Smoke and Mirrors

Alice told herself she would start dating again once her daughter moved out. It was a pleasant dream because it was a remote dream. Nothing about it required her immediate attention, not when there were pictures to hang on the refrigerator and talent shows to attend. Even after kickball ended and crushes started, when unicorn posters morphed into boy bands and pigtails were cut short and dyed black, an empty nest seemed too distant to worry about.

Then Cecelia was ensconced in a dorm at State and Alice ran out of excuses. Two days later, she found herself outside her favorite bar with the profile of a man named Jim on her cell phone. Her dream's arrival made her question whether she wanted to live it.

Alice found herself envying Miles, the bar’s lumpy bouncer, who slouched against the doorframe with a cigarette in his mouth. Although the autumn weather was turning cold, he wore a black tank top which displayed his cheap tattoos, their ink turning blue and their images flabbed out of focus.

“I thought you weren’t allowed to smoke this close to the door,” she said.

“The state of California says one thing and my boss says another. Only one of them cuts my check.” He held out his pack, a single cigarette extended towards her. “Want to bum?”

“Absolutely.” Alice allowed him to light it for her.

“Where are the girls tonight?”

“Who knows?” Alice took a long drag, savoring the heat as much as the nicotine. Just a few minutes and she would go in, she told herself.

“You seem down.”

“I’m meeting someone.”

“And what? She ran over your cat?”

“A male someone,” said Alice. “For the first time since Nick got locked up.”

“He sounded like a real son of a bitch,” said Miles, ashing his cigarette.

There was the problem, Alice thought. She’d only ever been with one man, and he was a son of a bitch. Alice and Nick, the yearbook had shouted, the couple most likely to live happily ever after. They married straight out of high school and she was pregnant a year later. Nick took a job on a road crew and she went to work as a secretary. A year later, Nick started vanishing after his shift. He’d come home late with puncture marks in his arms and Alice would go to work the next day with a new bruise.

She tried to leave, tried three times, but her mother died, her father wouldn’t have anything to do with her, and her siblings all moved out of state. She couldn’t get it to stick, just kept collecting one broken bone and one apology after another. At last, Nick was arrested breaking into some mansion on the coast. He went away. The divorce stuck. Nick popped in and out of prison, never on the streets long enough to interfere with their life.

Jim was different, she told herself, a software engineer with carpal tunnel syndrome and a love of Indian food. She was different too. She wasn’t some dewy-eyed high schooler convinced she could find true love. Alice was a survivor, a kick-ass single mom who created a real life for her and her daughter. She could do anything she put her mind to, including an internet date. Even if it would be her first in eighteen years.

“Thanks for the smoke,” Alice said, putting her cigarette out in Miles’ ashtray. “Time to face the firing squad.” She pulled her bag to her shoulder, steeled herself, and took a step toward the door.

“Wait just a minute,” said Miles, slamming his arm across her path. His expression turned stern, the same face he made when he was ejecting a rowdy customer. “I’m going to need to see some ID, young lady.”

Alice called him a pig and a fascist, but the two of them couldn’t hold the charade for long. They both broke down giggling. Miles opened the door for her, the motion stretching the tattoo on his shoulder far enough that Alice could see it was a cartoon moose. She took a deep breath. She hoped Jim would make her laugh too.

###

Jim wasn’t funny. He was also considerably more bald than his profile picture, ten years out of date, had implied.

Neil’s profile said he was single. The wedding band falling out of his pants pocket had a different story.

Geoff seemed quite normal. Alice had a soft spot for a British accent and he made her laugh. She agreed to see him again, and then once more. He proposed on the third date. Turned out his visa paperwork wasn’t quite as in order as he had said.

Jaimie whispered sweet nothings into her ear over email and only lewd suggestions in person.

Anibal, a forty-year-old accountant with a 403B, turned out to be Cecelia’s age and living in his mother’s spare room.

Lionel didn’t realize she smoked. Alice, thinking back to creating her profile while Lionel shouted in her face about lung cancer, realized she hadn’t ticked the smoker box. Then Miles wrapped his meaty hands around Lionel’s shoulders and ushered him toward the door.

###

Alice forced herself to go on one last date before Cecelia came home for winter break. She and Eric had been messaging for weeks, part of a careful plot to weed out any deception. She knew the names of his kids. She knew the name of his ex, whose Facebook privacy settings were lax enough to confirm they were actually divorced. This time, Alice would not be mislead.

The weather had taken a brisk turn and she was surprised to see it had gotten to Miles. He wore a garish green-and-red Christmas sweater with the moose from his tattoo clumsily stitched across the front. When he saw her coming, he tapped a cigarette out and offered it to her. Alice waved it off. She wanted to be her best for Eric.

“What’s with the sweater?” she asked. “Present from an aunt who doesn’t like you?”

“Fresh from my workshop,” Miles said. He grabbed onto either side and stretched it flat for her to see. The sweater nearly fell apart from exertion as the yarn strained against its loose stitches.

“You knit?”

“Surprised?”

“Everyone has a secret life,” said Alice, waving her hand at the door.

“Who is it this time?” Miles took a long drag and exhaled slowly. The smoke, heavy in the cold air, swirled around his head.

“I’ve done my research. Tall, handsome, not married, responsible. I think this one might take.”

“Best of luck.” Miles held the door open.

###

An hour later, Miles held the door open again as Eric walked out. Alice moved to the bar and ordered a scotch. After that ordeal, she needed to nurse something with a bit of a kick.

There was nothing wrong with Eric. Nothing hidden, nothing secret, nothing save his complete disinterest in her. They had started with small talk and never moved on. He was polite, well-spoken, and, as quickly became obvious, bored. After an hour, he had stood, shaken her hand like it was a client meeting, and left.

As Alice’s second scotch wound down and the bartender started to cough into her hand, Miles sat on the stool next to her.

“Closing time,” he said.

“I know.”

“Looks like it didn’t work out.”

“This one was supposed to be different,” Alice said. “I did my research. There was nothing wrong with him.”

“That’s where you’re mistaken,” said Miles. “There was something very wrong with him. I didn’t say because I didn’t want to ruin your date.”

“Yeah, what was it? Does he shoot heroin? Is he under investigation by the SEC? Did a judge order him chemically castrated?”

“Nope,” said Miles, resting a hand on her shoulder. “His problem was he’s not good enough for you.”

Alice tried to laugh, but the humor choked into a half-sob in her throat. She thought she didn’t want to cry in front of Miles, but when she turned to look at him--his eyes furrowed, his mouth a slight frown--she realized she’d never wanted to do anything more.

###

“You’re sleeping with the bouncer? Why?” asked Cecelia. She slammed the refrigerator shut, took two steps, then paused to contemplate. “More importantly, how?”

“I’m dating him,” said Alice. She held out her glass. Cecelia poured some wine.

“So you’re not sleeping with him? He can't get it up, can he?”

“Not as far as my daughter needs to know.” Alice tried to be annoyed at the sexual renaissance Cecelia was experiencing at college, but she didn’t have much capacity for that sort of thing anymore. Something about breaking the nest had evaporated all her helicopter instincts, it seemed.

“But he’s old. And fat.”

“I’m old and fat too.”

“Yeah, but not like the bouncer.”

“Stop that. He has a name,” said Alice. “I was hoping you’d be happy for me. Miles is sweet. He knits his own sweaters. He doesn’t lie to me. And he’s the first guy I’ve been with since your father.”

“That reminds me.” Cecelia stopped prancing and straighted her blouse. “Dad’s out again. He called me yesterday. He wants to see you.”

Alice groaned and shook her head. Nobody could ruin her holiday spirit like Nick.

“I know, mom, I know. Please?”

“I told him I never wanted to see him again.”

“He sounds different,” said Cecelia. “Like he found religion or something. Just one meeting. It could be my Christmas present.”

“Fine,” said Alice, “but only if it’s somewhere public.”

###

Miles was wearing another terrible sweater, this one cotton-candy pink with a big orange square across the chest. Alice declared it a second masterpiece as she accepted first a kiss and then a cigarette.

“Who is it this time?” he asked.

“Some big idiot,” said Alice. She looked him up and down. “With an ugly sweater.”

They both laughed. Miles put out his arm and tucked her in, huddling her in close. She enjoyed his softness, his closeness, his warmth, despite the itchy yarn.

“I wish I was here just to see you,” she said after a minute. “I promised my daughter I’d meet Nick. I wanted to do it somewhere familiar.”

“What?” said Miles. For the first time since they’d met, Alice heard a note of fear in his voice.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “You don’t have to talk to him. You don’t even have to meet him.”

Miles’s arms fell away. He looked up the street, as if plotting an escape, then down the other way. He twitched slightly and shook his head. Alice followed his gaze and saw Nick walking up.

“Baby, it’s been too long,” said Nick. His grin was too large for his goatee. He opened his arms and strode toward Alice, who ducked out of the way. “What, you won’t hug me?”

“I didn’t even want to see you,” she said. “This was Cecelia’s idea.”

Nick’s smile wavered. His eyes shifted across her face and Alice saw a shadow of the old times. She wondered where he had been before he came here. Then he traced to Miles.

“Big M!” exclaimed Nick. “I didn’t expect to see you out! How’d you sweet talk the board?”

“You two know each other?” Alice’s surprise overtook her impulse to cold-shoulder her ex-husband.

“We were in Calipatria together, back--what? Sixteen? Seventeen? They say Big M busted some guy so bad the docs had to sew pieces back on. Hey, nice sweater.”

“It was a long time ago, Nick,” said Miles.

“You were in prison?” said Alice. “Together?”

She took one step back, then turned and ran. A block down, she bent over to take off her shoes. When she looked back, she saw Nick trying to follow her and Miles holding him. She took her shoes in her hands and kept running, her bare feet slapping at the cold concrete.

###

Miles called three times that evening. On the third call, Alice picked up. She yelled until he stopped apologizing, then told him never to call again.

Nick called as well. She told him the same thing. Nick called again. And again. And again. He stopped on the same day, surely by coincidence, that Alice saw a notice in the newspaper of an arrest three blocks from her apartment building.

A week stretched into a month, then two. Cecelia went back to school. Nick was arraigned and pled, vanishing into the world behind bars. Alice went out with her friends, always careful to avoid her favorite bar. Miles didn’t call.

The week before Cecelia was due to arrive home for Spring Break, Alice found herself wandering to the bar. She stopped a block away. The weather was turning warm and Miles had ditched his ugly sweaters for his wrinkled blue tattoos. He saw her. They held eye contact. Even across the street she could see him blinking. Slow and steady, like a moose. He didn’t wave or shout.

Alice walked up, her eyes on the ground.

“You didn’t call,” she said.

“You said not to.”

“I don’t like being lied to, Miles.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Why did you?”

Miles heaved himself onto a stool. He leaned his head against the building’s brick facade and gazed at the blue sky.

“I spend all my time these days trying to avoid people like your ex-husband. I used to spend all my time being a person like him.” Miles shook his head, rolling it back and forth against the bricks. “I do whatever I can to be better now. Yoga, karaoke, knitting. Anything that might make the past go away. No matter how many hobbies I collect, I can never be a new person. There are some stains you can’t take away.”

“We’ve all done things we should regret,” said Alice. She picked up Miles’s hand, feeling the calluses across his knuckles. “That’s the difference between you and Nick. He doesn’t regret a thing. He’s not trying to hide who he was because he doesn’t see anything wrong with it.”

“I love you, Alice.” Miles squeezed her hand. “That’s why I lied. I thought once you knew what I had done, you’d want nothing to do with me.”

“I know who you are. You’re the one who stopped calling me after I asked him to.”

“Would you like a smoke?” asked Miles, thumbing a cigarette clear of the pack with his free hand.

Alice nodded, but instead of accepting the smoke, she leaned in for a kiss.