Rafe #2
I took the coffee. “Peaches?”
“You’ve seen four hundred photographs of this animal.”
“I’ve never heard her name.”
“That seems unlikely.” He sat back. “Originally she was Tuesday, ten a.m. It was perfect, and the catsitter was available. Peaches is calm in the morning. She goes in the carrier without the thing she does.”
“What does she do?”
“You’ll find out.” He drank some coffee. “They moved her to Thursday, one thirty, because their tech’s on leave. At one thirty in the afternoon, a fourteen-year-old cat who’s had a bad morning is a different animal in that carrier.”
“Okay.”
“So my treatment was Thursday, one thirty. I called and tried to change it, but it’s Danny’s last slot of the day. He’s my PT.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Here’s the part that concerns you,” he said.
“Okay.”
“When you get her home from the appointment, she gets the thyroid dose from you at three. It’s a gel. It goes in the ear, the inside flap, and you rub it in, and you don’t touch your own face afterward. She takes it fine. She’s not dramatic about the medicine; she’s dramatic about the carrier.”
“Right.”
“Then she needs somebody in the house for a while after. That’s also you.
It’s not because anything happens. It’s because she’s been in a car and handled by strangers, and she comes home and sits under the bed.
If there’s nobody in the condo, she stays under the bed all night and doesn’t eat, and then Friday I’m dealing with a cat who’s decided to act insulted for a week.
” He drank. “You don’t have to do anything.
You sit on the couch. She comes out on her own schedule and pretends it was her idea.
Forty-five minutes. By then, I’ll be on my way home after Danny and groceries. ”
“Okay.”
“Thursday. One-thirty vet, gel at three, and she eats after. Key’s under the thing by the meter.”
He didn’t ask a question, but it wasn’t an imposition. Trier was trusting me with the most important thing in his life.
“Sure,” I said. “Happy to.”
“Obviously.”
“What’s the thing?” I asked.
“What?”
“By the meter. The thing.”
Trier looked at me for a second. “The thing,” he said.
Then he took his coffee and went back to his row.
I’d told Niko Thursday, but I hadn’t told him a time. I could be at the shop by a quarter to five, and he’d never know my afternoon had been anything other than a normal afternoon.
Heath was two rows up with his eyes closed. He spoke to me without opening them or turning around. “Rafe, you can come straight to our place from the airport.”
I looked at the back of his headrest. “I’ve got my bag.”
“Bring your bag. Kieran’s putting the short ribs on the second we’re through the door. If you go home first, you’ll sit down on that couch and look at your phone, and then it’ll be six thirty and you’ll decide you’re tired from the trip and talk yourself out of it.”
“I wouldn’t talk myself out of it.”
“Rafe.”
“I might have showered.”
“You can shower at our place,” Heath said.
They had a good shower in their bathroom. I walked into a condo in Lincoln Park, hearing the ribs sizzling, and Heath said the towels were in the closet by the bathroom.
When I came out with my hair still damp, Heath was asleep on the couch with one arm hanging off the side. Kieran was at the stove. He turned around as I entered the kitchen.
“Better?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. Sit down. We’ve got bottles of beer and iced tea in the fridge. No help needed; I’ve got a system.”
I sat at their counter with a bottle of tea and watched Kieran work.
The rest of the guys started showing up around five. Trier let himself in without knocking and stopped in the kitchen doorway.
“That’s a lot of short ribs.”
“It’s the right amount of short ribs,” Kieran said.
“For a wedding.”
“You’re early, so you carry folding chairs. Front closet.”
Trier went to the front closet.
Varga was mid-sentence coming through the door, talking about the wine he’d bought from a wine shop twenty minutes out of his way.
“He said it was a mistake with ribs. A mistake. It’s a Zinfandel. It’s built for smoke, with jam in it; it wants ribs. This is what the grape is for. I’ve been going to him for three years, and he picks today to become a coward.”
“So what did you do?” Kieran said.
“Bought two.” He handed the bottles across the counter and tapped the second label. “That one’s to prove him wrong. Open it last.”
Rook hung up their coats. “Is there a game on?”
“There was one on,” Heath said from the couch, “and it’s already over, so don’t get excited.”
Cross and his wife brought a salad. Pratt asked Kieran quietly whether the oven had done the thing again. Kieran said it fixed itself. Pratt said ovens don’t fix themselves.
The short ribs came out at seven, and there were two dishes. Kieran carried the big one to the table with both hands and set it in the middle, then went back and got the second, much smaller one, and set that one down at my end with a great deal of ceremony.
“This,” he announced to the table, “is the mild batch.”
“Here we go,” Heath said.
“It’s for Heath.”
“It is not for me.”
“It is for Heath,” Kieran said, “who grew up in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, where they season food with nothing stronger than salt and pepper. It’s here for him. Anyone else who is near his platter, that’s between them and their conscience.”
“I’ve eaten your food without complaint since we moved in here.”
“And every time I make a smaller batch of the mild, and every year the smaller batch disappears. Then you look me in the eye and tell me it was Trier.”
“It was Trier once.”
“It was Trier once,” Trier agreed.
I ate from the mild one. Kieran walked past behind my chair at one point and moved the small dish about three inches closer to my elbow with two fingers, and kept going.
Heath and Kieran’s wedding in July came up twice. The first time was somebody asking whether the venue would be big enough, and Kieran said it would. He said it was at his brother’s out in the ‘burbs, and they were hiring a company to set up tents in three acres out back.
The second time it came up was during dessert, when Heath’s phone buzzed. He looked at it and said, “My uncle wants to play at the wedding.”
“Which uncle?” Kieran asked.
“Guitar uncle.”
“No.”
“That’s what I said. I said I’d ask you so I could tell him I asked you.”
“You can tell him I said absolutely not and then blame me.”
“That was the plan,” Heath said, and asked whether anybody wanted the rest of the rice.
Varga couldn’t let it pass. He placed both hands flat on the table.
“Six months,” he said.
“Lucas,” Rook said.
“Six months, and the plan is a yard with tents and no guitar.”
“There’ll be a lot of food,” Heath said.
“Everyone always says there’ll be food.” Varga looked around the table. “Ours will not be like this. You’re all witnesses. There is a place on the river. I have walked it. I walked it in December in the snow, alone, for an hour, and I have photographs.”
“He has photographs,” Rook said.
“The light comes off the water and up onto the underside of a bridge. Do you understand what I’m describing? It is free. Nobody is charging for that light. It’s simply there, on the bridge, and no one in this city has thought to stand underneath it and get married.”
“There’s a reason for that,” Trier said.
“What reason?”
“It’s under a bridge. Pigeons nest there.”
“I’m also writing my toast,” Varga added.
“You can’t write your own toast,” Cross’s wife said. “Somebody else gives the toast.”
“That’s the flaw in the system. It’s a clear flaw. You spend your life with a person, and then on the most important day you’re not permitted to speak about it. Instead, a man named Gary from the wedding party stands up and rambles for eight minutes about a fishing trip. I’ve written four drafts.”
“He’s read me three of them,” Rook said.
“You said the third one was good.”
“I said the third one was shorter.”
“You said it was good, Mattias.”
Rook swallowed a mouthful of beer and set the bottle down.
“It was better,” he said.
Varga sat back, satisfied.
Cross’s wife asked who was next, and the entire table turned and looked at Pratt.
He’d been eating quietly the entire time and had said perhaps nine words.
“No,” he said.
“Nobody has asked a question yet,” Trier said.
“They were going to.”
“Yes, we were,” Kieran said. “There are two engagements at this table. It’s contagious.”
“How long do you need?” Varga asked, leaning around Heath to get a clear line. “Why haven’t you asked him?”
“We’re fine.”
“Fine.” Varga held a hand over his heart. “He says fine. Where is Sully anyway?”
“He’s working at the bar. He’s coming when his shift ends.”
“I know what Sully deserves,” Varga added. “Sully deserves a production. Sully deserves a man on one knee in a public place with a crowd and at minimum one stranger crying.”
“He’d hate that,” Pratt said.
“He would love that,” said everyone at the table, all at once.
Pratt took another bite and didn’t answer.
My phone buzzed, and I looked.
Niko: Thursday’s good.