleased to meet you,” Whitney said.
“Enchantée,” Jenna said.
“What makes it a Jenna day?” Whitney said.
“I didn’t wake up at Gram’s,” she said.
Jenna smiled softly at Whitney as though that explained something, or everything, or at least a couple important things at once.
“And so in spite of the sushi for lunch…” Will said.
“I know I should be used to it by now,” Jack said, eyeing the grayer fish on the table adjacent to them, “but I still don’t totally love the tins.”
“It’s no grilled chicken,” Whitney said.
“Exactly,” Jack said, smiling widely at her.
Jenna lifted her glass and puffed a low laugh, an at, not a with. Jack noticed and his cheeks showed that he’d been drinking for a while.
“Look at this shit,” Jack said, a little loudly, to Will and Whitney. “Nothing is cool enough for the coolest chick in town.”
“I’m gonna get a refill,” Jenna said, ignoring him, already edging toward the bar. “Should I just grab a bottle?”
They watched her squeeze between two sets of male shoulders and place her elbows and the top half of her torso, the loosely trestled window of the chest of her dress, on the counter. Behind the bar were a woman who looked like she could’ve fought beside Orwell in Will’s book, and two men as tall as Jack, each with dusty hair and glasses. One of them was quick to take Jenna’s order, quick to take a generous glance at what she’d presented on the other side of the partition.
“So just…Jenna, then,” Whitney said to Jack, when she
