Page 16 of Just Come Over
Never mind. He and Casey were free once more. They also had pizza. He put a mile-high slice onto her plate, then two onto his own, and contemplated the wisdom of his preferred path from here, which was to dive face-first into every single remaining yeasty, high-topped, cheese-and-tomato-sauce-laden slice, and carbo-load his way into a caloric stupor where he wouldn’t care anymore.
It hadn’t been the best forty minutes of his life, but at least it was over. The cops hadn’t appeared exceptionally impressed with Casey’s brand-new passport, or by his explanation that he was her father, either, especially onceCaseyhad explained, at another table but loud enough for Rhys to hear, that she wassupposedto be at school, because it was a school day, and she didn’t even have her lunchbox, but she had to go with that man instead.
In the end, he’d had to produce Jada’s name, and then wait until the social worker got back from lunch and deigned to return her calls. Sitting in a booth with a cop beside you, blocking your exit, and another across from you, both of them eyeing you alertly for signs of imminent flight, wasn’t the most relaxed environment he’d ever experienced. He’d wanted to tell Jada, “I told you I needed more documentation than this,” but he hadn’t even got the chance.
“All right?” he asked Casey now.
“Yes,” she said, sticking her fork into the middle of her pizza in an awkward sort of way and hacking off a bite. “Except I thought they were going to arrest you. That’s what policemen do.”
“Maybe they just wanted lunch. Did you think of that?” Bloody hell, this pizza wasgood.Sausage and all. He’d just sit here for a minute and inhale. Aromatherapy for men.
“Policemen don’t eatlunch,”she said. “They only come if somebody did a crime. Then they take you to jail, which is like being in a cage, except not nice like a rabbit cage. And a lady police came to my school with Elizabeth when my mommy died, so that’s two things. Arresting and telling bad news. They do that on TV, too, so I know it’s true. But they didn’t even take their handcuffs out. I thought they would do that. Handcuffs are the mainpart.”
He kept eating. “Maybe we should invite them back to have another go, if you’re disappointed. I haven’t been terrorized nearly enough today.” Casey was sawing away at her pizza with a knife and fork, but not making terrific progress on the dense crust. “Here,” he said, and reached over to cut it into pieces. The last time he’d done that had surely been for Dylan. At least he knew how to dosomethingsemi-parental. “Who’s Elizabeth?”
“She’s my mom’s friend. The police lady didn’t know I was supposed to take my lunchbox. Elizabeth didn’t know, either, but that’s because Elizabeth doesn’t have any kids. She says that kids make you fat and poor, but my mom said it was just poor, for her.” She studied Rhys with what he could swear was a critical eye. “You’rekindof fat, but not exactly. That’s why I think you’re really Maui and not my dad. You don’t look like a dad. Besides, people don’t just be dads all of a sudden. Your dad has you from when you’re a baby. He only sometimes lives with you, but you still know he’s yourdad.”
“Excuse me,” he said, deciding that this was the easier part of the debate, “but I am not fat. I weigh less now than I did when I was playing, and my waist is three centimeters smaller. I’m big.”
“Oh. But you’rekindof. Like, your arms are fat.”
“They’re not fat. They’re muscular. They’re... never mind.” He tried to remember what they’d been talking about. He was also rethinking the pizza, given all the talk about his excess weight, except that somehow, he’d finished both slices and had started on a third. A fourth might be in the cards, too. “That lunchbox has come up a fair few times. Maybe we’d better look for a new one of those as well as a suitcase. You’ll need one for school in New Zealand, I guess. I don’t actually know.” Add that question to the list.
“They might not have one that has Moana,” she said.
“But they might. Or maybe they’ll have something you like even better.”
She eyed him skeptically and gave a world-weary sigh. Her hair was mussed. He was going to have to work out what to do about that. And how you did it. He ate some more pizza.
“I can’t like anythingbetter,”she said. “It’sMoana.That’s myname.”
“Yeh,” he said, “but your name’s also Casey. Maybe there’ll be one with a locomotive on.”
“What?”
“Casey Jones. He was a... Never mind. We’ll do our best.” Time to establish some more of those boundaries. “We’ll find something practical, that we both like. A mutual decision, that’s the idea.”
The department store, when they got there, did not in fact have a Moana lunchbox. Only natural, as the film had come out ages ago. He said, “Never mind. We’ll find something better. Or we can wait until we get to New Zealand, and order it online. Might have to wait a bit, that’s all.”
“Oh,” Casey said, her voice small again. She glanced up at him, then looked down. “OK.”
He clearly still wasn’t up to standard. “Or,” he said, “maybe there’s something else you’d like. Look, this one has, uh, girls on.”
“Those are Disneyprincesses,”she said. “Notgirls.”
“Huh.” He studied them. “Nah. You’re right. Too blonde. We’re Maori. We’ll hold out for Moana. Let’s go look at suitcases instead.”
See?he told himself.You handled it.You’re fine.And when Casey spied the enormous pink hard-sided suitcase with an embossed pattern all over it, looking like somebody’s fever-dream of a magnified diamond, which was nothing any reasonable man would have bought a six-year-old? Or anybody? He did his best to handle that, too.
He knew when Casey saw it, because she stopped, gasped in dramatic fashion, ran over to touch it, and said, “This is the best one. Iloveit.”
“It’s not made for kids,” he said, and hefted it with a grimace. “Definitely not. Probably weighs as much as you do. It’s made for... dunnowhoit’s made for. Nobody with any style sense, that’s for sure. A YouTube star, maybe.” The tag said “Rose Gold,” but as far as he was concerned, it was pink.
“But it’s on sale. See? S-A-L-E. If it has a yellow tag on it, it’s on sale, so you can buy it. It’s saving money!”
“It’s still a hundred twenty-nine dollars and ninety-nine cents, it’s too big for you twice over, and God knowsI’mnot using it. No. It’s not saving money if you get the wrong thing, and you have to go out afterwards and buy the right thing after all. It’s the opposite. It usually means spending twice as much money.”
“But Iloveit.” She was on her knees, now, stroking her hand over the shiny surface. “It’sbeautiful.It’s a princess suitcase, like Cinderella has. It’s the best one there could ever, ever be.”
