The Art of Fielding_ A Novel - Chad Harbach [78]
“Pella! So nice to meet you.” Genevieve squeezed Pella’s elbow and smoothly took the bag of groceries from her, as if they’d accomplished this exchange hundreds of times. Pella, in the presence of this sleek being, felt frumpy and floury again. She crossed her arms to protect the pasty sag of her breasts and biceps, vowed to hit the pool with new vigor tomorrow.
“Pella, this is Owen,” Affenlight said. “Owen, Pella.”
Owen smiled with half his face and lifted a palm in greeting.
“Congratulations on your fellowship,” Pella said.
“Thank you.” The unsmiling half of his face was hugely swollen, covered in purple bruises, and he was wearing a bizarre getup of white undershirt and red pajama pants dotted with black-and-white yin-yang symbols. But what struck her most was how slender and gentle he looked: she knew he played baseball and was expecting an enormous jock like Mike.
“Pella and I will be in the kitchen.” Genevieve carried the food that way as if the apartment were her own. “You men try to entertain yourselves.”
Pella trotted behind obediently. Genevieve opened all the right cabinets, finding serving dishes Pella didn’t know existed, and busily began transferring Chef Spirodocus’s concoctions—falafel, hummus, vegetables, something wrapped in grape leaves, something that smelled of fennel—from their plastic cartons. Pella tried to think of some way to help. Finally she spotted the cinnamon-currant loaf sitting on the counter, where Genevieve had set it, and stuck it in the oven.
“Now,” Genevieve said, pouring herself another glass of wine, “as long as we’re women in the kitchen, can we indulge in a bit of women-in-the-kitchen gossip?”
“Sure.” Pella squinted at the oven display. Three hundred degrees? Four hundred? She decided to split the difference.
“You should probably preheat that.” Genevieve touched Pella’s elbow to lessen the force of the order.
“Of course.” She punched the button that said PREHEAT.
“Maybe without the loaf in there?”
“Ah.” Pella withdrew the pan and set it on a burner. Back home in Buena Vista she had a restaurant-quality six-burner self-cleaning stainless-steel range, yet she didn’t even know how not to char food that someone else had made. That seemed like some kind of metaphor for her life, or modernity, or something.
“Perfect,” said Genevieve. “So. Your dad’s not married anymore?”
“He never was,” Pella said, more eagerly than she intended. It’d been a long time since she’d talked about boys; it was fun, even if the boy was her dad.
Genevieve nodded. “He has that perpetual-bachelor thing going. Responsible without being mature. And this apartment—it’s like an English major’s dorm room but with first editions instead of paperbacks. Where does he spend the summer?”
“Here.”
“The poor man.” Genevieve’s hair was shorter than Mike’s, but she had an analogous way of passing her hand over it when nonplussed. Though maybe it wasn’t analogous at all—Genevieve’s was a breezy feminine grooming motion, whereas Mike’s was always accompanied by a sad exhalation. In which case, thought Pella, I’m looking for excuses to think about Mike. Which would mean that I like him. But maybe I don’t want to like him. She poured some wine into her empty whiskey tumbler and tabled the question—she’d come to Westish to try her hand at being unattached.
Genevieve was looking at her intently.
“Pardon?” said Pella.
“I’m sorry. Did that question offend you?”
“Which question?”
“It would never have crossed my mind,” Genevieve said quickly, sounding apologetic, “except that when O was in high school he read your dad’s book—I forget the title—and was so enamored of it. I think that’s how he first heard of Westish, by Googling Guert Affenlight.”
“Ah,” said Pella. “Is my dad gay.”
Genevieve was watching her