WILCO AT THE VIC
Wilco at the Vic. Hard to believe that their first date was 21 years ago. They both lived in the city then, barely able to make rent. He, a junior broker and she, a sous chef, both paying off their student loans. Lean times. How had he gotten the tickets again? Oh yeah, Johnson had bungled the ALPEX deal and the clients bailed and he’d happened to be sitting right there.
“Quit talking about that girl and ask her out,” Johnson had said as he’d thrown the tickets down on the desk. “If you get laid, I won’t have to think of this as a total fuck up.”
They fell for each other somewhere between his bad (it was really bad) walkie talkie impression “Kssh! Breaker one niner. That’s a roger wilco, roger wilco!” and her being able to tell the difference between a Strat and a Tele. He held her during the encore, standing behind her with his arms around her waist, swaying back and forth. She’d fit so neatly into his chest. They both knew, in a way that can’t be quantified or explained without sounding cheesy. This is the one.
They no longer live in the city. They’ve worked their way up and now commute. He has a corner office with a view of the lake, and she has a restaurant of her own. Pounds have piled on, bills have piled up. They belong to a country club. Their oldest is training for a shot at the Olympics.
They have made it.
That they went to see Wilco at the Vic for their first date is an indelible detail in the minds of their friends, who bought them tickets for their 20th anniversary. But she was late coming home, and he hadn’t picked up the dry cleaning like she had reminded him to that morning. Not like they needed more excuses to fight all the way into town. Their youngest isn’t going to class. It’s just a phase. It’s drugs! You’re off base. So I’m a bad mother?! They’ve been fighting more often. They are not sure they want to make it anymore, but neither wants to be the first to say it.
The Vic is the same as they remember it, but Tweedy looks like hell when he gets on stage. Speaking of drugs.
They don’t say anything throughout the set. They don’t even look at each other. He drinks a beer, then another. She’s been doing edibles without telling him. Then their song starts, and he decides—or maybe the beer decides—that the moment is too good to pass up. He moves behind her, his gut pressed into her back, and reaches for her hips. He finds that his hands are as far apart as he put them when he came back from that fishing trip in Florida last year and lied about catching a fish to their youngest. When was the last time he held her? When did she get so— fat?
She’s been watching a young couple in front of them for a while now, wondering what brought them here and where they’ll go afterward. She watches them clap for a band she hadn’t imagined twenty-somethings still liking, and then the guitar player slides up the neck into a blistering high note. The rest of the band stumbles into the intro, sounding far more drunk and stoned than they actually are, banging out the old familiar chords so that Tweedy can sing through his nose about how all he can see is black and white and blades of blue.
Her husband, probably imagining that he’s in some movie and that this is where it all gets fixed if only he does the right thing, puts his hands on her hips and tries to sway. How do his hands always find their way to exactly the spot she’s feeling most self-conscious about? These jeans fit perfectly three months ago. Three months ago! She can actually feel a disc slip in her lower back from where his beer gut is pressing in. Another visit to the chiropractor, another seventy-five bucks. But this is their song, so she reaches back and sets her hands over his. It’s awkward. Their waistlines and portfolios have expanded, and there is more of both of them than there used to be.