Nicole! Louisa here. Not sure what time you’re eating but any chance you want to grab a quick drink in town tonight after dinner?
The answer comes back so fast it seems like their texts could have collided in the air.Yes please. Just got home and already dying to get out.(The text is heavy on the emojis: winky face, smiley face, party hat.)I’ll pick you up at seven-thirty.
At seven-thirty sharp, Nicole appears at the door. She has changed out of her belted dress and into teeny-tiny shorts and a flowy silk tank top. Her legs are firm and tan, and she’s pulling off wedge sandals and shorts with aplomb.Southern ladies,thinks Louisa, feeling pallid and flat-haired. Her summer dress, which looked bohemian in the Pink Room mirror, now feels stodgy and maternity-like.
“You want to drive?” says Louisa. “Or should I?” She’s not sure if Nicole is a big drinker or not. Back in the day, sure, neither one of them said no to some purloined vodka mixed with lemonade. But Nicole might have turned into a health nut. Look at her skin—it’s glowing!
“I figured we’d take an Uber. Girls’ Night Out, right?”
“Oh!” says Louisa. “Oh. Got it.” So not a total health nut. And this is not merely a night out, this is a Night Out. She recalculates. The air has that feel particular to Maine in summertime—the sudden cooling of the day, the fog like a curtain over the water, the change in atmosphere that feels like teenage promise even though Louisa hasn’t been a teenager in two decades. She thinks about Steven out celebrating the Poddie nominations and she says, “What the heck? Let’s do it, all the way. Girls’ Night Out.”
Nicole whips out her phone.
In the Uber they decide on Myrtle Street Tavern, because it’s one of the only places in town with live music. Sure enough, there’s a band setting up, and a massive group of fortysomething women, mostly blond, in white jeans and tank tops; they look like they’re ready to take over the dance floor as soon as the music starts. Nicole and Louisa sit at the bar and order two vodka tonics. One of the white jeans ladies comes up next to Louisa and leans on the bar. “Another round of the same tequila shots, please,” she says. “Thirteen. Put it on my tab. You have my credit card. Sherri Griffin.” She lowers her voice and whips her head around toward her friends and back again and then she says, “How much will that be, by the way?”
“Ninety-one,” says the bartender.
“Okay.” The woman looks worried. To her hands she says, “I think we’re splitting it up after...”
“You still good to go?” asks the bartender. “Or you want to go lower shelf?”
“Oh, no, gosh no. The ladies wouldn’t like that. I’m good to go.” She produces a wobbly smile and glances at Louisa. She’s pretty when she smiles, although the worried divot remains in the center of her forehead. “We all have thirteen-year-old girls home in Massachusetts, and we’re on a two-night getaway. Trust me, we need these shots.”
“I have a thirteen-year-old girl!” says Nicole.
“Ihave an almost thirteen-year-old boy!” says Louisa. “And theylikeeach other,” she adds, motioning back and forth between herself and Nicole. “Her girl and my boy.”
“Awwww,” says Sherri. “That’s adorable.” She looks more closely at Louisa and Nicole, as if trying to decide if they are people she can confide in, and then she says, “I’m the newest member of this group. It’s the first time I’ve been invited overnight. I don’t want to do anything wrong.”
“Fourteen shots,” says the bartender. He starts to put them on a cocktail tray. “Here’s the first bunch. You might need to come back for the rest of them.”
“Oh, I—” Sherri starts to say something, but the bartender has already turned away to line up the rest of the shot glasses.
“Excuse me!” calls Louisa. “Bartender!” He turns around. “She only ordered thirteen. Make sure you don’t charge her for the fourteenth.”
“Thank you,” whispers Sherri. She palms the tray and steadies it with her other hand—clearly this is not this woman’s first time in a bar—before making her way back to her group.
The bartender shrugs. “Got it.” He pushes the extra shot toward Louisa and Nicole. “One of you two want this?”
“Definitely not,” says Louisa.
“I’lltake it,” says Nicole. She throws back the shot, then looks at Louisa expectantly—she looks like one of Louisa’s students, waiting for her to start the lecture.
“Soooo...” says Louisa. (What do you say to someone you haven’t seen in twenty-three years?) She settles for, “Tell me about Nashville.”
Almost instantly, Nicole starts crying. “Sorry!” She plucks a napkin from behind the bar and blows her nose with an indelicacy that contrasts heartily with her silk tank top and expensive perfume. “Sorry. It’s not really all that bad. Nashville is a great town!Amazing music. Amazing food, blah blah, just like everyone says, super hot in the summer but the flowers bloom just about all year long. I’m going through some things with my husband, and oh, who am I kidding, I know we’re headed for a divorce, and that’ll bethreedivorces, and I’m not even forty. But it’s fine. It’s totally fine. I’m sorry.” She lets out a big puff of air and says, “To be honest, Richard thinks the sun comes up just to hear him crow. I think it’ll be good for me, once we’re separated. Good for Hazel too. But three divorces! I just can’t get over what a failure that makes me feel like.”
Louisa slides a clean cocktail napkin in front of Nicole and says, “Mark Harding has had two divorces. And he’s our age. He seems pretty normal. Sometimes things just happen, and they may not be your fault. Sometimes you have to go easy on yourself.”
“MarkHarding?”says Nicole. She blows her nose and dabs at her eyes and somehow, due to magic mascara or a lot of practice crying in public, her makeup looks just as fresh as it did in the driveway at Ships View. “Holy smokes, there’s a name I haven’t thought of in years. Mark Harding, huh? You keep in touch with him?”
“No. I haven’t been. But I ran into him this summer, sort of randomly. He’s up here full-time, you know. He’s adetective.”
“A detective!” Nicole whistles. “Impressive.”
“Not what I would have guessed for him.”
“Me either. I would have thought, I dunno. High school principal?” Nicole finishes her drink and signals the bartender for two more. Louisa, realizing she’s behind, tries to drink faster without gulping. “That was my first heartbreak, when Mark chose you over me. Oh, I cried and I cried over that.”
