“Wow, Jacksonville.”
He says it and I watch the calculations happen on his face, the same look that was on Tex’s face this morning. The distance and the time. What it means for the visits.
“How far is Jacksonville from Panama City?” he asks.
“About four and a half hours.”
“When are you being transferred?”
“Couple of days. As soon as they confirm a bed and work it out with my insurance.”
“How long will you be there?”
“Six to eight weeks. Depends on how I progress.”
“Okay. What’s the facility like? Is it decent? Have you looked it up? I’m looking it up right now.”
He pulls out his phone and his thumbs are moving before I can respond. He’s Googling and scrolling through results. I can see the furrow between his eyebrows deepening.
“This place looks legitimate,” he says, still scrolling. “Top rated. Specialized spinal cord program. Good reviews from patients.”
“That’s what the doctor said.”
“You need the best. If this is it, then this is where you go.” He’s nodding, talking himself into it, the same way I imagine he talks brides through last-minute changes. Then his thumbs keep moving and I see his screen shift to a map and I know what he’s doing before he says it.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Checking the drive time from Miami to Jacksonville.”
My heart speeds up. He just heard that I’m moving further away and his first move wasn’t to pull back. His first move was to figure out how to get to me.
“Five hours, forty minutes,” he says, looking up from his phone. “From my place in Miami to Jacksonville. That’s not bad. That’s very doable. I’ve driven further for rock concerts.”
“Benji, you’re not driving six hours to visit me in rehab.”
“I drove two hours to visit you in a hospital every day. Six hours is just two more hours plus two more hours. And then the reverse. Simple.”
“That’s not how time works,” I tell him.
“It’s how my time works. My time is creative and I make it work for me.”
He’s smiling but I can see he’s worried.
“The wedding is almost here,” I say. “Your friend Dante is coming. After the wedding you’re going back to Miami. You can’t keep running the road like you’re doing. You’re wearing out your car and you.”
“We don’t have to figure out every piece of this tonight, Mickey. Tonight we have Tex’s food and a semi-glaze emergency that I still need to tell you about in full. Because the second act of the pot saga involves a voicemail that she left me at eleven-thirty this morning that was four minutes long and included the phrase ‘artisanal clay treatment,’ which I’m pretty sure she made up on the spot.”
He’s talking faster. I let him because he’s right that we don’t need to solve everything tonight. And because the Kacie saga is genuinely entertaining and having him in this chair talking about artisanal clay treatments is better than not having him here at all. And because I’m watching the chain at his throat shift against his skin when he leans forward. I wantthese forty-five minutes to be exactly like this. As long as he’s talking, I have a legitimate reason to stare at him.
He tells me about Kacie’s voicemail. Except he doesn’t just tell me. He performs it. He sits up straight in the chair and holds his phone to his ear like a prop and does Kacie’s voice, a sweet, syrupy Panhandle drawl, and the room becomes a one-man show.
“‘Hey Benji, it’s Kacie from Beach Blooms. So I just wanted to follow up on our conversation about the pots because I’ve been thinking about it and I talked to my supplier and he mentioned something called an artisanal clay treatment which is sort of like a glaze but not a glaze, it’s more like a sealant that gives the pot a natural sheen without looking, you know, glazed, so it’s like the best of both worlds?’”
He pauses and looks at me. “Notice the question mark in her voice. She’s asking me if her own idea is good. She doesn’t know. She’s making it up as she goes. It gets worse.”
He puts the phone back to his ear. “‘And I was also thinking, and this is just a thought, but what if we did a light wash on the outside? Not a glaze, just a wash. Like a watercolor effect? The clay still looks raw but it has, like, a glow? I saw it on Pinterest and it was really beautiful, Benji, and I think it would really complement the wildflower aesthetic we’re going for? Anyway, call me back when you get a chance. Have a blessed day!’”
He drops the phone from his ear. “She Pinterested it, Mickey. She Pinterested my luxury beach front wedding. She’s scrolling Pinterest for clay pot ideas instead of filling the order I gave her two weeks ago. And she blessed-dayed me at theend. As if that makes up for the fact she’s fucking lying to me and has been the whole time.”
