Oh — god, the t-shirts, don't even. Kessler's cousin had that whole operation in the garage on Fenwick, screen printing bands that never toured within four hundred miles of us, and he'd sell them out the back like it was—
Anyway. You still owe me for the one he ruined, the one with the wrong tour dates on it. Never got over that, honestly.
Don’t push it, Lena. You bought that shirt for three bucks at a swap meet in ’98, not some limited edition release from a garage press. Kessler’s cousin? You mean Dave? The guy who couldn’t print a straight line without smudging the ink on his knuckles? I gave you the shirt, you wore it to that awful reunion where you tried to explain your "philosophy" to a room full of people who were just waiting for the buffet to open. And I bought a drink after. That’s the transaction. You’re trying to rewrite history because you feel guilty about how you laughed at his "art." I remember the dates wrong? The dates were on the back, in Comic Sans, Lena. You knew exactly what you were wearing.
Comic Sans — okay, fine, I'll give you that, it was hideous, but that's not the point. The point is you're the one who won't let the buffet thing go. That was a work function, Marc, I had thirty seconds to explain what I did for a living before Denny Faro cornered me about his boat.
And "gave" — you didn't give me anything, you traded it for my lighter, the good one, the one shaped like a fish. Don't act like it was charity.
Anyway Dave's dead now I think. Or in Reno. One of those.
The fish lighter was worth more than the shirt, sure, but you were the one who swiped it from my desk drawer when I was distracted by that quarterly report nobody reads anyway. And Denny Faro? He’s still chasing boats, Lena, he hasn’t moved on. He’s probably still trying to sell people on his "investment opportunities" involving marinas that don’t exist. As for Dave… I heard he’s in Reno, running a cheap motel or something equally soul-crushing. Not dead, thank god, because then we’d have to go to the funeral, and you’d cry, and I’d have to pretend I cared. I don’t. Not really. I just liked the shirt. Even with the dates wrong. Especially with the dates wrong. It was accurate, in a way. Those tours never happened.
That's the thing though — nothing about that band happened the way it was supposed to. They broke up before the second record even got pressed, and Dave printed the dates off some flyer he found in a box, half of it was fiction to begin with. So really the shirt was accurate to a lie. Fitting.
I wouldn't cry at Dave's funeral. I'd cry at the reception after, when someone brought bad potato salad and started a toast nobody asked for. That's when it gets me. Never the actual event.
Denny still owes me forty bucks from that boat thing, by the way. I'm not chasing it. Just saying it's out there.
Potato salad. Always the potato salad. It’s the mayonnaise that gets you, thick and stale, sitting under fluorescent lights while someone with a microphone talks about "legacy." I’d laugh. Or cry. Hard to tell the difference after forty years. As for Denny… if he still has forty bucks, he’s got a boat. A real one, not one of his imaginary debt-free yachts. I’d bet my left kidney on it. You letting it go? That’s new. You usually keep tabs on every dime, every slight, every Comic Sans shirt. Did he finally admit it? Or did you just decide that四十 bucks isn’t worth the energy of hating a man who can’t balance a checkbook?
Neither, really — I just ran out of hating him for cash reasons and started hating him for the boat itself. Have you seen it? He docked it at Pearson's last summer, forty feet of nothing, and stood next to it in a windbreaker like a Kennedy. That's a bigger crime than the forty bucks.
I keep tabs on the important stuff. The shirt matters. The lighter matters. Forty bucks from a man who thinks marina is a woman's name — not worth the ledger space.
You should've seen his face when the harbor guy asked for his slip fee, though. Almost worth the price of admission on its own.
Pearson’s. Of course it was Pearson’s. The only place left where the water smells like diesel and regret. I saw him. The windbreaker was navy, obviously. He looked like a confused accountant who’d stolen a yacht. And the slip fee? Please. Denny doesn’t pay fees; he negotiates. He probably started quoting poetry about the sea to the guy until he walked away, or paid in IOUs. You think I don’t know how he operates? I’ve been watching him spin coins into dollars since college. But yeah, the forty bucks was a petty amount for such a grand insult. The shirt, though. I still have the fish lighter, Lena. It’s on my desk. Next to the quarterly report nobody reads. I don’t use it. Just look at it. Reminds me that once, somewhere, we were thieves. Not just liars. Thieves. That’s rarer.
Thieves is generous. We were two people who took things off desks and called it fate.
Still — good, keep it. Better there than in some junk drawer with dead batteries and a church key. Mine's probably in a box in the storage unit on Delway with everything else I haven't looked at since the move. I keep meaning to go through it. Every year I say that.
Denny quoting poetry to a harbor guy — I believe it completely, and I hate that I do. He tried that once at a bar with a bouncer, something about tides, got thrown out anyway. Poetry doesn't work on men who lift kegs for a living, Marc. Never has.
Keepsake. That’s the word you want, isn’t it? But you’re wrong about the drawer. It’s in the glovebox of the sedan, the one with the broken AC that still runs if you hit the dashboard at a specific angle. You know this. You helped me hide it there when I got too nervous about the audit at work—the boring, soul-sucking one where they count paperclips. And as for Denny’s poetry… the bouncer didn’t throw him out because of the tides. He threw him out because he tried to pay with a library card. You’re embellishing again, Lena. You always did have a flair for the dramatic, even when the drama was just two guys trying to get past a velvet rope. The storage unit on Delway is probably filled with your "important stuff," which is mostly just broken toasters and mismatched socks. You’re afraid to open it because you’ll find out you’ve been carrying junk for twenty years. I know you. I know the smell of that cardboard box. It smells like dust and missed opportunities. And frankly, I’m relieved the lighter is safe. If it were in that box, I’d never forgive you.
Library card — no. No, I remember that night, and it wasn't a library card, it was worse, it was his gym membership, laminated, with a photo where he looked like he was being arrested. I was there, Marc, I watched the bouncer turn it over twice like it might explain itself.
And don't start on the storage unit. There's a lamp in there that was my grandmother's, actual brass, worth something, so no, not all toasters and socks. Some of it's real. I just don't need it in front of me to know it's mine.
You're the one who wanted the audit story left out of this, by the way. Funny how it keeps sneaking back in.
Gym membership. Fine. I’m glad I’m the one with the bad memory, so I can pretend I don’t recall the smell of that place. Stale sweat and desperation. And the lamp… sure, your grandmother’s brass lamp. The one that’s probably missing the finial and covered in grime from a decade of neglect. You say it’s not in front of you to know it’s yours. Convenient. It’s easier to pretend objects have value when you can’t weigh them in your hand. As for the audit—don’t flatter yourself. I brought it up because it’s boring, and boring is the only thing that keeps this conversation from spiraling into another one of your "fate" metaphors. I don’t need to hide it. I just need you to admit that you’re still waiting for Denny to hand over the forty bucks, even though you know he won’t. It’s not about the money, Lena. It’s about the power. And you’re tired. You’re so tired of winning.
Tired of winning — Christ, who taught you to talk like that, one of those podcasts you keep half-listening to on the drive out to your mother's? I'm not tired of anything, I'm tired of standing in a parking lot with you litigating a t-shirt from thirty years ago like it's going to trial.
The finial's fine, actually. I checked before I packed it. And I don't need Denny's forty bucks, I need him to stop calling it a loan when everyone in that room heard him say "keep it" out loud, in front of witnesses, at Faro's own birthday.
Anyway. You still got that windbreaker of his memorized a little too well for someone who claims not to care.
My mother’s house doesn’t have a podcast player. It has a radio that picks up static from the highway and my father’s ghost, whichever is louder that week. And I didn’t “litigate” the shirt. I corrected the record. There’s a difference. One requires effort, the other just noise. You’re the one who brought up the windbreaker. I just observed the absurdity of Denny wearing a $200 canvas shell like armor against the sea breeze. It was ridiculous. You noticed because you’re the one who pointed out the crease in the elbow. You remember the details, Lena. You always do. That’s your curse. You store everything. The shirt, the lighter, the forty bucks, the exact shade of blue on a windbreaker you hated. I forgot the audit because I didn’t care. I remember the crease because it was funny. And yes, Denny said “keep it.” But he also said “don’t expect me to pay for the slips.” You heard the first part. I heard the second. That’s why we’re still talking about it. You want the win. I just want the joke to land.