The Last Call

The bear of a man sat at the corner table, his shoulders hunched around a drink he'd been nursing for two hours. Elena watched him from the bar, her palm sweating against the cold glass of her iphone. Three missed calls from David. Three ignored.

An orange wedge slid across the counter as the bartender passed her a fresh vodka soda. 'You okay there, hon?'

She nodded, unable to speak around the knot in her throat. The man in the corner looked up then, and their eyes caught — that sudden electric recognition of two people at their absolute lowest point.

His name turned out to be Marcus. He'd just lost his job of seventeen years. His wife had left him six months ago. He was living out of a suitcase at his sister's place, feeling like the family dog no one wanted anymore — fed and walked occasionally, but fundamentally unloved.

'My husband,' Elena said, and the words felt like broken glass. 'He's in love with someone else. He just hasn't told me yet.'

The iphone lit up again. David's name flashed across the screen like an accusation. Marcus reached across the table, his massive hand covering hers, palm rough against her smooth skin.

'You don't have to answer,' he said, and something about his gentleness nearly undid her.

She answered anyway.

David's voice came through tinny and distant. 'Babe, I think we need to talk.'

Elena looked at Marcus — at this broken man who'd given her more kindness in twenty minutes than her husband had in three years. She thought about the life she'd built, the compromises she'd made, the slow erosion of self that happened so gradually she hadn't noticed until she was nearly gone.

'I know,' she said to the phone, to Marcus, to the empty bar. 'I know we do.'

She hung up before David could respond. The orange garnish had turned brown and sad in her drink. Marcus raised his glass in a silent toast, and somehow, in the wreckage of two lives, something new and uncertain began to bloom between them.