The Guitarist's Ex

The Drowned Rat smells like spilled beer and forty years of old wood, which is exactly why I like it. I'd worked the ranger station at Pelican State Park for thirty years, and the Rat had been my Friday night for most of them. Deb used to come with me, before.

I'm Harold, by the way. Sixty-two years old, knees like a bad hinge, salt and pepper everywhere the salt won. I tell you that up front so you know I'm not some romancer. I'm a park ranger. I fixed trails and ticketed guys with coolers.

So there I was, Friday night, wanting a beer and some peace, and I walked in and saw her. Deb. My ex-wife. Fifty-eight and looking like she'd spent her settlement money on everything from the neck down. She was laughing at a table right in front of the stage, throwing her head back the way she does, and the man making her laugh was Bernard. Bernard the drummer. Bernard the guy she walked out on me for, six months ago, like she was leaving a bad restaurant.

How did I know he was the drummer? Because he was sitting at a table with a drumstick in his hand, tapping it on the table edge the way a man who needs you to know he's in a band would. God, I hate drummers.

And there's something you should know about me right now. I don't get mad fast. I simmer. I simmer like a pot of beans on a camp stove, low and quiet and for a long damn time. Six months of simmering, and there she was, close enough to smell her perfume.

What did I do? I did what any grown man does. I sat down at the bar as far from them as I could get and ordered a beer from Louie.

"The usual, Harold?" Louie asked, already reaching.

"Yeah, Louie. And I'm gonna need two of them."

"Rough night?"

"You have no idea," I said, and I tipped my head toward Deb's table just a little.

Louie glanced over. "Ohhh. That Deb?"

"That Deb."

"Well, hell, Harold, she's been in here every week. Band rehearses in the back on Thursdays and plays Fridays."

Great. Fantastic. The woman left me and took over my bar too.

***

Here's how it happened, since you're wondering. Six months ago Deb sat me down at our own kitchen table, the one I refinished myself, and told me she'd met someone. Someone who was alive, is what she said. Someone who made her feel like life was still happening. That's a direct quote. Life was still happening.

"And I wasn't happening?" I asked her.

"You were comfortable, Harold. You were a warm bath."

"A warm bath?"

"I mean it as a good thing! I loved the bath. But you can't live in a bath."

Well, that's the kind of talk that doesn't have an answer, so I didn't give one. Three weeks later her boxes were gone and so was she, and a mutual friend let it slip that the someone was Bernard, the drummer from some local band, some guy from her church choir, of all things. Fifty-nine years old, drives a Camaro with a lift kit on it, which tells you everything you need to know about Bernard.

So yeah. Simmering.

The band that night was called something like the Tide Locks, or the Lock Tides, I don't remember, because I wasn't listening. I was on my third beer, watching Deb laugh at Bernard's drumstick jokes, when the band started up. And that's when I saw her.

The guitarist. Lead guitar, standing at the front of the little stage, and she was already looking at me. Not at the crowd. At me. She was maybe thirty-eight, dark hair, red guitar, sleeves rolled up on a flannel shirt, and she had a look on her face like she was trying to place where she'd seen a face before.

I looked away first. Old habit. Then I looked back, because I'm a fool, and she was still looking.

She was good, I'll give the band that. Good enough that even a guy plotting divorce revenge has to admit the woman can play. She played a solo that made Deb shriek with delight, which annoyed me for some reason, like Deb didn't get to enjoy anything I was enjoying.

Between songs, the guitarist leaned into the microphone and said, "This one's for the guy at the bar who looks like he's doing his taxes."

The whole bar laughed. I looked up from my beer. Deb didn't recognize me in the dim, thank God for dim. Bernard just drummed the intro.

She was teasing me. This stranger on a stage was teasing me, and the worst part was I almost smiled.

***

The set ended around eleven. Deb and Bernard stayed at their table for another round, and people crowded the little stage to tell the band they were great, the way people do. I stayed on my stool, working slow on beer number three, because leaving would mean walking past Deb's table and I hadn't decided yet if I wanted a scene. Simmering men never want a scene. We want things to happen to other people.

So I was just sitting there, doing the math on how long I'd have to stay to not look weird, when she came over.

The guitarist. She came and sat on the stool right next to mine like it was assigned seating.

"Are you a fan?" she asked.

"Of what?" I said, which came out ruder than it sounded in my head.

"Of us. The band. You haven't clapped once all night. I was watching."

"You were watching?"

"I was! I keep noticing this guy at the bar with the sad park ranger face, and I thought, is he a friend of Bernard's? Because he doesn't look like a friend of Bernard's."

"How would you know what a friend of Bernard looks like?"

"I'm in the band, grandpa. I know all his friends. They're all terrible."

That got a laugh out of me, an actual one, which surprised us both I think. "Grandpa?"

"How old are you?"

"Sixty-two."

"See? Grandpa. I'm thirty-eight, I'm allowed to say that."

"Maria!" somebody from the stage called out.

"In a minute!" she called back, and then turned that attention on me like a flashlight. "I'm Maria. I play the red one."

"I gathered. Harold."

"Harold. Okay, Harold, so which is it? Are you a fan who doesn't clap, or a guy who got dragged here by a woman who stood him up?"

"The second one," I said, before I could stop myself.

"Ah. Ouch. Which woman?"

And here's where I should have said nobody, and moved to the other end of the bar, and gone home to my quiet house and my quiet dog. But I'd had three beers and six months of simmering, so instead I turned on my stool, slow, and pointed my chin at Deb's table.

"The one in the green, laughing at the drumstick."

Maria looked. I watched her look. And I watched something change in her face, some little flicker, quick, like a fish under water.

"Oh," she said. "Ohhh. That's Deb. Deb is dating our drummer."

"That's the rumor."

"Wait, are you the ex? The ranger ex?" She actually put a hand over her mouth. "Deb talks about you!"

"She does not," I said.

"She does! Bernard complains about it. She's always, oh, Bernard, Harold would never, Harold used to, Harold this, Harold that. I thought Harold was fictional."

Well. What do you do with that? My ex-wife, who left me for being a warm bath, had apparently been narrating my whole existence to her new boyfriend's lead guitarist, and the lead guitarist thought I was fictional.

"What does she say about me?" I asked, and I hated how much I wanted to know.

Maria grinned. She had a good grin, crooked, one dimple. "Oh no. Nope. I'm not getting in the middle of anything. I just play guitar."

"You just did get in the middle."

"That's different. That was an accident. You're a stranger who buys me a drink and it never happened." She flagged Louie down. "Two tequilas, Louie. Limes."

"I didn't buy you a drink."

"You're buying me a drink. I'm telling you what happened, that's how memory works."

So I bought her a tequila. And we sat there, and Bernard was waving at her from the stage to come help load gear, and she waved back with her whole arm, and then did not move an inch.

"So Harold the ranger," she said, licking lime off her thumb, which was probably not even on purpose and it still went straight through me like a rifle shot. "You really a ranger? You got one of those hats?"

"Park ranger, not forest ranger. Different hat. State park, out past the dunes."

"You like it?"

"I love it. Best job in the world. I walk around outside and tell people not to feed the raccoons."

"That's a real job?"

"It's a real job! There's paperwork!"

She laughed at that, a big open laugh, and across the room Deb's head turned at the sound, just slightly, the way heads turn. And I swear on my mother's grave, some mean little coal in my chest got brighter.

Because I realized right then, sitting next to Maria while Deb's eyes flicked our way: Deb talks about me. She brags about me. Six months later, I'm still the yardstick she's holding up against Bernard and his drumstick, and that means there's a part of that woman still watching this bar stool.

And part of me, the part I'm not proud of, thought: good.

* * *

Second Friday, I told myself I was going for the walk. That's the official story I gave my dog, and he bought it, because dogs are idiots about motive.

The Drowned Rat again. Same smell of spilled beer and old wood. Same crooked pool table. I took a stool closer to the stage this time, at the end near the speaker, because I'm a coward with a plan.

They were already into the second set. Bernard was doing his thing back there, all arms and eyebrows, and Deb was at her table in a red dress this week, laughing at something that I guarantee was not that funny. And Maria, well. Maria was up there in jeans and a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled, playing that red guitar like she was arguing with it and winning.

She spotted me during the first chorus. I know she spotted me because she smiled into the middle of a riff, which nearly caused her to fluff a note, and Bernard shot her a look. Then she got even more deliberate about it, played the rest of the song staring two feet to the left of my head, which was somehow worse.

Set break, she came over with two ciders and sat down without asking.

"You came back."

"You told me they play Fridays."

"I did! I can't believe you actually listened. Men never listen to me." She pushed a cider at me. "This is yours. I bought it. That's how memory works, remember?"

"It's not how memory works at all."

"It's exactly how it works. So. Did Deb see you come in?"

"Probably."

"Did she look?"

"I wasn't watching."

"You were so watching. Look at your face. You're watching right now, you're doing the ranger scan." She waved a hand in front of my eyes. "Hello? Earth to grandpa?"

"I'm doing no such thing!"

"You're doing it! Okay, fine, don't admit it. But Harold? Can I say something as a woman who's watched you for two whole Fridays?"

"That seems like a very small sample size for wisdom."

"Shush. Here's my wisdom. If this whole thing is about her, you're going to have a bad time. Because she's not looking at you. She's looking at whether you're looking at her. There's a difference and it matters."

I didn't say anything to that. I drank my cider, which I had technically bought myself, and looked at the stage, where a kid was unplugging cables.

"And also," Maria went on, "Bernard keeps glaring at me and I don't care, but I do care about my ears, and you should come hear something."

"Hear what?"

"The studio. In the back. We rehearse out here but we record in the back room. I want you to hear a song."

"You want me to critique your song? I don't know anything about music. I know about raccoons."

"It's not a critique situation. It's a listening situation. Private listening. Very exclusive. One attendee per night." She stood up and picked up her guitar. "Come on. Before Bernard commandeers me for the third set."

* * *

The back room was smaller than I expected and a lot shabbier. Peeling foam on the walls, gray stuff gone yellow at the edges, and one big worn velvet couch that had seen some decades. A mixing desk, a lamp, a coffee mug with a toothbrush in it. It smelled like dust and warm electronics.

"Beware the couch," Maria said, setting her guitar down. "It's older than both of us combined, probably. Louie found it at an estate sale. Somebody may have died on it."

"Comforting."

"I'm just setting expectations. Sit."

I sat. On the least died-on end. She plugged into a little amp in the corner, dragged a chair over so she was maybe four feet from me, and sat down with the red guitar across her lap.

"Okay. House rules. No talking during. No polite applause after. And no ranger face."

"That's three rules and all of them are about me."

"All the rules are about you. It's your listening."

And she played.

I cannot pretend I can describe music. What I can tell you is that it was slow, and it was quiet, and it was built out of these little repeating pieces, the same run of notes going around and around like water circling a drain, and her voice came in low, almost talking, and I stopped hearing it