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Bob shifts the curtain, peering out the window of the living room. One lone, straggling couple remains chatting in the outdoor seating section of Jimmy Pesto’s.
Ugh. Outdoor seating. Bob thinks. Who likes outdoor seating? People who love getting…flies in their food? Having their menus blown away by the wind?
He continues observing. Unfortunately, Jimmy’s laminated menus look too sturdy to be stolen by a sudden breeze. They’re also huge, surely full of decadent appetizers and over-the-top drinks.
Naturally, Pesto’s is all flair and no quality. This doesn’t stop people from going there in droves, apparently shameless about gorging on soulless, frozen mozzarella sticks.
Before he can get more worked up, Bob forces the curtain shut. Now is not the time for a rant about cooking. About the integrity of being a chef, and how food made by a passionate hand is inherently better.
Anyway, there’s no one around to direct his diatribe at. Louise listens sometimes, mostly because she thinks it’s funny when his face gets all red, but she and her siblings have been sound asleep for hours.
Linda, normally the prime candidate for nodding along to his rants, is…occupied. She’s off doing her own thing—a thing Bob has made complete and total peace with. It doesn’t bother him at all.
He tears the curtain open once more, illogically hoping that his vantage point has become suddenly clearer. Right now, Linda is inside Jimmy Pesto’s. She’s probably sitting at the bar, kicking her legs and making small talk, but Bob can’t see that far from where he’s standing.
It’s fine. She’d asked if he was okay with her going there for a drink, and then she’d asked a second time just to make sure. After Bob grimaced through his ‘yes’, she practically skipped across the street.
He checks the clock. Linda’s been gone for twenty-eight minutes. Twenty-eight? She drinks way faster than that. In fact, she’s been known to gobble down food and drink at almost hazardous speeds.
Bob stares at the entrance to Pesto’s restaurant. He waits to see Linda spilling out of it, turning her head for a final smile and wave. It’s getting late—late for them —and he’d rather not spend much more time waiting for bed.
He stares across the street with intent, so immersed in his task that he jumps when his phone rings. Frantically digging in his pocket, he brings it to his ear and takes the call before it wakes up the kids.
“Hello?”
“Bob? Hey. It’s uh…it’s Jimmy. Jimmy Pesto.”
He almost hangs up. Staying on the line is likely to result in a juvenile prank, and Bob’ll only end up making his own, equally childish call in retaliation. It’s better to stop the whole exchange before it starts.
“You know your wife’s over at my place, right?”
The reminder wounds Bob’s pride. Not for the first time, he considers splurging on good coconut rum. He’s sure he can make a better drink for Linda than Trev, or Jimmy, or whoever’s behind the bar this late at night.
“I’m aware, Jimmy. Yeah. Your food is awful, but she likes the tiny umbrellas you put in drinks. What’s your point?”
Another jab pops into his brain. More like dumb-brellas. Ha. Lacking the will to banter, he pockets that burn for a better time.
“Oh, she loves my umbrellas.” Jimmy says, managing to make even this sound smug. “A little too much. Is she always this loud when she drinks?”
Bob rolls his eyes. Considering how loud Linda is when she’s sober, this strikes him as a stupid question.
“Why are you calling me, Jimmy? If Linda’s being loud, then talk to Linda about it. She’ll quiet down if you feed her.”
Jimmy chuckles wryly on the other line.
“You’re not picking up what I’m putting down, Bob. I’m calling you to come get her. She’s ruining my atmosphere!”
Suddenly, this conversation makes a lot more sense. Linda, a lot to handle when she’s at her best, becomes nearly unmanageable if she drinks too much.
“Oh, God.” He says, pinching the bridge of his nose between two fingers. “She’s singing, isn’t she?”
Jimmy moves the phone from his ear, so Bob can listen to the chaos around him. Sure enough, Linda’s voice is rising above the crowd.
“‘Cause everybody’s liiiving in a material world, and I am a material girl!”
What she lacks in pitch and tune, she’s making up for in passion. Jimmy brings the phone back to his lips, as Bob heads toward the stairs. He looks toward the kids’ rooms, trusting that Tina is old enough at seventeen to handle whatever emergency might spring up in the five minutes he’ll be gone. He heads downstairs as quickly as he can without tripping, the sound of footsteps making it a little more difficult to hear Jimmy’s voice through the phone.
“See what I mean, Bob?” He’s asking now. “If I wanted someone’s wife to hang around and make my life harder, I never would’ve gotten divorced.”
Using one ear to pin the cellphone to his shoulder, Bob tugs a coat over his t-shirt and pajama pants. He flattens his lips in a tight line.
“You shouldn’t have played a Madonna song if you didn’t want her to sing.” He points out, suddenly defensive.
“What? Your wife is the one who–”
“Just stop.” Bob says, cutting him off as he opens his front door. “I’ll be there in thirty seconds.”
“Hey, wait! I was–”
Bob hangs up, getting a jolt of satisfaction as Jimmy scrambles for the last word. Locking the door and praying none of the kids wake up, he looks both ways before speed walking across the street.
He gets a sense of Pesto’s crowd before he’s even inside. Noise-a cacophony of music and yelling and bottle-clinking-is leaking from the building and into the road. Bob walks faster, knowing it's only a matter of time before Linda gets caught up in some song she can’t be torn away from.
Once inside, he scans the room for his wife. She’s relatively easy to spot, with her frumpy jeans and wrinkle lines setting her apart from Jimmy’s usual clientele. Bob rushes to her spot at the bar, opening his mouth to speak before he’s close enough for her to hear.
“Lin! Lin. It’s time to go home now.”
She perks up, almost like a dog, trying to make out where the voice is coming from. When Bob appears by her side, she breaks into a smile.
“Hey, Lin.” He says, trying to sound as patient as possible. “Let’s get out of here.”
She frowns, studying the splotches of red already creeping up Bob’s neck. Just the rush down the stairs and across the road was enough to leave him winded, his body wearing the tell-tale signs of exertion.
“What are you doing here, Bobby?” She asks. “You look like you’ve been running a marathon!”
Right away, Bob knows she isn’t as drunk as Jimmy suspected. She’s definitely tipsy, and there are two empty glasses in front of her, but her faculties seem mostly intact. The obnoxious singing doesn’t mean much, considering she’s done worse while sober.
“Pesto asked me to come…collect you.” He explains. “I guess you were making a scene?”
“Me? A scene? Nooo.”
Bob gives a knowing, skeptical look.
“Just a little scene.” She concedes. “The fun kind! Trust me, Bobby. This place needed a little energy boost!”
Even if the source is his slightly drunk, biased wife, this feels good to hear. He looks around, spying two fighting couples and three drunks with mopey expressions. It seems the booming music might be part of a facade.
“I…think you’re right.” Bob agrees. “You don’t really fit into the crowd he’s got tonight.”
Linda spins the barstool around to face him.
“That’s probably why he wants me outta here! I’m too cheery for these sad sacks.”
She hears her own words and frowns.
“Aww. Sad sacks! Bobby, maybe I should sing one more song. To cheer ‘em up!”
Before Bob can shut her down, Jimmy speaks up from his spot behind the bar.
“No thanks, Linda.” He sneers. “I don’t know how you do things over at your place, but my customers come here to relax.”
“Ha! Cause her singing is bad.” Trev adds, eavesdropping even as he prepares a drink.
Linda’s mouth turns down in a pout, sweeping all of Bob’s irritation with her away. Her singing is bad, and she’s probably been bothering everyone in the vicinity, but that doesn’t give Jimmy Pesto the right to say it to her face.
“You know what, Lin?” Bob says, narrowing his eyes across the bar. “I think you should do another song.”
She brightens, bouncing forward in her seat.
“Really? You think I should?”
“Uh, what?” Pesto asks. “But I called you, because—”
Bob turns his head, tuning Jimmy out.
“Yeah, I do think so.” He says. “In fact…”
He looks across the room, grinning when his eyes land on the abandoned karaoke machine.
“It doesn’t look like anyone’s doing karaoke tonight. Why don’t you go pick out a song?”
In his peripheral vision, he sees Jimmy fix him with a glare. Linda smiles widely enough to blur all of that out, until Bob is numb to anything in the restaurant but her.
“Yay, Bobby!” She cheers, jumping out of her seat and grabbing his hand. “Come with me. You can watch me sing!”
As she drags him off, walking on slightly wobbly legs, Bob turns back to smirk at Jimmy Pesto. For what might be the first time, he enjoys that his wife is a patron at their rival's restaurant.