“That, or maybe donuts. As long as you give the oil enough time to cool down before you go and make your peace offering.” He gave a casual shrug. Given Marcus had stated a, sensible though it was, aversion to fire, hot oil was just a step below and plenty unpleasant. Dante knew this. He’d had the bacon grease pop and hit his exposed skin. Same general idea. “I don’t know a lot about baked goods, I’m just trying to think of things that are softer instead of harder. Maybe just give her cash instead.” He stated in a deadpan manner. Although that could cause a papercut. Ouch. “Jam Jar’s pretty good, yeah.” Maybe not quite up there if he was looking for something bent more towards his ethnic tastes, but beyond serviceable nonetheless.
“I get it,” he said without any hint of offense taken. “This place is so huge, it takes a special kind of person to really know the tiny details like which neighborhood is which. Must be hell for delivery people.” One of the reasons why he made it a point to tip as well as he felt he could in the moment, without being excessive, was because Dante had been there. Empathy was a strong motivator. “Still, it’s impressive that you’ve managed to learn some street names even though you haven’t been here that long.” A trait that was necessary to survive in any big city, at least in Dante’s mind.
“Moms are like that, right?” And he said it without any hint of the reality that, for Dante, his own mom didn’t do any of that. She didn’t try to guilt him into staying. If anything, Marisa was probably a little bit bitter that her son was leaving the family home before she got a chance to do the same. He knew at the time that saying goodbye to his grandparents, even if the goodbye was quite literally an ‘I’ll still be here all the time’ kind of goodbye instead of one that implied he would be back for holidays and big family events, but Marisa’s indifference towards his relocation stung Dante deeper than he would have cared to admit. Especially since he, ultimately, wasn’t surprised by the passive approach his mother gave. Just disappointed. Maybe in himself. Maybe in her. Jury was still out on that. Seemed to be the default when it came to the tangled weave of mother and son.
He made a sound that expressed his affirmation to Marcus’s comment. “The silence is maddening. Or it can be. I need to hear something, even if it’s just the sound of a few cars driving down the street in the middle of the night. That’s my white noise, I guess.” No whale cries, or sound of a babbling brook. Nope. Stuff that was mechanical. Manmade. Those were the comforting sounds to him. Yeah, that checked out.
Dante was grateful to know that he hadn’t yet crossed a line during his conversation with his neighbor. It had happened a few times in life. And while there weren’t many instances where that line was crossed out of malice during his entire lifetime, it was still uncomfortable enough to give Dante pause when he felt like he might have been veering towards that line. Still, he had no intention of drilling into Marcus, despite the other man’s statement about not being able to strike that particular nerve. There were some similarities between the two, at least as far as Dante observed. That, however, wasn’t one of them. Thankfully, most of his triggers were private and deeply internal. Made it easy for just about everyone… except him, of course. But Dante tended to make things harder on himself by default. Second nature and all that.
“My mouth can get me into some situations, too…” he agreed, because it could. And it had. “As for my job, I’m a mechanical engineer for a company downtown. Got my degree in mechanical engineering over at CSULA, so the job is my first ‘big boy’ job that I’ve had.” Dante didn’t want to belittle the jobs that he had done before he got his current one, though. Waiting tables, washing dishes, cleaning the bathrooms at the gym, what a fun one that was, they all helped shape him. And for that, he was grateful. “It’s a lot of fun. And I’m very grateful to be one of those people who get a degree and actually get to use the degree in what they do professionally.” Way less people had that option than one would think. Truly unfortunate. “Your work part of the reason you moved over here?”