External Affairs — Book IV — Chapter 2
Reunion

To read Chapter One of Book IV, click on the link below:
My first thought on seeing Kelly for the first time in almost one month was whether she was here looking for me, but I didn’t want to ask that right away. At the moment, I was adjusting to seeing her again. I started to order her a beer, but she said,
“Come on Dan, are you turning into a lightweight on me,” so I ordered another pitcher. I had gotten a good start sitting with Rob as he recounted the story of Theodore and his brother Michael, but after sitting with Kelly for a few minutes, I pretty sure she had also gotten a start already herself. The question then was where had she been prior to this.
I filled our glasses.
“Seems like you’re unwinding pretty good tonight,” said Kelly.
“I guess you could say that. How about you? Been out anywhere tonight?” I asked.
“I was up the street with some girlfriends.”
“What happened to them?”
“Oh, they’re still there,” said Kelly. “I decided to come over here for a little while.”
“Why?” I asked.
She raised her eyebrows and stared at me.
After a few seconds, I said “What?”
“Dan, are we really playing this game? What do you think? I came by to see you. We haven’t seen each other for almost a month. I thought it would be good to see you. Maybe I was wrong.” She started getting up like she was planning to leave. I didn’t want her to do that.
“Wait, no,” I said. “I didn’t expect to see you is all.” I decided to change the subject. “How did you know I was here?”
She gave me the same look. “Danny, you are nothing if not a creature of habit.”
I was about to say I agreed with her, but she said first,
“And I saw Trevor when he came into the bar and he told me you were here. He’s spending a lot of time up here lately.”
I nodded. “Things with him and Gayle have been moving along it seems.”
“Looks that way. She’s actually driving me a little crazy. She’s not too keen to tell anybody what has been going on with her and Trevor.”
“With good reason,” agreed Kelly.
“Well, I seem to be the exception to that rule,” I said. “I guess she has to confide in someone so she’s always coming up to me and giving me information I don’t really want. She also seems to think this is some sort of group effort between the four of us. She keeps saying we should all go on a road trip together. I mean, really?”
Kelly considered this, took a sip of her beer, then said, “I don’t know, where do you think we’d go,” and she raised her eyebrows. “We could take a wine tour out on Long Island.”
I started laughing. Kelly did too. The ice was broken.
“It’s good to see you,” I said.
“It’s good to see you too.”
Brief pause. Uncomfortable silence. Then I said, “Any requests?”
“I thought you’d never ask,” said Kelly.
I asked the bartender Madison to make change and got a bunch of single dollar bills. Kelly and I then proceeded to program the jukebox for the next couple of hours. We decided to kick it old school for a while, creating a set from bands at the center of the Rock and Roll canon: The Beatles, The Stones, The Who, we threw in Lola by the Kinks just for fun, and then rounded out the set by picking a half dozen or more songs by Led Zeppelin.
“That’s better,” said Kelly when our first song started to play, Come Together, by The Beatles. John Lennon came floating out of the speakers.
Kelly took a long sip of beer. “Where have you been?” she said.
“Work got kind of busy for me lately.” That was the lamest excuse imaginable, I knew, but there was some truth to it. I have been involved in this fairly large deal with our clients in London, and they are trying to close before the end of the month, so everything had become a frantic hurry in the last few weeks. From my perspective, closing by the end of the month was preferred. It ended the quarter and would nicely have everything all ticked and tied going into July 4th weekend. Then it wouldn’t be hanging over us going into the holiday. Of course, our British clients didn’t give a good Goddamn about the 4th of July. They’d just as soon forget that day entirely, so if the deal spilled over into the next, no big deal for them.
All Kelly said to this was, “Uh-huh.” I didn’t say anything else, so she added, “Wouldn’t have anything to do with your little acrobatic act at the movie theater over Memorial Day weekend, would it?
My turn to stare now. After our Friday together over Memorial Day weekend, Kelly told me that she had to leave. My wife was away that weekend, and I thought Kelly and I had the whole weekend together. When I found out we did not, I decided to go into work, then out to a movie. At the theater, I saw Kelly through an outside window with a guy I presumed to be her husband. For reasons bordering on the adolescent, this somehow bothered me. Then Kelly turned towards me and I jumped away from the window out of her view. Or so I thought. Kelly didn’t say anything else, just sat there with a little smile on her face.
Eventually, I said, “Guess you saw that?”
Her smile widened. “Yeah, I did. I mean, what was that?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t want you to see me.”
“Why?” I didn’t say anything, so she wrinkled her eyebrows and said, “Were you following me around?”
“No, no,” I said quickly and defensively. “I was just going to a movie and then I saw you there with……” I hesitated.
“My husband?” said Kelly.
“Okay, yes,” I said. “And I wanted to get as far away from there as possible.”
Kelly leaned forward. “Again, why? If you just came in and bought a ticket to a different movie, what difference would it have made. Jumping away like that only draws attention to the situation.”
“I guess I wasn’t thinking along those lines in that moment,” I said.
Kelly paused, took another long pull of beer. I did the same.
“Did you feel like I was cheating on you with my husband?” Kelly said. I said nothing, so she added, “Because that’s some screwed up logic, Danny?”
“I know,” I said. “It’s just that……I…..uh…..you know…..” I couldn’t find the words, or maybe I didn’t want to say them, but Kelly pressed me.
“What? What is it you are trying to say?”
Finally, I blurted out, “I wanted to spend the weekend with you. I thought we were, and when I found out we weren’t and then saw you there, I got….I don’t know, upset by the whole thing, okay.”
“And that’s why you’ve been ignoring me these last few weeks?”
“I got busy at work,” I said weakly.
Kelly gave me the look of , You’ve got to be kidding me.
The Rolling Stones were playing now, Start Me Up. In my mind Mick Jagger was gyrating in every conceivable direction as the lyrics came out of the speakers.
“All right,” I said. “It was childish, I know. I thought maybe you thought this had run its course.”
She looked at me strangely, then said, “After the night we had that Friday, that’s what you thought?” said Kelly.
I shrugged, feeling stupid. I also really had to go to the bathroom again. All the beers with Rob, and now with Kelly were taking their toll, so even though I did want to continue this conversation, as Kelly refilled our glasses, I excused myself to go to the bathroom.
I realized I had made a mistake at the movie theater that night. Unfortunately, that was only the beginning. What Kelly didn’t know, or what I thought she didn’t know, was that after leaving the theater, I came here in a sulky mood, drank a great deal and proceeded to pick up a woman named Naomi, who I also have not seen since.
I went into the bathroom and closed the door. The bathrooms at Teddy’s are single use, one for men and one for women, though they have been known to be interchangeable during desperate times. The Men’s room has a lock on the door, but I never use it. There is a urinal and a toilet and it is not unusual to for another guy to come in and relieve themselves in the vacant receptacle while you are in there.
I was washing my hands at the sink, the door opened and someone did come in. In the mirror I saw it was Kelly. She did lock the door. I turned to face her and she moved quickly, first flicking off the light, then her body pressed against mine and our mouths met. She pulled away briefly and whispered in my ear,
“Don’t fuck this up, Dan. This could be a really great summer.” Her mouth found mine again and we said nothing, losing ourselves in the darkness, the Stones still providing the soundtrack. She undid my belt and moved herself so her back was against a wall wedged between the sink and the toilet.
“You think this has run its course?” she whispered as she raised up one leg, so that her foot rested on the toilet seat.
“I don’t think this has run its course,” she said and took my hand, showing me what she meant.
I no longer thought it had run its course. Quite the contrary, it felt as if it was just beginning again. If I had been on an airplane, I suppose it would have been said that I joined the Mile High Club. What is it called in the bathroom of the local dive bar? As the opening sounds of The Who’s Won’t Get Fooled Again began swirling around us, I was about to find out. Pete Townsend’s angry guitar filled the air, buffeted only by the fury of Keith Moon’s drums and the inexorable power of Roger Daltrey’s voice. Needless to say, my original plan of calling it an early night evaporated. It was going to be a long night. We still had all of Led Zeppelin to get through.
To Be Continued…..
External Affairs is a serial story currently consisting of four books. If you would like to read any of the chapters in the first three books, please click on the link below. If you enjoyed this or any of the other chapters in the story, please consider clicking on the clapping hands. Feedback is always welcome. Thanks for reading.

