Rip and Pinch

No one else paid attention to trivia. The girls and Ronald were too busy listening to Trevor whine about Rearsborough, Ohio. The mass shooting was all over the news. It happened at a public library scheduled to host a drag queen story hour, but the killer mixed up the days and mowed down a veteran’s book club discussing the latest Clive Cussler. Not that anyone on the trivia team was mourning the victims. They sat in awed silence as Trevor moaned about how he grew up in Rearsborough, and it was at that library, on a couch now splattered with blood, that he read the first Harry Potter and fell in love with literature.

If you’re so in love with literature, Nick wanted to ask, why don’t you help me out with this Faulker question? But he had to cry about how traumatizing it was to see his parent’s house on TV. A helicopter crew caught it during the manhunt for the shooter. Trevor passed around his phone, showing the team a blurry screenshot of a roof and trampoline he remembered bouncing on as a boy. Even if it was true, Nick knew Trevor’s parents no longer lived in that house. They moved to Florida almost a decade ago, while Trevor was still in college. That detail seemed to slip Trevor’s mind as Stacy rubbed his arm and cooed in his ear that his parents would be fine, the police would catch the killer soon. 

“Let me see if I can pull up the other video. The anchor says it’s a deer, but I swear you can see the shooter running through our backyard.” His voice grew shaky. “That’s where I learned to play catch.”

While Trevor searched for the video, the trivia MC yelled “no phones” and docked their team five points. They ended up losing by three, but did they hold Trevor accountable? Just the opposite. Ronald suggested they cover Trevor’s portion of the bill. Then it was Ronald’s turn to get his shoulders rubbed.

 

 

#

 

 

Nick tried telling his parents the story, but they got hung up on the wrong details.

“Are Trevor’s parents okay?”

“Did they catch the gunman?”

They didn’t appreciate what a feat it was to win trivia at this particular bar, and how it was even more impressive that he pretty much did it on his own. When he mentioned how Trevor cost him a hundred bucks, they looked concerned and asked if he needed money.

For their first night in the city, Nick made reservations at an acclaimed, yet affordable, Italian restaurant, but his father waved off the suggestion, saying they had perfectly good Italian in Denver. They wanted to try something more adventurous, more worldly. “I read an article that called Brooklyn an ‘epicurean paradise,’ even if the real foodies flock to Queens, which the author described as the ‘crossroads of the culinary world.’”

They eventually settled on an Ethiopian restaurant. The first plate was brought out and his dad whispered to his mom, “That’s injera, that sponge bread I was telling you about.” He rolled the r in injera with surprising grace, giving the word a Spanish flair. Nick doubted this was the right pronunciation, but didn’t know enough about whatever language they spoke in Ethiopia to correct him. “You just tear off a piece and pinch the food. Kind of like an improvised taco.”

“Sponge cake?” Nick’s mom asked. “It looks more like one of those reusable paper towels we got.” She leaned across the table to Nick, who was trying to signal to the waiter for another beer. “We’re trying to cut down on our waste. For the environment.” 

“It’s sponge bread, not cake. See those holes on the surface of the bread? Aren’t they sponge-like?” Nick’s father stared at her until she nodded in understanding. “Also, don’t be alarmed if the bread has a sour taste. Apparently that’s on purpose.”

“Sour, huh?” Nick’s mom reached for a piece. “You know I love my grapefruit.”

“Wait, wait. It’s not meant to be eaten alone. It’s as much a utensil as it is food. You wouldn’t eat a spoon, would you?”

“I would not.”

“And grapefruit is tart, not sour.”

“How’s work, honey?” 

“It’s good. I got a raise.” Nick left it there, not wanting to go into the details of his recent performance review. He’d met with a woman from HR and Brett Allistaire, who was only a few years older than Nick but already a VP who managed like 25 people. Nick had been hoping for a promotion (it felt weird to be over 30 and still have junior in his title), but Brett Allistaire shook his head and said the timing wasn’t right.

“Is there any chance I can change departments?” Nick asked. “I think I could do well in the Innovation Lab.”

Brett Allistaire winced. “They don’t have a role that caters to your strengths.”

“What about Creative Solutions?”

“They’re fully staffed.”

“Strategic Partnerships?”

“Nick, I really think Operations is where you’re going to thrive.”

“Is there something I can do differently to become an Associate Planner?”

Brett Allistaire tented his fingers and squinted, focusing on Nick with such intensity that the Junior Planner had to look away, which seemed to settle something for the VP. “I gave a speech at the leadership retreat, which I’ll paraphrase for you now. Every workplace is like a big dinner table. There are people who bring food, and there are people who eat the food.”

“I eat? That’s why I’m still junior?”

“No, you actually inspired me to create a third category. You’re the kind of person who passes the plates.”

“Okay.”

“You need to bring the food to get a promotion, but you did a little more than just sit there stuffing your face. We want your compensation to reflect that.”

The woman from HR slid a paper across the table. It showed his salary from the previous year in one column, and his salary for the upcoming year in the next column over. The difference was a thousand dollars, and when Nick received his first paycheck with the new salary, he discovered that changes to his benefits and withholdings meant his take home pay was eight dollars less than it was before.

The waiter set a big tray at the center of the table. His father seemed satisfied with the variety of colors and textures on display. Nick hoped his dad might get distracted by the food, trying to identify each dish and scrutinizing Mom’s injera-pinching form, but Nick’s job was another field in which he felt he was an expert. “So you got the promotion?”

“Well, no. But I got a raise.”

 “Did you ask for a promotion?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you give them an ultimatum?”

“No.”

“You should have told them you had another offer. That’s how Jessica got her promotion.”

“She’s an Associate Director now,” Nick’s mom added.

“When were you guys talking to Jessica?” She had broken up with Nick six months earlier, and to his knowledge, had never directly communicated with his parents in the three years they dated.

“She called us last week,” Nick’s mom said. “She wanted to make sure we weren’t affected by the fires.”

“A class act.” Nick’s dad nodded as he finished chewing a handful of lentils. “People remember that kind of thoughtfulness. A crisis is a great opportunity to build and nurture relationships, and relationships pave the path to management.”

“What crisis? None of the fires came within miles of our neighborhood.”

“We have friends who had to evacuate.”

“The Sumners.” Nick’s mom’s hand trembled as she grabbed some marinated beets. 

“Are they okay?”

“Why don’t you call them and ask?” Dad asked. “Then maybe a few months down the line, Mr. Sumner hears about someone looking for a Senior Planner and thinks of the nice young man who rallied to his side when his house burned down.”

“Their house burned down?”

“Unclear. It’s still too dangerous to go back to the neighborhood and check, so they’re waiting things out at the Sheraton.”

Nick’s mom rested her hand and her husband’s forearm. “It’s the not knowing that’s the hardest.”

Nick figured losing your home and possessions would be slightly more difficult than a little ambiguity, but didn’t care enough about the Sumners to argue the point. “So Jessica called you out of the blue, asked if your house burned down, then told you she got a promotion? Do I have that right?”

Nick’s mom shook her head. “She told us when we got coffee.”

“You got coffee? Like, this morning?”

“We told her we were visiting New York when she called. She said we should get together.”

“We always got along,” Nick’s mom added.

“You need to reach out to people, Nick. Otherwise they forget you exist. In matters both personal and professional, networking is like tending to a garden, and like a garden it requires—goddammit! You’re like a little girl trying to kill a spider.”

Nick was picking at the lentils with a scrap of injera.

His dad took a deep breath. “Just tear off a nice big hunk and grab whatever you want. Easy as that. Rip and pinch.”

 

 

#

 

 

Nick browsed Broadway shows on his work computer, sending his parents links and asking what looked interesting to them. If he entered the lottery for multiple shows on each day of their visit, they’d probably get to see something.

“We’ve done Broadway before,” his dad texted back an hour later. “We signed up for a tango class tonight.”

His mom followed up minutes after. “We would have included you but it’s couples only. Maybe we can grab a drink afterwards? It says the class lets out at 11.”

Nick ignored the texts and went into a conference room. There were five of them in the office, but they had to wait for Brett Allistaire, who was visiting a client in Seattle, to join the Zoom.

“Anyone up to anything this weekend?” the youngest and most ambitious Junior Planner asked.

“Getting dinner.”

“Grabbing drinks.”

“Maybe seeing a movie.”

“Nick?”

He was the only one who hadn’t answered. “Um, my parents are in town, so probably doing something with them.”

“You don’t have anything planned?” 

“Not really, no.”

“Where are they visiting from?”

“Colorado.”

“Were they affected by those fires?”

“Kind of.” Nick figured that was true, since they had friends who evacuated.

“Oh my god. Is that why they’re visiting? They had to evacuate and…”

Instinct kicked in. “Didn’t have anywhere else to go. I guess they could have gone to the Sheraton, but…”

“No, no.” She shook her head. “You’ve got to be around family in a time like this.” 

The video screen in the conference room flashed and Brett Allistaire’s face appeared. “How we doing, team?”

“Brett, did you know about Nick’s parents?”

Brett dimmed his expression from exuberant to sober. “No, what’s happened?”

“Their house burned down. In the Colorado wildfires.”

“Not exactly.” Nick looked around the conference room, adjusting to their attention. He wasn’t used to this many eyes on him. It felt good. “The truth is we don’t know if the house burned down. It’s still too dangerous to check the area.”

“My God.” With one graceful swoop Brett Allistaire swung his elbow onto his desk and pinched the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes and giving the subtlest shake of his head, as though attempting to process such horror was causing his brain to sputter and overheat. “I can’t imagine.”

“Not knowing—that’s the worst part,” Nick said. 

“I’ve heard that’s true,” the ambitious Junior Planner said, patting his arm. “Uncertainty only draws out the pain. What you need is closure.”

“An open wound can’t heal.”

He wasn’t sure if that tracked medically, or as a metaphor, but everyone in the room hummed in appreciation at his hard-earned wisdom. Brett Allistaire told him he could go home early, but Nick said it was okay, work was a good distraction. This earned more impressed looks from his coworkers.

Nick did start to pack up at five, announcing that he needed to get to the grocery store. He planned to cook a hearty, fortifying stew for the whole family, even though his parents had been refusing food since they staggered off the plane. He liked the image he was painting, his coworkers imagining his parents as shellshocked hicks, faces covered in ash, hunched over bowls of soup. As he waited in line at the movie theater concession stand—he had hours to kill while his parents were busy with their tango class—he thought of more details to slip into conversation. He could groan and hold his back, and say he was sleeping on the couch because he’d given his bed to his parents. He could ask engineers and IT if they had any tips for recovering files, such as family photos, stored on burnt computers.

“I was going to upload them onto the cloud during my next visit,” he explained the next day. “I shouldn’t have waited.”

Nick had always felt like a peripheral part of the office. A distant planet’s lesser moon, but suddenly he was the sun. An intern gave him a book of poetry that helped her get over the death of her dog. Betty, the Sales Lead on the Strategic Partnerships team, handed him a pot of some kind of ethnic soup and said her grandmother made it whenever she was sick as a little girl. Nick, humbled, put his hand to his heart and said his parents would love it.

On Friday he met his parents at a coffee shop before work. If anyone questioned him for being late, he could say he’d been searching satellite imagery for updates on his parents house and lost track of the time. “Do you guys want to come over for dinner tonight? One of my coworkers made me this really authentic ethnic soup because I helped land a really big client.”

“As lovely as that sounds, we have plans tonight with our tanguero.” Once again Nick’s dad took pleasure in his ability to roll an r. “Tanguero means tango teacher.”

“Maybe we can have the soup for lunch,” his mom said. “I should have mentioned this earlier, but we’ll need to borrow your keys and pop into your apartment today.”

“I only have one set of keys.”

“That’s fine. When we’re done we’ll drop them off at the bodega on your block. Our tanguero says that’s the Brooklyn way.”

“You want to leave my keys with a stranger.”

“Not a stranger. Your bodega guy.”

“I don’t really have a bodega guy. I usually just go to Walgreens.”

“Oh Nick.” For a moment, Nick’s mom actually sounded like someone whose house burned down.

“Why do you need to go to my apartment?” 

“To borrow your pickleball equipment.”

“I don’t have pickleball equipment.”

“Why not?” his father asked.

“Because I don’t play pickleball.”

“Really? Our tanguero says it’s the fastest growing sport in America.”

“You’re playing pickleball with your tanguero?”

Nick’s mom reached for his hand. “We’d invite you, but we’re going straight from pickleball to the Dine and Dance.”

“We would have invited you to the Dine and Dance, but you haven’t had any tango lessons and don’t have a partner.” Nick’s dad took the last sip of his flat white, and exhaled with pleasure. He had insisted on going to an Australian coffee shop. “You’d probably feel embarrassed and left out. Unless you’ve been to a Dine and Dance before?”

“I haven’t.”

“It’s all the rage. Happens every night at this unlicensed dance hall in Bushwick. Quite the scene. Supposedly someone’s writing an article about it for The Cut. You’ve heard of that, haven’t you?”

 

 

#

 

 

Nick met his parents outside of a Bed-Stuy bodega the following morning. They were wearing sunglasses and sweatpants, his mom nursing a personal carton of Tropicana while his dad sipped a massive iced coffee. Nick noticed a sour smell when he hugged them hello.

“Did you guys play pickleball this morning?”

“We just woke up,” his mom said.

“We crashed at Ramon’s last night.”

“Ramon?”

“Our tanguero. He says this spot has the best chopped cheese in the city.”

“Are you guys okay?”

“A little tired, but we had the time of our lives. The Dine and Dance went until 4am.”

“It was more like a drink and dance,” his mom said. “Oh Nick, we had this funky wine that was sparkly and had all this yummy junk in it.”

“Sangria?”

“A low-intervention cab,” his dad said. “Not loaded with sulfates and nitrates and all the processed crap that gives you hangovers.”

“You look kind of hungover.”

“Nothing a chopped cheese can’t handle.”

“Did you get me one?”

“We think you should order your own,” his dad said. “The guy is really friendly. Introduce yourself, maybe ask if he watched the Knicks game last night.”

“Good practice for befriending your own bodega guy,” his mom added. 

Nick mumbled his order for a bacon egg and cheese and scanned the refrigerated cases for his preferred brand of canned iced coffee while the guy made it.

Still chewing, his dad balled up his wrapper and threw it into the trashcan next to their park bench. “Nick, there’s another Dine and Dance tonight. Your mother and I discussed it. We think you should join us.”

“Don’t worry,” Nick’s mom said. “Ramon says it’s an inclusive space, even to gringos who can’t dance.” His parents shared a chuckle at the recollection, eyes going misty with the thought of their tanguero.

“Don’t I need a partner?”

“Jessica might be interested.”

“You invited her?”

“She seemed intrigued when we mentioned it during pickleball.”

“You played pickleball with her too?”

“Ramon needed a partner.”

Nick’s mom smiled. “At first, I’ll confess, we thought Jessica and Ramon might hit it off, but at the Dine and Dance we realized Ramon’s gay.”

“Less than a week in New York and we already made a gay best friend. Wait until we tell the Sumners.”

“That’s great. Go hang out with your gay best friend and my ex-girlfriend. I’ve got plenty else going on.” He pulled out his phone, opening the AMC Stubs app to browse showtimes.

“Hang on, don’t you see?” Nick’s mom said. “This is your chance to win back Jessica.”

“Who says I want to win her back? You wouldn’t believe the things she said to me when we broke up.”

Nick’s dad was stretching, twisting his back to shake off the last remnants of his hangover. “You know, on the plane I read this article about radical honesty. It said sometimes it’s good for our feelings to be hurt. Emotional acupuncture, they called it. Sometimes we need to be poked and prodded into being our healthiest self.”

“That reminds me of what Ramon said last night about how our bodies can articulate what our mouths are too timid to say.”

“That’s right, Nick. Let your body speak. I’m confident Jessica will listen.”

Nick’s parents needed to shower and nap, but they wouldn’t go back to their hotel until Nick agreed to meet them at the Dine and Dance that night. Back at his apartment he watched some Youtube videos from professional tango competitions. The movements were alternately militaristic and sensual, carried out by performers with bright outfits and shiny hair. Their faces were so serious. The women wore red lipstick and the men had muscular, hairy forearms. Nick couldn’t see himself doing any of it. The only times he danced were at weddings after half a dozen drinks, and he mostly bounced from one leg to the other and mouthed along to songs he remembered from middle school. That kind of half-assed bobbing around wouldn’t fly at the Dine and Dance.  

He got off the subway in Bushwick and started walking in the direction of the unlicensed dance hall. The closer he got to the venue, the more his heart started to race. He was going to have to see Jessica, interact with his parents and a bunch of new people, and make self-deprecating jokes as he desecrated the tango. He had never met Ramon but could already imagine the dashing tanguero telling him he was too stiff, that he needed to relax his shoulders, which would inevitably make him tense up even more.

Nick stopped at a dimly lit bar and ordered a beer. He sipped his domestic lager, taking a stool with the best view of a Knicks-Nuggets game, and finally felt comfortable in his golf shirt and performance chinos (his only clothes that were both semi-formal and moisture-wicking). Panic returned when his mom texted.

“We’re waiting outside with Jessica. Where are you?”

He stared at the text and wondered how to respond. A text from his dad followed a minute later.

“We’ll meet you inside.”

He considered his options, and eventually settled on food poisoning. He could tell his parents he had eaten the authentic ethnic soup and it made him violently ill. They didn’t expect him to do the tango while in the throes of diarrhea, did they?

He ordered another beer and started typing out his text, but before he hit send there was a tap on his shoulder. It was the ambitious Junior Planner, out with her boyfriend.

“Nick, what are you doing here?”

“Oh, grabbing a beer.” The Junior Planner and her boyfriend stood there smiling, clearly expecting to hear more. “I’m about to meet up with my parents. They’re still in town.”

“That’s good they’re getting out.” The junior associate turned to her boyfriend. “His parents are the ones that I was telling you about, the ones in Colorado.”

“Of course, yes. How are they holding up?”

“Fine, yeah.” Something felt different about his coworkers’ expression. Sympathy was curdling into condescension, or maybe exhaustion. “Actually, we’re going out dancing. To celebrate. It turns out their home is okay.”

“Really?”

“The fires finally settled down enough that their friends could drive into the neighborhood and check. I think about a third of the houses on their block were still standing, and theirs was one of them.”

“Wow! That is so great to hear.”

“Amazing,” her boyfriend added. “You deserve to celebrate.”

Nick worried the good news would be greeted with disappointment, that the Junior Planner would feel deceived by Nick, but she was beaming. You’d think it was her own home that hadn’t burned down. Nick wondered if lying was really a form of generosity. With a few words he had allowed her to feel shock and sadness, followed by joy and relief. Thanks to his deceit, her life had become more emotionally rich.

“I should get going. The Dine and Dance is starting soon.”

“Dine and dance?”

“Yeah, at this tango club down the street. Have you been?”

The Junior Planner mock-pouted. “He never takes me dancing.”

“Oh, you’ve got to try it,” Nick said to the boyfriend. “It’s actually a really inclusive, welcoming environment, even to beginners.”

The boyfriend was looking defensive. He put his arms up and said sure we can go sometime. Nick paid cash and got out of there quickly, not wanting to spoil the impression he made. Maybe it was all pretend, he thought. That if you act like someone who goes out dancing and has interesting hobbies, you eventually become that person. You keep doing the right steps until it feels natural.

He was beginning to look forward to the Dine and Dance. He could suggest a work event, possibly for Latin Heritage Month, and have Ramon come to the office and teach everyone to tango. Organizing that would certainly qualify as “bringing food to the table.” The idea put a skip into Nick’s step, but he slowed his pace when he saw smoke. He stopped when he heard sirens.

 

 

#

 

 

Brett Allistaire didn’t tell anyone, not even Evelyn, that it was his first time at a gay wedding. He spent a fortune on a vintage suit, far more than his proximity to the couple warranted (Evelyn interned with one of the grooms a decade earlier), and justified the purchase as necessary because the wedding was at an upscale beach club in one of the fancy parts of Long Island (he had grown up in one of the non-fancy neighborhoods). There were stunning ocean views and Evelyn would want pictures. We could use it for a holiday card, he suggested, to which she laughed and asked since when do we do holiday cards?

This was why he needed a two thousand dollar vintage suit. He wasn’t as cool and cultured as Evelyn’s friends. His friends had belonged to fraternities and worked in finance and sales, not art and fashion and design. He was dreading the inevitable questions about what he did for work, and could picture eyes glazing over as he droned on about creating “innovative solutions for modern workflows.”

It wasn’t as bad as he imagined—of course, he remembered, cool people try not to talk about work—until the dancing started. People were singing along to songs he’d never heard before, claiming they were iconic club anthems. He was sweating too much. He chanced a move with his elbow and knocked a drink out of a grandmother’s hand. He was grateful when Evelyn suggested a break to grab another prosecco. Actually it’s a pet-nat, she whispered as they carried their glasses back to the table, where another couple was seated. One of the men had a receding hairline and a watch Brett knew cost more than his vintage suit. The other guy was younger than Evelyn, and wore cheap sunglasses and vaped constantly.

“It’s hot out there.” Brett said it to say something, but instantly regretted it. Now that he’d mentioned being hot, he wouldn’t be able to put on his suit jacket to hide the rings of sweat under his arms. 

“Mmm.” The younger guy blew a fat, minty cloud across the table. “It’s a real Tango Inferno out there.”

“That’s not funny,” the older guy said.

“Please. That was like a year ago.”

“I don’t care how long it’s been. Referring to it as a ‘Tango Inferno’ is so fucking glib. People were gathered in a queer space to dance and be joyful, and more than thirty of them died, all because an asshole landlord couldn’t maintain his building.”

“Maybe your self-righteousness will bring them back to life.”

“I know you think you’re being amusingly cynical and transgressive, but you’re coming across as an asshole who’s had too much coke.”

“Is that what these nice folks think?”         

Brett laughed and shook his head, not sure what side to take. He usually thrived in situations like this, even when slightly intimidated by the crowd, but the reference to the Tango Inferno, combined with the wine, had him a little dizzy. Evelyn, thankfully, picked up the slack. “You know, Brett knew one of the victims.”

“See?” the older man said. “This is why you don’t go around making jokes about a fucking tragedy.”

The younger guy ignored him. He put his vape on the table and leaned forward. “Is that right?”

Brett took a sip of pet-nat and found his footing. “Someone I worked with. I was kind of his mentor. He took his parents there on the night it happened.”

The other couple shook their heads. “Did any of them make it?”

“The fucked up thing was my protege was running late, so his parents were already in the building when the fire started. So he was okay, but his parents…”

“Holy shit.”

Close enough, Brett thought. Sometimes the truth takes too long. So maybe Nick wasn’t his protege, but he was one of his direct reports. He left out the part about Nick’s girlfriend (or was it his ex-girlfriend?) also dying in the fire. Given his audience, he liked the implication that he mentored someone gay. It would have been too complicated to explain that Nick’s father was only disfigured by the fire, and that Nick had to move back into his childhood home in Idaho or wherever to take care of him. The substance was basically the same—he knew someone close to two people who died in the Tango Inferno. Brett just made the anecdote more digestible, which was necessary now that so many people at the wedding wanted to talk to him.