Chang-Rae Lee - Aloft

"Maybe. You could sue her, over her treatment decisions. Or maybe I should do that. You could just threaten to leave her."

"She'd know I was just bluffing," he said. He flipped the pancakes, one by one by one. "Or else she might turn around and leave me."

I didn't answer, because it occurred to me that Theresa could very well do that, if only temporarily. When she was a teenager she only had one boyfriend (that I can remember), a lanky, melancholic, semi-creepy kid who wore a black scarf no matter the weather and wrote science-fictional love poems to her, a few of which I found in the pockets of my old letterman's jacket (which she liked to wear with the sleeves pushed up); for whatever inexplicable reason she was madly in love with the kid, as she'd spontaneously burst into tears at the mere mention of him, regularly enough that before I could even say anything she herself began refusing his phone calls, and because of nothing he did, which made her even more miserable for a while (and him as well, the poor goth neuralgic), but soon enough she'd cured herself of the crying jags and they went steady until she dropped him, she told me later, because she was really tiring of

"his work."

"You know what the doctor finally said to me when I talked to her on Friday?" Paul said, handing me my plate of flapjacks, syrup on the side. "Theresa and I had a bad little fight, so after she went to take a nap, I called. They wouldn't put me through but I pretty much freaked out and the doctor came on. So I gave her a whole speech about responsibility and the benefits of shared knowledge but it was like she didn't hear a word."

"Some lady doctors, you know. ."

"Well, whatever it was. She didn't have time to talk, so she just said that perhaps I ought to consider getting us to couples therapy, if our 'communication levels' weren't where they should be."

"What a superbitch! I hope you told her off."

"Unfortunately, I did. I told her she could go fuck herself."

"Really?"

"I shouldn't have."

"Good for you!"

"It was stupid. She's our doctor. But you know what, Jerry?

She might be right, about our communication."

"What the hell are you talking about? All you two do is talk."

"Yeah," he said wearily, slumping down in the chair. He wasn't eating yet. "But maybe not in any way that counts."

"Let's not get ridiculous here. It's not a great situation, by any stretch. That, and you're someone who's definitely got a reserve of patience and faith in people that's larger than the next guy's."

"You don't have to sugarcoat it, Jerry. I know I'm a pushover."

"You're not!" I told him, firmly holding on to his arm, not letting go until I'd made my point. "You love her, and love her dearly. As her father, I couldn't be happier about how obvious that is. It's all I'd ever worried about for her if you know what mean. Theresa isn't the easiest gig around. Okay, okay, so maybe you could push back a little more, because people like Theresa respond to shoves more than nudges. But if you really can't it's only because you think the world of her. And maybe I'm not the guy who deserves to say it, but there's nothing else of any worth."

Paul then said, "I'm scared to death here, Jerry. You know, I'd give her up now if someone promised me that nothing would happen to her."

"Nothing will. And you're never going to give her up. Just keep busy, like you're doing."

"Me? I can't do anything."

"Is the writing still on pause?"

"It's full stop. I haven't even thought about one line of poetry since the diagnosis, much less written one. I've officially quit the novel I was already not writing. You'd think I'd have all this determination and energy left over to focus on this thing, but I seem to have less and less every minute."

"You're sure cooking a helluva lot."

"Theresa seems like she wants to eat, so it's easy."

He smiled, but then he looked stricken again. He got up.

"You want more?"

"Maybe just one, if you're making some anyway."

"It's no problem."

Paul clicked on the burner, and just then Theresa came padding into the kitchen in her bare feet, wearing summer weight men's pajamas, short-sleeve Black Watch plaid. She crooned, "Morning, Jerry."

"Morning, dear."

She kissed Paul on the mouth, goosing him slightly in the butt. The tired pinch of his eyes seemed to soften. "Those for me?"

"Yeah," I said.

Paul asked, "How many you want?"

"Just two, today. I'm not feeling so hungry."

"I'll make you an extra, just in case."

"Okay. "

And soon enough we were back to our customary places at the kitchen table, Paul and I sitting on either side of Theresa, who's generally been settling down in yours truly's place at the head since they've moved in, the new array of which doesn't feel in the least awkward or wrong. Maybe it's even right, as Paul and I seem ever balanced in our need to glance over constantly at her, to keep a tab on how it's all going down, whether she's eating a little less today than yesterday, which in fact appears the case, though the gleaned quantities must be minus-cule, in our inexact but somehow confident science.

I'm definitely on the warpath, eating everything that comes my way. Unbidden, Paul packs me a lunch on the days I come into the office here at Parade. Yesterday it was some vegetarian maki rolls, today a panini with prosciutto and mozzarella di bu-fala and a tub of roasted sweet peppers sprinkled with extra-virgin olive oil and fresh basil.

Miles Quintana now enters, carrying his own lunch of two bulging fast-food bags, and shoots me a "S' up, bro?"

I S'-up-bro him back. He's a little early for his 3 P.M. to 9 P.M.

shift (I work until 5), and as is customary he'll eat one of his meals now before getting into the routine of checking fares for his clients and greeting the walk-in browsers and booking impulse vacations for the fed-up after-work crowd, then heat up the other bag later in the office microwave, for a quick break/

snack. Being technically still a teenager Miles requires the triple-meat cheeseburger with ultrasized fries and chocolate milkshake value meal, 4000 calories of pure pleasure and doom, though of course none of it appears to be slowing him now, as he's maybe 150 pounds fully optioned in his slick Friday night dancing slacks and wine-red silk shirt and black-and-white bowling-style shoes. At the close of the evening his ever-silent baby-faced buddy Hector will pick him up in his low-riding hi-rev tuner Honda waxed to a mirror finish, and then they'll streak up and down the Northern Parkway dusting bored family men in their factory Audis and Saabs and afterward hit some under-twenty-one club, where they'll pick up unruly rich girls from Roslyn and Manhasset and ferry them to Manhattan for a couple of hours of real drinking and dancing before each taking (if the girls are willing, which they always are) a half-night room at a truckers' motel on the Jersey side of the Lincoln Tunnel. They'll stay until dawn and then eat steak and eggs at a diner before cruising back through the conquered city, to drop the girls off at their parked car before heading back for their mothers' row houses in Spanish Huntington Station.

Not a bad life, if you ask me, and once Miles even suggested tag along sometime, just for the hell of it, but I knew better than to take him up on it, as my presence would certainly obliterate his evening and probably our good working friendship, which depends in part on our mutual view that the other is somehow exotic and thus a little bit glorious.

There's no one here but us (it's slow in the summer, especially in the afternoons, and Chuck the manager is at a travel seminar in Mineola), and so Miles pulls up a chair to my desk and we eat together. I naturally filch a few sticks from his mountain of fries.