Stacks of mail.
A laundry basket.
An empty Nike box.
“There’s a table under here?” I tease. It’s Friday. Despite the fact that we haven’t spoken much this week, I’m taking the liberty of lightening things up a little.
I place the stack of files on a chair and begin clearing off the table, though when I glance around his apartment, I’m not exactly sure what to do with any of this. There doesn’t seem to be order to anything. I wouldn’t go so far as to call him a slob, but it seems he just sort of … puts things wherever.
My skin crawls, but I force the sensation away as best I can.
I also force away the overwhelming urge to organize every square inch of this place, starting with the pile of shoes by the front door.
How can anyone live like this?
I sit the items neatly on one of the dining chairs, piling and stacking them so they don’t fall over.
“All right. I guess I’ll see you Monday?” I ask, slinging my bag over my shoulder.
“It’s only two o’clock,” he says. “You’ve got three more hours on the clock yet.”
“Right. I was going to go back to the office,” I speak slowly and point in the general direction of north.
“It’ll take you a half hour just to get back. Makes more sense if you stay here,” he says. “I could use help going over next year’s marketing presentation.”
He has a point. It’d take me a half hour to walk back to work, and Rush’s place isn’t all that far from here. It’d be more convenient for me to stay. I guess.
“Sure,” I say, taking a seat and hanging my bag on the back of my chair.
Calder sits beside me, wasting no time poring over files of printed presentations. Marketing wants to increase their ad spend by 35% for the next fiscal year, but they have to support that with data and projections galore.
I suppose anyone could make a case for anything if they tried hard enough.
His nostrils flare and his breathing grows louder every few minutes, and sometimes when I glance up to steal a peek, I spot the indentation above his jaw flexing.
“You okay?” I ask, daring to step outside the lines we drew in the sand this week.
“What?” Our eyes meet and he’s practically scowling, though I’m not sure he realizes it.
“You seem, I don’t know, upset about something.”
“How would you know what I look like when I’m upset?” he asks.
“Never mind,” I say, convincing myself to quit while I’m ahead. I reach for another file, aimlessly flipping through it. I’m too distracted to read right now, my mind too intent on figuring out what’s eating Gilbert Grape over here. “Forget I asked.”
I don’t expect reverse psychology to do the trick, but it couldn’t hurt to try.
Calder flips to the next page of the marketing presentation, and I catch his jaw doing that thing again where it flexes. His fist is balled and pressed against the side of his face. He looks like he’s reading, but I don’t think he actually is.
“Sorry.” He exhales, closing the folder and leaning back in his chair. “My father said something today and it got under my skin. You’re free to go. I don’t think I’m going to get much done this afternoon.”
I close my folder and stack it on top of his, aligning the edges. “Families are complicated, aren’t they?”
He sniffs. “This goes beyond anything you could even begin to comprehend, Keane.”
Rising, I take my bag off the seat back and roll my eyes. “How would you know that? Huh, Calder? How would you know that?”
“Are your parents still married?”
“What? What does that have to do with anything?”
“Just answer it. Yes or no.”
“Yes, but—”
“—did your father ever try to kill your mother?” he interrupts me with a question that sinks my heart deep into my chest. “Does your father love money more than he loves anything else in the world?”
I don’t answer.
“I’ll take that as a no,” he says. “And so, yeah, you couldn’t possibly begin to understand how complicated things are between us.”
“I don’t have to understand it to sympathize,” I say. “And it’s not a competition. You don’t get a prize for having it worse than someone else.”
“No fucking shit.”
“My parents forgot to call me on my birthday last year because they were high as fucking kites, running around in body paint at Coachella,” I say. “My father once went on an acid trip for a week. He saw snakes everywhere. My mom had to keep him locked in the bathroom like a wild animal until he came down from it. And then there was that one year my parents wanted to drive around the country in an Airstream so they could give me a ‘real education.’ Thank God my brother put a stop to that. We never had groceries in the house growing up. I mean, sometimes we did, but mostly we didn’t. I can’t tell you how many marshmallow-saltine dinners I ate. And as far as laundry? Do you know what it’s like to be eight years old, washing your clothes in the bathtub because the kids at school won’t play with you anymore because you ‘smell funny?’ And I don’t think I had a pair of shoes that matched until I was nine. Do you know I used to envy the kids with curfews? It meant their parents gave a damn.”