Addison Zeller
By then it was nine, ten years. He’d never been to Navy Pier. I went a few times with my parents, and much later with friends, different ones. We agreed to meet for lunch. His wife—I hadn’t met her—would join us with their daughter. Ex-wife, I mean; they married after I moved, divorced in two years, reproduced in the meantime. I absorbed the news with a vague sense that she’d pushed friends out of his life, or so he’d hinted, perhaps unfairly, in a text exchange—I don’t remember when. He was definitely trying to reconnect now, after the long silence: a silence that had felt natural, unnoteworthy, truly silent. If a car is not present, I don’t stop to wonder why I can’t hear a car: that kind of thing. At the same time, without feeling as if a silence existed at all, as if we were still as aware of each other as we could be—as anyone could be. He was on a bench, face low over his phone, hair thin, beard close. I don’t think he knew me when he looked. He waved back hesitantly, smiled, a fog in his eyes lifting as he resigned himself to my changes, perhaps then remembering who he came to see. He’d dressed warmly, I hadn’t. At his boots a gull ate a cough drop wrapper. Want to try the KFC? he asked; he said I loved fried chicken, to indicate, I suppose, that he remembered some of my attributes. Maybe share the eight-piece box? He insisted on paying. In line, he stared ahead, avoided eye contact. First time he’d been in years, he said; he’d almost forgotten how to order in a physical restaurant. If asked for his PIN, he’d have to make up something and hope it was the same something he made up when he chose it. He wasn’t confident he’d know which side of the card to swipe. Three years since all that. His kid hadn’t learned anything in three years, he said. That’s what he called her, my kid, or the kid, until I discreetly checked our texts for her name, Mira. I slipped it into the conversation and he started saying it too: Mira, or my kid Mira. We sat by the window so he could look at the gray skies and the Ferris wheel. He wanted breasts, I claimed thighs. They’re the best pieces, I always thought—the juiciest. Good, because I’m a breasts man, he said. Thighs, I repeated. I conceded he was making a joke. Thighs man, he said, and how do you like chicken ass? Are you what is called in the language a chicken ass man? I made, for his benefit, a sniffing noise roughly in the shape of a laugh. I’ll eat anything, I said; I used to eat McChickens. That’s right, he said. Which are, as you know, basically beaks and feet. You’re a madman, he said. I’m just happy with these plump breasts. Gizzards man, too, I said, love those kidneys, love the pee flavor. He asked about my dating life. I reminded him that my girlfriend was presenting at a conference downtown, which is why I could see him. And you? I asked. He told me he was trying online dating. It’s just like work, he said. You enter data, you fudge the data, eat perfunctory meals. Ever take them to KFC and say you’re a breasts man? I asked. No, you little shitbird, he said. But he didn’t know what else to say. So, you’re all grown up, he resumed when we stepped out. You can go on all the rides. What is there at Navy Pier? I asked. There’s the wheel, he said, consulting his phone. Carousel, Crystal Garden, Shakespeare Theater, Children’s Museum. Somewhere the kid and the bitch are running around. Funhouse Maze. Funhouse Fucking Maze—let’s do this. Like a West Coast bar in here, he said when we were inside. Luminous tubes extended down the black hallways, shifting color, assuming patterns. His face changed with the light. On one wall, a TARDIS spun in a galaxy of noctilucent swirls. Still watch that show? he asked. I sort of keep up, I said. We were reflected on the walls, the floor, the ceiling. Our image drifted and stood beside us. Woah, Adam, he said, I think—yes. I truly believe I am upside down. And the chicken is going to drop out of my face. Prepare yourself, Adam. Unless we go right-side up, the chicken will depart my face and splash across the floor. A girl in a puffy jacket whispered to our reflection and plucked his sleeve. Hey! he said, kneeling down, where’d you spring from? Your mom here? She nodded, smiling, and looked at me. Mira, this is Uncle Adam. Want to say hi? She will not say hi. You aren’t going to say hi, are you? She is shy; she is a small shy person who rejects the new and disdains the unfamiliar. My nephews are that way, I said. Nice to meet you, Mira; I’m Adam. She hopped into the shadows. Her coat flashed as the neon shifted again; firefly, I thought. Guess they say there’s a link between autism and anti-depressants, he said. Just so you know. You thinking of kids? Or—Jesus Christ, do you have kids? No, no, I said, a cat. Oh—a cat man. Mira tore down the corridor ahead like a prevailing wind, dragging a woman in a puffy jacket by the wrist. Cats—ever think if you were smaller, you’d be in trouble?
#
Addison Zeller’s fiction appears in 3:AM, Epiphany, Cincinnati Review, trampset, minor literature[s], hex, Ligeia, ergot., and elsewhere. He is a contributing editor for The Dodge and lives in Wooster, Ohio.