Twenty-Five

THE DAY AFTER CHRISTMAS, I WORKED AN EIGHT-HOUR shift at the Charcoaler. My dad let me pick up extra shifts since it was the Christmas break. I didn’t mind the job. Okay, there was this guy that I worked with who was a real jerk. But I just let him talk and most of the time he didn’t even notice that I wasn’t listening. He wanted to hang out after our shift and I said, “I got plans.”

“Date? ” he said.

“Yup, ” I said.

“Got a girlfriend? ”

“Yup, ” I said.

“What’s her name? ”

“Cher.”

“Screw you, Ari, ” he said

Some guys can’t take a joke.

When I got home, my mom was in the kitchen warming up some tamales for dinner. I loved homemade tamales. I liked to warm them up in the oven which was really strange because that wasn’t the standard way of warming up tamales. I liked the way the oven sort of dried out the tamales so they got a little crispy and you could smell the corn leaves sort of burning and it smelled really great so my mom put some in the oven for me. “Dante called, ” she said.

“Really? ”

“Yeah.”

“He’s going to call you back in a while. I told him you were working.”

I nodded.

“He didn’t know you worked. He said you never mentioned anything about that in your letters.”

“Why does it matter? ”

She shook her head. “Guess it doesn’t.” I knew she was doing some math in her head about this, but she was keeping the math to herself. That was okay with me. That was when the phone rang again. “It’s probably Dante, ” she said.

It was Dante.

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

“Merry Christmas.”

“Did it snow in Chicago? ”

“No. Just cold. And gray. I mean really cold.”

“Sounds nice.”

“I kind of like it. But I’m tired of the gray days. They say it will be worse in January. February too, probably.”

“That sucks.”

“Yeah, it does suck.”

There was a little silence on the phone.

“So you’re working? ”

“Yeah, flipping burgers at the Charcoaler. Trying to save up some money.”

“You didn’t tell me.”

“Yeah, it’s not important. Just a shitty job.”

“Well, you’re not going to save too much money buying nice art books for your friends.” I could tell he was smiling.

“So you got the book? ”

“I’m holding it in my lap. Gericault’s Raft of the Medusaby Lorenz E. A. Eitner. It’s a beautiful book, Ari.”

I thought he was going to cry. And I whispered in my own brain, don’t cry don’t cry. And it was like he heard me—and he didn’t cry. And then he said, “How many burgers did you flip to buy the book? ”

“That’s a very Dante question, ” I said.

“That’s a very Ari answer, ” he said.

And then we started laughing and couldn’t stop. And I missed him so much.

When I hung up the phone, I felt a little sad. And a little happy. For a few minutes I wished that Dante and I lived in the universe of boys instead of the universe of almost-men.

I went out for a slow run. Legs and me. It’s true what they say that every guy should have a dog. Gina says every boy is a dog. That Gina. She was like my mother. I had her voice in my head.

Halfway through the run, it started to rain. The movie of the accident played through my brain. For a few seconds, there was a pain in my legs.