The kids turned toward Harry’s bedroom the second Felix unlocked the front door and canceled the burglar alarm.
“Harry, wait. A word, please.”
Harry looked over his shoulder. “Yeah?”
“Your door stays open.”
“Excuse me?”
“A new house rule when you have a girl over.”
“Great,” Harry mumbled as he slumped off. “Another house rule.”
“I heard that,” Felix called after him. Would it be inappropriate to have a whisky before the kids turned up? Highly inappropriate. Suppose another parent came to the house because it was polite to say hello to the parent in charge, and that person smelled alcohol on his breath and assumed Harry’s dad was an alkie . . .
No. No alcohol.
Felix focused on working down his to-do list. Everything was checked off by 5:45 p.m., and then he paced.
Guests arrived in dribs and drabs—the two girls came together—and Felix ordered the pizza. The kids had taken off their shoes in the hall, as Felix had requested, but they’d left them scattered. When the pizza delivery guy rang the doorbell, ten minutes behind schedule, Felix tripped over a particularly large white sneaker. The quintessential American sneaker, the ugliest shoe in the world, and it was defiling his hall.
He nearly yelled at the kids right then to leave. It took all his powers of concentration to swallow his irritation so that he could serve supper. An Oxford education reduced to slicing pizza.
The kids descended on the pizza like starving street urchins from Oliver! Trying to get them to line up led to failure, but he did force them to wait as he cut the pizza and handed it out one piece at a time, on double paper plates. Then they homed in on the dining room table, squishing into the six chairs. Two of the boys stood to eat. Why hadn’t he covered the floor with drop cloths?
When Max helped himself to a piece of Hawaiian pizza directly from the box, and a small chunk of pineapple fell to the wood floor, Felix rushed at him with a paper plate. And two napkins.
“Uh, thanks, Mr. FW,” Max said.
Felix couldn’t take his eyes off the kids for a second, especially not Max, who was barely house-trained. There was even a can of Coke sitting in the middle of the coffee table without a coaster underneath. Felix rectified the situation and wiped down the entire table with a wad of paper towels.
Then he retreated to stand behind the kitchen island, where he waited with the pizza cutter for the next half hour—to make sure nobody pulled a Max. Occasionally, he snuck glances at Harry and Sammie snuggled together on the same chair. In part he did this for Ella, who loved Harry’s birthday parties and would expect a detailed report. But he was also curious to see how Harry handled himself with a girl. At one point their foreheads touched, and Harry sat perfectly still—until he giggled at something Max said. Strange that Harry still had his little-boy giggle.
When the kids abandoned the dining room table to sprawl on the sofa, the floor, and the fireplace hearth, Felix started the cleanup with a black bin liner. Harry fired several blinking glances at him as he dumped all the paper plates and half-munched slices of pizza. Did this generation not finish anything?
Under the table, there was a snowdrift of candy wrappers. Why had he thought the bumper packs of individually wrapped candies were a good idea? He picked up one, two, three cans of soda, but they were all half-drunk. How could he rinse them out and recycle them when he didn’t know whether or not the kids were finished? What a waste if they were; what a waste if they weren’t. He dumped the cans anyway.