“I caught a cold. Walked to Mrs. Park’s for milk yesterday? Had to sit on two stoops. Nina let me rest on her cot she keeps for beauty naps behind the steam presses in back. Can’t seem to shake this chest thing. Feel so out of it. Last night, shivered my nuts off. Sweated like it was the Tropics and I was Joan Crawford chewing scenery in … (don’t even tell me, Hart. Because I know you’re going to try to act it out) … Rain. Shook to where my bed squeaked. That bed, even with a crowd, never squeaked before.”

I advanced a theory. “Maybe it’s been loosened up by all the recent floor activity.” And we all laughed, but out of Robert’s mouth a goodly sample of his chest cold, one corner piece of gray-green phlegm—shot, hit, then slipped down the side of one glass Parmesan dispenser. Our waiter, seeing, looked prissy, then solemn. Robert alone laughed at the projectile, laughed quite loud, pointing. Two candlelit couples at far tables turned, romance offset by his sudden braying, peeved.

“Honey,” she said. “Honey?” And I saw her hand scoop forward. At her touch, he set his head down on the checkered cloth before us, good jaw amid rattled mussel shells. Bama’s palm pulled back as from a lit stove.

“Hartley, feel him.”

My hand now met his heat. At this temperature, it felt unlike a human surface.

“What?” Robert awarded us a dazzling out-of-sequence smile. “Because is it something I said?”

“I’ll pay.” I signaled for our waiter. “Robert, sweetie, you have a temperature, a brain-cooker temperature. Robert? We’re going to get you fast over to St. Vincent’s.”

“A saint lives in the Village? I don’t feel my absolute best. But, where is there one? Can we walk to see the Saint?”

“Yes.” She held his right arm. I took his excellent left one.

It was among us.

AFTER
That Ship Left Already

How’re the Folks?

A Highly Unlikely Love Poem to My Parents

y father has lost our car. He’s way out there, wandering the mall’s vast lot. He disappears behind a hundred palm trees lit with Christmas stars somehow sickening at noon. Mom and I strain to see him. There, white-haired between vehicles, his golf togs overbright as educational playthings, a thin man keeps waving something side to side.

A compass? Some pocket dowsing rod? No, she explains, it’s that thing, his latest toy (four hundred bucks)—“a no-key remote-entry device” meant to unlock the trunk, flash headlights, activate the alarm of a much-missed Buick Park Avenue. Among the thousands of cars beaded colorful to the horizon, my old man is trying to flush out his. He hopes to force his own to dance.

I am, of course, in Florida. I’ve left Angie and the others in charge of Robert’s latest hospital stay. Beside me, on this backless bench set just within mall glass, my gaunt chic mother, 80, clucks, shuddering. Feeling responsible, she acts as ashamed for herself as for poor Pop out there.