“It’s stress origami,” Simon says.
“What?” Now Charlie’s rolling the tube into a spiral, like he’s making spanakopita on one of the YouTube baking channels Simon watches as ASMR.
“You only start with the folding and rolling when you’re nervous.”
“It’s satisfying,” Charlie says.
“I can’t even tell you how much you don’t need to explain that to me, a man who doesn’t know inner peace until all the mug handles are at four o’clock, but what did I do?”
Charlie’s head snaps up. “What are you talking about?”
“You were fine, then you weren’t. I’m the only one here,” Simon explains. “So, out with it. What did I do? If you tell me, I won’t do it again. I’m trying, here.” It’s such a stupid thing to say. It’s a bit passive aggressive, to start with, but what’s worse is how much it exposes Simon.
“It doesn’t have anything to do with you,” Charlie says. “I mean, it does, obviously, but it isn’t your fault.”
“Come on, out with it.”
“Where am I sleeping tonight?”
“Fuck if I know,” Simon says, startled into honesty.
Charlie snorts. “Any ideas?”
It’s such a relief thatthisis what’s bothering Charlie, the same thing that worried Simon all morning until Charlie’s presence temporarily jostled it out of his mind. Charlie doesn’t have any more of a clue than Simon does.
If Charlie stays with him, then Simon doesn’t know how he’ll keep his wrecked little emotions under wraps. But the idea of Charlie at a hotel thirty blocks away makes Simon want to kick things.
“Sharing space with you isn’t terrible,” Simon says, figuring that if Charlie wanted to stay at a hotel, he’d have said so instead of doing terrible things to his napkin. “We did okay in Arizona.”
“I was going to stay in town for four nights.”
Apparently they’re going to decide this by throwing barely connected statements at one another and flagrantly avoiding question marks.
“I’m here until next week because my niece is graduating high school and I’m making an effort.” For reasons Simon can only blame on literal mental illness, he makes air quotes aroundmaking an effort. “I mean, Iammaking an effort. I like her. But having a family member who likes me back is enough of a novelty that I feel like I need to go.”
“How did you wind up with a niece old enough to be graduating high school?” Charlie asks, like this information isn’t easily available by comparing the birth dates on his and his oldest brother’s Wikipedia pages.
“I was your classic midlife surprise. My parents had already filed for divorce by the time I was born.” Again, all of that is basically public. There are pictures of him, still a baby, at both his parents’ remarriages. It’s an explanation he’s made dozens of times, usually when people realize that the age gap between him and his brothers isn’t filled with the evenly spaced births of six other siblings.
None of it’s a secret, but saying it out loud to Charlie feels—not like an admission or a confession, but like he’s handing over a document to someone who will be able to read the invisible ink that’s all over it.
It’s not that Simon thinks he is the way he is because of how he grew up. He’s met enough aunts and grandparents to know that weird shit is simply in the gene pool. Uncle Clement’s house is filled with two decades’ worth of newspapers. Grandmother Devereaux spent some time at a special hospital in the sixties. Simon’s own mother has been on SSRIs practically since they were invented, afact that came as a bit of a shock when he learned this from Nora, of all people.
Still. Sometimes, when he’s feeling sorry for himself, he wonders if things might have gone a little differently if he hadn’t known all along that he wasn’t part of the plan, hadn’t spent most of his childhood reading that meaning into everything that happened. He knows—this is what a couple decades of therapy will buy you—that his automatic assumption that people don’t want him around is part of a well-worn thought process, rather than anything based in reality. He knows this, but knowing things isn’t the same as believing them.
“Are they nice to you?” Charlie asks.
Simon isn’t expecting that; he is honestly too much in his head right now to expect anything at all. “Oh,very,” he says, and it comes out weird and wrong. He doesn’t even know what he means, why there’s a slightly nasty edge to his words. Charlie nudges him under the table, his shoe connecting with Simon’s calf, and Simon remembers the taqueria, remembers everything he knows about Charlie’s childhood, and could not possibly feel stupider for bitching about his own family.
He isn’t sure what, exactly, is playing out on his face, but whatever it is, Charlie rolls his eyes and starts kicking him in earnest.
The waitstaff is snuffing the candles and sweeping the floor. It’s time to go. Edie fell back asleep, so Simon carries her home.
At an intersection, while they’re waiting for the light to change, he catches Charlie looking at him—at him and the dog—with an expression Simon hasn’t seen before. And, sure, a man carrying a dog around like an infant isn’t something you see every day, but Charlie doesn’t look embarrassed to be seen with him. And if hehas a problem with Simon being an overly indulgent dog owner, he probably wouldn’t have flown that dog across the country, first class.
It’s more like he’s looking at Simon like he’s doing something much more wonderful than carrying his geriatric dog.
“Come on.” Charlie’s hand is on the small of Simon’s back, his eyes still on Simon’s face. “We have the walk signal.”
