Chapter 3: The Last Two Bites

The Last Two Bites

The place was called Cade’s. It was two streets over from the school, a low brick building with a hand-painted sign and a parking lot the size of a living room. Smoke hung outside the door, the good kind, the kind that got into your clothes and stayed there.

Wren pulled the door open. A bell rang.

Inside there were three tables, a counter, and a glass case with two pies in it. A woman in a red apron stood behind the register with a pen behind her ear.

“Hey, Darlene,” Wren said.

The woman looked up and grinned. “Look what the tide brought in. Where you been, baby?”

“School.”

“School in September. Shame.”

Wren’s voice had changed. The vowels went long and flat, and she said ma’am to Darlene. Ethan stood half a step behind her with his bag on his shoulder and watched her become somebody from somewhere else.

“Half pound of moist,” Wren said. “Two ribs, one link. If you’ve got the point, I want the point.”

“I got the point.”

“Then I want it.”

“You want it sliced thick?”

“Thick as you can without turning it into a steak.”

Darlene laughed and wrote on a pad. “You heard her,” she said to Ethan. “What about you?”

“I’ll have the same,” Ethan said.

“You want lean?”

“No.”

“You know what moist means?”

“He’s learning,” Wren said.

Darlene looked at Ethan, then at Wren. “This your boyfriend?”

“Old classmate,” Wren said.

“Mm-hm. Old classmate.” Darlene tore the ticket and put it on the counter. “Old classmate,” she said again, to the kitchen.

Ethan looked at the menu board and did the math. Half pound, two ribs, a link. Forty-one dollars and change for both of them. He had fifty-eight dollars in his account. He did the math again and made himself stop.

Wren took a card out of her back pocket and tapped it before he could get his wallet out.

“I can get mine,” he said.

“I know,” she said.

The card reader beeped. She put the card away. He stood there with his wallet open like an idiot, and then he put it away too.

They sat at the table by the window. Darlene brought the tray over: butcher paper, white bread, pickles, onions, two ribs each, sliced brisket glistening at the edges. Wren pushed a paper towel at him.

“Here.”

He took it.

For a while neither of them said anything. The brisket was good. It was better than good.

“This whole block’s coming down in two years,” she said.

Ethan looked out the window. There was a laundromat, a nail place, a parking lot with a chain across it.

“How do you know?”

“I came back and looked for it.” She picked up a rib. “It wasn’t here.”

“When?”

“Later.”

He chewed. Out the window a car went by with its windows down and somebody’s music spilling out of it.

“I asked around,” Wren said. “Nobody knew what I was talking about. Some kid told me there used to be a barbecue place, but he had the name wrong.”

“What name did he have?”

“The wrong one.”

She smiled at him. He let it go.

“Why are you doing this?” he said.

“Doing what?”

“The hand. The study hall. The—” He gestured at the tray, the room, her. “This.”

Wren chewed. “Because you’re a project.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“In the movie of my life,” she said, “you’re the montage.”

He was smiling before he could decide not to. She watched him do it.

“Every girl needs a project,” she said. “Mine won’t order for himself.”

“I ordered.”

“You ordered what I ordered.”

He wanted to ask again. The question was right there. He picked up his fork instead.

Wren wiped her mouth with a napkin. “You keep looking at the door.”

“I’m checking who comes in.”

“You did it when we sat down. You did it when Darlene came over. You’re not worried about the school.”

“I’m not worried.”

“You’re a bad liar.”

“I’m not lying.”

“You’re bad at that too.” She set her fork down. “Cora Bennett.”

He choked on the brisket. Not a lot. Enough.

“That’s not—” he said. “We don’t— she doesn’t know I’m alive.”

“She knows.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means she knows you’re alive.” Wren picked up her fork again. “Eat your brisket.”

He ate his brisket. His ears were hot. Darlene was watching them from behind the counter and enjoying it.

“Did I get married?” he said. “At thirty-one. Was there a—”

Wren shook her head.

“Nobody?”

“Excuse me?”

“I mean thirty-one and nobody. That’s rough.”

Wren set her fork down. Not hard. Carefully, which was worse.

“Are you calling me nobody?”

“What? No. I meant—” He stopped. “Wait. You too?”

She picked the fork back up. “Thirty-one is when the good roles start. For an actress it’s the only window the industry gives you. You think I’m throwing that away to get married?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You did the face.”

“I didn’t do a face.”

“You did a face.”

He put his fork down. “The hand thing. It’s worse for you than for me. Nobody’s going to say anything about me. But you’re a girl, and you’re in the arts, and people say things about girls in the arts. That they’re— you know. Working some guy. Practicing. Worse things than they say about guys. I don’t want to be the reason somebody says them.”

Wren chewed. She chewed for a while. Then she wiped her mouth and pushed her tray across the paper.

“I can’t finish. Here.”

She knew exactly what she was doing. Or she was full. People got full.

“I’m not eating your leftovers.”

“They’re not leftovers. They’re the last two bites. The bark’s all there, the fat’s rendered. It’s the best part.”

He looked at Darlene. Darlene grinned at him and went back to wiping the counter.

Ethan pulled the tray over and ate the last two bites. He got sauce on his thumb and wiped it on the paper towel she’d given him.

“Good?” Wren said.

“Good.”

“I know.”

She stood up and took his phone off the table.

“What are you doing?”

“Saving my number.”

She typed with her thumb and put the phone back in front of him.

“There. Text me when you get home.”

“Why?”

“Because I said so.”

“That’s not a reason.”

“It’s a reason.” She picked up her bag. “Monday. I’m going to improve you.”

“I haven’t agreed to that.”

“You will.”

She walked out. The bell rang. Through the window he watched her go up the street with her hands in her pockets, not hurrying, not looking back.

Ethan sat there for a minute. Then he ate the pickles.

The apartment was on the third floor of a building with a lobby that smelled like new carpet. The lock read his thumb and let him in. He dropped his bag by the door and turned on the light.

The kitchen looked like a kitchen in a photograph. The counters were clean because he never used them. There was a frying pan in the cabinet that had come with the place. He had never taken it out.

The rent was paid through June. His father did it a year at a time, which meant it was never a monthly argument, only an annual one.

Five hundred dollars hit his account on the first of every month. Most of this month’s had gone to the school store in the first week—the graphing calculator, the gym clothes he was required to buy and would wear twice. He opened the banking app and looked at the balance the way you look at a bruise. Fifty-eight dollars and forty cents. The phone bill came out on the fifteenth.

The new game was seventy. He put it on the wishlist and closed the app.

His mother lived in Arizona. His father lived eleven minutes away, in a house with a guest room. Nobody called it his room.

The apartment was supposed to teach him independence.

He got a bottle of water out of the fridge.

He sat down at the desk and woke the computer. The tower under the desk came up in a slow red wave.

He typed: can someone come back.

The search bar offered him can someone come back from the dead.

He clicked it.

He read for a while. Most of it was garbage. People arguing about souls, people arguing about hospitals, a man who said he had died for four minutes and seen a garden.

Then he made a throwaway account and posted to the board where people asked things like this. He typed signs a girl likes you into the subject line and hit post.

Then he sat back and read the answers as they came in.

The first said she was either into him or selling him something. The second said if a girl gives you her food, she isn’t flirting, she’s feeding you. Bro. You’re not her boyfriend, you’re her dog.

He read that one twice.

More came in. One said she was comfortable with him. One said he was overthinking it. One asked for pictures.

The Harrow Road thing was still in his head. Four volumes, out of print, and she knew the ending. He had tried to make it a coincidence. It wouldn’t go.

He put his hands back on the keyboard.

How do you know if someone is telling the truth about who they are.

He looked at it for a while. Then he deleted it.

He typed: Is it possible that someone can come back.

He deleted that too.

The cursor stayed in the empty box. He sat with his hands off the keyboard.

Then he closed the browser.