Amateurs by Dylan Hicks

hmm’d, amusedly, he hoped. She seemed able to acknowledgethat something was sort of funny without laughing, as you might when watching an episode of Mike & Molly on an airplane. Another possibility was that she didn’t find Lucas even sort of funny, and her smile was an attenuated version of sociable laughter. “Gemma says you’re a lawyer?” he said.
    â€œNo, that’s the other Karyn-with-a- y Bondarenko, a public defender from Pittsburgh. Weird, I usually show up higher than she does on Google.”
    â€œSearch is localized, though. Maybe you’re only winning in the Twin Cities.”
    â€œDamn, I never thought of that.” The Twin Cities Karyn Bondarenko explained that she was an employee-benefits specialist for a large retailer.
    â€œSo, talking to insurance people and stuff?” he said.
    â€œI’m on the phone with vendors a fair amount, yeah. It’s a lot of, you know, helping someone go on short-term disability, sorting out compliance issues with the FMLA.”
    â€œThat’s the Salvadoran guerilla outfit?”
    â€œFamily and Medical Leave Act.”
    â€œI took a Latin American history class in college.”
    â€œWanna give me a hand with these?” She held out two plates.
    It was a small dining room with one turbid window and a built-in cabinet, behind whose glass doors there was little but aging phone books and a monster doll handmade, Lucas learned, by a neighborhood artist with only one name. “I gave it to Maxwell for Christmas,” she said. “It was the year of my divorce, and I hadn’t really figured out presents, even though I’d been given a list and shopping could hardly be more convenient for me.”
    â€œAnd you must get a discount, right?”
    â€œYes.” Pause. “I got it for him on Christmas Eve at this ultragroovy gift shop where I kept buying totally wrong things just so I’d have something.” She interrupted herself to call Maxwell downstairs. Ina quiet voice and while listening for her son’s footsteps she said, “He was sweet, tried to be grateful. But it was dismal.”
    â€œFuck.”
    â€œThat same year his dad bought him a Wii.”
    Shortly after Maxwell came to the table, Lucas asked about the fantasy game responsible for the dissemination of so many cards and dice throughout the first floor. Several minutes later he wished the boy were slightly more afflicted with the mumbling taciturnity that often marked prepubescent responses to strange adults. Alongside the eggs there were fat slices of wheat toast, microwaved vegetarian bacon, hard smiles of cantaloupe, and very good coffee. “Oh, that’s cool,” Lucas said to Maxwell about a particular card’s complicated properties.
    â€œWell, no, that’s bad,” he said, his face showing a mix of frustration and embarrassment.
    â€œNo, yes, bad. It’s confusing for me,” Lucas said with a surge of affection for Maxwell, though he didn’t see himself as the type who had to bruise someone’s feelings to fall for them.
    â€œI’m sorry,” Karyn said, “Gemma didn’t tell me what kind of work you’ve done.”
    â€œI’m a public defender from Pittsburgh. No, I—well, I was working in banks. For a while in New York. Implementing marketing collateral, if that sounds like English to you.”
    â€œSure.”
    â€œThen my dad got sick, so I came back to Mipliss to be closer to my folks, and without really trying to I got another bank job. Then the recession hit and . . . yeah. Now I’m in a What Color Is Your Parachute? phase.”
    Maxwell nonverbally asked his mother to elucidate the reference.
    â€œIt’s a book for people trying to get jobs as parachutists,” she said. The sound of her voice had lightened now, though there was still something attractively serrated about it.
    Lucas: “The metaphor is . . . do you