“‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’ is like a trigger. As soon as they hear it, all those sweaters…” He shakes his head. “Just trust me. You don’t wanna see it.”
“What? Is it like a sweater orgy?”
“Think about it. The lighting up of Rudolph’s nose, all red and pulsating, it’s a symbol for—”
“I get it,” Sophie interrupted, waving away the image. But she was still laughing “You’ve put a lot of thought into this.”
“Scary, ain’t it?”
Sophie wasn’t sure if he was referring to the amount of thought he’d put into it or the vision of all these nice, clean, singing people having an orgy. But when, a few moments later, the carolers chimed in with the opening notes and words, “Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer, had a very shiny nose…” Sophie and Russell looked at each other, and, as if by some mutual agreement, took off running.
* * *
The problem was, there was nowhere to go. The campus was pastoral, surrounded by farms and woodlands. There was a small commercial strip but places tended to shutter early, even when school was in session.
They were standing in front of the student union, which was open, but going inside felt like admitting defeat, and after the last few months—or maybe the last few minutes—Sophie couldn’t bear it.
But then Russell said, “I’m parked just over there.” He flashed the key remote and a car with Texas plates chirped and lit up.
“I’m not going to wind up at the bottom of some limestone quarry, am I?” Sophie asked, almost as a formality, to prove that she, a tough New Yorker, wasn’t just naïvely getting into the car with him. But then she worried that he’d take the question differently, because he was black. And then she chastised herself for obsessing about this. Zora was black. She never acted this way around her. Then again, Zora wasn’t a guy.
But he just grinned again and undid the top two buttons of his coat to reveal his sweater underneath. Heather gray and plain. “No Rudolph, no light-ups. You’re safe.”
Once in the car, Russell flipped the ignition and started driving. He seemed to have a destination in mind, which was a welcome change. Her few outings with the Kyles and Connors had been group affairs with everyone chiming in, What do you want to do? I don’t know; what do you want to do? It made Sophie want to do precisely nothing.
The car was plush, leather interior, that new-car smell.
“Nice car,” she commented.
“Thanks,” he said. “Hand-me-down.”
“Really? My hand-me-downs are usually more of the winter-coat-slash-ice-skating variety. And yachts. Everyone gives me their castoff yachts. It’s really a pain.”
Russell laughed. “Yeah. I hate it when that happens.”
On the dash were the controls for butt warmers. Sophie loved butt warmers. Loved anything that made her warm. She’d been surprised by how cold it was here, a chill that never left her bones. She’d stand under the shower for twenty minutes and still be cold. She missed her bathtub.
“Shall we fire up the butt warmers?” Sophie asked.
“We can fire up anything you want,” Russell said, which made the need for butt warmers immediately redundant. Russell switched them on and Sophie grew the toastiest she’d been since winter had descended, as if on a schedule, the day before Halloween.
“How about some tunes?” he asked.
“Sure,” Sophie said.
He turned on the stereo. “You spin.”
Sophie looked around for an iPhone or a dock or something. Russell glimpsed her and said: “It’s voice activated. Just call out a song.”
“Ohh, magic,” Sophie said. Except then she realized that she wouldn’t have the luxury of browsing Russell’s collection to see what he had. Sophie had the musical taste of a fifty-year-old woman, in other words, her mother’s musical taste. But that was embarrassing. What did normal people like? Zora was into this indie folky music that put Sophie to sleep. Maybe Kanye. Or was that too presumptuous? Lorde? Didn’t everyone like Lorde?
“It’s not a test,” Russell said. “Just tell it your favorite song.”
“‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want,’” Sophie blurted.
She started to explain that it was the Rolling Stones but Russell was already asking the magic car to play track nine of Let It Bleed. A few seconds later, the opening chorus of choirboys singing (sounding much better than tonight’s carolers, Sophie thought) filled the car, followed by Mick Jagger’s beautifully ruined voice.
They drove, and let Mick Jagger croon them over the dark country roads. Sophie loved this song, and mouthed the words, but resisted the urge to sing out loud. One of the What the Hell Have You Done, Sophie Roth? moments had involved an ill-advised rendition of “To Sir, with Love” on the karaoke machine in the common room. “Maybe not the best choice if you’re tone-deaf,” one of the girls had said. She’d been trying to be helpful, but none of Sophie’s NYC friends—some of whom had attended the performing arts high school—had ever seen fit to make such a comment.
Sophie wasn’t sure where they were going. It was rural out here; they just seemed to be driving, but that was okay. Driving and listening to the Stones definitely qualified as the best date she’d had here so far. (Not that this was a date. Was this a date?)
After about twenty minutes, Russell pulled off the highway. In the middle of an otherwise empty stretch of road, all lit up like a beacon, was a diner. Not just a diner, but an old-school, aluminum-sided diner. It looked like a giant Airstream trailer.
“What is this place?” Sophie asked as they crunched over the gravel parking lot. It was so completely unexpected, like being handed a beautifully wrapped gift for no special reason.
“This,” Russell said, “is the best pie in the state.”
“But where did it come from?” Sophie heard the question. It was the diner equivalent of What are you doing here? But the only diner-type places she’d seen around campus had been chains: Applebee’s and Fridays and the like.
“Oz,” Russell said.
That seemed exactly right. Oz, like it had been blown in on a twister, or like it was in Technicolor after everything these past few months had been in black and white. Maybe when people asked Sophie where she was from—in that overly solicitous but also mildly suspicious tone that suggested that wherever it was, they were glad they weren’t from there—she should stop saying Brooklyn (so big city) and start saying Oz.
Oz was packed. They found the last remaining booth. A waitress in jeans and a T-shirt with a Saint Bernard in an elf hat on it plopped a couple of menus on the table. “Merry Kiss-My-Ass,” she crooned in a smoke-scarred voice.
“Right back at you, Lorraine,” Russell said. “What’s good tonight?”
“Why you always ask me that?”
“I like the way you talk pie.”
“Oh, stop it.”
“Also, I have a guest.”
Lorraine glanced at Sophie. “So you do.” She cleared her throat. “We got some specials: banana cream. Reese’s peanut butter pie, sweet potato. Plus, the cherry’s good. Fruit’s frozen but the cherries were grown only two miles from here.”
Russell looked to Sophie. “Well?”
“Do you have apple?” she asked.
Lorraine looked at Russell. “Really?”
“Hey, I didn’t know.”
“Didn’t know what?” Sophie asked but nobody answered her.
“Two apples then,” Lorraine said. “You want ’em à la mode or with cheese?”
Sophie winced. Pie with cheese. Why not add some gravy while you’re at it?
Russell registered the look. “You ever had apple pie with cheese?”
Sophie shook her head.
“But you know it’s no good?”
“Yep,” Sophie said.
“Without ever having tried it?”
“Well, I’ve never had apple pie with toenail clippings either, but I’m pretty sure where I stand on that.”
Russell smiled. Lo
rraine tapped her pencil against the pad.
“We’ll take one of each,” he told Lorraine. He turned to Sophie. “You might be tempted.”
“Don’t bet on it,” Sophie said.
“I always go for the long shot.”
He was teasing her, Sophie could tell, but she wasn’t entirely sure he was teasing her about pie.
“That all?” Lorraine asked.
“Almost,” Russell said. He looked right at Sophie, as if they were in cahoots. “Coffee. Right?”
“Obviously.”
“Two coffees, please.”
After Lorraine left, Sophie looked around. It was an interesting mix of people; farmers in Carhartt, but also people who looked at home in a city, even though the nearest city was more than a hundred miles away. How had they all found out about this place?
“Is this place on Yelp?” Sophie asked.
“Don’t think it has a name, let alone a Yelp listing,” he said.
“How’d you find it?”
“You knock three times on the fourth red barn on your left and someone whispers you directions.”
“Very underground,” Sophie said.
“Yep,” Russell said. “Only for the cool kids.” He gestured to an elderly couple behind them. “The ultimate insiders.”
She laughed at that. Not that she’d ever been an insider, but never less so than in the last three months. “I miss diners.”
“They’ve got good diners in New York,” Russell said.
“They do. There’s this one me and my mom sometimes go to for upside-down dinner, which is—”
“Breakfast for dinner,” Russell interrupted. “Big fan of the upside-down dinner.”
“Me, too. Wait, how’d you know I was from New York?”
Russell didn’t answer. Or let his oozy grin do the answering.
“Oh, I see. It’s obvious. Because I’m so big city.”
“Big city?”
“That’s what they tell me here all the time. Only they don’t mean it as any kind of geographical designation. It’s more of an all-purpose commentary on how strange they think I am. You watch foreign films and are sarcastic, therefore so big city.”
Russell thought about it a minute. “You eat spicy food, therefore so big city.”
“You read the New York Times and not for an assignment, totally big city.”
“You listen to jazz, whoa, big city.”
“You wear black, definitely big city.”
“You are black, definitely big city. Only then they call you urban.”
Sophie laughed. “Sometimes I think big city is code for Jewish, even if people here don’t realize it because they’ve never met a Jew before.”
“Seriously?”
Seriously. When Sophie first got here, she’d been asked about what kind of church she went to. She’d explained that Jews went to temple (not that she did; her family wasn’t that kind of Jewish). She’d been incredulous that people did not know this, but a lot of people didn’t. Her mother had packed her a small menorah for Hanukkah, but it had remained stuffed in the far reaches of her closet. Sophie couldn’t bear the number of explanations that lighting the candles would require.
Sophie was wondering how much of this to tell to Russell, but he was now looking at his phone and then he was waving Lorraine over, and for a small second Sophie feared she’d gone too far (she was always going too far) and if he was asking for the check. But instead he asked Lorraine if they had hash browns. “The patty kind, not the chunky ones.”
“Chunky ones is home fries. Hash browns is the patties. We got both,” Lorraine said, exasperated, though Sophie was beginning to suspect she enjoyed being exasperated by Russell.
“Okay. Hash browns. With a side of apple sauce, and sour cream.” Russell looked at Sophie. “Right?”
“Right,” Sophie managed to say. Barely. Because of the sudden lump in her throat. Hash browns, basically latkes, with applesauce and sour cream? This was Hanukkah food.
“How did you know?” Sophie asked when she’d recovered.
“Genius thing, called a calendar,” he said. “It’s got all kinds of intel.”
“The dates, maybe, but latkes are insider knowledge. Where are you really from?”
His grin was a little bit wicked. “You suggesting a brother from Texas can’t know about latkes?”
“I’ll bet it’s a violation of several state statutes, actually,” Sophie said.
Russell laughed. “Probably right. I used to date a Jewish girl.”
Well then. “So they have Jews in Texas?”
“This wasn’t Texas.”
“Oh.” Now that she thought about it, he didn’t sound like he was from Texas. But she didn’t sound like she was from New York, either. People on campus were surprised by that. She guessed her accent, at least, wasn’t so big city. “So where are you really from then?”
“Really from? Not sure I’m really from anywhere.”
“Now you’re just trying to be mysterious.”
“How’m I doing?”
“You’re James Bond. But even he’s from somewhere.”
His face seemed to flatten out a bit. “Haven’t lived anywhere long enough to be from there.” Then he listed a roster of places he had lived: Dubai, Seoul, Amman, Mexico City, and, stateside, North Dakota, Colorado, and most recently, Houston, Texas. “My father’s in the oil business,” Russell added.
“Oh, I thought…” Sophie began as her brain fully digested yet another thing that should’ve been obvious. Russell was rich. Why had she had thought he was on scholarship, when all evidence pointed to the contrary?
“Thought what? That I was big city?” Then he looked up at her and something in her expression must’ve given her away. “Oh,” he said. “You thought I was a jock on scholarship.” His tone was still light, but a little guarded now. His version of a just kidding.
“Sorry,” she said. And she was. More than that. A bit devastated. Somehow Sophie had gotten it into her head that she and this guy had something in common. The optimism that had been speeding along all night crashed into a brick wall.
“Nothing doing,” Russell said, his expression saying otherwise. “Lemme guess. Basketball.”
Sophie had lost the thread of conversation. “What?” she asked. “Oh, right, I guess.”
Russell made a sound, kind of like a cough. Sophie snapped to, looking up at him. She expected anger or derision but it was worse than that. He was like a Christmas tree after you unplugged the lights. Sophie had joined the ranks of dumb commenters. She had let him down. Part of her wanted to explain why she’d thought that, and how she really hadn’t, and to tell him about her black best friend and growing up in Brooklyn and all her big-city (urban) bona fides. But she didn’t. Because somehow, he had let her down, too.
* * *
Just as the evening spectacularly stalled, Lorraine arrived with all the food stacked up her arms. Pie with cheese. Pie à la mode. Hash browns with applesauce. Only instead of sour cream, she brought cottage cheese. Figures, Sophie thought.
The food just sat there, cooling on the table between them. Sophie was desolate, miserable, and terribly homesick all of a sudden. This had to be the worst What the Hell Have You Done, Sophie Roth? moment so far.
She’d come here for knowledge but Sophie felt herself growing dumber by the minute. Case in point, what had just happened. It wasn’t as if she was unaccustomed to being around rich people, all kinds of rich people. Though her neighborhood had been gritty and cheap when her mother leased their rent-stabilized apartment before Sophie was born, over the years it had gentrified. When Sophie was ten, a family bought one of the nearby brownstones and gutted it before moving in. They had a daughter, a girl Sophie’s age named Ava, who quickly became one of Sophie’s close friends. Over the years, Ava always offered to pay for Sophie, for her movies, for her dinners, for weekends away. At first the gestures—BFF subsidies, Ava called them—had been sweet, but then they had stopped feeling swee
t and had only made Sophie hyperaware of what she lacked. She started declining the subsidies. Ava carried on offering. Sophie started resenting her for it. Sophomore year they’d had a huge falling out. “I’m not a Neediest Cases,” Sophie had screamed. The offers stopped. And the friendship died soon after. Sophie felt bad about it, but was never sure how to repair things.
She wasn’t sure how to repair things now, either, but as the food sat there untouched, a glaring reproach, she knew she had to. Russell had already rescued the first half of the evening. Not just by making her laugh and getting her away from a possible sweater orgy, but by giving her some space to be herself again. She hadn’t realized how much she needed that. Of all the things and people she missed lately, it was odd to find herself at the top of the list.
She took a deep breath and out of the silence said: “What I was going to say before was that I thought you were like me.”
He looked at her again, which was something, but it was clear from his foggy expression he didn’t get what she meant.
So Sophie told him what she hadn’t told anyone else here, though she knew it was nothing to be ashamed of. It was something to be proud of.
“I’m on scholarship. I guess I thought—hoped—that if you were too, it meant you might be like me.”
The silence between them stretched. Sophie wasn’t sure her admission had done anything to save the night, though it had righted something in her. But then Russell said, “Who says I’m not?”
He slid the cheesy pie across the table toward her. She was unsure if this was a challenge or an olive branch. Either way, she picked up her fork, and though the pie looked profoundly unappetizing—the cheese had bubbled into a blister—she took a small, tentative bite.
And. Oh. My. God.
The sharp tang of the cheddar brought out the hint of savory in the crust, and contrasted with the sweetness of the apples. And then there was the collage of consistencies: gooey, crumbly, juicy, all of it warm.
She took another forkful, larger this time. Russell watched her. He seemed amused. She took a third bite. Now he was smiling, a sort of shit-eating grin.
“What?” Sophie asked.
“Thinking I won that bet,” Russell said.
My True Love Gave To Me: Twelve Holiday Stories Page 20
