I make my way up his steps and hold out the spaghetti. “I hope you’re hungry.”
He eyes the food. “I already ate.”
“The early-bird special is more of an afternoon snack, don’t you think?”
Walt cracks a small grin, and I’m close to one myself. Breaking through his wall feels like a victory.
He backs up, holding open his door. “Come in, then.”
I step in, and the harsh click announces the door being closed behind me.
“Wasn’t expecting anybody,” he mutters, shuffling around. He picks up a folded newspaper, stares at it, then sets it back down in the same spot.
“Please, Walt, don’t worry about clean-up. I made too much spaghetti and I want to give you some. I don’t need to stick around.” I look down at the containers, one for the noodles and one for the sauce I made last night, and stay in my spot, just a few feet in the doorway.
From the outside his house looks to be only a few hundred feet bigger than mine, but on the inside, it feels smaller. Muted photographs in thin wooden frames hang from the living room wall, and his recliner takes up a large portion of space. The lamp on the table beside his chair is huge, and so is the old TV in the corner of the room. Knick-knacks and a full collection of encyclopedias are crammed onto a dusty bookshelf.
Without thinking I walk forward, balancing the food in one hand and running my hands over the spine of one encyclopedia. “My grandparents had these.”
“Oh yeah? Did they have the whole set?” There’s pride in his voice.
“Nope. But my grandma wanted the whole thing.” I can still hear her voice, telling my grandfather that an incomplete set was like leaving out a letter of the alphabet.
Walt walks over. He smells funny, kind of like how my grandpa smelled. It’s hard to describe. Back then, when I was fifteen, the only word I could come up with wasold, which wasn’t very nice, or descriptive. Nine years later, and I’m still struggling for a better word.
“My wife didn’t care about the books. I did, though. Guess I just like to know things.”
I hold the spaghetti out to Walt. “Here you go. I just wanted to drop this off.”
Walt takes it, walking away. “You might as well stay. The kitchen table has a motor on it, so we can’t sit there, but there’s a table out back that’s clear.”
I follow him and see he wasn’t kidding. An actual motor is on the table, lying in parts on top of newspaper. At least he gets points for protecting the table first.
I want to say something about having a motor in the kitchen, but I keep my mouth shut. If I tease him now, I might never be invited back.
He stops for a fork and napkin, then I follow him out of the screen door. His backyard is an even bigger mess than the inside of his house. Random junk lines the fence, and in the very back is a large piece of ride-on equipment. I have no idea what it is, except to say it looks like it could flatten someone into a pancake if it drove over them.
He directs me to sit down at the glass-top patio table. Steam rises from the sauce when he takes the lid off the container. He leans in, sniffing, and tells me it smells good.
“Was that a compliment, Walt?” I grin. I can’t help myself. Reaching over, I add the sauce to the noodles for him, then sit back.
“Don’t let it go to your head.” He takes his fork and sticks it in the spaghetti, spinning it around. “It might taste like crap.”
I can only laugh. My food doesn’t taste like crap. I’m a lot of things, but a bad cook is not one of them. He takes a bite and doesn’t say a word, but he does take another bite, and I’ll accept that as praise.
His hair is cute. It’s mostly white, but there are strands of black here and there, a lot more salt than pepper. The top is messy. He has a bit of a natural wave, and his combover isn’t terrible. It’s obvious he’s hiding some baldness, but it’s a suitable hairstyle. Anything that’s not a toupee is acceptable.
He’s chewing now, and he looks at my shirt.
“Why does your shirt say that?” He points a gnarled finger at me.
I wink at him. “It’s nacho business.”
He glowers and takes another bite. “I don’t get it.”
“It’s a play on words.” I look down, pointing at each word as I say them out loud. “Now do you get it? Taco is like sayingtalkand nacho is like sayingnot your. Ha ha ha?”
Walt wipes his mouth with his napkin and places a palm on the table. “In my day, jokes were funny.”
