Chapter 100: A Feast
Karen's living room had the comfortable, specific quality of a space that had been designed by someone with genuine taste and maintained by someone who cared about it. The kind of room that was expensive without announcing it.
She and Gretchen were on the couch with takeout burgers and sodas — the specific combination of people who had access to a well-appointed kitchen and had chosen not to use it — and the television was on at low volume, providing atmosphere rather than content.
Gretchen had her legs tucked under her and the particular inward quality she had when she was thinking about something she wasn't going to bring up.
Karen finished her burger and looked at her.
"You should have come out," she said. Not accusatory — just the observation of someone who had arranged something and watched it not go the way she'd arranged it.
Gretchen looked at her hands.
"I know you wanted me to," she said. "And I appreciate that." She paused. "I just — I'm not going to do something like that with someone who isn't looking for it. It would have been — it would have been for the wrong reasons."
Karen looked at her.
"You like him," Karen said.
Gretchen's ears went pink in the specific, involuntary way of someone who has been named accurately.
"I find him — interesting," she said, with the careful precision of someone choosing words because the honest ones are too exposed. "Which is different. And it means I'm not going to arrange things. If something develops, it develops because it's real." She looked at her soda. "That matters to me."
Karen was quiet for a moment.
Then she said, simply: "Okay."
Gretchen looked at her. "Just okay?"
"Just okay," Karen said. "I'm not going to argue with that."
Something in Gretchen's posture released — a degree, barely visible, the specific easing of someone who had expected pushback and hadn't received it.
"Thank you," she said.
Karen ate a fry. "I noticed something this week," she said, in the easy pivot of someone who had been holding a second topic in reserve. "Regina's been — I don't know. Off. She keeps checking the mirror."
Gretchen looked at her steadily. "I've noticed."
"You think it's the drinks Cady's been bringing?"
"I think it might be," Gretchen said. She said it carefully — not enjoying it, not distancing herself from it either. Just naming it honestly. "She's been having one every day."
Karen looked at the wall for a moment.
"Is that—" she started.
"It's not harmful," Gretchen said. "I looked it up. It's just high-calorie. She's going to figure out the source eventually." She paused. "When she does, it's going to be a specific kind of conversation."
Karen absorbed this.
"Are you going to tell her?" Karen said.
Gretchen was quiet for three seconds.
"No," she said.
Karen nodded once, slowly. "Okay."
They sat with that for a moment.
"The thing with Mike at the cafeteria last week," Gretchen said. "The analysis I gave her."
"About Ashley's tray," Karen said.
"I've been thinking about why I did that," Gretchen said. She said it with the genuine self-examination she applied to things she was trying to understand about herself. "I don't think it was about helping Regina. I think it was about—" She stopped. "I've been doing what Regina needs for two years. And for the first time, I made an observation because I was interested in making it. Not because she asked me to."
Karen looked at her.
"That's different," Karen said.
"Yes," Gretchen said.
"That's actually very different," Karen said.
Gretchen looked at the television.
"I know," she said.
The restaurant George had chosen was a mid-range seafood place on the main commercial strip — the kind that had been there for twenty years and had the specific, well-maintained quality of a local institution that locals actually used rather than just recommended to visitors. He'd been wanting to try it since the spring and hadn't had a good enough occasion until now.
The occasion had arrived.
The hostess seated them at a round table near the window — George, Mary, Connie, Georgie, Sheldon, Missy, and Mike — and George took the menu with the specific, expansive energy of a man exercising a generosity he'd been working toward for a while.
"Order what you want," he said. "It's on me."
Mary looked at the menu.
Her expression did the specific thing it did when she was running numbers — the careful, practiced arithmetic of a woman who had been managing a household budget for eighteen years and couldn't turn it off even on special occasions.
She ordered the sirloin steak, which was the most reasonably priced item on the table.
Georgie went for the seafood risotto after clocking his mother's expression — a silent calculation, a silent revision, a quieter choice. He looked like he'd made peace with it.
Missy had no such calculations.
She had been looking at the menu for approximately forty-five seconds when she said, with the focused certainty of someone who had identified what they wanted and was committing: "The lobster."
She pointed at the top of the menu. The Boston lobster. Two and a half pounds, market price.
"Missy," Mary said.
"It's the special," Missy said, with the innocent confidence of someone whose father had said order what you want.
George had said order what you want.
George looked at Mary.
Mary looked at George.
George said: "Let her have the lobster."
Mary pressed her lips together and looked at her steak.
George ordered several more dishes — grilled salmon, a shrimp appetizer, a pasta for Sheldon who had been quietly reading the menu with the focused attention of someone approaching a nutritional decision — and a bottle of the house red.
"George," Mary said, quietly.
"We're here to enjoy ourselves," George said, equally quietly. "The next paycheck covers it. And after that, just the two of us somewhere nicer." He looked at her. "Deal?"
Mary looked at him.
"Deal," she said. She stopped pinching his knee under the table.
The food arrived in stages.
Sheldon's pasta first, which he assessed and found acceptable. Georgie's risotto, which he found unexpectedly good and was now slightly embarrassed about not ordering more. The salmon, which George served portions of to everyone who would take it.
And then the lobster.
The server set it in front of Missy with the specific care of someone presenting the table's centerpiece.
Missy looked at it.
The lobster was on its back with its head angled toward her, the two black eyes at the ends of its stalks pointed in her direction at the specific, fixed attention of something that had been a lobster and was no longer a lobster but still looked very much like one.
Missy made a sound.
"What's wrong?" George said, already turning.
"It's looking at me," Missy said.
The table looked at the lobster.
The lobster's eyes were, in fact, aimed directly at Missy.
"It's not looking at you," George said. "It can't look at anything. It's the lobster."
"It's looking at me," Missy said again, with the conviction of someone reporting an observable fact.
George had the expression of a man who had paid market price for a lobster and was now being required to negotiate its orientation. He moved to Missy's side, carefully turned the plate so the lobster's head faced the window, cracked the claw, extracted a clean portion of meat, and placed it on Missy's plate.
"There," he said.
Missy looked at the portion on her plate. She picked up her fork. She put it in her mouth.
Her face changed.
"This is really good," she said.
"I know it is," George said, returning to his seat.
Missy looked at the portion on her plate. Then she looked at Mike.
She picked up the fork, speared the other half of the portion, and put it on Mike's plate with the specific, generous authority of someone making a gift.
"Try it," she said. "It's good."
George watched this happen with the specific expression of a father watching his daughter redirect the expensive thing he just prepared for her to someone else.
Mike divided what Missy had given him in half. He ate his portion. He put the other half back on Missy's plate.
"You eat the other half," he said. "It's yours."
Missy ate it.
"Next time," she said, "I want to come back here."
"Next time," Mike said, "I'll treat."
Missy pointed at him. "That's a promise."
"That's a promise," he said.
George watched this exchange and decided that the lobster had been worth it.
The meal ran almost an hour, which was the right length for a family dinner that had something to celebrate and was doing it properly. The food was good — genuinely good, the kind of specific, quality-at-this-price-range experience that produced the particular satisfaction of a good call validated.
George ordered a second glass of wine.
Mary accepted a top-up.
Connie had been talking to Georgie about the game for the last twenty minutes — not commiserating, just talking through what had happened with the interest of someone who found the thing genuinely interesting — and Georgie had been talking back with the specific animated quality he had when he was discussing something he cared about and the person he was talking to was actually listening.
Sheldon was working through a proof in a small notebook he had apparently produced from his jacket pocket, which nobody commented on because it was Sheldon.
Missy was telling Mike about her plan for the upcoming Saturday, which involved the nail place on Fifth Street and a specific color she'd been thinking about since the Connie visit and a horse she'd seen in a field on the drive to the Houston tech expo that she felt had looked at her in a meaningful way.
Mike listened.
He asked a question about the horse.
Missy looked at him with the specific brightness of someone who had expected to be indulged and had instead been taken seriously.
She told him about the horse.
On the walk back to Meadowlark Lane, the September evening had the specific warmth of a Texas night that had decided to be gentle about it — not the pressing heat of August anymore, just the comfortable temperature of a season changing at its own pace.
George and Mary were ahead of the group, and at some point — Mike noticed it but didn't mark it, just filed it in the way he filed things that were good — Mary took George's arm.
Not dramatically. Just took it, the way people took the arm of someone they'd been with for a long time and were glad to be walking next to.
George put his hand over hers.
They kept walking.
Behind them, Connie was talking to Sheldon about something mathematical that Sheldon had apparently raised between the dessert and the check. Georgie had his hands in his pockets and the comfortable, unhurried pace of someone who had eaten well and had nowhere particular to be.
Missy was beside Mike, still talking about the horse.
Meadowlark Lane appeared ahead, familiar and specific, the houses lit from inside the way they were when a street knew the people who lived on it.
"Do you think the horse remembered me?" Missy said.
Mike looked at her.
"Horses remember people," he said. "It's documented."
Missy considered this with the gravity it deserved.
"Then it remembered me," she decided.
"Probably," Mike said.
She took that as settled and walked the rest of the way home in the satisfied, quiet way of someone who has resolved an important question.
The Coopers filed through their front door, and Connie crossed the street to hers, and Meadowlark Lane settled back into the comfortable night sounds of a residential street that had had a full day and was done with it.
Mike stood on the porch for a moment before going in.
He looked at the street. At the lit windows. At the sky, which was very clear and very full of stars in the way Texas skies were when they made an effort.
A hundred chapters of a story, he thought, for no particular reason.
He went inside.
(End of Chapter 100)
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