Crossing Paths

Christian Brown is not an erratic man. He always considers his decisions. He makes lists. Pro. Con. Sometimes he makes Venn diagrams when he thinks his ideas belong somewhere in between. As he speeds north on the highway in his dead father’s pick-up truck, all he can think about is the fact that his decision to be on this highway, heading north, has nothing to do with lists and diagrams. It’s love, pure and unconditional, perfect and aching. Christian Brown is not an emotional man, but his wet eyes blur the exit numbers and motel signs now.

His dead father’s pizza joint was the last sad remnant of Cobb’s family-owned restaurants. Dilapidated, with a patchy covering of rotten, wooden shingles, it looked like it might breathe its last at any moment. The dingy dining room was lit with outdated, rusty fixtures, and the doors creaked. Christian had just graduated from the state college when he found out his father was now his dead father and his dead father’s restaurant was now his.

“Cancer,” they said. “Something in his lungs.”

“It was the mining.”

“The coal dust.”

“The stress of putting that boy of his through college.”

Christian can never say what compelled him to move back to Cobb and take over the restaurant. He had no one to take care of. It certainly wasn’t the busybodies that still brought casseroles by every so often. The business was steady, but he wasn’t making a fortune. The little bedroom crammed above the restaurant, with its creaky bed, left more to be desired. Christian liked to think it was some sense of duty and honor that kept him here. His dead father poured all of his heart and soul into keeping the restaurant open, and Christian couldn’t just let that go. The truth is that the world out there was ugly, and he was terrified. It’s been ten years, and if anything, he’s more terrified than before.

Christian Brown is not a romantic man, but he can remember the day he first saw her. It was the restaurant’s slow hours, a Thursday, when every passing minute between three and five feels like a year. He was busy with his Thursday afternoon ritual. He had swept the floors, wiped the tables, and cleaned the door with Windex. The bleach smells stung his nose, but he liked a clean place, took pride in the cleanliness. He was just finishing up when the little bell on the front door handle tinkled, and she walked in. He didn’t recognize her. She was not one he had grown up with, kissed in the bed of his dead father’s truck, taken out for burgers at the drive-in, or seen in cowboy boots at the bonfires out on Durham Hollow Road. She was short, dressed in jeans and an i-love-new-york t-shirt. Christian realized she was waiting for him, eyebrows raised.

“You can sit wherever you want.”

His voice, calling from the back of the restaurant, sounded unnaturally loud in his ears. He mentally cringed. Play it cool. He pretended to be busy, wiping glasses behind the small bar, but watched out of the corner of his eye as the woman pulled out her chair, gripping the top edge with chipped, red fingernails. She settled in a corner, stretched her legs out under the table, and picked up a menu.

Christian’s mind raced. How long had it been since he’d wiped down the menus with Clorox wipes? Was it sticky? He watched her pixie face for any sign of disgust. He followed her green eyes as they swept across the appetizers. Her eyes met his. He waited.

“I think I’m ready to order...” she called from her table.

“Oh, right.”

He stood over her, decided it was awkward, and sat across from her at the table, order pad between them.

“I’m Christian Brown.”

“Yeah, hi. I want two slices of cheese and a Leinenkugel. The Summer Shandy.”

“Great, I’ll have that right out.”

Christian was fascinated. He had cheese pizzas from the lunch rush heated already, but he rolled out some fresh dough, coated it with olive oil, and red sauce. He grated cheese, parmesan and mozzarella, over the pizza and wondered where she came from. How does a gorgeous woman he has never seen in his life just show up in his dead father’s restaurant? Obviously, she thinks he’s an idiot.

He put the pizza in the oven, tried not to dwell on whether she thought he was an idiot, and rewashed some of the lunch dishes off of the drying rack. He cut two slices off the fresh pizza, and carried them out with her beer.

“Are you hiring?”

Christian nearly dropped the tray. Looking stricken, she backtracked.

“If you’re not, it’s ok. I’m just in town for the summer and I need something.”

He could use some extra help around here.

“Absolutely. I’ve been looking for a good waitress all summer.”

That’s the first time he failed to make a list.

On Friday, Delaney tied the apron strings around her waist. Christian just had this lying around, for his summer waitresses, he said. Green like her eyes. It was ten, so for the hour or so before their eleven-thirty opening, Delaney followed Christian from one end of the restaurant to the other. She nodded her understanding as he explained the refilling of the ice machine, showed her the location of the dumpster out back, and taught her how to change the soap, paper towels, and toilet paper rolls in the bathroom.

“But basically all you have to do is write down orders correctly and make sure drinks are full.” He gestured to a beat-up, manual cash register behind him. “You can ring up orders here.”

Then he kicked her out of the kitchen to take the first customers of the day, and he kept up a steady stream of baking pizzas and building subs in the back. The work soothed his frazzled nerves. Something about her. They had more customers than usual thanks to the Friday rush, so they didn’t talk much. He noticed everything. She took her orders accurately. Her handwriting was neat and small. In fact, the more Christian looked around his dead father’s pizza joint, the more he realized the entire place seemed neater, more beautiful.

During the afternoon shift, she swept the floors and he bussed the dirty tables, dumping dishes in the sink and wiping down tabletops. As he moved between the dining room and the kitchen, he asked her some of the questions he had written down in a list the night before.

-where are you from?

-why cobb?

-do you like to hike?

-to canoe?

-to hunt?

She was originally from Cincinnati, but she studies anthropology at Columbia. New York City, New York. She isn’t sure what she’ll do with her art history degree. Maybe go to grad school. Maybe come back and work here, in the pizza restaurant. She laughs a high-pitched, tinkling laugh. It’s pleasant. She’s in Cobb for the summer, she says, to find a good nursing home for her insane old grandwitch and put the house her father was born in on the market. Her parents say spending time here is good for her, will teach her responsibility, but they really just don’t want to deal with her shit.

“And what brings you to Cobb?” She raised her eyebrows, something Christian noticed she did when she was teasing.

“Well, I live here.”

“I know that, silly, but why do you live here?”

Christian gestured lamely around the restaurant.

“I have a dead father.”

Delaney stopped twirling around the room, stirring up dust bunnies with the broom, and leaned it haphazardly in the corner. She came to him, beautiful, and she stood on her tiptoes to gather him in a hug. It was a little forward, but she was, after all, not from around here.

They spent that night together in Christian’s creaky old bed, in the room above the restaurant, and every night together after, sometimes above the restaurant, sometimes (quietly) in the grandmother’s spare room, and sometimes underneath the stars in the bed of Christian’s dead father’s truck. Delaney was delighted to find out he studied philosophy, some ten years ago, and they started to go to the library every Tuesday during their afternoon break. She would sit in his bed and smoke a cigarette and read out loud about Greeks and Romans and Hobbes and architecture and Celtic civilization and all of the obscure U.S. presidents. She laughed her tinkly-glass laugh, joked about the two faux-academics stuck in backwater Cobb, and kissed him on his mouth.

On the weekends, they put the grandmother between them in his dead father’s truck, and drove to visit every nursing home within a hundred miles of Cobb. The grandmother always insisted they had been there before, which made Delaney laugh, which made Christian’s heart swell. He was in love, he knew it, he loved her, and she had to be his. They were happy as a rainy May progressed into a sweet-smelling June, so happy that he was actually surprised when they had their first fight.

“Chris, this place is a dump. What do you think about fixing it up? I could help.”

He glared at her from the floor, where he was on his hands and knees, plaid shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows, waxing the floor. “I like it like this.”

She picked at a hangnail. “No one could possibly like it like this.”

He threw down his rag and stood up. “I said I like it. This is how Dad liked it. This is how the town likes it. What do you know, anyway?” He had hurt her. He could tell.

“I know a lot of things,” she said quietly. “I mean, I do go to Columbia.”

“Well that’s great. Just great. Just throw your fancy school in my face. I could be there. I could be there right now. But I like this place, the way this place is. You can really be pushy sometimes.” She stood to go, stomping across the dining room, dodging his dropped cleaning supplies, and turned to throw her apron in his face. As she leaned back to throw it, she slid and fell on his freshly waxed floor. Of course he rushed to help her, but he lost his balance on the slickness, sliding to a halt right next to her left ankle. They laughed and cried together then, because every couple in love laughs and cries and makes up. I love you. I love you. Let me take you to bed.

So she put new dining cloths on the tables, got a man to come give them an estimate on new shingles, and hired the high school kid two doors down to deliver pizzas in the dead father’s truck. She was thrilled over how great the place was turning out, but Christian knew it was already perfect from the moment she walked through the door. It was this first argument that planted a seed, prompted a phone call, and much secretive behavior on his part. Getting into a fall graduate program with just months to go is no small feat, and he certainly did not have the time to make any lists.

Christian Brown is not an excitable man, but his heart raced as he sat across from Delaney in his dead father’s restaurant. The candles he had placed everywhere threw soft light on the sharp angles of her face. He thought he had done a good job, it was romantic, she had to love it. She had to. He watched her in rapt attention, as always, like he did as a small boy with his Saturday morning cartoons. He laughed when she laughed, reached across the table to grab her hands in his. He couldn’t wipe the silly smile off his face. She complimented his tonnarelli and clam dish and he actually blushed, which he had considered himself incapable of doing for many years now.

“Delaney, I have something for you. I think you’ll like it.”

She giggled. “I hope it’s not a ring!”

“Even better,” he replied as he pushed the folded letter towards her. It was a wrinkled, stained letter. He had read it so many times, in the shower, over his cooking, in one hand while he mowed the grandmother’s lawn last week. It was his dearest treasure, and soon, they could share it together. Christian held his breath as he watched her scan the lines.

“You got into a master’s program. At Columbia.” Her voice has grown soft and small.

Christian ignored this.

“Yes!”

He grabbed her hands and waited. After a few seconds of needle silence, Delaney congratulated him and took a sip of her wine, staring out the window into the July night. Christian waited. He watched her closely. She sipped her wine again, and wiped red lipstick off the side of her glass. She twirled the last bit of pasta around her fork and dropped it onto her plate. She bit her lip. He watched.

Finally: “You didn’t tell me you were applying. At my school. Where I live.”

He sighed, relived, quickly realizing that she just didn’t understand what he had done for them. For her. “It’s a surprise. It was a surprise for you. I wasn’t sure I’d get in.”

Delaney smiled at him, thin-lipped, cold. “Don’t you think this is something we should have discussed?”

Christian laughed.

“We did talk about it. You said you hate for the summer to end. That we belong together. Now we can be together. I did that for us. Maybe we can find an apartment. Maybe a house. I’m selling dad’s restaurant.”

“But you love this place. You love it.”

“It’s holding me back.”

Delaney stared at him.

“I’m not going back this semester.”

Christian grinned, then stopped.

“Excuse me?”

“I’m not going back. I failed out last semester. My parents sent me here to take care of my grandmother, and ‘find myself.’ I thought I’d stay on here. With you.”

Christian stood up too quickly, spilling his wine across the pristine tablecloths. “You always talked about going back. When were you going to tell me?”

Stricken-faced, she explained that she wanted him to like her, wanted to impress him, didn’t want to admit the truth to herself. She was terrified of life out there.

Christian stormed and screamed and bawled, kissed her, and asked her to leave. He cleaned up the remains of dinner, carefully, and blew out the candles. He knew what she said was true, she was not coming with him, but he couldn’t stay here with her. Not now. Things were waiting.

He packed the truck, went to see his dead father’s lawyer the next day, and got his paperwork done. He mailed a letter to the grandmother’s house, put flowers on his dead father’s grave, and started speeding north on the highway.

On Thursday, Delaney opened a deed to the pizza restaurant. She laughed and cried, and went to work. Love bites.