Page 90 of Man Cuffed
She takes the champagne out of my hand, sets it on the coffee table. Then she grabs both my hands in hers and looks me in the eyes. It’s a little uncomfortable at first, but then, I don’t know, it’s sort of magical. Like everything else just kind of focuses and zooms in.
“Look,” she says. “Mac has come a long way. And I can tell he loves you. I know it. This is going to work out.”
I try to pull my hands back, but she squeezes them tighter.
“This. Is. Going. To. Work. Out,” she says.
Somehow, I believe her.
28Not a Picky Man
Maguire
It’s a Wednesday evening in mid-September when I walk into an unfamiliar hipster bar in Eastown. I give the place a quick scan. Groovy brick walls? Check. Alternative track playing on the sound system? Check. Eight page beer menu? Skinny bartender with tons of ink and a handlebar mustache? Check, check, check.
Morris isn’t here yet, though. I wonder if he’ll even show. But I grab a bar stool anyway.
The bartender hurries over before I can even pick up the menu. “Hey dude. The usual?”
I blink at him in confusion for a second. But then it hits me. He thinks I’m Morris.
That used to happen all the time. But for ten years I’ve been living my life as if I don’t share my face with someone else. I’ve been apart from him long enough to forget that we’re a matched set.
“Sure,” I say, because it’s the path of least resistance. It’s rude, but Morris and I used to do that sometimes—play along when an unsuspecting stranger confused us. Not in a creepy way, of course.
But what’s the point of sharing your face if you can’t goof with people a little now and then? Besides, this is a little window into Morris’s life. I have to admit that I’m curious about what he drinks when he comes to this place.
I used to know him so well. And now that I’m sitting here, I can admit that I miss it.
The bartender walks past all twenty of the artisanal beer taps to pull a bottle and a chilled mug from the cooler. He opens the bottle and sets it down in front of me, along with the mug. And then he also slides a bowl of wasabi peas in my direction.
“Thank you,” I mutter, feeling like an imposter. I pick up the bottle and glance at the label, which is in German. Huh. I pour the light yellow beer into the mug and take a tentative sip. And it’s...just okay. A little bland. No,reallybland. Unlike the rest of the world, my brother’s taste in beer has not evolved toward hoppy, complicated brews.
I’m fascinated. I wonder why he comes to this snobby beer bar and orders this? It’s a good thing I’m not a picky man.
I take another sip of the beer, which is wonderfully cold. And I relax my elbows on the bar.Life is good, I remind myself. Everything happening right now is more or less exactly what I wanted.
My new job is only three days old, and already interesting. Today I went on my first call to a crime victim’s house. I visited a family who’d lost a daughter in a drunk-driving accident. The perpetrator is out on bail, and they wanted to know what’s stopping the perp from killing more people.
“No one else should experience this,” the victim’s mother had said in a shaking voice. “How can we keep this from happening again?”
I spent a long time with the family, explaining that the driver of the car would not be behind the wheel of a car anytime soon. But also giving them a realistic vision of the criminal justice process. They had so many questions about sentencing, and about plea deals, and even about parole.
And I answered every single one as patiently as possible. It’s a terrible thing that happened to them. I can’t bring their daughter back. But I can make this small difference in their experience by listening and being available in their time of need.
It’s goddamn humbling is what it is. “Bad shit happens in varying degrees to everyone,” I’d explained to Lance just before the end of the day. “What matters is how you learn to cope with it.”
“I dunno, dude,” he’d said. “I just don’t understand why you want to spend your days on crimes you aren’t even allowed to solve.”
That’s only partly true, though. A calm, informed witness is a useful witness. But never mind. I prefer to think that Lance just misses me. I miss that crazy doofus, too.
But, let’s face it, I miss Meg even more. I mean, our breakup is still for the best. But I shouldn’t have lost my shit like that. I really wish I hadn’t. We parted on bad terms, and it’s all my fault.
I admitted as much to my sister Rosie, who is super mad at me. “You areso much dumberthan you look!” had been her response. I’m still puzzling over whether or not that was a compliment.
Probably not. She’s still so mad at me that I can’t ask. And so is her friend Aubrey, and also my mother. Word gets around. Everybody keeps telling me they were “pulling for Meg,” whatever that means. Like she and I were engaged in a battle, and they wanted her to come out on top.
But it wasn’t a battle. She was never mine to win. Some people just can’t change on a dime, and I’m one of them.
