Page 9 of Blind Spot
“You’re not?”
“A bachelor? Yeah, but a bachelor-in-waiting.”
I set the bags down and unpacked them. I had duck, Brussels sprouts, and a good baguette. The last item out was 70% dark chocolate I bought because our household had standards.
Stepping around the island, I put my hand on the back of his neck. His shoulders dropped, not all the way, but enough.
“Hey, where are you?” I asked.
“I’m here.”
“You’re not.”
“I’m here, Luki.”
My parents gave me Lukács. Canada changed it to Lucas. Three months in, Rook called me Luki. It was the name I’d rejected when I was nine. He could use it now because he used it for the right reasons.
I kissed the top of his head.
“Liar,” I said quietly.
“Okay, it’s a PR thing.” He leaned back against me. “Mark had a request. I’ll tell you after we eat. It’s small.”
It’s small,meaningit’s not, but I haven’t figured out how to discuss it yet.
“I’m hungry. Score the duck. I’ll handle the sprouts,” I said.
We worked side-by-side. I washed and halved the sprouts, slid them into the cast-iron, and pressed garlic with the flat of the knife the way my mother did. I did it quietly, but couldn’t resist a hum under my breath.
After he had the duck in the pan, he stepped up behind me, wrapping his hands around my waist. “Thank you,” he said into my hair.
“For what?”
“You know.”
I did. “Move,” I said. “I am not eating charcoal.”
We cooked, and Rook talked—about everything but the thing he wasn’t telling me. He told me about Cross’s new stick. He talked about Mikkelsen calling Markel “sir” even after Coach forbade it. Finally, he said Heath was moving funny on his right side. He thought it might be a red flag. I thought it was Heath being Heath in October.
We ate at the kitchen table. The duck was excellent. Eric had been right.
Rook ate the sprouts first. He always ate the vegetable first, the way he had eaten the fries first the one time I had ever seen him in a McDonald’s. I had a theory about it. I had never told him the theory.
“‘Hey Ya!’” I said, with my mouth full of duck. “Outkast. It was on the radio on the way home, and now it’s stuck. You are not supposed to shake a Polaroid picture, Rook. The image fixes faster if you don’t.”
“What’s a Polaroid picture?”
“Don’t.”
“I’ve never seen one,” he said.
“You are six years older than me. You have seen many Polaroids.”
He ate a sprout, but he didn’t concede.
My father had a Polaroid of me at five, in the yard in Komárno, holding a wooden stick my grandfather had cut down for me. We were a Hungarian household in a Slovak town.
Now, after more than two decades in North America, my mother still spoke to me in Hungarian sometimes, and my father swore at the television in both Hungarian and English. The picture lived in a drawer at their home in Minnesota. I hadn’t thought about it in months.
