“—don’t buy it. I just don’t.”
“Why would I lie about this?” Frowny Claire’s voice sounds as sad as she looks.
“After the shit we’ve been through, that’s a really great question.”
“Beck, like I said on the phone, I’m seriously sorry.”
The click of a lighter, and then—smoke. Coming in a billow out the window, just over my head.
I knew she was smoker.
“Would you like some lemonade or something?”
“What? No.” The conversation comes to a brief silence. Then, Beck’s damaged voice again: “I really thought—I don’t know. I mean, I know it’s been a while, but I thought when I got here . . . if you could just see me . . .” More silence. Then, Beck in a whisper: “You really don’t remember me?”
Another billow of smoke.
“I was in a number of homes. It was a hard time for me. My therapist says it’s normal, you know, to block out the pain.” Another beat, another billow. Then, Claire’s voice again, this time, quieter. “Listen, I didn’t . . .”
More silence, then Beck says, “Are you okay?”
“No. I mean, yes, it’s just . . .”
“What?”
“It’s probably nothing, but—did I make a promise or something?”
Another beat.
“Like what?” asks Beck.
“Nothing. I’m sure it’s nothing. Would you like some lemonade?”
Beck sighs. “I gotta go.”
Hunched over, I backtrack around the townhouses, scurry over to the truck, and start kicking the tires just as the front door opens. As Beck crosses the lawn, I stick my hands in my pockets like I’ve been here the whole time.
“What’re you doing, Mim?” His voice is shaky.
“Just making sure the craft is seaworthy.” I clear my throat and throw on my most casual, super-optimistic, non-spy smile. “So how’d it go?”
“Fine,” he lies, opening the driver’s door. “Let’s get out of here.”
Back in the truck, Walt clicks the last green square into place. “Are the tires still filled with air and whatnot, Mim?”
“Sure, Walt.”
“Hey, hey, I’m Walt.”
“Damn straight,” whispers Beck, pulling out of the driveway.
We make our way back through downtown Bellevue in silence. I can only guess what’s going through Beck’s mind right now. He came all this way only to be offered lemonade—twice—by a frowny-ass-chain-smoking amnesiac. That’s a shit hand right there.
In front of a boarded-up ice-cream parlor, a little boy stands alone, crying his eyes out. I can’t help but think that’s about the only thing a little kid can do these days. I can’t help but think that’s the only thing that even makes any damn sense.
30
Kung Pao Mondays
WITHOUT POMP, WITHOUT circumstance, I wipe off the war paint. There are no balloons, confetti, or plastic-wrapped roses. Even so, staring at myself in yet another grimy mirror, there is a sense of I-don’t-know-what . . . nostalgia, I suppose, whirring in my heart. I’ve never been much of a runner, but with Cleveland mere hours away, this sure feels like the homestretch.
In all likelihood, that was my magnum opus.
Like most everything else in this restaurant, the bathroom door is constructed entirely of bamboo: the faded Berber carpet is its soil, the flowery wallpaper is its oxygen, and—behold!—the perennial evergreens of exotic Southeast Asia sprout forth like so many common weeds right here in ho-hum Northeast Ohio.
Basically, I hike back to our table through the Asian outback.
“Are you blushing?” asks Beck, gnawing on a piece of red chicken on a stick.
Damn. Even with the makeup remover, the lipstick leaves a reddish afterglow. “No,” I say. But yeah, I probably am. And if I wasn’t before, I am now. “Where’s my duck?”
Beck chuckles. “You know you sound ridiculous, right?”
Walt, without looking up from his plate, cracks up.
I slide into the bamboo booth. “If I want duck, I’m getting duck. Anyway, I’m not the one who suggested Chinese before eleven a.m.”
“You don’t like Chinese food?” says Walt. Having consumed his own red chicken, he’s now using the stick to stab a green bean.
“Love the food, Walt. Hate the restaurants. Well. All but one.”
Beck and Walt both ordered the buffet and have now moved on to sweet and sour chicken. You gotta hand it to the Chinese; they’ve really perfected chicken varietals.
“Which one?” says Beck.
“What?”
“You said you only eat at one Chinese restaurant. Which one?”
“What difference does it make? They aren’t all the same. Most are like—” I point to the buffet in the middle of the restaurant, where a line of wild-eyed, overweight white men are jockeying for position.
Beck munches a piece of broccoli. “You’re quite mad, you know.”
“Pardon me for preferring my food unsullied.”
“Unsullied?” says Walt.
“Fresh. Untouched by gross, deformed strangers who pay five ninety-five a pop and eat enough in one sitting to last a week. A buffet is just—it’s not food, see. It’s a feeding.”
“I like feedings,” says Walt, just as my duck arrives. After finishing the last bite on his plate, he gets up and heads back to the buffet.