Georgie, All Along (35)
“Oh, God no,” she says, sharp and decisive. “I’m not moving back.”
It has the desired effect in terms of her face, but not in terms of the way it makes me feel. She sure was forceful about not moving back here, though I don’t know why I should care.
Friendly, I remind myself. Not fragile.
I nod and busy myself rearranging the ingredients I laid out, an unnecessary task that helps me pass the time before I turn back toward the grill, flipping the dough over and setting about loading the cooked side with toppings. I should’ve asked after her preferences, but then again, I’ve got that pasta as a precedent. She’s not a real particular eater, if I’m going off that.
I ask if she’ll get Hank’s food for him, and she seems grateful for the opportunity to leave the table. I use the time to finish off the food prep and also to debate myself on whether I should blow out the candle. In the end, I leave it, because I might as well not risk adding the West Nile virus to this situation, and when Georgie comes out again, I’m shifting the finished pizzas onto the wooden cutting board I brought out with me.
“Holy shit!” she exclaims when I set it down. “This looks like a professional made it!”
The compliment warms me. Cooking’s one of the few things I consider a hobby, and I’ve gotten pretty good since I’ve taken over Carlos’s house.
I murmur a thanks as I get to slicing, but I doubt she hears me.
“I didn’t even know you could make pizza on a grill!”
She seems so excited. I like that about her, how easy she shows her pleasure. I better not let that train of thought get too far, wondering how it works in scenarios not related to dinner.
I split the pieces between us, and she takes a bite right away, moaning her enjoyment even as she fans a hand back and forth across her slightly open mouth, steam puffing out.
“This is so good!” she says, with her mouth still half-full, and I don’t know why it’s sexy, but it is. Big, unrestrained, uninhibited. I think about the way she held out her arms the other night when she told me about her job.
I shift in my seat, try to focus, bring things back around to that simple, friendly place I’m determined to stay in.
“So you’re helping your friend move in to her place?”
She shrugs, swallows. “Not really. I’m . . .” She cocks her head slightly and stares at her pizza for a beat. “I got laid off from my job. Back in LA.”
Jesus, I hope the pizza didn’t somehow bring that up for her. “Sorry to hear it.”
“My boss there, she decided to take her life in a different direction. A more . . . she wants more simplicity.” She doesn’t do the gesture, but I can tell there’s air quotes in the mix around that last word. “So she didn’t need me anymore. An assistant, I mean.”
“You in money trouble?”
She shakes her head, takes another huge bite of pizza, but doesn’t wait until she’s all the way done chewing to answer. “I didn’t have many expenses when I worked for her, so I have savings. And she gave me a nice severance. I’ve got time. Options for other work like I was doing before, if I want it.”
I furrow my brow, chewing slowly. I don’t mind admitting it’s hard to understand what she means, if I want it. What’s work got to do with wanting?
“I know I’m lucky to have that. I’m trying to take this opportunity. . . well, it’s hard to explain.”
“Try,” I say, surprising me and I’m sure her—going by the way she blinks up at me—with the demand. But I’m curious now, and a second later I confront an uncomfortable thought: Is this how it felt for Georgie, the other night, trying to talk to me?
She seems to think for awhile, and I wonder if she might shut me out the way I did her. I’d deserve it, I guess.
“When I was a kid,” she says, and dang, I might’ve been holding my breath. “I made this . . . it was sort of a list of things I thought I would do as a teenager. Once I got to high school. You know how it was, switching to that big school. It felt so important, back then.”
I doubt it felt the same to me as it did to her. I was already in a lot of trouble by that time; I’d had three school suspensions and one night in a holding cell by the time I started at Harris County High School. The only important thing to me back then was wrecking shit, including myself.
But I say, “Yeah,” because I want her to keep talking.
“So I had the list, but as it turned out, I didn’t follow through with much of it. I got distracted or derailed, or I don’t know what. And then I graduated, and I hadn’t done any thinking about what I wanted for my future. After that, I kind of fell into this career where my job was about making sure other people had what they wanted.”
Honestly I figure that’s what most jobs are. Barbara Hubbard wants a dock bench even though her original structure is too narrow, and now she’s going to spend a bunch of extra money to get it to work, and she’ll probably only sit out there twice a year because she’s always worrying after ticks dropping down from the trees hanging over her shoreline. Last year Dale Hennessy wanted me to install four big cleats on the dock we built him, even though he’s got no intention of having any sort of watercraft, ever. “For authenticity,” he’d said.
We’d put in the cleats.