He nodded.
“I’m not,” she said, “close to my father. What does your dad do?”
“He’s an analyst,” he said. “Specializes in children.” He thought of Hendricks — was he abnormal in any way? Behavioral analysts everywhere had to have kids, he thought.
There was silence. What did Rhodes say to do when silence makes you feel bad?
Echo.
“What does your dad do?” he asked her.
She sighed, very audibly. She shook her head. She sighed again. She sat on a plastic chair. “I don’t see him at all. But he works for Boeing.”
He nodded absently. It meant nothing to him. There is nothing wrong with asking questions, though, Rhodes would also say. “What is that?”
“What’s what?”
“Bing, did you say?”
“Oh, Boeing. You don’t know? Oh, um, they make planes.”
They make planes. Airplanes, he thought, the giant roaring aluminum-alloyed birds that he did not like one bit. “Oh, I don’t know about those.”
She looked at him funny. “You’ve flown.” It refused to be a question.
He shook his head. “No.” He paused. “Actually, once, when I was little. But I don’t remember.”
She nodded. “I don’t know how I knew that, but I somehow knew you had never really flown. I mean, I know you didn’t know Boeing, but that’s not really a tip-off. Lately I just know things.”
Zal nodded. He had no idea what she meant. “What would you like to do?” he asked. “And how do you say your name again?”
“I don’t know what,” she said. “AWE-see-ya.”
“AWE-see-ya.” He pretended to dust his counters with his hand, as Hendricks sometimes did.
She was bored. “I don’t know what we could do. Weird day. Probably will be crazy out there. We could?. .”
And just then he saw it on the fridge: a note. Z — Must have missed you, will be back later, will bring the TV, we can watch the pin drop at Times Square — happy 2000! Love, Pops
Zal immediately panicked. Any minute his father could come home and see him with this strange woman whose name he could barely say. And on the flip side, any minute this woman could meet his strange father who held the keys to his entire strange past, that he would no doubt somehow manage to unload on her, not considering Zal’s investment or feelings or anything, just thinking Zal probably hadn’t done it, just thinking it was probably best he do it, that it would be best to have all the facts, the whole damn story, out in the open, so she could go ahead and treat Zal the way everyone else did: extremely carefully. He would once more find himself in one of those special-considerations relationships, where his story would eclipse him — and them, even — swallow them up and spit them out, and once again leave Zal the loneliest man on earth.
He could not allow the two of them to meet. Not yet, at least. He would maybe have to have a talk with Hendricks soon — if, that is (and he knew he was jumping all guns), she or any girl, really, was going to be in his life, but if she wasn’t, he had no idea why she was there, why she was tolerating him, why for hours — had it really been hours? — she had followed him and asked what he wanted and mirrored his food selections and not made him feel stupid for not knowing the B-something name of airplanes and still didn’t want to leave, didn’t want to leave, wouldn’t want to leave, until of course the thing to end all dates — what was a date exactly? — would burst through the door: a parent.
“We have to go,” he said as he crumpled the note. He quickly uncrumpled it and desperately grabbed a pencil on his desk and wrote on the back: No, Father—Hendricks alone called himself “Pops,” and only in those notes he left—I cannot do that. With a friend. Will be back at a later time. Do not worry. He paused and added, for extra normalness, since he knew his father would be suspicious something bad-extraordinary had happened, Happy 2000 too.
“Where to?”
“We have to go now,” Zal said. “Sorry. I don’t know where.”
“Right now?”
“Now! I mean, now. Yes. I mean, now would be good.”
She squinted her eyes at him. “Uh, okay.”
“It’s just that this place will be filled with. . noise. And. . my father.”
She nodded. “Of course, your father,” she said, in a tone he was too panicked to even attempt to read. “Well, we could walk to my apartment. It’s uptown.”
“That sounds nice!” He tried to sound very excited, but really he was panicked.
“But my little sister and brother will be there,” she said. “Definitely my little sister.”
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”
He grabbed a coat and opened the door and, like the gentlemen of old movies, he said, “After you.”
He thought he heard her snort as she brushed by him and out the door. He thought he saw Hendricks — it was possible it was just another of the many Santa Claus-y older gentlemen of New York, but he could not afford to properly look — as they speed-walked to a subway going uptown. He was still in the clear, he thought: normal, or thereabouts.
She, too, gave him a disclaimer outside her door: “It’s depressing as fuck in here, know that.” He felt somehow alarmed at the word fuck on her lips — it seemed too heated a word for the odd, cold girl, fuck having that equal and opposite effect on him as, say, laughter would have on her. She did not wear it well.
They both took a deep breath and went in.
If you asked Zal what a nice apartment was, he would have told you, well, his father’s or Silber’s. He was usually not so impressed. But this was unlike the dusty book-filled old loft of his father’s, or Silber’s ultra-edgy minimalist townhouse. This was old New York, as he had seen in photos. It was huge, a whole brownstone. Chandeliers, floral wallpaper, bits of gold and marble and pearl and shiny woods of sorts he’d never seen, sculptures and china that all looked like it belonged in a museum or on a cake.
“Depressing,” she said. “I hate it here. My parents’ since forever.” She was a bit red and suddenly seemed annoyed, possibly embarrassed to the point of irritation.
Zal felt uncomfortable. “I would rather live here,” he said, honestly.
“No, you wouldn’t.”
“I think I would. I don’t find it depressing.”
“No,” she said firmly and walked around, checking out rooms. “It’s a mess, and my brother and sister are both home, so, well, here you go. This is all so weird.”
“It is,” Zal had to agree.
“Little over four more hours,” she said, waving her watch at him. “What do you think is going to happen anyway?”
“I don’t have any idea,” Zal said. “Probably nothing, is what my father says, though.”
“A lot of shit could hit the fan,” she said, grabbing an apple from a large bowl holding apples in every color they came in, it appeared to him. There she went again—shit—cursing. Shit and apple contradicted each other so thoroughly, he thought he went deaf and blind for a moment. It appeared in her own home she suddenly fell into this cursing self. He tried not to be bothered by it. “I mean, I know I don’t know you, but get ready — I will probably be a pain closer to midnight.”
“A pain how?”
“OZ!!” came a shout from upstairs, echoing the way it would in a concert hall, Zal imagined.
“My sister,” Asiya explained, looking more annoyed. “One sec.” She stomped — really drove home her annoyance with that stomp — upstairs into another room.