The Art of Fielding_ A Novel - Chad Harbach [76]
After a while Chef Spirodocus looked up from his potatoes. “Something else?”
“Um…” Pella rocked from one foot to the other. “I was just wondering, you know, whether you hired people to work in the kitchen. To wash dishes and such.”
“Do I hire people to wash dishes?” Chef Spirodocus repeated wondrously, with a sad shake of his head. “Yes.”
“So you’re hiring right now?”
“I am hiring always.”
“Could I have an application?”
His eyebrows lifted. “For whom?”
“For me.”
Chef Spirodocus’s eyes took in her white flat sandals and pale legs and crisp dress and whatever else he happened to find. Pella felt his gaze linger, not on her breasts, as men’s gazes tended to do, but on her fluked tattoo. “You’ve worked in a kitchen?” he asked.
“No.” The word left her mouth and hung dead in the air. “I’m an extremely hard worker,” she added quickly, and wondered whether there was any way in which this could possibly be considered true.
“I have an opening on the breakfast shift,” Chef Spirodocus said. “It begins at five thirty. Monday to Friday.”
“Five thirty?” Pella said.
Chef Spirodocus nodded with infinite sadness. “I understand. It’s far too early.”
“It’s early,” agreed Pella. “I’ll see you Monday.”
26
Affenlight, who was keeping watch through the kitchen window as he mopped up the wet red mess he’d made of the tomatoes, saw Genevieve and Owen emerge from Phumber Hall and, hand in hand like the most comfortable of couples, make their way across the foreshortened strip of spring-damp lawn that separated Phumber from Scull. The sight sent a misguided pang of jealousy through him, not unlike the one he’d suffered when he found out that Henry Skrimshander was Owen’s roommate. Imagine that: jealous of the boy’s mother, for holding his hand. He checked his tie and his cuffs in the hallway mirror and headed downstairs ahead of the bell.
Genevieve released Owen’s hand and squeezed both of Affenlight’s, planted kisses on both his cheeks. “Guert! Can you believe it?”
“Barely,” Affenlight said.
“On one hand I think, Darling, why do you have to go to Japan? Is it really necessary to abandon your poor mother entirely? But I’m so proud. And really, Tokyo’s not much farther from San Jose than Westish is.”
“And warmer,” Affenlight agreed. “Much more pleasant to visit.”
“Oh, don’t be modest,” Genevieve said. “Your campus is so quaint, so… nineteenth century. I’m embarrassed that it took O landing in the hospital, of all things, to finally get me to visit.” She ran her hand through her hair, which was cut so short it should have been butch but instead looked sleekly feminine. She was wearing the same navy skirt and white blouse as this morning, but a few subtle changes—a jangle of silver bracelets, an undone blouse button—had altered their impression entirely. She fixed Affenlight with a look: “I’ll have to come back when I can stay longer.”
“Parents are always welcome,” Affenlight said cautiously. He extended his hand to Owen, felt an electric thrill as their palms clapped together. “Congratulations, young man. You’re the first Westish student to win a Trowell.”
Owen smiled with the good side of his mouth. “Well, the Trowells have only been handing them out since eighty-two,” he said with laconic pride. The handshake lasted.
Upstairs, Affenlight opened a bottle of wine, showed Genevieve to the bathroom, and encouraged Owen to take off his shoes and put his feet up on the ottoman. “Please,” he said. “Don’t stand on ceremony here.” Affenlight tucked a pillow behind Owen’s head, on the back of which stood a massive, bandage-covered lump. He heard again the ugly thud of that beautiful head slamming against the cement back of the dugout. “How are you feeling?”
Owen nodded gingerly. “I’ve felt worse.”
“When?”
“Well, never. But I could imagine feeling worse.” A fuchsin semicircle rimmed his eye socket; the swelling spread all the way down to the blood-stiffened corner of his lip, so that his words emerged slowly, slightly thickened, from one side of his mouth. “I get dizzy,” he said. “I’ve been having