He walked off to clean the tables at the back of the room, and Sadie and I sipped our beers in silence. Finally she looked at me. “You two—you and Rusty—never came here together. It was always us girls.”

“He didn’t like to go out with me when I was in a crowd or with other people. He liked for us to be … just us. I thought that was so sweet. So damn sweet. I mean, he wanted me all to himself. He must have really worshipped me.”

“Funny how we get confused about what’s love and what’s freakish control.”

“Exactly,” I said, and swallowed my urge to cry with a long, cold swallow of Bud Light.

Sadie, as she always can, heard the sadness in my voice anyway. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like—”

“No, it’s true. I thought all those ways of keeping me to himself were his ways of loving me.”

“Change of subject.”

I stared at Sadie for a moment. “I think Hutch will be in Bayside, Sadie.”

She placed her mug on the counter. “You think?”

“Well, he said he would go because he’s finalizing this exhibit about the ’60s Women of the Year and he wants some last-minute facts about Mother. But I told him it wasn’t a good idea, that I’d tell him whatever I found out.”

“Finalizing the exhibit? You really think that’s what he’s finalizing, Ellie?”

“Yes, I do. He has a girlfriend. I’m actually stunned he doesn’t hate me. For God’s sake, we haven’t spoken in over twenty years, and the last time we did talk … it wasn’t good.”

“Ellie …”

“What?”

She shook her head. “You’re a wise, grown woman. I don’t have to give you advice. Hell, you’re the one everyone goes to for advice. There’s nothing I can tell you that you wouldn’t tell yourself.”

“Exactly,” I said.

The hum of the air conditioner was all we heard until we set our mugs down, empty. “Let’s go see Lil and get on to Bayside,” she said.

I nodded, dropped a twenty on the bar, which was overpaying, but I knew college students weren’t good tippers. We hollered goodbye to the bartender, and he shouted out, “Later,” as if we’d return to hear the band that night.

“The thing,” I said to Sadie, “that strikes me right now is how awful and dark this place is and was and yet … didn’t we have the best times here?”

She paused at the door, and her gaze settled into the dark room. “Yes.”

“So it doesn’t always have to look good to be good.”

“Maybe someone should have told us that what it looks like doesn’t always have everything to do with what it feels like.”

“Yeah, and who would that have been?”