It’s funny how you can be doing the most ordinary things just before your life is turned upside down. She was serving up the salad. When he told her, the tongs dropped from her hand, chipping the edge of her dinner plate.

“Twenty years,” she said, nodding at the server as he placed another glass of Simi Valley cabernet in front of her and removed the empty glass.  Veronica turned back to the man sitting across from her.  He wore a worn leather jacket over a white dress shirt and she found the combination both daring and attractive.  The jacket was fitted, but not enough to determine whether or not he worked out regularly.  She decided he probably did.  He wore his dark brown hair short and styled in the way her son’s college-aged friends were wearing it, gelled and swept slightly to the side.  He was younger than she but several years older than her son.  There were visible lines at the corners of his eyes.

His expression softened as she spoke of the end of her marriage, as if he could have any idea what twenty years of marriage was like – or twenty four.  What was he?  Thirty five?  Thirty six?  He couldn’t be over forty.

Reducing her marriage by four years had been as easy as telling him she was travelling to her sister’s wedding and not her niece’s.  She didn’t consider which years she had erased.  It wouldn’t have been the first four, before the children, when careers were fresh and newly filled pockets emptied out for plane tickets and shiny cars and possibilities.  She would never give up the years of breast feeding or preschool or soccer games and piano recitals, even though child rearing had nearly sucked all the marrow out of her bones – it had been so exhausting.  There had been three babies, smelling of sour milk from the hidden creases in their necks, each arriving with wide open, toothless mouths, ready to gobble up the world, and pieces of her along with it.  Over the years they alternated between bold and shy, animated and introspective, running out and back again, like sand crabs playing in the waves.  Then one day she woke to find three achingly beautiful beings, standing on their own, self-reliant and separate from her.

And just like that, her job was done.  They’re job was done, because hadn’t she and her husband been a team?  For most of it, they had been.

“He told me on steak night,” she said to the man now.

Bryan was his name.  He had said this when he asked to sit at her table, giving an apologetic look around the overcrowded airport bar, another consequence of the storm.  She didn’t know if it was Bryan with a Y or Brian with an I, but he looked like a Bryan with a Y.  He could also be a Shane or maybe a Devon, but never something as dull as a Mike or John or Dan.  Her husband (soon to be ex) was a Dan.  There were far too many Dans in the world already.

“Steak night,” Bryan repeated.

“Yeah, you know.  We’d have steak night every couple of weeks, usually on the weekend.”  She suddenly felt ridiculous.  Bryan wasn’t wearing a ring, so there was no wife, probably no kids.  Maybe he could afford to have steak night every night, whenever he felt like it.  But then Bryan smiled and nodded, like he knew exactly what she meant, and it encouraged her to keep going.

That night with her husband, she had wanted to talk about going back to school.  It wasn’t unheard of for a woman nearing fifty.  She had known a few women who had done that very thing after the kids were in high school and college.  They’d reinvented themselves.  That’s what she wanted to do.  Years before, she’d left the career track and got a job in the school office, just to be home in the afternoons and summers.  But now it was time for something new.  She was thinking about massage school.

“We need to talk,” she’d said to Dan as he brought the steaks in from the grill.

He set the plate down and sighed.  “I suppose we should,” he said.

It’s funny how you can be doing the most ordinary things just before your life is turned upside down.  She was serving up the salad.  When he told her, the tongs dropped from her hand, chipping the edge of her dinner plate.  It had been one of their wedding set.

“I suppose you know I’ve been banging the secretary,” Veronica mimicked her husband’s low voice.

Bryan pretended to gag on his beer.  “He said what?”

Actually he hadn’t used the word banging, and Debbie was some sort of technician, not a secretary, but the whole thing felt so cliché, it might as well sound that way.

“So that was it.”  Veronica took another sip of her wine.  “Twenty years of marriage over just like that.”

“So what did you do?”

“I took the steaks off the table and threw them in the dog bowl.  Then I told him to get the hell out.  I haven’t been able to eat a steak since.”

Bryan sat back in his seat and studied her for so long she had to look away.

“Excuse me.”

Veronica looked up to see he was calling to the server.

“I think it’s time you had a steak,” he said, giving her a wink.

“How’s your sirloin?” he asked, when the server arrived.

 

One steak and two glasses of wine later, she was laughing at the train wreck of Bryan’s last relationship.

“She said you weren’t felon enough?  What’s that supposed to mean?”

“She likes the bad boys, I guess.  Tried to get me to shoplift for her.”

Veronica lifted an eyebrow.  “You didn’t do it, did you?”

“Do I look like a shoplifter?” he said.

No, she thought.  He didn’t.  She smiled and shook her head.

“How was your steak?” he asked.

She liked Bryan.  She liked him a lot.  She didn’t know if it was because of his genuine nature (the packaging didn’t hurt either), or if it was because of the wine.  Either way, she hadn’t felt this comfortable with a man since her marriage had ended.

“Best damn steak I ever had!” she said and it made them start laughing again.

She glanced up and noticed the bar had cleared some.

“I better check my flight,” she said, digging her phone out of her purse.  “Sheesh!  I’m boarding in 30!  Good thing I checked.”  She suddenly had to pee.  Badly.  “I need to run to the ladies’ room.  I see one just across the way.”

“I’ll be right here, Veronica,” Bryan said and she felt a pull at her center.

She loved the way he said her name.  She loved that he said I’ll be right here.  Veronica actually giggled as she got up from the table.

In the bathroom she lingered at the mirror before returning.  Even in this wine-induced glow, she couldn’t kid herself.  She no longer looked twenty.  Or thirty.  Or even forty.  But she did look pretty good.  For her age, as they say.

She said it out loud. “Damn!  I look good!”

“Yes you do!”

A tiny Asian woman appeared beside her at the sink.  Veronica looked in the mirror and met her eyes, the lines around them deepening with amusement.  They both started to laugh.  Catching her breath, Veronica thought to fix her make up but realized she’d left her purse at the table.

“Have a good day,” she said as she headed for the exit.

“Go get ‘em tiger!” the woman called after her.

And Veronica would.  She would start over.  She would become a massage therapist.  She would flirt with younger men if she wanted.  She felt anything was possible as she made her way back to Bryan.

Nearing the table she decided things were finally starting to go her way.

But then they weren’t.

Among their scattered dishes, she could see the bill.  But Bryan was gone.

And so was her purse.

 

“What happened here?”

It was the Asian woman from the bathroom.  She found Veronica in a semi-hysterical state between laughing and crying.

“He left me!” she said between a hiccup and a sob.

“Who left you?  Your husband?”

“No,” she blubbered.  Although, yes, her husband had left her.

“Your boyfriend.”  The woman concluded.

“Um…” sniffle.  “No.”

“Your son?”  She was looking confused.

“No… It was just someone I met.”

The woman raised her eyebrows.  “When?”

“Today.”  Veronica felt stupid even as she said it.

There was that same look of amusement she’d seen moments before in the bathroom mirror.  The two woman burst out laughing.

Through teary laughter, Veronica told yet another stranger that her husband had left her.

“Then there was this good looking guy, giving me attention just when I needed it, and now my purse is gone… I’m such a fool,” she said.  “And now I’m going to miss my flight.”

“When is it?” the woman demanded.

Veronica still had her boarding pass and ID in her pocket from going through security.  She pulled them out and showed her the pass.

“We’re on the same flight!  My name’s Tuyen.”  She looked at the bill on the table, rummaged in her purse and pulled out four twenties.  “Is someone meeting you there?”

“Yes, my sister.”

Tuyen smiled.  “See?  It’s going to be fine!  We better go to the gate.  You can talk to security there.”

 

By the time Veronica was done speaking with airport security, all other passengers had boarded flight 209 to Los Angeles.  When she spotted the one empty seat, she was amazed to see Tuyen sitting next to it.

“I remembered which seat from your boarding pass.  I asked to trade. Said we were sisters.”

“Sisters!  Yes!  It’s like looking in the mirror!” Veronica started to giggle.

“Could you please find your seat, we’re getting ready for take-off now,” said an attendant.

Veronica was laughing so hard she could hardly maneuver her way to the window.  She was convinced she loved this woman – this sister.

“Can I get two Bloody Mary’s please?  One for me and one for my sister?” Tuyen asked the flight attendant, who had waited to make sure Veronica got seated.

“I’ll bring those once we’re in the air,” she promised.

“Men are bastards,” Tuyen said as the plane pulled away from the gate.

Veronica shifted her attention away from the attendant pointing out the exits.

“Did your husband leave you too?” she asked.  She felt the magnetizing pull of shared tragedy.

“Oh yes!  No warning at all!  After 49 years!”

Veronica was stunned.  “Forty nine years?”

She nodded.  “We met during the war.  Got married when I was 19.  Now I’m doing what I always wanted – going to Los Angeles to learn how to be an actress.”

Tuyen had to be nearly 70, and here she was, chasing after her dream.  Veronica wanted to kiss her.

“Was it a younger woman?” she asked.

“What?”

“Dan left me for a younger woman.”

“Oh no,” she said.  “Heart attack.”

Tuyen’s eyes began to fill and she looked away.

“O-oh,” Veronica stammered.  “I’m sorry.”

She could think of nothing more to say.  Finally, she reached over and placed her hand on top of the older woman’s.

“You are going be okay,” Tuyen said.  “You are looking-good, go-get-‘em tiger woman, remember?”

“Yes,” Veronica nodded.

The two women held hands as the plane lifted into the air.