Have You Seen Luis Velez?(47)

“He’s still at the office?”

“Yeah. So what’s new?”

She stepped backward out of the doorway. Raymond knew it was the closest she would come to inviting him in. Then again, this was a custody arrangement. He lived here every other weekend by order of a judge. It did not require her permission.

He moved into the living room and stood, still carrying the heavy duffel bag on his shoulder. There were two twenty-dollar bills on the coffee table. He stared down at them, not sure if he wanted to bring them up in conversation. They might have been his allowance. His father often gave him a fairly generous allowance, at least compared to Ed. But he didn’t dare pick them up until he knew for sure.

It might have been a test. Sometimes with Neesha there were tests.

“I have my book group tonight,” she said when she noticed him staring at the bills. “And I didn’t get a chance to cook anything.”

It seemed like an odd statement to Raymond, because she never cooked on the Fridays when he arrived.

“So order some pizza for you and Malcolm,” she added.

She never called him “your dad” or “your father.” Never. She seemed to be in some disagreement about that reality. Or at least a degree of denial.

“You know what he likes on it. Right?”

“Yeah. Same things I do.”

Like father, like son. Whether you like it or not.

“I have to go,” she said.

She grabbed up her purse and let herself out. Raymond walked into his secondary bedroom and dropped the duffel bag onto the bed. Then he came out and turned on the TV.

He had forgotten to bring the book he’d been in the middle of reading. There wasn’t much else to do.



His father didn’t come home until almost seven o’clock in the evening.

Raymond looked up from his pizza as he heard the door being unlocked.

His father came in with his jacket over one shoulder, despite the fact that it was fairly cold outside. He held a never-lit cigar in his teeth, and Raymond knew he was not allowed to smoke it in the house. He smiled when he saw Raymond sitting on the couch, watching TV. Which was nice, as far as a thing like that goes.

“I started without you,” Raymond said, holding up a half-eaten slice of pizza. “Sorry. I was hungry.”

“I don’t blame you.” His father was a big man with a deep, booming bass of a voice. Yet utterly unintimidating. Raymond had gotten his height from his father, but not his thin frame. “I had an emergency. A patient with a lost crown. I can throw a slice in the microwave. It’s okay.”

“Don’t use the microwave. It kills the crust. Warm a piece up in the oven. Or I will. If you’re too tired.”

His father shrugged. “Tastes fine to me from the microwave.”

He disappeared into the kitchen.

Raymond heard the beeping of the microwave oven.

Not two minutes later, his father came out with a slice on a paper plate. He dropped heavily onto the couch beside Raymond and loosened his tie. Clapped Raymond on the knee. Then he kicked off his shoes and put his sock feet up on the coffee table.

Raymond stared at his father’s feet for a moment. “Might as well get that feet-up thing out of your system before Neesha comes home,” he said, “huh?”

“I’ll say. What are you watching?”

Truthfully, Raymond had to struggle to remember. He had to look at the screen for clues. He had been switching from channel to channel, and his mind had been somewhere else most of the time.

“Um. Some kind of mystery about extraterrestrial life, I think. It’s not very realistic.”

“What have I missed so far?”

“I’m not sure. I haven’t been paying very good attention.”

He had been mostly worrying about Mrs. G.

They sat staring at the screen together. Raymond wondered if his father was paying any better attention than Raymond was. They didn’t speak. They mostly didn’t speak when together.

Raymond figured he got along fine with his father. They had no beefs with each other, and never argued. But they went nearly two weeks at a time without seeing each other. And then, when they got together again, neither one of them seemed to be able to think of much to say. If anything.



On Sunday, midmorning, they sat in their favorite restaurant together. The brunch place. The one where Raymond had taken Mrs. G.

“I asked your stepmother to join us,” his father said. “But she brought some work home that she has to get done by tomorrow.”

Raymond stared at his menu, even though he already knew what he wanted. At first he thought he would let the statement go by. Just let it stand, the way he always did.

Then, to his surprise, he shook off the complacency that had always held him down in the past.

“You make excuses for her every time she ditches spending time with us. But she doesn’t like me, and I don’t know why we can’t just talk about that out loud. It’s so obvious. It’s not like I don’t notice.”

He watched his father as the words sank in. Watched the dark skin of his face crease and fall.

Raymond regretted having spoken. The idea had not been to hurt the man, but apparently that was what Raymond had done.

“You’re misunderstanding the situation, Raymond.”

“I’m sorry if I upset you. But I don’t think I am.”