Everything Changes

with her?”
    “Why not?” Norm says, perturbed. “What’s wrong with me?”
    “You think a twenty-year-old girl like her lies in bed at night dreaming of the fat, bald sixty-year-old man who’s going to come into the restaurant and sweep her off her feet?”
    The hurt in his eyes is instantaneous, the collapse of his smile, the sagging of his jowls, and I immediately regret the remark. “Listen, Norm, I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just, I live here, you know? I eat here all the time, and I was a little embarrassed.”
    “I’m sorry I embarrassed you,” he says. “I’m an outgoing person. That’s just the way I am. When I see a beautiful woman, I let her know she’s beautiful. Once in a while, I’m lucky, and it leads somewhere. If not, I’ve at least paid her a compliment, brightened her day just a little bit. Either way, I’m not going to apologize for it.”
    “No one’s asking you to,” I say quickly, noting the waitress’s approach and trying to end the conversation.
    “You made up your minds yet?” she says.
    “Is the minestrone soup any good?” Norm asks her.
    “Sure is.”
    “I’ll have that and the grilled cheese.”
    I order a salad and grilled cheese. “We always had the same taste in foods,” Norm tells Penny with pride.
    “So,” I say brightly once she’s gone. “What would you like to talk about?” I’m still feeling bad about shooting him down before, haunted by the acute sadness instantly readable behind his fallen smile. I realize that regardless of whether he truly believes in the appreciation of indifferent bystanders and the possibility of young waitresses, or it’s just an attitude he’s embraced as a survival mechanism, the behavior is symptomatic of a deeply ingrained loneliness that informs his every impulse.
    “Just about you in general,” he says, sitting back in his chair. “How are things at the Spandler Corporation?”
    “How do you know where I work?”
    “I looked through your desk while I was waiting in your room.”
    “Jesus,” I say angrily. “You’re a piece of work, you know that?”
    “It looks like an impressive place. What do you do there?”
    “I don’t want to talk about work.”
    “So tell me about Hope.”
    “I don’t want to talk about her either.”
    “Do you still think about writing screenplays?”
    “Nah. That was never a serious thing.”
    Norm nods sadly. “Zack,” he says. “A man’s two great loves should be his woman and his work. You seem unwilling to talk about either one. Now, if I were a long-lost son whose no-good father showed up, I’d want him to see how well I’d made it without him. I’d take great pleasure in letting him know that I’d made a success out of my life, that I was doing well at work and I was in love with a great woman. It would be the most natural impulse in the world. And yet I can’t get you to discuss either one with me. Why do you think that is?”
    “You haven’t given a shit about me for all these years,” I say, my voice coming out louder than I’d intended, and I’m vaguely aware of the other diners pausing in their conversations and looking our way. “Don’t you think it’s a bit presumptuous to show up and think I’ll share any details of my life with you? You’re not a part of it, Norm. It’s none of your fucking business, that’s all. A man’s two great loves should be his woman and his work? That’s great, Norm, really brilliant. You cheated on your woman more times than I probably know, and unless things have changed dramatically in the last few years, you haven’t ever held down a job for more than a year or two in your entire life. Maybe somewhere in there, one of your great loves should have been your children, don’t you think? It would have been much harder to lose us, but I guess you managed to pull that one off too.”
    Norm stares straight at me, willfully absorbing my tirade, his face reddening from the effort of it. Then he nods, frowning slightly. “Everything you say is true,” he says. “I’m not going to deny any of it. It’s no great secret that I’ve made a colossal mess of my life. But just because all of that’s true, it doesn’t change my instincts that you are under a tremendous strain, and that all is not right with you. I’m worried about you, Zack.”
    “That’s just self-serving bullshit,” I practically scream at him. “You’re worried because you want to be worried, because you want to feel like the