Tales of the City 07 - Michael Tolliver Lives

bootlaces, so he finished with a punctuating yank. “They don’t tip as good, either.”
    He came to the bed fully dressed and wriggled between us until we became his naked bookends. There was something strangely intimate and sweet about holding him in his clothes. He lay there for a while, sighing a little, then kissed us on our foreheads and got up again, heading out. “Be well, my brothers,” he said at the door.
    “You too,” we said in unison.
    “Y’all make a nice couple.”
    “Thanks.”
    “I’ll see you on Thursday,” he said. “When we sign that thing for your mama.”
    It took me a while, but I gaped at him until I got it. “You’re the other witness?”
    Patreese nodded. “You be nice to her, you hear?”
    He opened the door and left, closing it behind him.
    Ben turned to me and dropped his jaw dramatically. “Jesus. What are the chances of this?”
    I told him he’d said that before.
    “Yeah, well…”
    “Do you think she put him up to it?”
    “Who? Your mother? ”
    “I wouldn’t put it past her.”
    “For God’s sake, Michael. We were the ones who picked him up!”
    Were we? I wondered.
    Ben rolled over and nuzzled my neck. “You ascribe way too much power to her.”
    Do I? I thought, staring up at the floral-patterned ceiling.

14
    Her Raggedy Soul
    T he next morning Ben and I wolfed down a huge breakfast at the Denny’s across the street. A touch of gluttony seemed a fitting follow-up to our late-night pig-out with Patreese. Besides, I rather liked the idea of ordering the Biscuit and Gravy plate in what remained of my beloved Southern homeland. Until I actually ordered it, that is.
    “Will that be the Senior Biscuit and Gravy?”
    Our waitress, a hefty young gum-chewing black woman, could easily have been one of Patreese’s bachelorettes.
    “No,” I told her with a measured smile. “I don’t think I qualify quite yet.”
    “How old are you?”
    I hadn’t been asked this in a place of business since I was seventeen, when I tried, unsuccessfully, to buy a fifth of Jack Daniel’s at a liquor store across the highway from Mr. Grady’s gas station. It was just as unsettling to be carded at the other end of my life, for a fucking biscuit, no less, but I answered as civilly as possible.
    “I’m fifty-five.”
    The waitress nodded triumphantly, scribbling something on her pad, like she’d just guessed my weight at the country fair. “This is your lucky day, peaches.”
    Then she sashayed off, leaving me in the dust of her righteousness.
    Ben picked up the big plastic menu and read the fine print. “She’s right,” he said. “Fifty-five and older.”
    I told him that was another reason not to live here.
    He smiled crookedly. “I think this applies at all Denny’s.”
    I took the menu from him and perused the Senior section: the Senior Omelette, the Senior Scramble, the Senior French Toast Slam. “Are the Senior meals any different from the regular ones?” I asked. “Do they come with a bib or something?”
    Ben rolled his eyes at this useless display of gerontophobia. “You know,” he said, “if it bothers you that much, you can always pay full price.”
    “It doesn’t bother me,” I said, laughing it off, since I was certain it didn’t bother him . It probably turned him on, in fact, that I’d just been certified an old guy by a leading family restaurant. Such is the nature of my greatest blessing. I know not to mess with it.
    I reached across the table and took his hand. “That was so hot last night.”
    “Oh, man,” said Ben, squeezing my hand.
    “He was sweet, too.”
    Ben nodded with a sleepy smile. “Definitely the right choice.”
    “You’ll tell me when I start looking like a silly old fool, won’t you?”
    “Fuck, no,” said Ben.
    I grinned feebly. “I didn’t mean to say that out loud, actually.”
    “You looked like a sexy daddy to me.”
    Two tables away, an obese white woman stopped wiping her obese child’s face long enough to stare us down. Ben smiled at her pleasantly, then returned his gaze to me, still holding my hand. “Did you ever check your cell, by the way?”
    I flashed on the night before and the phone call that had come just after we had. I fished the cell phone out of my jacket and checked the readout.
    “It’s from Anna,” I said.
    “Better check it,” he said.
    All he meant was that Anna was old enough to require our attentiveness, but I still felt a sudden shiver of anxiety. That’s usual for me when