As in:
The very perishable state of ease that Pierce had felt that night on the train with Meg had evaporated by the next morning. It was not so much that his confidence had dissipated, but more that the whole rhythm to that rare opportunity to approach her was gone, replaced by a nagging pain in his stomach and the sight of three overcooked fried eggs, only one of which had a yolk that had survived the once over flip.
“Shit,” he heard his mom say as she broke the second yolk. He’d never heard her say that before.
“I’ve never been good at eggs.” He had heard her say that before.
And maybe, subconsciously, that’s what inspired his interest in cooking. Although, for some reason, it didn’t seem like that should be a career path at the time. In his defense, there just weren’t very good male role models for the culinary arts in the mid-1970s. There was Chef Boyardee looking self-satisfied atop a can of mini-ravioli. Oh, and Hop Sing from Bonanza. That was about it.
So he began to tell people he would study Geology. He’d work for an oil company. Travel the world. Make a lot of money. Find the perfect girl.
And yet he thought he had already. Found the perfect girl. Only to have seen his moment with her disappear in the dark down the railroad tracks, in thin green and red lights, toward Ancon station.
Yeah, that was a hard thing to wake up to. He figured the stomach ache was on account of his lack of courage. So he would resolve that by calling Beth Ann, ostensibly to check on how badly her knee was feeling today, after the bloody fiasco on the Cristobal tennis court the day before. He got through the ostensible part just fine. She was putting on a brave face, touched that he called to check on her. And the truth was he was concerned for her on account of how game a player and teammate Beth Ann was. He actually felt that if he needed another sister, he would like it to be Beth Ann.
Yet, it was also the case that he just couldn’t find the nerve to ask her for Meg’s number.
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