don’t really care who grows our walnuts. You and the job just seemed like a good match.”
“Nice of you to think of me.”
“I’m being practical. We need a new supplier for walnuts, and nobody would be more reliable than you.”
“Well, now, don’t get too excited. I’ll go up there, but I may not want them. They may not want me.” Catching the protest forming in Vivy’s mouth, he added, “I’ve got a PhD that’s five years old and no professional experience. Would you hire me?”
“I would if I knew how hard you work, and how dependable you are,” Vivy said, avoiding his humid, affectionate eyes. “You should bring some ideas for long-term plans to the interview. Tell them what to do about borers. Five years as a partner here should have taught you how to do projections.”
“It hasn’t taught me to make plans on my own,” David said, a bit of near-sarcasm that heartened Vivy. “Look, I know this is the kind of thing you love—new job, interviews, the whole thing—but I hate even thinking about it. My life is in order. I don’t want to rearrange it.”
“Jesus, David. How do you know you’re not dead?”
“My tomatoes look terrific,” he said.
Vivy glanced at him twice before she found the hint of a smile, an expression that quickly reverted to his normal, fond placidity. He was like some rounded-off life form, evolved beyond the skeleton and muscles of desire. She shivered. She would rather think of David as fiercely selfish, encircling every moment and squeezing it empty of possibility. At least selfishness had a little vigor.
“I’ll bring you tomatoes in a few weeks,” David said. “I planted Early Boys. Does Sam like tomatoes? I’ll bring you a lot.”
“He loves them. I won’t tell him they come from you, though. If he knows they’re connected to Cecilia he’ll want to put them on an altar and worship them.”
“Ha,” David said. Turning to face her, he dropped one eyelid in a slow wink, like the gesture of a clumsy, fleshy uncle. A sleepy-eyed kid, one of two customers in the store, looked up and she frowned at him.
“We don’t need two people up front,” she announced, yanking the hot water nozzle to full spray and plunging her hands in. “I’ll go chop almonds.”
“Atoning for something?” David said. Often the partners prepared mix-ins after Life Ties meetings, pondering mistakes they’d made on the home front. After especially heated meetings Sam said the back room sounded like a flamenco troupe was practicing.
“Nope. This one’s for charity.”
David made a fond shooing motion, and Vivy wondered, as she slipped through the swinging door, how he had managed to jump straight into a grandfather’s mannerisms without ever pausing at fatherhood.
Her sandals slapped across the isthmus of tile flooring between the chopping board and the enormous freezer. Vivy had arranged to buy that freezer, slightly used, from a restaurant that closed its doors after six months. The thing took up the whole back wall and saved the partnership over $1,000. Vivy briefly wondered, as she often did, whether she could apply the $1,000 to her and Sam’s debt.
She pulled down the good knife, the one as long as her forearm, then reached in the freezer for a carton of almonds. She’d barely had time for the first rough chops when the phone rang—most likely Nancy, the only person who regularly called the store. Vivy was careful to sound cheerful when she picked up the phone and said, “Natural High Ice Cream,” and so was reduced to a delighted sputter when Fredd’s voice said, “Christ, Vivy, calm down. You sound like Shirley Temple.”
“I had my tap shoes on.”
“Take them off. You could scare a guy.” Vivy could hear a clicking noise behind his voice, and wondered what he was juggling. Sounded like dried beans. “Listen, I heard about a festival down in Watsonville. I’ll bet they need a juggler.”
“So call.”
“I was thinking you could do it for me. Take a cut. I’ll feel better if you take care of the details.”
“Flatter me, why don’t you?”
“No problem. Seeing you the other day reminded me how much I need you in my life.”
Vivy snorted. “Fredd, are you trying to proposition me?”
“In a way.” Click. “I got to thinking about how things used to be. It was easier when you were around, reminding me of things, looking out for me. So I want you to go back to being my agent. All my gigs. Straight ten percent, right? This can be just between us. Nobody else needs to know.”
“What the hell are you juggling over there?”
“Pennies. I’m practicing one-handed. What do you say? Get back in the saddle?”
“I guess you’ve overlooked the pesky fact that I already have a job.” David’s words rolled out of her mouth before she could stop them.
“Come on, Vivy. You don’t need forty hours a week to book one juggler. You can make phone calls while you’re cooking dinner. You don’t even have to go to the gigs—I can set myself up. You’ll still keep track of stuff better than I do, and you’ll get some extra dough for whatever you want. Clothes, a car. You win, I win.”
“We all scream for ice cream. If I went out and bought a car, my butt would be in a crack in a big way. Sam and I are in the hole eighty thousand bucks. No new cars until that’s paid off.”
“Well, this will help you start socking away some bread.”
“I don’t mean to make you doubt yourself, but I’ll have to represent you for two hundred years to sock away eighty grand.”
“That’s the other reason I called. My nephew’s in a band. Elphenevel. They play songs about Dungeons & Dragons games, with heavy metal guitar.”
“Save me.”
“No joke. Seventeen-year-old boys are nuts for this. The band played at a high school last week, and two thousand kids showed up. Two thousand kids, and the band brought home five hundred bucks. They need you.”
“Heavy metal wizards? No thanks.”
“You don’t have to love it, Vivy. But they could fill the Civic Auditorium. You could catch them at the beginning of a real career. T-shirts. Posters.”
“I get it,” Vivy said.
“The guys are in college, in case music doesn’t pan out. They don’t want to play but a couple nights a month.”
“I get it,” she said. She ran her tongue back and forth across her teeth, an old nervous habit. This was a band that would call for big management, full promotion, the kind of work she and Sam had barely glimpsed before the old company slipped away from them. House managers, stagehands and the IATSE, contracts stipulating eight percent—was it still eight percent?—of the box office. The Civic Auditorium held five thousand, at no less than $15 a seat.
Fredd mumbled “Shit” and grunted—scrambling after one of the pennies,
