Making and keeping friends: not my forte.
“A guy hit me, too,” Ellen said.
“At a poker game?”
“In my bedroom.”
“Was it a break-in?” I asked.
She held my gaze a moment. “He was my boyfriend. Eight years.” She drank from her beer. “But he only hit me for the last six. We were sort of engaged.”
I sipped my drink and tried to figure out what the hell to say. “What happened to him?”
Ellen eyed me as if I were born this morning. “What happened to him? Jesus. Nothing happened to him. Nothing ever happens to anyone.” She shook her head. “Fuck.”
Only minutes earlier we were having a good time. Amazing, I thought, how quickly an evening can turn dark. Ah, the holidays.
At a table across the restaurant, some men and women were laughing up a storm. They probably weren’t even trying to be funny. When their laughter died down, one of the women kept cackling. It was the kind of cackle you could hear a mile away.
“What are you doing for Christmas?” I asked Ellen.
“Going to my brother’s.”
“You have a brother?” I didn’t know why this should surprise me, her offhand mention of family.
“He lives in Yardley. Wife, kids, the whole deal. He’s a teacher, too. High school math. They always invite me over for Christmas brunch. It’s nice.”
“And these kids, they’re real? Or are they the kind you show photos of at card games?”
Her expression was becoming more familiar to me. It meant I should have pieced something together but hadn’t. “Those kids are the card-game kids,” she said. “It’s why the pictures are in my phone. That’s the only time I ever do magic tricks, by the way. For the nephews.”
I thought about my own plans for Christmas day: practicing the Greek deal. Calling my mother. Joy to the world.
“How late do you stay there?” I asked.
“Most of the day. Why?”
I told her about my Christmas evening tradition, going on five years: pizza delivery and The Sting on DVD.
“One of my favorites,” she said.
“I know the poker scene isn’t very realistic,” I said, “but I don’t care. It’s just fun to watch. If you aren’t doing anything later in the day, you should come over.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I’d like that.” She brushed the hair out of her eyes. “But are you sure you wouldn’t rather watch Thelma and Louise? I know what a feel-good movie you think it is.”
I told her I was rescinding the invitation.
“Or maybe Sophie’s Choice? That’s a fun one.”
After the nachos arrived, and once the bartender had placed second rounds of beer in front of us and walked away, Ellen said, “I’m sorry a guy did that to you at a gig.”
“I’m sorry about your boyfriend,” I said. “That must have really sucked.”
“Sucks doesn’t begin to describe it, Natalie.” She took a long drink from her beer. “But thanks for saying it.”
We ate and watched the crowd, all these people who’d taken a time-out from the bustle of the holidays to be with their friends. I felt almost like one of them.
J
On Christmas morning, I decided to wait until noon to call my mother since Reno was three hours behind. But at 11:30 she beat me to it.
When my phone started vibrating, I was doing something highly unusual. I was sliding a tray of cookies into the oven. Not the prefab kind, either, but the kind where you add eggs and flour and sugar and eye-popping amounts of butter. I figured cookies would make the apartment smell festive.
“Merry Christmas,” I said into the phone. “I just put cookies in the oven.”
“Oh, Natalie,” she said, “we have such good news.”
I was immediately on edge because of the manic tinge to her voice that she got whenever she was on the verge of making a terrible decision.
“What is it, Mom?”
“So you know how Chip is really good with people?”
I had no knowledge of this. “I guess,” I said, and then stayed quiet while my mother told me about the plan they’d hatched.
It could have been worse. They had decided to become pawnbrokers.
“Our niche is going to be motorcycles!” she said.
“Pawnshops have a niche?”
“Oh, Natalie. In today’s marketplace, you have to have a niche.” I wondered what website she’d gotten that from. “And Reno’s a great town for pawnbrokers,” she added. That, I believed—all those casinos, all those people losing everything.
I pressed the phone a little closer to my ear. “Mom, they have you working on Christmas morning?” For the last few months she’d been serving drinks at Harrah’s.
“No, I’m not working today,” she said.
“Because I hear … you’re in a casino, right?”
“No, I’m not.”
“It sounds like you are.”
The bells and whirs continued.
“We just have to raise a little more seed money, that’s all.” I didn’t say anything. The background noise was saying it all. “Relax, Natalie. Chip’s been on such a roll lately. I wouldn’t even call it luck. He won two thousand a couple of weeks ago.”
That did it. I couldn’t resist. “How much did he lose winning that?”
“See? Now you’re just being very negative. I called to wish you Merry Christmas and to tell you about this great new business we’re both so excited about, and I hoped that my own daughter …” She sighed. “I’m sorry. I know you have your opinions, and that’s good. That’s how I raised you.”
We talked a while longer about her pawn business. How Chip had found a great storefront location, “perfect for growing into.” She was studying up on how to differentiate diamond from moissanite. Everything she said made me uneasy. Then she asked about me, and I’m sure I made her uneasy, too, with my vague and cagey replies. By the time we got off the phone I think we were both glad it was another four months until Easter.
And my apartment smelled like burnt cookies.
Ellen was due at five. She had proven to
