“You lookin’ for anything in pa’ticular?” he asks me.
“Something to grill,” I say. I’m surprised that he’s here, he was going to stay behind with Juliette. But I got held up with a few things and Juliette left right away. He seemed fine with coming down to town to shop, in fact he didn’t seem disturbed by being in town at all, the way he had been about the DMV.
“Umm, steak?”
“Too expensive,” I murmur. The meat in the butcher’s case is beautiful to the point of being breathtaking, but it’s a small fortune. I can’t make myself do it.
“I want steak,” he says.
“How about for supper tonight, then?”
“Great, get big ones. Hey, could we have those two big steaks?” he calls to the butcher. He points out the biggest ones in the case.
“That’s too much, just get one, that’s plenty.”
“My treat. I feel like I’m gonna be hungry later. Now what about tomorrow?”
“Maybe just hamburgers and...”
“Boring. What about shish kebab?” He points to long, lovely skewers of meat, chicken, and seafood interspersed with vegetables. They look good, but if I’m going to make them, I’ll buy them fresh tomorrow, and tell him so. “Besides, I really need to call Mickie and...”
“Use mine,” he says, handing me his cell phone and flipping it open.
“She might not be home... hi, Mickie, it’s Siobhan.” She’s home. Not only is she home, but she would be thrilled to come to supper tomorrow. In fact, she would be thrilled to come early and bring the girls, because didn’t I know that Tish was sleeping over there tonight so that she and Kim could finish up a project they were working on? No, I did not know that, and Mickie and I laugh. She tells me that she’ll pick the girls up from school, take Tish home to get her overnight things, and that all of them would be at the house some time in the afternoon tomorrow. “Tell Tish to ring my cell when she gets to your place, Mick. I’ll talk to you then. Bye.”
“Sounds like you’re free and clear tonight,” Alex says, because he’s been openly eavesdropping on my side of the conversation the entire time. “Would you, like, mind if I invited a coupla people, too?”
“No. Are you sure...”
“Yeah, it’ll be cool if they can come. I’ll be right back. And have these guys send the stuff up to the house. They’ll deliver.”
My ‘thank you’ supper is turning into a party. I’m not sure how I feel about that. I’m only hoping that whomever Alex invites is a different caliber of person than he’s recently acquainted me with. I can’t do anything about planning for tomorrow at this point, but I can reduce the order for tonight by one steak. There is no way the both of us can eat those two monsters.
I CAN purchase produce, though, and I move over to the fruits and vegetables. I was planning on an assortment of salads, including a citrus salad I’ve wanted to try, and something with mixed baby greens that has some bitterness to it. I want corn, too, to put right on the grill in their husks, but I don’t know how many to buy. Alex finds me in the aisles.
“It’s a go, so that makes... I don’t know, how many?”
“How many people did you invite?”
“Two.”
“Then it’ll be eight.” I pluck eight ears of corn from the display. I don’t even have to check it, every ear is perfection. “I still don’t have an entree.”
“Steak,” he repeats, and cackles like a madman.
“Speaking of which, I honed supper down to one. It’s only you and me.”
“Fuck it, why don’t we eat out?”
“No, I’ll cook,” I say.
“Give yourself a break.”
“I’d rather cook. Really,” I tell him. Because I would. And I have the feeling that we’ll be eating lunch out, if we eat it at all, and I don’t like eating that many meals out. It reminds me too much of moving, of all the diner meals and fast food I ate en route to someplace. “I’ll make the steak. It’ll be fine.”
“Whatever,” he says.
We’re back to the meat counter and the butcher is as charming as ever. He’s even trying to help, but Alex is counterproductive. I don’t want beef two nights in a row. He would eat it every night. It turns into a bit of bickering that the butcher finds amusing.
I settle on the shish kebab. It solves so many issues about the meal, what with getting a variety of types. And the vegetables are included. Alex tells the man that he wants it all delivered at around five this afternoon, along with everything else I’m getting, and that’s not a problem. They’ll even include grilling instructions and marinades that they’ll recommend. Just leave the cart with customer service, he’ll send the meat along with it.
“I need potatoes.” I do. I want to make some German potato salad, served warm with bacon and onions. Another round of shopping, and we’re through. Only it’s Alex who leaves the cart, and pays for everything, hustling me out the door, ignoring my protests.
“Hey, shut up,” he says. He laughs in my face. “I’m crashin’ your party, least I can do is foot the bill.”
“Absolutely not,” I insist, knowing that he’s not paying any attention to me. I know this because he has put his fingers in his ears and is chanting, ‘nah, nah, na na, nah’ rather loudly as we walk to the car. Then he sticks his tongue out at me.
“You are SUCH a child,” I say, and he just sticks his tongue out further.
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“What about this?” I ask Shi. She shakes her head.
“You can’t put glass and chrome in that room,” she tells me. “You can’t put glass and chrome in that HOUSE.”
“But I like it.”
“Then buy it, but you’re not going to like it much when it’s sitting in front of that sofa. And I wouldn’t buy anything glass, considering what happened to the last table.”
“That wasn’t my fault.”
“I understand that, although you can be provoking, Mr. M.”
“You’re sure about this?”
“I’m sure.”
I’m learning real fast that Shi is sure about most things. She’s sure I won’t like the entertainment center that’s caught my eye. She’s sure I won’t be comfortable very long in the swivel chairs I like. She’s sure that the fake fur throw I have to have for the bedroom is ‘synthetic crap’ and that it’ll only make me itch. Now she’s sure about the coffee table I like.
We’ve been browsing for hours and gettin’ no where. My foot is starting to ache, and I want a cup of coffee. There’s a place right around the corner.
“I give up. I want coffee,” I announce.
“That sounds good to me,” she agrees, and we head for the coffee shop. Once there I can’t resist a doughnut, because they have glazed and I love glazed. Shi passes on the pastries, but gets an extra large triple shot latte with an extra shot of espresso. I figure she should be hangin’ off the ceiling by the time she drinks it all.
“You don’t like my taste,” I tell her.
“Not true. You are a minimalist. There’s nothing wrong with that. The problem is, your house is Spanish. Now, I know that out there, in the great wooly wilds of Malibu there is some kind of decorator that might be able to meld those two schools of style together. We are NOT that decorator.”
“You got any bright ideas then?”
“Many.” She smiles at me over her coffee cup. Sunlight and the lights above the table we’re sittin’ at reflect up off the glass table top and I see that she has some freckles on her cheeks and nose. Tiny little golden ones. I never noticed that, I thought she was just pale, ‘cause, damn, she’s pale.
“Well, like what?” I ask her.
“Like Mission style. I think you might like it, it’s very clean, spare. Like the night tables in your bedroom. Almost Shaker, but not quite THAT severe.” Her hands move up and down. “Lots of slats and stuff. By the way, where’s your headboard?”
“My what?”
“The headboard on your bed. Don’t you have one?”
“Oh, that, no, don’t have one. Never could agree about that. So where ya think we can look at some Mission stuff?” I change the subject. I don’t want any more Sarah talk today.
“There are some antique stores on the main street.”
“Oh, this is old shit.”
“It’s not shit.”
“You know, you sound funny when you curse.”
“That’s probably because I don’t curse. Much,” she adds when I raise an eyebrow to her.
“You went to college, right?”
“No, I didn’t. I got married right out of high school.”
“But you’re smart, right?”
“Not really, when you think about,” she says, and she laughs into her cup, this light little airy laugh. “If I was, I guess I would have gone to college, instead of having this career pinnacle.” That breathy laugh turns into a full chuckle, and she shakes her head and drinks her coffee.
At the moment, I’m sorta glad she wasn’t that smart.
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© 2003 Chandrah, Inc.
© 2003 (*> Baby Bird Productions, Inc.
