Not Perfect(35)

“Hi!” she said, once she reached him, which was no easy feat. There was barely any space between people. She would hate to have to get out of there in a hurry.

“Thank goodness you’re here,” he said. “They are like lions, tigers, and—no, they are like Wolverines. I don’t think I could have held them off a minute longer. Please, sit, immediately.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“What took you so long?” he asked.

“Well, I wasn’t even necessarily planning to come,” she said. “It just sort of worked out.”

He looked at her incredulously. “It’s the Penn State game,” he finally said. “So many local and personal rivalries going on in this room right now. You can’t miss that.”

“I know, I know,” she said. “That’s why I came!” She didn’t have the energy to say that she got it, she really did, but that this wasn’t her thing. It was Stuart’s thing, and she was here because they had a good buffet of free food.

Toby turned his attention back to the game. She was glad to not have to talk. They watched in hushed horror as Penn State almost made a touchdown, but at the last second Michigan intercepted the ball and ran it all the way back. She was glad, she really was, but she worried about the colorful guy getting back up on the table. Everyone sang, and they started to pass the chair of the alumni association chapter around rock-concert style. Toby put out his hands to help support him as he came by, but Tabitha stepped back so she wouldn’t have to. As soon as the man was safely delivered to other outstretched hands, Toby looked at his phone.

“Shoot,” Toby said.

“What?”

“I have to be home in an hour to walk my dog. I just got a text from the dog walker that he couldn’t get in; the key didn’t work. That’s never happened before. She’s been alone for, let me think, about three hours. I might have two hours before I have to take her out. She’s a good dog, but dogs will be dogs, and she’s getting older.”

“I didn’t know you have a dog,” Tabitha said. It was a dumb thing to say—she didn’t know much about him at all. “What’s her name?”

“Yo-Adrian,” he said matter-of-factly.

“You mean her name is Adrian?”

“No, it’s Yo-Adrian. Her whole name is Yo-Adrian. I call her Yo-A mostly.”

Tabitha shook her head. That was the most clever dog name she’d ever heard. She loved it. She had always been a sucker for Rocky references.

“That is so great,” she said. “When I was a kid, we had a dog named Buster. We might as well have named him Dog, I guess.”

“No, Buster’s a great name,” Toby said, like he meant it. He reached out and took her hand. It was so startling and unexpected that she literally yanked it away.

“Sorry,” he said, as nicely as he’d said everything else. She waited for him to say more, to explain that he thought there was something between them, or that he was getting mixed signals, all the things people usually said when one reached out but the other didn’t reciprocate. But he didn’t. He just went back to watching the game.

Tabitha felt claustrophobic. She had to get out of there. She checked her phone, hoping a kid would need her, but nobody did. She was just sitting up straighter, getting ready with an excuse, but then Penn State scored, and the group at the other end of the huge bar screamed, “We are—” and everyone in their section mouthed, “Shit.” You could almost hear it, though not quite. It was like a ghost whisper.

“So, I’m planning my mother’s birthday party, and I could use a little help,” Toby said, like they were in the middle of a conversation. There was no indication that he was embarrassed or had any regret about trying to hold her hand. Had he actually tried to hold it, or had she imagined that? Now she wasn’t sure.

“How old is she?”

“She will be eighty years old,” he said, proudly. “I have a great idea. Want to hear it?”

“Sure,” she said, relaxing again.

“The theme is Uranus.”

She must have heard wrong.

“As in, your anus?”

“Yes, Uranus.”

“Wait, you mean like your butt?”

He smiled a slow smile.

“No, like the planet.”

He let it sink in. He had good timing, this guy.

“That’s a strange theme,” she finally said. “How about a garden party or Harry Potter? Did your mother read Harry Potter? Even a pirate party might be better. I always love a good pirate party. No, I know, a Wizard of Oz party! That was always my mother’s favorite. She loved recreating the yellow-brick road.”

She tried not to let her entire face change. Toby didn’t know anything about her mother. He didn’t know about her last few horrible days, he didn’t even know that she was dead.

“No, the Uranus party it is!” he said. “I am committed. I’ve been thinking about this since I learned about the planets in seventh grade. I always hoped she’d live long enough so I could do it.”

“Okay, so then I have two questions. How do you think I can help? And why Uranus?”

“Both very good questions,” Toby said, brushing a piece of maize confetti off of his leg. “I will give you the answers in the reverse order in which they were asked. Why Uranus? Because it takes a little over eighty years for the planet Uranus to orbit the Sun. From what I understand, that means that Uranus will travel all the way around the Sun once in many peoples’ lifetimes. How cool is that? In a perfect world, I might wait until my mother turns eighty-four. I think that might be a more precise number, but this is such a big birthday and well, you never know.”