Finally, Caulder smiles a little. “He is. We’re hoping to catch up with him at some point this weekend.”
I begin flipping through channels, waiting for each program to come on or the information to load. It seems we get one or theother first, but not always the same from channel to channel. I settle on what appears to be a movie and set the remote between us on the bed.
“This your first All-Star?” I ask.
He nods. “Yeah. You?”
“Yep. I was invited one other time a couple years ago but my grandfather was sick; I had to turn it down so I could be there in case he passed.”
“Did he?”
“No. Not then. He has since from the same illness, but I’m glad I went home then. He was more lucid and himself for the days I was there than he had been in years. It was the right decision to skip All-Star, though I was bummed at the time.”
“I’m sorry he passed.”
“Eh. I miss him, but he was sick for a very long time. It’s nice to know he’s no longer suffering. More than anything, it’s a relief, even as heartbreaking as it is that he’s gone.”
Caulder nods. “My parents were really young when they had me, so I haven’t had to watch someone I love die yet. Although now that everyone’s getting older, I anticipate that I’ll no longer be so lucky in the next decade. My grandmother was just diagnosed with the start of Alzheimer’s.”
“Oh, that sucks. Sorry, man.”
He smiles lightly. “It hasn’t been horrible yet. She was only diagnosed a month ago and there’s some experimental treatment that she’s going through—which sounds terrifying, though I’m aware that all treatments are experimental in the beginning. So far there’s still only moments here and there.”
“Out of all the diseases and shit in the world, anything having to do with memory seems like one of the cruelest. You live an entire lifetime and then suddenly, you don’t know who surrounds you. Where you are, who you are. Sometimes youdon’t know how to talk or walk or anything. And there’s no true treatments.”
“Yeah.”
I glance at him and wince. “Sorry. That’s not the kind of thing you should be thinking about when you just told me about your grandmother. Let’s ignore I said that.”
He laughs quietly.
“How about something more lighthearted? How’s the snow in Buffalo?”
His laughter is louder this time and I love the sound. It makes me smile and I find myself grinning at him. He’s shifted a little closer to me now, his body angled in my direction as we talk. There’s still an ocean between us, but I don’t get the impression he’s hanging off the side of the bed anymore.
“Not bad right now,” he says. “That can change in an instant, but when I left, the sky was clear and the snow was contained.”
“Contained. Nice.”
“That’s the most you can do. Make mountains and hope that all the salt mixed in with it doesn’t kill the ground or pollute the lake when the mountain melts.”
I shake my head. “You’d think with all the technology in the world, we’d have a better way of managing snow.”
“I’m sure there are a lot better ways, but salting is the cheapest, so that’s what cities use.”
“Isn’t that the truth.”
We’re quiet for a minute, our attention moving to the television. I don’t know what we’re watching. The guy is in a hall, throwing open doors as he storms on. He looks a little… crazy. Is he on a murdering spree? Is he going to find a dead body? Is he looking for his child? What’s going on right now?
“Are you familiar with this movie?” I ask.
Caulder shakes his head. “No idea what this is.”
The question of what he’s looking for is finally answered. I want to celebrate for him when he finds the girl that he was obviously desperate to locate, but then they start making out. Heavily. Groping as clothes start coming off.
And that’s the end of this movie. I sit up to reach for the remote as sexy sounds start filling the room from the television. A glance at Caulder tells me that he definitely doesn’t want to watch this with me right now either.
However, the remote is being evasive. We’ve barely moved but, apparently, we’ve shifted enough that the blankets have now eaten the remote. Caulder sits up now too, pulling the blankets up to look under them.
