Teddy Wayne - Kapitoil

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” he said. “What time and where?”

“I do not require transportation,” I said. “I would merely like to give thanks to you for the previous rides.”

He paused for a few seconds, then laughed. “You’re welcome. It’s my job.”

“Also, I would like to wish you and your family a happy Thanksgiving.” He reciprocated, and I asked, “Are you having a large Thanksgiving dinner?”

“Just having a few friends and relatives over, nothing too fancy,” he said.

“That sounds enjoyable.”

There was another pause, and he said, “You?”

“I do not have any current plans,” I said.

I could hear Barron intake his breath, and then he said, “Well, shit, like I said, it’s nothing fancy, but you’re welcome to come over here.”

“I could not infringe on your hospitality.”

“I wouldn’t have invited you if it was an infringement,” he said.

“Then I accept your offer, and I will bring some food with me as well.” He gave me his contact information. “Mr. Wright, may I infringe on your hospitality and invite someone else?”

He laughed again. Barron created high pressure when he didn’t speak, but when he laughed he depressurized the environment. He said why the hell not as long as I called him Barron and not Mr. Wright.

I called Rebecca, who picked up on the second ring. When I invited her to Barron’s, she said, “You don’t have to do that just because you feel sorry for me.”

“It is all right,” I said. “I was invited just because he felt sorry for me.”

She laughed and accepted, and I hypothesized that she and Barron would partner well because they were the only two people in the U.S. who thought I had a sense of humor.

On Thanksgiving I cooked hareis. It is my preferred meal to cook because it is like writing a complex program: It takes a long time to produce such fragile meat, you can innovate with trial-and-error experiments with different spices (e.g., I use more cinnamon than most cooks do), and removing the bones at the end is even parallel to debugging. Then you have a full meal made from several ingredients that would not be independently edible, minus the lamb and rice, just as a program combines several functions that have less value when solitary.

I also blended a complex juice of bananas, strawberries, peaches, and kiwis, which are independently edible but preferable in collaboration.

Rebecca and I planned to meet at Barron’s home in Jackson Heights, which I read was the most diverse area in the world. The subway was above the ground in Queens, and I tried counting the number of Spanish and Indian restaurants, but even I couldn’t do it. I also saw very few stores with names I recognized. Before I came to New York I expected to see this class of neighborhood more, but I haven’t found it in Manhattan.

Although I found this neighborhood intriguing, all the garbage on the streets suddenly made me wish I was in Connecticut with Mr. Schrub and his family and around trees and lawns and spacious houses.

I found a small brick house in a row of similar houses and rang the front door. A female with short black hair answered. She was Japanese.

I reviewed the number above the door. “I apologize,” I said. “I think I have the incorrect home.”

“For whom are you looking?” she asked.

“Is this the house of Barron Wright?”

“The house of Barron Wright and Cynthia Oharu, yes. Barron’s my husband.” She smiled, and I felt foolish for my original statement. “Karim, right? Please come in. And would you mind taking off your shoes?”

I said that was often the custom where I was from as well. She asked for the location, and I told her, and she made me guarantee to tell her more about Qatar later. Then she said my friend was waiting for me.

The living room had pictures on the walls of Barron and Cynthia and their daughter. Over a dozen adults and several children stood or sat on the two couches and multiple chairs. Everyone was black or Latin American, minus Cynthia, Rebecca, two white couples, and me.

Rebecca was eating and talking on one of the couches with another female. She told me to sit with them and introduced me. She introduced me to the people near us. She wasn’t a networker in the office, but she was more skilled here, similar to how she was at her own party, although that was understandable because the guests there were her friends.

There was a table near the kitchen with food on top of it, like at the Yankees game, including the hareis, but all the guests served themselves, so I did the same. The food was not the Thanksgiving food I previously read about, which slightly disappointed me, but there were fish and vegetable pies and dishes I believe were Latin American.

Cynthia made everyone laugh and transferred between guests frequently. She reminded me slightly of my mother, who was also a robust host. I briefly considered asking Jefferson later if he wanted to meet her, but his interest in Japan was not 100 % positive, and for him to meet Cynthia merely because she was Japanese was parallel to when I thought it wasn’t Barron’s house also because she was Japanese.

Barron was more like my father. He talked to a few of the guests at the party but remained in his seat, except at one point when he tickled his daughter, Michelle, which amused me, although of course I was not the target of the tickling. When I said hello to him, he shook my hand and thanked me for coming. This was more like my father when I was much younger. I don’t remember the last time we had a party in our apartment.

I said, “I would like to thanks-give to you and your family for inviting me.”

Barron’s brother was next to him. “Thanks-give?” he asked as he laughed at me.

Barron turned to him with a look I had never seen on his face. “Shut the hell up,” he said quietly. Then he said to me, “That suit still looks sharp on you,” and I thanked him, but he was incorrect, as it was in fact a different suit from the one I wore in the car, although he was correct in that it did look sexy on me. I felt enhanced until I saw his gray sweater had a small hole under the shoulder.

Several people enjoyed the hareis, and although the other children drank soda instead, Michelle repeatedly requested more of my juice.

I didn’t talk with Rebecca because Cynthia asked me much about Qatar and I also talked to a female social worker named Ana, who was originally from the Dominican Republic and who sometimes partnered with Cynthia’s law firm. She asked me, “Have you had any trouble assimil — have you had any trouble adjusting to life here?”

I said, “I have had some difficulties assimilating and acclimating, but I am not having a very hard time dealing.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply you didn’t know that word,” she said.

“No harm, no foul,” I said. “I did know it, but I enjoy learning new words.”

Right after I said that, Cynthia said we should all play a game called Taboo. She explained the rules, which require a person to provide clues for his teammates to guess a specific word or phrase, but the person cannot state five other words, e.g., if the word is “baseball,” you cannot say: “sport,” “game,” “pastime,” “hitter,” or “pitcher.”

I would be very poor at this game, because I didn’t even know the word “pastime,” and if I didn’t know the censored words then I wouldn’t know the non-censored words either, and I would humiliate myself in front of everyone and Rebecca. So when Cynthia said we had an odd number of adults, I said I would not play. Rebecca tried to make me partner on her team, but I said I preferred to play with the children.

As the adults set up the game, I asked the children, “Who wants to play a game?”