Further Interpretations of Real-Life Events by Kevin Moffett

Author:Kevin Moffett [Moffett, Kevin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0062069225
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Published: 2012-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

lugo in normal time

Lugo unbidden, Lugo at home in a new pair of sweatpants, holding, circling, waiting for something to happen. Something often happens.

This weekend he has his daughter. He’s sipping brandy and following her from room to room while she works on a project for school. A teacher has asked her to find a household item and use it to tell a story, so all morning Erica’s been picking things up, studying them carefully, and putting them down. She roots through the boxes in his closet, boxes in the hallway and in the kitchen. She finds a fondue set: a pot with six blue-handled and six red-handled prongs, like equipment for opposing teams. She taps one against the sink. “How about these,” she says.

Lugo regards the derelict prong from the kitchen table. “Never used,” he says. The idea, the hopeful logistics of him and Irene making fondue together seem ridiculous now. He remembers the old lady who sold it to them repeating, It’s so lovely, it’s so lovely. “We bought it at a yard sale before you were born,” he tells Erica. “It’s supposed to melt cheese.”

“And you still have it why?”

“I guess it reminds me of your mother,” he says.

Erica is fourteen years old. She has brought a to-do list with her, which she keeps taped to Lugo’s refrigerator. This weekend, she must finish two pages of geometry problems, start Member of the Wedding, figure out feudalism, and go to a friend’s birthday party. Lugo notices Stay with Dad written on the list, among her obligations.

Uneasy, he says, studying the list.

Not easy is what he means to say. His daughter’s not-easiness makes him uneasy.

Earlier that day, when she dropped Erica off, Irene handed him a note. “Remember what we talked about,” it said. “Ease up on the scotch. Distract yourself (and her). Maybe take her to a movie.”

Lugo looks at the newspaper. Searching for the movie listings, he finds an article about a prison escape in Illinois. A prisoner sealed himself in a box with some packing peanuts and shipped himself to freedom. He jumped out of the mail truck and is still at large. At large, Lugo repeats, treasuring the sound of it. Sometimes an expression like this is all it takes. He closes the newspaper, forgets what he was going to do. Then he remembers: he was going to fix himself another drink.

Erica moves in long, loping strides, scrutinizing, disregarding. This is Lugo’s house, his new house. Actually it’s an apartment, an old apartment with broth smells and puppy and disinfectant smells in the carpet. The odor of a dozen forfeited security deposits. Most things are still in boxes from his move eight months ago. Extension cords, Halloween appliqués, ornaments, a box of old Louis L’Amour paperbacks whose covers Erica studies, bemused. She opens one of them. “ ‘Death had come quickly and struck hard,’ ” she reads, “ ‘leaving the burned wagons, the stripped and naked bodies, unnaturally white beneath the sun.’ Wow. Are these yours?”

“They were when I was about your age,” he says.

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