The Bidding War

*This one came from thinking about how the most interesting things can happen in the most boring places. Thanks for reading hope it makes you smile in all the right places.*

The house got quiet after Kyle left in August. He's twenty-two, off in Denver with a job and a roommate and a life that doesn't include coming home for dinner anymore. His sister left two years before that. So it's just me and a big empty place in the suburbs that used to be loud with two kids and a husband and a dog.

The divorce was finalized five years ago, and honestly the quiet was worse than the lawyers. I'd walk through the living room at six in the evening and the silence would just sit there. I filled it with work. I'm a therapist, which is a funny job for someone who hates an empty room, because my whole day is full of voices.

So when the Heartland Wellness Conference came around, three days in Omaha in October, I signed up without thinking too hard. My friend Bradly from my Tuesday consultation group was going, and he said it was going to be dull as dishwater, and somehow that sounded perfect. A dull conference in a hotel with bad coffee and name tags. A strange relief. Nobody needing anything from me. Nobody asking why there's only one car in the driveway.

I'm fifty-two, by the way. Bradly is forty-two. We met eight years ago at a seminar on grief counseling, back when I was still married but already feeling alone, and we've been friends ever since. He's a software consultant who somehow ends up volunteering at every wellness event in the region, mostly because he gets bored at home. He calls it networking. I call it an excuse to eat conference cookies.

***

The Grand Prairie Business Hotel is exactly what it sounds like. Big lobby, beige everything, a fountain nobody notices. I checked in Friday afternoon and found the ballroom already set up for the opening mixer. There was a silent auction along one wall to raise money for youth programs, tables of donated stuff with clipboards in front of them. Gift baskets, a massage package, a set of wine glasses. Local vendors trying to look generous.

Bradly found me by the drink table before I even got a name tag on straight.

"There she is," he said, holding up two glasses of wine. "I saved you from the chardonnay. It's terrible."

"It's conference wine, Bradly. Lower your standards."

"Never." He handed me the glass. He was in his usual outfit, blazer over a t-shirt, like he couldn't commit to either. "Okay, first order of business. Come look at the auction stuff. It's all garbage except one thing."

We walked down the row of tables. He stopped at a clipboard near the end. The item was a weekend getaway package, two nights at some resort out by the lake, dinner credit, spa access. The photo on the display card showed a room with a big bed and a view of water.

"You should bid on that," he said.

"I don't need a resort weekend, Bradly."

"Everybody needs a resort weekend. Look, you're the only person here I actually like, and watching you bid against strangers would entertain me all night."

"That's your reason? My entertainment value?"

"Partly. Mostly I dare you."

He knows I can't resist a dare. He's known it for eight years and he uses it shamelessly.

"A dare from a man who volunteers at conferences for fun," I said. "Fine. But if I win, you're driving me out to this resort and carrying my bags."

"Deal. Bid now, the minimum's ten dollars."

I picked up the pen and wrote my name. Marnie Hill, fifty dollars, because I was feeling generous and the money went to kids' programs anyway. Bradly waited until I set the pen down, then picked it up and wrote sixty.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Beating you. Obviously."

"You dared me to bid. You didn't dare me to lose."

"Two different dares. Keep up."

***

We went back and forth four more times while the mixer hummed around us. He went to seventy-five. I went to ninety. He laughed and wrote one-ten. I wrote one-fifty and underlined it, which felt dramatic and great. A woman running the auction table gave us a look that said please keep going, the kids need new equipment.

"You know this is charity, right?" Bradly said, leaning on the table. "You're spending real money out of spite."

"Spite is a renewable resource. Ask my ex-husband."

"That's cold, Hill. I love it." He wrote one-eighty. "Also, I want to win, because then I get the resort weekend, and my wife would've loved the spa part."

He caught himself on the word wife. His divorce was about four years before mine. We don't usually mention the marriages, but he didn't flinch, and neither did I. That's sort of the deal with us. We can say the sad words and keep moving.

"Then outbid me," I said.

"I just did."

I picked up the pen. Two hundred dollars. The current bid was one-eighty, so I wrote two-ten and a note: beat that, Danner.

He read the note and shook his head, grinning. "You're ruthless."

"You made me this way."

"I did no such thing. I gave you a dare and you turned it into a personal vendetta."

"Same thing."

He stood there with the pen in his hand for a second, and then he put it down on the table instead of writing. "Two hundred ten is my limit. You win."

"You're kidding. You always go one more."

"Not tonight. My consultant brain says the marginal value of a resort weekend caps out around one-ninety."

"You just made that up."

"Absolutely. But it sounded professional, didn't it?"

The auction closed at nine. A woman with a clipboard came over and checked my bid sheet, then checked something on her tablet, and her face did a funny little thing.

"Congratulations, Ms. Hill," she said. "You're the winner of the weekend getaway."

"Great," I said. "Do I pick up a certificate or something?"

"Actually, there's been an upgrade. The resort overbooked, so the donor swapped the prize. Your package is now the premier suite here at the Grand Prairie. Tonight and tomorrow night, plus dinner credit in the restaurant."

I looked at Bradly. Bradly looked at me.

"Here?" I said.

"Here," the woman said. "Same hotel. Room 1408. Check in whenever you like, it's ready now. The spa credit transfers to the hotel spa downstairs."

She handed me a little folder with a room key already in it and walked off to close out another table.

Bradly picked up his wine and took a slow sip, watching me over the rim.

"Well," he said. "You spent two hundred ten dollars on your own hotel."

"I did not see that coming."

"You literally live forty minutes from here."

"Thank you, Bradly. Very helpful."

He was grinning, and I was trying not to, and the funny part was this weird little flip in my stomach. A suite. Two nights. A bed bigger than mine at home. The quiet house flashed through my head, the empty driveway, the six o'clock silence.

"Okay, so here's the thing," he said, setting his glass down. "What are you going to do with it?"

"I have no idea."

"Because I volunteer here all weekend. I could, hypothetically, come see the suite. As your guest. Since I technically drove the price up."

"You drove the price up to entertain yourself."

"And it worked beautifully. So. Roommate rules or guest rules?"

I looked at the key in the folder. I looked at him, this man I've known for eight years who buys me conference coffee and dares me to bid on things. Somewhere around the third outbid, when he wrote one-ten with that dumb grin, something had shifted in my chest and I hadn't bothered to name it.

"Guest rules," I said. "But you're sleeping on the couch."

"Suite couches are great. I've heard."

"Bradly."

"Yes?"

"Go get your bag. You're not wandering this hotel in a blazer and a t-shirt."

He laughed and headed for the elevators, and I stood there with a room key and two hundred ten dollars of spite, feeling like maybe the quiet house had done me one favor after all. It got me here.

I went to check in.

* * *

Saturday morning I woke up in room 1408 feeling like a fraud. The suite was gorgeous and I had no business in it. The couch had actually been fine, which Bradly announced twice before I'd finished my first coffee.

"You snore," I told him.

"I absolutely do not. You have witnesses?"

"I have ears."

"That's one witness and she's biased."

We went down for the second day of the conference, which was the worst day, the one with the eight a.m. keynote on workplace wellness metrics. A man named something forgettable stood at a podium in the ballroom with a laser pointer and two hundred slides. Bradly and I took seats near the back, out of habit more than strategy, and he immediately leaned over.

"Bet you five dollars he says 'synergy' before the first coffee break."

"He already said it. Slide four."

"That doesn't count, I wasn't listening at slide four."

"Then you owe me five dollars for lack of attention."

"I'm contesting the ruling." He settled back and crossed his arms. "This is your fault, you know."

"How is this my fault?"

"You're the one who won the auction. I'd be at home right now watching football in my underwear. Instead I'm in a blazer learning about organizational flourishing."

"You volunteered for this weekend. You told me that at the mixer, remember? You said, and I quote, somebody has to keep the coffee urns honest."

"That was before I knew my Tuesday group leader was going to bankrupt herself on spite and drag me into a suite situation."

"Drag you. I seem to recall you asking to be dragged."

He didn't have an answer for that one, so he just grinned at the podium like the presenter had said something wise. The thing about Bradly is he's tall and he doesn't sit still. Even in a folding chair he takes up more room than he needs, knees apart, one arm on the back of mine. I've noticed this at consultation group for years and never thought much of it. Yesterday I started thinking about it.

The keynote droned on. Something about measurable outcomes. I had my hands in my lap, and at some point, without planning it, my right hand slid over and landed on his knee. Just rested there. His leg was warm through the fabric of his good slacks, the ones with the crease.

He didn't move.

I didn't move either. That was the strange part. I've been a therapist for twenty-five years, I teach people about boundaries for a living, and here I was with my hand on a man's knee during a lecture on workplace metrics, watching the slides like nothing was happening. His jaw did a little tighten and release. He kept his eyes forward. His hand came down slowly and covered mine, not gripping, just resting on top of my knuckles like we were two people at a table holding still for a photograph.

The speaker said the word "synergy" again and neither of us took any money off the table.

We sat like that for eleven minutes, because I counted, because I'm apparently a fifty-two-year-old woman who counts things when she is nervous. Then the lights came up for the break and we both pulled back at the same time, fast, like two people caught shoplifting. Two adults in their forties and fifties behaving like it was a scandal to touch a knee.

"So," Bradly said, clearing his throat.

"So."

"Synergy. That's five dollars."

"You said it doesn't count before the break."

"It counts now. New half."

"Fine. You owe me ten."

"I'll put it toward your auction debt."

"You don't owe me auction debt. I won fair."

"Morally, Hill, I owe you everything." He said it light, the way he says most things, but his ears had gone a little red, and I liked that more than I meant to.

We got coffee from the urns he supposedly guards. He fixed mine the way I take it, splash of milk, no sugar, and handed it over without being asked, which is a thing he's done at group for years. I used to read it as just Bradly being Bradly. Standing there in the ballroom lobby with the bad keynote audio bleeding out of the doors, I read it differently.

"You know what's funny," he said, walking with me along the window that looks out on the parking garage. "I spent three years trying to figure out how to get your attention. Dares, coffee, the bidding war. And then you just reach over during the worst keynote of the decade and put your hand on my knee like it's Tuesday."

"It is Tuesday."

"It's Saturday."

"Not for another," I checked my phone, "huh. Three days."

"Three years, Marnie."

I stopped by the window. Below us a minivan was doing the slow circle looking for a spot. "I knew," I said. "For about the last year, I knew. I just didn't do anything about it, because." I shrugged. "The house is quiet. You get used to quiet. You start thinking quiet is what you deserve."

"That's a terrible thing for a therapist to believe."

"Don't I know it. I'd bill myself two hundred an hour for that sentence."

He laughed, and then it got quiet between us, the kind of quiet that isn't