Spoonbenders

“He’s an idiot, and an asshole, and he may have done plenty of other things—but not that one.”

She reached into her big purse, pulled out a green bag, a soft-shell, insulated lunch box with cartoon characters on the front. “I’d like to show you something.” She unzipped the bag. Inside were a blue plastic freezer pack and a clear plastic sandwich container. She pushed the container over to him.

He opened the lid, and inside were half a dozen gray pebbles. No, not pebbles.

“Rick Mazzione’s teeth,” she said. “Nick Senior would very much like them.”

“Why?”

“It’s a long story,” she said, and called for another bourbon.

8 Irene

She waited fifty feet from Gate C31, half hidden by a column, as the passengers from Flight 1606 disembarked. She felt like a grocery store dog, one of those jittery creatures tied up outside the glass doors, desperately scanning each human face for its master: Are you the one I love? Are you?

Then she thought: Oh God. The word “love” is in my head.

She was not in love. How could you fall in love with an AOL icon, or a few hundred screenfuls of text? The thrill she felt every time a computer informed her that she did, indeed, have mail was as palpable as a lover’s touch.

People kept pouring down the Jetway. It was an early morning flight, and many of the passengers were mussed and sluggish, as if they’d woken up to a fire alarm; they reached the main corridor and peered left and right and left again, trying to get their bearings, before lurching off. The business travelers, however, were all business, from their business jackets to their business skirts and their shiny business shoes. They sliced through the crowd of civilians like business sharks.

Last Dad Standing—aka Joshua Lee—was one of those business types, a man who traveled across the country all the time in, yes, business class. She was terrified, though, that she wouldn’t recognize him. He’d sent a picture of himself standing in the shade of a palm tree, but her black-and-white ink-jet printer had turned it all into a low-contrast smear, so she’d left the printout at home. The harder she tried to keep the picture in mind, however, the more she doubted her memory.

But there was another reason failing to recognize him terrified her. After they’d been talking online for more than a week, they’d had this exchange:

LAST DAD STANDING: I have something I need to tell you. Two things, actually.

IRENE T: Sounds serious.

LAST DAD STANDING: First—my daughter is Chinese.

IRENE T: That’s great! I didn’t know you’d adopted.

LAST DAD STANDING: Not exactly.

And she’d thought: Not exactly? What did that mean? They’d stolen her?

LAST DAD STANDING: That brings us to the second thing. Her parents are Chinese, too.

She almost typed back, “Of course her parents are Chinese.” Then the penny dropped. Joshua Lee.

She felt a rush of embarrassment: retroactive, conditional embarrassment. Had she ever said something bad about Chinese people? Or Asians in general? She mentally scrolled back through the messages they’d exchanged. But of course a racist wouldn’t even remember if she’d said something off-color.

Then she became doubly embarrassed when she realized he must be waiting for her to respond. And probably laughing. What a jerk, to tell her this way! Quickly she’d typed back:

IRENE T: Have you told your daughter yet that her parents are Asians?

LAST DAD STANDING: Heh. We’re waiting for the right time to break it to her.

IRENE T: And me, too, evidently.

LAST DAD STANDING: Are you mad I waited?

IRENE T: No. I don’t care what you are.

LAST DAD STANDING: That’s a relief. Because I’m actually an 80 yr old grandmother in Flagstaff.

IRENE T: Then stop typing and knit me something.

They exchanged biographical details like trading cards. He was third-generation Chinese, she was third-generation on the Irish side and who-knows-how-many generations on the Greek side (Dad was hazy on his family history). Culturally, the widest gulf between them was southwestern versus mid-. (They ignored Male versus Female and White Collar versus Working Poor, and she didn’t bring up Sane versus Psionic.)