Love Saves the Day

One day Laura came to my apartment with the news that she was engaged. I was happy for her, of course I was happy for her, and yet I also thought, My only daughter is engaged to a man I’ve never even met. Laura tells me so little about her life. But there was a happiness, a sweetness that seemed to exist despite itself in her blue, blue eyes, so much like her father’s. I know my daughter well enough to know when she’s happy. And when she invited me to have lunch with her and her fiancé and I met him for the first time, I could see why.

I actually ran into Josh once after that, completely unexpectedly. It was at night, maybe around eleven o’clock or so, during one of my endless walks. One small club I passed had live music playing, and, impulsively, I drifted inside. It was a three-piece acoustic band, performing a cover of Blind Faith’s “Can’t Find My Way Home.”

There are moments when a song hits you in a certain way. You know it’s soupy and self-indulgent, but even knowing that doesn’t stop the tears from rising. And suddenly I was so tired, a bone-deep exhaustion I’d been feeling more and more lately. I sat down at the bar, needing a moment to pull myself together.

And then, out of nowhere, Josh was beside me. “What a surprise!” he exclaimed, kissing me on the cheek. “I’m here with some of the writers from my magazine, checking out this band. Come over and I’ll introduce you. I’m sure the three of you could talk music for hours.”

Josh was only nine or ten years younger than I was. Still, he looked like he belonged in this place. Looking around at all the young faces, I was suddenly aware of my age, how far-too-old I was for Lower East Side dives where young artists played in the hope of being discovered. One day you look around and realize everyone in New York is younger than you are. “Oh,” I said to Josh. “That’s okay. I was just going to have a quick drink and head home.”

“I’ll have a drink with you, then.” He sat on the bar stool next to mine and ordered a Maker’s Mark rocks from the bartender.

“How’s your family?” I asked, at a loss for anything else to say. “I’m looking forward to meeting them.”

“They’re good,” he said. “My parents still live out in Parsipanny in the house I grew up in. My dad’s getting ready to retire soon. My sister has a house near them, but she’s looking for a place in the City, closer to where she works.” His face hardened subtly. “She and her husband split up and he … doesn’t do a lot for their kids. She’s basically raising them on her own.” Then he sighed. “Oh well. It’ll probably make her and the kids closer with each other as they grow up.”

“Yes,” I said faintly. “It happens that way, sometimes.”

There was a mirror behind the bar. The Josh sitting next to me on the bar stool was looking into it. But the Josh reflected in the mirror was looking at me. I turned my eyes down and twirled the straw in my drink a few times.

“Hey,” he said. “Did you ever hear how Laura and I met?”

“No.” I tried to smile. Tried not to think of all the little ways I’d long ago stopped being a part of Laura’s inner life. “I don’t think I have.”

“She came to my office one day. Her firm represents my company and they had a meeting of some kind. Anyway, I was on my way to see somebody when I saw this beautiful woman near the elevator. She has those eyes, you know? And she was struggling with these two enormous briefcases.” He laughed. “I mean, they looked heavy. Heavier than her, maybe. So, naturally, I went over to help, but she didn’t want me to. She didn’t just say, No, that’s okay, I can manage. She really didn’t want me to carry those briefcases for her. I could tell she was embarrassed. She cared about managing those two heavy briefcases on her own.

“For days, I couldn’t get it out of my head. Why would somebody care so much about such a simple thing? It wasn’t stubbornness, I could tell that, but it was something. I thought about it all the time, trying to figure it out. Finally, I called her office and asked her out.” He paused, took a sip of his drink.

“Later she told me it was her first client meeting. Apparently, it’s a customary thing for an associate to carry a partner’s briefcases when they go to meetings. I said to her, But that guy you were with was all the way back in the conference room. It’s not like he would have seen me helping you. And she kept saying, But an associate is supposed to carry the briefcases. That’s part of the job. It’s what you’re supposed to do. And I thought that I’d probably never met anybody who cared so much about doing the right thing, doing what you’re supposed to do, all the way down to the little things.