Ride Steady(66)

“Now.”

“You do him. I’ll do spaghetti.”

Okay.

What was happening?

“Um… Joker—”

“Drop your bag, Butterfly, and get your kid,” he ordered.

“Are you having dinner with me?” I asked.

“Yeah, after I cook it,” he answered.

I didn’t know what to make of that so I asked, “Why?”

“Why not?” he asked back.

I had no answer to that.

Fortunately, he gave me more.

“I’m here. It’s dinnertime. You need to eat. I need to eat. You feed your kid. I’ll make shit to feed you.”

I liked the idea of dinner with Joker. What I wasn’t so sure about was why Joker wanted to have dinner with me.

Maybe he was just being friendly.

Maybe he was just hungry.

I didn’t ask.

Instead, I shared, “I think the tally now is eight-five cents.”

He shook his head and then he gently shook my son as a message to me.

“Get your kid, Carrie.”

Carrie.

Three people called me that

But it started with Althea.

When she was little, she couldn’t say Carissa and instead said Cah-ree-ree which morphed into Carrie.

My parents called me that back then too.

When we lost Althea, they stopped.

No one had ever shortened my name to Carrie again. In fact, except for calling me “honey” sometimes, “beautiful” others, and “baby” when we were having sex, when he stopped calling me Riss ages ago for whatever reason, Aaron had had no other sweet nothings or cute nicknames for me.

The return of Carrie should have brought up bad memories. Maybe even hurt.

But it didn’t.

No, I liked Joker calling me Carrie.

“Babe, kid,” he said impatiently.

I jumped to, got rid of Travis’s bag and my purse, moved into the kitchen, and grabbed my son.

This commenced both Joker and I moving around, me putting Travis in his highchair and getting his baby food ready and Joker taking off his jacket, tossing it on a stool, then opening and closing cupboards, grabbing stuff, and starting to get our dinner ready.

I pulled the highchair around to the stools, sat on one, and started feeding my son.

I did it while also watching Joker. So I saw him season the browning meat with salt, pepper, and dried basil. I also saw him peruse my meager spice collection like he was looking for something.

“What do you need?” I asked.

“Red pepper flakes,” he answered.

“I don’t have those.”

He turned to me. “Don’t like a kick?”

“I do. I just…” I shrugged. “Actually, I just eat what I eat as long as it’s fast. I don’t spend time on it because I don’t have that time or the energy.”

There was that, of course, but also dried red pepper flakes cost money and were unnecessary, thus they were not in my cupboard.

His jaw flexed and he shut the door on the spices.

I concentrated on feeding Travis, who was banging his fists, one that had a set of humongous plastic keys in it, against the highchair tray.

But I did this talking.

Or, maybe, semi-interrogating.

“You know how to cook?”

“Yeah.”

“Self-taught?”

“Learn or earn.”

I looked to him, loaded baby spoon in the air. “Learn or earn?”

He kept his eyes to the spoon he was using to push around the meat. “Learn or earn my dad bein’ pissed. He liked his food. I learned to make what he liked ’cause I wasn’t big on the consequences.”

I drew in breath to calm the tumult of feelings his disclosure caused and forced my tone to nonchalant, like I was asking the weather, when I noted, “So, no mom, and your dad wasn’t all that great either.”

“Hitler wasn’t all that great. My dad was a dick.”

My gaze shot to him. He must have felt my horror because he looked at me.

“Relax, Butterfly. It’s a joke.” He held my gaze. “But my dad was a dick.”

I nodded, thinking he didn’t want me to make a big deal of it, even though it was a very big deal, so I looked back to Travis.

Only then did I say softly, “I’m sorry, Joker.”

Joker didn’t reply.