The Regulars' Show

Thirty-four years, folks. That's how long Vern Hobart and I circled each other like two dogs tied up on opposite sides of a fence.

It started back in 1988. I was twenty-eight, working mall security at Eastgate, and Vern was warehouse security for Corley Freight. We kept running into each other at the same boring training seminars. You know the kind. Some guy from the insurance company flips through slides about liability for two hours and everyone pretend-takes notes.

Vern always sat in the back row with his arms crossed. I always sat three seats over, also with my arms crossed. We'd catch each other's eye during the dull parts and smirk. That was our whole relationship for about a year. Smirks.

Then one October night, after a contract meeting at a diner off Route 9, we walked out to the parking lot together. It was cold and my car wouldn't start. He offered to give it a jump and I said sure, and while the cables were hooked up and my engine was coughing, he kissed me.

Or I kissed him. Honestly, to this day I'm not sure who moved first. I think we both leaned in at the same time like idiots.

It lasted maybe five seconds. Then we pulled apart and just stared at each other over the hood of my Buick while it rattled itself awake.

"Well," he said.

"Well," I said.

And that was that. He unhooked the cables, I drove home, and neither of us ever mentioned it again. Not once. Not in thirty-four years.

We kept seeing each other at seminars though. And at the regional security conferences down at the Ramada. And when our companies bid on the same contracts, we'd end up across the table from each other, going back and forth about patrol schedules like it was chess. Everybody in the local security scene knew we were rivals. Izzy Schaffer and Vern Hobart, always squared off, always sniping at each other's proposals.

What they didn't know was that I thought about that parking lot kiss more than I thought about most things. For decades. Isn't that something? One five-second kiss in 1988 and it just sat there in my chest like a coin in a couch.

We both retired eventually. Me in 2019, him a year later. And you know where two retired security guards with nothing but time end up? The Copper Tap, every Tuesday night, same booth by the window, drinking the same cheap whiskey and complaining about the same aching knees.

Old rivals, sharing a booth. Go figure.

So here's how last Tuesday went.

The Copper Tap sits on Mill Street, in a block where half the storefronts are papered over. Inside it's dim, worn oak booths, a long mahogany bar that Nadia keeps polished like it's a museum piece. There's a Schlitz neon sign above the back shelf that flickers on and off. It's been flickering since before Nadia bought the place, and she refuses to fix it. Says it's got character.

I got there first, a little after eight. Cold outside, first real autumn snap of the year, and I had my red flannel buttoned to the collar. I slid into our booth and hung my coat on the hook.

Nadia spotted me from down the bar and came over with the bottle already in hand. Forty-two years old, known me since she was a kid hanging around her dad's shop next door.

"Usual, hon? Or are we feeling fancy tonight?"

"Since when do we have a fancy option?" I laughed.

"We don't. That was a test." She poured two fingers of the well whiskey into my glass. "Vern coming?"

"Isn't he always?"

Vern came in about ten minutes later, shaking rain off his jacket. Sixty-four years old and he still walks like he's checking the room, old habit. He dropped into the booth across from me like he'd done it a thousand times. Because he had.

"Beat you here again," I said.

"You always get here first. It's your only victory left in life, Izzy."

"Ha! One of us has to keep score, and you're too busy losing."

Nadia brought his whiskey without being asked. "You two bickering already? It's not even nine."

"We're warming up," Vern told her.

Elijah came in around nine. He's an old electrician, retired, plays poker with Vern on Thursdays. Fifty-five, loud, thinks he's the funniest man in the county. He dragged a chair over to our booth like always.

"So I says to the guy, that's not a ground wire, that's a wish wire!" Elijah slapped the table, delighted with himself.

Vern groaned. "You've told that one six times, Lij."

"It's a good story!"

"It was never a good story," I said.

Elijah stayed for one beer, told two more stories that weren't good, lost five dollars to Vern on a coin flip for reasons nobody remembers, and took off around ten. The bar had thinned out by then. A couple nurses from the hospital having a nightcap, some guy nursing a flat draft at the end of the bar. That was everyone.

Nadia flipped the jukebox on low and went back to her crossword.

And then it was just me and Vern in the booth. The Schlitz sign flickered. Flickered again. Kept flickering.

"Remember Delmar Fuqua?" Vern said, swirling his drink. "The training guy with the slides?"

"The liability guy? God. Two hours on slip-and-fall incidents every single spring."

"He ever updated those slides once? Not once in thirty years, I bet."

"Same photo of the wet floor cone. Same clip art of the falling man." I laughed into my glass. "You always sat in the back row."

"You always sat close enough to the back to smirk at me. Don't think I didn't notice."

"I noticed you noticing."

He chuckled, then went quiet for a second. The flicker of the neon caught the side of his face. When he spoke again, his voice had dropped some.

"You know what I always wondered? All those years, watching you strut around those conferences in your uniform?"

"What."

"What you looked like under it. That's it. Thirty-four years of wondering that."

Well! I sat there with my whiskey halfway to my mouth and felt something slow and warm start up in my chest. A dare, sort of. Blooming like a weed in a crack.

Because here's what nobody knows. I've thought about that parking lot kiss for thirty-four years too. And about six months ago, sometime after my sixty-second birthday, I decided that if I ever got the nerve, I was going to give Vern Hobart the show I chickened out of giving him in 1988. Tonight, sitting in that flickering booth, it was starting to feel like the night.

"You wondering right now?" I asked him.

He looked at me over his glass. "It's a permanent condition, Izzy. Like my knee."

"Hm." I set my drink down slow. My fingers went to the top button of my flannel, just resting there. "Big square building, lot of glass, one wet floor cone. That's how I'd sum up your whole career."

"And yours is a food court and a walkie-talkie," he shot back.

"Two walkie-talkies. I had a spare."

He laughed, real and low, and under the table his boot nudged mine. Not an accident. Not an accident at all.

"Thirty-four years, Izzy," he said. "How'd we get this old?"

"Fast. While we weren't looking." I took a sip. The whiskey had gone smooth somehow, or I had. "You ever regret backing off? That night in the lot?"

He didn't answer right away. The sign flickered. Outside a car went past, headlights sweeping the window.

"Every so often," he said finally. "When I let myself think about it. Which wasn't often, because it made me feel like a jerk. You were married back then."

"So were you, Vern."

"Yeah, well." He spread his hands. "There it is."

Both of us single now, though. Both of us for years. Both of us sitting in a dim bar with the whole night ahead of us and nobody waiting up.

I looked at the top button of my flannel under my thumb. My heart was doing fine, steady actually, which surprised me. I figured it'd be hammering. Instead it just felt decided.

"Vern," I said. "Remember when you told me I always sit close enough to smirk at you?"

"Sure."

"Still smirking."

He looked up from his glass then, and I swear the old back-row smirk came up on his own face to meet mine. The Schlitz sign flickered off, then on, then off again, like it couldn't decide either.

I was one button away from not being able to take it back.

So here's what I did. I drained the rest of my whiskey, set the glass down nice and quiet, and said, "Hold that thought."

"What thought?" Vern asked.

"Just hold it. I'll be back." I slid out of the booth and walked to the restroom at the back of the bar, and I could feel his eyes on me the whole way. Good. Let him look. That was sort of the point.

In the ladies room I leaned over the sink and looked at myself. Sixty-two years old, gray hair short as a crew cut, face that's got more map lines every year. A younger woman might've talked herself out of it right there. I didn't. I washed my hands, checked my teeth for whiskey stink, and squared my shoulders like I was about to walk a beat one last time.

When I came back out, I didn't go to my side of the booth.

I went around the table and slid in right next to Vern, on his side, close enough that my knee pressed up against his thigh under the table. He went stiff as a board. "Izzy? What are you..."

"Changed seats. Booth was too big over there."

"There's nothing wrong with your side of the booth."

"There's everything wrong with it. It's too far from you."

He looked down at his glass like it might have answers printed on the bottom. Under the table, his leg didn't pull away. I took that as permission and pressed in a little more. "Vern. Look at me." He looked. His eyes went to my top button, the one my thumb had been resting on before my little trip. "You're up to something," he said.

"Maybe I am."

"You've had that look since 1988. Every time you've got a