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A Night Out
Matt was five pages into a chapter on pectin activation and not paying attention to anything else, which meant Ben had been sitting across from him for a while before he noticed.
“Time to go.”
“In a minute.”
“Hartfield.”
“It’s interesting.”
“It’s berries.”
“It’s chemistry. The pectin sets differently depending on the acid in the fruit. Strawberries are low-acid. That’s why they’re harder to set without adding lemon.”
“My grandmother’s recipe says ‘enough sugar’ and ‘a good squeeze of lemon.’ Hers set fine. Come on.”
Matt marked the page. But he didn’t move.
“It’s been a while.”
“I know.”
“I don’t know what I’m walking into.”
“You’re walking into them being glad to see you. That’s it.”
“If it’s weird—”
“We leave. You can get back to your pectin research.”
Lucy texted Marcie as Ben’s truck pulled out of the driveway.
The boys finally left. The house is mine.
Marcie’s reply came at once.
For now. Cab’s here. On my way.
For about ten minutes, it was perfectly, blissfully quiet. Peaceful. Then Marcie called.
“We’re outside.”
She grabbed her bag, her keys, the bottle she’d promised, and headed out. The cab was idling at the curb. Marcie had the back door open.
“Violet’s already there. She’s texted three times.”
“Are we late?”
“She thinks we’re late.”
She buckled in. The cab rolled.
Ben gets Matt, I get my sanity. Perfect.
The table by the back saw him come in and the volume dropped.
“Relax. I’m not contagious.”
“Get over here, Hartfield.” Rodney was already on his feet.
“Make room, then.”
Garvin shoved a chair aside as Jackson half-stood and sat back down. Wood clapped him on the shoulder on his way in.
“Two years. You couldn’t pick up a damn phone?” Rodney sneered.
“I was busy.”
“Doing what.”
“Learning to sit up.”
“That’s the whole two years?”
“The first six months, yeah.”
“And after that?”
“After that I just didn’t like you.”
They cracked up. Rodney flipped him off. Ben came back from the bar with a pint, two waters, and a soda. He set the pint and water in front of Matt.
“I can get my own.”
“Next round.”
Jackson leaned across. “You look like shit, Hartfield.”
“Yeah. Gravity does that to you.”
“Still got the mouth, huh?” Wood said.
“Oh, it’s worse,” Ben said. “He’s had unlimited time to come up with material.”
“Turns out surviving makes people really uncomfortable. Might as well have fun with it.”
Half the table groaned. Garvin flicked a peanut at him.
No one was treating him like glass.
Matt sat back and smiled.
Violet waved from the back corner with two open seats beside her.
“Finally.”
“We’re not late.”
“I’m on my second glass.”
“Whatever she’s having, times two,” Marcie said to the server.
“So,” Violet said. “Patterson. Tell me it’s good.”
“Oh, it’s good. She wrote a memo. Bus consolidation for away games. Very concerned about the planet. Took it straight to the principal before anyone in athletics saw it.”
Marcie grinned. “She learned from last time.”
“She learned not to tell me. She didn’t learn to check her numbers.”
The drinks came. They did a quick cheers first.
“We’ve got games in three different directions. You put everyone on one bus, you’re routing through the city twice before you even leave town. I pulled the district’s own mileage rates. Handed her a one-pager.”
“And?”
“She said she’d take another look at the proposal.”
“That’s it?”
“Then she said she appreciated my input.”
“A whole year and she still thinks she can outflank you.”
“She’ll try again in the fall.”
“She can try. I’ll be ready.”
“Ralston,” Wood said. “We’ve known each other since academy. Settle something.”
“No,” Ben said.
“I haven’t said it yet.”
“I know where this is going.”
“The forklift.”
Garvin moaned.
“I heard three versions from three people. I want to know which one’s real.”
“All of them.”
“Ralston.”
“Some of them.”
“One of them has you driving it onto a burning roof.”
“Could be.”
“Ralston, I swear to god—”
“I’m not under oath.”
Matt sipped his beer. “He’s never under oath. That’s the whole problem.”
“Hartfield. You were there.”
“Don’t remind me. Bad enough I came out of the coma still remembering it.”
Jackson laughed first. Rodney joined in.
“Hartfield—”
“What.”
“The coma didn’t fix you at all,” Garvin said.
“Speaking of Hartfield cleaning up other people’s messes.”
Matt saw it coming. “Rodney. No.”
“The dumbwaiter. Industrial laundry?”
“Yeah.”
“Guy got himself wedged.”
“He thought it was a freight elevator.”
Wood frowned. “How—”
“Don’t ask me. He couldn’t explain it either.”
“So what’d you do?”
“Took the wall off.”
“You took a wall off?”
“Wall can take it. The guy couldn’t.”
“And how’d the inspector take it?”
“Shut up, Ralston.”
“Just asking.”
“I said shut up.”
“So I come home,” Lucy said, “and he’s reordering the bookshelf. By height.”
“By—”
“By height. Not author. Not subject. Height. He called it structural harmony. He said it with a straight face. Like he’d been thinking about it. Like it had been bothering him.”
Violet put her face in her hands.
“He got through halfway, couldn’t reach the rest, so now I’m up on a step stool finishing his masterpiece while he sits on the couch pointing. ‘A little to the left. No, not that left.’ I told him I’m putting every encyclopedia in backwards on purpose.”
“He’ll be up there with a ladder by Tuesday,” Marcie said.
“And I’m not picking him up when he falls.”
“You say that every time. What else.”
“Oh, it gets better. Ben showed up last week with a documentary on duct tape.”
“He what?”
“A documentary. About duct tape. Five hours. Five. I don’t know who watched it all the way through except my husband and his best friend, who both took notes and then had a discussion about grades of adhesive like they’d just come out of a lecture.”
“That man needs something to do.”
“That man needs a job. He is losing his mind and he is taking me with him.”
Violet was laughing so hard she’d stopped making sound.
“And now Ben’s been bringing over his family’s berries. First week, fine. Lovely. We ate them like normal people. Second week there’s nowhere to put them. I told Matt we physically cannot eat this many berries, and he looked at me like I’d just given him a mission.”
“Girl. That’s like waving a stick at a border collie.”
“Too late. He’s been reading about acid ratios. He wants to make jam. He hasn’t started yet. Yet.”
Marcie poured more wine into Lucy’s glass.
“I love you,” she said. “I’m so glad I’m not you.”
The bar had quieted, or his ear had stopped tracking it. His pint was half done. He’d switched to water a while back.
Jackson caught his eye across the table.
“So. Next month.”
“What about next month.”
“You know, the barbecue. You coming this year?”
“We’ll see.”
“He’ll think about it. I’ll let you know.”
“Ralston’s your agent now?”
“He’s my problem,” Matt said.
“Those aren’t mutually exclusive,” Ben said.
The conversation moved to Rodney’s cousin’s boat and whether it still counted as a boat if it had sunk twice.
Matt reached for another fry and flagged the server for more water.
It was good to be back.
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