The waiter comes around and asks if we’re ready. I haven’t even opened my menu. “I always get the same thing here,” Matty says, smiling, big and crooked, like he used to. He orders a sandwich called The Bowery Basil.
“I’ll have that too,” I say to keep things simple.
“It’s so good to see a real person.” He stares at me with a warm kind of wonder, like the fact that I left him has been forgotten.
“Yeah,” I say. “It’s good to see you.”
His eyes rest on my nose and stay there even after I lower my head, trying to make eye contact again.
“When’d you get this?” He taps my nose with his index finger.
“Right after—” I breathe in through my nostrils and feel the post of the tiny silver stud touch my septum. “Right after I left,” I say. My napkin is still wrapped around the utensils. I unroll it, place it in my lap.
I have this picture in my head of Matty coming home from school, sitting on the sagging yellow plaid couch in the living room, re-reading the letter I left on his pillow. I can picture it so clearly even though I wasn’t there. Afternoon sunlight through the brown slatted blinds making lines on his face and the wood-paneled walls. He reads it and puts his head in his hands, and in my mind he stays just like that. He never gets up. He never moves. He never moves on. He doesn’t get discovered in the mall on a trip to Minnesota to visit his aunt. He doesn’t win a Daytime Emmy. He’s not one of the most beautiful people. He’s just Matty and he keeps his head in his hands, the promise ring he gave me hooked on his little finger. He stays on that couch. Waiting for me to come back for him.
“I’m sorry,” I say, looking up at Matthew.
“No.” He smiles his benevolent hero smile. I think they’ve given him new teeth. “You were right. We had to get out of there.”
There’s a big difference, I think, between leaving by yourself in an old Mercury with a fistful of tip money and being whisked away in first class by a fairy godmother casting director. Before he was discovered, his dreams were only as big as a double wide and a job at the factory, a child bride to make him venison burgers, finally being old enough to buy beer. The waiter comes with our food, saving me before I say something snotty.
There are different colored sauces swirled on the plates, grill marks on the bread, and green beans in some sort of dressing, stacked like pick-up sticks on the side.
Matthew eats the green beans but leaves his sandwich. His movements are mechanical: take a bite, rest fork on plate, chew, wipe mouth, sip water, wipe condensation on napkin, pick up fork, start again. The stack of beans dwindles slowly. I wonder if someone taught him how to eat. I remember him devouring an entire foot-long sub in nanoseconds, eruptions of shredded lettuce spewing all over the couch.
I try to leave my sandwich too, but I’m hungry. I haven’t eaten more than a street pretzel since I got into New York, and with the exception of a sandwich at the coffeehouse, my meals lately have mostly consisted of Slim Jims and corn nuts. I pull my sleeve over my wrist under the table every time I put my fork down.
“I went home a few weeks ago,” he says between green beans. “I did a signing at the Big M. Crazy. It was mobbed.”
“The women of Little River do love their soaps.”
“Brandy Baker was there, waiting in line for an autograph.”
“Seriously?”
Brandine Baker was head cheerleader and class president, and after being in school with her since kindergarten, she called me June at the homecoming dance when she wanted to borrow my hair spray.
“Man, she peaked in high school.” He laughs and holds his arms out from his sides to show me how she’s gotten fat.
“It hasn’t been that long.”
“She’s already had two kids.”
We would’ve too, I think, and I’m not sure if that would be good or bad anymore. “I hope nobody thinks I peaked in high school,” I say.
“You haven’t peaked yet,” he says, his yellow eyes squinting in the sunlight.
I know he means it as a compliment, but I think I could find an insult in it if I wanted to.
Two women with lots of shopping bags get very close to our table on their way out. “It is him,” one whispers loudly to the other.
Matthew looks up and smiles at them, flashing pearly porcelain teeth.
The women scurry out in a mess of rustling shopping bags and sighs.
Now even the businessmen are staring at us, trying to figure out what the fuss is about.