The Wait
by Colin Lubner
“I did this every day for a year. Except for most holidays, and maybe a random day here or there. What I would do is walk a mile to the coffee shop closest to my flat. And then I would walk back.”
They are in Hawaii when he tells her this. Maui—Kihei—in a hotel room that smells like a flower from another planet. Jovian violet, Plutonian wisteria. Minutes ago, he asked her what she missed most from the time before them, and she told him a story about the first dog she had as a kid. And then it was his turn. And now it still is.
“It wasn’t a thing I planned on doing. I just did it one day. I walked there, and then I walked back. I got a mocha, a medium, with almond milk. I remember that.”
They are in bed. The sky out the window is a sort of eggshell color. He rolls over, so he’s only looking at her. She blinks.
“I didn’t think about things. People say they go for walks in order to think, but that’s not me. I just walked there. And then I walked back. I didn’t have a whole lot else to do. This was toward the end of that one part of my life. I was coming out of it, but I wasn’t yet quite in the clear. I was living in a beach town that winter, in a condo my old roommate’s family rented out in the summer months. Waiting it out. I’ve told you about it.”
“I know,” she says. “I know.”
“Anyway,” he says. “I would go for a walk. Rain or shine. Sun or snow. In the winter, the shop was closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, and still I’d go. It got to a point where people would look out for me. They’d look forward to seeing me. There was this one guy, he owned the liquor store, who’d have a donut ready for me on the walk back. He ordered a dozen for his employees, every day. There were always a few left over. He’d wait by the door until I came by. Sometimes I’d take it, but most times I wouldn’t.”
She looks at him. She closes her eyes. She lowers her face into the hollow part of his throat. He can feel the warm, wet pressure of her lips. He puts one arm around her. With his free hand, without looking, he lifts the brochure from where he left it atop the duvet. But he doesn’t open it. Not yet.
He says, “Hey.”
She says, “Hey.”
“I did that for a year. And then I stopped. One day one of the baristas said, ‘I remember the first day you came in. The anniversary is coming up. It’s in about a month. I know the exact date. Do you want to know how I know?’ And then she told me why. There had been a tragedy in her family. One of her aunts had died. It was expected, but that didn’t make it any less hard. So I knew what day I had to stop, and I did. I’ve told you my philosophy about that. You shouldn’t do anything for more than a year that you don’t plan on doing for life. Not if you have any real say in the matter.”
“She could talk,” she says. “Eggy could talk. Like a human. Like you or me. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s true.” Eggy was her first dog. An improbable sort of beagle. He knows most of what there is to know about Eggy. She’s shown him videos over two decades old. Eggy’s talking sounded like a washing machine about to bite it. “I’ll never have that again,” she says. “A dog that can talk.”
He opens the brochure. He reads it for a while. He says, “Hey. How does this sound?” He points at a baby-blue icon in the top right corner of the fold-out map. “Does that sound okay?”
“Mhm,” she says, and closes her eyes.
He closes the brochure. The light has changed.
“Okay,” he says. “I’m hungry, though. Do you want to do room service?”
“I do,” she says, and smiles.
“Okay,” he says. “What do you want?”
“Whatever you’re having,” she says. “I’m fine with whatever you have.”
The menu is on the nightstand. He reads it. He opens the hotel’s app on his phone. He places the order. The wait is twenty minutes. He closes the app. He puts down his phone.
He says, “It’ll be about twenty minutes. They’ll notify us when it’s on the way.”
She wriggles against him. He squeezes her, hard. He kisses her on the nose. They have been married for a week. In fifty-one more it will be a year. A day after that will be a year and a day.
He thinks about when it will get there. He wonders if it will be okay.
Colin Lubner writes from Harlem. You can check in on him on Twitter: @no1canimagine0. He'd love it if you checked in.
