Emma's Table by Philip Galanes Page A

compensate for a few extra years.
    But the girl didn’t seem like that to him, not at all. She was just high-spirited.
    Bobby had never had much trouble finding women. He found them too easily, in fact, and his spate of secret apartments had come in handy for trysts as well. But at sixty-four, he was old enough to be this girl’s father, and he’d never gone in for that sort of thing. What’s more, he’d curtailed his romantic high jinks lately. He was after a more mature companionship nowadays—some mutual pampering, not too much heat.
    He was hopeful of his reconciliation with Emma.
    Bobby looked down at his expensive shoes, willfully breaking contact with the girl’s insistent gaze. He transferred his briefcase heavily from one hand to the other.
    â€œWell, don’t be a stranger,” she said, the arc of flirtation on its downward trajectory.
    He was glad to watch her turn away, back to her own door then. Bobby walked down the long hallway, all covered in wall-to-wall carpeting—a mauve ground with a small, insistent pattern printed on it, like a swarm of busy ants. He passed a succession of metal doors, all painted beige, just like his own. Ten of them, he’d bet, every five paces or so, and every one of them exactly the same.
    That’s twenty apartments a floor, he thought.
    They had the landing to themselves at home.
    Bobby called for the elevator, its doors opening the verysecond he pushed the shiny gold button. It must have been waiting since the girl decamped. He stood inside the elevator cab, waiting for the doors to close again. He heard the fluorescence of the tiny lights that were set into the hallway ceiling, ticking away like impotent time bombs. He’d heard them from the first moment he’d walked into the place—just ticking and ticking—but no explosion yet.
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    â€œ DAMN BLACKMAN ,” TINA MUTTERED, ANNOYED with Benjamin and mildly attracted to him both. Even as recently as their meeting on Friday—the two of them gazing at each other through veils of mistrust—Tina had felt strangely drawn to him. She’d gone to special pains to dress that morning, for a meeting with Benjamin at the very end of the day. She might be crazy, but she suspected, from time to time, that he returned her interest. They were like lame tulip bulbs in April—fighting not to push their heads above ground.
    But why, she wondered? Tina supposed she’d never work it out.
    And she couldn’t blame Benjamin for her current problem. It was her fault—not his—that Gracie thought they were going to a party that night. Benjamin may have recommended the Diet Club to her, and he was definitely the one who told her that the group that met at the Baptist church on Sunday nights specialized in families and children, but Tina was the one who’d upgraded a support group for fat kids into some kind of party.
    Much as she’d like to, she couldn’t blame him.
    It wouldn’t hurt, she thought, if she met a decent guy every once in a while.
    Tina steeled herself as she walked down the hall to Gracie’s room. Better to get it over with, she decided—moving slower with every step, as if she were crossing the Mojave Desert. The corridor was only ten feet long.
    â€œSweetie?” she said, from outside the door.
    There was no reply. Tina didn’t hear the girl inside either.
    â€œGracie?” she called, opening the door.
    The first thing she saw was a yellow dress laid out on the bed, its lacy neckline beneath the pillow. It looked like a body in a coffin.
    That’s my doing, she thought, wanting to crucify herself on a cross of cheap yellow taffeta.
    â€œWhat the hell?” she mumbled, taking in the balance of the scene.
    She saw Gracie on the floor, leaning up against her bed, half a dozen stuffed animals arranged all around her—a cookie in front of every one of them, and the orange box in Gracie’s