The Salad Course

The hat sat on the table like a dead thing. Marcus's hat, actually—a tweed flat cap he'd worn ironically to the Christmas party, now gathering dust beside the bread basket. He hadn't worn it since December, hadn't been much of anything since the promotion.

This wasn't how friendship was supposed to look at thirty-seven.

"You're quiet tonight," Julia said, not looking up from her phone. Her thumbs moved rapidly, responding to emails that surely could wait until tomorrow.

"Just thinking," I said, pushing spinach around my plate.

The dinner was supposed to celebrate Marcus's new VP role. Six of us, gathered at an overpriced Italian place where the wine list required a second mortgage. But the man of honor was forty minutes late, and Julia was already three drinks in, and the spinach—perfectly sautéed, probably—tasted like disappointment in my mouth.

I checked my iphone. Nothing from him. Just a notification about my credit card bill and a weather alert for tomorrow.

"He's not coming," Julia said finally, setting down her phone. The screen had gone dark, a mirror reflecting her carefully neutral expression. "He's with HER."

We both knew who she meant. The new senior analyst, twenty-four, with the kind of optimism that hadn't been beaten out of her yet.

"He said he'd be here," I said, knowing how pathetic it sounded. How long had I been making excuses for him? Three years? Four? Since we were both mid-level managers making jokes about the quarterly reports in the breakroom?

"He also said we were friends," Julia said, reaching for the wine bottle. "Friends don't leave friends waiting at restaurants on Tuesday nights."

She poured. The red liquid caught the light, beautiful and terrible.

"I've got something in my teeth, don't I?" I asked suddenly.

Julia looked at me, really looked at me, for the first time all night. She smiled—a small, genuine thing that reached her eyes.

"Spinach," she said. "Left side. Has been since the appetizers."

"You didn't tell me?"

"I was waiting to see how long you'd go before you stopped performing for people who don't give a shit." She gestured at the empty chair, at Marcus's abandoned hat. "We're all just wearing costumes anyway."

I excused myself to the restroom. There, under fluorescent lights that showed everything, I picked the spinach from my teeth. My phone buzzed—Marcus, finally. A screenshot of his calendar: "Dinner w/ team — changed to team building tomorrow, hope u understand!"

I deleted it.

When I returned to the table, Julia was paying the bill.

"We're getting tacos from that truck by the metro," she said. "Come with me. No work talk. No hats."

I left Marcus's tweed cap on the table. Let it gather dust with his excuses.