“What’s good here?” Gertie fixes Biceps with her best smile.
“Everything’s good. What do you like?”
“I like cocktails, and I like tequila. Can I leave it with you?”
He gives her a half smile. “How do you feel about spice?” (Is he flirting?)
Gertie arches an eyebrow and says, “Not afraid of it.” (Is Gertie flirtingback?)
Biceps grins. “Then yeah, leave it with me. One more bourbon, sir?”
“At least one more,” Timothy says, resenting the heck out of thesir.
While Biceps goes about his work, Timothy gives Gertie abrief sketch of his talk with Amy. By the time he’s done, she has a drink in front of her, and he has a refill.
“So,” says Gertie. “What’s bothering you the most about everything Amy said? That you think she’s wrong and you want her to know it, or that you fear she’s right?”
Timothy thinks about this. It’s an uncomfortable question—it wedges itself underneath his collarbone. More bourbon. He sips; he feels the warmth spread through him.
“A little bit of both,” he says finally. He wants Amy to be wrong. But he fears she may be right. “My mother cried when Hugh Jackman sang to her... happy-sad tears, you know? But overall good tears. So I assumed I’d done something meaningful for her.”
“You did.”
“But now I’m wondering.” He pauses, and Gertie lets the pause play out. When they were married, she would have tried to fill it: she would have told Timothy what she thought he meant. “Now I’m wondering if I didn’t kind of steal those tears from Amy, you know? If she didn’t earn them more than I did, and I swooped in, and I took them.” Gertie still says nothing, so he sips more bourbon. “Do you think I did?”
Gertie tents her fingers on top of the bar and chews her bottom lip. “I mean, when you put it that way...”
Her reaction makes him uncomfortable; he shifts. “So you think I did. I stole them.”
“Not on purpose, Timmy. Of course your intentions were good. But maybe your ego stole from Amy just a little bit.”
“You think I have an ego?”
“Of course you have an ego!”
More bourbon down the hatch, and there’s Biceps again, looking at him questioningly. Timothy nods:one more, yes, please.He’s not driving home, that’s for sure.
“There’s no such thing as an actor without an ego,” Gertie goes on. “I mean, look at us! Always getting up in front of people, asking for their time and attention and their praise. Who do we think we are? We’re looking for people to applaud us, Timmy, over and over and over again. That’s what we all want, whether we admit it or not, every single person who’s ever stepped on a stage or in front of a camera. Watch me, look at me, see what I can do. We’re like seventy-five percent ego, on an average day. And with you, sometimes, darling, your ego takes over when it would be more appropriate for another part of you, like your compassion or your generosity or your love for your sister, which I know is real and true, to drive the bus.”
Timothy considers this. “Really?”
“Sure.”
“Does that happen a lot? With me? More than with other people?”
She sips her drink and considers him. “It happens,” she says. “A lotis a strong phrase. Let’s just say it happens.”
“Why didn’t you tell me any of that when we were married?”
Biceps is looking at his phone at the far end of the bar; Great American Novelist is scribbling away; the customers at one of the tables have left. He and Gertie are practically alone.
“Ha! Is this a conversation you would have wanted to have when we were married?”
“No.”
“Exactly. But I can tell you now. We don’t have to be quite as careful with each other now as we once were.” She places her hand on top of his. He looks at her long fingers—Gertie has such beautiful hands. He remembers so much about those hands, and what they used to feel like on his stomach, in his hair, on the back of his neck. Everywhere else. Before he messed it all up.
“I’m afraid,” he tells Gertie. “I’m afraid I’ve left too many mistakes in my wake.”
