contracted for jobs outside the Atlanta area—he’s been in Glasgow for the past four months, working on a shoot for a miniseries, a WWI piece, I think he said. He must just be getting back into town.
“Doing good, man, glad to be home.”
“You were in, what, Glasgow?”
“Mostly, yeah. It was a challenging set. Complicated and extensive. Looks good on the ol’ resume, though. The director is getting a lot of attention, so having worked on his set will do good things for me.”
“Good to hear it, happy for you.”
“How’s books?”
“How about we meet downtown for drinks and talk, huh? Usual spot?”
“Sounds good. See you in twenty?”
“For sure.” I end the call; get my wallet and keys and head out. I still feel like shit, and drinking is probably not a great idea considering liver failure is what tends to be the real killer behind pancreatic cancer, but fuck it. I’m gonna live while I’m still alive.
Nathan is good people, and I always enjoy getting to talk to him.
We meet up at our favorite bar in downtown Atlanta. He’s big, Nathan is. Six-four, and broad as a damn barn. Heavy shoulders, thick chest, thick arms. His hair is almost as dark as Nadia’s, but he has tinges of gray at the temples. Short but thick beard, also streaked here and there with silver. He’s the same age as me, forty-one. His hands always fascinate me—they’re gargantuan, almost double the size of my hands; when we shake, his grip is loose and easy, but it’s like shaking hands with a cinderblock.
He got here before me and ordered for us—we chose this bar as our haunt because they have a bewildering selection of whiskey and scotch and rye. He’s ordered an obscure scotch, something he discovered in the UK, I figure.
It’s just shooting the shit at first. He talks about the set in Glasgow, lots of building trenches and such, the challenge of making new wood look old and muddy and splintered and blasted, things like that.
Two doubles in, and I sense him going sour. He’s quiet, and I let it be. He does this when he’s a few drinks in—goes from animated and easygoing to slow and dark.
“Thinking deep thoughts over there, Nate,” I say.
He shrugs. “Nothing worth sharing.”
“Try me.” I don’t usually push, when he goes dark like this.
He never wants to talk about it anyway, and seems to appreciate that I can just sit and sip and let him claw his way out of whatever pit the whiskey shoved him into. Today, though, I can’t shake my own maudlin, my own depression. I’ve tried to fake it, hanging out with Nathan. A glance here and there from him, though, tells me he sees through it and is just being polite enough to ignore it.
“I will if you will,” he says, his voice a low, bumpy grumble.
I sigh. Flick a finger at the bartender at the other end of the bar; she nods, brings over the bottle. “Breaking the mold here, my friend,” I say. “But you’ve got a deal.”
He waits until our tumblers are full again, two ice cubes each tinkling around the amber. “Truth is, I’m thinking about my wife.”
This has me rocking back on my stool. “You’re married?” I cough around a startled mis-swallow. “I’ve known you almost four years, and you’ve never told me you’re married.”
“Was.”
“Past tense.”
“Yup.” A hefty slug from the tumbler. A hissed growl as it burns on the way down; this is thick, bold scotch, with a rough burn that only turns honey-smooth after you’ve swallowed it.
“Divorced?”
He shakes his head. “Nope.”
“Shit.” This hits close. “She, um…she passed?”
He harrumphs. “Hate that bullshit phrase. She passed, like she just sorta moved on, nice and easy. She died.”
I take a more tentative sip. “You, uh. You want to talk about it?”
He’s silent for a long time. “I’ve talked to a shrink. After she died. Every week for six months. Helped, I guess. Very least, I started to understand what I was feeling. Which is…it’s a fucking lot.”
My face burns. The whiskey is unsettled in my belly. I can’t look at him—I’m scared he’ll see the nature of my curiosity. “I imagine it is a lot.”
“No. You don’t imagine.” His forefinger, the size of a frankfurter, if not thicker, taps rapidly on the bar top. “It’s just so much, man. And it’s all tangled together like one big rubber band ball of fuckedupness.”
I go for a sideways bolt of honesty. “I don’t know how to navigate this conversation,