The Best American Short Stories 2014 by Jennifer Egan Read Free Book Online Page B

fine if the fastener was left open. It was a little problem to keep the Velcro from flipping over and fastening itself, but I folded the top strap and held it together with a big paper clip, and eventually we got going.
    â€œAn old man like me, and I’ve got no scarf, no hat, only gloves I bought from a street vendor, the same day I had a roasted chestnut and bought another one for a squirrel. I can tell you which one of us was happier.” He was holding the crook of my arm. “Only you would take me out in the snow for a meal. Promise me one thing: you won’t make me watch you make a snowball and throw it in a wintry way. You can make an anecdote of that request and use it later at my memorial service.”
    He’d had a triple bypass two years before. He had diabetes. He’d told me on the phone that he might have to go on dialysis.
    â€œIs this the part of the walk where you tell me how your relationship is with that fellow I don’t consider my equal?”
    â€œDid I bring him up?” I said.
    â€œNo, I did. So is he still not my equal?”
    â€œI feel disloyal talking about him. He lost his job. He hasn’t been in a very good mood.”
    â€œTake him dancing,” he said. “Or read him my most optimistic poem: ‘Le petit rondeau, le petit rondeau.’ That one was a real triumph. He’ll want to know what ‘rondeau’ means, so tell him it’s the dance that’s supplanted the Macarena.”
    â€œI wish you liked each other,” I said, “but realistically speaking, he has three siblings and the only one he talks to is his sister.”
    â€œI could wear a wig. Everybody’s getting chemo now, so they’re making very convincing hair.”
    We turned the corner. Snow was falling fast, and people hurried along. He wasn’t wearing a hat or a scarf. What had I been thinking? In solidarity, I left my little knitted beret folded in my coat pocket.
    â€œLet’s go there,” he said, pointing to a Mexican restaurant. “Who wants all those truffles and frills? A cold Dos Equis on a cold day, a beef burrito. That’ll be fine.”
    I could tell that walking was an effort. Also, I’d realized his shoes were surprisingly heavy as I put them on.
    We went into the Mexican restaurant. Two doctors in scrubs were eating at one of the two front tables. An old lady and a young woman sat at another. We were shown to the backroom, where a table of businessmen were laughing. I took off my coat and asked Franklin if he needed help with his. “My leg won’t bend,” he said. “That’s happened before. It locks. I can sit down, but I’m going to need an arm.”
    â€œSeriously?”
    â€œYes.”
    The waiter reached around us and put menus on the table and rushed away. I pulled out a chair. How was I going to get it near the table again, though? I was just about to push it a little closer to the table when Franklin made a hopping motion with one foot and stabilized himself by grabbing the edge of the table and bending at the waist. Before I knew it, he was sitting in the chair, wincing, one leg bent, the other extended. “Go get those doctor fellows and tell ’em I swalled Viagra, and my leg’s completely rigid,” he said. “Tell ’em it’s been this way for at least ten hours.”
    I dropped a glove, and when I bent to pick it up I also tried to move the chair in closer to the table. I couldn’t budge it. And the waiter looked smaller than I was.
    â€œLet’s see,” Franklin said, picking up one of the menus. “Let’s see if there’s a simple bean burrito for a simple old guy, and our waiter can bring a brace of beer bottles by their necks and we can have a drink and make a toast to the knee that will bend, to Egil our friend, to a life without end . . . at least, let’s hope it’s not rigor mortis setting in at a Mexican