Out to Lunch by Stacey Ballis

eating it before going back in for a second piece of kibble. It takes her the better part of thirty minutes to finish her bowl. I’m sure if she had thumbs, she’d be patting her chin with a linen napkin after every morsel. When she finishes, she hits the water bowl. Silently. No one can figure out how she drinks, she sort of purses her lips and sucks, none of that slurping and splashing that accompany most dogs’ drinking. She is a stealth drinker. When she finishes, she heads to her little bed in the corner of the kitchen to groom her fur a bit. Lovely girl.
    I’ve got my entire mise en place, en place. Prep trays next to the cooktop, ready to be put into quick action. There is a six-pack of Miller High Life chilling in the fridge. Bet you can guess whom that is for. I’ve got a bottle of Raveneau decanted and am working on my first glass, letting the wine relax my shoulders a bit. The doorbell rings, an old-fashioned ding-dong sound that was not only hard to find but ridiculously expensive by doorbell standards. I shake my head, steel my spine, and head to the door.
    Wayne fills my porch. The ultimate bull in a china shop, Wayne has a presence much larger than his physical person. His six feet tends to feel more like six four or five, since he is often smacking his head into low-hanging light fixtures or shelves. He is probably only about 230 pounds, but he carries it in what feels like enormous bulk, enhanced by clothes that are neither expensive nor fit well. He borders on schlumpy. His hair is thick, dark brown, sprinkled with gray a little more prominently over the past year, with a serious widow’s peak. He isn’t handsome, but would be considered cute in a baby-faced way, like a giant eight-year-old. Which he sort of is. When clean shaven, he looks like Eddie Munster, so his face is an endless experiment in facial hair, mustaches thick and thin, goatees, full beards, sideburns of various configurations. He was full bearded at the funeral, the last time I saw him, close-trimmed and neat. Today he has only one strange half-inch-wide stripe down the center of his weak chin. It looks like a face Brazilian. Oy.
    “Hey Wayne,” I say, stepping aside to let him in. He grabs me in a bear hug and I’m doused in Drakkar Noir. Hello 1984, how I have not missed you.
    “Hello Jenny.” He snuffles into my hair. He has always called me Jenny. And I have always hated it. I am Jenna to most, Jen only occasionally, schnookie to my parents. Miss Jenna to Andrea’s folks and Auntie Jenna to Benji. But I am not now, nor have I ever been, a Jenny.
    Some other odor is cutting through the miasma of cologne. Wayne steps back and thrusts an enormous bunch of white and pink stargazer lilies at me almost violently. My least favorite flower. They stink to high heaven. Every florist Aimee and I ever worked with at StewartBrand knew that stargazers were a firing offense. And these, grocery store flowers if ever I saw them, still have their pollen pods attached. I look down. Yep, the front of my pale blue cashmere sweater is now sprinkled with yellow dust from the force of Wayne’s imposition of the bouquet on me. He sees me looking down.
    “Oh, sorry, did I do that?” he says, reaching over and trying to brush the pollen off my stomach.
    “No! Don’t . . .” Too late. The pollen is now streaks of saffron yellow, and from experience, this sweater is now ruined forever. This particular pollen is as bad as beet juice in the stain department. Many a perfectly good tablecloth has met with an early demise when a florist forgets to remove the pods.
    “Uh-oh. That’s bad, huh?” He continues to swipe at me absentmindedly with his hamlike hands, ensuring that the pollen smears are well distributed. But I am not going to let this faze me. It’s a sweater. I ruin half a dozen a year myself with cooking spatters when I’m too lazy or overconfident for an apron, and god knows how many over the years because practically everything I