I snort. “I just can’t believe you paged me to the desserts. I thought we were in an episode of Law & Order: Special Cookie Unit.”
Oliver smiles. “Well, until I paged you, I thought you were in an episode of The Young and the Restless. What’s with Captain Douche?” He gives a quick nod in the direction of the doorway, where Max is putting his tray away.
I just shrug and take another bite of ice cream that takes forever to swallow. How can I tell him that I thought I knew Max from a lifetime of dreams, but I somehow managed to imagine everything? That even though I really feel like I know Max, he’s not actually the Max I know. That the Max I know . . . well, that Max doesn’t even exist.
“You don’t wanna talk about it?” he asks.
I just shake my head.
“In that case, may I Segway you home?”
It turns out Oliver lives four blocks from Nan’s house, which I know I should start calling my house. But my house is a floor-through walk-up on 119th Street, a strange hybrid of teenage lair and perpetual man cave. Not an endless maze of Oriental carpeting and paintings with heavy gold frames. My house has restaurants representing six different countries within a one-block radius. Nan’s has a place called Beacon Hill Fine Linens.
“Is there anything more ridiculous than a store specializing in five-hundred-dollar sheets?” I ask Oliver when we pass it on our way home. “It makes sleep, one of our most basic needs, elitist.” I am walking Frank beside him, and he is walking his Segway, because it ran out of juice.
“You want ridiculous?” he asks. “I went to the corner store to grab some milk for my cornflakes last week, because my parents forget I need to eat sometimes, and the lady said they only carry organic sheep’s milk. She told me that with a completely straight face. I just turned and walked out.”
“Your parents sound busy,” I say.
“They run their own packaging company, so they’re always running off to China at the last minute. They aren’t around a lot.”
“Do you get lonely?” I ask.
“Sure, but a guy finds ways to entertain himself.” He gives one of his charming Oliver smiles. “Like doing poorly in school and getting into trouble all the time.”
“I get it,” I say. “My mom took off when I was little, and my dad isn’t much of a talker, so I developed a pretty active imagination.”
I expect him to feel awkward after my admission, or ask where my mom went. But instead he just says, “Like what?”
“I dunno, I was a curious kid,” I say.
“Give me an example,” he presses.
“I can’t tell you!” I cry. “It’s embarrassing.”
“Alice Rowe, so secretive,” Oliver teases. “You could be a Russian spy, for all I know. Have you already stolen my identity?”
“Okay fine!” I say when we stop at a crosswalk. A man walking a pair of poodles stares at Oliver’s Segway. Oliver just nods hello. “For example, I used to follow our dog Jerry around like we were in one of those National Geographic documentaries, recording his every move on my dad’s old tape recorder. He’s a bulldog, and they aren’t exactly energetic, so you can imagine how interesting it was.”
“Please tell me you still have the tapes,” Oliver says.
“If I do, you will never hear them,” I reply.
“I think I know what’s bugging you,” my dad says over paella that night. He learned to make it when we were in Portugal two summers ago for one of his conferences. Besides scrambled eggs, it is basically all he can make.
“Oh yeah?” I say absentmindedly, staring into a prawn’s eyeballs. He can’t just make it with the store-bought shrimp. It has to be authentic.
“The boy,” he says then, and I almost drop my fork. “The one from New York. Come on, you can’t fool your dad.”
“You’re right.” I nod, though of course he has it all wrong. Because there is no boy from New York. “It’s the boy from New York.”
My dad sits there quiet a moment. “Did you know the brain processes emotional rejection the same way it processes physical pain?”
I raise my eyebrows. “I did not.”
“Well, it’s true.” He always lights up when he discusses the brain. “When you’re in love, your brain has an influx of dopamine. The same effect people get from doing drugs. You’re basically an addict. But when love, the person of your affection, is taken away from you, we process it in the same part of the brain that tells us if we’ve burnt ourselves, or broken a bone, or scratched our skin. So what I’m telling you, Bug, is not to worry. Heartache is not just a word we use. It has a scientific basis. So you don’t have to feel bad for missing him. It’s totally normal. But all broken bones or burns or hearts . . . well, they all heal up eventually.”
I reach over and give my dad a pat on the forearm, just short enough so neither of us gets uncomfortable. Sometimes I wish he was the kind of dad that would just ask where the guy lived, drive to his house, and grab him by the collar. But I know this kind of dad is better.
6
Mrs. Perry Requested Peacocks