I Thought You Were Dead by Pete Nelson Page A

on and on and fill up your whole tape, and I won’t, I swear, but right now I wish you were home. If I was there, I’d get
Casablanca
from Blockbuster and put it in the VCR because you said you’ve never seen it, and then I’d rub your feet while we watched it. Tell the truth, it’s a little weird to be sitting on this bed, having fantasies about you. I don’t know if I told you this, but all the prepubescent fantasies I had as a kid generally involved situations where girls were forced to sleep with me, where we’d be trapped in cave-ins or shipwrecked on a deserted island or stranded by a plane crash at the North Pole and I’d rescue these various damsels in distress and none of them ever voluntarily offered their affections. They only kissed me because I saved their lives and because I was literally the last man on earth. Doesn’t say much for my self-esteem, does it? Anyway, we can talk further about this, but I’d really hate to ramble on and fill up your entire tape.”
    He paused, counting slowly to five.
    â€œGosh. It’s really cold here. Is it cold there? It’s cold here. Howmuch snow did you get? I’m really sorry to just ramble on and on like this. Seriously. Anyway, I shouldn’t ramble on and on and on, but I wanted to tell you I miss you and I wish I could talk to you. To tell the truth, part of me hopes my dad gets better so that someday he can meet you, because it would make me sad to think he never did …”
    He caught himself. He’d broken an unwritten rule, a tacit clause in their agreement to live fully in the present moment and not talk too much about the future. He needed to put the cat back in the toothpaste, as his mother, prone to malapropisms, might have said.
    â€œOkay, now I definitely think I shouldn’t have said that. Don’t get me wrong, I would love for you to meet my family, obviously, someday — not right now, necessarily — and I’d obviously love to meet your mom and all that, but we’re probably not at that point yet in our relationship where we can start talking about meeting each other’s families … not that there’s any reason …”
    â€œBeeeeeeeeeeep.”
    â€œSonofabitch!” he said, slamming the phone back in its cradle.
    It had been a long day. He hoped he would be back on his game tomorrow.

4
King Carl
    T hat’s
what you fought about?” Stella said. “Paul — a
fortune cookie
?”
    â€œThere was a little more to it than that,” Paul said.
    â€œNot even that he ate your cookie,” Stella continued. “I can understand getting mad at somebody if they ate your cookie. You’re telling me he was trying to get
you
to eat your
own
cookie — do I have that right? I’m just trying to understand this.”
    â€œHe’s controlling,” Paul said. “He thinks he knows what’s best for everybody. I suppose he means well, but it’s so irritating.”
    When Paul got back to Northampton, he’d taken the trash out, watered his plants, and then dumped the contents of his suitcase into the laundry basket. He’d played the messages on his answering machine, the last of which was from Tamsen, saying she wanted to drive up to see him that night. He’d called her back, got her machine, told her he was heading to the Bay State for a beer later and to find him there, and then drove to collect Stella, who’d been staying with her friend Chester, the retriever with the heart of gold and the brain of stone.
    Her first question, once he’d lifted her into the car, was how his father was feeling. He told her what he knew. He’d visited the hospital every day during his stay, sometimes with his mother, sometimes with his sister or alone, reading out loud to his father from the newspaper and adopting a disparaging tone when mentioning those goddamn Democrats, which he assumed his fatherwould find