Shakesteer's
Jim Wyatt

Zoë comes into the den holding Horatio, who flaps his arms and smiles when he sees me. It’s Saturday morning, but Zoë’s wearing a black Burberry skirt and plaid jacket, as if she’s dressed for an evening on the town.

“David, can you mind him for a bit?” she asks. Zoë has a faux-British accent. She spent one semester in Leicester when she was in college and came back speaking like Audrey Hepburn. I found this affectation charming when I first met her three years ago.

Lately, though, I’ve been wondering how big a betrayal of my current wife it would be to telephone Laura, my ex. I’ve learned from experience that cheating on your wife is only hard at first, and that’s what scares me. I wonder if I’m about to screw up a second marriage.

Zoë brings Horatio over to the couch, and I reluctantly take him on my lap. “Ta,” she says, and leaves me with the baby.

Horatio has two teeth up, two down: it’s a jack-o’-lantern smile. He has his mother’s blond hair, and his eyes look as if they might stay blue. He’s beautiful. But I’m fifty-four, and I never wanted another child.

Horatio writhes in my lap; he squirms and arches his back. He hates to be constrained when there’s a whole world out there to explore. Zoë has dressed him in a polo shirt, khakis, and what appear to be baby penny loafers. He’s better dressed than I am, but I’m not sure how long I can afford to keep him in Ralph Lauren baby-wear. Shakesteer’s isn’t making money.

I look around the den. We’ve just bought a new television, a hulking monster that dwarfs the stand it’s been placed on, and now five loudspeakers clutter the room. There are framed movie posters of La Dolce Vita and Wild Strawberries on the wall, and near the door sits an antique popcorn cart. The entire house is big and pretentious. There’s an acre of yard that needs constant trimming, and since we’ve moved outside of town, no one ever drops by. I bought this house after I sold the Shakesteer’s franchises because Cordelia, my daughter, insisted that it was a good investment. And now I’ve bought the television and the loudspeakers because Toby told me I needed home cinema.

All my children are named after characters from Shakespeare. Toby was my first, named after Sir Toby Belch. He’s twenty-six. Cordelia, named after Lear’s faithful daughter, is twenty. And Horatio is ten months.

Zoë, my new wife and Horatio’s mother, is also twenty-six, which sometimes sounds a little sick to me, too.

I put Horatio on the floor and he immediately crawls to the television cart—the flashing displays of the DVD and the stereo are just too tempting. Before I can get up off the couch he’s made his way to the jumble of power cords.

Is calling my ex-wife tantamount to cheating on my current wife? It’s certainly a step in that direction. But in truth, I don’t know how to reach Laura. She made a clean break—she took what she wanted and had the rest sold. She quit her tenured position at the university and found something new—a job at a teaching college, somewhere on the east coast. It was a step down professionally, but at least she got away from her son-of-a-bitch ex-husband.

I hurry over to the television cart and manage to pry Horatio’s fingers away from the cord. I lift him up in my arms. Immediately, he begins to cry and kick his feet. What he desires seems so simple—he just wants to hold this fascinating new thing in his hands, perhaps to take a little taste of it—and yet I won’t allow him to. This is what Horatio’s life centers on: I want. And I feel for him, because I want, too.

I want, but I don’t know what.

I pick up Horatio and carry him back to the couch. I rock him in my arms, but he’s too old for rocking. He turns and explores my face with his fingers. He finally settles on my nose, which he grasps with surprising strength. I pry his fingers loose and hold him a bit farther away. I’m holding him at arm’s length and staring at the monstrous television when Zoë comes back into the room. She gives me a questioning look.

“I’ve got post-purchase dissonance,” I say.

“I told you buying this telly was daft,” Zoë says. “It’s too big. And you only ever watch old movies.”

She’s right; it is silly, but then I should be used to that. I glance through the sliding glass doors at the pool and the patio. An outdoor pool in Missouri is daft, too. It’s early September, and although the pool man ran his net through the water just this morning, there’s already a skim of dead leaves floating on the water’s surface.

I hold out the baby to her. “Couldn’t we dress him in cheaper clothes?”

She laughs. “God, you’re mean,” she says. When she says “mean” she means cheap. “Where do you want to buy his clothes? Wal-Mart?” She doesn’t move to take Horatio, so I set him back on my lap.

“He is a baby,” I point out. “It’s not like he knows what he’s wearing.”

“I think he can start appreciating quality now. Who knows how early his tastes are formed.” She looks me up and down as if to suggest that he might already have a genetic predisposition toward bad taste.

Zoë believes that I should replace my wardrobe of jeans and T-shirts with one of tailored suits. Last year, for my birthday, she bought me a dark Hugo Boss suit; or rather, as she charged it on the credit card, I bought myself one. When I tried it on, she ran her hands up and down my back admiringly. “You should dress like this all the time,” she said. I pointed out to her that I still owned Shakesteer’s, that all my clothes were stained with grease and pickle juice. She looked at me, disappointed. “You’re a success, darling,” she said. “You could buy dozens of suits and throw one away if you ruin it.”

I think that’s why I fell in love with Zoë, because she actually believes I’m a success. At best, I’ve been a reasonably wealthy failure. The thing I most wanted to achieve in life was my PhD, but I’ve been David Starling, ABD for almost thirty years now, ever since I gave up on my dissertation and opened Shakesteer’s. I fell in love with Zoë because I saw myself through her eyes. I felt as if twenty-seven wasted years had drained away.

Why did Zoë marry me? She may love me, but I also know that if I hadn’t had money, she would never have looked at me. And now Shakesteer’s is foundering.

I hold out the baby again. “I’ve got to go in to Shakesteer’s,” I say. “I need to see how it looks after the renovation.”

Zoë sighs. “Please, David. Can’t you take him with you? Just this once?”

*

I put Horatio in his car seat and carry him out to the garage. The restaurant has been closed for a week while Toby organized a quick sprucing up, and even if it means taking the baby, I’m going to drive into town and see how Toby has managed. Since Zoë and I got married, I’ve been letting my son run Shakesteer’s. It’s not the best idea I’ve ever had. Toby’s attitude towards management is laissez-faire. He’s not too concerned with keeping track of our labor or food costs.

At Shakesteer’s we serve hamburger-steaks (which we call steers) and shakes, of course, and when you order the server asks you, “Will that be to go or not to go?” There’s Hamlet and Egglet on the breakfast menu, and Titus’ Meaty Pies on the lunch menu. We serve beer, which we call ale, and wine, which we call Rhenish.

A few years ago I sold these ideas to an entrepreneur who wanted to open Shakesteer’s near five other colleges. I got a fat check, but it was a one-time thing—all the other Shakesteer’s failed, and I still count on the original to keep earning money. Last year, for the first time, the restaurant didn’t make a profit. Lately, although I haven’t told Zoë, I’ve been dipping into savings.

In the front of the garage, parked where I can’t get it out without moving the other cars, is my Volkswagen Beetle rag-top, fully-restored. It’s the car I’d dreamed about ever since Laura and I went to see Annie Hall, the movie that defined for us the good life; and when money came in, I bought one. Zoë and I first dated in that car, but now she doesn’t want me to drive it. She won’t let me put Horatio in it because it’s a convertible and there are no seat belts in the back.

Over my head, from her room above the garage, I hear Cordelia’s subwoofer begin to thump. Zoë, I’m sure, will soon pound on Cordelia’s door and tell her to turn down the stereo. There will be yet another fight, or as Zoë will call it, a “row,” one that I will be happy to miss.

I walk past the VW and past Zoë’s Jaguar, and I come to the white Volvo which I bought at her insistence. It’s a big, sturdy, ugly car, the kind I hoped never to drive again. I strap Horatio’s car seat into the center rear. I wish I were more certain of how the thing buckles in.

Horatio cries a little but settles down as I leave our neighborhood and pull onto the interstate towards town. I just pray that Toby hasn’t screwed up the renovation. I’ve given him very specific instructions: restore, preserve; don’t change. But he’s been insistent that I not come in until the work is finished. Clean, I told him. Re-lacquer the tables where the surfaces have been carved into. “Don’t worry,” he said. Replace the old beer- and puke-stained carpets with new ones, but make sure they’re the same burgundy color. “You’ve got to trust me a little,” he said.

I just hope he gets it right. Part of Shakesteer’s charm is that it doesn’t change, it weathers. Our graffiti walls are the stuff of local legend: twenty-seven years of signatures, jokes, and quotations; there’s hardly an inch of clean wall left. But the start was serendipitous: when the restaurant first opened, there was a long stretch of hallway leading to the toilets that I hadn’t decorated; before the first week was over, someone had scrawled smoke pot not war on one of the blank walls. I stared at the graffito. Was it an act of sheer illiteracy or a moment of brilliance? The more I stared, the more perfect it seemed, and so I left it, and I nailed up a small shelf where I put cupfuls of markers.

It’s no wonder the franchises failed: the reason for our success is not the Shakespeare gags. We’ve beaten the competition around here because of our reputation as a cool place to hang out. And to keep that reputation, I hire the hip. It doesn’t matter if they’re surly or tattooed; I hire the kids that other kids tell me are cool. That was the reason I hired Zoë—because she was recommended; because she had a weird accent and a collection of obscure British bands on CD. I let my employees wear the hats they choose instead of hairnets, I don’t dress them in goofy polyester uniforms, and I don’t complain too much if they call in sick when they’re really just hung over. And in exchange they play the right music on the stereo and get their friends to drop by, and they lend Shakesteer’s a cult following. Or at least that’s the idea. Lately, something isn’t working.

I exit the highway and drive into town. There’s a lazy feel to a university town—even now, driving the streets at noon, you know somehow that all over the city people are just getting up and pulling on their jeans. The trees, now turned orange and yellow, canopy over the sidewalks. It’s pretty, but I never expected to still be here. I was supposed to write my dissertation and move on.

The working title of my dissertation was Put Money in Thy Purse: A Marxist Examination of Shakespeare’s Villains. Laura and I were both graduate students then; we subsisted on ramen noodles and rented a room in a house where every morning we had to clean other people’s pubic hair from the bathtub drain. When Laura got pregnant, I decided I wasn’t a Marxist, not even for the sake of literary theory. I borrowed money from my parents and opened Shakesteer’s. It’s on the edge of campus, and even at a glance you can see that it wasn’t a purpose-built restaurant but just an old house. I knocked out the interior walls to make the L-shaped dining room.

Toby is standing in the parking lot as I pull up. When he sees me, he raises his bandaged right hand, a huge mitt of white gauze. He burned his hand a week ago, working the fryer. He was using the tongs to fish out a piece of deep-fried chicken, dropped the tongs, then reached his hand into the fryer to grab them.

I wave and park the car. Toby jogs over and opens up the rear door. He leans his face in close to Horatio’s and says, “Hey, Tiger.” To my surprise, Horatio doesn’t recoil in fright but smiles. If Frankenstein’s monster had been assembled with staples and rivets instead of sewing thread, you’d have an approximation of Toby’s face: he has a stud in each eyebrow, a nose ring, multiple piercings in both ears. He’s dressed entirely in black.

And yet for all his attempts, I know that Toby isn’t cool. At the restaurant, it’s apparent that he’s a poseur in the world of hip. He’s shy and introverted. Already his hairline is receding, which makes him look surprisingly old.

Toby shuts the rear door and comes and stands by the driver’s side. I unbuckle my seat belt and start to get out, but Toby leans against the door. I look at him. He taps on the glass with his left hand. I touch the button and roll down the window.

“How’s it going, Dad?”

“Are you going to let me out of the car?”

“I called the house and Zoë told me you were on your way.”

I push against the door, but he leans the weight of his body against it. “I want to see the restaurant,” I say.

He waves to Horatio in the back seat. “How’s Cordelia?” he asks. I stare at him, and he fingers the stud in his eyebrow. “It’s not ready,” he says finally.

That doesn’t sound good at all. “We’re supposed to open this afternoon.”

“We’ll be ready. I promise. But I don’t want you to see it until it’s finished.”

This sounds worse still. I glance again at his bandaged hand, and I wonder if I should let him run the restaurant at all. I appointed Toby as manager because I couldn’t stand another day at Shakesteer’s. When I boxed up my dissertation, I gave up on the thing that mattered to me. I watched Laura finish her doctorate while I learned about keg systems and carbonated beverages, grades of hamburger meat, greengrocers. It was interesting for a time, but then I realized that my intellectual life was over. I grew to hate Shakesteer’s, but now I need it to succeed again.

“Just let me take a quick peek,” I say. “I don’t want to have to drive back out.”

“Dad, you’ve got to learn to trust me.”

This is my son who spent his time at university bouncing from major to major until his academic probation finally ran out. I hired Toby as a cook because he couldn’t find a job anywhere else. I’m just glad that he’s had only one week to screw things up.

“Okay, I trust you,” I say. “I’ll come back later.”

*

I carry Horatio upstairs to the junk room, the room where we pile up the laundry and the ironing, and where all the boxes I’ve never unpacked are stacked. Although I haven’t looked at it for years, I want to find my dissertation.

I set Horatio on the floor. He sits, points his finger at me and gurgles. As long as he’s sitting, I can work. I go to the boxes in the corner. In one of these, God knows which, are the notes and the draft of my dissertation. Somewhere in here are three years of my life.

I take the top box down from the stack and begin to root through it. It’s obviously the wrong box—it’s filled with pictures. I pull one out, a photo of Laura and me standing in front of Shakesteer’s on its opening day. I’m wearing white trousers with a noticeable flare to the legs. Laura is sporting the Annie Hall look.

I feel a wave of regret: I regret never finishing my dissertation. I regret starting Shakesteer’s.

My father lent me the money to open Shakesteer’s, but I know it broke his heart. He ran a café in my hometown, and the only thing he ever wanted was for me to get my doctorate. He died last year, and he never talked to me about the restaurant. We never once talked shop.

Laura wrote her dissertation while she stayed with the kids, getting a few words in during their nap time, a few more words in when I took them out for a walk. She wrote to the sounds of the dishwasher and the washing machine. I cooked hamburgers and french fries, and she became a medievalist.

I want to know how she is. I want to talk to her. I’ll bet anything that Cordelia and Toby know how to contact their mother, but I don’t want to ask them. Cordelia would happily give me the number just so she could spitefully tell Zoë that I wanted it. Toby would be disappointed in me—he likes Zoë.

I look up to see that Horatio has crawled over to me. He pulls himself to standing against the box and shrieks in delight. He grabs the picture from my hand. “No,” I say. “Let’s don’t wad that up.”

From downstairs, Cordelia calls, “Daddy!” I hesitate. I know, more or less, what this is going to be. She calls again, “Daddy, will you come here?” I carry Horatio downstairs and to the kitchen.

Cordelia and Zoë lean against counters on opposite sides of the kitchen, like prize-fighters in their corners. Cordelia, still in her pajamas in the afternoon, stares purposefully at Zoë. Zoë looks away. I can tell she’s on the verge of tears.

“Will you tell her, please, that this is the drawer for the silverware,” Cordelia says, pointing to the drawer by the fridge.

“I’ve moved the silverware,” Zoë says. “And I want to use this drawer for Horatio’s things.”

Cordelia takes a pacifier from the drawer and drums it on the countertop. “Will you tell her, please, that this has always been the drawer for the silverware?”

“Can it possibly matter,” I ask Cordelia, “which drawer the silverware goes into?”

“Every time I want to get a fork, I find a drawer full of plastic spoons and rubber nipples. Why does it matter to her which fucking drawer his stuff goes into?”

“Don’t say ‘fucking’ in front of the baby,” I say. I turn to Zoë, “What do you think? Could we put Horatio’s things into another drawer?”

“You don’t understand anything, do you?” Zoë gives me a look of utter exasperation. “I’m going for a fag,” she says. She means a cigarette. She walks past me out of the room.

Cordelia sits down at the kitchen table and looks at me. “Remind me again how you chose her?”

“You could get your own place,” I point out.

She scrunches up her face and shakes her head. “This is my house, too, Daddy.”

I ruffle Horatio’s hair, and he smiles, contented for the moment to be held. So far my children haven’t turned out much like their fictional namesakes; Goneril might have been a better name for my daughter. Cordelia studies marketing. She’s learning how to sell shit—since when is that a university course of study? She’s joined the College Republicans, and I can tell she’s embarrassed to be seen with me. Can this really be the child to whom I read Tales from Shakespeare every night?

I know that Cordelia won’t move out of the house. She lives rent free with a father who pays her bills and who doesn’t care what time she comes back home. Still, I decide to fish a little. “Or you could live with your mother,” I try. “You might like Connecticut.”

She gives me one of her disgusted looks. “Mom lives in Delaware.”

“Oh.” This is the sort of information I need. “Where is it she’s teaching?”

Cordelia’s face lights up. “Do you want Mom’s number?” She gets up from her seat and grabs a box of raisin bran from the cupboard and pours it into a bowl. “Why didn’t you just ask for it?” She goes to get a spoon, opens the familiar drawer, and yells, “Motherfucker!”

“The baby,” I say. He’s frightened, and I bounce him in my arms.

“Good for you, Daddy.” She rummages around in the other drawer and finds a spoon. “God knows nobody would blame you if you dumped Miss Cruel Britannia.”

“Look,” I say, “you’ve got to promise me you won’t mention this to Zoë. I’m not going to call your mother. I just want to know how to contact her, in case of an emergency.” The explanation sounds thin and I know it.

“Don’t you worry.” She spoons the raisin bran into her mouth. “I won’t say a word.”

I carry Horatio out of the kitchen, down the hall, and to the den. Through the sliding glass doors I can see Zoë by the pool. She’s sitting in one of the lounge chairs, a cigarette in her hand. She sits there, staring at nothing. But then I see the thin white cord snaking from her ears, down her chest, to the cushion of the chair, and I realize that she’s listening to her Ipod. This is her form of entertainment. I almost never see her reading.

I’ve been encouraging Zoë to enroll again as a full-time student, but she takes only the occasional course, preferring, I suppose, to enjoy my money. She was a Music major when I first hired her to work at Shakesteer’s. Even then, before she could afford Burberry’s, I could see she was beautiful.

The first night I cheated on Laura it was raining. Zoë and I closed the restaurant together. We played her CDs on the stereo and she told me about England. It was a slow night because of the rain, and we closed early. When I finished mopping the kitchen, I went out to the front, where Zoë was cleaning the soda dispenser.

“How are you?” I asked.

“I’m jolly good,” she said.

I didn’t mind the affectation. In fact, it felt to me like hope, as if one’s past really didn’t count for anything. What did it matter if you were raised in a hick town where everyone called you Janet? With a little imagination you could be exotic European Zoë.

One of the nozzles was stuck, and I took off my apron and went to help her. We both put our hands on the nozzle and twisted and pulled until it finally came apart. Standing close to her, I knew I could kiss her.

But I didn’t do it. Instead I asked if she was hungry. It was already late, after eleven, but she said yes. We didn’t have umbrellas, so we cut open a plastic trash bag and tried to hold it over our heads as we ran to the car. We drove in the rain, looking for an open restaurant. The Beetle’s windshield wipers could barely keep up with the downpour, and we mostly felt our way along the main drag to Bao Long.

We ran through the rain again, both soaking wet now, and collided in the foyer, laughing. I showed Zoë to a table, and then excused myself to use the phone. It’s hard to cheat on your wife the first time. I felt a knot in my stomach as I dialed our number. “It’s me,” I said when Laura answered. “We’re still closing up. We had a rush at the end. I’ll be a little bit late.”

And that was it. That was how I betrayed Laura, with a single phone call—not, rather, two weeks later when Zoë and I consummated our relationship in a motel by the stadium. After I hung up, I stood in the foyer a minute longer, surprised at how awful I felt.

And now I’m standing at the window watching my young wife lounge by the pool, but I keep thinking about my ex-wife, who’s not glamorous, who’s not young, and who would never sit by the pool without a book in her hands.

I slide the glass doors open and step out onto the patio. I walk over to the chair where Zoë’s sitting and I stand there holding the baby. I can see that she’s been crying.

After a moment, she pulls out the earbuds and lets them lie across her chest. “What?” she says.

I touch her leg. “Couldn’t you try a little harder to be friends?”

“She wants me out of here, David. And you never take my side.”

I don’t want to take anyone’s side. “I have to go back to the restaurant,” I say. I hold out the baby to her. “I need to check up on things. I’ll be back in the evening.”

She looks at me but doesn’t move to take Horatio. “Why don’t you mind him for a bit longer,” she says. She puts her earbuds back in, crosses her arms, and closes her eyes.

*

When I arrive at Shakesteer’s, I’m glad to see that the sign in the door is flipped to Come in, we’re open. I carry Horatio inside. The dark wooden booths are still standing. Toby hasn’t gutted the place. But it’s far too bright. Over the booths, where the funky, old, dimly-lit brass lamps used to hang, there’s now a row of halogen lights, glass and stainless-steel affairs strung along metal wires running the length of the restaurant. Each booth is washed in a harsh light that doesn’t say, “Come, sit, and have a drink of ale”; rather, it’s a light that suggests dental surgery.

I glance around the booths. There’s one couple sitting in the back. They look younger than our usual crowd, and I pray that Toby asked them for ID before he pulled their beers. They don’t have any food in front of them, and I hope they’re going to buy more than their two half-pints.

Two servers stand at the counter, tattooed girls with matted hair who are too busy talking to each other to look my way. Toby sits at a table up front reading a book. There has to be at least one cook in the back. I’m paying four people to look after two customers.

Toby glances up from his book and sees me. He raises his gauze-wrapped hand and jogs over to Horatio and me. “How’s it going, Dad?”

“What did you do with the lights?” I ask.

He seems pleased with himself. “What do you think?”

“Just tell me you haven’t thrown out the old ones.”

“Don’t you like them?” He looks crestfallen. “I thought these were a lot trendier.”

I groan. “You did have them put on a rheostat, didn’t you?”

He nods.

“Well turn them down, for Christ’s sake,” I say. “And you’ve got too many people on the payroll. Why don’t you see if one of those girls wants to go home early?”

Toby looks away. I know I’ve hurt his feelings, but what else can I do? “Here, watch him.” I hand over the baby to Toby, who takes him awkwardly in the crook of his left arm. I walk to the kitchen.

When I get to the counter, I glance down the hall to the toilets. The graffiti walls have been painted stark, glaring white. I stand there staring. Twenty-seven years of history erased.

Toby comes over, still balancing Horatio in his arm. He must read my thoughts, because he says, “Think of it as a palimpsest.”

Even the first words effaced. I don’t know what to say. I can feel my breathing become shallow.

“There wasn’t any room left to write anything. I thought we could start over.”

I pick up one of the black magic markers from the shelf, and I turn to the wall. I try to remember the exact spot where the first graffito was, and I consider re-writing it. But then I uncap the marker and write, I wasted time, and now doth time waste me. “Right,” I say. “Good idea.” I hope my tone will leave no doubts as to what I really think. I push through the double doors to the kitchen.

There’s a kid I don’t recognize working the fryer. He’s wearing a Captain Beefheart T-shirt, cowboy boots, and a pair of cut-off shorts. Is this look cool, or is he just a freak? I don’t even know about the T-shirt—is it possible that Captain Beefheart is hip again?

I tap my head. “You need to wear a hair restraint,” I tell him.

He shoots me a look as if I were beneath contempt. After a moment he takes a wadded beret from his back pocket and tugs it on. I watch him pull a basket of fries up, shake the grease off of them, and dump them into the warmer. He piles fries onto a plate with a pair of tongs. “Order up,” he yells and sticks the plate in the window.

I guess the big-spending minors have ordered some food after all.

“Whoa,” I say. “Wait a minute.” I grab the plate back up from the window. “How big is a serving of fries?”

He shrugs his shoulders to let me know he doesn’t give a fuck. I point to a faded, greasy sign above the warmer.

“Three ounces,” I say. “Let’s see how much that is. I carry the plate over to the prep table, put a plate on the scale and then zero the dial. I dump the fries from his plate onto the scale. Seven ounces. “See?”

He looks at me but doesn’t say anything. I slide half the fries into the warmer and then take off a couple of more using the tongs. I show it to him. “There,” I say, “that’s a portion of fries. Remember what that looks like.”

“Wow,” he says. “I really learned something. Thank you.” The little fucker.

I walk back to the office, a little nook next to the beer kegs, the soda containers and the CO2 dispensers. I sit down at the computer desk.

Would it be so terrible if I contacted Laura?

I told her about Zoë in the parking lot here at Shakesteer’s. I had planned to take Laura out to eat; I would confess to her over drinks, after dinner. I had planned to tell her in a public place, where it was less likely she’d become hysterical. But instead I blurted out my confession in the car. We sat in the Beetle with the top down. It was late summer.

I needn’t have worried about Laura’s hysteria. There was an icy undertone to her voice, but mostly she just sounded tired. She turned in the seat and looked at me.

“This is really what you want?” she asked.

Up until she asked the question, I had been sure. Still, I nodded.

She shook her head, sadly. “You don’t ever know what you want.”

“I know how I feel,” I said.

“And you think you love this girl?” The wind blew her hair across her face.

“She’s not really a girl,” I said. “She’s twenty-four, but she’s very mature.”

A note of sarcasm crept in to her voice. “Are you sure that won’t be a problem? Her being mature?”

Now, on a whim, I Google Laura. I type Dr. Laura Jones Delaware into the search field. Google informs me that it’s found 41,300 results in .31 seconds. I check the first page and then the second, but nothing looks like the match I want. I’ll have to wait for Cordelia to give me the number.

I swivel my chair around and look at the beer kegs. We make a lot more money on drinks than we do on food, but I’m certain Toby hasn’t been doing what I told him to do. I lift up the extra keg, and sure enough it’s empty. The sole reason I buy our beer from the local brewer is that they still ship in open kegs. I’ve shown Toby how to work the system: how to pry out the bung, siphon beer into the extra keg, and then top up the first keg with water. You hammer the bung back in and re-pressurize with CO2. It’s easy, and we can get four barrels for the price of three.

I walk back through the kitchen. The Beefheart Kid has taken off his beret again. “What?” he says. “It’s hot.” I stare at him until he pulls the hat out from his pocket and puts it back on. On the way to the dining room, I stop and look again at the walls—a single line from Shakespeare surrounded by oceans of white space.

Back in the dining room, Toby is holding Horatio, bouncing him up and down. Horatio laughs and reaches out with both hands to grab at the studs in Toby’s face. “You’re not using the extra keg,” I tell him.

“It’s not right, Dad.” He shakes his head. “And it’s probably not legal. Let me handle things.”

I look around the restaurant. It’s Saturday afternoon and the dining room is empty. Maybe the word hasn’t gotten out that we’ve reopened. Maybe business will pick up in the evening. Maybe the coupons in the student newspaper will bring in some business. But I’m not sure how much longer I can afford to keep this up.

I take Horatio from Toby and carry him back to the car.

*

Zoë’s Jaguar is not in its place when I drive up to the house. I carry Horatio inside. “Zoë?” I call. No answer. She’s obviously gone, and so my babysitting duties continue. I poke my head in the kitchen. “Cordelia?”

Then I notice the sheet of paper on the counter. It’s Cordelia’s handwriting, giant letters running the full length of the page, Daddy, Here’s what you wanted: mom’s phone number in Delaware. Say hi from me. P.S. Don’t worry, I didn’t tell Her Majesty. And then there is a number, a 302 area code.

I hold the note in my hand and feel a moment of panic. Has Zoë seen it? Or did she leave before Cordelia placed the note on the counter? I decide finally that Cordelia wouldn’t have left it lying around with Zoë still in the house—she promised, and that would be vicious even by her standards.

I take Horatio’s bottle from the fridge and pop it in the bottle warmer—perhaps it will keep him entertained while I look for my dissertation. I fold up Zoë’s note and put it in my front pocket.

I carry Horatio and the bottle upstairs to the junk room. My box of photos sits open on the floor, and the laundry is piled high on the couch. Zoë must have just left the house because the iron is sitting on the ironing board, still plugged in.

I set Horatio down on the floor and go to the stack of boxes. The top box is light so I don’t even bother to open it; I just toss it on top of the box of photos. The next one I wrestle to the floor and rip open. Jackpot. Pages of dusty notes and a series of cardboard binders. I can hear Horatio knocking his bottle against the floor. Each binder is a chapter in progress. I open one and pull out a yellowed type-written page. After years of word-processing, it’s a shock to see what a page of my old typewriter’s courier 12 looks like. I read the chapter heading: “Selling out Hamlet: Rosencrantz, Guildenstern and the Power of the Market.”

I hear Horatio’s shriek of delight, and I look up just in time to notice that he’s crawled over to the ironing board. He’s got both hands on the cord of the iron. He shrieks again. He tries to pull himself up to standing.

I drop the binder, run to the board, and just manage to catch the iron on its way down. I grab it with both hands, one hand finding the plastic handle, the other closing on the tip of the metal triangle. I put the iron back on the board, gather up Horatio in my arms, and jog to the bathroom.

I can already feel the burn growing hot. Holding the baby in my left arm, I turn on the tap and run cool water over my right hand. My hand radiates heat. When I take it out from the running water, I can see a brand on my palm, a bold red chevron.

Still holding Horatio around his waist with my left arm, I try to rummage around in the medicine cabinet for burn ointment, but all I can find are Zoë’s creams from Crabtree and Evelyn. Horatio, frustrated, kicks his legs and shrieks. I try the drawer. I’ve just managed to find the ointment when Horatio kicks his leg hard into my groin. I double over; I almost drop him. His head glances off the sink as I bend over coughing.

Horatio screams. I set him down on the floor, and then I sit on the toilet seat, nauseated from pain. Horatio sits on the floor, his face contorted. He screams in displeasure, but I let him howl for a moment. I take the burn cream from the drawer and spread it on my hand, and then I find the gauze and, as best I can with my left hand, wrap some around my palm. Only then do I turn my attention back to Horatio. He’s red in the face, his lips puffed out, and he looks at me accusingly as he cries.

I pick him up and hold him to my chest and bounce him. I try to think of the songs I used to sing to Toby and Cordelia. He cries louder, and I sing to him, Hush little baby, don’t say a word, Daddy’s gonna buy you a mockingbird. And if that mockingbird don’t sing, Daddy’s gonna buy you a diamond ring. His crying quiets down, but even as I sing the words I realize that here’s an entire children’s song about post-purchase dissonance.

*

At night, after I’ve finally gotten Horatio in bed, I sit in the den and roll myself a joint. It’s not easy with my bandaged hand. I’m fucking exhausted from looking after the baby.

The red mark on Horatio’s forehead has turned purple, and I know I’ll have to explain to Zoë. In the evening, I managed to change his diaper again, and then I gave him another bottle while he lay on the couch. He fell asleep still holding it—I touched his head, but he didn’t wake. He was sleeping so soundly that I was able to pick him up and carry him upstairs to his room. There was something heart-breaking in his helplessness.

At nine Zoë still hasn’t returned, so I decide to put a disk in the DVD player. I choose La Dolce Vita from the collection. I sit on the couch and light up the spliff. It’s been so long that I cough out most of my first drag. My eyes water. The second drag goes down a bit easier. When the film starts, I’m impressed by the picture on the new television—the opening scenes of the helicopter ferrying the statue of Jesus over Rome look spectacular on the wide-screen.

I take a couple of more drags off the joint and then pinch it out, pleasantly buzzed. I’m watching Anita Ekberg bathe in the Trevi fountain when Zoë finally comes in. She’s carrying a leather attaché.

She scents the air. “Are you smoking dope?” She looks at me with disgust. “What is wrong with you? Why can’t you grow up?”

“You once told me you’d rejuvenate me,” I say. “Make up your mind.”

She drops the briefcase on the floor and sits down on the couch. “What happened to your hand?”

I wave away the question. “Don’t you want to watch this?” I ask.

“You know I don’t like old films.”

I let this pass. I can tell she’s still angry about this afternoon. “How about some music then?”

She nods, but she doesn’t look happy about it. I get up off the couch and switch off the television.

The smoke has made me sentimental, and I know what I want to hear. I go to the rack and search through the records until I find The Velvet Underground and Nico. I pull the disc from its sleeve, run the record brush along its surface, and then hand the album cover to Zoë. “Andy Warhol did the cover art.”

She gives me a look of incomprehension, as if I had referenced an obscure renaissance master. “I’m taking a class,” she says suddenly.

“That’s good.” I look at the track listing on the record label and decide that track three is the safest bet for Zoë—Nico singing “Femme Fatale.”

“I bought the book just this afternoon.” She upturns the attaché and a literature anthology spills onto the floor. “You could act pleased.”

“I am,” I say. I nudge the tone-arm over to the third band. “Good for you.” I gently lower the needle into the groove.

“You could probably get this on CD you know.” She shoves the anthology back into her case. “They’ve re-released a lot of old music.”

“I like vinyl,” I say.

“It’s popping.”

“Just listen.” I move over to the couch and sit down beside her. When I touch her back, she stiffens. The static settles down and we hear Lou Reed’s guitar—tinny, thin, slightly out of tune—begin the track. And then there are Nico’s flat Germanic vocals: Here she comes, you better watch your step.

“What do you think?” I ask.

“I think she can’t sing,” Zoë says.

“Just listen,” I say again. “You might like it. Laura and I must have listened to this at a thousand parties.”

“Why do you only like old things?” She looks to be on the verge of tears.

And then it dawns on me. “You saw the note.”

“What else do I have?” She lets her accent drop. She sounds like a frightened girl from small-town Missouri. “What am I going to do if you leave me?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I say. “I’m not going to leave you.” But I put my hand in my pocket and feel Cordelia’s note.

She gets up from the couch and walks to the door. She turns back and says, “I thought it would be better with Horatio.”

“Everything’s okay,” I say. “Don’t worry.”

She walks out of the room. I keep the Velvets spinning, and I think about what Zoë has just said. She thought that a baby would keep us together. Could she have gotten it any more wrong?

The first side finishes, and I turn the record over. I’m listening to “I’ll Be Your Mirror” when the phone rings. I pick it up on the second ring and hope that it hasn’t woken Horatio.

“Dad?” It’s Toby. He sounds uneasy. “I need help. I hate to ask, because I know you don’t think I can do anything right, but I’m all alone here.”

“What do you mean?”

“I sent those two girls home, like you said. But now the cook’s quit.”

“Cowboy Boots?”

“I told him that he needed to put more fries on a plate, and he just walked out.”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” I say.

*

I get in the Volvo and for the third time today I make the drive along the interstate, into town, and to the edge of campus. It’s raining hard, and I still have a buzz on from the joint; I suddenly find myself appreciating the Volvo’s reputation for safety. When I get to the restaurant, it’s the dead time—after the dinner rush but before the hungry drunks start looking for something to sop up the alcohol in their stomach. I run in the rain across the parking lot.

Inside, water drips from my coat onto the dining room’s new carpet. To my relief, Toby has turned down the floodlights. But not a single booth is occupied.

Toby raises his bandaged hand to me and I raise my own bandaged hand back. I walk up to the counter and glance down the hall. The graffiti walls are still bare, save my quote from Richard the Second. “Have we had any customers at all today?”

He shakes his head. “Not many.” He looks unhappy. “I thought maybe the coupon would bring them in.”

I feel for him. I know he wants the restaurant to succeed. “Maybe later,” I say, “when the drunks come out.”

“Will you work the kitchen?” he asks. “My hand hurts whenever I’m even near the grill.”

I glance down at my own bandaged hand. “I’ll work the kitchen,” I say.

I push my way through the swinging double doors. I walk past the fryers and to the grill. Despite the empty dining room, the entire grill is turned on. I reach across it and turn off half the surface. Even being this near the heat causes my hand to radiate pain.

I go to the serving window and stare out into the dining room. Toby is sitting at one of the booths reading when two customers come in, a couple, probably grad students. They carry a single umbrella, and they laugh and shake water off of themselves. They hang on each other without any sense of embarrassment, his hand in her back pocket.

Their clothes are bargain-basement, not hip, just cheap, and I can tell from one look that they’ll be using the coupon: two burgers for the price of one. Before they’ve even ordered, I go to the walk-in fridge, take out two of the small patties and lay them on the grill. I keep my bandaged right hand behind my back. I salt and pepper the patties, and then I take two buns out from the plastic sack on the counter.

“Two-fer-one burgers,” Toby yells.

I walk up to the window so I don’t have to shout back. “Anything to drink?”

“Two waters,” he says.

I squint out into the dim light of the dining room. The couple has moved to a booth, where they sit side by side on the same bench. Their hands are intertwined on the tabletop.

I walk back to the grill; the heat is almost unbearable. The burgers have turned brown around the edges and a puddle of pink juice has formed on top. I pick up the spatula with my left hand and clumsily flip them over.

The burgers finish cooking, and I place them on their buns, dress them with lettuce and pickles and garnish the plate with a twig of parsley. I start to put the plate in the window, but then I reconsider. I walk back to the prep table and throw on a couple of handfuls of potato chips.

“Order up,” I yell through the counter window. Toby looks at me questioningly when he sees the chips on the side. “Who knows,” I say, “maybe they’ll come back.”

Toby carries off the plate of burgers. I pick up the cordless phone from its base and take it into the walk-in fridge. Toby will probably stay up front behind the counter, but the fridge is the one place where I’m guaranteed some privacy, and this is a conversation I really don’t want him to hear. I carefully pull the door almost-closed behind me, leaving it ajar so that the light stays on inside.

The fridge is quiet; the light from the overhead bulb, dim. Wire racks stand against each wall, a narrow aisle between them. There are three plastic barrels of pickles at the back of the fridge. I pull one out and sit on it. I lean my back against the metal rack. The cool air of the fridge feels good on my hand.

I take out the note from Cordelia. I unfold it and let it rest on my lap. Holding the phone in my left hand, I dial the number with my thumb.

It takes her a long time to pick up. “Hello,” she says. “Hello?” I can tell I’ve woken her.

I hesitate. “It’s me,” I say at last.

There’s a long silence, and I wonder if I should just hang up the phone. “What do you want?” she asks. It’s not a friendly question.

“I never know.”

She snorts. “Well, that’s never stopped you from acting.”

The rack to my left is filled with bags of shredded lettuce. “No,” I agree, “I’m the anti-Hamlet.” I try to think of what else I can say. I take a look through the lettuce, checking the use-by dates. Toby hasn’t been rotating the stock. “I’m thinking of finishing my dissertation.”

“Is that why you’ve called me?”

“I found the manuscript. Maybe you could be my advisor. I think Dr. Jenkins died.”

“You want advice on your dissertation?” she asks. “My advice is to forget it. You’re better at selling hamburgers.”

On the rack above the lettuce there’s a small box of hamburger patties, allowed to thaw so that they’ll cook faster. Since business has been slow, the meat will probably have to be thrown out. “I’m discontent. I regret starting the restaurant.”

She hesitates and then says, “Don’t you remember why you never finished your dissertation?”

“Because of Toby,” I say. “Because of Shakesteer’s.”

“Bullshit. You never finished it because your dissertation was crap.”

“Everyone’s dissertation is crap,” I point out.

“No. Yours was real crap. You were trying to argue things that made no sense. For every villain you could find that was driven by greed, there was another who was motivated by something else. Even your title was nonsense. Put Money in Thy Purse—Iago and Othello were both driven by jealousy, not money.”

“I had a fix for that. I think.”

I study the plastic tubs of mayonnaise on the shelf opposite me. There’s the sound of a fan whirring as the condenser kicks in.

“I’m not even sure if I believe in villains any more,” I say.

There’s a long pause. “People do villainous things,” she says at last.

“Do you remember the ending of Othello? Where Othello looks at Iago’s feet to see if he has cloven hooves?”

“I’ve seen your feet, remember?”

“That’s a real villain. Nowadays we just think people are complex.”

To my surprise, she laughs. I decide to keep on the theme. “Wouldn’t it be nice to think that some people are dedicated to evil? Wouldn’t you like to picture Bush saying, ‘since I cannot prove a thinker, I am determined to prove a villain’?”

She laughs again.

And then from outside the fridge, I hear the doors to the dining room swing open and closed.

“Dad,” Toby calls out.

I don’t answer. I sit still so as not to make a sound. He pushes closed the door of the fridge. I’m not locked in—there’s a handle on the inside—but the light switches off, and I sit in darkness. “Dad,” he calls out again.

“David,” Laura says. “What do you want?” The way she says it, it’s a different question this time.

I don’t say anything. Through the thick walls of the fridge, I can faintly hear Toby calling out again. “Dad?” He sounds worried now. “Where are you?”

I have a memory of Toby, from when he was still small. It was Christmastime, and I had taken him to the shopping mall. I was window-shopping, and when I looked around, I realized Toby wasn’t by my side. I spun around. There was no sign of him. I began to retrace my steps, but the mall was packed with people. And then I heard him calling out, “Daddy?” I pushed my way through the crowds, and when I got to him, his face was screwed up in tears. “Daddy!” he called out to me, like an accusation.

“David?” Laura says.

I sit there quietly in the dark. And then I think of Horatio this afternoon, sitting on the bathroom floor and crying after I bumped his head. He clenched his fists and puffed out his lips in anger.

Toby calls, “Dad, where are you?”

“David?” Laura says again.

I reach out in the darkness and brush my bandaged hand against the cool of the bagged lettuce. “I have to go,” I say.

© James W. Wyatt