“Did you eat the chicken’s ass? What the hell’s wrong with you?” her father asked without looking at her. She recognized his exasperated expression, a single gray eyebrow raised under the unruly silver mop brushed away from his beard and mustache. She had nothing new to say.
“My cat died,” she said, surprising herself. Bella’s absence had created a feline-shaped hole in her heart.
“Still with the cat? I thought that cat died ages ago,” he said.
“Only a month.”
“You’re still upset about a cat that’s been dead for a month? She was a cat, for Pete’s sake. She lived a long time. Get another one,” he said before belting out the lyrics of Sinatra’s “Fly Me to the Moon.”
Alice shrugged. “They’re not interchangeable. They have individual personalities,” she said over his singing.
“It’s not complicated,” he sang, then changed the lyrics to the song. “Get another one,” he sang, holding the tone of the word “one” while Sinatra sang “moon.”
How would he understand? He did not grow up with pets nor allow Alice any when she’d been a kid, saying he didn’t have time or money for one. But she’d had Bella for nineteen years. Aside from Rudy, the cat proved to be the longest relationship she’d ever experienced.
“A new cat will have its own personality. End of problem,” he said in a regular tone, turning in to the Costco parking lot. “Why do you overcomplicate things?”
Rudy, a precise man who credited his success to being the neatest, cleanest, and most organized plumber in the city. He pulled their collapsible wagon from the van’s rear doors. Later, they organized the snack boxes inside the van’s cargo area, where plumbing equipment sat in ordered rows with smaller tools affixed to the bulkhead. This echoed the pattern of all the businesses Rudy had launched in which Alice had worked, including delivering greeting balloons and the homemade rum he baked in a church basement kitchen.
With the grace of well-practiced choreography, they prepped for their route—first, the three gyms where the six smart machines were located, followed by the employee break rooms at the Baltimore Port and at the railroad depot, next door. From the data sheet, Alice read the names of the items needed for the first two machines while Rudy cut open the boxes and placed them into the wagon. The combo machines offered different, healthier snacks, like protein and energy bars, enhanced waters, sunflower seeds, and packets of nuts and trail mix, whereas the two regular machines in the employee break rooms provided sweet, fatty snacks like cinnamon buns, mini-donuts, and packages of cookies that could be eaten by pulling the packaging back, eliminating the need to touch the food with dirty fingers. She checked items on the data sheet as Rudy loaded them into the wagon before pulling the spray glass cleaner and paper towels from the bulkhead and handing them to him; he arranged them into a specific place before locking the wheels and setting a purple Crown Royal bag atop the load.