The trifle was one of Charlie’s only recipes, and he prided himself on supersaturating the thing with sherry. Yale had learned to count each serving as a drink.
“Feef,” Teddy said to Fiona when they’d dug in, “are you old enough for this stuff?”
She put on an affronted face. “I am fully twenty-one,” she said. “As of September third.”
“You didn’t invite me to your party!”
“It was only for nice people.”
Yale imagined she hadn’t celebrated at all, in the throes of that wretched summer. Her twentieth had been a dance party at Nico’s with strobe lights. This one she’d probably spent in a waiting room.
Teddy said, “I’ve only got ten minutes. I’m having a whole dinner at my thesis adviser’s.”
Asher said, “This is your appetizer?”
Teddy stuck the spoon in his mouth upside down, pulled it out dramatically by way of answer. He said, “It’s my palate cleanser! I already ate at my mom’s. So how’s everyone feeling about the Howard Brown thing?” And then, when there was awkward silence, “They’re doing testing.”
“I’m sure they know,” Terrence said.
“I mean, you know I’m still anti-test, but maybe these ones can really be anonymous. I mean, if I want real anonymity, I’m gonna get tested in Cleveland or something.”
Fiona said, “Teddy, it’s Thanksgiving. We shouldn’t—”
Asher said, “Sure, they’ll anonymously give everyone a false sense of security.”
Terrence was looking down at his trifle, smoothing the whipped cream flat.
Charlie said, “Asher wants everyone to walk around dying of ulcers instead. Drinking themselves to death over stress.” Yale kicked him under the table. But Charlie kept talking. “Does this mean you’ll get tested now?”
“Hell no. I don’t even think the tests work. How do we know they aren’t all part of the same government conspiracy that cooked up the whole virus to begin with? I’m just saying that—”
“Stop!” Fiona slammed her glass onto the table.
Teddy opened his mouth, decided better.
Terrence said, “So. Hey, what do you call a black guy who studies rocks?”
Fiona was the only one who made any noise, a startled giggle. Then she said, “I don’t know, what?”
“A geologist, you bunch of racists.”
After the laughter, the conversation, thank God, split into three frivolous directions.
Yale got up to put a new record on.
Teddy made his excuses and grabbed his jacket and was gone.
* * *
—
“Is it time for coffee?” Yale asked. He directed it at Asher, because he was really asking about the envelope. Asher nodded and stood and fetched it off the refrigerator, but no one moved toward the coffeepot.
“Let’s make this festive,” Asher said. “Let’s have a little ceremony.” He pulled out the papers, asked Charlie for a pen.
Terrence said to Fiona, “Shall I get down on one knee?”
Yale looked at Charlie to see if he knew what was going on. Charlie mouthed, “Power of attorney.”
It made sense. Nico’s parents had botched his medical care horribly—moved him to a hospital that didn’t even want him there—and then they’d claimed the funeral too. Terrence’s family, Yale understood, wasn’t one he’d want making his medical decisions. Terrence hadn’t seen his mother in years, hadn’t been back to his childhood home in Morgan Park, on the South Side, since he graduated high school. Still, it seemed a lot to put on Fiona. She was just a kid.
“We’ve got the limitations stuff filled in, but look that over. And you need to initial one of these three,” Asher said, pointing. He took the cap off a pen and handed it to Terrence.
“I want the first one, right? I do not want my life prolonged?”
Asher cleared his throat. “That’s what we’d talked about. But look them over.”
Terrence took a long time reading the page.
“Oh!” Fiona said. And then it seemed she had to think of something to say, a thing to fill the silence. “I have to tell you the sweetest story!” She told them how one of the little girls in the family she nannied for, the three-year-old, could hear the lions and wolves from the Lincoln Park Zoo at night through her bedroom window and so had assumed, till recently, that the creatures roamed the city at night. Fiona had gotten the mother’s permission to walk the girl over after bedtime, to see the animals secure in their enclosures.
“I used to cruise the zoo,” Charlie said.
Terrence found this hilarious. He put his pen down.
“It’s true! You remember Martin? That’s where I met him. Well, near the zoo.”
When Yale first met Charlie, he was seeing a huge, bearded guy named Martin who played