“Karmic debt—do they have a payment plan for that?” Dora felt at ease again.
“The terms are very reasonable. What you want to avoid is karmic bankruptcy. That’s a killer. You can’t get any good karma for seven years afterwards.”
“Good to know.”
Con grinned. “Where do you want to eat? Monday in Forsyth . . . so our choices are fast food, fast food, and the K&W Cafeteria. Or fast food.” He stopped for a minute. “Huh. I didn’t really think this through.” He looked at his watch. “When do you have to get back? There’s a great Mexican place I know, but it’s in Greensboro.”
“I don’t have a curfew. . . . Would you mind? I mean, driving to Greensboro?” Usually Dora loved the K&W, but it would be full of folks who would ask her about Mimi. “I know it’s cowardly, but I think the sympathy is almost the worst part. Far fewer people in a Mexican restaurant in Greensboro will ambush me with any.”
“I understand.” Con swapped his clipboard to his other hand, and offered Dora his arm. “Greensboro it is. Your chariot awaits.”
Dora took his arm. She waited for the awkwardness to hit, but it didn’t feel dorky or awkward at all. “Must be the dress,” she muttered.
“What?”
“Nothing—Greensboro, please.”
They hit a little traffic outside the airport. Con looked over at her. “This is where real Forsythians complain about how built up we’re getting, just so you know.”
“I suppose it’s nothing to someone who’s lived in New York, huh?”
“Well, I didn’t drive much in New York. Or at all. Subway all the way, baby.”
“Did you live in Manhattan?” Dora was trying to imagine Con in Manhattan. She could only picture the New York of
Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
George Peppard sitting up in bed . . . She shook her head.
“Busted,” Con laughed. “I couldn’t afford Manhattan. I lived in Brooklyn. Park Slope. Which is very, very, very nice, as I explained to my mother about one hundred thousand times.”
“Didn’t she go visit you?”
“She was going to—they were going to—then my dad got sick.” Con braked as a minivan swerved into their lane. “One of my few regrets.”
“I’m sorry.” Dora wondered if she should reach over and take Con’s hand. Before she could make up her mind, Con had reached for the radio. “Maybe we can get a traffic report.”
While he fiddled with the dials, Dora looked out the window, and tried not to think about her own regrets.
By the time Con found a traffic report, the slowdown had passed. “Go figure,” he said. “Gotta remember that trick—listening to the traffic report makes the traffic disappear.”
“Now if only there was a parking report, you’d have everything Forsythians complain about solved. . . .” Dora suddenly remembered her bike.
“I left my bike—Mimi’s bike—at the shop.”
“How about I pick you up, then, tomorrow, on my way into the Feathertons’? I have to warn you, construction starts early. Could you be ready at seven?”
“I could just drive. . . .”
“There’s a parking crisis, remember? I don’t mind picking you up.”
The restaurant was small—only ten booths. Loud Tejano music was playing, but the cook turned it down when they walked in.
“What do you want?” The choices were on a board above the counter.
“Um, just a burrito, I guess. Chicken?”
“I gotta warn you: they are as big as your head.” Con cocked his head to one side and looked at Dora. “Possibly bigger. We could get one, and measure them both. . . .”
“Three chicken tacos, with everything. And a Coke,” Dora said firmly.
“Good choice.” Con ordered for her, and got a burrito and a Coke himself.
They sat down, and the waitress brought their food, plus a giant basket of chips and guacamole and salsa.
Con dipped a chip in salsa and took a big bite. “Hot pepper,” he gasped, and reached for his Coke. His eyes were streaming. Dora reached into her pocket and gave him her handkerchief. Con mopped his eyes, then raised his eyebrows at the knot in it.
“Nervous habit?”
“It’s for luck.” Dora took a more cautious bite of a chip laden with guacamole. “It’s something Mimi does,” she explained.
“Does it work?”
“We’ll have to see,” she said. She didn’t look at him.
Con applied himself to his burrito. “Tell me something you hate,” he said.
“Um, why?” Dora looked at him mock suspiciously. “Are you recruiting for something?”
“I just think you get a better idea of a person by asking them about what they dislike than about what they like—I mean, everyone likes puppies.”
“I hate puppies,” Dora said. Con’s eyes widened. “Just kidding.”
“Whew.” Con used Dora’s handkerchief to mop imaginary sweat from his brow. “You had me worried.”
“What do I hate? I hate Velcro.” Dora took a bite of her taco for emphasis. “It’s too easy. And it makes noise. It’s an accomplishment to be able to tie your own shoes. And tying your shoes is silent. Those are both good things. There is nothing good about Velcro.”
“What about for astronauts?”
“What about for astronauts?”
“Like when there’s no gravity, and they put Velcro on the walls and their shoes so they can hang in one place and not float around.” Con dared another chip, carefully avoiding the jalapeños in the salsa.
“I thought they did that with magnets.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s Velcro. Would you want giant shoe-magnets near the computer that runs the space station?”
“Well, I’m sure that if they can send a computer to space, they can shield it from cosmic rays and magnets and probably spilled coffee, too.” Dora stuck her tongue out at Con.
“Velcro would be easier. I’m just saying.”
“Well, what do you hate, Mr. Velcro Apologist?”
“Nothing. I am a man without animus.” Dora threw a chip at him.
“Now we’ve escalated to physical violence, I see,” Con intoned. “The reaction of the rabble to the man without hate is always instructive.”
“Seriously.” Dora looked at Con.
“Okay, don’t out me to the other members of the He-Man Woman Haters Club, but I despise baseball.”
“‘Despise’ is a strong word.” Dora looked down at her plate. All she had left were shreds of lettuce and cheese. She snagged another chip.
“If you know a stronger one, I’ll use that. It’s just a bunch of fat guys trotting around. And they use
tools.
That’s not a sport, that’s a job. A sport is bodies and a ball and that’s it. Basketball is sport. Baseball is . . . interpretive dance.”
“Interpretive dance where they keep score?”
“People always keep score, Dora,” Con said, in a cynical voice.
The waitress came over and refilled their water glasses. They were the only diners left.
“For instance,” Con went on, “I bet you’re keeping score on me right now. Right? What do I score?”
Dora smiled weakly. “Um, on what scale?”
“Any scale. Every scale. Pick a scale.”
“I know one where you’re off the charts.” Dora looked Con straight in the eye. “Kindness.”
Now Con looked down . . . and did Dora see a blush? Or was it the aftereffects of the hot peppers?
“Aw, that just means I’m picking up the check.” He got up before Dora could stop him and paid at the register. Dora dug around in her bag and dumped a handful of singles and a five on the table. She went to stand beside Con at the register. “I left the tip,” she said.
He glanced back at the table. “You left two tips,” he said. “You’ll have to eat at my brother’s restaurant sometime; his staff would love you.”
They played “What do you hate?” all the way back to Forsyth. Dora hated ankle-high socks (“especially on men”), cigar smoke, the noise a pepper grinder makes, and Con hated chocolates with “wet insides,” any show where people burst into song for no reason (“But what if the reason is that they’re
in a musical
?” asked Dora, which Con ignored), and some kind of hammer that Dora immediately forgot the name of. “It’s a terrible hammer, let’s leave it at that. And imagine how bad at hammering something has to be to be a bad hammer,” said Con. “Your turn.”
“Camille.”
“Okay, okay. I understand she’s pretty bad, as family goes, but she’s still family.”
“No—there’s Camille, waiting on the front porch.”
Con peered through the windshield.
“She looks terrifying. You want me to talk to her?” She was sitting on the front porch in the same grubby bathrobe. Dora felt mortified.
“No, no—that’s okay. She’s probably waiting for Tyffanee,” she said, with a conviction she didn’t feel.
If anything has happened with Mimi . . .
“If you’re sure . . .” Con reached out and squeezed Dora’s hand. “I’ll see you in the morning. Seven sharp.”
Dora didn’t want to move her hand, or to open the door and leave the safety of Con’s truck, either, but she could see Camille gathering herself to come off the porch and across the lawn to the street.
“Thank you again, Con . . . for everything. Good night.”
“Good night.”
Dora hurried over to Camille. “Camille, what on earth?”
“Do you
know
what time it is?” Camille made a big show of looking at her watch.
Dora cut her off. “Camille, whatever time it is, it’s too late for you to be sitting outside in your robe.”
“And who was that?”
“A friend of Mimi’s,” Dora said. “Conrad Murphy.”
“Mimi has young man friends?”
“He’s a contractor doing work in the building, and Mimi was helping him with some other project, I think. He took me to dinner to cheer me up.”
“What do you know about this person? How do you know he really knows Mimi? And he bought you dinner, of all things? I don’t like it,” said Camille, in rising tones. “I’ve seen stories about stuff like this. People are vultures when someone is sick.”
The irony of the statement was clearly lost on Camille; Dora swallowed the urge to point it out.
“It is late, Camille, and I’m really tired. I’m sorry you were worried. We can talk in the morning.”
“That we will.” Camille looked smug. She stomped back through the front door.
Dora left her bag on the hall table. Gabby’s bag wasn’t in its usual place, and her keys weren’t on the hook where she kept them (when she remembered). Dora called out to Camille, who had settled herself back in front of the television.
“Camille, did Gabby call?”
Camille actually muted the television to reply. “I haven’t seen her all evening. If she’s here, she flew up the stairs.”
Dora wished she could fly up the stairs. She trudged up them instead.
Dora was hunting around for her phone charger when she saw the power light of her laptop winking at her. The only problem with Con’s “distractions,” she thought, was that they almost made the nondistracted time more difficult. Email. She should check her email.
ANT UPDATE
Dear Dora,
The ant-o-cide was today; the exterminator came immediately and was very efficient. He assured us everything was food-safe but now we blow the sugar off the powdered doughnuts before we eat them just to be sure.
We’ve missed you, is everything okay? When are you coming back?
ARE YOU THE KEYMASTER?
Dora-ble,
If not, who is? Sheila lost her key and we should probably get the locks changed.
WHAT WAS LOST HAS BEEN FOUND
Sheila’s key fell in the coffee beans. Key fine, grinder dislocated. Coffee machine repair number not answering. Ideas?
PS Yes we threw out all the beans that were in the grinder when we found the key.
ODD QUESTION
What would you do if a full can of soda fell behind the biggest cooler and exploded? Would it involve ignoring it and hoping it goes away? Please say yes.
And by “fell” I mean “was thrown.”
Words cannot express how much we all miss you.
AND ANOTHER THING
Actually, everything else is fine. Just wanted to drive home the point that we miss you and want you to come back asap.
PS I lied. I can’t find the bakery order sheet.
PPS Amy found another grinder repairman. His name is Jacques, and he’s what Amy calls “a hottie.” I hate him.
Gary’s emails made Dora feel oddly impatient. He was a grown man, wasn’t he? It was one thing to be needed, another thing to be the object of infantile dependence. Besides, Dora had a pretty good idea of who had thrown that soda. She started to hit “reply” to the last email, then sighed and closed the laptop.
She emptied her pockets out onto the dresser. Con had kept her handkerchief.