Heading under an overpass and onto Oraton Parkway, they blew past a wide building with boarded-up windows. Zig thought it was a factory, but it was really a school.
“Nola, just think about the job, okay?”
“I’m not taking it.”
Zig started to say something, but stopped himself. In half a mile, the road veered again, through a tollbooth that dumped them onto the Garden State Parkway. For the first minute or two, he searched the side of the road for green mile markers, to see how far they were from home. What caught his eye, though, was a sign for something called the Midwood Diner. Next exit.
Since his earliest days as a mortician, Zig knew that there are people you carry with you your entire life. They either help you or haunt you. But as the saying goes, you know you’re on the right path when you stop looking back.
“You hungry?” Zig asked.
Nola thought about it. “I can eat.”
107
Two weeks later
“Close your eyes.”
“They’re closed,” Zig insisted.
“Really closed. Not that fakery where you peek,” Charmaine said. Like any ex-wife, she knew his tricks.
“Char, why would I—？ Look! Closed! Y’happy?” Zig asked, standing in the threshold of his front doorway. Outside, Charmaine was facing him, a big Lululemon bag at her side, resting on the doormat. As she opened it, Zig heard the jingling of the crystal and beaded bracelets on her wrist. Then a clink. Something glass.
“On three,” Charmaine said. “One . . . two . . . voilà.”
From the bag, she pulled out a vintage Waterford crystal decanter—etched glass, sterling silver collar at the top. Zig’s eyes went wide. Growing up, he’d spent every Sunday watching his grandfather fill it with cheap scotch, trying to make it look fancy.
“Whoa. Where’d you find it?”
“In my bar.”
“What’re you talking about? You stole it?”
“Don’t pick a fight,” Charmaine teased, her crow’s-feet deepening as she grinned. She looked stunning as the late summer sun waved goodbye to the sky, bathing her in golden light that made her green eyes glow. “I never stole it. You accidently left it behind. I just decided it liked me better.”
“That sounds like kidnapping.”
“Think of it as me making it a better offer.”
“So like the U.S. government with World War II Nazi scientists.”
“Personally, I tend to dial back Nazi metaphors, but if that’s the hammer you need to make your point, so be it. And you’re welcome. I refilled it.”
She held up the crystal bottle. The liquid’s pale bronze color gave it away. Balvenie 25 Year Single Barrel—the one his grandfather always talked about, but could never afford. The last time Zig got a bottle was a wild night in Vegas that they’d never talked about since the divorce. “To top it off, I pretend buy you those Winston Churchill lowball glasses that we should’ve bought in that antique shop in London.”
Right there, Zig knew what to say. He had the perfect comeback on his tongue—loaded like a catapult—the retort that might make her blush, but would most likely make her lower her chin and cock her eyebrow in that way Zig could already feel in his pants.
Charmaine took a half step closer, handing him the crystal decanter. The thin neck and wide bottom of the bottle had always reminded Zig of I Dream of Jeannie. But right now, as he reached for it, it looked like an oversized pawn.
A light breeze blew through the porch, making the bamboo wind chime sway with a soothing timbre. Zig replayed his line again, but instead of cutting the catapult’s rope, he holstered the comeback, putting it aside. Instead, he went with, “You’re a good person, Charmaine. I pretend buy you something really nice, too.”