Saturday Morning Cigars: My Neighbor's Beach Fantasy in Westchester

Disclaimer: I am a dad living in Westchester, New York. The names of all people, but not all places, have been changed to protect the innocent and me from the glares of my neighbors who are definitely not reading this blog.

Greg Miller smokes cigars in a lawn chair on Saturday mornings. I don't know what his job is, something in the city, something that allows him to slow dance to music in the living room with his wife like he's character in a period piece about the 1950s. If I had to guess, and I don't, but I will, I think he probably works somewhere down on Wall Street. Takes the Metro North in the morning from Greenwich, even though he could take the Port Chester train, reads the New York Times on his way there, works, and then returns just as the sun falls in the sky. 

Greg and Anne Miller have been together for 30 years. They have a child who went to Cornell because he couldn't get into Dartmouth, and they drive a Tesla and have one of those stickers that says that they bought this car before Elon went crazy. They also voted for Donald Trump, so I'm confused by the sticker, which I guess is probably the point. Maybe they're being ironic. I know that Greg Miller voted for the current president because at a party that my wife made me attend he had too much gin and told me in confidence.

On Saturday mornings, Greg Miller sits in a lawn chair and pretends he is at the beach. It's Memorial Day for him, and he is commemorating his father who fought in some war he was vague about when he told me his father fought in the war at that same party. He wears sunglasses and looks up at the sky. Smoke entrails balloon towards the sky like he's nominating the new pope himself.  But he's not in Vatican City, at least not on this trip, though he has gone according to Anne at that same party I attended. He's at the shore. Again, another piece of the puzzle I don't know or understand. Perhaps he's pretending to be at Cape Cod, the Hamptons, definitely not the Jersey Shore though. 

If it weren't for the smoke puffing out of that cigar, I might be worried he was dead. But he's going to live forever, according to him and the trainer that comes over on Saturday afternoons, right after he's done smoking that cigar. He's not having an affair with that trainer. At least he didn't tell me about that at the one and only party he and his wife invited my wife and I to. 

What he did tell me was how unhappy he was. Not with words. That would be odd for him to pull his next door neighbor into a secluded room and admit that the life he has built isn't the one he wants. No. He didn't tell me I could just tell. The way he flinched whenever he heard his wife telling the same story. The way he took deep breaths when he was alone in a room. The way he opened up to me about everything and nothing all at the same time, and then didn't invite me to another party because he didn't want to look me in the eye anymore. He didn't want to have to see the shame he felt reflected in my eyes. 

It smells like cigars on Saturday mornings. On Saturday evenings there are only stubs and parties and no more invitations.