someone.”
The conversation moved on. We didn’t talk about Chase this night, either. I was aware that I was
avoiding mentioning him and I felt a little self-conscious about this, but I wasn’t doing it because I thought it would make Iris sad or uncomfortable. I just wanted to have some time when I was talking to her alone, rather than to her and my brother. I have no idea why she was avoiding it.
Fortunately, we also weren’t talking about movie theaters and shopping centers.
“So what was the story with you and this job in Springfield?” she asked. The night before, I had told her what I still hadn’t told my parents: that I’d quit my latest job a couple of weeks earlier.
“Nothing that hasn’t been ‘the story’ with other jobs. It just played itself out. I mean, I never really thought I was going to have a long-term future in the career counseling business. It would have been ironic if I had, wouldn’t it? If the firm wasn’t so laid back, I probably never would have applied for the position at all. But, you know, as it went on, they wanted me to attend seminars and association meetings and that kind of thing. And then when they invited me to a retreat to ‘contribute to the direction of the enterprise,’ I just got the sense that they were expecting a lot more out of me than I was out of them. It seemed like the right time to give them notice.”
“Do you have something lined up for when you get back?”
“Lined up? Gee, that sounds like a plan. I’m rather plan-averse, if you want to know the truth. Something has always come up. It probably won’t be in Springfield, but who knows? I’ve been thinking about a few other places.”
“So many strip malls, so little time.”
“It sounds so exotic when you put it that way.”
She tilted her head. “I actually think there is something exotic about it. I mean it’s not as though you’re exploring the Himalayas or anything like that, but you really are sort of casting yourself out there. It’s anybody’s guess what you’ll discover, but the potential for discovery is always available.”
I smiled at her and took a long drink of my beer. When I finished, I looked at Iris again and our eyes met in a way that they hadn’t in more than a decade.
“I literally couldn’t put it better myself,” I said.
There was something especially fulfilling about being “seen” by Iris. Other women had given me their impressions of what they thought went on inside of my head, and a few had even been moderately accurate. But in all of those cases, their observations had felt like an invasion. With Iris, all attention was welcome and the thought that she would expend the effort to consider my perspective on things was flattering.
I realized that Iris and I had a unique kind of history together. We had not spent very much time as friends. And yet because of the intensity of her relationship with my brother and the fate of that relationship – not to mention the “moment” we had together – our own connection went considerably deeper. Iris was almost certainly the most significant living person from my Amber days, and as such qualified as my most reliable personal historian. More so than someone I might have known since elementary school.
Late in the evening, the acoustic band on the stage began a medley of Joni Mitchell songs. As I
suspected, they played them well and even with a bit of inspiration. I began to think about Iris’ husband. I’m not entirely sure why it was such a surprise to me that she had gotten married. Certainly, a decent percentage of people got married by the time they were in their late twenties. I suppose what surprised me was that Iris would have gotten married on a whim and then split in the same way. I suppose because I was still thinking of her with Chase, I saw her as the kind of person who would make a lifelong commitment to everything she did. I imagined that when she married, it would be to someone she knew she