A grizzled heavyset guy wearing a trucker hat is sitting at the counter, talking to the waitress. She looks about eighty-five years old, her skin falling in heavy folds from her arms. There are brown penciled-in arcs where her eyebrows should be.
“Mabel,” Finn says, tipping his head at her. She grunts in return.
I follow him into the next room, where the nautical theme continues. There’s a life-size, crusty-looking old wooden sailor statue in yellow and blue lurking near the door, and paintings of lighthouses along the walls. The room is edged with red vinyl booths, and in the middle sits a table with a vase of dusty plastic flowers, a tarnished disco ball floating sadly overhead.
We’re the only ones in this part of the restaurant.
Finn heads toward one of the booths, and I settle in across from him, avoiding the patch of split red vinyl that’s duct-taped together farther in.
“So, do you come here a lot?”
Finn nods toward a faded red curtain halfway up the wall, about the size of a television screen.
“Just watch.”
I squint. “What is it?”
He digs through his pocket, dumping five quarters out, and points to the corner of the table where a mini jukebox sits.
“Pick one,” he says, sliding a quarter across the Formica. I start flipping through the jukebox tracks, but all the names are blurring together and I don’t want to choose the wrong thing.
“I don’t know what to pick,” I say, and hand the quarter back to him.
He shrugs and clicks through the selections and drops the quarter in, pressing F17 and H2.
“Watch,” he says, pointing at the curtain on the wall.
I hear things clicking from behind it, and then, with a rickety noise, the red curtain jerks open, revealing a glass panel with the words STRIKE UP THE BAND underneath. Behind the panel is a miniature six-piece band, the figurines dressed in tuxes. But something must have happened to one of them, because inserted in the mix is a Barbie wearing a gold minidress, her hair messily ratted up. She’s strangely oversized compared to the rest of the band.
A light clicks onto the disco ball in the middle of the room. It starts a slow rotation, weird shimmers sparkling over the room, suddenly making everything kind of pretty, right as a warbly woman’s voice begins haunting the room. “Craaazzzy . . . crazy for being so lonely . . .”
The dolls in the band begin to move in small robotic rhythms, playing along with the music, a hand strumming a guitar, another mechanically tapping a drum.
Only the Barbie is still.
“Whoa,” I say, near speechless.
It’s one of the most magnificent things I’ve ever seen.
I look across at Finn, who’s watching me watch it, his expression unreadable, wary almost.
I can’t believe I’m sitting across from him.
I can’t believe I walked away from my internship and am sitting here right now.
I dig through my bag for my phone, see two missed calls from a 513 number and one message.
“Um, just a second,” I say, clicking to my voice mail, then listen to the program assistant asking me if I’m still sick. I hit delete right as Mabel comes in and drops two sticky laminated menus on the table. She doesn’t say anything, just holds a pad of paper and a pen, looking sourly down at me holding my phone.
“Sorry,” I say, dropping my phone back in my bag and reaching for a menu, but Finn shakes his head at me.
“Two grilled cheeses with fries, two Cokes,” he says instead to Mabel.
He gets a grunt in response, and she trudges out of the room.
“Sorry,” I say to him, because evidently that’s all I can say right now, but Finn shakes his head.
“Mabel hates everyone, cell phone or not.”
“Ah, okay, cool,” I say.
We sit there quietly.
I clear my throat. “So, what have you been up to lately?” I ask.
“Not much.”
“Do you like working at the Float?”
He looks the other way. “It’s okay.”
“Cool.”
The song ends and another clicks on, but this time I recognize the singer: Johnny Cash.
I fold the corner of a napkin. “Where are you going to college?”
Finn’s breath pushes out in a gentle sigh.
“Did I do something wrong?” I ask, confused.
“You don’t need to do that with me.”
“Do what?”
“That small-talk stuff.”
“I was just trying to make conversation. . . .” My voice trails off, my face hot.
Finn shifts awkwardly. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything.” He looks frustrated with himself.
Mabel brings back our Cokes and two straws, and both of us are quiet, and I focus really hard on folding my napkin into an accordion, tiny pleats up and down.
Finn drops a few more quarters in the table jukebox, clicks a few selections.
So no small talk—only sitting here in silence?
And just when it’s getting to the point where I don’t think I can stand the silence one second longer and he’s not helping the situation at all, I hear the words leave my mouth: “How’d you get the black eye?”
He lets out a sharp exhale—one that almost sounds appreciative.
I look him straight in the face, meet his gaze head-on. “You don’t want small talk, so there. I’m making big talk.”
“Big talk,” he says, the corner of his mouth turning up. “Okay.”
I try not to smile.
“I box.”
“Oh,” I say, and I see him register the surprise in my voice.
“Yeah, I started in second grade. I kept getting in fights in school, so boxing was suggested as a good way for me to manage all my ‘anger issues,’?” he says.
I nod, remembering that day on the playground in first grade when the principal pulled him away. “And the eye?”
Finn smiles fully for the first time then—big and real—and I see the sliver of space between his two front teeth I remember from when he was a kid. “Got my ass kicked in the ring last week. Moved too slow.”
Silence settles in. Finn digs in his pocket for more change before flipping through the selections again.
I realize there’s something about being here, with him, right now, that loosens the knot in my chest. For the first time in a while, I’m at ease.
It’s like first grade all over again—this person sitting next to me on the playground when I was at my loneliest, this person sitting next to me now.
I look up. “My brother, Charlie—do you remember him?”
Finn nods carefully. “A little.” He stops, recognition dawning on his face. “Wait. Charlie and Parker? Charlie Parker? Like the jazz guy?”
“You know him?”
“Just the name.”
“My dad is super obsessed with all kinds of music. When he found out Mom was pregnant with twins, he came up with this mega list of possible names, all featuring his favorite musicians: Ella and Fitzgerald, Peter and Gabriel, Laurie and Anderson, Frank and Zappa, Bob and Dylan, you get the picture.”
“Zappa?”
“Yeah, luckily Mom vetoed that one hard. But she really liked Charlie and Parker, so here we are.”
“It’s better than Finnegan,” he says.
“I don’t know. In grade school, this kid Felix in my class used to call me Parking Lot.”
Finn snorts.
“I hated that so much.”
His face goes red. “Sorry.”
“You didn’t call me that,” I point out, but he doesn’t say anything.
After a few seconds, he clears his throat. “What were you saying earlier, about Charlie?”
“We got in a huge fight this morning. And we had another one on Saturday night. It’s bad, you know?”
Finn nods carefully.
“Charlie has cancer. Had it, I mean. Twice. In fourth grade and again this year. He’s in remission now. And he’s going to be fine. I know things aren’t easy for him, so I try to give him the benefit of the doubt, but some of the stuff he said . . .”
I stop, realizing that even though he’s my brother, maybe even because he’s my brother, Charlie has the ability to hurt me more than anyone else I know.
“That must really suck,” Finn says.
“It’s been hard for him.”
“I meant for you, too.”
I give him a small smile. “Ever since I was little, I wanted to be a doctor so I could fix Charlie, you know? I was supposed to start an internship at Children’s Hospital today. Friday actually. But I got sick on Friday, and when I tried to go in today, I just couldn’t do it.”