You Are Not a Stranger Here - Adam Haslett [3]
There’s a line at the restaurant and when I try to slip the maître d’ a twenty, Graham holds me back.
“Dad,” he says, “you can’t do that.”
“Remember the time I took you to the Ritz and you told me the chicken in your sandwich was tough and I spoke to the manager and we got the meal for free? And you drew a diagram of the tree fort you wanted and it gave me an idea for storage containers.”
He nods his head.
“Come on, where’s your smile?”
I walk up to the maître d’ but when I hand him the twenty he gives me a funny look and I tell him he’s a lousy shit for pretending he’s above that sort of thing. “You want a hundred?” I ask and am about to give him an even larger piece of my mind when Graham turns me around and says, “Please don’t.”
“What kind of work are you doing?” I ask him.
“Dad,” he says, “just settle down.” His voice is so quiet, so meek.
“I asked you what kind of work you do.”
“I work at a brokerage.”
A brokerage! What didn’t I teach this kid? “What do you do for them?”
“Stocks. Listen, Dad, we need—”
“Stocks!” I say. “Christ! Your mother would turn in her grave if she had one.”
“Thanks,” he says under his breath.
“What was that?” I ask.
“Forget it.”
At this point, I notice everyone in the foyer is staring at us. They all look like they were in television twenty years ago, the men wearing Robert Wagner turtlenecks and blazers. A woman in mauve hot pants with a shoulder bag the size of her torso appears particularly disapproving and self-satisfied and I feel like asking her what it is she does to better the lot of humanity. “You’ll be riding my bicycle in three years,” I tell her. She draws back as though I had thrown a rat on the carpet.
Once we’re seated it takes ten minutes to get bread and water on the table and sensing a bout of poor service I begin to jot on a napkin the time of each of our requests and the hour of its arrival. Also, as it occurs to me:
• Hollow-core chrome frame with battery mounted over rear tire, wired to rear wheel engine housing, wired to handlebar control/thumb-activated accelerator. Warning to cyclist concerning increased speed of crankshaft during application of stored revolutions. Power brake?
• Biographer file: Graham as my muse, mystery thereof; see storage container, pancake press, tricycle engine, flying teddy bear, renovations of barn for him to play in, power bike.
Graham disagrees with me when I try to send back a second bottle of wine, apparently under the impression that one ought to accept spoiled goods in order not to hurt anybody’s feelings. This strikes me as maudlin but I let it go for the sake of harmony. Something has changed in him. Appetizers take a startling nineteen minutes to appear.
“You should start thinking about quitting your job,” I say. “I’ve decided I’m not going to stay on the sidelines with this one. The power bike’s a flagship product, the kind of thing that could support a whole company. We stand to make a fortune, Graham, and I can do it with you.” One of the Robert Wagners cranes his neck to look at me from a neighboring booth.
“Yeah, I bet you want a piece of the action, buddy,” I say, which sends him back to his endive salad in a hurry. Graham listens as I elaborate the business plan: there’s start-up financing, for which we’ll easily attract venture capital,