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“Toss’em on the table.”
The kitchen table was just as bad, covered in fast food wrappers, a month’s worth of junk mail, and coupons cut out of mailers. I cleared a space and set the pie and invoices down, wondering if they’d get lost in the sea of crap and not get paid.
“Have a seat,” Nelson said.
The only other chair in the living space was an old throwaway he’d salvaged from the curb. It had once been white. I sat on the very edge, resting my elbows on my thighs.
“Our team’s playing,” Nelson said. “Green Bay versus Dallas. Packers up by ten.”
“Sweet.”
We watched the game for a few minutes. The place smelled of sour sweat and old beer. I wanted to get the fuck out of there and yet couldn’t stand the thought of leaving him alone.
“You’re doing a good job with the building,” he said after a minute.
“Thanks.”
“The tenants like you.”
I nodded.
“That’s fine so long as they don’t walk all over you.”
“They don’t,” I said, thinking of Maryann’s twins. They climb all over me.
“Good. See that they don’t.”
“The Cliffside building needs a new roof,” I said slowly.
Nelson let out a shout. “There it is! First down, hot damn.”
“Nelson…”
“I heard you. I’ll think about it.”
I left it alone. That was more than I expected.
The game went to commercial and Nelson looked at me for the first time. “Did you say you brought pie?”
“Yeah. A gift from one of the tenants. Maryann Greer.”
“For me?”
I nodded.
His lips pursed and hmmphed. “Go figure. Well, I got two turkey dinners. You may as well stay. Since you’re here.”
I nodded, stunned. “Two dinners?”
“They’re in the freezer,” he said, his eyes on the TV. “Beer’s in the fridge.”
The freezer was frosted over, but I pried two dinners from the white cave. Sliced turkey, peas, mashed potatoes and gravy, and a square of some kind of dessert that looked like it might’ve been an apple tart.
Each one took eight minutes to cook. While Nelson’s was rotating in the microwave, I cleaned up a little. I found cheap plastic plates in a cabinet and put the meals on them—minus the apple shit—so they wouldn’t look like TV dinners but more like real food. I grabbed silverware and two beers from the fridge. Nelson had cleaned off his TV tray and showed me where a second one lay folded against the wall.
We sat with our food in front of us and watched the game. Neither saying much, except to talk stats and Green Bay’s prospects for the rest of the season.
“I may live in Cali, but Wisconsin’s in my blood,” he said.
