Let’s See That Again
by Claire Hopple
We’re splitting a sandwich named after him at the deli when he strolls in. The sandwich is wrapped up in such a way as to resemble a wet fist.
He’s our less-famous version of a famous person. We call him The Mayor, though he’s not into politics. He has a homemade key to the city and everything. He’s what you might call a sensation.
We’re here under the auspices of lunch.
He injects himself into a booth like only The Mayor knows how. He’s not trying to cause a commotion, but he doesn’t want to remain indistinguishable from the other sandwich-eaters either. We motion him over. He cooperates.
Here’s the ugly truth: we trust the guy.
The Mayor squinches across vinyl to join us at our table.
“The fact is, we need your help. We received this yesterday.”
We nudge the package toward him but it’s like he doesn’t see it or maybe it’s underwhelming to him.
After about three seconds, he budges. As he reaches for the package, a pepper shaker tumbles.
“Let’s see that again,” we say in unison, practicing our best sports announcer voices.
This is a habit we’ve adopted of late: creating fake sports replays of mundane blunders.
The Mayor looks at us, seemingly unperturbed. He opens the package to find a bubble-wrapped Tupperware container filled with leftovers and a few T-ball participation ribbons scattered around it.
“You know what this means?” one of us asks.
He closes his eyes, summoning a prescient response. We stop him before he can guess wrong.
“Our son has run away with his old babysitter. He left this for us on the kitchen counter.”
Margie. She was a dutiful babysitter back in the 90s.
She still has her charms, yes. She’s renowned for her casseroles. She confiscates nonrecyclable items from everyone’s recycling bins and burns them in an open subdivision lot.
“Listen, I’ve seen sons turn to unknowably dire circumstances,” says The Mayor. “Believe you me, this is nothing.”
Our son is an adult. There’s not much we can do, really.
“Don’t pay it any mind,” he continues. “I’ll look into it.”
“We were hoping that your son could—”
“—Right. You don’t need to wire a place when your slapshod apartments share a wall. I’ll talk to him.”
We feel less confident about The Mayor’s son. Not doomed per se. We watched him saw off the head of a roadkill deer to mount on his game room wall a few years back. At his auto repair shop, he only takes cash. You can never hand it to him directly. You have to place it between the teeth of his pitbull, square in the mouth. Then the pitbull takes it to the back office. That rule goes for everybody. And his father is no exception.
“We appreciate it.”
“Don’t worry about it. Plenty more where that came from.”
He slides out of the booth.
The Mayor arranges a meeting at a chain restaurant of yore the following week. The meeting is a bust; we can see that right away.
Here we were each thinking, This is my moment, and a few seconds later we’re in the thick of it, flustered as all get-out.
For one thing, The Mayor’s son doesn’t even show up. His girlfriend arrives twenty minutes late.
“Thanks for meeting us here. We’re hoping you can corroborate the story we’ve pieced together about our son.”
“Who?” she says.
The way she said it—how can we put this—it’s like she was smacking gum even though she wasn’t.
“Our son who ran away. With Margie, we think. Didn’t The Mayor brief you on this?”
“Lost interest,” she says, refusing to look at us.
We pivot.
“How do you make a living again? What’s your career? The Mayor said it was rather impressive.”
“Computer stuff,” she says.
“What did you hear between the wall? This is where you come in. This is where you’re supposed to come in.”
It doesn’t matter which one of us is speaking because we’re thinking the same things. About her, about the whole charade.
“Make me,” she says.
But that’s not the rough part.
She starts up with, “You know what you should be doing right now? You should be, at this juncture, taking notes. Of what I’m saying, who’s coming through the door, the grams of fiber listed on your cereal box, everything.”
“But you’ve refused to tell us anything.”
A waiter approaches.
“Excuse me,” the girlfriend says, “That lady over there, she—well, at least someone who looks like a woman—she told me that we can get half-price drinks and apps right now. Does that include the—” she snaps her fingers when the waiter looks away, “—Yes, hello. Does that include the mozzarella sticks?”
He nods and solemnly takes our orders.
“Boy, they don’t get PhDs in kindness here, do they?” she says.
Her point is made. And yet she hasn’t made a single point.
Which brings us to three months from now, when our grocer will conjure a witness. A kid trying her first cigarette on the rooftop of a boutique had seen our son clasping hands with Margie. The two of them had shimmied into the backseat of an unidentified Prius, presumably a ride sharing vehicle, and rode away from town.
Turns out we didn’t need this witness because we got a postcard from them the next day. GREETINGS FROM KANSAS, the front read. We’re not at home anymore, the back read. In poor penmanship, we might add.
Claire Hopple is the author of four books. Her fiction has appeared in Hobart, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, The Rupture, New World Writing, and others. More at clairehopple.com.
