Garner emerged from his mother’s Honda and took a sharp breath. His date with Ainsley the night before had not gone well. They hadn’t made it past the hors d’oeuvres course, the samosas Ainsley had spent half the day making. He’d arrived three or four gimlets in, and had immediately started working on an oversize Indian beer. He’d been too drunk and could now feel the proof of that in his temples. This was why Garner didn’t usually drink. He couldn’t handle it. He’d gone to the bar yesterday afternoon because he was anxious about dragging Lucas into this. Garner had felt impatient since the minute he’d arrived back on the coast, and it had all caught up with him last night. He’d kept trying to rush things to the bedroom, and Ainsley had kept slowing him down as politely as she could. He’d asked her why the hell she’d invited him over, and then watched injury bloom in her face. She’d stood up from the couch stiff and composed. He was different from his old self, Ainsley had told him. There wasn’t any sweetness in him anymore. Not a trace. Whatever he’d been pretending to be in Atlanta, he really was now. She’d handed him the wristwatch and given him a long look that expressed mostly disappointment.
Maybe he could patch that up in a few days, but he couldn’t let it distract him right now. It was a bad date with an old flame; that’s all it was. It was time for business, time to look Cuss in his good eye. The reason schemes didn’t occur to most people, he knew, was they couldn’t pull them off. Garner could. This is what he did. He found the soft spots, and there were plenty of them. He swung the door of the Honda shut and stepped over a row of lilies and up onto the sidewalk, the day open and bright in every visible direction, feeling the fist of rolled cash in his pants pocket with each stride.
THE PICNICKERS
At the close of the spring semester, Kim drove from Galesburg to Chicago to visit her old friend Rita. She normally stayed a week, but after three days in the suburbs it began to feel like she’d been there long enough. Rita’s neighborhood friends were always dropping by — Tuesday for health shakes, Wednesday for scrapbooking. This morning, roused by their noise, Kim had made her way down to the kitchen to find a group of them trying to convince Rita to go to the outlets. These women had plenty of money but nonetheless got a thrill out of finding a bargain. Rita was hesitant about the plan. She knew that Kim wasn’t a shopper.
“Maybe it’s time I learned,” Kim said. “Maybe it’s time I broadened my horizons. This is stuff other people didn’t want, right — at the outlets? That might suit me. I usually like stuff other people don’t want.” She got a bottle of diet soda from the fridge and sat down at the table with it. She felt bad for Rita, having to juggle Kim and her other friends all at once. Kim so plainly didn’t fit in that she’d begun to feel emboldened.
“It’ll be all day,” Rita said. “We grab lunch up there and everything.”
“I have two hundred and twenty dollars and some change. Is that good enough for all day?”
Rita’s friends had grown used to Kim and didn’t often respond to her. They were regarding one another with tight faces and blowing into their coffee cups.
“I just don’t want you to be bored,” said Rita. “You have to promise you won’t be bored.”
“You don’t need to worry about me being entertained,” Kim said. “How long have we known each other?” She was smiling — a little crazily, it felt like.
It was very bright outside, but Kim could see a lot of clouds through the window too. The leaves on the trees were tender-looking and motionless. The kitchen smelled of whole things, grains and healthy shampoo.
One of the women, the youngest of them, wasn’t drinking coffee. She made this conspicuous by fondling her cup, turning it upside-down. When the others finally questioned her, she played coy for a moment before announcing she was pregnant. Might be pregnant. She was almost sure. Squealing and flouncing ensued, the women all hugging each other and even deigning to hug Kim, though she remained seated. The other women jokily consoled the pregnant one about not being able to drink wine. Apparently she really liked wine. They all hoped she’d have a girl this time. Preliminary plans for a shower were put in place, duties assigned. Rita didn’t want catering again. She wanted anything but catering.
“The Carter’s outlet,” one woman said. “I saw the sweetest animal blankets in there. Neutral colors too. They have a pale green and a mustard. And some adorable bibs. You can’t have enough of those.”
“I have a stack of ten-percent coupons,” Rita put in. “They work anywhere in the whole mall.”
“I have some for the kitchen place,” said someone else. “Not Williams-Sonoma but the other one.”
Now Kim stood with her soda. She didn’t really want it anymore, but she opened it and took it over near the sink. There were more clouds in the sky than a minute ago but also more sunlight. Going to the outlets, she knew, was not a good idea. These women didn’t want Kim around. Things would not turn out well. There was a time when Kim could go with the flow, could see the good in people, but that time had passed. She was grumpy now; she worried all the time, and about the wrong things. She worried that she was tired of all the music she owned, instead of that her bathroom was filthy. Her car’s engine was about to give out, but she complained that the windows stuck. She had some money in the bank but no confidence she knew how to spend it. Right now she should’ve been worrying about the fact that she’d fallen out of friendship with Rita, but there didn’t seem to be anything either of them could do about it. Their lives had diverged radically; the alliance of soul they’d shared when they were younger was dead on the vine.
Franklin, Rita’s son, came down the stairs, his footfalls weighted and clumsy. Without acknowledging the kitchen full of women, he stuck his head in the fridge. He wore a wrinkled dress shirt and pants with numerous pockets. He was lanky, with sharp, slight shoulders. Franklin had a driver’s license these days and didn’t seem to eat meals. He didn’t need anything from Rita anymore.
After banging around for a minute, Franklin emerged from the fridge with a bag of lemons. He dumped them on a cutting board and began halving them with a cleaver.
“Franklin,” Rita said. “Dare I ask?”
“They’re going rotten. The United States and Australia waste more food than the rest of the world combined. That’s something I learned just this morning, doing random Internet research. It may or may not be true. I don’t know what you bought these for, but they’re on their last legs.”
“I’m aware they’re on their last legs,” Rita said. “That’s why I put them in the fridge. I was going to make pear butter, but I didn’t get around to it. For the walk-run.”
“Well, what I’m going to do is take the lemons life gave us and make lemonade.”
Rita picked up a heavy peppermill and cleaned a spot on it with her thumb. “I don’t think lemonade is a breakfast. Why don’t I make you some eggs? I’ll make over-easy eggs and rye toast like you like.”
“Breakfast isn’t really my strong suit anymore,” said Franklin. He set the knife aside and squeezed a few of the lemon halves over a bowl. He paused and plopped in ice cubes, then found a spoon and fished out some seeds. “This day is starting off fun,” he said.
Kim could remember Franklin as a small child. Rita and her husband had been worried about him, thinking he had Asperger’s or something. It had visibly pained him to look anyone in the eye, and for some reason he’d refused to ever say hello or goodbye. He still didn’t say hello, now that Kim thought about it. His verbal skills were always off the chart and he’d been a happy kid, but he didn’t want to talk to anyone. He’d shown no interest in the cartoons the other kids adored, no interest in playing hide-and-seek or tag, but then he’d take a puzzle over to a corner of the room and keep putting it together and taking it apart for hours, until someone stopped him.