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Melanie hands me and Summer our drinks and raises her glass.
“To a good night,” she says.
Summer and I raise our glasses and repeat her words and we all drink. Melanie smiles and sits down in the chair opposite the couch Summer and I are sharing.
“So how did you two meet?” Melanie asks.
I cringe inside and I hope it doesn’t show on the outside. Summer starts to tell her about the takeover and how we met at work, and I’m so relieved she didn’t say it was in a line for a taxi home from a nightclub.
Melanie and Summer are chatting away, and I’m quite content to listen and just add in the odd comment and laugh along with them. Melanie is very different to how I imagined her to be. For starters, I expected her to be a lot older and I expected both her and Jason to be quite cold and unwelcoming with what Summer has told me about them being determined she should focus only on her career and how they were so disappointed when she didn’t want to be a doctor. I expected Summer’s parents to be quite traditional, maybe even old fashioned, but that is definitely not the impression I’m getting from Melanie.
After around half an hour, the door opens, and Jason pokes his head around it.
“Dinner is ready,” he says.
We get up and I follow the women through to a dining room where the table is laid elegantly with shiny silverware and glassware and a beautiful floral centerpiece. The dark mahogany wood of the table and the frames of the chairs with the red velvet of the seats should have made this room feel a little bit dark and dingy, but the real fire crackling away in the fireplace compensates for it and makes a lovely, cozy feeling room.
I like the taste of the couple. Their apartment and its décor and furnishings scream good taste and class rather than gaudy look at me, I have money. It’s not always easy to stay on the right side of that line, but so far, the Malones have absolutely nailed it.
I pull a chair out for Summer and then hurry around to the other side of the table to get Melanie’s chair. She smiles and thanks me and I go back to my side of the table and sit down beside Summer. Jason comes in through a different door pushing a hostess trolley. I can smell the tantalizing smell of the spices and the meat, and it makes my mouth water.
Jason begins to unload the trolley. He places large silver dishes on the table then takes the lid off of them one by one. One is a huge container of chicken curry. The other ones are a big pile of white rice and a big pile of chips plus a stack of naan bread. I see what Melanie means now about there being enough food for half of the block and when it’s my turn to help myself to food, I don’t hesitate to help myself to a nice big portion.
I try the curry and it tastes every bit as good as it smells.
“Wow,” I say. “This is amazing. You’ll have to give me the recipe.”
“I will,” Jason says. “It’s literally the only thing I can cook but I do cook it well, even if I do say so myself.”
We all dig into our food and for a while, everything is quiet as we eat. After a while, I turn my attention to Jason and Melanie.
“What sort of a doctor are you both?” I ask.
“I’m a surgeon,” Melanie says.
“And I work in the ER,” Jason says. “And the answer is one Lego block, two mini micro machines and a small remote control”
“Huh?” I say, confused.
Jason laughs.
“Usually, the first question I get when I say I work in the ER is what’s the weirdest thing you’ve had to remove from someone’s butt. And that is the answer. And yes, they were all in one person’s butt and it was the same occasion.”
“And let me guess. They fell on them?” I say which gets an approving laugh from Jason.
“Every damned time,” he says.
“And the weirdest thing I ever removed from someone was a small doll’s head,” Melanie adds on. “Now if that was a child, I’d say not that weird. Kids swallow some random stuff. But no. This was a woman in her thirties. She said she did it for a dare and she believed it would just pass through her, but the hair got tangled around her lower intestine and caused a blockage.”
“Mom, we’re eating,” Summer says but she’s laughing.
“You’re not squeamish are you, Tyler? Because we talk about anything and everything here,” her mom laughs.
“No, I’m not squeamish,” I say. I’m quite enjoying their stories and I genuinely don’t mind talking about this kind of thing. In fact, I want to hear more. “What’s your most crazy ‘how are they even alive’ story?”
“I had one once, a young man who tried to take his own life. He jumped from the top of a five-story building. The fall should have killed him outright, but he landed on a fence post. It impaled him, but it stopped him from smashing his head open. He got rushed to surgery with the fence post still in position through him, but that post had missed every damned one of his vital organs. I pulled out a few splinters and put in a lot of stitches and he was fine,” Melanie says. “And when he recovered physically, he was referred for counseling and he very much wants to live now.”
“You kept in touch with him?” I ask.
