Andrew Rucker Jones is a former IT dweeb and American expatriate living in Germany with his Georgian wife and their three children. He has had the honor of being published in The Four Faced Liar, Dark Matter Magazine, and Tales from Fiddler’s Green, among many others.
Issues 81, Summer 2025
In an upscale Chinese restaurant—the kind with two stone lions flanking the entrance, dragons weaving up the columns, and a decorative fish tank bubbling insinuations of wealth—in the private function room before twenty pairs of eyes, the guests of honor called the Hispanic waiter, who called the Chinese owner. The guests of honor, Finlay and Eloise, spoke their wedding vows twenty-five years ago today, and Finlay would not celebrate his wife with beer. He had ordered a French chardonnay for her, but a Tsingtao lager arrived instead. The waiter insisted Finlay had ordered it, Finlay insisted he had not, Henry muddied the waters by asserting he thought he had heard “Tsingtao,” while Eloise stated with certainty her husband would never do that to her, and her agent could keep his muddy assertions to himself. In the end, Henry was happy to stand the Chinese beer at attention next to his Budweiser, and Eloise got her wine.
It wasn’t long after egg rolls crackled under forks and between teeth that someone called, “Speech!”
Finlay took his wine glass and stood, back straight, chest out, as half a life of public speaking had taught him. Eloise rose with the practiced sway of a lily in the breeze and bestowed small waves and winks around the room.
“So, you’ll make us work on our day off, will you?” Finlay began, and a light chuckle scattered through the room. “Well, I was expecting it, and I thought I would regale you with the tale of how we met.”
Three “hear, hear’s!” went up from different corners of the room, and Eloise slipped her warm hand around his upper arm.
“The first time I saw her on stage, I backed into her car after the show. Now, I don’t want you to get the impression I bent her fender just to see her backstage, but she was ravishing in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, so—”
“A Streetcar Named Desire, Finlay. People told me Vivien Leigh paled next to my beauty.”
Henry let fly with the cat call he employed to stoke her marketability at any performances he caught. Eloise batted his shoulder.
“All right, A Streetcar Named Desire, folks, though I could have sworn I remembered thinking how apt ‘Maggie the Cat’ was for a looker like her. Twenty-five years blurs the details a little.” Finlay cleared his throat and sipped his heady wine. “Anyway, I went to see her backstage, and to my great fortune, she was alone.”
His wife withdrew her hand from his arm. “Now, Finlay, that’s simply not true, as romantic as it sounds. I was a woman of virtue and would never be alone in a room with a man. You know that.”
Finlay half-turned to regard his wife. “I distinctly remember being alone with you, because it thrilled me.”
“Finlay, dear, in those days I always drove Doris to and from performances. She was in the room, waiting for her ride home. She just made herself inconspicuous.”
Finlay rotated back toward the audience, his wineglass now sagging to touch the table. “I see we should have rehearsed.”
The audience laughed, and Finlay regained some of his poise.
“Well, folks, the next thing I know, she’s in my car, and I guess Doris is too, but I don’t remember that part, and I’m driving her home, because our fender bender knocked the muffler free of her jalopy so it dragged on the asphalt. When we arrived, I walked her to her door gentleman-like, and I kissed her straight on those ruby lips, this woman I met half an hour—”
“Finlay!” Eloise cried, and Henry guffawed. “I never kissed anyone on a first date, and that wasn’t even a date. You’re remembering wrong.”
“Eloise, I kissed you right then and there for the first time. I know it because I kept my hands behind me on account of them being filthy from trying to fix your muffler.”
“Dear, my memory is better than yours.”
“Well, then.” Finlay seated himself and looked up at his wife. “You have the floor. What do you say happened that first night?”
“Don’t be like that, Finlay.” She laid a hand on his shoulder. “It was perfectly romantic, even if you’re remembering wrong. You took me out for a burger, and we shared a milkshake. Since the burger joint was only two blocks from my home, you walked me back. The roses in my neighbor’s garden were in full bloom, and we smelled them from half a block away, so you cut one off with your pocketknife and cleaned the thorns like scaling a fish. I kept that rose in a vase in my kitchen for days after.”
The room waited while Finlay considered.
“I had . . . ” He wiped his nose with the handkerchief from his breast pocket. “I had almost forgotten that. I’m so glad you remember, Eloise.” He took her hand and stood, and she nodded to the guests as if the performance were over. Someone at the back clapped once, like the first, heavy drop of a summer storm.
“But that wasn’t until weeks later,” Finlay said over the pattering of claps. “I didn’t own a pocketknife until my twenty-second birthday. That night, I kissed you with my hands behind my back and went home to my parents’ house to copy out love poetry for you. Don’t you remember?”
Eloise turned away from the guests and placed a hand on Finlay’s cheek. “My friend Rutherford gave you that book of poetry, dear. You didn’t know him before you met me. It can’t have been the first night.”
Finlay smiled and squeezed her hand. “Yes, it was, darling.”
She pulled him into a kiss, and the room crackled with applause. Henry thumped his Tsingtao on the table and cheered.