Moe Hagopian, 62, retired antique map restorer, picked at a crumb of fried cod stuck to the edge of his plastic plate. He’d sold his Ann Arbor shop three years prior, when a mild essential tremor started making his hands shake too bad to line up 19th century paper edges without tearing them, and these weekly VFW fish fries were the only consistent social obligation he bothered keeping. For 18 years, he’d kept everyone who wasn’t a fellow vet or a guy stopping by to get an old fishing rod fixed at arm’s length, still carrying the hot, sharp grudge from the day his business partner Richard Voss ran off with his wife Lorraine. He’d turned down three different setups from the ladies at the church down the street, convinced every woman his age was only after a steady social security check and a guy who could fix a leaky faucet without charging.
The ceiling fans creaked overhead, dragging the smell of burnt grease and cheap tartar sauce across the room, when the front door swung open. Jenna Voss walked in, linen blouse sticking slightly to her shoulders from the July humidity, holding a stack of campaign flyers. She’d won the county commissioner seat two months prior, and Moe had even voted for her, mostly because her opponent had proposed raising fees on boat registrations, but he’d never actually met her face to face. He knew who she was, though—Richard’s wife of 12 years, 14 years younger than him, the woman he’d left Lorraine for six years after the affair started.
Moe tensed, ready to pretend he was checking his phone when she walked past, but she spotted him, grinned, and headed straight for his corner table. She pulled out the chair across from him without asking, sat down, and her bare knee brushed his denim-clad leg under the table by accident. The contact sent a stupid little jolt up his spine, and he grabbed his plastic beer cup so fast a little sloshed over the edge.
“Moe Hagopian, right?” She held out a hand, her nails painted a soft, chipped pink, no fancy rings. Her voice was lower than he expected, rough around the edges like she spent half her day yelling over construction sites. “Richard still bitches that you were twice as good at restoring colonial survey maps as he ever was. Says he still gets customers asking for you.”
He stared at her, halfway between furious and amused. He wanted to tell her to get lost, that he didn’t want anything to do with anyone married to that son of a bitch, but then she leaned across the table to grab a french fry off his plate, and her forearm brushed his, and he smelled coconut sunscreen and peppermint gum on her breath, and all the snarky lines he had ready died in his throat. She held eye contact while she bit into the fry, like she knew exactly how off-balance she was making him.
They talked for 45 minutes, half the time bickering about Richard, half the time laughing about how terrible the VFW’s tartar sauce was, how the county had let the public boat launches fall to pieces over the last decade. Every time their hands brushed reaching for the shared pitcher of beer, Moe’s tremor got a little worse, and he kept having to wipe his palms on his jeans. She told him Richard spent 12 hours a day at the map shop, slept in the guest room half the week, forgot their 12th anniversary two weeks prior, that she hadn’t had a real conversation with someone who didn’t want something from her in six months. She leaned in so close when she told him about catching Richard flirting with his new receptionist last month that he could feel her warm breath on his cheek, and he had to look away for a second to catch his breath.
The disgust was still there, sharp at the back of his throat. This was his worst enemy’s wife. Messing with her was the kind of petty, stupid move he’d spent 18 years mocking other guys for making. But the desire was louder, softer, warmer, the kind of feeling he’d forgotten he was capable of: the thrill of someone actually listening to him when he talked about the old map projects, the way she laughed at his dumb joke about Lorraine’s terrible meatloaf like it was the funniest thing she’d ever heard, the way her knee kept brushing his under the table like she wasn’t even trying to avoid it.
When the VFW bartender yelled that last call was in 10 minutes, Jenna pulled a scrap of receipt paper out of her purse, scribbled a number on it, and pressed it into his palm. Her fingers laced with his for two whole seconds, her skin soft against his calloused knuckles, and she didn’t look away when she spoke. “I’m staying at our Silver Lake cabin this weekend alone. Richard’s at a conference in Chicago. No one knows I’m there except you.” She stood up, slung her purse over her shoulder, and winked before she walked out the door.
Moe sat there for 10 minutes after she left, staring at the crumpled receipt in his hand. Part of him wanted to crumple it up, throw it in the trash, go home to his empty house and his old fishing rods and pretend none of this happened. But the bigger part of him was tired of carrying that grudge, tired of being alone, tired of letting Richard win every single part of his life even 18 years later. He tucked the receipt into the pocket of his flannel shirt, finished the last of his beer, and walked out to his beat-up Ford F-150.
He stopped at the gas station on the edge of town, bought a six pack of Blue Moon—he’d noticed her coaster had the logo, she’d mentioned it was her favorite—and a bag of the salt and vinegar chips she’d said she loved. He turned onto the highway heading west toward Silver Lake, the windows rolled down, the smell of pine and lake air blowing through the cab. He pulled into the gravel driveway of the cabin 40 minutes later, saw her sitting on the porch swing holding a glass of iced tea, and she waved when she spotted his truck.
