Page 45 of Meet Stan

“That’s just it, though. You don’t get soft spots for chicks. You get hard spots. You guys hooked up at a party and suddenly you’re dating? I’m just saying the trajectory of all of this has moved really fast.”

I got to the elevator, and thankfully she didn’t follow me into it.

“Just saying.” She offered a shrug as the doors slid shut. I rode down to the lobby, because the truth was I was just trying to get away from Jack and really needed to get back to my own office.

I finished up my work for the day, splashed on a bit of cologne, brushed my teeth carefully, and headed over to the interim project manager’s office.

“Hey,” she said. “You look great.”

“Thanks. You look even better.”

She beamed at the compliment. I thought about what Jack had said, and felt a stab of guilt. I pushed it aside.

“I’m ready to meet your parents.”

“Okay, here’s the deal,” she said. “There are certain things you can’t talk bad about around my parents.”

“Okay. I’d been intending to avoid the usual, religion and politics.”

“In my parent’s case, you need to avoid anything positive said about the St. Louis Cardinals or the Dallas Cowboys. It will set my father off and we’ll have to listen to him go off on an hour-long diatribe on why they’re a bunch of cheats who don’t deserve all their world championships.”

I laughed and nodded. “Fair enough.”

“In my mother’s case, don’t bring up anything about zoning laws—my mother will get triggered by that—and you also need to avoid saying you don’t like her two favorite movies.”

“Which movies are those?”

“Joe versus the Volcano, and Titanic. I know, don’t even get me started, but she loves those movies.”

“Duly noted. I’ll make sure to avoid even bringing them up, and if the subject does arise, I’ll wax nostalgic about the supposed plot of the former, and the low caliber acting of the latter.”

“To be fair, the ship was the best actor in the movie. You know that my sisters and I worked it out and decided there was no way they couldn’t have shared that stupid door—oh my god.”

She slapped her hands to the side of her face.

“I forgot all about my sisters. Okay, Iris and Isabelle are okay, but Irene has been a little bit uptight ever since Christian turned ten and became kind of a little punk.”

I laughed, thinking back to my own youth.

“That’s an awkward age. Not a little kid any longer, but not ready to go through puberty either.”

“Hopefully he’ll be on his best behavior.”

We left the building and took a limo to her parent’s place on Staten Island. I cocked an eyebrow when the limo parked outside of a dry cleaning/tailor shop.

“Is your parents’ place further down the street?” I asked.

“No, it’s up in the air.” She pointed to the second story of the tailor shop.

She led me to a glass door beside the entrance to the tailor shop. Ivy pulled it open and beyond it was a sudden, steep stairwell. We took it up, the smells of home cooking enveloping me as we went. There was something oddly comforting about the aroma. I dined in fine restaurants all the time, but there’s just something about a meal that’s been specially prepared for people the chef loves.

We hit the top of the stairs and she opened another door. Now we were in a kitchen, surprisingly large but crowded with a woman I took to be Ivy’s mother, as well as two others who had to be her sisters. I assumed that the burly man with a balding pate had to be her father.

“Hello,” her mother said. She handed a pair of oven mitts to a sister I took to be five years or so older than Ivy. “Irene, can you check the scallop potatoes for me? Thanks.”

Ivy’s mother came up to me, smiling ear to ear.

“Hi, you must be Stan.” She offered me a wizened hand. “I’m Dolores, Ivy’s mother.”

---