“A delight,” she amended.
“Of course she’s a delight,” Mr. Gautier said. “She’s my daughter. So anyway, I worked it out with Laura. You’ll be changing your days so you can be there every morning Dezzy is.”
“You what?” Tovah said.
“Don’t worry, you don’t have to do a thing. I took care of it.”
“Look, I’m flattered, but I picked my days already. I think Dezzy is great, but so are the other kids, and I’m all set in my schedule.”
“Do a search,” Mr. Gautier said.
A low snarl threaded his voice. There was something birdlike about his face, she noticed now, specifically a big scavenger bird, maybe a turkey vulture. But a handsome turkey vulture. It was confusing.
“Excuse me?”
“When you get home, open your browser and do a search on me.”
“Okay.”
She couldn’t believe she’d agreed. What a bastard.
“Then you can do a search on me,” Tovah said.
She hoped her snideness bore no hint of tease. She hoped she sounded young enough to make him feel old.
“I did,” Mr. Gautier said. “When they aren’t mired in postmodern feminist crap, your poems are really good. Couldn’t find anything recent online. What happened?”
“Life,” Tovah said, startled.
“I’m thinking maybe the opposite. Look, we should be friends. I like the effect you have on Dezzy.”
“It’s been two days,” Tovah said.
“Those first few are the ones that count. Anyway, thanks for rejiggering your schedule. It means a lot, and you shall be rewarded.”
“Rewarded? I’m a professional.”
“No, you’re not,” Mr. Gautier said. “That’s why you’re good.”
* * *
She figured she’d have to be patient, but the Goat popped right up on her computer search and dominated the many pages of results that followed. Math prodigy Randolph Gautier had dropped out of a North Jersey high school in 1973 and hitched out to Palo Alto. He would have seized a silicon throne but for some purloined software here, a botched algorithm there. Still, he’d done just fine. He’d sold his company, Glyph Systems, for tens of millions, though in interviews he seemed bitter about it. He told RadTech magazine that Bill Gates had an IQ of seventy-four.
The man had made money in computers. Was this fact the object of her search? There were plenty of rich oldies in the neighborhood. Then she noticed another branch of search hits, sites that mentioned Gautier in relation to artistic foundations, to his funding of a poetry journal called Glyphonym. She’d never heard of the journal or any of the poets listed in the index, but the bound editions looked swank. Photos of a launch party in a grand ballroom featured charitable omnipotent people chuckling over cocktails. No real poet would want a poem in that journal, but the party looked like vulgar fun, or at least better than a night on the couch locked in a frigonometric fugue state, sour sweet-and-sour sweat soaked through the cushions, although Tovah did, to her surprise, look back on that evening with fondness. “Needing the Wood” had a few lines now, borrowed, perhaps, and in Sanskrit, but indelibly on the page.
* * *
The shock about Sean was his shock of white hair. It looked regal but incongruous with the dark-locked boy she’d known. He stood and seemed to bow as she approached the table, a fairly formal gesture for a place that specialized in artisanal scrapple.
“Sean!” she called with cheerful volume, as though to cover for her disappointment in his follicles.
“Tovah!” Sean said. “Awesome!”
They hugged, and Tovah’s chin grazed his collarbone. That zap, the hot, sweet charge of the party long ago, tingled. She wanted Sean to save her and screw her and give her a baby. After that, maybe he’d have to leave.
“You look great,” Tovah said.
“If that’s true, I owe it to the mighty sport of handball. I play with the Spanish gentlemen at the playground. It’s an epic workout. You look really good, too. Seriously.”
“I never exercise and I rarely eat. It’s a winning plan.”
“I think you’re meant to be a little heavier, though. You’re tall and skinny with big, beautiful bones.”
“Big bones?”
“Totes. I know it’s a euphemism for chubby girls, but you just happen to be hot with slightly extra-large bones. I always wanted to jump them. That night we talked. That was an epic night.”
They hadn’t even heard the specials and he’d already mentioned their magic moment.
“Man,” he said. “What’s it been? Twenty years?”
“Sixteen.”
“Oh, that’s better.”
“How’s your sister?” Tovah asked. “I haven’t spoken with her in a long time.”
“She’s good. I mean evil. She works for this huge rape-a-licious law firm.”
“Is she still married?”
“Totes.”
“What’s ‘totes’?”
“Sorry, I work with a lot of young people. I pick up their lingo. Anyway, man, Tovah, you do look really good.”
Was it possible he could be a moron and still be her savior?
“Where do you work?”
“Right now I’m involved with a new start-up,” Sean said. “It’s hard to explain. We make apps for apps, basically.”
“So that pays well?”
“No, not yet. Meantime I’m working with organic food materials. Mostly flour items.”
“Like a muffin shop?”
“Yeah, pretty much.”
“I’m a part-time preschool teacher right now.”
“Sounds epic,” Sean said. “Little kids.”
“I love kids,” said Tovah. “But the politics…”
Or could she be the moron?
A young waiter arrived without menus and explained the ordering process, which involved a few crucial decisions about sides and beverages but a surrender of volition in the realm of entrées. Tonight was Thursday, which meant Pennsylvania-style scrapple.
“What exactly is scrapple?” Tovah asked.
“It’s Mennonite soul food,” Sean said.
The waiter rolled his eyes.
“It’s everything from the pig except the meat,” he said. “Organs, hooves, eyelashes, lips. It’s all pressed together in a loaf. I, personally, love it.”
“Sounds kind of tref,” Tovah said.
“Très tref, dollface,” the waiter said. “After dinner you can join a settlement and redeem yourself.”
“Whoa there, buddy,” Sean said.
“It’s okay. I’m a Yid,” the waiter said.
“Really?” Tovah said.
“Totes,” the waiter said.
“Look, I think I’m going to leave,” Tovah said. “I actually prefer pig eyelashes as a separate dish.”
“Of course,” Sean said. “Let’s go.”
They walked the streets for a while, laughed at the shitty waiter and the perspectival complexity of time. It reminded Tovah of those play scenes from eighth grade. Lovers by the creek or at the carnival. Something about the moon. Now they leaned on a playground fence. Beyond it, in the last of the light, children stalked each other with neon water rifles.
Sean looked at Tovah, pinched the collar of her shirt.
“Twenty years later, and I still feel attracted to you.”
“Sixteen years,” Tovah said. “I had no idea you liked me. I was so smitten. You were the genius. You were going to do all the wonderful things.”
“Yeah, well.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing happened,” Sean said. “I’ve had all sorts of adventures. Good times, bad times. You know I’ve had my share…”
“Seriously,” Tovah said.
She must have clawed out of the womb saying that.
“Seriously, I wasn’t measuring myself against a prophecy of me.”