15. Graham
GRAHAM
T he next morning, she’s rushing around the apartment, late and frantic.
I open my mouth and she stops me. “It’s not my fault.”
I doubt Keeley’s ever thought anything was her fault.
But given how mad she was at dinner, and how tired she looks today, I figure I should keep this to myself.
We probably need to discuss what happened last night—I’m still not sure what the hell I said that set her off—but this clearly isn’t the time.
She swings the bread out from the cabinet. “Can you make Mark his toast?”
I swallow down the unpleasant memory of that name from the night I first came here. For a solid two minutes, I was imagining a man named Mark replacing me, sleeping in her bed, raising my kid.
It felt a lot like jealousy. It still does. I don’t want to hear any other man’s name on her lips for a good long time, homeless or otherwise. Not when she’s pregnant, at least.
“Oh. And this is his paper.” She shoves The Wall Street Journal into my hands.
“Why is he getting his paper here?”
“Well, I buy it, but I really only want the style section so I give him the rest. You’re on your way out, right? Just hand it to him and tell him I’ll be down to hang out with him after work.”
“Far be it from me to criticize—”
Her eyes roll. “Yes, you’ve held back admirably thus far.”
“But maybe you shouldn’t be sitting on a filthy sidewalk while pregnant.”
“I’m not,” she says, heading out. “He keeps a chair down there for me.”
I release a quiet groan as the door slams shut.
Of all the women in the world to accidentally knock up, why her ?
After a lifetime of staggering, consummate carefulness, how could I have slipped up with this person who thinks Lucky Charms count as a health food and who has her own chair to sit with the homeless man outside?
I quickly send a text to my second in command, asking him to get the staff researching a new vaccine that looks promising, and head downstairs.
The British guy at the front desk, Jacobson, greets me like an old friend, though we only met for the first time last weekend.
“Keeley ran late again, did she?” he asks with a fond shake of his head.
“She’s always telling me to let myself in and move her clocks forward fifteen minutes. ”
I stare at him. I can’t begin to imagine what’s led Keeley to tell this man to enter her apartment at will, but that fucking key under her mat is coming in today. For good.
Paul, the doorman, grins, leaning with his hand against the wall. “Keeley’s finally settling down. You’ve won the lottery with that one.”
Jacobson lifts his coffee cup to me as if it’s a flute of champagne. “She’s a great girl. Cheers, mate.”
Clearly, these two have very little real-life knowledge of Keeley.
I walk outside, still expecting the chill of New York in April, and LA’s sunshine and balmy air hits me like an unexpected gift. I suppose there are a few things about living here I don’t hate. Bringing breakfast and the paper to some homeless guy is not among them, however.
Fortunately, there’s only one person sitting on the street, using what appears to be a full bag of garbage as a backrest.
“Uh—Mark, right?” I ask. In my experience, the homeless are more likely to grunt at you or expose themselves than they are to read The Wall Street Journal , and I wouldn’t put it past Keeley to have set this whole thing up as a joke.
He raises his eyes to me and grins. “You must be the father,” he says, taking the toast and paper.
I blink. “I didn’t realize she was telling people yet.”
“Well, I’m not people . I’m one of her best friends.”
Fifty percent of LA thinks they’re Keeley’s best friend, I’m guessing. And every last one of them knows where she keeps her key. “Okay…uh, enjoy.” I step backward, preparing to walk away.
“She needs a 529 plan,” he says.
I still. “Excuse me?”
“A 529 plan. To save for college. If she just cut back by one pair of shoes every month, she’d cover it.”
This is the last conversation I ever thought I’d have with a homeless guy sitting on a street corner in downtown LA. “She doesn’t even contribute to her 401k.”
“Don’t even get me started on that one,” Mark replies. “I told her when she took that job—‘Keeley,’ I tell her, ‘have them take the money out of your check before you even see it. With moderate growth on the stock market, you could retire in—’”
“Twenty years,” I say.
He shakes his head. “Don’t tell her that. We’ve got a few shaky years ahead, and if Keeley sees that money hasn’t increased the way you promised, she’ll give it a month and decide it’s best spent on a trip to Cabo. You’ve got to keep her expectations low.”
It troubles me that he’s probably right . “I can’t even convince her to tell her office she’s pregnant,” I mutter. “I don’t see her listening to anything I suggest about a 401k.”
Mark gives me a sympathetic smile. He has perfectly straight white teeth, incongruous on his very tan, very weather-beaten face. “Give her time. She’s overwhelmed right now, and you know how she is…when she’s overwhelmed, she needs a second to pretend nothing’s gone wrong.”
Except I don’t know Keeley, which means the homeless guy outside the building understands my wife better than I do. And I can blame a lot of things on her, but probably not that.