over his bowl. Unidentifiable chunks of fatty gray meat bob around in the murky liquid. He lifts a piece of overcooked cabbage with his spoon and lets it fall back into the soup. What is she thinking, serving such dog food. She knows that he—that he can’t. That he has better taste than this. That this is . . . The kids drift in. This Ernesto is only a head taller than Alice, but he’s broad and muscular. His hair is short, black, and shiny. He greets them politely, introduces himself. He must be older than Alice, Thomas thinks, feeling discomfort, both at the soup—which actually tastes like food served at an institution—and Ernesto’s hairy hands, one firmly planted on Alice’s thigh as he shovels soup into his mouth with the other. Alice stirs her spoon around her bowl and picks at a piece of bread. “How are you doing?” Patricia tries. “It’s been so long since I’ve seen you.” “Really good,” Alice says. “Are you still looking for work?” Alice nods disinterestedly. “No, you’re not,” Jenny says. Ernesto glances up. Alert. Solid jawline. “And how about you?” Patricia regards him with interest. “Are you a student? Are you in college?” All of a sudden she sounds rather strident. He smiles curtly. “Hardly,” he says in a calm, friendly voice. “I’m a musician.” “Really, how exciting—are you a singer?” He shakes his head. “Drummer.” So that’s why he’s so muscular, Thomas thinks, clearing his throat. “Ernesto plays in a really cool band,” Alice explains, pushing her bowl aside. “They’re super awesome. You can listen to them online, if you want. They’re called El Pozo.” She stands. “They just sit around, doing nothing at all,” grumbles Jenny. “You don’t do a thing. I don’t know how you can stand it.”
“Thanks for lunch,” Alice says.
“There’s an apple pie,” Patricia says. “If you’d like to eat some later?”
Alice vanishes into the hallway. She’s in an awful rush. Ernesto turns in the doorway and, smiling, reveals a relatively nice set of teeth. There’s a noticeable gap between the front two. “Thanks for lunch, Mother Jenny.” Then he’s gone. Jenny and Thomas exchange glances. “Mother Jenny?” he says softly. “What the hell does he mean by that?”
“I have no idea,” Jenny says, ladling more soup into her bowl.
“Doesn’t he have a mother?”
“I don’t know.”
“He seems sweet,” Patricia says, raising a yellow-brown drinking glass to her mouth.
“He’s not. He’s a snake.”
Patricia swallows, then puts down her glass. “Why a snake?”
“I can just tell. He’s lazy and slimy. They just lie in bed all day fooling around. Alice is being dragged down to his level. Into the mud. Before him it was another guy. He was actually worse. An arrogant bastard, to put it mildly. She’s got a new boyfriend all the time.”
“I can find out if we have a job for her at the museum.”
“If she’s even able to handle a job,” Jenny says bitterly, putting her spoon down. “I honestly don’t know what I should do with her. She hates me.”
“Oh, stop, Jenny. She doesn’t hate you,” Thomas says. He’s irritated, dark waves in his belly. “She’s only eighteen.”
“But where does he live, this Ernesto? Here?” Patricia asks.
Jenny gets to her feet and rinses the bowls. “It seems that way, doesn’t it?” Patricia wraps a lock of her hair between her fingers; no one says a word. Patricia glances curiously at Thomas, but what does it mean? He needs to smoke, he can’t breathe, he has to leave. “The toaster,” Jenny says coolly, “it’s over there.” She nods in the direction of the big closet at the end of the kitchen table. “Can you please look at it now?”
Thomas fiddles with a little fucking screwdriver. The women are seated in the living room drinking tea and eating apple pie. As far as he can see, Jenny’s drawn the curtains—which is better than nothing. The door’s ajar, but he can’t hear what they’re saying. Are they laughing? Yes, Jenny is, and now Patricia too. The toilet flushes. Heavy steps in the hall, it must be Ernesto. The toaster is unbelievably greasy and revolting and littered with old crumbs. That he’s really sitting here prying it apart in this kitchen fills him with disgust—that he’s agreed to do it. Insanity. That old feeling of deep-seated anger at Jenny and all the guilt that comes with it hits him like a slap. It’s so incompatible. The sobbing. There’s no development in our relationship at all, he thinks. It’s as if her entire personality exists to play the role of victim, huge and hollow, for my benefit only. So I can fill the holes with my shame, my strange, indebted need to protect. The screwdriver slides from his hand, he’s warping the screws. He props the toaster between his knees, braces it tight, and tries again. It’s big and clumsy, probably at least as old as he is. He has no idea how you pry such a thing apart, he just keeps unscrewing the screws and removing all the parts that come loose, when the screws no longer hold them together. Suddenly it breaks in two. The shell of thick plastic falls apart. Thomas gawks at the guts of the toaster. And all at once he jerks his head back.
Fastened between the now detached outer shell and the heating coils, on either side, is a thick packet wrapped in tinfoil and taped carefully together with clear, yellowed tape. At first he simply stares. Then he manages to pry them out. He hears Patricia’s voice approaching. Feverishly he stuffs the two packets under his shirt, then under the waistband of his pants. When she steps into the kitchen, he’s back to sitting over his work, replacing the screws in the tiny holes. And what part belonged where? He hadn’t organized the pieces in any manageable way. He’s beginning to sweat.
“Is it tricky?” she asks, filling the pot with water.
“Nah,” he says. “Not really.”
Patricia sets the pot on the stove and turns on the gas jet. “Tell me when it’s boiling, okay?” Then she leaves again.
He’s warm and cold, his heart races, his hands tremble. What the hell did he find? A mass of disjointed thoughts swirl through his brain, but there’s no up and down to anything. What the fuck is it? Who put the packets there? What the hell’s in them? He screws and screws with the terrible doll’s screwdriver that keeps rotating crookedly on the thread, and now Jenny comes out and stands beside him, her hands at her side.
“Can you figure it out?”
“Well, I’ve taken it apart and put it back together, at least,” he mumbles. “We’ll see if it works.”
“Could you tell what was wrong?”
“Nope,” he says, tightening the last of the screws. “It probably just doesn’t work. Broken.”
He puts the toaster on the table, and Jenny immediately grabs it and plugs it into the outlet above the table.
“Oh, look!” She claps excitedly. “It works! I said it would! Oh, thank you, Thomas. Look, it works!”
And it does. The small coils glow orange. “Patricia, come out here. Your man is a genius with a screwdriver. Come see!”
They all stand admiring the rather smoky toaster. A burnt odor hangs in the kitchen.
“Can you smell it? Oh, I love that scent. Right before the toast pops up.”
She’s crazy, Thomas thinks. The pot whistles. Patricia pours water in the teapot. Excited now, the women return to the sofa.
