Inexcusable by Chris Lynch Page A

much left on either plate but crumbs, snail trails of grease and butter, jelly daubs.
    â€œYou think I’m wild?” I asked.
    â€œKind of.”
    â€œBut you still like me.”
    She gave me something of a how-sad smile. You know, the one that comes with the sideways tilt of the head.
    â€œDo you still remember, in kindergarten? My joke?”
    Like it was yesterday.
    â€œNot sure I do, actually,” I said.
    â€œSure you do.” She started giggling. “My mother was walking us to school like she did, and it was very cold. I had on my big parka. Oh, come on, you do.”
    It was robin’s egg blue, the parka. With tawny flecked fake rabbit fur around the hood and cuffs.
    I sighed, like I was bothered. “I think I recall some distant memory of you getting me to look into your sleeve because you said your hand had gone missing.”
    Now she was laughing. She covered her mouth with both hands, but was pretty clearly audible anyway.
    â€œI’m so sorry, Keir,” she said, pulling off the miracle of sounding truly sorry and delirious with laughter at the same time.
    â€œWhat?” I said now, and had to laugh myself. “For punching me in the face? For taking advantage of my trusting nature?”
    I was only making it worse. She could hardly form words. “Yes,” she said, nodding frantically. “You were so sweet.”
    â€œNo, I wasn’t, I was just stupid.”
    â€œThat is not true,” she said, calming down and grabbing both my hands in hers. “And you never even tried to get me back.”
    â€œI think I was just afraid you would beat me up.”
    She looked up close and all the way in at me. “No, you weren’t,” she said. “You just didn’t have it in you. And it was right then that I started almost loving you.”
    It had to be possible for her to feel the thunder of my heartbeat through the contact of our hands. I pulled away, but she could probably still feel it through the floor.
    â€œLike you do now,” I said.
    â€œNow and always, as always,” she said warmly.
    Almost loved. To be almost loved. To be almost loved by Gigi Boudakian.
    What a wonder was that? What a horror was that? I was so proud ecstatic grateful angry I felt for that instant I knew what it was like to be fire.
    â€œYa,” I said, standing and very politely wiping the corners of my mouth with my yellow paper napkin, “well, I was very happy when your mother smacked you.”
    â€œWho are you kidding?” she said, standing across the table from me like a gunslinger. “She only did that when you started crying.”
    There was nothing left that the International House of Pancakes could do for us, so we left. The morning was still so beautiful, soft and dewy and warm, that we tried to finish what we started and walk all the way home. But that was just not practical, not possible, not a very good idea.
    The world was waking up, the spell was lifting, and we were coming down. Things were starting not to feel the way they felt before. Every step was heavier than all the earlier steps. We carried our shoes again, but the pavement was getting hotter, harder, grittier. Sweat stains were blooming under the arms of my shirt and were even trying to fight their way all the way through the mighty polyester rented jacket. Worst, worst of all, sweat dared to appearunder the arms of Gigi Boudakian where sweat should never ever be, creeping down her sides like poison ivy staining a lovely satin garden wall.
    We were getting so, so tired. The sun, which a while ago was a sunrise, was now my evil nemesis.
    â€œI’ll get a cab, huh?” I said.
    â€œI thought you would never ask.”
    What I would like right here is to tell you about how, in that cab, I didn’t try anything, not right in the closing moments of the greatest night, the finest memorable prom night, with the wondrous Gigi Boudakian. How I treated her with the