Garrison replaced the cap on the Snapple and left the half-emptied bottle on the top shelf of the refrigerator, trading it for a beer. He popped off the top, and shuffled through the kitchen, past the breakfast table, and through the screen door onto the back deck.
You forgot to sign the check, Asshole.
He left his beer on the patio table and returned through the screen door to the island. He scribbled his name on the signature line and left the pen tucked into the fold of the checkbook. Back on the deck, he pulled muddy golf shoes from a bench in the corner. The branch from a gingko tree hung low over the hand rail, and he snapped off a short twig. Garrison dropped heavily into a patio chair and cleared his throat with a grunt.
His dark hair turned gray around his temples, and Dina saw the mole just under his left eye was gone. Over two decades had passed since she'd drawn imaginary circles around it while he slept, tapped it until he woke. "You're cute," she'd said to him then.
He scraped mud and grass from between the cleats, and clods formed a clumsy archipelago on the wooden deck floor. He used his big toe to push the dirt between the slats.
"So are you," he'd said in return, before closing his eyes again.
Dina rested the tip of her finger in the cleft of his chin. "I'm tired of borrowing you."
He did not open his eyes. "Borrowing me?"
"It's like I have you on loan."
"Like a book from the library?"
"More like a car."
"That's not borrowing; that's renting." He opened his eyes. They were watery and a little bloodshot. They'd had too much to drink in the hotel bar the night before. It was the last night of the Newspaper Association of America conference. Journalists were like that--drinking to excess as they attempted to out-importance one another.
Dina rolled onto her back and pulled the sheets to the top of her neck. "It doesn't matter. Either way, you're not mine, and I have to send you back. I don't like it anymore."
His face turned apologetic. "Dina… I feel like such a failure, here. I know--"
"Jesus, I don't want you to leave your family or anything. God."
But I did and knew you wouldn't. Aside from cheating on your wife, you were relatively decent. Are you still? What has a lifetime of guilt done to you?
The cleats sat partially cleaned. Garrison absentmindedly rubbed the spot where his mole had been. He shook his head and exhaled audibly letting his shoulders droop. "She doesn't cash them," he said aloud, shaking his head.
He returned to the kitchen and pulled a yellow legal pad from the junk drawer, then the pen from the checkbook. "Dolores," he wrote on the top line. "I hear you stopped by this evening."
This is your opener? You're a writer, for shit's sake.
Garrison flipped the page and started again. "Dolores, I have thought of you every day for the last 23 years."
Better.
"Please know I loved your mother. I feel her everywhere." He paused, spinning the pen between his fingers.
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