Here So Far Away(33)

My stomach chose that moment to sing out like a baby humpback whale that has lost its mother.

“Stay,” Francis said. “I’ll cook. And I”—he lowered his voice—“I won’t assault you again.”

After changing into jeans and a well-worn sweater, Francis poured a jar of yellow powder into a pot with salt and milk, set a pan of water to boil, chopped a bunch of vegetables and herbs, and drizzled oil over them. The quick, confident movements of someone who’d done them many times before. As he worked, I caught myself going over the boob-tag story in my head, as though I were going to tell it to Lisa. One of those habits I was having trouble shaking, like looking over at her in class whenever a teacher said something funny or lame. Except, I realized, that even if we were speaking, I probably wouldn’t tell her that story because it wasn’t the same if you didn’t know that my boob and his hand had a history, and how could I trust her again with a secret like that?

Within twenty minutes we were sitting in front of steaming bowls of yellow porridge he called “polenta” with roasted veg and poached eggs. He grated a hard cheese on top, which turned out to be Parmesan. I’d never seen Parmesan that didn’t shake out of a plastic container.

“Son, if you’d told me a few weeks ago that I’d be satisfied without a piece of meat on my plate, I wouldn’t have believed you,” Rupert said.

“I picked up a few tricks working in kitchens.”

“George, honey, pass me that paper over there,” Rupert said. “You read ‘Tales From the Dispatch’?”

I shook my head. That was the local paper’s weekly account of the more entertaining emergency calls made to the police. I got the highlights at home.

“‘A man loitering on Main Street in a samurai costume was questioned by police in Veinot.’ Obviously waiting for a drive to an early Halloween party.”

“No, sir, he was not,” Francis said.

“Huh. ‘An unattended foil package was found on campus at the University of Noel. It was determined to be a donair.’”

“Six hours,” Francis said. “We had to bring in the bomb disposal unit. And today a woman called because another woman gave her a dirty look at Dairy Queen.”

“Yeah, sorry again about that,” I said.

I’d been pretty quiet, and the sound of my voice seemed to startle Rupert and Francis.

“Oh, George is being funny,” Rupert said. “Very good.”

Francis didn’t smile. “And after that,” he said, twirling his fork on the tabletop, “we had a call about a stolen pickup parked in someone’s driveway. Dispatch said to go up the one-oh-six, get off at Bishops, swing a right down Old Porter Road at the United Church, six miles from there. If you hit the river you’ve gone too far. I retraced my steps again and again, and I couldn’t even find the damn church.”

Rupert and I looked at each other.

“What?”

“That church burnt down,” Rupert said.

“Burnt down when?”

“Going on ten years!” Rupert guffawed so hard he hiccupped. “Come on, now, son. Dispatch probably didn’t think of it.”

“By the time I happened upon the place, the truck and the guy who stole it were long gone.”

“Did you try his mother’s house?” I asked. “It’s just, my dad says you always check the mother’s.”

“Alright, I’ll do that. Any more job advice? Or any sort of advice?” His tone had flipped from grateful to challenging in the space of a second. “Kids grow up so fast around here, you must be a wellspring of flawless decision making.”

“Don’t get me talking,” I said coolly. “I can be quite a handful.”

The faint percussion of Francis’s foot under the table stopped.

Truth is, people had been calling my dad about him. Not that he was doing anything wrong according to the rule of the law, but as far as the unspoken rules of the valley went, he was screwing up regularly.

“Go on, George,” Rupert said.

Shaggy had wandered into the kitchen, and now came over to rest his chin on my lap. I used my napkin to scrub the dust from his snout, which I suspected came from breaking into Wilfred’s birdseed. “Well,” I said, “don’t overdo the parking tickets on Main Street.”

“In your town?” Francis said.

“Any main street. I know it seems like you’re bringing in cash for the municipalities, but the shops complain about business going down. And maybe drop in places sometimes, say hi.”

“I got one,” Rupert said, pleased with himself. “Don’t worry about that sad woman who hangs outside the Pizza Palace in Veinot.”

“Are you telling me she’s not a prostitute?” Francis asked.

“Sure she is, but she has a kid, so they let her be.”

“Okay, free parking for all on Main Street, no hookers with kids, say hello. But I have a question: What the hell is a donair?”

Rupert and I laughed.

“That happens every time I ask, and no one ever gives me an answer. All I know is that it’s food.”

“A pita sandwich,” I said. “The meat is carved from one of those twirling vertical spit jobs and it has sauce made from condensed milk.”