The Pie Auction

The pie auction wrapped up at ten forty and by eleven Bev and I had the last of the money counted, boxed, and signed off on, three hundred and twelve dollars for the fire hall roof fund, receipts filled out, everything settled clean and separate the way she always insisted, because she'd been burned once by a church raffle that went sideways and she never let money and anything else mix in the same room again. Then she grabbed my sleeve and said come on, I booked the side room for an hour and I'm not singing alone, and that was how the two of us ended up in the back karaoke room at the Rusty Note with the velvet drapes pulled shut and a little stage nobody was going to stand on.

I'm forty-four, she's forty-four, we've known each other since we were both twenty-one and dumb at State, and in all that time I don't think we'd ever been alone in a room with a closed door, which is a strange thing to realize about a person you've loved in that quiet sideways way you don't say out loud. She's an antiques appraiser, runs the pie auction every fall for the community center, and I clean the center floors six nights a week, so we've been orbiting each other for over twenty years, her pointing at a lamp and telling me what it's worth, me telling her which toilet backs up on Tuesdays.

She kicked off her shoes first thing and dropped onto the little curved bench by the wall, and I sat down next to her close enough that our knees touched and neither of us moved away, which I noticed, believe me. The muffled noise of the main bar came through the wall, somebody butchered a Journey song, and Bev laughed her real laugh, the loud one she only does when she's tired.

"God, that auction," she said, tipping her head back against the velvet. "Mrs. Hollenbeck bid forty dollars on a pecan pie she baked herself, Kirk. She bid against her own husband."

"She likes winning."

"She likes paying forty dollars for her own pie, is what she likes." She sighed and dug through her big canvas bag, the one she hauls appraisals around in, and came out with a little cassette tape, the kind that hasn't been normal in twenty years, and held it up between two fingers like it was a dead mouse. "Look what I found in the donation box. Somebody dropped off a whole box of junk from an estate, and this was at the bottom. An answering machine tape."

"An actual tape."

"An actual tape. And you know me, I can't appraise a thing without checking it, so I played it on the machine in my car, the old one in the glovebox, don't ask, and Kirk, it's you."

I laughed, because that had to be a joke. "It is not me."

"It is absolutely you. It's dated, there's a date stamp, June, ten years back, and it's your voice, drunk as a skunk, and it's about me." She was grinning but her cheeks had gone pink, and she set the tape on the little table between the bench and the machine bolted to the wall. "Do you want to hear it or should I bury it in the yard?"

That's not a question you answer fast. I looked at the tape, and I looked at her, and my stomach did something complicated. I remembered that June, I remembered the housewarming party at Lewis's place. I remembered driving home furious at myself for something I never said.

"Play it," I said. "Then we burn it."

She threaded the tape into the machine, hit the button, and there was a hiss and a click, and then there I was, ten years younger and eleven beers deep, mumbling into somebody's answering machine. The voice said, hey Bev, it's Kirk, it's like two in the morning, don't play this for anybody, and then it rambled about Lewis's party, about how I'd stood in Lewis's driveway watching her get in her car and how I'd wanted to kiss her so bad my teeth hurt, and how I figured I'd blown it by saying goodnight like an idiot, and how someday, someday, I was going to tell her that, when I was brave, which clearly was not tonight, goodnight Bev. Click. Hiss.

The machine wound down and the room got very quiet, and we both sat there looking at the tape like it might get up and walk.

"Well," she said finally, and then she laughed, a short helpless sound, and I laughed too, and for a minute it was fine, it was a joke, we were two old friends laughing at a drunk on a tape. Except the laugh ran out and the quiet came back and this time it had weight to it, the kind of quiet where you can hear your own pulse in your ears, and she wasn't looking at the tape anymore, she was looking at me, and her pink cheeks had gone redder.

"I never knew," she said softly. "Ten years, Kirk. You carried that around for ten years and I never knew."

"Easier that way," I said. "Or I thought it was."

"I was married then." She picked at the tape's little label, not looking at me. "You know how that went. And every time I thought about you saying something, anything, I'd get mad at you for not saying it, which isn't fair, but there it is." She turned on the bench to face me, her knee pressing into my thigh now, and her voice dropped. "I used to sit in that driveway too, you know. Before I drove off. I sat there with my keys in my hand wondering if you were going to walk over, and then you said goodnight and I thought, well, okay then, that's settled."

"You waited?"

"Four or five minutes, probably." Her eyes were shiny and steady at the same time. "I've wondered my whole adult life what that kiss would have turned into. I've wondered about it in bed, Kirk, if you want the truth, more times than I'd admit to a priest."