Lucky for your company

“Looks like rain out there, huh, man.”

Regardless of dashed expectations here, he still liked the way Shep talked, the way he averted his eyes and spoke in considered clips but managed to tack on ‘man’ to his sentences. As Shep peeled the label off his bottle, Greg wondered how the frail American had fared in his time before the workday. It did not look like rain out there and Shep’s phone sat silently between them like a bar of soap. Greg texted his wife, asking very clearly this time about her plans for the evening, while Shep tried again.

“What about you?”

“What about me?

“You’d asked me if I do this often—do you?”

“Do I go out drinking often?”

“Well. Do you go out drinking with any of our coworkers often?”

Greg finished his first round and considered the complexities of the question—whether or not to allude to instances of the others drinking without Shep, which were rare but certainly notable; how to answer a question that had been posed, he now realized, slightly out of the worst kind of meanness, which was abrupt honesty. How best to refrain from explaining that he didn’t go out with coworkers to dive bars because he had other people to go out with, actually, other places to be. Deflection, perhaps.

“Not really. How many times you been in love Shep?”

Exhaling through his nose, “What kind of question is that?”

“We work together,” he gestured to the astroturf on the TV behind the bar, “but you don’t actually care about this, I certainly don’t care about this. There are two things we can talk about and I’m tired of talking about corporate compliance. No offense.”

Shep busied himself with a list of bourbons and Greg realized he’d reverted too harshly to his actual personality, his own brusqueness. He sighed, visualizing the two possible evenings stretch out before him, and checked his phone again to insulate himself entirely from any miscommunication. His wife had replied to the earlier text, “Thank you for asking!! take your time love xx,” and so Greg gestured to the bartender.

“How many times you been in love Shep? You ever do an Irish car bomb?”

“I don’t think you’re supposed to call them that.”

“Let me show you something”—un-pinching two fingers together—“What are the drop shots that you have here?”

The guy, who probably made his living off of two hours of bitter commuters, had the whole performance down pat, and rubbed a spotless glass with a cloth while looking up and squinting slightly: “Eh—we can do Jager bombs, Irish car bombs—”

“Yeah that—two of that.”

* * *

For a sliver of the evening between clarity and numbness they hit the rare pitch Greg had sought out, that old couples can ride for an entire evening, or so he suspected. Shep burned through softballs eagerly.

“We’ve worked together how long? And never seen each other on the same train line?”

“I’ve seen you once or twice actually. I didn’t know if you cherished the serenity of the train ride. For some people it’s ritualistic, the commute I mean. It’s the only time available to them for introspection.”

“Four years and we’ve never had a beer together.”

“I didn’t want to ruin that for you. Being on the train I mean. That’s not how it is for me. But I didn’t want to ruin it for you, just in case. Also, in our defense, we live in different neighborhoods.”

“What do you think of that new guy Kurt.”

“Actually that we take the same train line to houses thirty miles apart says more about the chaotic infrastructure of the city than our own etiquette. You said no work talk but he seems fine man.”

“Not odd to you though? Four years, across the office and never once a beer. That’s not work talk. I think he’s deeply strange.”

“I’ve read some about the importance of shared communal spaces, of how the very notion of suburbs…I think he just has an accent.”

“So? I have an accent, here.” If nothing else, Greg relished the liminal space of a new dive bar, how it exposed the suburbs and skyscrapers for the bizarre extremes they were. Taking two half-trips home was worth it, on and off and on and off the train while it grew dark. Even alone, as he knew quite well. Finding someone to trade small talk with midway on the long line whose endpoints he otherwise sat upon or slept under all day and night. Life was small talk.

“You don’t have an accent.”

“Funny guy, I don’t have an accent. My wife teases me all the time.”

“But yeah it’s like, after I moved to the suburbs it’s been hard to…Wait, the teasing must be kind of nice. Er, intimate. So when did you first know?”

Greg smiled. “About loving her?”

Hearing it repeated back to him, Shep seemed to regret the question, as if he’d been tricked. “Um, yeah. About loving her.”

“I got home on my birthday and she had baked me a chocolate cake with a dime in it.”

“You had the answer ready,”chuckling, nervous that he’d already missed some earlier detail, his eyes made it look like he was straining to read something, “What the heck? A dime?”

Who the hell said heck?

“Vasilopita—new year bread. Cake. Whoever gets the coin inside—”

“You had to work on you birthday?”

“—whoever gets the coin, they’ve got good luck for the year, basically. Of course I had to work on my fucking birthday. I’m thirty-five years old. You Americans, always so surprised by your own assumptions.”

Nodding, “She’s heard you talk about this quirk of Greek culture, she knows you must be missing the dime thing. A kind and empathetic thing to do. Birthdays often become monuments to homesickness. Wait—you were born on New Year’s day?”

“It’s not a ‘dime thing.’ But she puts it in the cake. I’m in my twenties, I get home late and she’s on the couch reading. My birthday is in August.”

“Quintessential, as you say.”

“My birthday is in August. She didn’t know it’s a new year thing. I kiss her on the cheek and walk into the kitchen and there’s this cake on the counter.”

“Sorry, I didn't mean to imply you say 'quintessential' a lot. But that’s some real Norman Rockwell shit, Gregorio, man.”

“I don’t know what the fuck that means. Chocolate frosting, two layers, the whole thing. She’d already lit the candles and,” his eyes threatened to glisten a bit now, at the memory of it, “she has two plates, with wine! ready for us, a knife to cut us two pieces to have together!”

“Vaseeloh-what? Didn’t it bother you that she missed the mark, culturally-speaking? Do you usually not have cake on your birthday, isn’t that kind of a bare minimum?”

“Vasilopita, Shep. The point is that for years she had remembered a dumb story about good luck back home that I’d told her when we’d met here, and then she made it something for us. To share.”

Shep kept getting up to use the bathroom, and these intervals clogged their conversation. He sat back down and twisted the petite square napkin under his glass while they both looked up at the TV.

“Man, she sounds great. You’re lucky for her company.”

“Who? My wife? I am lucky for her company.”

“Did you get the dime?”

“What?”

“Did either of you find the dime the night of your birthday?”

Greg smiled, looking outside the windows of the bar. “Of course not. You ever share an entire cake between two people? Progress is slow. I found it in a big slice I brought to the office for lunch a week later.” He finished his bourbon, remembering the way he’d had to spit out the coin, which was smaller than the drachma from his childhood. “I ate it at my desk and sent my wife a picture.”

“Ugh. God. I hate that place man.”

The buzz of the bar had all but died. A man several stools down from them was frowning at a laptop, as if perturbed that it had followed him there and hopped up next to him like a stray dog. Greg wondered why he had invited Shep to have drinks, what exact moment had rerouted his usual course of a quick nod and smile upon running into a beleaguered colleague on the train home. Shep had seemed downtrodden, sure, looking at neither his phone nor out the train window nor at the buttoned up shirt that needed to be dry-cleaned badly. He hadn’t been listening to music but didn’t notice Greg sidling over to him between other commuters until Greg clapped him on the shoulder and made up something about owing Shep a beer for handling a client meeting. Greg had a fond, quiet memory of Shep’s first day, during which they’d talked about each other’s names briefly at Greg’s desk, with Shep only shrugging and saying that the shortened version of his last name, Sheppard, had "just kind of stuck." He’d been the only one at work to ever ask Greg if he preferred ‘Gregorio.’ In the years that followed, Greg rarely had to pass Shep’s desk in the corner, but would witness the occasional conversation, watch how Shep lapsed out of self-consciousness enough to crackle with cerebral wit. He’d hoped a few awkward beers together would lend the kid a bit more comfort. A small price to pay for a little more light in the office, after all. On the train Greg had imagined a new, fundamentally more real version of Shep while staring at him, had fully constructed a character in his mind that was rid of its corporate snakeskin and speaking honestly for once, gesturing wildly. Evidently what Greg missed, craved, and hoped for in this desk jockey limping between his cubicle and his couch was the novelty of conversation.

Just as Greg was about to open his mouth to let out some platitude about getting home to his wife Shep spoke first.

“The way you did it—that seems right to me man.”

“Sorry, I don’t understand?”

“I hate to call it this but, like, the high school sweetheart thing. That seems right.”

“Ah well. There’s, hm, uncertainty,” Greg paused, “about the…the probability of getting it right the first time.” He chose his words carefully, pressed with the volatile evenings of late that had followed the dance of the workday. “We are happy but there seems to be a curiosity, too, you know.”

At this remark Shep looked aghast, suddenly drunk again. “What the heck? That is some nonsense. That is some Greek nonsense man. You’re served a slice of chocolate cake in a warm home…and you’re worried about whether or not there’s a dime inside.” He seemed to vocalize this quick of honesty to nobody in particular, laughing at it, and had soon relapsed into giggling at his own ability to form phrases like ‘gregarious greek.’ Greg felt his phone buzz in his pocket while he considered their skyscraper. The closeness that becomes possible between people who spend years together without ever really speaking. Shep looked up. “You wanna do one more?”

* * *

An hour later, they each stood outside the bar, unsure how and where to part ways, how to slip back under an umbrella of etiquette that didn’t make any sense in this context. The following morning would be rude to them and Greg wished he had a glass of water. It looked like rain. He turned to Shep, briefly considered inviting him to have dinner the following week, the way people used to. Instead he gave him a firm handshake and a wink.“Until next time, eh? Chin up man. Enjoy it while it lasts.”

Shep returned a drunk smile. “Good luck out there.”