“You have to understand,” this Bert said to me, solemnly, “I’m down in a big way.”
“Just apologize,” the older guy said.
“I’m very sorry,” Bert said. He reached up and picked a pine needle out of his hair. “I, um, thought you were someone else.”
“It’s okay,” I told him.
The older guy nudged him, then nodded toward the fliers. “Oh, right,” Bert said, dropping down to his knees. He started to pick them up, his fingers scratching the pavement, as the other guy walked a bit down the driveway, picking up the ones that had slid there.
“That was a good one, too,” Bert was muttering as I squatted down beside him to help. “Almost had him. Almost.”
The light outside the kitchen door popped on, and suddenly it was very bright. A second later the door swung open.
“What in the world is going on out here?” I turned to see a woman in a red apron, with black curly hair piled on top of her head, standing at the top of the stairs. She was pregnant, and was squinting out into the dark with a curious, although somewhat impatient, expression. “Where is that platter I asked for?”
“Right here,” the older guy called out as he came back up the driveway, a bunch of my fliers now stacked neatly upon the platter. He handed them to me.
“Thanks,” I said.
“No problem.” Then he took the stairs two at a time, handing the platter to the woman, as Bert crawled under the deck for the last few fliers that had landed there.
“Marvelous,” she said. “Now, Wes, get back to the bar, will you? The more they drink, the less they’ll notice how long the food is taking.”
“Sure thing,” the guy said, ducking through the doorway and disappearing into the kitchen.
The woman ran her hand over her belly, distracted, then looked back out into the dark. “Bert?” she called out loudly. “Where—”
“Right here,” Bert said, from under the deck.
She turned around, then stuck her head over the side of the rail. “Are you on the ground?”
“Yes.”
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing,” Bert mumbled.
“Well,” the woman said, “when you’re done with that, I’ve got crab cakes cooling with your name on them. So get your butt in here, please, okay?”
“Okay,” he said. “I’m coming.”
The woman went back inside, and a second later I heard her yelling something about mini-biscuits. Bert came out from under the deck, organizing the fliers he was holding into a stack, then handed them to me.
“I’m really sorry,” he said. “It’s just this stupid thing.”
“It’s fine,” I told him, as he picked another leaf out of his hair. “It was an accident.”
He looked at me, his expression serious. “There are,” he said, “no accidents.”
For a second I just stared at him. He had a chubby face and a wide nose, and his hair was thick and too short, like it had been cut at home. He was watching me so intently, as if he wanted to be sure I understood, that it took me a second to look away.
“Bert!” the woman yelled from inside. “Crab cakes!”
“Right,” he said, snapping out of it. Then he backed up to the stairs and started up them quickly. When he got to the top, he glanced back down at me. “But I am sorry,” he said, saying the words that I’d heard so much in the last year and a half that they hardly carried meaning anymore. Although I had a feeling he meant it. Weird. “I’m sorry,” he said again. And then he was gone.
When I got inside, my mother was deep in some conversation about zoning with a couple of contractors. I refreshed the fliers, then directed a man who was a bit stumbly and holding a glass of wine he probably didn’t need to the bathroom. I was scanning the living room for stray empty glasses when there was a loud crash from the kitchen.
Everything in the front of the house stopped. Conversation. Motion. The very air. Or so it felt.
“It’s fine!” a voice called out, upbeat and cheerful, from the other side of the door. “Carry on as you were!”
There was a slight surprised murmur from the assembled crowd, some laughter, and then slowly the conversation built again. My mother smiled her way across the room, then put a hand on the small of my back, easing me toward the foyer.
“That’s a spill on a client, not enough appetizers, and a crash,” she said, her voice level. “I’m not happy. Could you go and convey that, please?”
“Right,” I said. “I’m on it.”
When I came through the kitchen door, the first thing I did was step on something that mushed, in a wet sort of way, under my foot. Then I noticed that the floor was littered with small round objects, some at a standstill, some rolling slowly to the four corners of the room. A little girl in pigtails, who looked to be about two or three, was standing by the sink, fingers in her mouth and wide eyed as several of the marblelike objects moved past her.
“Well.” I looked over to see the pregnant woman standing by the stove, an empty cookie sheet in her hands. She sighed. “I guess that’s it for the meatballs.”
I picked up my foot to examine it, stepping aside just in time to keep from getting hit by the door as it swung open. Bert, now leafless and looking somewhat composed, breezed in carrying a tray filled with wadded-up napkins and empty glasses. “Delia,” he said to the woman, “we need more crab cakes.”
“And I need a sedative,” she replied in a tired voice, stretching her back, “but you can’t have everything. Take the cheese puffs and tell them we’re traying the crab cakes up right now.”