The Foyle
S.G. Fromm
We’d just been seated at a back booth in the restaurant and ordered lunch when Berkman told me he’d had an epiphany.
Not an epiphany. The epiphany.
“I can boil it down to a few words,” he said, looking around to make sure no one was in earshot.
“This is it,” he whispered, leaning forward. “I’m a creep.”
Berkman sat back in the booth, crossing his arms, his face a blend of smugness and tranquility.
“That’s it?” I asked.
“That’s it.”
“That’s no epiphany,” I said. “It’s written on your birth certificate, right next to your blood type.”
“Hilarious,” he said, waving it off. Berkman could do that—reflexively dismiss any insult, even if it was true. It was one of the traits that made him an incurable creep.
The waitress came up with our lunch. Berkman asked for another beer. I asked for another napkin. Berkman stayed silent for a moment, not looking directly at me, but somewhere at a point between us.
“Wait,” he finally said. “I skipped a step.”
“Skipped?”
“After the first epiphany, I had a second.”
“You must be exhausted.”
He took a huge bite of his burger. After a few chews he went on, talking around it.
“Really. The first is the creep thing. The second is I don’t really think I can stop being a creep.”
I looked at him, holding my tuna wedge. I wasn’t used to Berkman surprising me. About anything.
“Seriously,” he said as he jammed a fry into his mouth. “So that second epiphany led me to a watershed moment.”
“I’m all ears.”
“If I’m a creep, and I can’t stop being a creep, I need to find a way to stop coming across as a creep.”
“Makes sense,” I said. It really did. “But it’s not a trait you can mask with a deodorant or something.”
“Right,” Berkman said. He pointed at me with the stub of a fry. “So. What do you think?”
I wiped my mouth with the napkin and took a sip of soda. I was stalling for time. It wasn’t that his line of reasoning threw me off. It was the fact that Berkman actually had a line of reasoning in the first place.
“Well, it’s like how little kids learn a foreign language,” I said. “They kind of absorb it almost by osmosis. It’s organic, the way a young brain is more receptive to new information. You did the same thing when it comes to being a creep. It’s ingrained.”
Berkman waved his hand dismissively, sensing my struggle with tact. That was his one good quality. Tact was not only unnecessary, it was irrelevant.
“It’s too late to unlearn anything,” he said. “Lets face it. I’m a creep for life.”
“You can try.”
“How? With self-help books? And even if I did any of that stuff, it all sounds like, you know. Work. I don’t need work. I need results. I need them now. I can’t waste time doing all this stuff and then find out it’s not working.”
“What’s the hurry? You’ve been a creep for most of your 30 years.”
“That’s exactly it,” he said, pointing his finger at me. There was a ketchup smear on his top knuckle.
“What’s it?”
“Thirty years,” he said. “We’re at that age, and they’re at that age.”
“Who?”
“Women.”
The waitress came back with Berkman’s beer and my napkin. She took his already empty plate, a wrecked Rorschach of splattered ketchup, and walked away.
“All women are 31?” I asked, even though I knew what he meant.
“Our age group. Our female peers.” He leaned forward. “This is the point where they start getting serious.”
“Serious?”
“Serious about what they want from us. This is the time where they stop looking into our eyes and start looking at our resumes. They don’t want gambles. They don’t want adventures. Maybe they say they do, but they don’t. They’re looking for stability. They want reliability. They want, you know, sweetness.”
Berkman took a long pull from his beer. The effort to explain what women want had clearly exhausted him. The waitress came back. I asked for coffee. Berkman nodded, more or less. She went away again.
“So if you can’t really change your creepiness, what’s your plan?”
“I don’t have one,” Berkman said. “That’s why we’re here. That’s why I’m buying lunch.”
“You’re buying lunch?”
“Don’t I always?”
“No. Never.”
“Don’t be a creep,” Berkman said.
“Hey. When in Rome.”
“Right. When in Rome, be a bigger creep.”
The coffee arrived. I was dabbling milk into my coffee when it hit me. When in Rome. Be a creep. A bigger creep.
“I just may have an answer,” I said between sips of my coffee. “If you can’t stop being a creep, maybe you could come across as a lesser creep,” I said.
“A lesser creep? How am I going to do that?”
“For you to appear like a lesser creep, you need someone to act like a bigger creep.”
“So what does that do?” Berkman asked, “other than put two confirmed creeps in the same room?”
“It’s an issue of relativity,” I said. “Maybe a mix of relativity and perspective.”
“Why don’t you drop all the Einstein mumbo-jumbo and tell me what you got on your mind?”
“As long as you’re with someone who is a huge creep, or at least a bigger creep than you, you’ll look reasonable by comparison. In fact, if it’s done right, you may actually not look like a creep at all. Comparison-wise.”
As I was talking, I saw comprehension’s deft light break across his face. And then it died.
“How can you make it something that really happens,” Berkman said. “I mean, how can you get into a situation where you’re looking like a lesser creep? You know. At just the right time?”
“Good question. In fact, it’s the question. How do you manage to look like a lesser creep at the right time, in the right place, in front of the woman you want to notice that you’re a lesser creep?”
Berkman took a noisy sip from his coffee cup and banged it down on the table. He was the type who avoided obstacles by giving up on them immediately. It worked well for him.
“I think I have that one figured out, too,” I finally said.
He looked up. “Yeah?”
“The most important thing is the first shot. You gotta get in there and look good to them on the first step.”
“First impressions,” he said.
“Exactly. You have to be that good guy, that significantly lesser of a creep on the first date. So why don’t we have that first date?”
“What do you mean we?”
“Relax. I meant that we’ll arrange it so I’ll be the bigger creep on your first date.”
“You mean, like, play it out?”
“Exactly. Role-playing.”
“But how do you come along on our date?”
“It’s like this: you go to a restaurant, and right after you sit down, after you order your drinks, I’ll pop in. You know. A big surprise bumping into you, that kind of thing. And you’ll invite me to sit down for a quick drink.”
“A guy sitting down for a drink while I’m on a date? Who the hell does that?”
“A creep, that’s who.”
Berkman considered that for all of two seconds, then slapped his hand down on the table, hard. The couple in the next booth jumped.
“And then I’ll start in with some kind of act,” I said. “I’ll push all the right buttons.”
“What buttons?”
“Buttons you’ll tell me about before the date,” I said. “Do a little research.”
“What research?”
“You know. Sensitive stuff. Stuff I can use. Her political beliefs. Maybe someone she admires. Famous or not. I could use pretty much anything.”
“How am I going to find out any of that stuff?”
“You know, during the flirting, getting-to-know-you stage, the one before you actually ask her out on a full-fledged first date,” I said. “When you meet her at the bar, or at some party, you just talk and pick up on things.”
“Things,” he echoed absently.
“Then you give me the information. I’ll need a little time to prepare, particularly if it’s political. You know, research. Then I’ll be your foil.”
“My what?”
“Foil. It’s got a lot of meanings. To enhance or contrast. I’m enhancing what a creep I am, and contrasting it with what a decent guy you are.”
“You making that up?”
“The foil? No. Look it up.”
“In the dictionary?”
“You can’t bother to look up one word?”
“I already had to look up epiphany,” Berkman said. “Isn’t that enough?”
~ ~ ~
Annabelle Shapiro was a layup. I couldn’t have asked for a better inaugural subject. Berkman had latched onto her at a TGIF event at a local sports bar.
He scored her phone number, then followed the rules etched, I presume, on some ancient surface predating the Rosetta Stone: a 48-hour wait; the re-introductory text call laced with mildly self-deprecating humor; the work lunch date, and, finally, arrangements for a dinner date. We went out for a quick coffee at this little café around the corner from work for a debriefing.
“So, you guys hit it off?” I asked.
“I get the sense she doesn’t like me.”
“How do you know that?”
“She said, ‘I’m not sure I like you.’”
“Then why is she going out with you?”
“I’m persistent.”
He was. To the point of being a creep.
“Tell me what you got,” I said.
“I think she’s my age. At least 30. She’s a writer.”
“What kind of writer?”
“Freelance. Lately a lot of stuff on the Middle East.”
“Eureka.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Can you be more specific about what kind of issues in the Middle East?”
“You know. Israel and Palestine. Conflict and what-not and all that stuff that they’re always going on about.”
“She must have mentioned something specific. Did you take notes?”
“No. I forgot.”
“Forgot?”
“Yeah. I started drifting.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“There was this really cute brunette standing in back of her. I think she may have been checking me out.”
“Maybe she was a Palestinian.”
“They hang out at sports bars?”
I didn’t press him. It would only discourage both of us.
We settled on Baxter’s Bait Shop. Berkman scheduled an 8 p.m. meeting with her at the bar for drinks, and 8:30 reservations for the dinner. I arrived at 9. It was perfect. They were sitting at a four-chair table not 15 feet from the bar. I ordered a Sam Adams, and, as pre-arranged, stood at the bar for about eight minutes sipping my beer, giving Berkman plenty of time to spot me. Within that space of time, Berkman was to point me out to Anna Shapiro and make some comment along the “I-know-that-guy-from-work” line.
I turned and pretended to witlessly scan the room and waited for Berkman to give me an innocent wave. I had to admit, his timing was impeccable. My visual sweep of the room had just landed on him and Annabelle when his arm went up. They were both looking at me, smiling. I smiled back, waved, hesitated a moment—just a hint of social awkwardness for authenticity—and loped on over.
“Todd, what are you doing here?” I asked.
“We were going to ask you the same thing.”
“Just having a drink or two before meeting some friends for a film.” A film. Not a movie. Definitely a pretentious creep word. After a firm handshake with Berkman, my eyes settled on Annabelle, who was looking up at me with her best public smile. Short brown hair, dark brown eyes and olive skin. Berkman didn’t stand a chance.
“And who’s this?” I asked.
“Annabelle, I’d like you do meet Seth Sutherland, a colleague from work. Seth, this is Annabelle Shapiro.”
“Anna,” she said, giving me a prim handshake.
“Excuse me?” For a moment I thought that imbecile had mistaken her name.
“I prefer to be called Anna.”
“Really,” I said, craning my head back. “Why would you do that?”
“Why would I do what?”
“Anabelle is such a pretty name. Why waste it?”
Her public smile dimmed by a few degrees. Not bad. I’d scored my first creep point before sitting down. I pulled out the vacant seat opposite Annabelle about two inches and then stopped.
“Mind if I take a seat?”
Berkman hesitated, looked at me, then Anabelle, then back at me. He looked a bit startled. He really was much better at this then I thought.
“Well. Sure. Have a seat,” he finally said.
I sat down and plunked my bottle on the table as if planting my colors on a patch of conquered turf.
“You order an appetizer yet?” I asked.
“Yes,” Annabelle said. “Eggplant with mozzarella and dried tomatoes.”
“Love that,” I said. “Don’t like dried tomatoes with anything else.” I looked at Annabelle. “Isn’t that strange?” I asked it as if it was the most significant question that would be asked of her that week.
She started to answer when I cut her off, looked at Berkman and asked some innocuous question about work.
Berkman gave me a dutiful answer, then turned to Annabelle and deftly brought her back into the conversation.
“Seth is the copy desk chief at the Journal,” he said.
“Ah,” she said. It had that tone, that inflection. I could already tell she was one of those. A writer who thought anyone who worked on a copy desk was a failed journalist who sought the gospel of The Elements of Style for a measure of fragile dignity. “How long have you been there?”
“Long enough to be alarmed by the growing illiteracy of so-called writers,” I said with as jovial a tone as I could muster. My blood was up.
Berkman let out a genuinely embarrassed laugh. Annabelle tilted her head just a bit, as if to regard me from some fresh angle, and uttered two brittle words: “Excuse me?”
The appetizer arrived, with the waiter accommodatingly providing an extra plate, fork, knife and napkin for me. I held up my hand as if to stop traffic. “Present company excepted, of course.”
“Right,” Berkman chimed in.
I concentrated on helping myself to a large chunk of the appetizer. I could feel Annabelle looking at me but pretended to be unaware. It’s what Berkman would do after offending someone.
He busied himself by digging into the remains of the gutted appetizer, gallantly doling out the bigger piece for Annabelle, and the rest for himself. We ate in silence for a few moments. A few long moments. Berkman finally broke the drought.
“Annabelle works for a lot of different mags,” he said in a chipper tone. “Harpers. The Atlantic. She’s working on a piece now for MetroTones.”
“Really,” I said dully. “Haven’t read it for years.”
I half-expected Annabelle to sit in silence for at least a few more boorish comments. No such problem.
“Why?” she asked, taking a swig of her drink.
“Why what?”
“Why haven’t you read it?”
“It’s just that, well. Every time I pick it up, there’s another piece on Israel or the Middle East. It’s the same issues over and over and over, with different players. Or worse yet, the same players, just with different names.”
And we’re off to the races.
“It’s really not the same,” Annabelle said. She offered it as some kind of mild antidote to what she was sure was an offhand, almost jokey retort.
“Sure it is,” I said. “Militarism. Territorialism. Terrorism. Counter-terrorism. Nationalism. It goes on and on, looping back onto itself.”
“Well, I’m not sure it’s that simple,” Berkman said. It wasn’t a bad reply for him. He really had no idea what I was talking about. Then again, neither did I.
“It has to be sorted out, right?” Annabelle asked in that same mild tone. And then, not so mildly: “Doesn’t it?”
We went back and forth for a bit. I rubbed up against a number of third-rail issues without fully letting on where I stood. It was a good move, because I didn’t know where I stood. No matter. All that was important was that Anna Shapiro thought I stood somewhere she didn’t like.
“Well,” Berkman said in the midst of clearing his throat, “it’s one of those topics everyone seems to have an opinion on.” He looked at Annabelle, smiled, and then patted her hand. “You know that old saw about politics and religion.” He almost winked but didn’t, thank God.
The table remained silent. Annabelle was staring at me. Or I should say she stared through me.
I thought maybe I’d overplayed my hand, but I noticed that Annabelle had moved slightly closer to Berkman, and that he was leaning toward her so closely that their shoulders were touching. As I was asking the waiter to bring mustard—and he was reciting a variety to choose from—they started talking in the warm, indecipherable murmur of co-conspirators, a hushed conversation ending with soft laughter. They were suddenly, quietly sharing something between them. And against me.
I started to smile, then winked at Annabelle. I couldn’t help it. Like any professional foil, I had to follow it through, right to the very end.
~ ~ ~
It was all word of mouth. That’s what made me famous. Or infamous. It wasn’t surprising. Anything involving Berkman couldn’t stay a secret for long, especially when Annabelle Shapiro had agreed to a second date, and then a third, and then a fourth. It was right before the fourth that Berkman let it spill, probably when some of our friends kept asking him how he was able to survive into the late innings with a woman undeniably out of his league.
So Berkman sang and it was out. He kept on referring to me as his foil. I thought it would blow over. It didn’t. I started getting requests to repeat my performance. At first I declined, describing it as a personal favor to Berkman. But I confess to feeling a bit of a buzz from the odd admiration that it inspired. Just as a joke I printed up some embossed business cards with my name and then, underneath, my new title: The Foil. Except I changed the spelling to Foyle. It just seemed a bit more elegant. The Foyle.
I agreed to continue the service. I wanted to prove it wasn’t some kind of fluke. It was my niche, my idea, and I wanted it to remain mine. And the offers of free dinners and drinks were a good fringe benefit. So the creeps lined up, and in each case I followed the procedure that had started with Berkman.
It was going as smoothly as a Gershwin melody. Until the case of Little Erin Pickford.
Or I should say the case of a new client, Brett Lincoln, a friend of Berkman’s who I’d never met. Instead of huddling at my usual deli for a briefing, Lincoln wanted to rendezvous at this trendy grill called the BlueMitzvah that specialized in obscenely overpriced mixed drinks. I didn’t object. It was on his dime.
Brett was a few years shy of early-thirties chubbiness, with a head of receding, fluffy blonde hair and a persistent scent of upper-end cologne. Berkman told me that his family was loaded, and that Brett was cooling his heels as a commodities trader at one of the smaller houses on the Street until his Trust kicked in.
But this was a tougher case. Berkman once referred to him as Twitch. Now I could see why. Lincoln was a foot-and-finger-tapping, fast-talking, chair-squirming, knee-bouncing, knuckle-cracking, hard-blinking coil of flexing restlessness. And he was also, evidently, an optimist.
“We really seem to be connecting,” Lincoln said of a recent lunch date with Erin Pickford. “But it just doesn’t feel like we’re connecting at a deep enough level, you know what I mean?”
“Intimacy,” I said. “You want a deeper level of intimacy.”
“Yeah. Or at least something that feels like intimacy. I think I know a way to get there.”
“I’m all ears.”
“It’s like this,” he said, leaning forward, placing his elbows on the table and looking me straight in the eye. I’m sure someone told him the gesture made him look more sincere. “It’s Erin’s sister. Her younger sister. She died in a swimming accident off Dewey Beach, in Delaware.”
“I’m very sorry,” I said, but he didn’t seem to hear me.
“What I need is for you to somehow bring up in conversation what happened to my younger sister,” he said.
“What happened to her?”
“She drowned,” he said.
I didn’t know what to say for a moment. He kept looking straight at me, mouth tight, eyes wide, not even blinking. It was the only time he was actually still.
“I’m very sorry,” I said in as soft a tone as I could manage above the buzz of the crowd.
Then he smiled.
“Don’t be,” he said. “It isn’t true.”
He gave off a bleating little laugh, then picked up his empty glass, rattled the melting ice and signaled the waitress for another.
“There’s one other little twist,” he said.
“A twist,” I said. It wasn’t a question. I was preoccupied with coming up with a way of declining the case on the grounds that he was a scumbag. Then again, all of my clients were scumbags. That was the whole point.
“I had to do this a bit differently,” he said. “I know you like the whole pre-meeting thing, to get all the background and so forth, which is trey cool, very thorough and blah, blah, blah but I don’t have time, or I just don’t want to wait or whatever.”
He paused for a moment, sucking a piece of ice out of his glass, then spitting it back into the glass with a little clank.
“She’s meeting us here,” he said.
“Here?” I smiled reflexively, thinking it was joke, or a test, or whatever rich, bored little creeps do to amuse themselves.
“Here. As in now.”
The waitress came up with his drink, saw that mine was untouched, took Lincoln’s empty and left. I sat there looking at him, clumsily stalled between the suspicion of a cheap joke and the nauseating realization that Erin Pickford was moments away. I kept scanning the ever-swelling bar and dinner crowd for an approaching Pickford. The inconvenient fact that I wouldn’t recognize her if I saw her didn’t stop me.
“Look,” I said, “about this, I really don’t approach -- ”
“I know, I know,” Lincoln said. “It’s kind of different. You do the crashing, but this is a kind of pre-crashing. I figured we could mix it up.”
“But there is a certain system--”
“System-schmystem,” he said.
I didn’t know what to say. I guess I should have asked what he was going to do when Erin Pickford found out he never had a sister, but Brett wasn’t thinking that far ahead. He wasn’t thinking much beyond the next three minutes.
“It’s going to be fine,” he said. “Here she comes. Just remember. Drowned. Make it Jersey. Someplace off Wildwood. Maybe mention I tried to save her.”
He stood up, smiled broadly and gave a little wave. I turned and saw her coming. That’s when she went from Erin Pickford to Little Erin Pickford. It’s not that she was petite. She was of average height, with an athletic build. It was more a sense that she gave off. I guess you’d call it vulnerability, underscored by wide blue eyes and a taut little smile.
“Hey there,” Lincoln said, leaning forward. She hung back for just a second, eyeing the immediate surroundings like a gazelle approaching a watering hole and scanning for predators. Our eyes met for a second. I gave her a nod and tried to smile. Lincoln pulled out the empty chair with a ceremonial flourish. Erin looked at it, then back at me.
“Oh,” Lincoln said, running his fingers through his hair, suddenly the socially-awkward-but-well-meaning boy. “Geez. Sorry. This is Seth. Seth Sutherland. He’s kind of a friend of a friend. He was at the bar so we just fell into talking while I was waiting for you.”
“Hi Seth,” she said, reaching across the table as she sat down. I leaned forward in my chair, rising just a bit, and took her hand. Her palm was sweaty.
“This is Erin,” Lincoln said to me as he took his seat. “Erin Pickford.” Before I could say anything, he turned back to her. “Can I get you a drink?”
“Sure,” she said, placing her little purse the on the table. “I’ll take a Dreaming Charlotte.”
Lincoln dutifully signaled for the waitress, who didn’t see him at first. He kept his arm up, index finger extended for what seemed a long, awkward moment made worse by the silence at the table.
“Friend of which friend?” Erin finally asked.
“Excuse me?”
“Brett said you were a friend of one of his friends,” she said. “Which one?
“Berky,” Lincoln answered for me, his index finger still up. “Is this woman Stevie Wonder’s sister?”
Erin pretended not to hear him. I gave him a look that he didn’t catch.
“Oh really?” Erin said. “Is that the one who’s getting engaged?”
“Engaged, or close or something,” Lincoln said, answering for me again. He’d finally caught the waitress’s eye. She came up to the table. Lincoln looked back at Erin. “What did you say you wanted?”
“A Dreaming Charlotte,” Erin asked the waitress. “Please.”
“And bring some of that toast stuff,” Lincoln said over his shoulder, his back to the waitress. I didn’t really know how I was going to out-creep this guy. When the waitress left, Erin back turned to me. “And how do you know Berky?”
“We work at the same place,” I said.
“And where is that?”
I told her the title.
“I’ve heard of that,” she said, “I think.” But she didn’t say it on a snotty way, which, of course, made my job that much more difficult.
“I was kind of surprised when I heard about the possible engagement,” Erin said.
“Why’s that?” I asked, hoping for one of those low-slung piñatas.
“I don’t know,” she said with a shrug. “He just doesn’t seem like the marrying type.”
“What does a marrying type seem like?” I asked.
“That’s a good question,” she said. “I guess it’s more of a sense than anything else, but if I had to put it into words, I’d have to say a good center.”
“What’s that?” Lincoln asked before I could. It came out sharp, like he was defensive about good centers, and whether he had one.
“Maybe those are the wrong words,” she said. “Or maybe not enough. Maybe I should say a calm center. Some kind of sense of confidence.”
“I think the old-fashion word for it is stability,” I said as dryly as I could manage.
“Hah,” Lincoln said. I managed not to acknowledge it. So did Little Erin Pickford.
“I see what you mean, but it’s more than that, or maybe something different,” Erin said. “It’s more a sense of knowing where they’re at. Of them knowing where they’re headed.”
“Isn’t that a bit, I don’t know, predictable?” I asked. But it came out soft. It seemed to be the only appropriate way to talk to her. “I know we’re supposed to have all these post-modern, post-gender traits, but they seem suspiciously suffused with feminine qualities, don’t they?”
“Who’s feminine?” Lincoln asked. It came out in that same sharp, wary tone he used with good centers.
I didn’t answer. There was nothing to say.
“I’m not sure they’re feminine qualities,” Erin said softly.
She smiled at me then, a certain type of smile lacing patience with something else. I think it was pity. Not pity from disdain. A pure kind of pity. And then something moved. Or shifted. Or changed. And I knew her. Just like that. She was no longer Little Erin Pickford. She was Erin. And she was tougher than any of us.
Lincoln was waiting, perched on the edge of his chair, ready to leap in as soon as the Foyle started doing his stuff. But I said nothing. Not a word.
The waitress came up with the bread. She practically dropped it on the table in front of Lincoln.
“You gotta try this,” he said, grabbing a slice and putting it on Erin’s plate. “Best friggin’ nosh in town.” He got a piece for himself and took a chomp out of it, then leaned closer to Erin. “I see what you’re saying, about centers and all. I really see it. And it’s not really feminine qualities, like Seth says. It’s something else, right?”
Erin picked up her piece of flat toast, took a little bite from a corner, and put it back on the plate. She didn’t answer.
“It’s something else,” Lincoln said gamely. “It’s like a kind of new dimension. For men. It’s like that, right?”
I sat still, staring down at the little piece of toast that Erin Pickford had bitten into, looking at its missing corner.
“Like, take how men handle grief, at least nowadays,” Lincoln said. “That’s changed. For men. How we handle grief. Say, like, grieving over the death of someone near and dear. You know?”
He took a bite of his flat bread. Some of the cheese stuck to his lower lip. I knew he was waiting for me to weigh in, to say something about his fictional sister fictionally drowning in Wildwood or Cape May or wherever it never happened, but I couldn’t look up. I just sat there looking at Erin Pickford’s toast, abandoned there on the plate.
Lincoln’s voice trailed off. I wanted to watch him squirm, watch the whole thing collapse. But he was saved, as people like him usually are. An arm shot up from the bar, and someone called his name.
“Dude,” Lincoln called. “Hey, dude.” He looked at me, then Erin, and pointed to the arm. “That’s Roderick. Haven’t seen him in, like, months.”
He got up from his chair, took a step, then realized he had to say something to Erin. “Excuse me for just a sec? Real quick? I gotta say hi.”
Erin didn’t seem to notice. After he’d gone, she reached for her little bitten piece of toast, lifted it just off the plate, and then put it back down.
“Not the best nosh in town, huh?” I asked.
“What?” she said, looking back up at me. She wasn’t trying to smile anymore.
“The toast,” I said. The word hung out there until the noise from the crowd swallowed it. “Never mind,” I said.
Erin got up, holding her purse. “Excuse me,” she said, nodding vaguely toward the bathroom, even though we both knew that was the last place she was headed.
“Sure,” I said, without really looking at her. I didn’t want to see the expression on her face. “I’ll keep the table warm.”
But she was already walking away. I looked toward the bar. Lincoln was fully engaged with Roderick, telling some story, already holding a bottle of beer. He didn’t look back at the table. I picked up my drink and drained it off. It tasted vaguely of vodka and some kind of juice blend that they called a Second McAuliffe. I was staring down at Erin’s nibbled piece of toast when someone sat down at the table. It was Annabelle Shapiro.
She gave me a wobbly nod. “Seth, right?”
“The one and only,” I said.
“Seths are probably a dime a dozen,” she said. “But there’s only one Foyle, right?”
I sat there blinking at her. It was the only tactic available in this type of situation. She just kept smiling.
“Is Berkman around?” I finally asked.
“Most decidedly not,” she said, leaning in closely. I could smell her breath. Vodka. “I dumped him.”
“Dumped him?”
“Dumped as in adios-amigo-hit-the-friggin’-bricks,” she said.
“I heard you guys were headed toward an engagement,” I said.
Annabelle jerked back her head as if I’d slapped her.
“Engaged? To Berkman?” she asked.
“You dump him over the Foyle thing?” I asked.
“Yeah. Well, no,” she said, pausing to move her chair closer to mine so I could hear her over the crowd. “He told me all about you.”
“He spilled? Why would he do that?”
Annabelle didn’t bother answering. It was just another dumb question. She spied Erin’s piece of nibbled toast on the plate, grabbed it and took a chomp. I sat still, listening to the murmur and laughter of the crowd as it rose and fell around me. They were three deep at the bar. I couldn’t see Lincoln anymore. Annabelle Shapiro leaned in still closer. We were almost nose to nose. She was all brown eyes and vodka breath.
“You know, even though you acted like a creep, I kind of liked you,” she said.
“Not really,” I said. “You liked the Foyle. It was just an act.”
“Nah. It wasn’t an act. Or it wasn’t all an act. You’re part Foyle.”
“You think?”
“I know.”
“Well, if you’re right, I wouldn’t make much of a boyfriend, would I?”
“Maybe so,” she said. She put her hand on my forearm. “Then again, maybe not.” She looked into my eyes. “Whaddya think?”
I didn’t answer. I looked over her shoulder, searching for Erin Pickford.
“Hm? Whaddya say?” Annabelle asked.
She kept tapping on my arm, trying to get me to look at her, but I wouldn’t. I kept searching the crowd, even though I knew she was gone.
S.G. Fromm
We’d just been seated at a back booth in the restaurant and ordered lunch when Berkman told me he’d had an epiphany.
Not an epiphany. The epiphany.
“I can boil it down to a few words,” he said, looking around to make sure no one was in earshot.
“This is it,” he whispered, leaning forward. “I’m a creep.”
Berkman sat back in the booth, crossing his arms, his face a blend of smugness and tranquility.
“That’s it?” I asked.
“That’s it.”
“That’s no epiphany,” I said. “It’s written on your birth certificate, right next to your blood type.”
“Hilarious,” he said, waving it off. Berkman could do that—reflexively dismiss any insult, even if it was true. It was one of the traits that made him an incurable creep.
The waitress came up with our lunch. Berkman asked for another beer. I asked for another napkin. Berkman stayed silent for a moment, not looking directly at me, but somewhere at a point between us.
“Wait,” he finally said. “I skipped a step.”
“Skipped?”
“After the first epiphany, I had a second.”
“You must be exhausted.”
He took a huge bite of his burger. After a few chews he went on, talking around it.
“Really. The first is the creep thing. The second is I don’t really think I can stop being a creep.”
I looked at him, holding my tuna wedge. I wasn’t used to Berkman surprising me. About anything.
“Seriously,” he said as he jammed a fry into his mouth. “So that second epiphany led me to a watershed moment.”
“I’m all ears.”
“If I’m a creep, and I can’t stop being a creep, I need to find a way to stop coming across as a creep.”
“Makes sense,” I said. It really did. “But it’s not a trait you can mask with a deodorant or something.”
“Right,” Berkman said. He pointed at me with the stub of a fry. “So. What do you think?”
I wiped my mouth with the napkin and took a sip of soda. I was stalling for time. It wasn’t that his line of reasoning threw me off. It was the fact that Berkman actually had a line of reasoning in the first place.
“Well, it’s like how little kids learn a foreign language,” I said. “They kind of absorb it almost by osmosis. It’s organic, the way a young brain is more receptive to new information. You did the same thing when it comes to being a creep. It’s ingrained.”
Berkman waved his hand dismissively, sensing my struggle with tact. That was his one good quality. Tact was not only unnecessary, it was irrelevant.
“It’s too late to unlearn anything,” he said. “Lets face it. I’m a creep for life.”
“You can try.”
“How? With self-help books? And even if I did any of that stuff, it all sounds like, you know. Work. I don’t need work. I need results. I need them now. I can’t waste time doing all this stuff and then find out it’s not working.”
“What’s the hurry? You’ve been a creep for most of your 30 years.”
“That’s exactly it,” he said, pointing his finger at me. There was a ketchup smear on his top knuckle.
“What’s it?”
“Thirty years,” he said. “We’re at that age, and they’re at that age.”
“Who?”
“Women.”
The waitress came back with Berkman’s beer and my napkin. She took his already empty plate, a wrecked Rorschach of splattered ketchup, and walked away.
“All women are 31?” I asked, even though I knew what he meant.
“Our age group. Our female peers.” He leaned forward. “This is the point where they start getting serious.”
“Serious?”
“Serious about what they want from us. This is the time where they stop looking into our eyes and start looking at our resumes. They don’t want gambles. They don’t want adventures. Maybe they say they do, but they don’t. They’re looking for stability. They want reliability. They want, you know, sweetness.”
Berkman took a long pull from his beer. The effort to explain what women want had clearly exhausted him. The waitress came back. I asked for coffee. Berkman nodded, more or less. She went away again.
“So if you can’t really change your creepiness, what’s your plan?”
“I don’t have one,” Berkman said. “That’s why we’re here. That’s why I’m buying lunch.”
“You’re buying lunch?”
“Don’t I always?”
“No. Never.”
“Don’t be a creep,” Berkman said.
“Hey. When in Rome.”
“Right. When in Rome, be a bigger creep.”
The coffee arrived. I was dabbling milk into my coffee when it hit me. When in Rome. Be a creep. A bigger creep.
“I just may have an answer,” I said between sips of my coffee. “If you can’t stop being a creep, maybe you could come across as a lesser creep,” I said.
“A lesser creep? How am I going to do that?”
“For you to appear like a lesser creep, you need someone to act like a bigger creep.”
“So what does that do?” Berkman asked, “other than put two confirmed creeps in the same room?”
“It’s an issue of relativity,” I said. “Maybe a mix of relativity and perspective.”
“Why don’t you drop all the Einstein mumbo-jumbo and tell me what you got on your mind?”
“As long as you’re with someone who is a huge creep, or at least a bigger creep than you, you’ll look reasonable by comparison. In fact, if it’s done right, you may actually not look like a creep at all. Comparison-wise.”
As I was talking, I saw comprehension’s deft light break across his face. And then it died.
“How can you make it something that really happens,” Berkman said. “I mean, how can you get into a situation where you’re looking like a lesser creep? You know. At just the right time?”
“Good question. In fact, it’s the question. How do you manage to look like a lesser creep at the right time, in the right place, in front of the woman you want to notice that you’re a lesser creep?”
Berkman took a noisy sip from his coffee cup and banged it down on the table. He was the type who avoided obstacles by giving up on them immediately. It worked well for him.
“I think I have that one figured out, too,” I finally said.
He looked up. “Yeah?”
“The most important thing is the first shot. You gotta get in there and look good to them on the first step.”
“First impressions,” he said.
“Exactly. You have to be that good guy, that significantly lesser of a creep on the first date. So why don’t we have that first date?”
“What do you mean we?”
“Relax. I meant that we’ll arrange it so I’ll be the bigger creep on your first date.”
“You mean, like, play it out?”
“Exactly. Role-playing.”
“But how do you come along on our date?”
“It’s like this: you go to a restaurant, and right after you sit down, after you order your drinks, I’ll pop in. You know. A big surprise bumping into you, that kind of thing. And you’ll invite me to sit down for a quick drink.”
“A guy sitting down for a drink while I’m on a date? Who the hell does that?”
“A creep, that’s who.”
Berkman considered that for all of two seconds, then slapped his hand down on the table, hard. The couple in the next booth jumped.
“And then I’ll start in with some kind of act,” I said. “I’ll push all the right buttons.”
“What buttons?”
“Buttons you’ll tell me about before the date,” I said. “Do a little research.”
“What research?”
“You know. Sensitive stuff. Stuff I can use. Her political beliefs. Maybe someone she admires. Famous or not. I could use pretty much anything.”
“How am I going to find out any of that stuff?”
“You know, during the flirting, getting-to-know-you stage, the one before you actually ask her out on a full-fledged first date,” I said. “When you meet her at the bar, or at some party, you just talk and pick up on things.”
“Things,” he echoed absently.
“Then you give me the information. I’ll need a little time to prepare, particularly if it’s political. You know, research. Then I’ll be your foil.”
“My what?”
“Foil. It’s got a lot of meanings. To enhance or contrast. I’m enhancing what a creep I am, and contrasting it with what a decent guy you are.”
“You making that up?”
“The foil? No. Look it up.”
“In the dictionary?”
“You can’t bother to look up one word?”
“I already had to look up epiphany,” Berkman said. “Isn’t that enough?”
~ ~ ~
Annabelle Shapiro was a layup. I couldn’t have asked for a better inaugural subject. Berkman had latched onto her at a TGIF event at a local sports bar.
He scored her phone number, then followed the rules etched, I presume, on some ancient surface predating the Rosetta Stone: a 48-hour wait; the re-introductory text call laced with mildly self-deprecating humor; the work lunch date, and, finally, arrangements for a dinner date. We went out for a quick coffee at this little café around the corner from work for a debriefing.
“So, you guys hit it off?” I asked.
“I get the sense she doesn’t like me.”
“How do you know that?”
“She said, ‘I’m not sure I like you.’”
“Then why is she going out with you?”
“I’m persistent.”
He was. To the point of being a creep.
“Tell me what you got,” I said.
“I think she’s my age. At least 30. She’s a writer.”
“What kind of writer?”
“Freelance. Lately a lot of stuff on the Middle East.”
“Eureka.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Can you be more specific about what kind of issues in the Middle East?”
“You know. Israel and Palestine. Conflict and what-not and all that stuff that they’re always going on about.”
“She must have mentioned something specific. Did you take notes?”
“No. I forgot.”
“Forgot?”
“Yeah. I started drifting.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“There was this really cute brunette standing in back of her. I think she may have been checking me out.”
“Maybe she was a Palestinian.”
“They hang out at sports bars?”
I didn’t press him. It would only discourage both of us.
We settled on Baxter’s Bait Shop. Berkman scheduled an 8 p.m. meeting with her at the bar for drinks, and 8:30 reservations for the dinner. I arrived at 9. It was perfect. They were sitting at a four-chair table not 15 feet from the bar. I ordered a Sam Adams, and, as pre-arranged, stood at the bar for about eight minutes sipping my beer, giving Berkman plenty of time to spot me. Within that space of time, Berkman was to point me out to Anna Shapiro and make some comment along the “I-know-that-guy-from-work” line.
I turned and pretended to witlessly scan the room and waited for Berkman to give me an innocent wave. I had to admit, his timing was impeccable. My visual sweep of the room had just landed on him and Annabelle when his arm went up. They were both looking at me, smiling. I smiled back, waved, hesitated a moment—just a hint of social awkwardness for authenticity—and loped on over.
“Todd, what are you doing here?” I asked.
“We were going to ask you the same thing.”
“Just having a drink or two before meeting some friends for a film.” A film. Not a movie. Definitely a pretentious creep word. After a firm handshake with Berkman, my eyes settled on Annabelle, who was looking up at me with her best public smile. Short brown hair, dark brown eyes and olive skin. Berkman didn’t stand a chance.
“And who’s this?” I asked.
“Annabelle, I’d like you do meet Seth Sutherland, a colleague from work. Seth, this is Annabelle Shapiro.”
“Anna,” she said, giving me a prim handshake.
“Excuse me?” For a moment I thought that imbecile had mistaken her name.
“I prefer to be called Anna.”
“Really,” I said, craning my head back. “Why would you do that?”
“Why would I do what?”
“Anabelle is such a pretty name. Why waste it?”
Her public smile dimmed by a few degrees. Not bad. I’d scored my first creep point before sitting down. I pulled out the vacant seat opposite Annabelle about two inches and then stopped.
“Mind if I take a seat?”
Berkman hesitated, looked at me, then Anabelle, then back at me. He looked a bit startled. He really was much better at this then I thought.
“Well. Sure. Have a seat,” he finally said.
I sat down and plunked my bottle on the table as if planting my colors on a patch of conquered turf.
“You order an appetizer yet?” I asked.
“Yes,” Annabelle said. “Eggplant with mozzarella and dried tomatoes.”
“Love that,” I said. “Don’t like dried tomatoes with anything else.” I looked at Annabelle. “Isn’t that strange?” I asked it as if it was the most significant question that would be asked of her that week.
She started to answer when I cut her off, looked at Berkman and asked some innocuous question about work.
Berkman gave me a dutiful answer, then turned to Annabelle and deftly brought her back into the conversation.
“Seth is the copy desk chief at the Journal,” he said.
“Ah,” she said. It had that tone, that inflection. I could already tell she was one of those. A writer who thought anyone who worked on a copy desk was a failed journalist who sought the gospel of The Elements of Style for a measure of fragile dignity. “How long have you been there?”
“Long enough to be alarmed by the growing illiteracy of so-called writers,” I said with as jovial a tone as I could muster. My blood was up.
Berkman let out a genuinely embarrassed laugh. Annabelle tilted her head just a bit, as if to regard me from some fresh angle, and uttered two brittle words: “Excuse me?”
The appetizer arrived, with the waiter accommodatingly providing an extra plate, fork, knife and napkin for me. I held up my hand as if to stop traffic. “Present company excepted, of course.”
“Right,” Berkman chimed in.
I concentrated on helping myself to a large chunk of the appetizer. I could feel Annabelle looking at me but pretended to be unaware. It’s what Berkman would do after offending someone.
He busied himself by digging into the remains of the gutted appetizer, gallantly doling out the bigger piece for Annabelle, and the rest for himself. We ate in silence for a few moments. A few long moments. Berkman finally broke the drought.
“Annabelle works for a lot of different mags,” he said in a chipper tone. “Harpers. The Atlantic. She’s working on a piece now for MetroTones.”
“Really,” I said dully. “Haven’t read it for years.”
I half-expected Annabelle to sit in silence for at least a few more boorish comments. No such problem.
“Why?” she asked, taking a swig of her drink.
“Why what?”
“Why haven’t you read it?”
“It’s just that, well. Every time I pick it up, there’s another piece on Israel or the Middle East. It’s the same issues over and over and over, with different players. Or worse yet, the same players, just with different names.”
And we’re off to the races.
“It’s really not the same,” Annabelle said. She offered it as some kind of mild antidote to what she was sure was an offhand, almost jokey retort.
“Sure it is,” I said. “Militarism. Territorialism. Terrorism. Counter-terrorism. Nationalism. It goes on and on, looping back onto itself.”
“Well, I’m not sure it’s that simple,” Berkman said. It wasn’t a bad reply for him. He really had no idea what I was talking about. Then again, neither did I.
“It has to be sorted out, right?” Annabelle asked in that same mild tone. And then, not so mildly: “Doesn’t it?”
We went back and forth for a bit. I rubbed up against a number of third-rail issues without fully letting on where I stood. It was a good move, because I didn’t know where I stood. No matter. All that was important was that Anna Shapiro thought I stood somewhere she didn’t like.
“Well,” Berkman said in the midst of clearing his throat, “it’s one of those topics everyone seems to have an opinion on.” He looked at Annabelle, smiled, and then patted her hand. “You know that old saw about politics and religion.” He almost winked but didn’t, thank God.
The table remained silent. Annabelle was staring at me. Or I should say she stared through me.
I thought maybe I’d overplayed my hand, but I noticed that Annabelle had moved slightly closer to Berkman, and that he was leaning toward her so closely that their shoulders were touching. As I was asking the waiter to bring mustard—and he was reciting a variety to choose from—they started talking in the warm, indecipherable murmur of co-conspirators, a hushed conversation ending with soft laughter. They were suddenly, quietly sharing something between them. And against me.
I started to smile, then winked at Annabelle. I couldn’t help it. Like any professional foil, I had to follow it through, right to the very end.
~ ~ ~
It was all word of mouth. That’s what made me famous. Or infamous. It wasn’t surprising. Anything involving Berkman couldn’t stay a secret for long, especially when Annabelle Shapiro had agreed to a second date, and then a third, and then a fourth. It was right before the fourth that Berkman let it spill, probably when some of our friends kept asking him how he was able to survive into the late innings with a woman undeniably out of his league.
So Berkman sang and it was out. He kept on referring to me as his foil. I thought it would blow over. It didn’t. I started getting requests to repeat my performance. At first I declined, describing it as a personal favor to Berkman. But I confess to feeling a bit of a buzz from the odd admiration that it inspired. Just as a joke I printed up some embossed business cards with my name and then, underneath, my new title: The Foil. Except I changed the spelling to Foyle. It just seemed a bit more elegant. The Foyle.
I agreed to continue the service. I wanted to prove it wasn’t some kind of fluke. It was my niche, my idea, and I wanted it to remain mine. And the offers of free dinners and drinks were a good fringe benefit. So the creeps lined up, and in each case I followed the procedure that had started with Berkman.
It was going as smoothly as a Gershwin melody. Until the case of Little Erin Pickford.
Or I should say the case of a new client, Brett Lincoln, a friend of Berkman’s who I’d never met. Instead of huddling at my usual deli for a briefing, Lincoln wanted to rendezvous at this trendy grill called the BlueMitzvah that specialized in obscenely overpriced mixed drinks. I didn’t object. It was on his dime.
Brett was a few years shy of early-thirties chubbiness, with a head of receding, fluffy blonde hair and a persistent scent of upper-end cologne. Berkman told me that his family was loaded, and that Brett was cooling his heels as a commodities trader at one of the smaller houses on the Street until his Trust kicked in.
But this was a tougher case. Berkman once referred to him as Twitch. Now I could see why. Lincoln was a foot-and-finger-tapping, fast-talking, chair-squirming, knee-bouncing, knuckle-cracking, hard-blinking coil of flexing restlessness. And he was also, evidently, an optimist.
“We really seem to be connecting,” Lincoln said of a recent lunch date with Erin Pickford. “But it just doesn’t feel like we’re connecting at a deep enough level, you know what I mean?”
“Intimacy,” I said. “You want a deeper level of intimacy.”
“Yeah. Or at least something that feels like intimacy. I think I know a way to get there.”
“I’m all ears.”
“It’s like this,” he said, leaning forward, placing his elbows on the table and looking me straight in the eye. I’m sure someone told him the gesture made him look more sincere. “It’s Erin’s sister. Her younger sister. She died in a swimming accident off Dewey Beach, in Delaware.”
“I’m very sorry,” I said, but he didn’t seem to hear me.
“What I need is for you to somehow bring up in conversation what happened to my younger sister,” he said.
“What happened to her?”
“She drowned,” he said.
I didn’t know what to say for a moment. He kept looking straight at me, mouth tight, eyes wide, not even blinking. It was the only time he was actually still.
“I’m very sorry,” I said in as soft a tone as I could manage above the buzz of the crowd.
Then he smiled.
“Don’t be,” he said. “It isn’t true.”
He gave off a bleating little laugh, then picked up his empty glass, rattled the melting ice and signaled the waitress for another.
“There’s one other little twist,” he said.
“A twist,” I said. It wasn’t a question. I was preoccupied with coming up with a way of declining the case on the grounds that he was a scumbag. Then again, all of my clients were scumbags. That was the whole point.
“I had to do this a bit differently,” he said. “I know you like the whole pre-meeting thing, to get all the background and so forth, which is trey cool, very thorough and blah, blah, blah but I don’t have time, or I just don’t want to wait or whatever.”
He paused for a moment, sucking a piece of ice out of his glass, then spitting it back into the glass with a little clank.
“She’s meeting us here,” he said.
“Here?” I smiled reflexively, thinking it was joke, or a test, or whatever rich, bored little creeps do to amuse themselves.
“Here. As in now.”
The waitress came up with his drink, saw that mine was untouched, took Lincoln’s empty and left. I sat there looking at him, clumsily stalled between the suspicion of a cheap joke and the nauseating realization that Erin Pickford was moments away. I kept scanning the ever-swelling bar and dinner crowd for an approaching Pickford. The inconvenient fact that I wouldn’t recognize her if I saw her didn’t stop me.
“Look,” I said, “about this, I really don’t approach -- ”
“I know, I know,” Lincoln said. “It’s kind of different. You do the crashing, but this is a kind of pre-crashing. I figured we could mix it up.”
“But there is a certain system--”
“System-schmystem,” he said.
I didn’t know what to say. I guess I should have asked what he was going to do when Erin Pickford found out he never had a sister, but Brett wasn’t thinking that far ahead. He wasn’t thinking much beyond the next three minutes.
“It’s going to be fine,” he said. “Here she comes. Just remember. Drowned. Make it Jersey. Someplace off Wildwood. Maybe mention I tried to save her.”
He stood up, smiled broadly and gave a little wave. I turned and saw her coming. That’s when she went from Erin Pickford to Little Erin Pickford. It’s not that she was petite. She was of average height, with an athletic build. It was more a sense that she gave off. I guess you’d call it vulnerability, underscored by wide blue eyes and a taut little smile.
“Hey there,” Lincoln said, leaning forward. She hung back for just a second, eyeing the immediate surroundings like a gazelle approaching a watering hole and scanning for predators. Our eyes met for a second. I gave her a nod and tried to smile. Lincoln pulled out the empty chair with a ceremonial flourish. Erin looked at it, then back at me.
“Oh,” Lincoln said, running his fingers through his hair, suddenly the socially-awkward-but-well-meaning boy. “Geez. Sorry. This is Seth. Seth Sutherland. He’s kind of a friend of a friend. He was at the bar so we just fell into talking while I was waiting for you.”
“Hi Seth,” she said, reaching across the table as she sat down. I leaned forward in my chair, rising just a bit, and took her hand. Her palm was sweaty.
“This is Erin,” Lincoln said to me as he took his seat. “Erin Pickford.” Before I could say anything, he turned back to her. “Can I get you a drink?”
“Sure,” she said, placing her little purse the on the table. “I’ll take a Dreaming Charlotte.”
Lincoln dutifully signaled for the waitress, who didn’t see him at first. He kept his arm up, index finger extended for what seemed a long, awkward moment made worse by the silence at the table.
“Friend of which friend?” Erin finally asked.
“Excuse me?”
“Brett said you were a friend of one of his friends,” she said. “Which one?
“Berky,” Lincoln answered for me, his index finger still up. “Is this woman Stevie Wonder’s sister?”
Erin pretended not to hear him. I gave him a look that he didn’t catch.
“Oh really?” Erin said. “Is that the one who’s getting engaged?”
“Engaged, or close or something,” Lincoln said, answering for me again. He’d finally caught the waitress’s eye. She came up to the table. Lincoln looked back at Erin. “What did you say you wanted?”
“A Dreaming Charlotte,” Erin asked the waitress. “Please.”
“And bring some of that toast stuff,” Lincoln said over his shoulder, his back to the waitress. I didn’t really know how I was going to out-creep this guy. When the waitress left, Erin back turned to me. “And how do you know Berky?”
“We work at the same place,” I said.
“And where is that?”
I told her the title.
“I’ve heard of that,” she said, “I think.” But she didn’t say it on a snotty way, which, of course, made my job that much more difficult.
“I was kind of surprised when I heard about the possible engagement,” Erin said.
“Why’s that?” I asked, hoping for one of those low-slung piñatas.
“I don’t know,” she said with a shrug. “He just doesn’t seem like the marrying type.”
“What does a marrying type seem like?” I asked.
“That’s a good question,” she said. “I guess it’s more of a sense than anything else, but if I had to put it into words, I’d have to say a good center.”
“What’s that?” Lincoln asked before I could. It came out sharp, like he was defensive about good centers, and whether he had one.
“Maybe those are the wrong words,” she said. “Or maybe not enough. Maybe I should say a calm center. Some kind of sense of confidence.”
“I think the old-fashion word for it is stability,” I said as dryly as I could manage.
“Hah,” Lincoln said. I managed not to acknowledge it. So did Little Erin Pickford.
“I see what you mean, but it’s more than that, or maybe something different,” Erin said. “It’s more a sense of knowing where they’re at. Of them knowing where they’re headed.”
“Isn’t that a bit, I don’t know, predictable?” I asked. But it came out soft. It seemed to be the only appropriate way to talk to her. “I know we’re supposed to have all these post-modern, post-gender traits, but they seem suspiciously suffused with feminine qualities, don’t they?”
“Who’s feminine?” Lincoln asked. It came out in that same sharp, wary tone he used with good centers.
I didn’t answer. There was nothing to say.
“I’m not sure they’re feminine qualities,” Erin said softly.
She smiled at me then, a certain type of smile lacing patience with something else. I think it was pity. Not pity from disdain. A pure kind of pity. And then something moved. Or shifted. Or changed. And I knew her. Just like that. She was no longer Little Erin Pickford. She was Erin. And she was tougher than any of us.
Lincoln was waiting, perched on the edge of his chair, ready to leap in as soon as the Foyle started doing his stuff. But I said nothing. Not a word.
The waitress came up with the bread. She practically dropped it on the table in front of Lincoln.
“You gotta try this,” he said, grabbing a slice and putting it on Erin’s plate. “Best friggin’ nosh in town.” He got a piece for himself and took a chomp out of it, then leaned closer to Erin. “I see what you’re saying, about centers and all. I really see it. And it’s not really feminine qualities, like Seth says. It’s something else, right?”
Erin picked up her piece of flat toast, took a little bite from a corner, and put it back on the plate. She didn’t answer.
“It’s something else,” Lincoln said gamely. “It’s like a kind of new dimension. For men. It’s like that, right?”
I sat still, staring down at the little piece of toast that Erin Pickford had bitten into, looking at its missing corner.
“Like, take how men handle grief, at least nowadays,” Lincoln said. “That’s changed. For men. How we handle grief. Say, like, grieving over the death of someone near and dear. You know?”
He took a bite of his flat bread. Some of the cheese stuck to his lower lip. I knew he was waiting for me to weigh in, to say something about his fictional sister fictionally drowning in Wildwood or Cape May or wherever it never happened, but I couldn’t look up. I just sat there looking at Erin Pickford’s toast, abandoned there on the plate.
Lincoln’s voice trailed off. I wanted to watch him squirm, watch the whole thing collapse. But he was saved, as people like him usually are. An arm shot up from the bar, and someone called his name.
“Dude,” Lincoln called. “Hey, dude.” He looked at me, then Erin, and pointed to the arm. “That’s Roderick. Haven’t seen him in, like, months.”
He got up from his chair, took a step, then realized he had to say something to Erin. “Excuse me for just a sec? Real quick? I gotta say hi.”
Erin didn’t seem to notice. After he’d gone, she reached for her little bitten piece of toast, lifted it just off the plate, and then put it back down.
“Not the best nosh in town, huh?” I asked.
“What?” she said, looking back up at me. She wasn’t trying to smile anymore.
“The toast,” I said. The word hung out there until the noise from the crowd swallowed it. “Never mind,” I said.
Erin got up, holding her purse. “Excuse me,” she said, nodding vaguely toward the bathroom, even though we both knew that was the last place she was headed.
“Sure,” I said, without really looking at her. I didn’t want to see the expression on her face. “I’ll keep the table warm.”
But she was already walking away. I looked toward the bar. Lincoln was fully engaged with Roderick, telling some story, already holding a bottle of beer. He didn’t look back at the table. I picked up my drink and drained it off. It tasted vaguely of vodka and some kind of juice blend that they called a Second McAuliffe. I was staring down at Erin’s nibbled piece of toast when someone sat down at the table. It was Annabelle Shapiro.
She gave me a wobbly nod. “Seth, right?”
“The one and only,” I said.
“Seths are probably a dime a dozen,” she said. “But there’s only one Foyle, right?”
I sat there blinking at her. It was the only tactic available in this type of situation. She just kept smiling.
“Is Berkman around?” I finally asked.
“Most decidedly not,” she said, leaning in closely. I could smell her breath. Vodka. “I dumped him.”
“Dumped him?”
“Dumped as in adios-amigo-hit-the-friggin’-bricks,” she said.
“I heard you guys were headed toward an engagement,” I said.
Annabelle jerked back her head as if I’d slapped her.
“Engaged? To Berkman?” she asked.
“You dump him over the Foyle thing?” I asked.
“Yeah. Well, no,” she said, pausing to move her chair closer to mine so I could hear her over the crowd. “He told me all about you.”
“He spilled? Why would he do that?”
Annabelle didn’t bother answering. It was just another dumb question. She spied Erin’s piece of nibbled toast on the plate, grabbed it and took a chomp. I sat still, listening to the murmur and laughter of the crowd as it rose and fell around me. They were three deep at the bar. I couldn’t see Lincoln anymore. Annabelle Shapiro leaned in still closer. We were almost nose to nose. She was all brown eyes and vodka breath.
“You know, even though you acted like a creep, I kind of liked you,” she said.
“Not really,” I said. “You liked the Foyle. It was just an act.”
“Nah. It wasn’t an act. Or it wasn’t all an act. You’re part Foyle.”
“You think?”
“I know.”
“Well, if you’re right, I wouldn’t make much of a boyfriend, would I?”
“Maybe so,” she said. She put her hand on my forearm. “Then again, maybe not.” She looked into my eyes. “Whaddya think?”
I didn’t answer. I looked over her shoulder, searching for Erin Pickford.
“Hm? Whaddya say?” Annabelle asked.
She kept tapping on my arm, trying to get me to look at her, but I wouldn’t. I kept searching the crowd, even though I knew she was gone.
