f (foundling) wrote in rooms, @ 2015-07-22 19:39:00 |
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He was supposedta be on his best behavior, blending into expectations, being good. He was supposed to keep his hands to himself, follow Sam's lead in (English-only) conversation, and include Lou. Those were his direct orders and he intended to follow them. Cris was optimistic about it, huh? 'Bout the whole dinner idea. It was low-key. He'd get to see Sam without some threat looming or some disaster dry as sand in bones lingering, some ache like a disease, some sadness a pearling mauve beneath O'Keeffe eyes—and he wanted that. (Among other things, but those were excluded 'causea the whole behaving bit.) He'd get to see her, she'd get to see Lou, and it'd be good. For Lou especially, he hoped. The gringo needed something, some pep, some hope to hold onto, unmoored as he was, so he could see, it wasn't all as bad as he thought. And if that meant playing nice and non-handsy, Cris was willing to do it, for Sam and Lou both. They could all use one night off. So he got a sitter for Teresita, who was too enamored with Rodin to care she was missing out on pizza—and who was of course promised pizza all the same—, and he made the 20 minute drive to Riverdale, to Dino's. Riverdale was affluent, huh? Affluent and majority white, and Cris thought that'd help. It'd feel more like home or something. And Dino's was good. It'd been around for thirty years, so they had to be doing something right.—It was a small place, typical New York, huh? Like someplace you'd see in a TV show—maybe onea the cop ones—, some loose interpretationa Italian paradise a mural on the wall, forimca tabletops, neon tubed and piped into letters blinking a branded 'PIZZA,' a couple people stooped into thick-molded plastic seats, sodas sweating in the summer heat by their elbows. There were some old papers on the loose giving the whole place a kinda aged look, but it was clean. Clean enough Lou would like it, Cris thought, and maybe cheap enough looking he wouldn't think they were catering to him as much as they were. The guy would think it was some kinda insult, like they were taking pity on him and that was the worst thing in the world, when it wasn't like that. Everybody needed a good night. And while Cris had Sam to lean on, Lou didn't have nobody. Now, Cris could try all he wanted to try and be the support the other guy needed, but he knew it wasn't that simple, not with Lou's sister strung between them. So maybe if they daisy-chained, huh? Cris and Sam. And if it gave him some glimpse that they weren't toxic for each other, like the guy liked to bring up in his fatalistic 'if/or' sentences—the ones he didn't think were as insulting as they were ('if things don't work out…, though I hope they do,' y 'or maybe it's just not meant to be!')—if this helped get that sour aftertaste outta Lou's brainpan, even better. Cris propped the door to the place. Inconspicuous. Wadded paper faded, stuffed beneath scratched metal frame, dragging on cement and not quite closing. It was summer, but as evening wore on, it cooled, sun sallowing. He'd tried to behave with his clothes too, huh? No baseball caps or nothing. No track pants or wifebeaters. Respectable, but no tie. Just a leather jacket, a thin sweater, jeans, and sneakers. He shaved too, dauba cologne in the hollowsa his throat, and he thought he was doing good, huh? Like I said, he was optimistic. It showed in the loose relaxationa muscles.—The jacket had already made its way to the backa his chair, one up near the counter (and displaya pies), where the guy sat wide-kneed, his phone face-up on chipboard and his attention kinda floating around the fluorescent room, moving between the clustered customers like a bee drunk on nectar trying to pick a flower. He ran a hand over his chin. He waited. And he was almost patient, huh? Almost. He had a packeta cloves and he flicked it back and forth between his palms. |