This was how we were going to play the game, Josie thought. “I’m changing my order, Madge,” Josie said flatly. “Give me whatever Ed’s having.”
“Don’t you want the same thing Alex wants?” Madge said, those smoker’s lips pursed like the puckered butthole of a cat.
That’s the problem! her heart cried out, but her mouth, thankfully, didn’t open and say those words. Josie chose this moment to ignore everyone, her wishes already stated, and took the coward’s way out, standing and slipping past Madge to go and use the ladies’ room.
Alex worried that maybe this had all been a mistake. Surprising Josie at work and bringing Ed in today had seemed like such a good idea at the time. Now, sitting across from her at the table filled him with so many conflicting emotions, he hardly knew which to act on. Teasing her about the threesome seemed to be a gentle ribbing that she could tolerate, but her speedy exit told him that he had crossed a line.
Grandpa seemed happy to be in a familiar place with his girlfriend nearby; her fast, sure motions around the rundown restaurant were reassuring, even to Alex. He liked Madge, they all did. She was a crotchety old curmudgeon, but she dearly loved Ed, and Alex, his mom, and his aunts were grateful for her stable, stalwart presence, as Ed was in decline.
Alex reached out and tapped Madge on the elbow in one of her many trips past the table. She halted, like something out of a Road Runner cartoon, coming to a screeching halt and turning to him with a look of surprise.
“Yes, Alex?”
“Do you really know Josie?”
“She’s been coming in here for a while.”
“Hasn’t half of Boston?” he asked.
“Well, yeah, but I mean, she’s been coming in here for the better part of a year. It started with the blonde, the pregnant one, and shortly after that, the two guys came in. They’re the ones who made the warlock waitress, you know, back in the day.”
“No way, Mike and Dylan were responsible for that?” he said in disbelief.
“They are indeed.” She nodded somberly. “One of them stole the cardboard cutout from some video store and they came in here with their old girlfriend and they finagled a waitress’s uniform out of me, and I don’t even remember who the hell put the balls on there.”
This was probably one of the longer conversations he’d ever had with Madge, who was already tapping her toe to get back into the kitchen and handle orders. She looked at the table in horror. “I completely forgot about your drinks! Shit!” she muttered under her breath.
Ed tapped her on the knee and said, “Don’t worry about it, honey, we’re good tippers, no matter what.” A quick wink from him, and Madge just smiled. The look of happiness on her face peeled back three decades—not enough to see the young girl she must have been at one time, but enough to see how much Ed’s presence lightened her heart.
He wanted to put that kind of joy on Josie’s face, just with his mere presence. The time they’d spent together a few weeks ago, everything from the birth of baby Jillian, to asking her to go on a walk, to their first time together at her place, it all had seemed seamless and ecstatic, electric and charged, with a strange combination of the new and the familiar. Call it fate, or kismet, or luck…whatever you called it, it had rolled out as if it were meant to be. Was the aberration Josie’s cooling off, or was the aberration the connection that he had felt? Figuring out the answer to that meant having access to her thoughts, so that his own looping questions in his mind didn’t become an echo chamber. Reinforcing his own ideas was easy; in fact, it was lazy, not worthy of the kind of self-reflection that he’d always engaged in. He didn’t want to just understand what he felt. He wanted to understand why he felt it.
Coming to Ed’s appointment, facing her head on, pushing her just a little to come to Jeddy’s, to sit with him and Ed, had seemed like it was a way to crack the door open, to get his foot in there and wiggle it enough for her to accept him as an audience. To ask questions, to be heard, and maybe, just maybe, to go back to the slow unfurling of what had seemed like a linear development of a relationship. A real relationship, with a woman who was not his type, who he would never had picked out in a bar, or at a coffee shop, or online, but who might just be his soulmate after all. No amount of self-reflection or careful planning had made that so. It just got dumped on both of them through some act of whatever higher power they might want to believe in. Maybe just dumb, dumb luck.
She came back from the ladies’ room with a chip prominently displayed on both shoulders. Her body edged into the booth with a non-verbal defensiveness that almost made him laugh at its rigidity. Somehow he had done this, and somehow he would undo this.
“Toffee mint cannoli?” he asked as she scooted into the booth.
“Excuse me?”
“Madge said they’re experimenting with some new desserts.”
Josie groaned. “I don’t think I can handle more.”
“What about coffee?” Madge barked, appearing suddenly with a carafe.
“Always room for coffee,” Josie backpedaled.
Alex stopped Madge. “Not now. Thanks. We’ll get a latte somewhere else.”
“Latte,” Madge huffed. “Well, excuuuuuuuse me for offering plain old brewed pig shit,” she said, storming off.
Josie choked on her water. “She’s always like that, isn’t she?”
“Can you imagine being related to her?”
“Yes,” Ed announced.
Josie raised her eyebrows and just looked at Alex, who humored Ed.
“Grandpa?”
“I want to marry her.”
“You go for it, Ed,” Josie said, cheering him on.
Alex gave her a death stare. They’d been over this with his grandpa plenty of times. If he married Madge, it would affect his housing subsidy and maybe future nursing home prospects. Madge was a nice woman, if a bit gruff with everyone but Ed, and she seemed firmly rooted in reality. The gesture was sweet, and he knew his grandpa did it out of a sense of love, but it was complicated.
“We can talk about it later, Grandpa,” Alex said, motioning to Madge to come to the table, pulling out his wallet.
“You think you’re getting a check, Alex? Oh, please,” Madge said, patting his cheek kindly.
“I’ll pay the tip in bed,” Ed added.
“Oh, God,” Alex mumbled, standing quickly, desperate to get out of there. Josie snickered. Alex guessed she had no idea how badly Ed’s filter had worn away this year. Then again, maybe she had. As much as it horrified him, Alex—or his mom, or aunts—should ask her whether Ed had been coming on to her. Fortunately, he always took “no” for an answer, and most of the young women he propositioned found it amusing, rather than threatening or creepy. But still…