Last Night at the Lobster by Stewart O’Nan

Author:Stewart O’Nan [O’Nan, Stewart]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 2012-06-24T17:16:34+00:00

Price isn’t an issue, within limits. Manny’s thinking a

hundred, a hundred-fifty, leaning toward the extravagant

on principle. He needs this to be good.

So, clothes? Right now she doesn’t have a size, and even

when he’s buying for himself he doesn’t trust his taste.

Perfume? They all smell too strong to him, and the

74 Stewart O’Nan

top of her dresser is solid bottles. The odds of getting

something she doesn’t have and likes are slim.

Music? Too high school, not personal enough, the

same with electronics.

Which leaves the fool’s last resort: jewelry.

Mansour Jewelers is D11, tucked into the wing right

beside Penney’s, but that’s where he bought Jacquie’s

necklace. He’ll have to go all the way down the second

level past Kmart and try Zales. Earrings, pearls or diamonds, as big as he can afford—a simple plan, yet he can’t keep it in his head. On the escalator, angling above

the cotton-wadded North Pole and its empty red-andgold throne (a bad sign), a blankness comes over him, wiping his mind clean, a purposeful short circuit, like

when he thinks of Jacquie laughing from her bathroom,

or the branching crack in her ceiling, or how she looks

when she’s asleep. He willfully releases the memory, and

creeping into the vacuum is a feeling of surrender, as if

it’s no use.

Everything’s open on the second floor, but traffi c is

unnaturally sparse. He passes a pregnant woman by

Hickory Farms, and then a minute later spies another below, eating a giant cookie beside a fountain glittering with pennies. On the far side of Kmart there are two

more, and more strollers, more toddlers. It shouldn’t surprise him—this is just who comes here, like the grandmothers lunching at the Lobster—but it forces him to Last Night at the Lobster 75

question what he would have done if Jacquie had wanted

the baby.

He said he wanted to marry her, and she laughed. He

knows—he knew then—that that wasn’t realistic, and

yet he was ready to follow through with the rest of his

life, honestly pledging himself, maybe because she never

took him seriously. He hasn’t asked Deena, and the way

he feels now he doubts he ever will, and there’s something wrong with that. He can just hear what his abuelita would say.

It’s also the first Christmas he doesn’t have to buy a

gift for his lita—other than a wreath for the visit he

keeps putting off—another absence that has him distracted. He has the needling, bad-dream feeling that he’s supposed to get something else while he’s here, but can’t

quite figure out what, or for whom. He wonders if Coach

will be alone over Christmas, if maybe he should arrange

to look in on him before he heads down to Deena’s. Yes,

definitely, he can set it up Monday at the Olive Garden,

and while Manny has no idea what to get him either, just

having a plan to concentrate on—something to work

toward and look forward to beyond tonight—helps.

Or helps some. A manager, he’s never free of his responsibilities. It may be his lunch break, a quiet halftime in the day, but even as he scans the display windows for

something Coach might like, he’s aware that every step

takes

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