Chapter 7
Chip
Art group with Finn wasn’t mandated anymore, but we still met up every so often.
It was at his and Walker’s place, now in Finn’s home art studio, a high-ceilinged room with big windows, and I loved it.
This week, Finn was going to talk about Fauvism.
I’d done my research and knew it was more than just throwing bright colors on a canvas.
I also learned about Henri Matisse and André Derain, and I was proud when Finn was shocked that I knew so much.
I liked Finn.
He was good for Walker.
The class was twelve minutes from my apartment in normal traffic, fourteen with snow, and sixteen if I caught the light at Monroe wrong. And I’d caught it wrong. I left three minutes later than I should have because I’d been standing in the middle of my kitchen thinking about brisket.
Specifically, I was thinking about brisket and a kosher cheesecake and a tablecloth table at Rabbi Eli Greenburg’s that had four place settings on it and a Kit-Cat Klock with eyes that swung in time with its tail and the precise way Dane Rourke looked sitting across from me, wearing a polo shirt the color of his eyes, smiling at his mother.
I thought about it on the drive in. I thought about it in the parking lot. I thought about it on the way up the stairs to the studio, with Sable padding ahead of me and my crutch tapping the rubber edges of the steps.
I was still thinking about it when I sat down at the easel two stations from the window.
Bob was already painting. He painted the same lighthouse every week.
It was a different lighthouse some weeks, but the same architectural concept: cylinder, rocks, water, weather.
Bob said the water was the part that mattered.
The lighthouse was just an excuse. I’d been trying to understand that statement for nine months, but I didn’t truly understand the man who was angry Bob.
“Hey, Chip,” he said without looking up.
“Hi, Bob.”
Sable did her circle behind me, found a square of floor, and lay down with a sigh and a wriggle.
Walker came in next, alone, then Finn three minutes later because, on average, Finn was three minutes after Walker because he always stopped in the kitchen to get extra snacks that weren’t hockey player approved.
Taft, who’d cut his hair sometime between our last game day and now, entered next, followed by Arnaud.
He said hi to everyone and put his coffee down too close to my paper before I gestured at him, and he moved it.
“Sorry, mon ami,” Arnaud said. He always said that when he forgot the rules. He always forgot the rules.
Bob scowled at my other side, never looking at Arnaud but clearly going into angry mode.
I guess something about Arnaud made Bob’s angry side react, but for the life of me, I couldn’t understand what.
His anger had led the team to enroll him in the ten-week art therapy program.
I don’t know why Arnaud had been referred to it.
I know Walker and Taft had their issues, and obviously someone in management thought art would be good for my neuro-spicy brain.
They were right. I loved it.
Finn began explaining the use of color in Fauvism.
When he said this week’s prompt was warmth, I knew exactly what I wanted to paint.
The Kit-Cat Klock in Eli’s kitchen. Though I think he was referring to using warm colors, not warmth in a kitchen.
I started a study of the Kit-Cat Klock’s face from memory.
I didn’t get the eyes right. I drew them three times.
“What are you drawing?” Taft leaned over.
“A black cat clock with a moving tail and pendulum eyes that swing in time. 1932 original design. Currently manufactured in Fountain Valley, California. They sell about a hundred thousand units a year.”
“Why a cat clock?”
“It was on Rabbi Greenburg’s kitchen wall last night.”
Taft’s eyebrow did a thing. “Rabbi who now?”
“Greenburg.”
“And you were in his kitchen.”
“For brisket.”
“For… you know what, never mind, keep going.”
Walker had heard. He had a setting where he heard everything, even when he was facing away with a brush in his hand. He turned a quarter on his stool. “Chip.”
“Yeah?”
“You were at someone’s house last night for brisket.”
“Yes.”
“Was this a date?”
“Wow, are you dating a rabbi?” Arnaud asked.
I considered which answer to give him, aware that everyone else was watching me as well.
“No, I think I’m dating a firefighter.”
“Tell us everything!” Arnaud said with his usual expansive arm waving, nearly hitting Walker in the face.
“The brisket was—”
“About the date!” Bob interrupted, then went scarlet and mumbled an apology.
“Oh. His name is Dane Rourke, and he rescued Sable and me from the fire at the gym.”
“Chip’s dating a firefighter,” Arnaud announced to the studio.
“I’m not… ” I paused because I didn’t know what I was. The previous evening ended with Dane’s hands around mine on the sidewalk between his stoop and Eli’s.
“Chip,” Taft said. “Are you dating a firefighter?”
“I held his hand last night.”
“Okay.”
“I asked him to come bowling on Sunday at Strike Zone. With all of you if that’s okay?”
“That’s great,” Bob said and grinned at me.
“I cannot wait to meet him!” Arnaud added.
And Taft smiled and nodded.
I think it’s okay.
Strike Zone was on Mount Read Boulevard.
It had nineteen lanes, which I knew because I’d been there on Walker’s birthday two seasons ago.
Nineteen was a number I couldn’t stop thinking about for the rest of that night because it was prime and there was no reason a building should have a prime number of bowling lanes.
Mathematically, it suggested the architect had run out of room.
I’ve checked since. There had been a twentieth lane until 2007, when it was lost during a structural retrofit that removed a load-bearing column. Now there are nineteen.
Nineteen. Still prime. Still wrong.
Bob was my ride for the night, and he parked in row two of the lot. Then we met the rest of the art guys at the front, under the buzzing red sign. Dane wasn’t there yet, so I had time to prepare.
“Are we just standing in the cold?” Taft said. “Or—”
“Inside,” Walker said and herded us.
Everyone else got their shoes. I had my own because the thought of wearing a stranger’s shoes was a big no.
The shoe rental kid had a face I recognized from the Rochester Tech newspaper.
His name tag said EVAN. He gave Sable a careful, professional look that I appreciated.
I told him that she was working. He nodded like someone who had once read about service animals and remembered the rules.
“I booked lane fourteen,” I said.
“Yep, all yours,” he said, and I thanked him.
I’d suggested fourteen because it had a wheelchair-accessible ramp at the foul line, which I’d requested when booking because my logistical plan for bowling with a hyperextended MCL involved zero strides on my right leg.
The plan was: I would set the ball at the top of the ramp.
I would aim from a fixed standing position with the crutch braced against my hip, then let physics do the rest. The ramp gave a release velocity of approximately 9.
8 feet per second from the top of the slide, which was on the slow end of recreational bowling but acceptable, given that Strike Zone’s lanes were oiled at a house pattern that forgave low ball speed by holding the line longer. I’d looked it up on a forum.
Dane came in, stamping snow off his boots, wearing a black coat I hadn’t seen before, his cheeks pink, his hair pushed back, and his hands in his pockets. Sable’s tail came up the second she saw him, and when he saw me, he smiled.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi.”
“Sorry, traffic on—”
“You’re four minutes earlier than your text estimated. You’re not late.” I felt heat rise in my face, and I bit my lip. Some people didn’t like when I assumed what they were going to say, not that it ever stopped me.
“Okay then,” he said with a grin. “I’m not late.” Then he turned to the others. “Hi. Dane Rourke.”
Walker stepped up first, which was the captain part of him moving, and put out a hand. “Walker.”
“Thanks for letting me crash the game.”
“Happy to have you,” Cap said.
Taft came next. He did the eyebrow. Dane was an inch shorter than Taft. Taft stuck his hand out anyway and said, “Taft.”
“Hey.”
“Finn,” Finn said, easing past Taft to introduce himself. “Walker’s partner.”
“Yeah, you are,” Walker said low enough that I almost missed it, but not quite. Finn grinned at him over his shoulder.
Arnaud said, “Arnaud Beaulieu. Nice to meet you, mon ami,” and shook Dane’s hand with both of his hands.
Bob shook hands. “Bob,” he said, and pivoted away.
I set my crutch against the side rail of our lane and stationed myself at the top of the ramp. Dane sat in the plastic chair next to mine with one arm along the back, which put his hand approximately six inches from my shoulder, and Sable lay between his foot and mine.
“You go first, Chip,” Walker said.
I’d never gone first. The youngest person at the table goes first. That was a rule from my brother. I’d been raised on rules, but I could break this one because of my knee, so I guess it was all good.
“Okay.”
I lined up the ball, aimed at the second arrow from the right, and let it go.
The ball hit the pins and knocked down nine.
“Strike,” Taft said.
“That was nine,” I corrected.
Taft shrugged, “Nope, it’s a strike for the man with the brace; that’s the rule.”
“That is not the rule, Taft.”
“It is now.”
Dane laughed, and I couldn’t fully concentrate on my second roll because of it, and I threw a gutter ball.
Bob bowled next—granny-style, with two hands between his legs—and rolled an absolute house of a strike.
Arnaud’s technique was neater. Taft bowled cautiously.
Finn threw gutters until Walker stood behind him, put a hand on his hip, and corrected his stride.
Then Finn rolled a strike, turned, and kissed Walker on the mouth in front of Strike Zone and the kid named Evan at the shoe counter, who could see lane fourteen from where he stood.
Evan kept his face neutral. I appreciated him even more.
It was Dane’s turn next, throwing a six and a two and shrugging at me as if he didn’t care about the score. I watched how his shoulder rolled as he came back to the seat, and I sat on my hands to stop myself from touching him.
By ten o’clock, the art guys were drifting. Walker and Finn had a cab, and Arnaud was driving Taft.
Bob stopped me at the door. “I’ll wait in the car.”
Dane was waiting for me in the lobby.
“Walk you out?” he said.
“Uh huh.”
The parking lot had filled in around us.
The snow had stopped. The asphalt was wet where the salt had eaten it and crusty where it hadn’t.
Sable kept tight to my left because the lot was busy with people.
I hooked my crutch under my arm and went slowly, and Dane went slowly with me to row three where he’d parked his dark blue Ford Escape.
It had one of those magnetic firehouse decals on the back panel that you could tell he’d taken off and stuck back on so many times as the corner had bent.
“Thanks for tonight,” he said. “I had fun.”
“Walker likes you,” I blurted.
“You think so?”
“His shoulder dropped when you shook his hand. That happens when he likes someone within three seconds. Within five, his jaw goes loose. Both happened with you.”
He looked at me for a second. It was the look he had in the back of the ambulance, the one he had at the cupcake box, and the one he had when he opened his front door last night and found me on the wrong stoop.
It was a look I’d seen four times now and was beginning to recognize.
He was interested enough to want to know more about the way I saw things, and warmth flooded me.
“You always read people like that?” he said.
“I read systems. People are systems.”
“Am I a system?”
“You are a system.”
His hand was on the open door of his car, and he was leaning slightly on it. “What kind?”
“A good one,” I said.
He didn’t say anything for a count of three; then he said, “Can I kiss you?”
I’d practiced answers to that question. I’d practiced them in my kitchen in the morning, and in the car to the studio, and on the lane between frames when nobody was looking.
“Yes,” I said.
He stepped in and didn’t rush. He put his hand—the rough one, the one that had carried me, the one that had stirred coffee clockwise three times and counterclockwise once—gently along the side of my jaw, tipped his head, and kissed me.
It was warm. That was the first thing. The second thing was that it was patient, in a way I hadn’t planned for because I had planned for fast, and he had given me slow. The third thing was the breath he let out against my mouth when he pulled half an inch back to check on me.
I leaned in and kissed him again. Usually, numbers stayed.
Timing stayed. Structure stayed. But Dane’s hand on my jaw had overridden all of it so completely that for several seconds, I had no idea how long we’d been standing there.
The math of it stopped working halfway through, and that had never happened to me before in any context I could remember.
I let the math stop and let the kiss keep going for another count I didn’t catch.
When he pulled away, his hand stayed on my jaw for one extra second.
Sable thumped her tail once against my shin.
“Okay,” Dane said, quietly.
“Okay,” I replied.
“Get home safe, Chip Cornish.”
“You too.”
He waited until I waved him away, then he drove out of the Strike Zone lot. I headed over to Bob, who was playing games on his phone, and didn’t seem to mind it had taken me a while to get over to him.
“Good kiss?” he asked with a smirk.
“Very good.”