Page 6 of Afternoon Delight
“Let’s get that under cold water.” I yanked the plug from the wall on my way to bringing him into the bathroom, then guided his hand so cold water washed over the pink crescent in his palm.
How had we missed that he was getting this bad?
It wasn’t actually a mystery. I hadn’t been here because I was a workaholic who’d been saving for a wedding and a house. Zara had a husband, a job, and three kids. I suspected her marriage was also on the rocks, but maybe it was just this situation with Dad putting stress fractures into their relationship. I didn’t have the nerve to ask.
“I thought it was your mother’s hair dryer,” Dad said, giving me a baffled look.
“It’s the heat gun for stripping paint. I was using it on the table.” He’d been using it himself last summer when I’d visited. “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have left it out.”
I had to start thinking of him like Ollie, Zara’s youngest, but it was a mental shift I didn’t want to make. Dad had taught me how to refinish furniture, for Christ’s sake. As well as how to drive, how to get a car loan, and how to change the oil. Sure, this was the YouTube generation. Every life skill you needed was one skip of a five-second ad away, but he was my Google.
Nothing in me wanted to accept that he couldn’t remember the difference between a heat gun and a hair dryer. Or that Mom was dead.
“Does that feel better?” The mark had faded and didn’t look like it would blister. “Let’s get some gauze on it, then you can hold a cold bottle of root beer. Sound good?” I needed to stop pushing sugar on him. We didn’t need him diabetic on top of the Alzheimer’s, but part of me wanted to believe his absent-mindedness was just low blood sugar.
“That does sound good,” he said, and I thought, What the hell. If it makes him happy.
I got Dad settled in the office with his root beer, then went back to the workroom and put away the heat gun, the scrapers, the turpentine—anything I thought could be a danger to him. There was only a wooden turning latch to keep the cupboard doors closed. It felt like a dick move to put a padlock on it, but I guessed I’d have to.
I added it to my To Do list, a living document in my phone that still had “pick up ring” on it. Then I returned to the office to listen to the message from the call we’d missed. The recording from the credit bureau warned me that my credit card was blah, blah, blah.
I deleted it without listening to the rest, but now I had to wonder how easily Dad could be tricked into entering his credit card number. I would talk to Zara before removing his cards from his wallet. We were in the middle of getting power of attorney for his finances anyway, but this felt like the next-level piss-all-over-his-self-esteem move. Maybe we could just lower his available credit to an amount we were willing to lose.
I heard a muted jangle and got out to the front of the shop just in time to see the door to Afternoon Delight go dark again.
At least I had a cute neighbor now. One who knew even less about sex toys than I did.
I’d never really fucked with them. Literally. Erica had had a vibrator, but she’d never wanted me to use it on her. I’d wandered through stores now and again and seen shit online, but my hand did the job—and it was always there.
My curiosity had grown since I’d seen that trident through the window, though. I’d spent way too much time trying to find it online. Turns out, looking at toys was almost as effective as looking at porn. It made me really horny.
Now I would be picturing Meg in her snug jeans, dark-blond hair, and flustered blushes as she fondled those things. Yes, please.
“Zak? Did that couple ever call back for this coffee table?” And just like that, he was back—shrewdly running the least profitable business in Canada.
“I think she wanted it, but he wasn’t as keen.”
“I think you’re right.” He took the ‘reserved’ sign off it and set a bowl filled with wooden fruit in its place. He gave the arrangement a little adjustment, always so loving with the clutter in here.
I had a lot of feelings about this place. Some were nostalgic, some were overwhelmed and annoyed. These days, I had to wonder if this smorgasbord of disarray was a peek inside Dad’s mind. It was filled to the brim, but everything was jammed together and unusable. The thing you might actually want was buried behind an umbrella stand, covered in dust so you couldn’t see it. That didn’t mean it wasn’t here.
“I was thinking of pork chops for dinner,” he said.
“Sounds great. Should we knock off early and pick them up on our way home?”
“Let’s do that. It’s good to have you home, Zak. I like the company.” He gave my shoulder a pat, smiling in a way that made me feel goofy, like a kid earning Dad’s praise for catching a ball.
It’s okay, I thought. He’s okay. Everything was going to be okay.
But then he noticed the bandage on his hand and began to pick at it with puzzlement, trying to figure out why it was there.
My heart sank. He was not okay.
Chapter 3
Meg
I pulled into the driveway and parked beside my mother’s Toyota Camry. Her first car had been a Camry that my father bought her. Every four years since then, she had traded it in for the latest model. Dad’s first car had been a used Pontiac Firebird—“Like Rockford used to drive.” He had always planned to restore it to its original glory, and it was still on one side of the garage, waiting for him. The other side was packed with a metric crapton of homeowner detritus, so Mom and I parked outside, even on a blustery day like today.
