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hello to Oliver.”
    â€œGood to see you, sir.”
    â€œHow are you feeling?”
    â€œYou know. Jazzed to be back on the show.”
    â€œAlthea catching you up on everything you missed?”
    â€œIt really wasn’t much,” she says.
    â€œDid you tell him about the track team?” says Garth.
    â€œDad, he’s been here for, like, two minutes.”
    â€œWhat about the track team?” Oliver asks.
    â€œNothing,” Althea says. “I quit.”
    â€œYou quit?” Oliver looks at her askance.
    â€œShe quit,” Garth confirms.
    â€œI wish you hadn’t said anything,” Althea tells her father.
    â€œI’m sure you were planning on telling him eventually.”
    â€œI’m sure how I might place in hurdles this year is the last thing on Oliver’s mind right now.”
    Actually, Oliver would much rather be thinking about Althea’s race times than what might be wrong with his brain, but standard best-friend-defense mode kicks into gear and he nods in agreement without meeting Garth’s eyes. “I bet it got boring anyway, running around in all those circles. Give someone else a chance to win.”
    â€œExactly,” she says.
    Ignoring her, Garth lowers himself into the recliner and turns to Oliver. “I think I’ve got one you’re really going to like.”
    â€œI’m ready,” Oliver says. Now he’s sorry not to have the popcorn.
    Garth teaches history at UNC Wilmington. A Southern gentleman from Savannah, where all of his family still resides, Garth quietly nurses—despite his outward trappings of erudite bookishness: reading glasses, ever-present glass of good scotch, and insistence on proper grammar—a fervent love of the lowbrow, particularly mass market paperbacks and poker. He organizes a weekly poker night among his department’s faculty, and though his specialty is Latin American history, he uses these card games as an opportunity to collect a wide range of fucked-up historical anecdotes. This semester, one of Garth’s colleagues is giving a seminar on ancient China, and Oliver loves the tales about brothers poisoning each other and eunuchs ruling through puppet emperors. A mildly contrite Althea massages Oliver’s shoulder while Garth tells them the gruesome tale of an emperor from the Tang Dynasty; it begins with him falling in love with a concubine and ends with decapitated bodies lying in a ditch.
    When he’s finished with his story, Garth rattles the ice cubes in his glass with a dramatic flourish. Oliver is rapt. Althea is horrified. “Well. I’ve stunned you both into silence. It means my work here is done. I’m going out to dinner.” He leans over and kisses Althea’s forehead. She wrinkles her nose in faux protest. “You’re not fooling anyone. You’re all mush.”
    â€œActually, I think I
am
fooling everyone. Who are you having dinner with?”
    â€œWhom. Just this year’s artist in residence. A writer, very distinguished. You’d like her.”
    â€œYou say that about the artist in residence every year,” Althea reminds him.
    Popcorn shrapnel crunches under Garth’s feet. He shakes his head at his daughter. “You could have just told Oliver that you missed him. Saved yourself an hour of vacuuming.”
    â€œBetter not keep her waiting, Dad; it’ll just give her time to think about your flaws.”
    Garth smiles wearily at Oliver. “Welcome back, Ol. She’s all yours.”
    Once he’s gone and safely out of earshot, Oliver turns to Althea. “So why did you quit track? What happened?”
    She shrugs, avoiding his eyes. “I got tired of it. I just walked off the field one day.”
    â€œJust like that?”
    She fiddles nervously with the pages of her sketchbook. “Just like that.”
    There’s more she isn’t saying, he’s sure of it, and while he’s sure he