Gold Dust by Chris Lynch Page B

unless you tell me where you are really going.”
    The Pier 4 idea was not even a possibility.
    “Movies,” I said.
    “Be back by ten,” he said.
    “Okay,” I said.
    I could be back by midnight if I wanted, since by ten he was always asleep. In the living room.
    I had told Napoleon that he and his dad could pick me up on the corner in front of Woolworth’s. I said it was because my steep narrow hill was rotten in the winter with the ice and with cars parked all the way on both sides up and down making it more likely than not that someone not used to it would have an accident. Which was true. If it was summer, I would have had to think of something else, though.
    “Well, Richard,” Dr. Ellis said when we had been seated by a guy in a suit who made me feel like I ought to have been serving him. “We are very pleased you could make it this evening. Aren’t we, son?”
    “Yes,” Napoleon said. “Thank you, Richard.”
    You might have thought that was the kind of thing a guy was saying because his father was forcing him to, but I could believe him. He sounded sincere. And he had already thanked me about three times in the car.
    “Happy to be here,” I said.
    A guy in a white suit came by then and served us these giant, mushroom-shaped rolls with big tongs. We hadn’t even ordered any.
    “This is cool,” I said. “Nice place.”
    “You have never been here before,” Dr. Ellis said.
    I shook my head. “We eat at home pretty much all the time. I do the cooking a lot even. So this is a treat.”
    “How many of you are at home then?” the doctor asked.
    Oh no. How was I getting into this? I thought we were going to be talking about baseball. Even Caribbean literature would be better than this. Like I said, the way things went there wasn’t a great need to talk about yourself or your home very much. You just figured everyone was aware of everyone and kind of shut up about it. I liked it that way.
    “Just the two of us, sir,” I said. “Me and my dad.”
    “Like us,” Napoleon said, as if we were all a part of this excellent club.
    “Ya,” I said, looking at the two of them all dusted up and starched and looking like one of those Father’s Day sale ads for Filene’s. Napoleon had to be the only guy in the world who got more dressed up after he took off the school uniform every afternoon.
    “Oh my, I wish I had known that,” Dr. Ellis said. “We could have asked your father along.”
    Yikes.
    “He doesn’t like restaurants much. Kind of... kind of a homebody.”
    “What does he do for work?”
    “He works for Midas. You know, the muffler guys?”
    “Ah, yes,” he said, and looked at me then with what felt like was a little extra X-ray. As if he was trying to figure out how far to go with these questions. He paused. “So, you are a huge baseball fan.”
    Dr. Ellis was a good man. A very good, polite man.
    Trying to be likewise, I made every effort to discuss baseball without being boring, or nuts. Mostly I talked about the league I played in, the Sox games I’d seen, and about us, me and Napoleon.
    “Should have seen him today, sir. Napoleon was tearing the ball up.”
    “Yes,” Dr. Ellis said, grinning as he half-buried his face in the gigantic laminated menu. “I spent most of the afternoon bringing him large cups of tea and keeping the fireplace tended.”
    I looked at Napoleon, who looked at his menu. “It wasn’t most of the afternoon,” he grumbled.
    I made a pass at joining in the menu reading. But very quickly I got overwhelmed. There had to be thirty different things on the menu, and that was just the appetizer page. And an appetizer cost more than we usually spent on the makings of a whole meal at home.
    I tried to remain cool. I tried not to turn red, but I felt it happening to me anyway. The lights from the chandeliers were getting hotter and hotter. I took a long drink of water, and as soon as I put my glass down some other white-shirt guy was there bang on the spot to refill