Thompson sets down his taco. Wipes his hands. “All right. What’s going on with you two?”
Berger looks up. “Excuse me?”
“You.” Thompson points at Berger. “Haven’t rated a restaurant in two weeks. Haven’t complained about the coffee since before break. Haven’t given anybody an unsolicited opinion since Tuesday, which might be a first in recorded history.” The finger swings to me. “And you haven’t said more than six words at a time since last week. You didn’t sing in the hallway once today. I counted.”
“I don’t sing in the hallway,” I say.
“You absolutely sing in the hallway. Every day. Multiple times. You sang a stupid Barenaked Ladies song on the Columbus road trip so loud Coach Bodie heard it from the front row seat.”
Hájek nods. “Yes. I see this too. Both of you are different.”
Berger’s jaw tightens. His hand is on the table, flat, fingers pressed into the wood. “I’m fine, Thompson.”
“You’re not fine. And he’s not fine.” Thompson looks between us. “I don’t need to know what’s going on. I’m not asking for details. I’m telling you that the two loudest guys in that building have been walking around like someone died and the rest of us can see it.”
The table holds the words. The restaurant noise fills the space around us, a table of six near the window laughing, the kitchen calling orders in Spanish. Berger’s taco is on his plate getting cold. I’m looking at my hands and thinking about Parker at home on the couch right now, one paw on the empty half, purring into the quiet of an apartment that used to be full of music and bolognese and a man who lined his shoes by the door.
Berger stands up. His chair scrapes against the tile and the sound cuts through everything. He looks at Thompson. Then at me. His face is closed in a way I have never seen from him, sealed, every door shut, the man who narrates the world deciding the world can wait.
“This is bullshit.”
He picks up his jacket from the back of the chair. Walks to the door. Pushes through it. The glass swings shut and the orange walls hold the space where the loudest voice on the team should be.
Thompson watches the door. Hájek watches Thompson. I watch the empty chair.
“I’ll check on him,” I say.
“Not tonight.” Thompson shakes his head. “Give him tonight. Tomorrow.”
Hájek looks at me across the table with the careful attention of a man who is always reading the room in his second language. “You are also not fine, Marchetti.”
“I know.”
He nods. Accepts it honestly and without pushing. He picks up his taco. Thompson picks up his. I pick up mine. We eat in the space Berger left, three men at a table with four chairs, the chips getting cold and the restaurant still loud around us. The taco is good, the char on the al pastor exactly right, and Berger would have known how good, and he would have told us, and we would have argued about his rating, and the table would have been full.
?
Burn It Down #3
Marchetti
[photo]
THIS WAS PREMEDITATED
2 AM. the crash woke me up. she was sitting in the wreckage with her ears forward. POSING. she destroyed my shoe rack and then she SAT ON IT
Thompson
that’s a lot of shoes Marchetti
Marchetti
it was a three-tier rack Thompson. three tiers. she took out all three. structural collapse. total loss. third time she's done this
Mueller
was the rack itself structurally sound?
