Nick

“Everyone else’s parents sent a driver.”

How late did the Sharps let those kids stay up? Katie’s got full-on suitcases under her eyes, and an attitude to match.

“Yeah, well, everyone else’s kids’ll miss out on pancake breakfast with their dads.”

“We already had breakfast. Fruit and pastries and champagne.”

What!? “You had—“

“Non-alcoholic—duh.”

I cannot wait for this “duh” phase to be over. “All right. Well, we can still go to the park, say hi to the animals.”

“Zoos are cruel.” Katie whips out her phone. Clearly, Twitter needs to hear about her evil, clueless dad. I open my mouth to tell her to knock it off, but fighting with a tired, grumpy kid doesn’t seem like a good use of my time.

Besides, I’m kind of grouchy myself. Woke up half an hour ago to an empty car and a king-sized crick in my neck. My mad dash across town barely got me to the Sharps’ in time to be pulled up by their doorman: “Excuse me, sir, but there’s something unfortunate on your shoe.”—last night’s condom, of course; where else would it be?—and Katie wanting to know why I was so late and...homeless-looking was how she put it. She and her friends shared a nice giggle over that.

Checking my reflection in the lobby on the way out didn’t do much for my ego: I do look pretty rough. My hair’s sticking up on one side, and there’s syrup on my shirt from the diner. And I’m missing a button—when and how did that happen?

Well, I have a fair idea when, and the how isn’t much of a stretch, but....

“Cindy Rajania’s mom says you’re nouveau riche.”

I blink. “Uh...and what did you say to that?”

“I said her mom’s a nouveau bitch.”

“Katie, Jjesus!” I’m practically crushing the steering wheel. Calm down. “Next time, you stick your nose right in the air, and tell Miss Cindy Rajania that by European standards, there’s no such thing as old money in a country as young as America.”

“Whatever.” And she’s tweeting again. Or texting. Or whatever it is she does on that thing all day.

“So...no park, then?”

“Huh? So I’m grounded? Just for saying ‘bitch’?”

“You just said it again.” Sometimes, I swear.... I take a deep breath. “And, no, you’re not grounded. I thought you didn’t want to go. I was all ‘let’s go to the park’; you were all ‘zoos are the worst’. Do you want to go?”

“Ob-viously.”

By tween girl logic, maybe.

We end up skipping the zoo in favor of skating. Katie dives into the back seat in search of her skates, and what’d I do with that condom wrapper? Is there anything...anything incriminating back there? Is she about to—

“Daddy?” She’s got her skate bag in one hand, a lady’s soft sheepskin coat in the other. “Whose coat is this?” Busted.

“Oh, that’s, uh...that’s Mary’s, from work.” My face is burning.

“What’s it doing in your car?”

Good question. “I gave her a ride home last night.”

“In the back seat?” Katie looks doubtful. “With the junk?”

“No, she...uh, the heater was blasting in her face. Guess she must’ve got hot, tossed it back there.” I reach for it. “C’mon, give it here. Let’s get our skates on before everyone else scratches up the ice.”

Katie’s bad mood is gone by the time we hit the rink. I don’t even try to keep up with her as she twirls circles around me. This could be an idea for her birthday: skating, hot chocolate, and...something to do with horses? Makeovers? Or am I supposed to fly them to Aspen? Apparently, the tenth is a big one. Like a dry run for sweet sixteen.

Still. Christmas comes first. One set of sky-high expectations at a time.

As soon as I’m positive Katie’s not looking, I go through Lina’s pockets. There’s a pack of spearmint gum, a tin of no-nonsense cough drops, an old bus transfer, and—paydirt!—a card with Cyrillic script framing a steaming plate of food. There’s an address in English, and a phone number underneath.

I flip the card over. Scrawled on the back, I find Mon AM; Weds AM, Thurs-Sat PM.

It’s a schedule—her shift schedule? This has to be where she works.

Monday AM, huh? I could swing by tomorrow for lunch. The coat’s the perfect excuse. She’s got to be missing that by now.

Then again, maybe—

Katie skates up behind me and throws her arms around my waist. “Race me, Dad!”

“Aw, no, don’t make me—“

But she’s already away. I take off after her. Her skates barely seem to touch the ice. I feel like a bear lumbering after a cheetah. Still, it feels good to stretch my legs, and by the time Katie’s looped all the way round and come up behind me again, I’ve decided on borscht for lunch tomorrow.

There were two of us in that car, and from my perspective, we had a great time. If she felt differently, I want to know. If she didn’t....

Hell, I just want to see her again. It’s been a while since I did something crazy. And, more than that, I felt something. Those few seconds in her arms, outside the Happy Bean—it felt like coming home. Felt like getting something back that I didn’t even know I was missing. I’ve got to find out if that was twelve years of grief catching up with me at once, or...or a genuine moment of understanding.

“Why are you carrying that around?” Katie’s eyeing up Lina’s coat again.

“Forgot my gloves. It makes a pretty sweet muff.”

“Ugh, Dad! Don’t say ‘muff!’”

Where’d she learn to be offended by that? “Fine. It makes a pretty sweet...hand-warmer. And people will think you have a vulgar mind if you get grossed out by proper words used in their proper contexts.”

“People will think you have a vulgar mind.”

“Come on. Don’t start that.”

“Come on. Don’t start that.”

I zip my lips. Katie can do the let’s-copy-Dad thing for hours.

She conks out on the couch the second we get home. Poor thing must’ve been up all night. I toss a quilt over her and head for my study.

Concentrating on work proves tougher than expected. I find myself indulging in the kind of time-wasting crap I look down my nose on other people for: a quick peek down the Facebook rabbit hole is on the verge of becoming a full-on spelunking expedition, when it occurs to me to investigate what Katie might’ve said about me on Twitter.

@gardengnomeparty * 3h

my dad has old popcorn in his hair and doesnt even know trollolol

@gardengnomeparty * 3h

@cinnndyboohoo my dad says u r noveau rich too haha

@gardengnomeparty * 1h

skaaaaaating wohoo! thanks dad ur cool for ur age

Can’t believe I’m getting misty over that. Not that she thinks I’m cool for my age, but that she wasn’t actually badmouthing me in the car. A quick scroll through her feed reveals nothing more than a sweet kid having fun with her friends. Good.

I should check out the contacts on her phone again. Make sure I still know everyone on there.

I should check out the contacts on my phone.

Takes me a few seconds to remember I put zzz in front of all my friends’ names, so they’d drop to the bottom of the list, out of the way of work stuff. The words fucked-up priorities come to mind. I stuff them back down. Not fucked up: practical. Normal. Everyone—

—and there it is, zzzMark, automatically transferred from phone to phone for the last decade plus. I used to call it sometimes, before his plan expired and the number went out of service. I can still hear the message, if I concentrate: You’ve got Mark Carter. I’m clearly not here. I can see your name in my missed calls, so don’t leave a message unless it’s important.

I have a vague memory of screaming “Come the fuck back! Is that important enough?” into his mailbox, about a month after he...did what he did.

A couple of months after that, I called to hear his message and got a “this number is out of service” robot.

On the first anniversary of his death, I called and got someone else. That was the worst.

I hover my thumb over his contact, not sure what I’m planning to do—call it? Delete it? Add more zs to the front, till it plunges so deep into bottom-of-the-list hell I’ll never stumble across it again?

I end up keying in another number, instead, the one from Lina’s business card. Maybe she’ll have a Sun PM scheduled. I could use a friendly voice. I could—

An aggressive male voice barks something in a language I assume to be Russian.

“Uh, yeah—hi—you wouldn’t happen to speak English?”

“English, yeah. What you want?’

“I’m calling for Elina; not sure if she’s—“

“I told you once, I told you a thousand times: lose this number!” The guy slams down the phone hard enough I’d swear I feel the vibration on my end.

Wonder who pissed in his Cheerios?

I scroll through the rest of my contacts, but there’s no one else I feel like talking to. Not even sure who half these people are.

Would it be a total dick move to wake Katie up so I don’t have to be alone?

Yes. Yes, it would.