Chapter 54
“Sounds like the ‘Red Wedding’ massacre on ‘Game of Thrones,’ minus the flagons of ale and Lord Walder Frey and King Robb Stark and ‘the Rains of Castamere,’” Pete said.
Then he growled, “The Lannisters send their regards,” and plunged an imaginary dagger into an imaginary chest.
Willa looked at him across the table at Flesh, an offal-only restaurant that served dishes like stewed tripe, sauteed calf’s liver, and head cheese scooped into glass pots. She’d always been adventurous about food. She’d had escargot — warm, dripping with butter, slimy but with a bouncy bite — during a godawfully boring New Year’s Eve as a tween at her Aunt Kit’s ostentatious house. During that same sit-down dinner, where it was so uncomfortably quiet you could hear every tink of silver fork against fine china, Willa tried frog’s legs, undeterred by Kermit’s attempts to avoid a similar fate for his limbs in “The Muppet Movie.”
Pete, however, came from a family that ate to live and would bathe a roast in water and call it a meal. Willa had more than once been served crunchy spaghetti in that house. Over the years she’d been able to slowly indoctrinate Pete, once ordering sweetbreads and waiting until he’d declared them delicious before revealing they were pig pancreas.
But they still had different tastes. Willa never understood his love of “Game of Thrones.” She’d abandoned the show early on because of the sexual violence. “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” and its merry band of miscreants was more her speed.
“It wasn’t a massacre, exactly,” Willa said, pushing a coagulated cube of duck blood around her plate. “Jen and Ashley quit after Tara failed them on their evaluations, but Jamie is sticking around and trying to work her way back up to Senior Coach. Mase, Brooklyn, and Delia aren’t leaving. And we now have Flora and Cassidy.”
“’A Lannister always pays his debts,’” Pete said, spearing a lamb liver fritter with his fork and popping it into his mouth.
“How does that have anything to do with what I’m talking about?” Willa asked.
“It doesn’t. Sorry. I just like saying it,” Pete said.
“Your ability to quote episodes of shows I don’t care about is unmatched,” Willa said. “At least you’re consistent.”
“Thank you,” he said. “In the interest of even more consistency, let me say again: You don’t have to keep doing this job. You can go back to graphic design. I’m sure those clients would be happy to give you work again. And my paycheck is enough to carry us through for a couple of months.”
Willa wiped her mouth with the black napkin. “My team needs me.”
“Right,” he said.
It was silent for a moment as they both sipped their beers. Pete checked his phone to make sure the sitter hadn’t reached out with an emergency.
“Why can’t you be more supportive?” Willa asked.
“How can you say I’m not supportive?” Pete said.
“You just don’t seem to take my job seriously,” Willa said. “Laughing while you compare the turnover in my studio to a massacre on a TV show. Telling me to just walk away. This matters to me. This place makes a difference in people’s lives. That’s important.”
Pete looked down at his food as if he’d just lost his appetite. “I handle everything when you’re gone.”
Willa softened. He was right on that point.
“I appreciate that. I appreciate you and all that you do around the house and with the kids,” she said, reaching her hand across the table to hold his. “I really, really do. I promise things will settle down at the studio and then I can be more present.”
Pete softened too. “OK. That sounds good to me.”
The server approached the table with the offer of dessert. “Tonight we have a special treat: beef fudge.”
“Beef fudge?!” Pete howled. “Sounds like the trifle Rachel made on ‘Friends!’”
That was a TV reference Willa understood.
The server looked wounded. “No, sir, it’s delicious — evaporated milk, marshmallow fluff, margarine, chocolate, chopped walnuts, vanilla. And roast beef.”
Pete looked horrified. In unison, he and Willa said: “No thanks, we’re good.”
On the drive home, as Pete shared his frustrations with co-workers who always asked for urgent editing at 5 p.m. and didn’t know the proper use of the phrase “that being said,” Willa checked her texts, then looked at Instagram.
She pulled up Jamie’s profile and saw a new story that showed her running on the treadmill in her condo building’s gym, her long auburn braid bouncing with each footfall. The caption read: “Workout #2: 60 minutes of wind sprints and hill climbs!”
Willa continued watching the videos on Jamie’s Instagram story and saw that, earlier that day, she had taken a class at the Rack Room, squatting an extraordinary amount of weight for her size with a spot from Bonnie, the chiseled owner.
Come to think of it, Jamie’s body was starting to look more like Bonnie’s — sinewy, wiry, dehydrated to show more definition.
“Everything OK?” Pete asked, turning down their street.
Willa had given Jamie high marks at the end of the seven-day suspension one month ago, but she still seemed rattled.
“Yeah, I think so,” Willa answered.
Despite their best efforts to stay out late enough to avoid the boys’ bedtime melee, Willa and Pete pulled into the driveway at 8 p.m. and saw, through the window, the kids body-slamming each other on the couch.
“We could go get some Dairy Queen,” Willa offered, “seeing as we passed on the beef fudge.”
Pete smiled. “You read my mind.”