Page 34 of Blind Spot
I sipped from the spoon and then grabbed a beer out of the fridge. I leaned on the island, watching Rook push the onions around. The Rafe thing came out before I could stop it.
“Mikkelsen asked me something today.”
“Yeah?”
“He sat on Trier’s bench by my stall, and he asked me how I keep my head clear before a game. He wanted to know how I don’t let the outside stuff in.” I turned the beer in my right hand. “I told him the whole thing. I talked about the costume and the quiet guy behind the loud guy. I was good, Rook. Then he looked at me wrong.”
Rook turned the burner down. He didn’t turn around yet, but he stopped moving the spoon. “Wrong how?” he asked.
“Like I’d answered a different question than the one he asked. He repeated it back to me: the room-you and the real-you, like he was holding it up to the light to see if it matched something he already knew. Then he saidthanksand left, and I sat there with one skate off and—“ I shrugged. “I don’t have the word for it. It wasn’t the mentor thing. It was under that.”
Rook turned around. He didn’t saythe kid’s tiredoryou’re reading into it.He looked directly at me.
“Yeah, I’ve been figuring something out too.”
“Yeah?”
Rook took the pan off the heat.
“Luki, I have to tell you something.”
My stomach dropped a little. Not bad. It was like a small hill on the roller coaster before you climb the big one.
“Okay,” I said.
Rook opened his mouth, and my phone rang.
“It’s Mom,” I said. I had a specific ringtone assigned to her. “I have to—“
“Take it,” Rook said.
She was already talking by the time I got the phone to my ear. That’s where I get it from.
“Igen, anyu. Nem—I’m home, Mom, I’m not driving.” The Hungarian always came out of me when I talked to my mom. We still spoke mostly in English, but the other words drifted in.
“The dog dug up the whole back corner. The entire corner, Luki. I planted bulbs there in the spring and now—“ The phone made a clattering sound that meant she was gesturing at a garden I couldn’t see, five hundred miles away. “Your sister says it’s the squirrels. It is not the squirrels.”
“It’s probably the squirrels, anyu.”
“You sound like her.” A beat. “She says everything is fine. Her job is fine, so everything is fine. You know that voice. Do you know what it’s about?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s just work.”
“It is not work. You’ll call her.”
“I’ll call her.”
“When are you coming for Christmas? Before the twenty-third? I want you here for the twenty-third, Luki, not the day before. The day before is not enough.” It would be two days, the same as every year. “What should I make? Tell me now so I can get the things. I have to order the good paprika. It takes a week.”
I wanted to sayI’m bringing someone.I wanted to sayanyu, sit down, there’s a man, there’s been a man for five years, he plants your trees and keeps your postcards on his refrigerator and won’t throw them out even though he can’t read them.I wanted to stop having two Christmases so badly.
I said, “Anything. Whatever you make.”
“I’ll make everything. You’re too thin.”
“I’m not too thin.”
“You look thin on the television.”
