“I can go with you,” Audra said. “If Graham wants to stay here with Matthew and label two hundred bags of Korean scorched rice candy.”
Well, Graham wanted to do that even less than he wanted to drive around with Julio. So off they went, in a blue Honda Accord that Julio had somewhat magically supplied. Graham suspected it belonged to another tenant who had no idea the car was out and about. He hoped they didn’t spill sweet-and-sour sauce on the upholstery.
Julio seemed unconcerned, driving fast and well, although he whistled when he saw the list of addresses. “How are we supposed to make twenty stops in two hours?” he asked Graham.
“Maybe we can do it if we call people and have them meet us in front of their buildings,” Graham said.
So Julio drove while Graham dialed his cellphone and they made a series of stops, putting on the hazard lights amid much honking, while a variety of parents ran out and thrust Tupperware boxes full of frozen food at them through the car window.
One woman handed Graham a bag full of cylindrical objects wrapped in plastic and then leaned in the window and gave them a long blast of information about rolling out the dough and brushing it with butter and afterward sprinkling each individual roll with egg wash and then a little pearl sugar or possibly almonds unless that was a danger due to nut allergies, which schools were way too paranoid about in her opinion.
Graham thanked her and rolled up the window.
Julio pulled the car back into traffic. “Do you remember one word of the shit that woman said?” he asked Graham.
“No,” Graham admitted.
“Shit,” said Julio. (He used the word shit all the time, Graham had noticed: as a noun, as an adjective, as an interjection, and sometimes just as a sort of filler, where another person might take a breath.) “I feel like my brain can’t hold one more piece of information about United Nations Day. It’s like my head’s full. I hear shit but I can’t absorb it.”
Graham had been unable to absorb any information for three weeks now, ever since the credit card finding. Julio was right; his head was full.
Julio continued. “You know, in the beginning, I cared about all this shit Audra said. I was concerned that nobody would work in the China Room even though one out of every four people in the world is Chinese or whatever. I thought it was terrible that the India Room wouldn’t acknowledge the Pakistan Room. I got upset when the bunting for the cafeteria was fifty feet too short. Bunting? I don’t even know what that shit is. But I cared because Audra cared.”
“I know—” Graham started to say, but Julio was too worked up.
“Now she talks and I don’t hear it,” he said. “It’s like I can’t hear it. It’s like there’s a limit to how much any one person can hear about United Nations Day and I’m there.”
“I think I reached it three or four United Nations Days ago,” Graham said.
“Audra says she’s going to be the happiest person on the planet when United Nations Day is over,” Julio said, “but she’s not. She’s going to be the second-happiest person, because the happiest person is going to be me— Oh, look, there she is.”
They were only a few blocks from home now and there was Audra, standing in front of the flower stand with Matthew. Audra was pointing at one bunch of flowers and then another and asking Matthew something. (Probably she wanted his opinion; she could never understand that men don’t have opinions on flowers.)
She was wearing her short swingy green coat and a little green beret, and just the ends of her hair curled from beneath it. Julio and Graham were stuck at a light so they watched as Audra finally decided on both bunches of flowers. She tucked them under one arm and took Matthew’s hand and began walking. Their clasped hands swung easily between them.
Julio blew out a breath. “A fine, classy lady,” he said.
And there was a little pause, a little space, where Graham was supposed to say “Yes, a very fine lady.” But he didn’t.
—
On the last Friday of every month, Graham and Olivia ordered Chinese food for lunch and ate it in Graham’s office.
Graham was fairly sure that Olivia looked forward to it—she always reminded him on Thursday nights, saying, “Tomorrow’s our lunch!” But sometimes he wondered if Olivia viewed their lunches as a form of community service. Perhaps she thought she was having lunch with some sort of shut-in. (It never pays to overestimate yourself.)
Today they had sesame noodles and shredded pork with snow cabbage and sliced beef with black bean sauce. Graham always ordered; he was trying to expand Olivia’s palate. She’d told him that before she came to work for him, the only Chinese food she’d ever had were egg rolls and sweet-and-sour chicken, and she’d only had that once at a restaurant in her hometown. (Graham did not want to even think about how bad Chinese food in Kentucky must be.)
Now Olivia was curled in the chair across from Graham’s desk, her feet tucked under her. She was wearing a black skirt and a white blouse with a Peter Pan collar and looked about eight years old. She ate rice dreamily, grain by grain with her chopsticks. “I love Chinese rice,” she said. “Whenever I make rice at home, it burns and we have to throw out the pan.”
It was news to Graham that Olivia ever tried to cook anything at home and he felt mildly encouraged for her future. “Just set a timer,” he said. “Then you won’t forget about it.”
“I guess,” she said, still dreamy. “But I wish there was, like, a machine that cooked the rice for you, like a coffeemaker makes coffee.”
“There is.”
Olivia looked confused. “There is what?”
“A machine that cooks rice,” Graham said. “It’s called a rice cooker.”
“What—you’re saying it really exists?”
“Yes.”
Her eyes were very round. “Where can I get one? Do I have to go to Chinatown?”
“Oh, no,” Graham said soothingly. “I’m sure you can get one in any department store.”
Olivia looked worried. “Will you write down the name of it?”
“I’ll tell you what,” Graham said. “I have an extra one. I’ll bring it in on Monday and give it to you.”
It wasn’t true that he had an extra one, but he did have one he hardly ever used. In fact, he could picture it, sitting in its box at home in a high cupboard that was hard to reach. He could see in his mind the thick layer of greasy dust that seemed to collect on all seldom-used kitchen utensils. He would give it to Olivia, and she and her roommate would eat rice all the time for a month and then she, too, would probably put it in a cupboard and maybe it would follow Olivia on a few of her moves, or maybe she would forget about it and it would remain in her kitchen for the next occupants. It made Graham feel, all at once, very sorry for the rice cooker, for anything that got left behind.