Ah, that waitress! She worked at the Cuban diner and Graham remembered her well. She used to give you a slow smile when she served fried plantains that could just about make you sob. And Graham thought again, guiltily, of Marla’s nipples poking at her blouse—like puppies’ noses or pencil erasers.
“But then Zoltan came along,” Elspeth continued, “and he thought I was the sexiest woman in the world! Why, I barely had to touch him—”
“Could we just get something straight?” Graham interrupted. “Did you ever in fact buy the man’s groceries?”
“Oh, yes,” Elspeth said. “But after a few weeks, we began having them delivered. So we would have more time.”
More time. Really, it was amazing how people always feel the need to add some little flourish, some extra element that you didn’t want to know. It was like they could not stop themselves.
“If you were in love with him—” Graham said, and his voice was as acidic as the space creature’s blood in Alien. He couldn’t help it. “If you were so in love with him, why didn’t you leave me and run off with him?”
“He wouldn’t hear of it,” Elspeth said simply.
Honestly, it was lucky that Graham could take a taxi home. If he’d been driving, he would have surely crashed the car.
—
Papa Stan turned out to be allergic to nearly all interesting food. Not that anyone told Graham this—no, indeed. He had to find out from Audra through the most irritating sort of process of elimination. Every morning, she would come up to him and ask casually what he was going to make for dinner and no matter what he answered, she would say “That sounds delicious!” in a falsely hearty voice and then add anxiously, “It doesn’t have scallions in it, does it?” Or olives. Or basil. Or almonds. Or feta cheese.
Audra had obviously been given a list of Papa Stan’s food allergies—probably it was in the same email that had announced Brodie would be visiting—so why didn’t she just tell Graham everything that was on the list and get it over with? Instead she backed him into a culinary corner until he found himself asking what Papa Stan wanted and that was what they wound up having: canned soups and grilled cheese sandwiches and sloppy joes and hot dogs and macaroni and cheese. Honestly, was it any wonder Graham wanted to go over to Elspeth’s for dinner?
Brodie was the only one who seemed to appreciate Graham’s cooking. One night Graham made a rib roast (let them eat hot dogs on a night he was out), and the aroma was almost more than Brodie could bear. He stood in front of the oven, drooling and moaning desperately. As the rib roast cooked, both the drooling and the moaning escalated, until Brodie was nearly gargling.
“It’s like living on Dagobah with Chewbacca,” Graham said to Audra.
She frowned slightly. “Was Chewbacca ever actually on Dagobah?”
“No, he wasn’t,” Matthew called from the living room.
“What?” Papa Stan said, and Matthew and Noah began giggling like crazy.
This was Graham’s life. His real life.
During the meals Graham ate at home, Brodie sat at Papa Stan’s elbow, moaning with desire every time someone passed a dish. Finally, Audra, who could be surprisingly handy, installed a baby gate across the doorway to the dining room, so now at meals, Brodie no longer groaned and slavered at the dinner table. He groaned and slavered behind the gate.
“Sweetie!” Papa Stan called to him. “I know it’s hard, but be patient! Let the nice people enjoy their dinner! I will give you a special treat later! You and I can watch Masterpiece Theatre together!”
(He didn’t really say that last part.)
Matthew and Noah ate as fast as possible, so they could go back into Matthew’s room and do whatever it was they did on the computer. (What were they doing in there? Graham wondered. Was anyone monitoring them?) Graham ate as fast as possible, too, so he wouldn’t have to listen to Papa Stan.
If it had been up to Graham, they would have ignored Papa Stan—politely, of course—and talked to each other, but Audra seemed to feel the need to include Papa Stan, to draw him out, even.
“Now, Papa Stan,” she would say warmly, “tell us about your day.”
“Well,” Papa Stan would say slowly. “First thing, Brodie and I checked the stock market and found that Pfizer had announced a tax inversion. Was it Pfizer? Or Walgreens? Pfizer, I think. Then we went for a walk and I stopped and got the newspaper, and then I went around the corner for a cup of coffee. Now, what is the name of that place?”
“Starbucks?” Audra said helpfully.
“No, no, the other one.”
“Tea Leaf?”
“Well, now, maybe it was, maybe it was. It was on Broadway and was it Seventy-second, or Seventy-third…”
Graham wished they could put Papa Stan behind the gate, too.
“…And then we came back and Brodie and I watched something on the History Channel. What was it, Brodie? Something about America’s Doomsday plans, maybe. Or was it about sharecropping? Let me think…”
“And tell me, what is the Doomsday Plan?” Audra said. She sounded like a TV talk show host. Graham thought he might strangle her and Papa Stan both if he sat there a moment longer.
He pushed back his chair so abruptly the legs screeched against the floor. “I’ll take Brodie out,” he said. “He looks restless.”
Brodie did look restless, but it was no doubt because he was eager for table scraps. It was Graham who was restless for escape.
Nevertheless, Graham would snap the leash on Brodie and drag him, nails clawing and scraping, out the door, into the elevator, and out on the street.
Walking Brodie was less like walking a dog and more like trying to fly a kite in a hurricane, or possibly windsurfing. Brodie lunged at people, dogs, lampposts, mailboxes. For Graham, it was all a matter of keeping himself firmly anchored and ready for Brodie’s next leap. How did Papa Stan manage?
Graham didn’t speak at all on these walks—there was no point since Brodie didn’t know any commands. Graham was sure the silence rang in both their ears.
And not only did they have to talk to Papa Stan, they had to talk about him, too.
“So today,” Audra said as they were getting ready for bed, “I told Papa Stan that I wished the dishwasher was either bigger or smaller because I keep running it three-quarters full. And I look up and he’s staring at this spot over my shoulder and he looks like he might faint and I’m thinking, Oh, no, this is what I’ve been afraid of! He’s going to die right here in the kitchen! And then I realize, no, he’s bored.”
She flexed her elbows in a brief chicken-wing formation while she undid her bra, and then pulled her nightgown over her head.
“I bored Papa Stan,” Audra said. “How awful is that? I feel I’ve hit an all-time conversational low. It’s like—I don’t know. Like I should go live in a cave or something. I’m apparently not fit for human society.”
Graham didn’t say anything. He was thinking that Audra wore satiny nightgowns and Elspeth had worn tank tops and pajama bottoms and you’d think it would be the other way around. He was thinking that maybe people weren’t meant to get married twice; it only led to comparisons.