Page 26 of Playworld
“It’ll rot your teeth.”
“How about to go away?” Oren said.
“Let me see what I got in change,” and he put his cigarette in his mouth and stuffed his hands in his jeans’ pocket.
Mom never carried cash, so we didn’t bother asking and moved on to hit up Deborah’s husband, Eli. He always wore a suit but on Sundays wascasual and lost the tie. After pulling a dollar bill from his wallet, Eli, in a moment of earnestness, held it up and said, “Only if you teach me how to play later,” to which we agreed, knowing full well it was a contract we’d never have to honor.
Deborah was next. She was smoking a Virginia Slim. She liked to make a big deal about connecting with us, about having a conversation, and turned her chair to face me. The drawer of her lower jaw slid forward to suck on her thin cigarette, so that it pointed up slightly. She palmed my elbows and properly oriented me; she finger-combed the curls from my eyes. She said, “Let me get a look at you, Mr. Handsome,” so I took the moment to get a look at her—her bobbed hair and heavily freckled face, her barracuda bone structure. “Now tell me, what’s going on? How’s school? What’s your favorite subject? What’s the last interesting thing you read?”
“Romeo and Juliet,”I said.
“Very good, very good, I like your taste, Shakespeare’s still relevant, who’s your favorite character?”
“Probably Mercutio. I had to memorize one of his speeches.”
“Our teacher showed us the movie in class,” Oren said. “There was a nude scene and we saw Romeo’s butt.”
Deborah, ignoring Oren, nodded seriously at me and, after tipping her cigarette’s cherry over the ashtray, took a long pull at it and blew the smoke from her nostrils. “So you like English then,” she said. “The communication arts.Very important.You could be a corporate speechwriter or go into advertising with those skills.”
“If you think about it,” Oren said, “Griffin’s already in advertising.”
“You know,” Deborah said, ignoring him again and winding things up with the same story about me that she always recounted, “I’ll never forget a conversation you and I had when you were seven. You’d been watching all these horror movies, and I asked you what you liked about them so much, and you know what you told me?”
“Wait,” I said, “let me think,” and took my chin in hand, pretending to recall the moment I had no recollection of whatsoever. “I said,” brightening, “they made me appreciate how good my life was!”
“And I thought that was a pretty profound answer.”
Deborah snapped open her purse and gave us a two-dollar bill, whichOren plucked from her. “We’re keeping this as a collector’s item,” he said as we swung back around to Dad, who seemed to have anticipated us.
Dad said, “Can you break a twenty?” which killed Al.
“Actually,” Oren said, and produced a wad from which he began thumbing change, “I can.”
“Go ask your mother,” Dad said.
Next to Al sat Elliott, who was the easiest to grift because of the tacit rules about speaking with him at these gatherings. He affected a sort of cloudy indifference, a happy disinterest, that I took to be a buffer. He had no desire to talk about anything personal whatsoever since all he ever did was talk to us about personal things, but especially tonight, when everyone was determined to ignore the election results or process the stunning outcome. Consequently, he did not greet us head-on but always seemed, at least at first, to notice us after a moment, like someone calling across to him at a loud and crowded party.
“Elliott,” Oren said, “I had the craziest dream.”
Elliott signaled the waiter and, after rattling his highball, pointed to his Scotch.
“It had episodes and cliffhangers likeBatman,but it started with me in my bunk bed, and Mom and Dad were in there too—”
“Yeah?” Elliott said. “Both of them?”
“And Mom was naked, and both Dad and I were in our underwear.”
“Let’s talk about this next week.”
“Okay, but Griffin and I were wondering if we could have some money for video games.”
Elliott stuffed a ten in Oren’s palm. Oren said, “I’ll bring you change,” to which Elliott replied, “Keep it, play till your heart’s content,” and then we steeled ourselves before approaching Elliott’s wife, Lynn.
She presented a massive challenge. A hulking presence at the far end of the table, dew-eyed and manatee-quiet among so many jabberers, she sat, as she always did, directly across from Elliott, their respective seats saved before their arrival as if every event they attended were one they were hosting. She was taller than her husband and hunched forward with her elbows resting on the table, her arms folded over each, these cradling her enormous breasts. This motionlessness, coupled with her short sandy hair and her expression of permanent disappointment and intolerance,plus the fact that she’d been a high school math teacher, added to her intimidating countenance. She was the sort of person who, upon greeting you at her door on Halloween, responded to the question “Trick or treat?” with “Trick.”
“And what can I do you gentlemen for?” she asked.
“A dollar,” Oren said.