The Birthday List

I was forty minutes into my weekly Friday night beer when Grady Jenkin came shuffling over with that look on his face. You know the look. The one that says a man is about to do something kind and completely unwanted.

"Martina Connelly," he said, setting down a shot of something amber next my pint. "Happy birthday. It's on me."

"Grady, it's not my birthday for five weeks."

"Close enough. Early birthday."

I looked at the shot. I looked at him. I turned fifty-six this past year, and I've been working at the Vintage Vault warehouse for nineteen years, and I know exactly what an early birthday shot from Grady Jenkin means. It means he's decided I'm a project. Ever since his wife passed he's been orbiting every unattached woman over fifty in a five mile radius like a very slow, very polite moth.

"Grady, honey, take that back before I say something we both regret."

"Oh, come on now. One drink. One little drink between friends."

"It is not between friends. It is a negotiation opener and I did not come here to negotiate."

He actually laughed at that, like I was being charming instead of dead serious. "You're a hard woman, Martina Connelly."

"I'm a tired woman! I stacked forty boxes of vintage denim today and my back sounds like bubble wrap. The last thing I want is a birthday drink five weeks early from a man who mows the lawn outside this bar like it's a marriage proposal."

That stung him a little, I could tell. Good. I'm not proud of it, but I was in a mood. It was the middle of March, it had rained for eleven straight days, and my birthday has been sitting on my chest like a cat ever since the calendar flipped. Fifty-seven coming. Fifty-seven! When did that happen? I swear I was thirty-four last Tuesday, riding in Nolan's pickup with the windows down, and now look at me.

That's when the door banged open and she walked in.

She was maybe twenty-nine, twenty-nine tops, with paint on her jeans and a canvas bag slung over one shoulder that had more colors on it than a paint store explosion. Short dark hair, arms like somebody who actually uses them for work, and a smear of yellow across one cheekbone like she'd lost a fight with a wall. She came behind the counter like she owned it, dumped the bag, and looked straight at me.

"You're yelling at Grady again," she said. "It's Thursday night, Martina. Thursday night is Grady's night to be yelled at."

"It's Thursday!"

"It's Thursday. Friday is tomorrow. That's why I'm here, doing his shift."

Oh. Well. My whole week had been off since the time change and there it was, confirmed. I liked her immediately, which surprised me, because I don't usually like anybody immediately.

"Your usual?" she asked, already reaching for my glass.

"Please!"

She pulled my beer while Grady took his shot and his wounded feelings off to the end of the counter. She set the pint down in front of me and leaned on the wood with both forearms. There was green paint under one thumbnail.

"I hear it's your birthday," she said.

"Who told you that? He did, didn't he. It's not for five weeks."

"Five weeks. So what's this, a rehearsal?"

I don't know what came over me. Maybe the rain. Maybe the denim. Maybe fifty-seven sitting on my chest. I heard myself say, "Do you want to go out with me?"

The bar was not quiet, but it went quiet in a two-foot radius around my face. She blinked at me. Then she smirked, and I want to tell you that smirk did something awful and wonderful to my insides.

"Wow," she said. "Straight to it. You rehearse that too?"

"Every night for five weeks apparently, and it still came out on the wrong night."

She laughed. It was a good laugh, loud enough that a couple of the old guys looked over. "I'm Roxie," she said, wiping her hand on her jeans and sticking it out. "Roxie Bell. I paint signs. And I serve beer here two nights a week to pay for paint."

"Martina. Connelly. Warehouse. I already said that part, didn't I? I said my whole name like a job application. Martina Connelly, warehouse."

"Roxie Bell, sign painter. Okay. So here's my answer." She held up one finger. "Yes, but."

"Buts are bad."

"This is a good but. There are conditions. I don't do complicated. I just got out of a thing that ended clean and I'd like to keep things clean, you know? Simple. Three dates, nice and easy, no drama."

"Three dates? You're already counting them?"

"I'm a planner. It's the painter in me. I sketch it all out first." She was smiling while she said it, so I decided to believe her. "Friday, next week. You, me, and the rules."

"What rules?"

"You'll see."

* * *

She showed up at my apartment on that Friday at seven sharp, carrying a bar napkin. Just the napkin, folded like a legal document. My apartment is on Delancey Street above a nail salon, small, clean, one cat named Noodle who took one look at Roxie and went back to sleep, which is Noodle's way of approving everybody.

"Okay," Roxie said, sitting down at my kitchen table and smoothing the napkin out like she was reading a contract. "The rules. I wrote them down so we can't pretend later we didn't agree."

I leaned over and read them. Seven rules, in careful paint-shop handwriting, numbered.

"One," she read out loud. "No gifts. Not birthday gifts, not sorry gifts, not just-because gifts. Nothing wrapped, ever."

"Two, no sleepovers. We have our own beds and we like them."

"Three, no cooking together. Cooking together is a trap. You cook together once and suddenly you're picking out curtains."

"I don't even own curtains," I said. "I have a sheet over the kitchen window."

"Perfect, see, we're compatible. Four, no meeting each other's friends. Friends hold opinions and those opinions leak. Five, no discussing work. I don't want to hear about the warehouse and you don't want to hear about a mural commission for a dentist's office that is six weeks late because the dentist keeps changing his mind about the color of a tooth. A giant tooth, Martina. Eight feet tall."

"That sounds amazing though."

"That sounds like a nightmare, which is rule five in action, so stop it. Six, no serious talk. No exes, no childhood, no what-are-we, no where-is-this-going. And seven." She tapped the last line. "No promises. None. Not even little ones. Not even I'll call you tomorrow. We just see what happens."

I read the napkin again, top to bottom. It smelled faintly of beer and turpentine, which is maybe the most honest smell a contract can have.

"You made these rules for everybody," I said, "or just for me?"

"For everybody. I've had one fling since Tina and I split, and it lasted four months because I broke every rule I owned. Never again." She said it lightly but there was a firm bottom to it, like the deep end of a pool. She'd been with her girlfriend three years and it ended the way she said, clean, and I respected that, but I could hear the walls going up while she smiled.

"Okay," I said. "Seven rules. I can count to seven."

"Can you? Because I've seen the denim inventory math you do on the back of receipts and I have doubts."

"Hey. That math is perfectly fine."

"It's a crime scene," she said, grinning, and I laughed so hard Noodle woke up, looked at us, and went back to sleep again.

So there we were, the two of us at my little table, a folded napkin between us like a treaty. She was twenty-nine and I was fifty-six and about to be fifty-seven, and somewhere in the back of my head a small voice said, Martina, honey, this is a bad idea with a very short shelf life. And a louder voice said, when exactly were you planning on doing something reckless, at fifty-eight?

"So," I said. "Rule six means I can't ask you anything real. What do we even talk about?"

"Paint," she said. "Weather. Whether the jukebox at the Cleaver has played anything but eighties rock since the Browning administration."

"It has not. I checked. The B side of that Def Leppard record has been worn smooth."

"Then we'll get along fine." She stood up and grabbed her jacket off the chair. "Come on. We're going to the Cleaver for dinner because rule three says neither of us cooks. And Martina?"

"Yeah?"

"Rule seven starts now. So don't promise me anything." She was holding the door, half in and half out, with that smirk again.

"Wouldn't dream of it," I said, which technically wasn't a promise, and we both knew it, and she laughed all the way down the stairs.

The second date was on a Sunday, and it started as a joke and ended as a crime.

"Vintage Vault," Roxie said, squinting up at the sign. "This is where you work?"

"Where I work, yes. Where I shop, no, because employees get a discount and I abuse it terribly." I'd stacked forty boxes of denim the day before and my back still sounded like bubble wrap, but I was excited. "Come on, I want to show you the weird stuff in the back."

"Is there weird stuff in the back?"

"Roxie. There is a fur coat from 1974 back there that someone spilled eggnog on. There is a crate of bowling shirts with names sewn in them. There is a whole bin of sunglasses shaped like stars."

She grinned. "Lead the way."

The thing about my warehouse is that I've worked there nineteen years so I know it like my own kitchen. Most people see the racks up front and stop. But in the back corner, behind the Halloween stock we never sell, there's a shelf of what my boss calls "miscellaneous," which means nobody knows what to do with it. Old suitcases. A mannequin with a missing arm. And, sitting there for two years like it was waiting for somebody, a rotary lawn mower from the 1960s.

"Martina," Roxie said slowly, when I dragged it out. "Is that a lawnmower?"

"It is. Isn't it beautiful? Look at it. It's green. It has a wooden handle. It's from before either of our parents probably owned it."

"Why is there a lawnmower in a clothing store?"

"That's the mystery of Miscellaneous, my friend. Nobody knows. It just appeared one day, like a cat."

Roxie circled it. She pushed the handle and the blades turned with a nice rusty click. "You know who mows the lawn at the Cleaver? Grady. That sweet old guy with the mower that sounds like it's dying."

"Grady Jenkin, yes. Poor man, his wife passed and now he mows that lawn every week like it's a religion. His machine is terrible."

"So you're buying this. For yourself? Do you even have a lawn? You live above a nail salon."

"I have a fire escape and a cat," I admitted. "No, the thing is this. I'm buying it because my birthday is in about three weeks."

"Rule one," she said, pointing at me like I'd robbed a bank. "No gifts. Not birthday gifts. Not sorry gifts. Nothing wrapped, ever. It's on the napkin, Martina, I have the napkin laminated in my head."

"It's not a gift. It's a joke. It's a joke gift for me. I'm buying myself a lawnmower for my fifty-seventh birthday because at fifty-six I bought a bread machine I never used and I need to keep the streak going." I was already waving the manager over. "Sergei, what do I owe you for Miscellaneous Number Four?"

Sergei looked at the mower, looked at me, and said, "Ten bucks and you carry it out yourself."

"Done."

Roxie watched me hand over the money and haul the thing off the shelf, and I want to tell you, that wooden handle over my shoulder like a rifle, her face started doing something. Her lips pressed together. Her shoulders started shaking.

"Don't you laugh," I said.

"I'm not laughing."

"You're absolutely laughing."

And then she broke, she just folded, right there between the Halloween stock and the eggnog coat, laughing so hard she had to grab a rack of flannel shirts to stay upright. "You bought. A lawnmower. For your own birthday. At a clothing store."

"It's from the sixties. It's vintage. This is literally the appropriate store for it."

"It's the funniest thing I've ever seen in my life," she gasped, and then she wiped her eyes, straightened up, looked at me with that mower over my shoulder, and kissed me.

Now, hold on. Did she ask first? Let me think. She said, "You are the most ridiculous woman I have ever met," and she was coming in toward me the whole time she said it, slow, like giving me the whole length of the sidewalk to step back if I wanted. She stopped an inch away and asked, "Can I?" and I said, "Please," and went up on my toes, mower and all, and we kissed right there in the back of Vintage Vault, and Sergei yelled from the register, "Not on the flannels, you two."

She pulled back grinning. "That wasn't in the rules."

"What, kissing?"

"Kissing isn't in the rules. I checked. The rules cover gifts, sleepovers, cooking, friends, work, serious talk, and promises. Kissing fell through the cracks." She tapped her chin. "Legally, we're fine."

"Good lawyer," I said.

"Best lawyer. I bill in beer."

* * *

Date number three was the following Thursday, which was also, by pure accident, the night Grady Jenkin gets yelled at, meaning Roxie was off the clock and free. She texted me a picture of a half-painted sign and the words, "You can watch me work. This is not a date, this is a viewing. Bring snacks."

I brought snacks. I brought excellent snacks, a paper bag of those little almond cookies from the bakery on Delancey, and I found her on a ladder outside Dot's Diner on Route 9, painting a milkshake the