Death by Pride by Mark McNease

Author:Mark McNease [McNease, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: MadeMark Publishing
Published: 2014-12-01T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER Nineteen

It had been a long day for Danny, filled with more emotion than he was used to or would like. Nostalgia wasn’t a weakness of his, but he’d spent the afternoon immersed in it: nostalgia for the years he’d been at Margaret’s Passion, with Margaret. Nostalgia for a time in his life he knew was passing quickly into memory. Nostalgia, even, for the years he knew he could never get back. Time, Danny had learned, was a non-renewable resource, and the older we get, the less of it we have. Unlike anything else in our lives we cannot replace it. It left him with a sense of self-pity, and that was something he disliked in anyone, especially himself.

He was relieved to be at home, back in the apartment with their cats Smelly and Leonard, back with Kyle and their friend Linda. As he prepared the beet and goat cheese salad he reminded himself there were always people with something to truly be sad about. Linda’s wife Kirsten was in Phoenix awaiting her arrival while she tended her mother in the final stage of her life. They’d both liked Dot when they met her at the women’s wedding. She’d seemed robust enough at the time, but Danny knew cancer could come fast and furious, zero-to-sixty in a matter of months, and that’s what had happened to Dot. According to Linda she wasn’t expected to live out the month of July and Danny had already spoken to Kyle about going to the funeral if they were invited.

“I love scallops,” Linda said. She was standing in the kitchen doorway watching Danny and Kyle prepare dinner.

“The trick is to not overcook them,” Kyle said. Frying the scallops was his task and he watched them carefully in the pan, making sure they didn’t turn to rubber.

The dinner consisted of scallops, sautéed spinach, baked potato and the salad. It was a rare treat for the men to have dinner at home with a guest. They ate at home often enough, but seldom with anyone else in attendance. It gave Kyle a chance to take out the small folding table they used for company and set it for three. Normally, he and Danny ate sitting on the couch in front of the television, or sometimes on bed trays while they watched something they’d recorded. Smelly and Leonard, too, were delighted to have a visitor. The activity interested them and they kept walking in and out of the kitchen, waiting for something to happen. Smelly was hoping for a scrap of some kind, which she would not get. Leonard, meanwhile, kept marking Linda’s ankles with his teeth, sliding them against her as he walked back and forth.

Fifteen minutes later they were all seated at the table. Kyle placed it by the window overlooking Lexington Avenue. It wasn’t all that scenic—the view was out over the avenue, and across the street they could see Baruch College. Street sounds drifted up, the occasional car horn, a shout now and then.

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