Chapter 27
“I’m a food photographer,” the guy said. “I shoot for the New York Times, Bon Appetit, stuff like that.”
“Huh. That sounds pretty cool,” Willa said, taking a sip of her beer. She was sitting on a stool at Milltown Arms in Cabbagetown next to this 30-something dude in skinny jeans, glasses, a “Sorry I’m Late, I Saw a Dog” T-shirt, and a royal blue hoodie.
“Yeah, it’s a really fun line of work,” he said. “Want to see some of my stuff?”
Willa had about half of a beer left. “Sure.”
He pulled out his iPhone and scrolled, then handed the phone to Willa.
She was looking at a poorly-lit plate of red slop.
“Oh, wow,” she said.
He looked over at the image. “Yeah, that’s from a new barbecue place near Emory. Scroll through if you want to see some more.”
“So you said you shoot for the New York Times?” she asked as she swiped through several more images, including one that was so zoomed in, the food looked like lumpy lava.
“Well, I want to shoot for the New York Times,” he said.
Ah. There it is.
She kept swiping through the photos. And then: “Hey, um. So. This is a photo of a dick.”
He laughed uncomfortably and grabbed the phone, his face reddening.
“Oops,” he said, quickly shutting off the screen. Then he slowly looked up at her, as if he was considering the possibility that she might actually be into it.
“OK, cool, nice to meet you,” Willa said, swallowing down the last of her beer and quickly leaving the bar.
She walked out to the parking lot and climbed into her car, feeling enough of a buzz that she knew she’d need to take some deep breaths, force her eyes wide open, and stay on high alert during the nine-minute drive home. I’ve come a long way, she thought, remembering how her high school teachers had managed to program the students to believe that if they took one drink and drove, they’d crash and die, or at least get a DUI. In those days, before Lyft and Uber or even dependable taxi service in her Connecticut town, they’d all formed Safe Rides teams and stayed sober one weekend a month so they could chauffeur their drunk classmates.
Come to think of it, her school had been really good at scaring the kids into thinking that one bump of coke could make you quit the football team and die of a heart attack, and that if you tried PCP you would most definitely jump off the roof of the school.
Willa wasn’t sure when she started to question and bend those rules. She hadn’t explicitly said no to drugs during high school; they just, miraculously and oddly, weren’t there to say no to.
She smoked her first joint during freshman year of college while listening to Pink Floyd with a paranoid dealer who kept peeking through the blinds in his dorm room. From there it was pot brownies, the marijuana sautéed on a hot plate in the hallway, and a handful of shrooms surreptitiously sprinkled on dining hall pizza. After graduation, she and her boyfriend tried what they then called X, purring while they rubbed shaving cream on each other’s hands but mostly just grinding their teeth and wiping spit from the corners of their mouths until they came down.
Somewhere along the way she’d stretched and degraded the definition of “safe driving.” That bit her in the ass once, when she miscalculated how close she was to a fire hydrant and the bolt of it ripped an enormous hole in her passenger-side door.
Her phone buzzed. It was Pete. “You on your way home?”
She fumbled for the phone and thumbed in the affirmative while keeping an eye on the road.
Willa and Pete operated on mostly independent planes in their social lives, only overlapping when it came to the Hoodbros and Hoodhoneys. That arrangement worked well for both of them. It meant they were never in a situation where one person was having a blast while the other was standing in a corner, telepathically screaming that he or she wanted to go home.
Pete wasn’t good at sitting still; when he drank, he liked to partake in an activity, like video trivia or foosball or pool. He also preferred places that allowed him to smoke. Though he’d given up cigarettes as a stress-reliever about 15 years ago, a pack of Marlboro Reds always seemed to materialize when he was drunk. And he did not dance. Meanwhile, Willa’s preferences occupied two extremes: sitting at a bar for very focused, very long sessions of drinking and conversation, or dancing madly in a sweaty basement club at 1 a.m.
Pete and Willa were at their best when it was just the two of them, laughing as he read aloud to her from McSweeney’s or making obscene gestures at each other in the grocery store. They also thrived as co-parents. When Willa was yelling at a kid about taking a bath for the first time in eight days (“Dude! Your feet smell! It’s disgusting! Get. In. That. Bath!”), Pete knew to soften, and to gently encourage the child to clean himself up.
As she drove home, she saw on her left a bank of modern, new condos. She pictured how clean they must be inside — all white paint and chrome, shiny new flooring, a couch with no stains, a bathroom sink free of toothpaste globs. She found herself imagining what it would be like to live in one of those condos. Working in a sunlit nook during the day, with no interruptions. Hitting the gym at whatever time suited her. No carpool, no helping with homework. Going out wherever, whenever, and however late she wanted to at night. Spending time with whomever she pleased and never having to check in with anyone.
Willa was alarmed by how lovely that all suddenly sounded. She shook her head vigorously to perish the thought, then pulled into her driveway.