Summer Rooftop

Right off, I wasn't stalking anybody. That word got used later, by Denise, and I'll get to that. But that night at the street fair I was just walking. Same as everybody. The heat had the whole town by the throat, ninety-one degrees at eight in the evening, and the asphalt was still breathing it back up at us. I was fifty-five years old, freshly single, and I was eating a paper tray of fried dough because I figured my body was already ruined so why not.

That's when I saw Allan.

He was standing by the ring-toss booths with a woman I didn't know, and he was laughing. That laugh. Three years since I'd heard it in person and my stomach did the same stupid drop it did when I was fifty-two and he first walked me to my car.

The woman was forty-something, maybe forty-five, tall, sundress, sunglasses pushed up on her head after dark like she forgot they were there. She said something and touched his arm and he leaned into it like a plant toward sun.

Now. Some context, since you're a stranger. Allan and I had a thing. Six months, when I was fifty-two and he was fifty-five. He was a mechanic then, retired now, hands like rawhide. I ended it because he would not commit to anything past Thursday. Six months of Thursdays and I finally said this is a hobby, Allan, and hobbies are for things you can put down. Then I dated Craig for three years. Craig ended it three weeks ago, by text, which is its own story and a boring one.

So there I was, holding fried dough, watching a man I dumped laugh at a joke a prettier woman made.

I told myself I was walking past them. I was. I just took the long way past, which is a thing stalkers say, I know.

"Susie?"

Damn it. He'd seen me.

"Allan." I turned around like I'd just noticed a mailbox. "Hey."

"You remember Denise?" He did the hand wave between us. "Denise, this is Susie. Susie and I used to..."

"Used to what?" Denise asked, smiling, not meaning anything by it.

"Nothing," I said. "Bingo league. Couple years back."

"That's one way to put it," Allan said, and Denise looked between us and her smile went a little sharper, like a dog hearing another dog three yards over.

"Well," I said. "Enjoy the fair."

I walked off. I walked off in a straight line for roughly forty feet and then I took a left, bought a lemonade I did not want, and stood behind the poultry club tent watching them like it was my job. I was fifty-five and I was hiding behind a 4-H tent. Craig had left me by text and this was what I'd been reduced to, surveilling a retired man's evening.

They wandered. I followed. There's no version of this where I come out dignified, so let's just keep going.

They ended up drifting toward the river end of the fairgrounds, where it thins out and the town shows its bones. Old mill, chain link, the bridge. The bridge has a maintenance catwalk underneath, narrow, steel grating, a couple of flickering streetlights that never get fixed because nothing in this town ever gets fixed. Kids go down there to drink. People my age go down there to not be seen.

They stopped at the top of the access stairs, and Denise said something, and Allan kissed her on the cheek. Quick, casual, the kiss you give a friend, though from where I stood I couldn't tell the difference and refused to learn it.

And here's the part I'm not proud of. I felt it in my chest. Not heartbreak. Craig hadn't earned heartbreak. This was older and uglier. This was the feeling from three years ago, the one where you want a man who has told you, in so many words, that he does not want to be wanted by any one woman in particular.

I stood in the dark by the stair rail and listened to my own breathing and tried to talk myself down. He's fifty-eight. She's forty-five, maybe, that's still ten years. You dumped him. You won. You have a condo and a cat named after a truck part.

Then Denise said, "I'm gonna go grab us something cold, back in ten," and came up the stairs alone.

I flattened against the railing like a moron. She passed within four feet of me, phone out, already typing. She smelled like sunscreen and vodka cranberry, and she didn't see me, or she pretended not to, and she went off toward the fair lights.

And I went down the stairs.

Why? You tell me. I've asked myself every day since and I keep getting different answers. That night the answer was: he doesn't get to be happy. No, that's not it either. The answer that night was I wanted him to look at me the way he looked at her, one more time, and then I wanted to walk away first.

I've never managed the walking away first part. Not once in my life.

* * *

The catwalk was hot. The day's heat had soaked into the steel and it came up through my sandals like a griddle. Down below, the river moved slow and brown. One streetlight worked in stutter mode, on, off, on. He was leaning on the far rail with a beer, and when my footsteps hit the grating he turned, and I watched him do the arithmetic on his face. Surprise. Then not surprise.

"Well," he said. "Small town."

"Real small."

"You following me, Susie?"

"No. I'm following the river. It's a scenic route. It happens to pass under the bridge you're standing under."

He took a drink. He'd gone gray at the temples since I'd seen him, more gray in the beard, but he stood the same, all forearms and slouch. Fifty-eight and still built as if he'd spent thirty years under cars.

"Denise went to get drinks," he said. "She'll be back in ten."

"I know. I saw her leave. I was standing right there when she walked past me."

He looked at me for a while. On, off, went the light.

"You watched us."

"I watched the river."

"Uh huh."

"Allan, I came down here to say one thing." And I had, in the forty seconds it took to descend those stairs, assembled a whole speech. "You're the same. Three years, and you're the exact same. Some woman with a sundress and a decent job and you give her Thursdays. That's all you've got, man. You're a Thursday dispenser. And she doesn't know it yet, and somebody should tell her, and since I'm apparently the town crier now, I'm telling you to tell her."

"Okay," he said.

"Okay? That's it? Okay?"

"What do you want me to say? You're right. I am the same. I never claimed to be in renovation."

"You could have the decency to look ashamed."

"Why?" He set the beer on the rail. "You dumped me, Susie. Clean break. Your call. I respected it. Three years, I hear nothing, and now you're under a bridge telling me I'm defective. Where'd Craig go?"

"Craig's gone."

"Sorry."

"You're not sorry."

"No," he agreed. "I'm not. Craig struck me like someone who'd leave by text."

"Wow. You talked about me. Us. To your little girlfriend?"

"Denise isn't my girlfriend, Susie. She's my neighbor, and she's engaged to the woman who runs the lemonade stand. I didn't say a word to her about you. I said that to myself. There's a difference."

The light cycled. On. Off. On. The creosote smell off the old pilings was thick down there, mixed with the