“Tomorrow’s Christmas.”
“I’m working Christmas. That’s how you get ahead.”
“Weren’t you born ahead?”
The guy flattened the money and arranged it so it all faced the same way. “Yeah, but I’m going to get more ahead, just like my dad did, and his dad.”
Cecelia took the bills from the guy’s hand, his face expectant, like Cecelia was going to do something, like he was going to get a show for his money, some parting words. She turned crisply and walked toward her car, finding it difficult to stride normally. The guy was going to miss her when she was gone. It felt good, finally retaliating against the world a little bit. It was a step. She wrapped the money around her finger and slipped it into her pocket. She didn’t know if she wanted to hurry or if she wanted to saunter.
SOREN’S FATHER
Hers had been the only letter he’d responded to. Something in the way she expressed herself failed to make him anxious. She wanted things from Soren’s father, she’d admitted, but wasn’t going to trick him into giving her any of them. She was going to get them fair and square. She thought it took years to get to know a person, so what did it matter how you met? What difference did it make what caught your attention first? Soren’s father felt a sensation that was familiar to him from when his wife had come along, a feeling of being taken in hand, of giving way to a person with superior romantic expertise. He was grateful to be pursued, and even grateful to himself for allowing the pursuer to succeed.
Soren’s father had read the letter over and over and then finally called the number at the bottom, the day after Christmas, standing out on the secret smoking landing but not smoking, and only when the woman answered the phone and greeted him did he know that her name, Gee, was pronounced like the letter G. Soren’s father normally spoke on the phone only to resolve simple dilemmas related to his lunch truck business, but Gee began asking him questions and, a surprise to himself, he knew how to answer the questions and so she asked him more questions and before he knew it he’d been on the landing forty-five minutes. Gee did not avoid the topic of Soren. She surrendered her belief that there was indeed something magical about him, but in this day and age a person’s magic was nobody’s business but his own. She mentioned she was divorced, but Soren’s father didn’t dig for details about that. She lived in Santa Fe. In her younger days, she had been head chef at a Chinese restaurant. As soon as Soren’s father had begun to feel a creeping embarrassment at how long their phone conversation was lasting, with the first stars becoming visible in the semblances of holiday dusk, Gee said they should probably get off but that she wanted to take him to dinner the next night. Soren’s father had gone back inside then, feeling that the longest Christmas of his life had finally passed. Christmas Eve had been awful, thinking of how excited Soren would’ve been at bedtime, his head full of Santa Claus. Christmas day had been grueling, listening to forced celebrations from other rooms, watching his turkey and dressing grow cold on the table. And the feeling had lingered right on into the next day, that feeling of being without happiness while others counted blessings. But at long last, with something new on the horizon, something new to be occupied with, Soren’s father felt that Christmas was done.
So here he was, waiting under the carport at the front of the clinic for a white van. It was the time of year most people were with their families, resting up and taking stock. Soren’s father’s family was on the sixth floor and Soren’s father’s lunch truck business was suffering without his day-to-day involvement and he was about to go on a date for the first time in years because he knew he needed to. Soren’s father could see his truck over against the far fence, lording above the cars. He knew he should go start it and let it run a minute, but he wasn’t going to do that. It was the same lack of will he felt when he wanted to do pushups. He didn’t want to smell the inside of the truck, the odor of grease and dust, a bad smell that was also comforting. He didn’t want to hear the engine knock around and then settle, didn’t want to picture Soren sitting on his knees at the other end of the bench seat, his face turned toward a window full of endless faded sky.
Soren’s father spotted the van. It was certainly white. It was one of those old vans, not a minivan. Gee was two minutes late. In his business, two minutes late was a crisis, but for most people it was the same as right on time. Soren’s father found himself short of breath when the van made the turn and rolled under the carport. He felt rooted to the cement. Gee hopped down from the driver’s seat and strode over and hugged Soren’s father. His feeling at seeing her was one of muted elation. He’d seen nothing but the sixth-floor nurses for two and a half months. Gee’s teeth were white, same as the van. She wore a loose sweater and had cool eyes.
Gee drove them down out of the city, Soren’s father watching the clinic until it was a spot of light among many. This was the farthest away he’d been. This was farther from the clinic than his house was. The night would be cold, Soren’s father could tell, but his palms were sweating. He looked at Gee, driving with both hands locked onto the wheel like they taught you as a teenager. There were no rear seats in her van and the space was taken with rods and couplers and sacks of bolts. Soren’s father asked about the supplies and Gee said she was helping someone set up an art gallery. Her tiny earrings were glittering in the light from the dash.
“I meant to buy you flowers,” Soren’s father said. “I forgot.”
“I don’t believe in buying flowers,” Gee said. “I believe in letting them grow wild and happening upon them.”
She pulled onto a gravel lot next to a tall, restored home. She explained that the chef lived upstairs and used the ground floor as a dining room. The chef’s two daughters were the waitstaff. Aside from a potted poinsettia on the front walk, there were no holiday decorations, and this pleased Soren’s father. There were no menus either. Small glasses of beer were brought out and Soren’s father realized he hadn’t had a beer since Soren’s coma.
“My only hope for tonight is that you can relax a little,” Gee said. “You’re the kind of father that needs to be forced to worry less, and I’m going to help with that. The first thing is, loosen your grip on that little black phone.”
Soren’s father set the phone on the table, and then he picked it up and put it in his pocket.
“Are you supposed to sip this or something?” he said, holding his little beer.
Gee shrugged. “Chug it if you want.”
Soren’s father tipped the glass back and emptied it, then flagged down one of the daughters to bring him another. The beer came out and soon after that an appetizer.
“I should put this on the lunch truck,” Soren’s father said. “See how the guys down at the paper processing plant would like some confit.”
“That’s a thing,” Gee said. “Trucks with gourmet food on them. They drive around the downtown office buildings. It makes the lawyers feel alive, buying a meal in cash off the back of a truck.”
“What makes it a confit, anyway?”
“They cook it in its own fat,” said Gee. “The French will do anything to an animal. A lot worse things than confit.”
The main plates came forth, trout that had been cooked on a wood plank and a salad of beets and cactus flowers and different puckery cheeses. Gee ordered wine but Soren’s father stuck with more beer. The food was ridiculously better than the lunch truck food or the clinic food. No denying it. He had the vague feeling of being in someone else’s life. His wife had been good at living, but he could already tell she had nothing on Gee when it came to enjoying things. Soren’s father watched Gee cut her fish into too-large bites and then savor each one. Maybe she would enjoy him that way. Maybe she could force herself into a space in his mind. He could think of her while he sat the hours away at the clinic.