Dear Strangers by Meg Mullins

Author:Meg Mullins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group

7

Mary has perfected her ability to talk to strangers. People on airplanes are anxious to reveal their lives, to craft them into brief expositions, with dramatic plot points that usually entail a death, a divorce or an unbelievable coincidence. Really, on any given flight, there are at least three people with a screenplay in their briefcase or a novel in their head. Soon, the whole world will be on TV.

For whatever reason, Mary never tires of listening. Each anonymous misery is a tonic, a salve she applies to her overactive mind. She can fill an entire sleepless night replaying the tales of travelers she might never meet again.

In some kind of perverted Zen theory, the process of listening to countless personal sagas enables her to shed her own hang-ups, like so much dirty laundry, like dropping pieces of her clothing into a tub of water in order to watch them become saturated and sink. So that she is both naked and invulnerable.

As she sits in the hotel bar, listening to this latest passenger tell her his marital woes, she accepts it all.

With obvious distress Doug confesses that, really, he and his wife have been nothing more than roommates for over two years now. Whatever romantic spark brought them together has long been extinguished. Their marriage is a result of the pregnancy that began at the end of a bad date with too many drinks and very little conversation. But they had been young. Barely legal.

He smiles at Mary, his eyes a deep brown. His woes are not unique. But his demeanor is. He’s way too handsome to be honest, she reminds herself. “You don’t really want to hear this, do you?” he asks. “She’s a great mom and I’m a decent enough father and we’re raising pretty good kids. So,” he says, taking another sip of wine, “we trudge on.”

“Is she happy?” Mary asks, more curious than she’s been in a long time.

He shrugs. “Would you be? The talk show hosts can sell it all they want, but there’s no faking love. We’ve tried. She deserves better.”

Mary is suspicious. She’s trained herself to be.

“What she deserves,” he says, his voice hushed, “is for someone to sit next to her and feel . . .”

Mary’s hands sweat against the outside of her glass as he pauses, his eyes unabashedly studying hers.

“This way. To feel like this one moment could be enough. Just this.” His eyes finally look down at his own hands on the table.

Mary is caught off guard. Her head buzzes. She smiles at him. He’s a married man in a hotel bar with a woman he’s just met. That’s a fact. Extenuating circumstances are subjective. His wife probably thinks that he adores her. She is probably expecting his nightly call any minute now, in which he will tell her he misses her. Tell her he can’t wait to be home.

“Does any husband feel that way about his wife?” Mary asks, wondering why deceit is always sexy and fidelity banal.

“Or wife about her husband? You’re right,” he says, nodding.

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