You're Next

way, but promise me you won’t ever do something like that again unless you really have to.’

That’s her – reverent and irreverent at the same time.

Confused, he acquiesces.

Later that week, exhausted, he dozes off at the shirt press and burns a tux vest. The customer, a coked-out dickhead in a blue Audi, shows up on his way to his black-tie event. ‘Do you have any fucking idea how much that tux cost?’ Mike apologizes and offers to file a damage claim. ‘And what the hell am I supposed to wear tonight?’ The customer grows irate, leaning over the counter, jabbing a finger into Mike’s chest. ‘You stupid fucking clown, you couldn’t pay for that with what you make in a year.’ The guy shoves Mike, and Mike sees the angle open up, the downward cross to break the jaw, but instead he takes a step back. The guy’s rage blows itself out, and he departs, peeling out and flipping Mike the bird. Mike still has a job, his knuckles aren’t bruised, and there are no cops to contend with. For days he basks in this small triumph.

He is becoming socialized.

But still he fears Dinner with the Family. Her father is a bankruptcy lawyer. Her older sister is a domestic machine who produces baked goods and offspring at an alarming rate. Her brother has a Subaru and a weave belt. He gives to charity and complains about taxes, the kind of guy who probably played multigenerational baseball at the park around the time Mike and Shep were boosting Bomb Pops and urinating on Schwinns.

Mike minds his silverware, his elbows, his napkin in his lap. He thinks of those few domestic memories he has held on to – sage incense in a yellow-tiled kitchen, his mother’s tan skin, the dust-and-oil smell of the station wagon’s cloth seats. He feels uncomfortable, unworthy of sitting here at a nicely set table in a nice home. The parents, none too enamored, seem to agree. When her father passes the butter, he asks, ‘Where did you go to college?’ and Mike smiles nervously and says, ‘I didn’t.’ The rest of dinner is consumed by stories of successful friends and neighbors who never went to college and were successful anyway, the two other siblings swapping anecdotes while the parents chew and sip and shoot each other shrewd glances. Annabel has to contain her laughter at the absurdity of it all, and when they leave, she says, ‘I will never make you do that again.’

The next week, at dinner, she fiddles with her watercress. Her face is tight and flushed and quite unhappy. He braces himself for the speech he has been fearing. And sure enough she comes at him hard. ‘What are we doing here?’ She tosses down her fork with a clatter. ‘I mean, I don’t want to do this whole casual-dating thing-’

‘I don’t either.’

She bulldozes ahead, undeterred. ‘-where we agree we’re allowed to see other people-’

‘I don’t want to see anyone else.’

‘-and I pretend I’m okay with it.’

‘I’m not okay with it.’

‘I’m too old for that shit. I need security, Mike.’

‘Then marry me.’

This time, finally, she hears.

They don’t drink a drop of liquor at the ceremony but feel drunk with joy. The service is brief, some pictures after on the courthouse steps, Mom and Dad doing their best to muster smiles.

As he helps her mother gingerly into the car at the night’s end, she pauses in a rare unfiltered moment, dress hem in hand, and says, ‘The thing that doesn’t add up with you – you’re so gentle.’ He replies, ‘I spent enough years being not.’

He works hard, is promoted to foreman. In what is the single best day of his life, their daughter is born. She was to be Natalie, but when they meet her, she is Katherine, so forms must be reprocessed to ensure she has her proper name.

They settle into an apartment in Studio City. Prints of water lilies, matching linens, little seashell soaps for the bathroom. Through their back window, they can see the Wash, where the L.A. River drifts through concrete walls.

Out of the blue, Shep calls from a pay phone. It has been months – no, over a year. Both times he and Annabel met were excruciating, Shep’s hearing putting a damper on what little conversation could be summoned. Annabel is protective of Mike, all too aware of the costs of the sentence he served, and Shep doesn’t understand her; she is simply beyond his frame of reference. Mike remembers only long silences and sullen sips of beer, him in the middle, sweating worse than he did at that first dinner with her family.

Given Shep’s hearing, this phone conversation, like all others, is awkward, filled with starts and stops. Shep has heard that Mike has a daughter, and he wants to come by. Kat is five months old, and Mike is nervous, still adjusting, but cannot bring himself to say no.

Shep arrives two hours late, well after Kat is down. ‘Can I spend the night?’ he asks at the door, before saying hello. ‘I have a thing going on with my place.’

Mike and Annabel manage nods.

From his pocket Shep withdraws a gift – a wadded, unwrapped onesie sized for a three-year-old. Mike hates himself for wondering if it is stolen. He rubs his fingers over the butterfly pattern. It is the softest thing he has ever seen Shep hold.

Shep puts his feet on the coffee table and lights up, and Annabel says, apologetically, ‘Would you mind not smoking in here? The baby.’

‘Right,’ Shep says. ‘Sorry.’ He walks to the window and leans out, blowing into the wind.

Annabel says to Mike, ‘I think I’m gonna grab some sleep while I can.’

Mike goes over to Shep, wanting him to say good night, to be polite, to be gracious. He rests a hand on Shep’s back, still ridged with muscle. When Shep flicks his cigarette and turns, Annabel is starting to pull out the couch bed, and he says quietly, ‘Don’t bother. I’ll just sleep on it like it is.’

‘It’s really no trouble.’

He pauses a moment, processing. ‘Couches are more comfortable,’ he says. ‘I sleep on a couch at home.’

‘Oh,’ she says. ‘Okay.’

They stare at each other, Shep pinching his St. Jerome pendant between his lips.

‘Well,’ she says. ‘Good night.’

Shep nods.

The bedroom door closes. Shep says, ‘Go get a drink?’ and Mike says, ‘I’m pretty beat. The baby has us up a couple times a night, and I got work at five.’

Shep asks, ‘Can I have a key?’

At three in the morning, the front door opens and closes loudly; Shep never hears doors well. Annabel wakes with a start, and Kat fusses through the monitor.

Mike stumbles out into the living room. Shep says, ‘Alcohol? Bandages?’

Drawing closer, Mike sees that his cheek has been badly raked by fingernails. He tilts Shep’s head, sees the white flesh glittering through the blood. He gets one of the matching hand towels from the bathroom and soaks it in warm water. When Shep pats on rubbing alcohol, he doesn’t so much as flinch. They have done this many a night – staying up, whispering, cleaning wounds. For a moment Mike is lost in the sweet familiarity of the ritual. But the footsteps and movement wake Kat fully. Annabel emerges from the bedroom, pauses on her way to the nursery. ‘What happened?’

Shep says, ‘Crowded bar. I was having trouble, you know…’ He gestures to an ear. Mike has never known him to speak directly about his hearing problem, and he isn’t about to start now. ‘Guy was playing with me. Sneaking up. He had a lot of friends. He sucker-punched me. The rest didn’t go down how they wanted. His girlfriend jumped on my back somewhere in there. Cops showed up, so I split. It wasn’t my fault.’

Someone bellows outside, ‘You fuckin’ asshole, get out here! We’re gonna kill you!’

Kat is crying now in the nursery.

Mike says, ‘Did you hear that?’

Shep says, ‘What?’ Mike points to the window. Shep crosses and sticks his head out. An instant later a bottle shatters against the wall near the window. The yelling, now a chorus, intensifies.

The phone rings, and Annabel snatches it up. ‘Yeah, sorry, Mrs. McDaniels.’ She points at the ceiling, in case Mike has forgotten where the McDanielses live. ‘Everything’s okay,’ she says into the phone. ‘Just some drunk out