Hours later, Jen’s new best friend is hauling her scooter up into the bed of his F-150 SuperCrew, while Jen debates explanations to Jace. The rain has softened to a steady beat of fat drops and the band of clouds lightens the starless sky to an inky indigo. Jen stands under the awning, victim to stray drops, watching Mikolaj grow progressively soaked as he strains under the exertion. She is glad for the rain, because it’s causing wisps of his hair to escape the elastic and curl slightly, making him somehow seem less smooth and together; less dangerous. She offers to help but he refuses, and truthfully, her scrapes are burning despite the bountiful wine and tender ministrations.
She is dreading their arrival at her river retreat, because Jace has been out drinking, and will make far too much of it all. If he’s even home when they get there. If she knew he’d be home soon, she would stay at Alby’s and claim inebriation—which would be true, to a point. But then he’d make a big deal about it and come out to get her and make her leave the scooter there because it wouldn’t fit in the car. And the next time she’d want to go out to Alby’s, he’d make a remark about whether she could control herself enough to make it home and give her a million reasons not to go. And Chris would miss her in the morning.
But if Jen shows up with this gorgeous guy who’s a dead ringer for Marty—the guy Jace is the most jealous of in the world—well, there’ll be a grand inquisition. Either way, she’s feeling a little sick. Sick of confrontation. Part of her also knows it sucks to be the guy who she is prejudicing with predictions of asshole behavior; that it’s not fair at all, but it seems to be how she rolls these days.
Mikolaj closes the truck gate and walks up to Jen, pulling the shawl Alby has lent her more tightly around her shoulders to ready her for the rain. She feels like a child, but it’s a nice feeling; one she can’t exactly recall from her own childhood. Alby and Rosemary come out to the stoop to send Jen off with hugs, and she thanks the creator or whoever for the friends she doesn’t deserve.
When she attempts to climb into the giant truck, she grimaces as she tries to lift her leg for momentum. Mikolaj comes over to give her a boost. Then he hops into the other side of the cab and cranks the engine to life. Jen has a flash thought that she doesn’t even really know this guy as he peels out of Alby’s driveway, but since she also feels like she’s known him forever, she’s not sure she’d mind an abduction about now.
Keith Jarret flows through the premium speakers, and Jen marvels at the combination of big truck and experimental jazz. This guy seems to house all the gods and goddesses within. A terrifying concept. She sinks into the rhythm of the wipers as the countryside oozes by, punctuated by piano flourishes, and feels high. They are silent, except for the low throaty tones of Mikolaj humming to the song, or rather, in some kind of riff-ish counterpoint to the song. Death and the Flower indeed. Normally, the silence would be unnerving to Jen. Somehow with Mikolaj, it’s just right, and she is able to banish the impulse for small talk.
They’ve talked enough tonight. He has extracted more from her over a few bottles of wine with the girls than she’s likely uttered to Jace in the entire last year—possibly the lifespan of their marriage. She marvels at how easy that seemed for him, and how easy it was for her to tell a stranger all the secrets of her soul.
When he gets to the River Road, he turns left instead of right and pulls into the little park that overlooks the river. Jen tenses, but doesn’t protest. The idea of a surreptitious make out session at one of her teen haunts is both surreal and exciting. But Mikolaj has something entirely different in mind.
“So, we need to get this Robert thing sorted out before I drop you off,” he rumbles, killing the engine.
Jen is a little stunned by both his boldness and the tact he’s taking.
“Why,” she asks.
“Because you need to get straight with yourself,” he says, turning to her to smile, as if the smile would soften the verdict.
“What do you know about Robert?” Jen says.
“I gathered from tonight enough about Robert to say that in the morning I want you to pick up the phone and call him and apologize for being a self-absorbed asshole seven years ago and to own that fact that you were scared and clinically depressed and that you hadn’t yet learned how to be a good friend. I want you to do this so that you stop mentally beating the shit out of yourself every time you see a guy in a wheelchair.”
“What’s it to you, anyway. Leave me be with my ghosts and my guilt,” Jen shoots back, flushed, furious and deeply embarrassed.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t ask you if you would take the coaching. Will you take the coaching?” he says, leaning forward to hold her face in his hands. Tears flood down her face and she wonders if this is what he was after as he folds her into his arms like a lost little lamb. His clothes are wet but she can feel the warmth beneath, the waves of trembling energy soaking into her skin like an infusion. There’s a tingling feeling as if their ions are exchanging information, and also a sense of deep release. She could float in this embrace forever. But he pulls away, and holds her face again, just staring at her, as if she already knows whatever his words are. He won’t let her look away.
“Yes,” she whispers. “I’ll take the coaching.”
He smiles and turns to start the engine. Jen is left trying to figure out what just happened. She has, it appears, become a project.
They pull into the lane mere seconds before Jace, and Jen sighs and prays he won’t make a scene. Mikolaj is helping her down out of the truck cab as Jace’s headlights hit them. She’s sure it must look like he’s just being chivalrous, and as if she’s too drunk to extract herself from the truck.
Jace turns the car off and gets out, looking a little unsteady himself. Before Jen even has a chance to gather her thoughts and introduce them, Mikolaj steps forward and extends his hand.
“Jace, I’m Mikolaj, Alby’s neighbor. Your wife had a spill on her scooter earlier tonight, so I am bringing the patient and offending vehicle home. Would you mind helping me get it off the truck?”
Jace looks at Jen and she nods so he follows Mikolaj to the truck gate and the pair lower the bike to the ground. It seems to involve more struggle than Jen recalls when Mikolaj loaded it himself, but she suspects the invitation is the “man way” of saying “I’m not screwing your wife; I mean you no harm.”
“So what happened, are you okay?” Jace asks her, somehow sounding a little phony or off-center. Like he has an audience.
“I wiped out turning into Alby’s lane. I’ve got a few patches of road burn, but they cleaned me up,” Jen says.
“Those damned wheels are too small, I keep telling you!” He turns to Mikolaj and thanks him.
“No worries. I’m sure you’d do the same for me,” Mikolaj says, getting into the truck and giving me a nod and a salute.
It hits Jen that in a million years, Jace would never do the same for him. That it is his essential weakness in the face of trouble, his constant refusal to get involved, his relentless blame and shifting of responsibility, that has eaten up all Jen’s love for him. And in the same instant she realizes that he holds within him this incredible and all-consuming fear that, as his father always told him, he will never be good enough. From this well of anxiety flows all of his false bravado and meanness in the guise of humor and concern about looking good instead of being good. But what’s Jen’s excuse?
So she gets it, finally, like the skies parting above her to allow a sliver of moon through the clearing night. She looks over at him, standing, wavering a little, seeming slightly stunned, hair damp and glasses fogged—he leans toward the bike, as if to walk it into the garage ¬ but then straightens and sputters:
“He looks just like Marty.”
And Jen’s heart breaks for him, even as she nods and takes his hand and pulls him toward her for a long overdue embrace that carries none of the ionic exchange of Mikolaj but that nonetheless is ripe with sex.