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Vince takes her to The Pickle Diner, crappy vinyl in the booth sticky like always, and he says, “Any sandwich you want, on me,” with a weird, pleased smile as if this whole thing was his idea.
So Uma orders the number twelve, wraps half right away and puts the napkin-protected half-sandwich in her purse for later.
“Hey, that’s neat!” Vince says as if Uma invented leftovers.
Bunny would have things to say about Uma going on a date with a Westie. This Westie in particular, jabbering about antibiotic-resistant pinkeye, some card game he likes, and his exercise routine on one of those bikes that have a seat like a karate chop to the crotch.
Whatever. There’s still half a sandwich on Uma’s plate, so at least she can eat.
“This sandwich is too dry,” Uma says, just to make conversation, rye bread between her fingers, the lone bite she took from the sandwich pretty good, actually, a nice punch of mustard and tomato on roast beef.
But Vince goes ballistic, calls over the waiter and demands a replacement sandwich, finger pointed downward to punctuate a weird kind of stammering rage with spittle flecking the table.
It’s … kind of sexy.
Uma isn’t going to mess this up, though, not the way she did with Matthew Broderick.
“Hey,” she says, casual toward Vince as the waiter retreats to bring her another sandwich, her praise sincere, “you didn’t fuck that up.”
“Nothing but the best for my girl!” Vince’s chest puffs with pride, mayonnaise dripping from the sandwich in his hands onto the knit of his sweater. “If you don’t like something, it’s my job to fix it.”
His girl?
His girl.
Well, if he likes fixing things, she can keep him busy.
“I,” Uma leans forward, confessional, conspiratorial, the edge of the table hard through the fabric of her shirt and into her skin, “don’t like anything.”
“I like everything!” Vince smiles that weird smile again, lips stretched and too many teeth … but in a way that’s … kind of … nice? “We’re a matched set.”
Play it cool.
Play it cool.
Don’t let him see the loneliness, missing Bunny, almost losing home to a godforsaken billionaire casino, friends moving to fucking Boca of all the hell-on-Earth places.
“We’ll see about that,” Uma says, and she would roll her eyes, but it’s more important to look at Vince, to see him take a celebratory bite of his sandwich, bits of chewed up lettuce visible in his mouth as he starts rambling about his stupid Peloton again.
The waiter returns with a new sandwich for Uma, rye bread warm under her fingertips and Uma isn’t lying when she takes a bite and says, “Better,” the mustard tasting more spicy and the tomato like one of those hothouse fancy ones. The roast beef is the same as ever, but it’s important, somehow, to make sure Vince knows that he did good, he yelled at the waiter just for Uma and it worked.
“Yeah?” Vince’s smile is so wide his eyepatch shifts, and there’s a new kind of hunger to know what’s under the rest of his clothes—not the eyepatch, Uma doesn’t need to see pinkeye to believe it—and, oh, oh fuck, is Uma smiling back, sort of awkward and crooked from lack of practice, but a smile all the same?
“Yeah,” she says, and she’ll let Vince talk some more about his card game and his latest antibiotic for his eye and his exercise. She's paying more attention this time, not asking questions exactly but nodding along as he goes into detail. He was in a movie, that’s interesting. Oh, and Vince is a widower, that’s better than a divorced guy. No alimony.
He pays the bill, three sandwiches for the price of two, with a sandwich and a half in Uma’s purse. Vince holds open the diner door for her, so chivalry ain’t dead, but he stops walking in front of the entrance for Arconia’s West Tower, his chest rising as if to pull in air to bid her farewell for the afternoon and ask to see her again sometime.
“Don’t be stupid,” Uma says, a jerk of her head telling him to keep walking with her, sometime is now, she likes him and he’s going with her to her place.
“Okay,” he says, that big smile of his not even a little annoying, and Vince’s chatter through the lobby and up in the elevator is fine, a kind of familiar noise like the traffic sounds of the city, and he starts complimenting everything in her apartment, which makes sense, Uma has good taste.
She should take her sandwiches out of her purse and put them in Ziplock bags in the fridge.
But she’s got a pinkeyed movie star in her living room who called her his girl and said they’re a matched set. And maybe being here has him hot under the collar, too.
So the whole purse goes into the fridge, and Uma strides into the living room, interrupts Vince’s praise for the quality of the crown molding to lay a kiss on him, vestiges of mayonnaise from his sandwich mixing with the mustard from hers, and Vince is a good kisser, better than Matthew Broderick, that’s for sure.
He takes off his own sweater, drops it to the floor like an animal, and Uma would tell him not to litter in her home but then there’s a trail of clothes, his and hers, from the living room to the bedroom—great, she’s picking up bad habits, Uma is a litterbug now—and the good kisser is pretty damn great in the sack, too.
She must have told him so, stupid chatter in afterglow, and Vince says, “Thanks! I got my endurance up with the Peloton. Once you clip in to Cody’s class, you don’t want to clip out.”
“I don’t know what the fuck that means,” Uma says, sweat drying on her skin as Vince extols the benefits of Cody’s exercise routines, of those shoes that are useless except for attaching to bike pedals, and of … of Uma?
“It’s just nice to have a girlfriend again, you know?” Vince says, and he never asked Uma to be his girlfriend, he just assumed the combination of sandwiches and sex meant something because … well … it did. “After my wife died, I was really lonely. In a dark place, you know? But now I have friends and I have you and everything is looking good again.”
He’s insane. Friends can die or move to fucking Boca, Vince and Uma barely know each other, and they live in the murder building.
But … it sure would be nice not to feel so damn lonely anymore.
And maybe being part of the matched set Vince talked about is trying to see things from his point of view.
Well, his point of view from his one good eye. Thank goodness he didn’t even ask to take off the eyepatch during sex.
“Yeah,” Uma says, wanting Vince to be right, and she closes one eye. Everything shifts a little. Subtle. But a definite shift, plus some extra blurriness. Not call-the-ophthalmologist blurriness. Just … the kind of blurriness that makes the world seem softer, nicer. “Yeah, things are looking pretty good.”