*
There’s a voicemail on the house phone from That Home informing us there’s been an incident with my father. My mother’s still at botany class, so I call back. As it rings, I crouch down on the floor like I’m about to pee, some atavistic instinct that it’s safer down there. By the time I get transferred to the nurse practitioner, I have my forehead bowed to the floor too. I rock back and forth on the balls of my feet and hum softly until she comes on the line.
She explains briskly that my father managed to squirrel an old credit card away and has ordered hundreds of dollars’ worth of products from daytime infomercials to That Home.
“The packages have been arriving for the last few days,” she says. “It’s against policy for patients to receive mail that’s commerce.”
“You couldn’t have mentioned in your voicemail,” I say very quietly into the floor. “That the incident with my elderly, infirm father was one of fucking commerce.”
*
I drive over to That Home and find my father cowering alone in his room like a dog that’s eaten the birthday cake.
“Hi, Pa,” I say softly, kneeling beside his chair.
He’s clutching the end of the curtain and rubbing the nubby corner back and forth with his thumb. Sunlight flocks through the window. I put my hand on his arm. He jerks it away.
“You’re not in trouble, Pa,” I say.
He fumbles to get a better handful of the curtain and tugs it slowly across his face.
*
The stuff he bought has been confiscated and held at the nurse’s station. Confiscated? I want to yell. He’s a doctor! He went to Princeton!
I borrow a pair of scissors and slice open packages in the lobby. There’s a retractable cane, a hair crimper, two calligraphy sets, something called the “Fat Blasting Magnet,” a purple neck pillow in the shape of a panda, and a scratch-proof saucepan.
“I’d advise you to return those,” says the nurse.
I lug the boxes out to the car and sit in the front seat filling out return labels. There is, understandably, no box for neurodegenerative disease under “Reason for return,” so I go with “Product did not meet customer’s expectations.”
I sit and watch the sky turn gray. A nurse in lavender scrubs steps out for a cigarette. A knot of pigeons corkscrews into the air. I grab the panda neck pillow and shove it under my arm.
“He’s keeping this,” I say as I march past the nurse’s station.
*
Frank and I are working late, supposedly on the presentation for this real estate company.
“This is bad, but not as bad as my first copy job,” Frank says. “It was for a Chinese restaurant. So many wok puns.”
“Like ‘wok ‘n’ roll’?” I laugh.
“All the obvious ones had already been taken,” he says. “We were resorting to things like ‘Chip off the old wok.’ ‘Laughing wok of the city’ …”
“‘Between a wok and a hard place.’”
“See, you’re a natural,” he says. “I wanted the tagline to be ‘Don’t be a woksucker,’ but they didn’t bite.”
Frank lays his hand, palm up, on the desk. I think about kissing it. Just those two parts of us, my lips and his palm, are in communion. I sit on my hands, but my head keeps tugging forward like it’s trying to bob for apples. It’s listening to my mouth.
*
Levi calls to tell me he’s working on a solo album about his breakup. It’s called Table for One … Not by the Window.
*
I find this line of poetry by Sáenz and email it to my mother:
I want to dream a sky / Full of hummingbirds. I would like to die in such a storm.
She replies:
I think I’d rather die in my sleep like Auntie Louise.
*
“But are these concepts ownable?” asks the real estate client in pinstripes. “Are we using language and phraseology that’s indigenously ours?”
“I’m going to have to stop you at indigenous,” says Frank.
The meeting did not go well.
*
“You and I deserve a drink,” says Frank as we leave the real estate client’s bland midtown offices. “Or twelve.”
We go to an Irish bar around the corner that smells of salted nuts and disappointment. I think Frank is worried about losing the client, which I assume is why he orders three whiskeys for every one of my wine spritzers. Soon he is looking at me as if trying to make me out through dark and murky water.
“All right, Mr. J. Daniels,” I say. “Let’s get you home.”
I try to hail a cab for him on the street while he weaves around me in a looping half dance. He grabs a parking meter and leans his cheek against it forlornly, blinking at me through his glasses.
“I don’t want to go home,” he says.
My heart lunges. What can I say to this? Why don’t you come home with me to New Jersey, just try not to wake my mother?
“Your wife will be worried about you,” I say.
He sighs. “You’re right,” he says. “When you’re right, you’re right!” He twirls around the meter without taking his eyes off me. “You are such a nice person, Eleanor.”
“You’re a nice person too, Frank,” I say over my shoulder as I flag down a free cab.
Frank shakes his head blearily.
“No, I’m not,” he says. “I’m a bad man.”
The cab pulls up, and I open the door for him.
“Bad, bad man,” he repeats as he heaves his way into the back seat.
I lean down to speak to him before I close the door.
“You’re not a bad man, Frank,” I say. “You’re just drunk.”
“Same thing,” he says, falling backward across the seats.
He is laughing as I close the door, but it doesn’t sound like he thinks it’s funny at all.
*
In the email inviting us all to the office holiday party, there is a warning that the company will not pay the bail of anyone arrested this year. I ask Myke if this is a joke.
“You didn’t hear? Two years ago, an intern and an account exec got caught doing blow on the street. Frank had to bail them out. Legendary.” Myke shakes his head in awe. “Absolutely legendary.”
*
I spend approximately three and a half hours getting ready for the party, which is the longest I’ve ever prepared for anything in life, including my SATs. I have been soaked, scrubbed, rubbed, shaved, plucked, and slicked with lotion. My hair has been washed, blow-dried, re-curled, and doused in hair spray. I have applied every cream and powder I own to my face. I have spritzed perfume into the air and walked through its wet cloud.
*