Chapter Twenty

It wasn’t the largest park in the city, but it was certainly one of the prettier ones. At least it would have been if the season had not rendered all matter of flora completely lifeless. The naked branches of the trees swayed in the wind that blew like it had a vendetta that day. The bark on them was such a dark shade of brown, it was almost black.

Jerry was late. This shouldn’t have worried me because punctuality wasn’t the prerogative in Milwaukee that it was in California and it was only a minute or two past the time we said that we would meet, but I couldn’t help but feel anxious that he wasn’t there yet. I tried to stand in the spot where I would be most visible from all directions.

This would be less than ideal if I were worried about a possible attempt on my life, I thought. A sniper would have a clear shot at me from a distance.

I shook the idea away. Why was I thinking things like that? Maybe it was the grimness of the weather that day or the urgency with which Jerry had invited me to speak with him. Either way, I didn’t think I was in danger of being assassinated. Mugged or held at knifepoint, by a roving lunatic (the area had more than its fair share of those), maybe, but I was definitely not going to be shot at long distance by a sniper. At least, there was a less than one percent chance of that happening.

You’re letting your mind ramble, I told myself. It’s because you’re nervous. Don’t let him see that.

For the entirety of my life, whenever I was scheduled to meet up with someone and I arrived first, I would always see them before they saw me when they finally arrived on the scene. So, naturally, when Jerry managed to sneak up on me from behind, I could have sworn I leaped nearly five feet in the air.

“Woah there!” Jerry said with good natured surprise. “Somebody’s jumpy!”

“That’s because you snuck up on me like a freakin’ Chupacabra!” I exclaimed.

Jerry laughed at this and, seeing this, I had to give in and laugh as well.

So far, so good, I thought to myself. He seems like he’s in a pretty good mood; we’re laughing together and all that. Maybe he’s been busy, and the awkwardness was all in my head.

“You know, it’s funny,” Jerry said. “Last night after I texted, I was so anxious about how you would respond or if I messed up my text etiquette that by the time you got around to texting me back, I agonized over a response.”

Oh, the irony.

“Yeah, it was kind of like that for me, too,” I confessed. “Things have been real…”

“Weird?” Jerry asked.

“Yeah,” I confirmed.

Okay, so maybe it hadn’t all been in my head. What was going on?

Even though I had gotten out of work early, it didn’t feel like I had because of how overcast the sky was. It was really kind of a bummer to be out when there was supposed to be daylight only to discover an anemic landscape before you. Just past the faded green grass hill on the edge of the park, the lake churned, creating white caps on the surface of the normally mild and placid lake.

Instead of addressing the issue further, Jerry glanced at the lake.

“Let’s walk,” he said.

I silently agreed and walked alongside him. The hill was steep, and it took some degree of physical concentration to scale downwards, which served as an excellent pretext for neither of us to say anything as we did so. This bought me time to think about the things I could say to him, but it also gave me far too much time to imagine all the things he could say to me. As someone who is very practiced in the exercise of speculating all the negative thoughts everyone in the world could ever have about me, I can tell you that this was a bad time.

Luckily, I was able to keep my stumbling and fumbling down the hill to a minimum. I wouldn’t exactly say that I was managing to play it “cool”, more like I was managing to not look like a completely distracted and neurotic moron (which is harder than you would think it should be).

The beach spanned out before us when we reached the bottom of the hill and I still didn’t have the faintest idea of what to say.

“So…” said Jerry.

Apparently, Jerry didn’t have the faintest idea of what to say either.

Oh God, I thought in a panic. We’re going to have a repeat of the incident at the diner aren’t we?

Something told me that Paula wouldn’t just materialize out of nowhere to save me this time, though.

“So…” I echoed.

“Things have been…” Jerry trailed off.

“Yeah,” I confirmed.

He squinted at the horizon even though the sun wasn’t even that bright. We were both stalling for time.

Finally, I broke the silence.

“Was there something I missed?” I asked. “I’m not always the best at social situations, but I feel like I committed some kind of faux pas the last time we met up.”

“Oh no!” Jerry exclaimed. “Not at all! I’m sorry you feel that way!”

“You know,” I said with a wry smile. “I’m sorry you feel that way’ is generally perceived as a non-apology.”

I can fully see the irony in asking someone if I committed a social error and then correcting them on such a thing literally seconds later. I don’t know why, but the only way I could manage to work some levity into the conversation was by being a little dickens.

Unfortunately, Jerry didn’t interpret it that way.

“Oh no!” he exclaimed, sorrowfully. “Sorry! Sorry!”

“Jerry,” I said. “Calm down; I was joking. I know it wasn’t meant to be a non-apology. It’s just that today’s been… weird.”

“Yeah,” Jerry agreed.

Fearing another awkward silence, I asked him an awkward question.

“So, you were freaking out about texting me?” I asked.

“So were you!” Jerry exclaimed.

“Yeah,” I said, “because I haven’t heard from you in a while and, like I said, I was worried I had done something wrong.”

“You didn’t.”

“Well, I know that now!”

Why had the conversation suddenly taken on this antagonistic tone? This was so unlike Jerry. I was finally able to pin down the manner he had adopted ever since we met up in the park that day; he was like an alpha male predator of some sort, locked up in the zoo and pacing as a way to work out his aggression because all other attempts were futile. Something was trapped inside of him and he needed a way to let it out, a release valve of sorts.

But how to go about this diplomatically? Had the sexual tension that had been building since the night we met become a major factor in our friendship? I wanted to address it, and I didn’t, all at once.

I took a deep breath.

“Jerry,” I said, sounding far more agitated than I meant to. “Can you please just tell me what’s going on?”

Oof… I sounded so harsh and it showed on Jerry’s face. He looked like a dog who had torn up all your throw pillows while you were away.

“Fair enough,” he said. “Ron, ever since we met, I haven’t been entirely honest with you.”

There it was. In a flash, all the terrible things he could possible tell me formed in my mind. Perhaps he was some kind of sadistic criminal or had a shady history as a dictator of some poor, Eastern European country. Maybe he profited from sweat shops or maybe he even owned sweatshops. Or maybe, and this was the worst one of all, maybe he was married, and his wife had been away on vacation this whole time. Maybe I was the other woman! Or man! Or whatever!

“What is it?” I asked.

I couldn’t stand it any longer.

“I lied to you about being a professional artist,” Jerry confessed.

Suddenly, it was as if the ground was the most beautiful thing in the world to him.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “So, you’re telling me that you didn’t paint all those paintings in your house. Where did they come from, then?”

“Oh no,” said Jerry. “I painted them. What I mean is… I’ve never actually sold a painting.”

“So?” I asked.

Jerry shrugged.

“You just seemed so excited about my work at the diner,” he said. “But then you started talking me up like I was someone who actually had customers on a regular basis.”

I recalled the incident at the diner and, indeed, that was where the outing had become a little icy.

You’re supposed to be more observant, I told myself. Maybe that’s why your career isn’t going so well.

I was, however, relieved that Jerry had not been offended that I had cut off the conversation when he clearly meant to delve into something serious. So, that was a relief.

“I’m not sure why this is a problem, though,” I said. “We had a misunderstanding…”

“A misunderstanding?” Jerry asked.

He seemed a little irate. His rugged good looks warped his strong, masculine visage into the very image of distress.

“Is that what you would call it?” he asked.

“So, you talked yourself up a little,” I said.

The conversation was a speeding train that was about to crash or go off the rails and I didn’t know how to pull the break. I did whatever I could not to panic and go into the full on counselor mode that I sometimes employed with super self-aware clients who were hit with a sudden surge of guilt that their business wasn’t doing as well as they had initially hoped.

“I lied to you!” Jerry exclaimed.

He ran both his fingers through his long hair. Normally, his hair was pristinely brushed or tied back into a low ponytail (the quintessential look for any artistic soul, in my opinion), but right now, it was tangled, out of sorts and every bit as frazzled as he seemed to be in the moment.

“But you’re telling me the truth now,” I tried to console him. “Anyway, when you told me that, we had only just met. Believe me, I understand the pressure in that kind of situation. I’m not holding any ill will against you for it.”

“How very kind of you,” said Jerry.

For the first time since I had met him, a little sardonicism snuck out in his tone.

“I’m sorry if I offended you,” I said. “This meeting doesn’t seem to be going very well does it?”

“No,” Jerry huffed. “It’s not going well.”

I frowned at the ground. The grass had thinned out and some of the sand from the side of the beach had sifted through the blades. The wind became much more aggressive, so I popped the collar of my light jacket.

“But it’s not your fault,” Jerry added on. “It’s really on me. I guess I’m ashamed because…”

He sort of trailed off and for a second, I thought the wind rising off the large body of water near us had simply carried away his words.

“What?” I asked.

“It’s because I wanted to impress you, all right?” Jerry blurted out.

He did so with a vigor so sudden, I could have never expected such a docile, moody man to speak to me that way. I was completely taken aback.

“Why would you want to impress me?” I asked.

“Do you really not know?” Jerry asked in return.

“I mean, it’s nice to be impressive,” I said. “But it’s not like my friendship was contingent on you being someone who sells their paintings. Your paintings are great and they could be sold. They just haven’t been yet. There’s no need to tell everyone they have been.”

Jerry’s face went slack. When most people make that face, they look unattractive and sullen, but, like all normally unappealing facial expressions, it worked on Jerry. It gave him a sort of compellingly disaffected persona.

“But I don’t go around telling people I sell my paintings,” Jerry said, emphatically. “Just you.”

I felt my face pucker up from the sour taste of confusion.

“Why me?” I asked.

“God,” said Jerry. “You are so dense.”

He then grasped me by the shoulders and pulled me in for a kiss right there in the middle of the park.