“Actually, it’s great. He’s more complicated than I realized. More human.”
When they got to the brewery, it was brighter inside than Alice would have liked. Classic rock bled from the speakers. The smell of fried food filled their nostrils. A stage had been set up against one wall with the tables angled toward it. A half hour before the show was due to begin, the brewery was filling up. Oliver wasn’t there yet.
“Did Oliver reserve a table for you?”
Gabby shook her head no. She spotted a small empty table in the middle of the room and walked toward it. “I guess we should have gotten here earlier. Will he be able to see us all the way back here from the stage?”
Alice suspected not but didn’t say so.
“It’s probably better if he doesn’t,” Gabby decided. “I don’t want to make him nervous.”
It seemed unfair, this pressure Gabby was putting on herself for Oliver to succeed. “Let’s try to have fun,” Alice suggested, offering to buy her a drink.
“Club soda,” Gabby shouted over the music. “I don’t trust wine at breweries.”
Alice was perched at the bar, waiting to place their order with the bartender, when Oliver arrived. She watched him scan the room. Gabby waved eagerly to him as his eyes passed over her, settling on a table of men dressed in similar plaid shirts and boot-cut jeans seated beside the stage. Oliver joined them. Alice took in the scene, dread settling in her stomach, as Gabby self-consciously brushed her hair with the hand she’d just used to wave and scanned the room to see if anyone had noticed the slight.
Oliver gave a few of the scraggly-haired men high fives and clapped others’ shoulders. Alice’s attention switched between Oliver and Gabby, alone at the table, pretending not to watch him. Eventually, he got up and walked over to Gabby’s table. He kissed her cheek, gently massaged her shoulders as he sat down. Gabby glowed, nodded too forcefully. When he stood, Gabby stood too, giving him a dramatic kiss that seemed to embarrass him. He returned to the men.
At last Alice ordered herself a cider, Gabby a club soda, and made her way back to the table. Gabby was focused on her cuticles, which she was picking, even though she was not the type to pick or bite her nails.
They sat quietly for a few minutes as Alice searched for the right thing to say. Everything reassuring sounded like a lie. Everything else seemed like a distraction. Fortunately the lights dimmed, and one of the men sitting with Oliver bounded onto the stage.
“How’s everybody doing tonight?” he breathed into the microphone, pacing the small stage as he heckled the audience. He wore a Santa hat even though it was still a couple of weeks until Christmas. The emcee told some benign jokes about the holidays with family and a few softballs aimed at a table of women who revealed themselves to be on a bachelorette weekend, made quips about first dates before pronouncing it time for someone funnier to take the stage. The first comic started her routine with the myriad questions guys asked her about being a redhead.
“You know what they never ask me?” She stopped pacing to cast a no-nonsense gaze at the audience. “Whether my kids are redheads.”
The crowd laughed more enthusiastically than the joke warranted, which continued to be the case throughout the next two sets. It’s not that they weren’t funny. They were just your-funny-friend funny. Not stand-up-in-front-of-a-room-and-make-a-career-out-of-it funny. Alice felt a new dread, one she hadn’t considered before—what if Oliver bombed?
When it was his turn, Gabby clenched Alice’s hand. Oliver kept his head down as he climbed onto the stage, looking a bit sheepish.
“Oh, God, he’s nervous,” Gabby said.
He cleared his throat and tentatively looked up. “How’s everyone doing tonight?” he said weakly.
Gabby gripped Alice tighter. “He’s so nervous.”
“So, my girlfriend says I tell jokes like her grandfather.” He used the microphone as the top of a cane and pretended to be hunchbacked, launching into a harmless story of an old man talking about kidney stones. Everyone laughed. Gabby’s grip loosened. Oliver returned his microphone to the stand and began his routine in earnest.
“Actually, my girlfriend is here tonight, and it’s the first time she’s seeing me perform.” Oliver mimed biting his nails, and the audience made various sounds of encouragement. “Gabs, where are you? There she is,” he said when the spotlight found Gabby, who was blinded momentarily. The light returned its attention to Oliver. “I know what you’re all thinking, how did someone like me landthat.”
Alice did not like the way he saidthat. Gabby’s hand flinched in hers.
Oliver proceeded to make a few self-deprecating jokes about how he didn’t have any money, wasn’t particularly well-endowed—Gabby flinched again—wasn’t a gifted dancer or cook. In bed, as in most parts of life, he was only a little better than average. “So how, you may ask, does a slightly above average man like me lock down a woman like that?” Alice braced herself for patter about her gift and the hummingbird story, a joke at her expense. And then he said, “Vanity.”
After a few moments of relief that she was not his target, she understood that it was far worse. Gabby’s grip continued to tighten as Oliver told a joke about how it took Gabby ninety minutes to get ready anytime they went anywhere. “Even when she’s just going downstairs to get the mail. I’m lucky if I remember to put on pants to get the mail. But my girl, she’s dressed in Gucci and stilettos before she steps foot in the hall. So my question is, what exactly is in the mail that’s so important it requires club attire?”
He launched into a few seemingly innocuous jokes about how Gabby could rationalize anything involving numbers: unusual weather patterns (“I didn’t realize I was living with a meteorologist”), the need for chocolate (“I’m already taking cover by the time the wordslowandblood sugarexit her mouth”), bad tipping (“Only monsters and people who have never worked in the service industry tip on the total before taxes”). His jokes didn’t seem particularly funny, but everyone was laughing as he turned Gabby into a caricature of herself. Her grip was making Alice’s fingers throb from constricted blood circulation. Alice knew better than to look over at her. Whatever facade of calmness Gabby was wearing would crumble the minute she locked eyes with Alice.
“You know what it doesn’t take her ninety minutes to get ready for? Going to the dry cleaners. That’s ’cause she’s all like,Babe, and I’m down the block before I even know what hit me. You guys know what I’m talking about,Babe,babe,babe.” Each time he said the word, he gave a coy little shoulder shrug, placing his hand on his hip. “What it is about that wordbabe?” He made the awful motion again. “It’s like hypnosis. It’s a more powerful weapon than withholding sex.Babe, will you stop by my mom’s house and walk her dog.Babe, I think I may have thrown out my favorite lipstick. Will you rummage through the dumpster and find it?Babe, will you drive to LA to get me that smoothie I really like? Oh, and will you make sure it doesn’t get too warm on the way home? Then can you drive to Ojai to get that lotion that makes my skin smell exactly like the lotion they sell at the drugstore here except it has to be the one from Ojai that’s artisanal and costs three-point-three repeating times as much. Rounded down, not up.” Oliver laughed with the crowd and then his face grew serious. “All jokes aside, I love this woman. Gabs, will you come up here? Just try not to take ninety minutes, because I have to be off the stage in about thirty seconds.”
The light found Gabby again. She stood, gave the crowd a Miss America wave, and sauntered up to the stage. This was not the response Alice expected. It wasn’t that Gabby didn’t have a sense of humor or was unwilling to make fun of herself. Oliver’s routine wasn’t funny. It was laced with too much truth, too many ways only someone who knows you intimately can turn your quirks into failings.
Oliver went to kiss her on the lips. Gabby offered her cheek instead and whispered into his ear. He continued to smile as she spoke to him, but his eyes went a little dead. Gabby, Alice understood, was furious.
She held Oliver’s hand as they walked off the stage together. Then she dropped it and walked steadily toward Alice. The smile on her face vanished. Her eyes were watering slightly, but she wouldn’t cry.
“Let’s get out of here,” Gabby said, heading for an exit sign in the back.
