“Candace,” Jesse said.
The girl looked at him vaguely. Her pupils were large. She had no focus.
“Is there anything you want to say to me?”
Jesse
said.
She looked at her mother.
“We are through here, Candace,” Mrs.
Pennington
said.
The girl looked back at Jesse. Their eyes met and held for a moment. Jesse thought he saw for just a moment a stir of personhood in there. Jesse nodded slightly. The girl didn’t say anything. Then
her mother took her arm and they walked out of the station.
8
“I’m here to cook you
supper,” Jenn said when she
arrived at Jesse’s condo with a large shopping bag.
“Cook?” Jesse said.
“I can cook,” Jenn said.
“I didn’t know that,” Jesse said.
“I’ve been taking a course,”
Jenn said and set the shopping bag
down on the counter in Jesse’s kitchen. “Perhaps you could make us
a cocktail?”
“I could,” Jesse said.
Jenn took a small green apron out of the shopping bag and tied it on.
“Serious,” Jesse said.
“Dress for success,” Jenn said and smiled at him.
Jesse made them martinis. Jenn put some grilled shrimp and mango
chutney on a glass plate. They took the drinks and the hors d’oeuvres to the living room and sat on Jesse’s sofa and looked out
the slider over Jesse’s balcony to the harbor beyond.
“It’s pretty here, Jesse.”
“Yes.”
“But it’s so … stark.”
“Stark?”
“You know, the walls are white. The tabletops are bare. There’s
no pictures.”
“There’s Ozzie,” Jesse said.
Jenn looked at the big framed color photograph of Ozzie Smith, in midair, stretched parallel to the ground, catching a baseball.
“You’ve had that since I’ve
known you.”
“Best shortstop I ever saw,” Jesse said.
“You might have been that good, if you hadn’t gotten
hurt.”
Jesse smiled and shook his head.
“I might have made the show,” Jesse said.
“But I wouldn’t have
been Ozzie.”
“Anyway,” Jenn said. “One
picture of a baseball player is not
interior decor.”
“Picture of you in my bedroom,” Jesse said. “On the
