The Golden State

We walk toward home, Honey sweaty and limp and heavy on my back, and I worry about how hungry she must be since it is lunchtime and I try to pick up the pace to the extent possible in the heat. But halfway there I feel the buzz in my pocket that means service and I look at a photo of Engin and the gang on the Kordon at dusk and then I think I ought to call Uncle Rodney back and tell him how much I liked his letter but I decide I’m not up for it, favorite uncle, only uncle though he may be.

We straggle the rest of the way home and I’m ready to collapse, it’s so hot, but finally we mount the steps to the screen door and I lay Honey down on the floor turn on the AC take my shirt off and rub the red grooves of my flesh. I decide against frozen pizza because of the oven and make a quesadilla instead even though that’s basically another fucking string cheese sandwiched between carbs and I stuff her full of blueberries too and try to get her to eat some browning avocado. She goes down docile for her nap and I stretch out on the bed and fall into a sleep so deep I wake up with drool on my chin.

* * *

Honey wakes up at the same time and I decide against Antelope Meadows because I don’t feel like getting her into the car seat but then I think the light is turning pink and it would be nice to go for a drive. That’s what my mom did with Rodney and her parents when she was little, she told me—they’d get in the pickup and drive out to someone’s ranch and drop in unannounced and be received with coffee and a piece of cake and normally that would sound horrible to me, that’s the one thing about Turkey I can’t really deal with, there’s a lot of visiting, but right now it sounds so so nice and I wish I knew someone to do it with.

I’m rummaging in a cupboard looking for nuts when I find Grandma’s cocktail napkins printed with cattle brands and delighted with this discovery observe her sacred five o’clock cocktail hour on the deck, where Honey is more or less penned in with the books I set down for her. I can’t find the nuts but I have two petite screwdrivers and the better part of a bag of Lays. I would like to have a cigarette out here in the thin air but I do not smoke in front of Honey because that is the worst thing you can do to your child according to experts. I am not used to drinking liquor instead of beer and I thrill a little at the heat it sends across my limbs and then when I think about dinner I decide we might as well just walk over to the damn Golden Spike again. The bank account must be closer to $200 now, but I vow that I will do a thorough investigation of our finances in due time. This is a kind of emergency, I say, and norms are set aside during an emergency.

“We’re going out,” I say to Honey, and I prattle cheerily to her as I tote her around the house, squatting down to pick up her changing pad and put it on the table and pick up her diapers and put them on the table and pick up her wipes and put them on the table and pick up her two sections of The Very Hungry Caterpillar which she tore in half the other night when she was damp from her bath and put them on the table, and then put all the things into the bag. She chortles every time I squat down and say “WHOA” and stand up and say “WHOA.” And then I get her string cheese from the fridge and put it into the bag, and find her socks on the floor and set her on the counter and put on the socks and shoes and then we are finally ready to go and I think about what drink I am going to get when we get there to keep the festive feeling going.

Honey is reasonable on the walk over, holds my hand over the hillocks and listens when I tell her we have to look both ways crossing the train tracks, so I am cautiously optimistic that there is no fractiousness on the horizon and we can have a nice dinner.

The restaurant has a dark bar off the main dining area through a beaded plastic half-curtain, one I’ve only ever been in for my grandmother’s wake. Tonight I hear a cheery “Hi” from its depths as I wait at the hostess stand and look through to see Cindy Cooper and a big be-mustached man I don’t know sitting in one of the leatherette easy chairs in the bar area. She waves us over. “On Sunday they’ve got Picon punch for four bucks,” she tells me, this is a horrible Basque drink with almond liqueur but four bucks is four bucks, and she says “Sunday” like Sundy too. I ask her whether she thinks it’s okay to have Honey in the bar area and the bartender looks at me like This is America ain’t it so I pull up a chair and Honey sits on my lap and I give her a string cheese from my bag and she smiles happily at Cindy and the man who it turns out is Cindy’s boyfriend Ed van Voorhees, who I’ve heard about from Uncle Rodney and I realize must be the brother of Sal, she of the café. Ed comes from a big ranching family but is I think a Pepsi distributor spreading Pepsis across the west so there’s got to be a story there, gambling or whatnot.