Watching Her Win

I'm 53 years old and I know it, mostly. What I don't need is a woman on a dating app reminding me of it. Her message came in at eleven at night and it was two words. "You're old." That was it. No emoji, no joke, nothing to soften it. I stared at my phone in the kitchen with the fridge humming behind me and I got mad in a way I hadn't gotten mad in years.

Here's the thing, though. She'd matched with me first. Kerri, 49, from Oakley Falls, said she was a grad student, said she liked dive bars and winning arguments. Her profile picture showed a woman with sharp cheekbones and a haircut that was trying too hard, short on one side and long on the other. I'd sent her some message I thought was clever and instead of laughing she'd gone quiet for a day and then hit me with those two words.

I typed back that she was forty-nine pretending to be a student, which was its own kind of old. She answered in about four seconds. "The Flask. Friday. Eight. If you've got the nerve." So here I was, Friday, standing outside this bar near the campus with my hands in my jacket pockets, and I'll admit my stomach was doing something it hadn't done since I was maybe thirty.

The Flask smelled like fryer oil and old beer. The floor was sticky in the way that no amount of mopping ever fixes. There was a pool table against the far wall and a jukebox nobody was using. A guy my age would have blended right in, except the rest of the crowd was college kids, and I felt every year of my life as I walked to the bar.

She wasn't there yet. I ordered a Manhattan because that's what I drink, and the bartender, some kid named Richie with a name tag and an easy smile, looked at it and then at me like I'd ordered a milkshake. "We don't really do those," he said. "I can do whiskey and, uh, sweet vermouth. Close enough?"

"Close enough," I said, and paid too much for it.

She walked in at 8:04. I knew it was her right away because the room bent a little in her direction. She wore a black blouse and dark jeans and that haircut, and she scanned the place like she was checking for exits before she even looked at me. Then she came over, unhurried, and sat down without saying hello.

"Is that a Manhattan?" she said, looking at my glass. "Jesus. Did you bring a smoking jacket too, or is that at the dry cleaner?"

"Nice to meet you too," I said. "What happened to your hair? Did you lose a bet or is that the style now?"

She didn't flinch. I'll give her that. She just leaned her elbow on the bar and turned toward me, and I noticed she had the kind of face that made you want to keep talking even when you knew you were losing. "So you do have the nerve. I honestly didn't think you'd show."

"You called me old. Of course I showed."

"You are old," she said, and she took a sip of whatever she was drinking, some vodka thing with lime. "But old isn't the insult you think it is. The insult is that you came in here like you needed to prove something. That's the part that reads old."

I remember gripping my glass a little harder and telling myself not to say anything I'd regret, and then saying it anyway. Most of the bar had stopped pretending not to watch us by then. A couple of pool players had stopped mid-shot. The place was small enough that any argument carried.

The bartender came down our way wiping glasses and he stuck around longer than he needed to. "You two want another round?" he asked, and he was grinning. I said no thanks and Kerri said, "He can't handle another round," and the bartender laughed like that was the best thing he'd heard all week.

That was when the third one showed up. A younger woman, 28 maybe, I found out later her name was Paige and she was in some grad program with Kerri, slid onto the stool on Kerri's other side like she'd been invited, which apparently she had. She had a scarf on even though the bar was warm.

"So you're Nathan," she said, looking me up and down. "She told me all about you. Well. All about the fight, anyway."

"There hasn't been a fight," Kerri said. "Yet."

"There's been a fight," Paige said. "You two have been going back and forth for two days. I read half of it over her shoulder. It was better than my coursework." She flagged Richie down and ordered a cider. Then she swiveled her stool so she was facing both of us like a referee. "Okay. I have an idea, and you're both going to hate it and then love it, because I know you both."

Kerri said, "If this is the truth or dare thing from Jen's party, no."

"It's not. It's simpler. One minute each. He does what you say for one minute. Then you do what he says for one minute. No backing down, no complaining. Then we see where the night goes." She looked very pleased with herself. "I'll be the witness. Richie can time it. Richie, can you time it?"

Richie, still wiping the same glass, said, "I can time it. You two look like you need the help."

I looked at Kerri. She looked at me. The truth is that the whole walk over I'd been half hoping she'd be someone I could laugh with for an evening and half hoping she'd be exactly this, exactly the problem she turned out to be. There was a game now and I did not want to be the one who folded first. I'm old, apparently, but I'm not a coward.

"I'm in," I said.

Kerri smiled, and it was the first real smile of the night and it did something to my chest I didn't want to think about. "Of course you're in. Fine. Me first, since I'm the one who set this up."

"You set this up?" I said. "You called me old and I answered."

"You walked into my bar."

"It's not your bar."

"It's my town," she said, and Paige laughed out loud at that, and Richie, who was holding his phone out like a stopwatch, said, "Starting now!"

Kerri turned on her stool so she was fully facing me, and she took her time about it, and the bar went quiet in that way small bars do when everybody decides at once to eavesdrop. She reached out and moved my Manhattan two inches further away from me.

"Drink water for one minute," she said. "Nice and slow. Sip it like a good boy, and look at me while you do it, and don't say a word."

I could feel the whole bar watching. Richie had the timer going. Paige had her chin on her hand like she was at a movie. I picked up the water glass, and my hand was steady, which I was grateful for, and I held her eyes and drank. The water was cold and I could hear it going down and I could hear her breathing, slow and even, like she was enjoying every second. Somewhere behind me the pool players had completely given up on their game.

Thirty seconds. I put the glass down and picked it up again because she hadn't said I could stop, just kept drinking, kept looking. She had gray coming in at her temples, just a little, right at the edge of that haircut, and I made a point of looking at it, and something flickered across her face when she noticed me notice.

"Time," Richie said.

"Good boy," Kerri said, quiet, just for me, and I felt it land somewhere below my belt, which annoyed me more than anything she'd said all night.

"Again," Paige said. "Best of three. Kerri goes first again, she earned it."

I opened my mouth to argue and Paige leaned in. "Oh, this is the good part!"

Kerri took a sip of her vodka thing with lime and thought about it for longer than she needed to, which I was learning was just how she did everything. "Stand up," she finally said. "Push your chair in. Stand next to your stool, hands at your sides, and turn around slowly. Twice. Like you're on display, because you are." I don't know what I expected from her, but it wasn't that. My face went hot before I even moved. Paige made a little sound into her cider. "You heard her," Paige said. "No backing down. Rules are rules!" I stood up. My knees cracked, because I'm 53 and that's just a fact of my life now, and everybody heard it, and Kerri's mouth twitched.

I pushed the chair in. I stood there next to the stool with my hands at my sides like an idiot at an auction, and I started turning. The bar was not big. There were maybe eleven people in it, counting Richie, and every one of them was watching me rotate like a rotisserie chicken. An old guy at the end of the bar raised his beer at me when I came around the second time. I completed both turns and Kerri said, "Again," and Richie said, "That's not really in the spirit of the, oh, whatever, keep going," and I did one more, slow, and by the end of it my ears were burning and I was, and I hate to admit this, hard.

Not fully. But getting there, in my good slacks, in a bar full of strangers, because a 49 year old woman told me to spin. She looked me over when I stopped, the way you'd look at a used car, and she said, "Huh. Better than I expected," and sat back like she was done with me. "Sit down, Nathan. Your minute's coming." I sat. Richie called time. My heart pounded as if I'd run stairs. Paige was grinning into her scarf. "That was incredible," she said. "Kerri, he didn't even argue."

"He's learning," Kerri said. "Slowly." The thing was, standing there turning in circles, the only thing I could feel besides the embarrassment was her eyes on me, tracking me the whole way around, and I wanted more of it, which is a screwed up thing to want and I know that. "Okay," I said. "My turn." She raised her eyebrows, glass halfway to her mouth, waiting. I thought about making her do the spin thing back at her, but that felt like copying homework. I thought about making her chug water, but that was hers too. So I went with the thing I'd actually wanted since I sat down, which was simpler and worse. "Come sit on my lap," I said. "Sideways, like a chair's not meant to hold a person. Put your arm around my neck. And tell me something true, right in my ear, quiet, something nobody else in this bar gets to hear. One full minute of talking." The bar made a collective noise, half laugh half gasp. Paige actually put both hands over her mouth. Kerri didn't move for a second. I watched her decide. I watched the exact moment she decided she wasn't going to be the one who folded, and something in her jaw set, and she slid off her stool with her vodka thing still in her hand, handed it to Paige, and crossed the two feet to me like she was walking to a podium. "Scoot back," she said. I scooted. She sat down on my lap sideways, and she was not a small woman and not a light one and my thighs registered all of it immediately. Her arm went around my neck. Her breath was on my ear already, warm, and she smelled like vodka and