“And who’s this?”
“This is Nick,” said Zoe, wondering if her mother would allow her to remain as vague about the details as her father had – she thought probably not. “He’s a friend of mine.”
“A friend?” Parenting for Olive Blanchard, as with all the best mothers, did not stop when the child left home. To her mind, finding her daughter a husband remained as much her job as burping her and changing her diapers.
“Yes Mom, a friend,” said Zoe, hoping the emphasis would save further elaboration.
“Funny you’ve never brought any friends back home before.”
“And this is why,” said Zoe with finality.
“Owns a bar,” Davis contributed. “Works there too. As a man should.”
“Zoe’s sister Karina worked in a bar,” said Olive. “And her brother Byron.”
“Pleased to meet you Mrs. Blanchard,” said Nick – it was the first chance he had had to speak.
“Call me Olive,” Olive took the proffered hand and shook it. “Mrs. Blanchard makes me sound so old.”
“It’s just a number!” Davis called from the pick-up, where he was collecting Zoe and Nick’s luggage.
The conversation continued in a rambling fashion throughout the afternoon as other Blanchard’s and Carey’s (Olive’s side of the family) turned up well in advance of the main party that night. It occurred to Zoe that it was things like that that you missed – the little things. In the city, when you held a party, you expected people to turn up about half an hour late, because that was polite – guests were a hideous burden and the less time they inflicted their company on you the better.
A party was a show, and the curtain went up when it went up and not before. But out here, a party was held out of a genuine desire to see people, and why wouldn’t you want to spend the maximum amount of time with them that you could? Besides, if you arrived early you could help set up – that was just good manners. There were no rules beyond the basic one of respect to the host and respect to your fellow guests. No one frowned if the wine you brought was an inferior vintage. No one cared if your dress was just so last year. It wasn’t a party at which to be seen, it was a party at which to see people.
And Nick thrived at it.
When she had initially invited him – via some weird subconscious blip – Zoe had thought that a weekend in the country would do Nick some good because she thought that a weekend in the country would do everyone some good.
He was clearly stressed over some unspecified issues with his brother, and some wholesome food, fresh air, and open space was just what he needed. If nothing else, it would take his mind off his own stuff for a bit. After she had made that initial offer, and most especially during their journey here, she had had some serious second thoughts about what good it might actually do him.
How would a man like Nick fit in here? Not well at all, she suspected. He would be at best uncomfortable and at worst would end up offending people, looking down on them, saying things that were mildly offensive, and thoroughly ruining the Blanchard family weekend, as well as wasting his own. The best case scenario seemed to be that he might keep himself to himself and shut the hell up. If pressed, she might have admitted the possibility of him enjoying himself because, frankly, her family were lovely, the food was good, the music was toe-tapping, and who wouldn’t enjoy themselves in that atmosphere? What she had not anticipated – what she had never even dreamed as a remote possibility – was that he might fit in.
A barman has to fit in everywhere, has to be a shoulder to cry on for everyone from the richest to the poorest, and treat both their very different sob stories as equal. But that was work, this was life – the fact that Nick fit in at the Blanchard barbeque had nothing to do with what he did, it was not an ‘ability’ to fit in or a skill he had learned. He genuinely fit in. He might come from a completely different background and have completely different life references, but he was a decent person at heart, even if he bumbled a bit, and when you were at the Blanchard’s that was all that mattered. More importantly, they were decent people, and that was apparently all that mattered to Nick.
In a strange way Zoe felt oddly short-changed by this. Nick had spent the last week convincing her that what was important was what you knew, how you looked, how you dressed, how you walked. Now it seemed that he had known all along that that was bullshit compared to the stuff that links us all as people – simple decency. Why had none of that come up when he was teaching her? It seemed grossly unfair that he should turn out to not care about all the fripperies of sophistication when he had been ramming them down her throat as if there were was something badly wrong with her for not knowing them in the first place. Zoe had half a mind to take him to task for this inconsistency, and when she had had a few more drinks (her cousin’s home brew had a wicked kick) then that half a mind swiftly became a whole one.
With this resolution firmly in mind, Zoe strode up to Nick, ready to lay into him for all the crap her had put her through. Nick looked up as she approached, and smiled. He had a great smile, but Zoe hardened her heart against it.
“Hi,” said Nick.
“Hi. I…”
“You having fun?”
“Yeah,” Zoe said dismissively, anxious to get to her point. “Nick, I want to…”
“Me too,” said Nick. “I’m having a great time.”
“I can tell. But…”
“I wanted to thank you for bringing me here.”
“No problem. Now…”
“You don’t know how much it means to me,” Nick shook his head a little drunkenly (Zoe’s cousin’s home brew had found another unsuspecting target).
“Well I’m glad I could…”
“You go through life,” Nick went on, barely noticing that Zoe had spoken, “thinking everything’s okay – acting like everything’s okay – and then one thing comes along and… and you realize that everything wasn’t okay to start with. And the whole thing – the whole… tissue of your existence starts to unravel. If tissue unraveled. Which I guess it doesn’t. The wooly pullover of your existence. And you realize it was mostly held together with spit and bubblegum. And hope and prayer.
He paused, and Zoe could have interjected there with her diatribe. But instead she sighed and said, “Do you want to talk about it?”
Zoe was more or less resigned to being a good person, a decent person, a person who would always do the right thing no matter the circumstances. It was one of the things that she most hated and loved about herself.
“No,” Nick shook his head. As he had been in the office earlier, he was unwilling to discuss personal problems – they were his issues, he would overcome them himself. But of course, in the office earlier, he hadn’t had a head full of Zoe’s cousin’s home brew. “No,” he reiterated before continuing. “The bar’s losing money. I mean losing money. And I mean money. Not really big money - not to someone like me. Probably HUGE money to someone like you.”
There he went being mildly offensive again. Zoe clenched her jaw.
“…but not to me. But…” He seemed to struggle for a second to decide which aspect of this was most upsetting to him. “It was my thing. You know? The bar. I didn’t step up and take an active role as CEO of RothCo cause… you know? That’s no life. I saw what it did to my dad. That’s not cool. That’s not for someone like me. But a bar – that’s cool. That’s laid back. That’s something I could do.” His face fell. “But apparently not. Apparently I’m not good at that either. And it makes you question – you know? Why did I leave the CEOing to Adam? Cause I didn’t want it? Cause I was taking a stand? Or cause I was afraid? Afraid I would suck. Maybe not afraid I would suck as much as know I would suck. I can’t even a run a bar to a profit! People will buy alcohol no matter how expensive and Nick’s isn’t the most expensive bar in town. I didn’t want that, I wanted a place where people go, somewhere friendly, where everybody knows your name. How did I screw this up? How is that even possible?”
“Is th
at what you and Adam were arguing about?” asked Zoe, tentatively.
Nick nodded. “He has never liked my bar. He doesn’t like the idea of a Rothberger being in the service industry. I mean,” Nick clarified with a drunkenly careless wave of his hand, “he drinks in there. Which you’ve got to respect. He’s a good brother that way. He supports my bad life choices financially by being probably my best customer (which isn’t saying much, but still). But he’s never liked it. And then he found out it was losing money. Money’s everything to Adam. I don’t think it matters so much. You know: money - who cares?”
“People who don’t have it,” suggested Zoe.
“Exactly!” said Nick, who clearly hadn’t understood her answer at all. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t live for money. I live for the moment. You know? I run a bar, I meet real people, I get laid, like all the time. Like constantly. He’s just jealous of me. Of my life. You think? You think he’s jealous of me?”
Zoe considered this. “No, actually,” she finally replied. “To be honest it sounds more like you’re jealous of him.”
“Whaaaat?!” Nick scoffed. “Me jealous of him? That’s crazy – you’re crazy. Why would I be jealous of that paper-pushing, pencil-pushing geek?”
“Because he’s good at what he does and you suck at it?” suggested Zoe.
“I run a bar,” Nick emphasized. “That’s way better than what he does. I slept with like three different girls last week. Who I met in my bar. Three! You think he slept with three girls in the last year? I did. That’s the dream!”
Zoe nodded at him skeptically. “I really hope it was a dream, because if it was reality, then that’s just a little sad.”
Nick scoffed again. “Sad? More like awesome! Do I seem sad to you?”
Zoe watched him with pity. “Yes, Mr. Rothberger. You really do. And I think you’re doing everything you can to hide just how desperately sad you are. Because you’ve done everything right. You followed your heart, you didn’t worry about money or the corporate ladder, you got your dream job – and yet you’re still unhappy. And you don’t know why. And I think now you’re scared that if you can have everything you ever wanted and still be unhappy then maybe you never will be happy. So you’re doing everything (and apparently everyone) you can to force yourself into a happiness you don’t feel because otherwise it’s just one more thing you’ve failed at.”