The Lucky Kind (5 page)

Chips & Salsa

I
stay long enough that we eventually order pizza for dinner. Eden asks her mother if she wants any, and Ms. Becker says no; then when the pizza arrives, she eats more than half the pie, so Eden and I only get a slice and a half each. I leave hungry, just as, it turns out, her father gets home. He steps off the elevator as I’m about to get on it.

“Hi, Dad,” Eden says. He’s wearing gray pants and a blue shirt; I get the impression his closet is filled with rows of nothing but gray pants and blue shirts. He’s tall, and he doesn’t look so much at Eden or at me as he looks above our heads at the living room behind us. After a second of silence, Eden slides between his body and the wall to catch the elevator before the door can close.

“See you later, Nick,” Eden says, and I step past her father, and past her, onto the elevator. Eden’s hair looks especially dark as her father walks into the apartment behind us; I’m not sure if he noticed that Eden had a friend over. I hold Eden’s gaze until the elevator door closes.

When I get home, I head straight for the kitchen. I find a bag of chips and a container of salsa, which I eat standing up, leaning over the kitchen counter.

“Don’t you at least want to take off your backpack?” my dad says behind me.

“Jesus, Dad, you’re gonna make a person choke, sneaking up like that.”

“Sorry,” he says, and he grabs the chips and salsa, carries them out of the kitchen and to the dining room table, and sits down. I slide my backpack off and leave it on the kitchen floor, then I follow him.

“Where’s Mom?”

“Walking Pilot.”

“Oh.”

We sit there, eating our chips and salsa. It’s a good thing I actually did end up studying a lot at Eden’s house, because I’m not at all interested in studying now.

“What does Sam Roth’s mother do now?” I say, lifting a chip to my mouth.

“What?” he says, though he doesn’t sound surprised that I brought it up, doesn’t even stop on his way to dip a chip into the salsa.

I wait a little before repeating my question, chew some more, and then swallow.

“Sam Roth’s mom—what does she do?”

“Her name’s Michelle. She’s a high school principal. The school Sam graduated from, as a matter of fact.”

I shake my head, reaching for another chip, like this will be a casual question. “No, I mean, his real mother. Your old girlfriend.” I can’t remember her name.

“Oh. I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“No. We lost touch after the baby was born. I assume she got married, left town, did what most people did.”

“She might still be living in Troy?”

“I doubt it.” I scratch the roof of my mouth, shoving a whole chip in. Ever since we got on this subject, I’ve been eating fast, like I’m starving. A piece of chip gets caught in my throat, with sharp edges, but I don’t cough. If I did, Dad would get up, pat my back, tell me I should be more careful, take my time, and the rhythm of the conversation would be lost.

“But, like, we could bump into her when we visit Grandma and Grandpa this Christmas.”

“No. I don’t think so. She left Troy, I’m sure.” Dad seems to have made up his mind to believe it.

“Doesn’t Sam know where she lives?”

Dad shakes his head. “How would he?”

“Well, he called us.”

“Oh. Sarah”—right, that’s her name—“didn’t put her name on the registry.”

“The registry,” I repeat, thinking of college registrar offices and presents for cousins’ weddings bought off a registry.

“There’s a registry,” Dad says. “You can opt in to be found, if someone decides to look for you. But only after the child has turned eighteen.”

“What made you decide to go onto the registry now?”

“Now?”

“Well, he’s only just found us, so what made you decide to opt in now?”

Dad leans back now, places his hands on his stomach so that I know he’s done eating.

“Actually, I signed up the very day Sam turned eighteen.”

“Oh.”

Dad doesn’t say anything, and I can’t decide which question to ask next. Finally, I say, “Well, why did he wait till now to call us?”

“He hadn’t gone on the registry until this past summer.”

“Right, so what made him decide to do it now, this summer?”

Dad pauses, smiles faintly. “He’s getting married,” he says, more an exhalation than a sentence. I can’t tell, but it almost sounds like he’s pleased, maybe even proud.

“But Sarah isn’t on the registry.”

“No.”

“But he could find her now. I mean, you could tell him her whole name—what’s her last name?”

Dad looks at me. I think he’s actually considering not telling me this woman’s name, as though I might go looking for her or something. As though he’s forgotten that I certainly have no reason to try to find her.

“Sarah Booker,” he says finally.

“Good name.”

“Yes. A great name.”

“Like a woman in a novel.”

“Yeah. A 1920s novel with good honest words and good clear names.”

“Ernest Hemingway,” I suggest, and Dad nods.

“So why not tell Sam her name? He could find her now.”

“He doesn’t want to. He didn’t even want to know her name.”

“Why?”

Dad looks away from me now, up at the ceiling, like maybe the answer’s stuck up there somewhere, like he threw it up behind the lights and all he has to do is reach around the bulb to get it down.

“It’s hard for me to explain to you, Nick.”

“Why? Seems like the natural next step, after finding you.”

“That’s just the thing, Nick—he didn’t go out and find me. It’s not as though he had to search for me. Essentially, by signing up on the registry, I gave him my name, I gave him my phone number, and I told him where I live.”

“Okay.”

“So, Sarah hasn’t done that.”

“Right, but now you can just tell him, and he doesn’t need the registry.”

I get up now, go back into the kitchen and toss the almost empty bag of chips, put the lid back on the salsa, put it in the fridge. Our kitchen is open, like Eden’s, so from here, leaning against the countertop, I am looking straight at Dad sitting at the table. I can watch him talking slowly to me like I’m a little kid who can’t understand anything.

“He doesn’t need the registry anymore,” I repeat.

Dad shakes his head. He’s not looking at me.

“Sam thinks he does. He doesn’t want to go after her like that. Her not registering is basically like her saying she doesn’t want to know him, as far as Sam’s concerned. And he doesn’t want to meet her like that.”

“Oh,” I say, pushing away from the kitchen counter and standing up straight. “I think I’m going to get ready for bed now.”

Dad nods, and I grab my backpack from the kitchen floor and walk past the dining room table toward my room without looking at him. I don’t hear the sound of his chair being pushed away from the table, so I guess my dad is just sitting there, brushing chip crumbs from the stubble on his chin, waiting for Mom to come home with Pilot; when they walk this long, it usually means they’ve gone to the bookstore, and she comes home with new novels and magazines. My dad must be sitting there waiting, and thinking about Sarah Booker and Sam Roth.

I’m thinking of them now, and it’s strange, I suppose, that I can’t help thinking of them collectively even though they’re two people who’ve never met each other, who don’t even know one another’s names. And I guess it’s not really fair now that I know both of their names, when neither of them knows the other’s.

I reach into my pocket for my cell phone and turn it on. I’d kept it turned off at Eden’s house, ’cause I knew Stevie’d be texting me something ridiculous. Now I can see that Stevie has sent me no fewer than eight text messages. I scroll through them.

1: Don’t get lost on your way to Tribeca.

2: Eden Eden bo beden banana fana fo feden me mi mo meden Eden.

3: I hope you guys are studying at least a little cause dude you do not want a bad grade on this sucker.

4: Sorry, that last message was insensitive. You get very good grades.

5: What color is Eden’s bra today?

6: Matching panties?

7: Jesus I hate the word panties.

8: Hope the rest of your night is okay.

I take a second look at that eighth one—no way did Stevie send something so harmless. It’s from Eden. Shit. I should write back, like right now. She might have sent this the minute I left her apartment, which was well over an hour ago, and now she thinks I’m an asshole not to have written her back, I bet.

I hit reply.

Hey—just got your message. My phone was off. Thanks for studying.

Hopefully we’re ready for the test.

What am I, writing a novel? I delete everything but “hey.”

Couldn’t be better than the beginning of my night—

Delete. That sounds creepy, not flirty.

Finally, I write:

Hey—thanks. You too.

I hit send. I should call Stevie, but I really don’t feel like talking; I don’t want to tell about Eden’s mother’s breasts and the way she introduced herself, or about the way Eden took my hand and have to explain that it wasn’t the right time to make a move. I don’t want to say that I only had a little bit of pizza and that I had to come home and snack, and I definitely do not want to think about, let alone talk about, talking to my dad over chips and salsa.

So I just text Stevie that I’m crashing, and that he’s a loser, and that I’ll see him tomorrow and I plan to smoke his sorry ass on the quiz.

It is much, much easier to text Stevie than to text Eden. When I can’t fall asleep, I double-check to make sure that I didn’t accidentally hit reply to the wrong message so that what was meant for Stevie somehow made its way to Eden.

Smooth

“S
o, touched the forbidden fruit yet?”

“Huh?” I’m leaning against my locker; Stevie’s leaning against the locker to my right. We’re both looking straight ahead.

“Notice that I said touch, not tasted, buddy.”

“Yeah, I noticed.”

“What time’d you get home last night?”

“I don’t know … around nine.”

“Dude, you didn’t text me till, like, ten-thirty.”

“I was talking to my dad.”

“Oh.” I feel the lockers shifting behind me, and I guess Stevie is twisting to face me, but I don’t turn. “You know, he looked terrible this morning. How’s the market treating him?”

“Huh?”

“This morning, when your mom fed me breakfast? Your dad looked like he hadn’t slept in ages.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Everything okay, then?”

“Yeah. He’s just, you know, got a lot on his mind.”

“To say nothing of wondering whether his little boy has had any luck with the apple tree.”

“You know …” A third voice enters the conversation, and the lockers give under some new weight leaning on them. I turn and I’m horrified to see Eden leaning back on the other side of Stevie. How long has she been there—and seriously, how much has she heard?

“You know, Stevie,” she says, “there’s nothing in the Bible to suggest it was an apple.”

“Oh?”

“Nope. That’s a pretty modern convention.”

“Wouldn’t be the first thing people just made up out of that book,” Stevie says.

“How’d you know that?” I ask Eden, hating Stevie for the easy way he’s lapsed comfortably into conversation with Eden. He didn’t even seem thrown to find her on his right side.

“Dude, you think there’s anything about Eden I haven’t heard? Gotta know your facts with a name like this.”

“Oh, I hear you,” Stevie says. “Imagine all the crap that gets hurled at guys with names like Steven and Nicholas.”

“I can only dream.”

“Nightmares, baby, nightmares.”

Eden giggles. I’ve never heard her giggle. She’s not really a giggling type of girl.

“Well, I’m gonna get to class,” Stevie says, leaning down to pick up the bag at his feet. “Don’t want to be late for that quiz.”

I glance at my watch, peeling myself off my locker to stand up straight.

“We still have fifteen minutes,” I say to Stevie’s back. Maybe the battery in my watch has died and really I’m running late and I didn’t even know it.

Stevie turns back and grins at me, then shrugs at Eden.

“Try to toss a friend some help,” he says, and walks away.

Crap. I hate that Stevie thinks I need his help—worse yet, I hate that I do need his help.

Eden slides along the lockers toward me. Her long brown hair seems to move more slowly than the rest of her, trails behind her on the lockers as she moves.

“Stevie’s pretty smooth,” she says, nodding in his direction.

“Yeah.”

“Wonder what he’s trying to cover up.”

“Huh?”

“Anyone that smooth has something to hide, right?”

I think about telling her about Stevie’s parents, about his coming on all my family vacations, about the fact that he’s slept every Christmas Eve since we were five on the floor of my bedroom, and how my parents still sign our presents from Santa Claus. My parents even tell us that the checks that Stevie’s parents give us are from Santa, even though their names are obviously on them and we know who they’re from. (And even though we’re both technically Jewish. And too old to believe in Santa Claus.) When we leave for Ohio on Christmas Day, Stevie is always waving from the curb, Pilot at his side since he watches Pilot for us while we’re gone. I’m pretty sure that’s the only trip we take that Stevie’s not tacitly—or explicitly—invited to join. I mean, Jesus, my parents may infantilize me—Stevie, too, when they get the chance—but mostly, at least, they stick around.

But instead of saying any of that, I say, “You’re pretty smooth, too.”

Eden looks down, and her hair falls over her face. I can smell her shampoo: grapefruit and brown sugar.

I realize I’ve implied that she’s hiding something, too. “Sorry,” I say quickly.

Eden shrugs. I try to make it better with a joke at my own expense.

“Well, if how smooth you are is a measure of what you have to hide, I guess I’ve got nothing.”

Eden looks up at me now, and smiles.

“Oh, I don’t know, Nick. You’ve got some moves.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

I smile. “I guess everyone has something to hide.”

“I guess so.”

Eden leans down to pick up her bag.

“Ready for the quiz?” I say.

“Let’s just get it over with,” she says, and we head for the classroom. And as we walk, just for a second, I put my left hand on her right shoulder. Her skin is hot underneath her shirt.

After school, Eden joins Stevie and me outside the pizza shop, now crowded with students. It feels comfortable with her here, staring at the middle schoolers, and pointing out to Stevie which of the senior girls roll their uniform skirts so high you can see their boy shorts underneath. And it even feels natural when she leans back against me, rather than against the pizza-place wall.

“Dirty,” she explains, pointing at the wall, like I’m the obvious alternative.

“Glad to help keep you clean,” I answer. I feel stronger, somehow, with her weight against my chest.

And as she leans on me, her left hand brushes mine, and it feels perfectly natural to me that I should take that hand. She looks up and smiles at me, and I feel distinctly like right now I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be, outside my school on a New York City fall day with my best friend beside me and—forgive the cliché—my best girl’s hand in mine.

I walk Eden to the subway, and the whole walk there, I know I’m going to kiss her good-bye, and I know she’s going to kiss me back. I feel the kiss coming up from my stomach, as though that’s where every kiss originates, waiting in your belly, growing stronger as it climbs up your rib cage, fluttering a bit when it passes your heart, and waiting, patiently in your throat, until you tilt your head and move your lips, and it knows it’s time to come out from inside you.

Eden probably knows I’m just waiting for the subway stop to kiss her; she’s waiting for it. And so I decide to use one of those moves she said I had. A block before the subway stop, I take her hand and pull her so that I’m leaning against a building and she’s facing me, and then I kiss her. I press her hands onto my sides until she takes hold of my shirt on either side of me. I don’t stick my tongue down her throat or anything. I mean, there’s some tongue involved. But not at first. First I kiss her once, quickly, and then again for a little bit longer. The taste of her is completely new, everything I imagined—the apples, the honey—and a thousand other things I never knew a person could taste like. I move my hands so that they’re on her hips, and I pull them toward me, my fingertips just barely resting on the curve of her ass. And then I pull her even closer and lean down over her and really kiss her. And then there’s tongue, and breath and warmth. And I know that I would never, not in a million years, be kissing her like this with my hands in those places, if she hadn’t told me that I had moves, that I was smooth.