She smiled then, teasing me. Warning me. She had a nose for our mischief, and thank God too, because it kept us from doing things that could get us booted. Things like this.
“We listen,” I said after a beat.
“Well, good then. Let’s be getting a move on the day. Time’s a-wastin’.”
“Always is.”
She opened the door wider yet. Carl shuffled forward, paused, and glanced over his shoulder into the room. I did too, and though there was nothing to see, I could feel it—a supernova energy, the kind from the wild blue yonder, the sort that came from sinking stars and gravitational collapses.
It pulsed from within our shower, the one with handicap grab bars and an emergency-call pull string, and it radiated to my fingertips, plagued me with ear ringing, and gave me gooseflesh, all of which made me certain of one thing: This energy needed a new solar system—somewhere far, far away from here—and assuming Nora hadn’t already, I intended to make that point to Carl after I had my fill of coffee and cold powdered eggs.
2
And now they’re quiet. Who do I have to thank for that?” Nora said as she escorted us to our table in the corner of the dining hall.
Carl pointed at me, while I pointed at him. She laughed her belly laugh, tucked us into our chairs, and scrutinized our nutritious, portion-controlled, diabetic-friendly breakfasts. It looked and smelled no better than the C rations from my army days, but still she hummed an mmm, mmm, mmm before leaving us to it.
I kept an eye on her as she zigzagged between the mismatched tables dotting the room. Ours was an old Shaker-style four-top cozied up next to a window. I liked it because I could look outside and watch the world go by. Carl liked it because he could see visitors come in through the front door. But right now, we had something to do besides lounge around, keeping Centennial under surveillance. Right now, we needed to undo the nooses we’d tied for ourselves.
When I felt no one was in earshot, which didn’t take much considering our present company, I leaned over my plate and said, “We’ve got to get that child out of here before somebody notices.”
Carl tucked his napkin into the front of his collar. “Act normal, will you.”
“Normal,” I repeated, making it sound as ridiculous as it was.
He responded by slowly stripping the wrapper away from his straw.
I said, “I think you’ve confused acting normal with acting like an idiot.”
“Nora doesn’t think so.” His eyes darted in her direction.
I peeked over my shoulder, and she met my gaze from across the way as she listened to blue-haired, big-mouthed Connie Salas yap. That old woman could beat her gums for an hour straight about the state of her health without even breathing. I forced myself to wink at both of them, turned back around, and, like Carl, paid extra-special attention to my fork, my milk carton, my cold eggs.
“That’s more like it,” Carl said.
I faked a smile and added a singsong lilt to my voice. “How could you keep something like having a daughter and granddaughter from me?”
“We don’t have time to talk about that, Duffy.”
I shelved the happy-day routine and pointed my fork at him. “Three years we’ve lived together, and you never once mentioned them.”
Carl stared into his coffee, then reached for the creamer and poured.
I huffed and started stabbing things on my plate without reason. I couldn’t decide if I was more mad or hurt, like we had time for either. It’s just that we’d itemized our entire lives for each other, starting with the days we were born. Nothing was secreted, not our stories of losing our virginity, not our shared complaints of persistent hemorrhoids, not our madcap ideas about God and heaven. We’d shared it all. Except for, I guess, we hadn’t.
Carl finished stirring his coffee and tapped his spoon on the edge of the mug. Set it aside. “Let’s talk about what to do.”
“Easy,” I said. “Call your daughter so she can come pick up her runaway.”
“Well, I would, but . . .”
“But what? We can find you a phone right now if you don’t want to walk back to the room. People carry those things around in their pockets nowadays.”
When he didn’t respond, I stopped assaulting my eggs for a moment and stared at him.
“I don’t have her number,” he said.
“And why not?”
His smile faltered. He stretched it back quick, though it didn’t carry through to his eyes. “I think you’re talking too loud,” he said, then took a bite of turkey bacon and chewed it like cud.
I set my fork down, so that I didn’t accidently stab him, and lowered my voice. “Her father then. Phone him.”
After a sour-faced swallow, Carl said, “He’s absentee.”
“Oh? That sounds fancy. Is it a nice way of saying Josie’s a bastard?”
“Duffy,” Carl reprimanded, as if our biggest problem at the moment was my lack of civility.
I said, “Fine. He’s absentee. So who else can return her to wherever she came from?”
Carl sipped his coffee and gave bald, Bible-beating Sherri Linley a wave from afar with his spare hand. He then plucked a sugar packet from the holder and raised it up as an offering to her, even though she had her own.
I banged the table with my palm. All the dishes clattered, and the conversations nearest us quieted. The outburst was stupid of me, I realize, but I’d had it. This was not something to be trifled with. He’d heard Nora, same as me. If borrowing a little oxygen therapy from Janelle Pratt was borderline cause for eviction, then running a hostel from inside Centennial seemed like a surefire bet.
I waited for the ripple in my water glass to settle before daring to look up. Thankfully, Nora had disappeared on some unknown errand. My next-door neighbor Charles, sitting one table over, stared at me.
“Something wrong?” I barked at him. The man was stone-deaf, narcoleptic, obese, and destructive with his motor scooter. We’d never gotten on, because I spent most of my time yelling at him, either to wake him up or so he could hear.
He turned back to his meal without answering.
I whispered at Carl, “I nearly solved this problem ten minutes ago, but you told me to wait. ‘Wait,’ you said. So I did, thinking we’d have an intelligent conversation, and now here you are, acting as if . . . as if . . .”
Carl set his coffee cup down, taking care that his shaking hand didn’t cause it to spill. He wiped the corners of his mouth with his napkin, pushed his plate away, and looked at me hard. “I want to keep her.”