Graham drove straight to Derek Rottweiler’s building without even stopping at McDonald’s because he felt that he could not physically endure being in the car with that ghastly, heartless child one minute more than absolutely necessary. And then they drove to their own building, where Matthew had some delayed seasick reaction and threw up in the hall outside their apartment door, and Audra discovered she’d left her phone charger aboard the Sapphire.
It was not the least fun Graham had ever had for four hundred dollars—that honor was reserved for a mule ride up a mountain trail in Puerto Vallarta, where Graham’s mule had died and Graham had had to hike back down with the sobbing guide—but, oh man, it was pretty close.
—
Graham expected Audra to be weepy on the day that Lorelei moved, but when he got home after work, she and Matthew were both pink-cheeked with pleasure.
“Lorelei gave me her Coke machine!” Audra said excitedly. “The movers couldn’t promise not to break it so she had them move it down here.”
“Come look, Dad!” Matthew said.
Graham set down his briefcase and followed them down the hall. Lorelei’s vintage Coke machine stood proudly in their living room, as immovable as a tree whose roots have cracked and lifted the sidewalk.
Audra showed him how to use it, as though he’d never seen a vending machine before, let alone this exact vending machine, which had stood in Lorelei’s den for years. Audra had always been enamored of it.
“Now you just put a dime here in the coin slot,” Audra said. “And then you press the button and your drink comes out! It can hold up to nine different flavors or whatever—including beer bottles!—so Matthew and I stocked it from the fridge and Matthew had his very first Coke!”
Perhaps caffeine was responsible for the bright-eyed looks on both of them? For a second, Graham had thought Audra was going to say that Matthew had had his first beer, so he was actually relieved that it was just a Coke. Although up until now they had refrained from giving Matthew caffeine, fearing that it would be as disastrous as introducing television to a primitive culture. Oh, well, who cared? It had to happen sooner or later.
Then suddenly Graham was reminded of the time when Matthew was four and they had made him give up his pacifier. (Yes, at age four, he still used a pacifier; they were tired of hearing about it.) They had promised Matthew that once he’d gone without a pacifier for ten days, they would take him to Chuck E. Cheese’s. Matthew had been surprisingly—joyously to Graham—cooperative, letting Audra collect all the pacifiers from around the apartment (she threw them away the next day while he was at preschool) and watching Graham carefully each night as he wrote a big black X on the calendar. The ten days went by like syrup sliding down a stack of pancakes, and they went to Chuck E. Cheese’s, and in the car on the way home, Matthew said, “That was great. And now I get my pacifier back!” He had not understood the deal at all, and when they explained to him that the pacifiers were gone for good, his wail of outrage had made Graham’s eardrums pulse. Graham suspected that they might be in for something similar now—the novelty of the vending machine would wear off and Audra would want her friend back.
“Press the button, Matthew!” Audra said now, inserting a dime into the coin slot.
Matthew pressed and the machine rumbled and clunked but no beverage dropped into the little glass-fronted dispenser.
“Huh,” Audra said, fumbling for her phone. “Lorelei said this might happen. Let me just call her—”
“Mom, you said we could go out and get more drinks,” Matthew said. “Special, interesting ones.”
“We will, sweetie,” Audra said, pressing buttons on her phone. “Just let me ask Lorelei about this.” She put the phone to her ear. “Oh, hey, it’s me! Are you guys at the airport yet? Remember that time you dropped me off at the airport and we were so busy talking that you dropped me at Arrivals instead of Departures and I had to—”
“Mom!” Matthew protested.
Audra pressed the phone against her chest. “I know, honey. Just give me two minutes.” She put the phone back to her ear.
Matthew looked at Graham. “Does she mean the long two minutes or the short two minutes?”
Graham sighed. “The long two minutes, I think. But I’ll take you.”
So Graham and Matthew went to the supermarket and bought ginger ale and root beer and cherry Coke and cream soda—all those strange drinks that you forget were once actually popular—and some cold beer in case Audra hadn’t been able to get the Coke machine working again. While they were shopping, they called the pizza place and ordered a large pizza with pepperoni and basil leaves.
They picked up the pizza on the way home. Audra was off the phone, amazingly, and the vending machine was working again. Matthew stacked the new drinks on the machine’s shelves while Audra updated them on Lorelei’s move, which was now less than three hours old—“So they leave for the airport, and Lorelei was all emotional, you know, watching the building get smaller and smaller in the window, and Doug starts talking to the cabdriver about mortgage refinancing and the Federal Reserve! She wanted to kill herself!”—and Graham set the table.
The Coke machine made sort of conversational noises, like an elderly relative—rumbling and shuddering and switching a fan on and off—but the drinks were ice-cold and Graham agreed that it was very satisfying to get them from your own personal vending machine. It was like being the proprietor of a general store, but without the pesky customers.
Say what you will about fat and sugar and salt and alcohol—it’s all true. But the meal really did—in a way, for a moment, under the circumstances—make them all a little bit happier, even Graham.
—
Graham and Audra were going out to dinner—just the two of them—while Matthew had a playdate with a new friend from school named Theo. Evidently Theo was going to be Matthew’s rebound relationship. Graham didn’t hold out much hope. Rebound relationships never worked. Not even when the rebound person was superior in every way to the previous person, not even when the rebound person owned a PlayStation 4.
They were all going to walk over to Theo’s apartment and then Graham and Audra would go on to the restaurant. Graham and Matthew waited for Audra by the door and at last she came clacking down the hall. She wore a rose-colored sheath dress and thin gold hoop earrings and a pair of platform cork sandals so high that it seemed as though she were standing on a stack of telephone books. Graham looked at the sandals doubtfully. “Are you sure you can walk to the restaurant and back in those?”
“Oh, yes,” Audra said. “They’re new.”
Graham wasn’t sure how the fact that they were new sandals made them any easier to walk in, but he supposed it was her decision. They left the apartment at five, which meant they would probably get to the restaurant at about five-thirty. Of course, five-thirty was earlier than Graham and Audra cared to eat, but it was like when Matthew was a baby and they watched TV with closed captions for an entire year because otherwise the sound woke him up: theirs was not a perfect world.
Out on the street, the new sandals forced Audra to walk as though her legs were short lengths of limp rope. She took Graham’s arm and they all walked very slowly.