Chapter 9
I watch, envious, as Nick opens his own door with his key.
“Come on in. Sorry about the boxes. We’re not completely unpacked yet.”
“This is my cousin Romily,” I say after we enter the gloriously cool apartment.
“Are you married?” Kira asks Romily as she sets down the pizza on the cluttered counter.
“No. I’ve been celibate for two and a half years.”
Kira furrows her brow for the first of what I assume will be a hundred times this evening. “What’s that?”
“Something you should ask your dad about,” I say quickly. “Romily works at Starbucks.”
“Only until school starts in the fall,” she says.
Kira’s eyes light up. She lets out a gasp. “I love Starbies.”
“I’m sure you do.” Romily turns to Nick. “Every time I see a pack of twelve-year-olds come into the store I want to burn my own hand in the warming oven.”
Kira seems to find this awe-inspiring rather than frightening.
“Romily is the person who opens the door first thing in the morning when it’s still dark out,” I say. “If she’s not there, no one gets coffee.”
“She works at Starbucks!” Kira exclaims to her dad.
“I’m the key holder,” Romily says gravely. “I have unlimited power.”
“Are you the key master?” Nick says in a voice that sounds like a growl.
He seems to be waiting for one of us to nod in recognition.
“Ghostbusters?” All three of us just stare at him blankly.
“Bill Murray knocks at the door and Sigourney Weaver is all possessed and sexy and asks, ‘Are you the key master?’ ”
Kira makes a face. “Da-ad, don’t say that word.”
I think she means sexy, and I get it, because even at the age of almost twenty-seven, I feel weird when my mom brings up anything with sexual connotations.
“I’m the only one in this apartment who knows Ghostbusters?” Nick shakes his head. “I’ve never felt more ancient.”
“I’ve seen it,” I say. Then, because I’m afraid there might be follow-up, I add, “Maybe not all the way through. It’s one of my dad’s favorite movies.”
Judging by the look on his face, I’m not sure pointing out that he shares cultural touchpoints with my dad helped assuage the “ancient” bit.
While Kira tears into the cheese-only pizza, I look around Nick’s apartment: the exact layout of my mom’s place, except for the landscape of cardboard box mountains, anchored by a giant sofa that’s far too big for the space.
Did the house he shared with his ex have an enormous den where this piece of furniture was the perfect scale for movie nights?
Or do men instinctively purchase the largest sofas they can find, square footage be damned?
In my experience, anytime an uncoupled man needs to furnish a home, you will find some combination of the following:
At least one black pleather couch or chair on cheap silver legs with nonexistent padding in the cushions.
Heavy wood furniture sourced from Mom and Dad’s twenty-year-old castoffs, usually comically large dressers and dining tables. (Yes, I have no room to judge here, this is simply an observation.)
If he has a porch or balcony, at least one camp chair, which he claims is “so comfortable.”
A corner of the room devoted to analog music, including a record player and a few choice vinyl albums that probably only get played when someone else is in the apartment to see it.
Occasionally this area will include hardback novels by Cormac McCarthy and David Foster Wallace, or Dune, and feature a knockoff Eames lounge chair and footstool.
In dire cases, the bedroom will consist of either a futon or a mattress on the floor. Sometimes a crate of some sort will serve as a bedside table.
A giant fucking TV. No matter how poorly equipped he is, there will always be at least one giant fucking TV.
Nick’s apartment doesn’t follow the basic pattern, aside from the TV. Maybe he has yet to unpack his music-credibility-establishing record player.
“Have you used this yet?” I hold up the Bundt pan that’s currently serving as a receptacle for Kira’s colored pencils.
“You know, it’s weird,” he says. “She put the pencils in there yesterday and they have yet to produce a Bundt cake.”
“Must be defective,” I say. “But it’s the perfect bowl for microwave popcorn.”
“We just eat popcorn out of the bag,” Kira replies. I had no idea she was listening. She’s sitting cross-legged on the couch, double-fisting slices of cheese pizza while Romily scrolls through streaming options on the giant TV.
“But it’s so much fancier to eat it out of a pan that looks like an ancient helmet,” I say. She ignores that.
Defeated by the selective hearing of a nine-year-old, I turn back to Nick. “I can quietly take it to the donation box and hide it under some old textbooks. My mom will never know.”
“No, I’ll keep it,” he says. “Someday maybe we’ll surprise you with a Bundt cake.”
“I need to use the bathroom,” Kira calls, rising from the couch, pizza still in hand. “Don’t come in.”
We watch her march to the bathroom, shut the door, and turn the lock. If it’s anything like my mom’s bathroom, the quality craftsmanship left a sizable gap between the bottom of the door and the floor and there’s no such thing as total privacy in there.
Nick leans toward me. “Just to be clear, I don’t go in there. I think she picked it up at school. They’re all obsessed with privacy.”
“It’s a challenging age,” I whisper, “in terms of bathroom etiquette.”
“She asked me if periods ‘hurt’ the other day.”
“And what did you say? I would love a man’s perspective on menstrual cramps.”
“The blood part is confusing to her,” he says. “She kept asking, if you’re bleeding, doesn’t it hurt? I can’t argue with that logic.”
“I went through a phase where I was obsessed with blood,” Romily remarks. “It’s a very natural curiosity.”
With that topic definitively ended, Nick offers me a slice of his pepperoni and mushroom pizza.
“I haven’t unpacked the plates yet,” he says, tearing off a piece of paper towel from a roll sitting on the counter. “But I do have some drinks in the fridge.”
I’ve grown used to living in a place with a consistently stocked fridge and pantry, so I’m a little shocked when I open Nick’s refrigerator and find Gatorade, some sparkling water, a filtered water pitcher, and a half-empty two-liter bottle of Cherry Coke.
In the door there’s an overflowing container of individually sized condiments: packets of hot sauce in three different levels of hotness from Taco Bell, those little mustards and soy sauces from the Chinese takeout place nearby, tiny containers of barbecue and honey mustard sauces.
“How long have you been building this collection?” I ask.
“I haven’t been to the store in a couple days,” he says. “And why would I throw away perfectly good condiments?”
“You’re very resourceful.”
We hear the toilet lid slam. Instead of a flush, there’s Kira’s muffled but chipper voice. “Hey guys! It’s Kira…”
“What’s she doing in there?” I whisper.
“Hope you’re all having a great day!” she says. “Things are pretty good here…”
Nick and I stay very quiet, both bending our heads toward the bathroom in the way that you do when eavesdropping.
“Sounds like she’s hosting a Twitch stream,” Romily says at a normal volume.
Nick and I stay huddled for a few more seconds, listening to her talk about her day at school in that particular cadence that people do in social media videos. She’s already mastered a fakey animated lilt to her voice.
“She doesn’t even have a phone,” Nick says, keeping his voice down. “She pretends to film vlogs on her game controller, which doesn’t even have a camera. At least, I don’t think it does. Maybe she’s practicing? I don’t really understand it.”
“It’s probably like a form of journaling,” I suggest. “It doesn’t matter if anyone’s watching it.”
“It makes me glad I grew up in a world without tablets. My kid wants total privacy from me, but she begs to use my phone so she can send all her innermost thoughts out to the internet. Kids used to have diaries with actual locks on them.”
“Yeah, get off my lawn!” I say, raising my fist like an old man yelling at a cloud. To my surprise, I make him laugh again.
“Yes, we’ve already established that I’m ancient. Almost forty. I belong in a community for active seniors.”
“Then you moved to the right apartment complex.”
“You’re right.” He doesn’t exactly laugh this time, but he’s sort of grinning at me in a way I find…flattering. Like I’m worthy of his full attention. For a second, I forget where I am. I don’t even notice the bathroom door open.
“I’m named after Major Kira Nerys,” Kira says as she rejoins us.
“Who?” Romily asks.
“Guess,” Kira says.
“A…historical military figure?” I say, because I don’t see Romily participating in a guessing game.
“She’s a fictional military figure,” Nick says. “From the Bajoran resistance.”
Rom and I stare blankly.
“She’s a character from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.”
Romily nods in recognition. “Levar Burton is literally the only man on Earth I respect.”
“No, he was on Next Generation.”
“You named your daughter after a Star Trek character?” I ask. I hear the slight note of judgment in my tone.
“It’s a pretty name in any context. At some point we’ll watch the show together and she’ll feel proud to be named after a Bajoran freedom fighter.
Deep Space Nine isn’t as popular, but after the third season, it gets so good.
The character arcs are outstanding. Even characters that start off as these comical archetypes get very intense—”
“Da-ad.” I get the sense Kira has heard him wax poetic on this topic before. “I’m still hungry.”
“You still have half a pizza,” he says. “Not that you should be eating the entire thing.”
“Can I have something else?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know!” Kira opens the fridge, looks inside forlornly, and shuts it again. Then she points at a phone number on an index card affixed to the fridge door with a magnet. The name Nora is scribbled on it. “This is my mom’s number.”