He opened the fridge and pulled out a jar of chopped onions, checking the clock on the back wall.
“What does that story have to do with his hand?” I asked.
“Who said anything about his hand?”
“You did. You said I needed to hear about his hand.”
“No, you probably misheard.”
“Hand and nose sound nothing alike.”
“Ah, you’ve been in California too long,” he said, his standard response whenever we disagreed. “You’re hearing things.”
It wasn’t worth arguing. “Okay, I get it. Even without his nose, he was the same old crazy Tex, right? That’s the lesson. I shouldn’t be weirded out just because she’s missing an arm.”
“Strike three,” he said. “He wasn’t the same after that. They fixed up his nose and sent him back to the platoon, but he’d lost the edge, and a sniper took him out within a week.” He grabbed a red bell pepper and closed the fridge. “The lesson, Donnie, is simple: start treating her decently or I’ll slice off half your nose.”
He handed me the pepper and headed back toward the ovens. I followed, once again his apprentice.
“She abandoned me. I don’t owe her anything.”
“She couldn’t take care of you, so she left you with someone who could. What’s so terrible about that? The last I checked, you turned out okay. Nobody’s asking you to donate a kidney. Just talk to her.”
A blast of heat smacked us as he opened the middle oven and checked on three mushroom and one pepperoni. He had a point, yet my resentment still felt justified, even righteous.
Uncle Dan closed the oven and headed to the counter, where one of the high school girls was on the phone, writing down an order. He grabbed my arm and pulled me next to him so I had no choice but to see Nancy still folding napkins in her booth. She wore a light, checkered print blouse and grey pants; her face had a pink, healthy glow and her lips were a dark, glossy red, the lipstick, amazingly, neatly applied. Except for the arm, she looked almost normal.
“Go over and talk to her,” Uncle Dan whispered.
“I’m just here to pick up the lasagna. I’m due at Amy’s…”
“She can wait,” he said, nudging me out from behind the counter.
I considered grabbing the lasagna and making a break for it, ten good steps and I’d be out the door, but that was too pathetic even for me, and on some level, I’d never outgrown the instinct to obey Uncle Dan. Since narcolepsy on demand was never an option, I stumbled toward the booth and slid across from Nancy, who looked up at me, blank-faced, then pushed a stack of napkins across the table with her forearm, as if I’d come to help finish the job.
“Hello,” I said, and—why not?—I started folding napkins, too. It was better than sitting with a stupid expression on my face; it gave my eyes somewhere to land other than on that missing arm, but after three or four napkins I realized I couldn’t keep up. She’d pat each napkin with her open palm, bring one end to the other, pat it again, and then fold the far corners, forming a half-diamond. She worked without stop, as if part-machine, her left sleeve, the empty one, hanging limply at her side while the other arm hustled, her eyes on the job except for a few fleeting glances to check on my progress.
From behind the counter Uncle Dan watched anxiously, like the host of a nature special waiting to see if two endangered species could coexist in fragile habitat. Sitting three feet away, I caught her scent, not quite B.O., but still pungent, like vinegar mixed with sour yogurt. I leaned back.
“Do you like working here?” I asked.
“Yes,” she nodded. “I come every afternoon when Ellen goes off. If Ellen isn’t on, that means it’s the weekend. On Saturday I come here after the second episode of MASH. Sunday is my day off.”
Her voice was slow, but strong; she looked back toward Uncle Dan, who smiled at her, then picked up a cloth and started wiping the counter. The high school girl, Ashley, played with her smart phone, one arm leaning against the cash register.
Nancy put down the napkins and scratched her nose, her thumb rubbing hard against the crook of her nostril. I studied her face for a resemblance; maybe it was there, maybe not; I wasn’t always sure about my own face, which seemed to change depending on my mood. She reached across the table and for a moment I freaked, thinking she might grab my shoulder or grope my face, but she didn’t want me—she wanted the napkins. My stack now hers, she resumed folding, her gaze focused on the job.
Uncle Dan shot me a thumbs-up.
“I like MASH, too,” I said.
“Frank Burns eats worms,” Nancy giggled, reciting a line from an early episode. When I was a kid, MASH re-runs were my religion; I’d stay up till midnight watching old episodes until Uncle Dan came in and killed the TV. So there it was: a bond, a genetic predisposition toward Hawkeye Pierce and Radar O’Reilly.
She turned her head and kept giggling, which was kind of creepy. I tried to distract her.
“I work in a pizzeria, too,” I told her. “In California.”
“I lived in California once,” she said. “Twice, I think. I was an actress, but they didn’t like me. So I left.”
“It’s a rough business.”
“I was in a movie once but…they made me do things I didn’t like so I never went back.” She checked if anyone was listening, then whispered across the table. “I don’t like fooling around with other girls.”
Another fine fact for the family tree: my mother once did porn.
“Do you live here now?” she
