Page 70 of How to Hide in Plain Sight
“So, you don’t like it?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“So, youdolike it?”
He sighed. Scraped the point of his knife absentmindedly into the soft, weathered wood of the dock in a way that made me wince. First rule of filleting: keep your knife sharp as hell.
“Yes. No. Yes, I do like it.” He nestled his knife back into the perch, copying the way I hugged the spine, and started to drag it down. “I love it, actually. The people there…they listen to me, you know? They listen to my thoughts and opinions in a way high school kids never did.”
“In a way I never did, you mean?”
“Yeah, well. At least none of these kids blocked my phone number.”
“Hey”—I pointed my knife at him—“I didn’t block youliterally. Just metaphorically.”
He laughed. A real laugh, too—not forced, not withheld.
Did that just happen? Did I reference our separation, and did helaugh?
Could it really be this easy?
As casually as possible, I asked, “Any girlfriends?”
He looked up at me, raising his eyebrows. “Seriously? That’s your next question?”
“Yes.”
He rolled his eyes. “Well, then. Absolutely. I’ve got girlfriends. I’ve got all the girlfriends. Girlfriends for miles. Girlfriends coming out the eyeballs.”
“Makes sense. You always were a lady-killer. Especially back when you had a unibrow on your forehead the size and shape of downtown Manhattan.”
He picked up a stray fish gut and chucked it at my head. I laughed. Then he started scraping the knife against the dock again. “Can I tell you something?”
“No,” I said, “I prefer we sit here and gut these fish in silence.”
“I’m serious.”
“I know you’re serious, Manuel. You frown, like, eighty percent of the time. It must be a requirement for getting into the Ivy League.”
“I just…” Scrape, scrape, scrape. “I miss you, Eliot.”
Silence.
By then, I was almost finished filleting the back half of the trout. I felt Manuel’s gaze, but I didn’t look up. I couldn’t. I focused entirely on the raw muscle beneath my knife. I sliced off two more chunks, clean and quick, and then it was over. The whole operation. I set my knife next to the severed head and reached for the dirty rag on the ground. As I massaged my palms into its grimy cotton, wiping away as much gore as I could, I said, quietly, “I miss you, too.”
“Do you?”
I looked up. I didn’t find anger in Manny’s eyes. It would have been easier if I did. Instead, I found hope.
My chest constricted.
“Of course I do.” I swallowed. “I haven’t seen you in three years.”
“That’s not what I mean.” He reached out and placed his hand over mine. “You know that’s not what I mean.”
I looked down at the fish skeleton at my feet. There wasn’t a single thread of meat left on it. It was perfectly empty. I glanced over at Manny’s fish, which was a hacked-up mess, an amateur operation that left juicy pieces of flesh dangling loosely up and down the spine. Little clusters of translucent white muscle and fat. I sighed, pulled my hand gently from his, and pushed my pristine skeleton aside, then picked up Manny’s and started working its flesh with my knife.
“This is a mess,” I said. “Let’s see if there’s anything left for me to save.”
