“Do you know how to play backgammon?” She set up the pieces on his bed. Sam cranked up the music in his shitty headphones and turned his back in response. Until the yelling really got going. That’s the thing about mobile homes. The walls were wafer thin. Jude’s eyes widened.
Sam sighed, plugged his headphones into Jude’s iPad, and put them on her. He showed her a few videos. Heavy hitters like corgis waddling on a trampoline and baby pandas squirming to a medley of dancehall music. There was a supercut of a cockatoo that played piano with its feet, and once Jude settled into an instructional of a woman making cupcakes resembling acid-washed jeans, Sam checked on his mom.
Through the crack of his door he could see Brandi Rose at the sink alone, drinking a tall glass of orange juice that likely contained as much vodka. The men were out of sight though not out of earshot. For the next hour Sam and Jude watched videos. By the end of the afternoon Sam could tell a kind of resolution had gone down. He hoped the wedding was called off. That Mr. Lange’s impetuous proposal had been the handiwork of a senile man and his jerk son had in fact saved the day. They weren’t quite so lucky. The happy couple married a few weeks later, with a five-day honeymoon cruise on the Mayan Riviera. Despite the joyous nuptials and the infinite promises, Brandi Rose’s husband failed to move them out of their trailer home; nor did he ever spend a night in her bed.
When it came time for the Langes to leave, Jude’s dad collected her, took out his wallet, removed four twenty-dollar bills, and tossed them on Sam’s bed, not once looking directly at him.
He shut the door without a word.
? ? ?
“Uncle Sam!” trilled Jude.
Five years of extensive orthodontia and a contraption known as reverse-pull headgear had corrected the more equine aspects of Jude’s face.
“Hey, Jude,” he said. It was unsettling to see her again. They’d had coffee a month ago, when she was in town for orientation, yet at no point in the following weeks did Sam believe she’d leave California to study six blocks away.
Jude was now five ten to Sam’s six foot (okay, five eleven and a half), but whereas Sam was scrawny, Jude was solid. She reeked of health in that sun-kissed West Coast way. Sam bet she could bench-press him if she wanted. He felt both strangely protective of her in a mammalian way—like how he imagined people in normal families felt toward each other—and deeply uncomfortable that she’d be hanging around.
“YAY!” Jude squealed, engulfing him. “It’s Uncle Sam!” She’d taken to calling him that on the flurry of texts signaling her arrival. She thought it was hysterical since Sam wasn’t exactly the “USA! USA!” type. Nor was he her uncle anymore. Brandi Rose and Mr. Lange’s doomed union lasted just under two years. A month before he’d owe alimony, he proposed to a twenty-five-year-old server from a Cracker Barrel in Buda. He was a class act through and through.
The pressure of Jude’s tanned arms encircling him was pleasant, a relief. It had been several months since Sam had been embraced with uncomplicated affection, and his ex-niece was like a gigantic golden retriever that loved you on sight.
“You hungry?” he asked, squirming out of the hug. “How was the flight? Are your folks here? How’s it feel to be a freshman?”
Then a beat. “Do you love questions?”
Sam awkwardly fixed his hair and took a slug of coffee to have something to do with his hands.
“Caffeine’s a helluva a drug,” she said, eyeing his cup.
He laughed.
“To your first question: I’m starving,” said Jude. “Flight was good. Parents couldn’t agree on who should bring me down, so we settled on nobody. They’re splitting up.”
“I’m sorry.”
Sam had met Jude’s mother only once—she was tanned and wore yoga clothes to dinner—and Sam had never warmed to her dad.
“It’s fine,” she said, and gave him a crooked smile. “They were miserable. By the way, they say hi.”
“No they don’t,” Sam said.
Jude laughed.
“Well, my mom does,” she admitted. “But my dad did ask about you. Whether or not you had plans to go back to school.”
Sam shrugged. “We’ll see,” he said. Sam was going back, just not to UT.
“Well.” She grabbed his forearm. “At least he won’t be visiting. He may have been born in Dallas but he still thinks Austin is for drug addicts and trust-fund hippies.”
Sam smiled dryly.
“Oh,” Jude continued. “And I don’t know how it feels to be a freshman, I love questions, and my first order of business was coming to see you to say hi.” She served up another of her trillion-watt grins and waved right in his face.
“Hiiiii!” She was such a cartoon.
“Hi back,” Sam said, and busied himself with a plate of pastries. “I made these for you.”
“Whoa, for me?”
“Donuts and cherry hand pies,” he said.
“Wait, you made these?”
He nodded.
“Jeez, I’m going to be over here all the time,” she said. “I can’t believe you bake.”
“Well, they’re fried,” he said. Sam wondered what constituted “all the time.”
“Even better.” Jude pulled out her phone. “I’m going to tell my friends to come by.”
Sam nodded.
Jude was good about that sort of thing. Sharing and sometimes oversharing. They’d been thrown together at family functions a few more times and he’d eventually grown to enjoy her consistent stream of conversation. It was a nice respite from the rancor of the grown-ups, and even after the split, Jude never allowed Sam to lose touch. And he’d tried. Jude remembered birthdays and sent silly messages at the holidays with unsolicited updates from her life. Her congeniality was unflappable. Sam meanwhile had no idea when her birthday was ever since he deleted all his social media accounts.
“Do you want a coffee or something?” he asked.
“Iced please.”
“Milk and sugar?” Another fact he didn’t know about her.
“Tons,” she said, beaming.
? ? ?
“Yaasssssssssssss!!!!!”
A tall brown-haired girl dressed as if she were attending a desert festival galloped in, trailed by someone bearing an uncanny resemblance to the tiny Asian girl from the Japanese horror movie The Grudge.
“Yasssssss!!!” shrieked Jude back, hugging the brunette as the tassels on her shirt jangled.
“Bitch, finally!” yelled the taller girl. Their long knobby limbs reminded Sam of king crabs clasped in an embrace.
The Asian girl smiled at him for a second, then changed her mind. He responded with a grimace.
Jude untangled her tanned arms and lunged for the shorter girl.
“Hiiiiiiiiii,” sang Jude into her hair, practically lifting her off the floor. “Yay, it’s Penny.”
The girl patted his niece’s back twice—pat, pat—and locked eyes with him helplessly.
“This is my best friend, Mallory,” Jude said. “And my roommate, Penny.”
“So, you’re Uncle Sam,” said Mallory, reaching for his hand. She had a firm handshake. The sort that quickly became a contest.
“I’m Mallory Sloane,” said Mallory Sloane.
“Pleasure,” he said, refusing to acknowledge her grip. She bit her lower lip in a seductive manner. Sam smiled and quickly said hi to the other one. She waved at a spot slightly left of his ear.
“So, what can I do for you ladies today?”
“Can you make me a flat white?” asked Mallory, who kept her sunglasses on inside.
Sam loathed the arbitrary taxonomy of fiddly coffee drinks and had long since learned them all out of spite.
“Sure,” he said, grinding beans for a short shot.
“Do you know what that is?” she challenged.
“Yep,” he said. “Latte with a modified espresso to milk ratio. With microfoam.”
“Nice try, Mal,” said Jude.
“What are you having,” he asked. “Penny was it?”
Sam followed Penny’s sight line to her shoes. Which, coincidentally, were exactly his shoes though smaller.
“Great taste,” he said, nodding at her feet.
Penny’s mouth made the shape of an “O,” but no sound escaped.
Dorm lotteries made for the funniest groupings. Sam’s old freshman roommate, Kirin Mehta, used to sleepwalk and sleep-pee in a corner of their living room every weekend. Sam hoped that these two girls—the mute and the sexpot—got along for Jude’s sake.