Bear jumped up to follow when I moved off the bed, but I nodded over toward Nat and he returned to her, crawling his way to the crook of her arm. Nat tried to shove him away, but he was persistent, wriggling closer until he had his nose buried in her neck. Finally she lifted one hand and began to stroke his side. I closed the door behind me and went out into the house.
Everyone fell silent when I slid open the screen door that led to the porch.
Kate was sitting on the opposite side of a large wrought-iron table with a magazine in her lap. Beside her, an Asian girl with a tattoo peeking out of her collar was drawing in a black leather-bound sketch pad. Reese sat across from them, slumped in his chair. The sun was just starting to fall, spreading golden light over all of them.
“Well, hello there!”
A stocky guy with exuberantly mussed blond hair stood at the head of the table, a bottle dangling from his fingers.
“Before you come any closer,” he said, moving behind Reese and planting his hands on his shoulders, “I have to ask: Do you intend to follow through on stabbing this young man in the face?”
“Alec!” Kate said.
“Keep in mind that none of us are against this,” he said. “I myself have always despised him because he’s so much better looking than me. A good facial scar might take him down a peg.”
The girl next to Kate spoke up, surprising me with a British accent. “Sorry, Alec, a good facial scar would just make Reese look tough as well as handsome.”
“Thank you, Diane,” Reese said.
Alec balled up his napkin and threw it at Diane’s head. “We have to stick together, D!” Alec mock whispered. “He’s prettier than you too!”
Diane laughed, then went back to drawing in her sketch pad.
“Over here, Cal,” Kate said, patting the chair beside her. “Me and D will be like insulation between you and our obnoxious host.”
“Obnoxious! Did you hear that, Reese? She called me obnoxious!”
“It’s almost hard to believe.”
I moved self-consciously around the porch as Reese and Alec argued playfully. The table was littered with food wrappers and green glass bottles covered in French writing.
“How’s Nat?” Kate asked as I took a seat beside her.
“She’s okay, I think. Tired.”
“Right,” Diane said with a gentle laugh. “If I’d been in a helicopter crash, I think I’d be pretty tired too.”
“Yes!” Alec said, dropping back into his seat. “The helicopter crash. They tell me you were fleeing the Path!”
“Alec,” Kate said. “Seriously?”
“What? Expressing curiosity about your guests is a virtue, Kate.” Alec turned to me. “Now, what was it like? They were shooting at you and stuff?”
Alec was leaning across the table, his green eyes wide, almost hungry. I looked down at the silverware by my plate. “Yeah. I guess so.”
“That is. So. Awesome.”
“Uh, I don’t think it was for their pilot, Alec.” Diane said.
“Yes!” Alec said. “Sorry. Thoughtless.”
“Obnoxious,” Reese chimed in.
“Ha! Yes, that’s true too. Sorry, Cal. Humble apologies. But that happens in war, right? Noble sacrifices?
“He wasn’t Army,” I said quietly, pushing at the heavy silver knife. “He was just a pilot.”
“Dinner has arrived!”
Christos came out from the house, bearing a massive plate that was overflowing with slabs of meat. Everyone pushed the debris on the table away so he could set it down. The array of food was mesmerizing — hamburgers and sausages and two-inch-thick steaks that were charred and dripping blood. Reese dashed inside and brought out bowls filled with potato chips, cut fruit, and a green salad studded with garnet-colored berries. A silver tray held a teetering pile of butter-slick corn.
“Gruyere?”
Christos had materialized beside me with a wooden board in his hands. It was covered with six overlapping piles of cheese.
Dumbfounded, I sat there with my mouth hanging open.
“On your burger?” He counted down the piles on the plate. “We have Gruyere, white cheddar, Brie, Havarti, a Danish blue, and… Diane, what is this one?”
Diane looked up from her sketch pad. “Gouda.”
“Gouda! Any preference?”
“Go with the Gruyere!” Alec said. “When in doubt always go with Gruyere!”
“Gruyere it is!” Christos loaded a thick slice onto a bun, along with lettuce and tomato and a half-inch burger. He paused, thought again, and added another slab of meat and three mahogany-colored strips of bacon. “You look like you could stand to put on a little weight.”
Everyone fell to their food. My body, used to canned tuna and desert reeds, was desperate to take in as much as it could. My stomach seemed to be bottomless.
“So are you from Wyoming too?” Diane asked, once most everyone had cleared their plates.
“New York,” I said. “I’m on my way back.”
“Alec!” Diane called. “Did you hear? Cal’s from New York.”
“That’s great!” he said. “I love the Plaza. Do you go to the Plaza?”
“God, you are such a ridiculous snob,” Kate said. “You’re like a
“What? It’s a nice place.”
“Yes, it is, but I think what Diane was saying is that Cal here is from—”
Alec slapped the table, rattling the plates. “Hey! I just had an idea. It’s going to be a beautiful night and I think it’s time we got this party moving! Who’s up for a swim?”
“Yes!” Reese agreed, leaping up from the table.
“Aren’t we supposed to wait a half hour or something?” Diane asked.
Alec lifted a scholarly finger into the air. “Society,” he declared, “has convinced us that the universe is a place of rules and regulations when, in fact, it is a… what?”
Alec leaned over Diane, palms planted on the tabletop, a ravenous look in his eye.
“Don’t leave me hanging here, D.”
Diane sighed. “Life is a cabaret.”
“Yes!” Alec shot a fist into the air and led Reese and Christos from the table and down a hill leading away from the house. His voice rose up into the night, loud and off-key.
Kate and Diane rolled their eyes as one and pushed back from the table.
“Come on, Cal,” Kate said. “It’s time to join the cabaret, ol’ chum. You want to get your guitar, Diane? You might be able to drown out Alec’s singing.”
“Maybe we should just drown Alec.”
Diane went back into the house as Kate gathered up some of the trays from the table. She stacked a loaf of bread and the board of cheese awkwardly in my arms and we left the porch, moving across a patch of lush grass that surrounded the house.
“Sorry about Alec,” she said. “I mean, he’s always been a handful, but he’s been unusually intense ever since we got here. I think he flipped out when Daddy Dearest sent him away. Probably thought he was indispensible to the empire or something.”
“What empire?”
