Our Infinite Sadness

Rock Wall

Ben stopped Charlie at the front stoop before he could stomp in with armloads of fish bundled into nets and dripping blood-tinged water. Charlie's face fell.

"Go around. The deep freeze is outside. Don't carry all that through the house."

"Now you know walking all the way around my own house like some unwelcome Bible salesman ain't my routine."

"Time for a new one. You need the exercise." Besides, Ben was expecting a guest with a heightened olfactory sense, and he didn't want the place reeking of field-gutted brook trout.

Ben next intercepted him at the back door and confiscated the armload of frozen fish he'd hauled from the deep freezer.

"I'll take care of this."

"Take care of it how?" Charlie demanded. "You know you can't cook."

Ben clenched his eyes, belabored from all sides, still rattled by his exchange with Zoey, and stressed by Edythe's impending arrival. Charlie's technique at the skillet wasn't hard. He crossed Harry's Fish Fry with the classic prep for Shake-n-Bake, and then shunted the filets around in bubbling oil with a spatula. Any child could do it.

"I'll somehow manage," Ben promised. "You get upstairs. Change out of those filthy clothes. You're tracking mud everywhere. And shower. Use shampoo."

Charlie indignantly boomed, "What the hell? We expecting the queen of England?"

"Something like that. Go. I'll get this started."

Charlie came down ten minutes later in a wool flannel shirt with wet hair, and he muscled Ben away from the stove with the denunciation that he was doing it all wrong.

He caught Ben glancing at the front window one too many times and demanded, "What gives, and why you wearing that rock gear? You headed out or something?"

"Maybe. If it's cool with you."

"Depends on what it is you're doing. And where. And how late. School night and all. Goin' out's for Saturdays, and last night you moped around and went to bed early. Kinda got it backward."

Ben laughed shortly, peeked out the window. If he only knew.

There was no easy way to come out with it, so he decided to just come clean in one breath, to head off a point-by-point third degree.

"Well I sort of hung out with Edythe Cullen this afternoon, you know, met her family and everything"—

"What? At her house?"

So much for spilling his guts in one breath.

"Well, yeah. We spent some time with her parents. And we got to talking"—

"Now hold on," Charlie exclaimed, "I thought you barely knew this girl."

"That's right," Ben agreed nervously, "I do. I mean, we're getting to know each other, you know? We talk every day. In Biology. And she plays the piano for Choir."

"Yeah, you said that stuff before. And she's introducing you to her father?"

"Well I knew him anyway, from the hospital. From the ice storm."

"When you saved her life."

"Technically, she saved mine. By looking up. I mean, it was a collaborative thing. Anyway, yeah, we're still alive. So we talked about rock climbing and how there's not much opportunity for it up here— no school program, I mean— and they know this place that's good for bouldering, so we thought we'd go check it out."