layla

So, Saturday Scott calls me and tells me he ran into his ex-girlfriend.

“I could really use a talk,” he says. “Could you meet me at the Apple Pan?”

“Of course,” I say, and I throw on my Adidas.

The truth is, the Apple Pan is a bittersweet choice of restaurant. Brett loves it, and we’d go there at least once a week. He’d wax poetic about their burgers with as much enthusiasm as he’d describe the most amazing eleventh-hour football miracle he’d ever seen. If you ask him why he loves the place so much, he’ll say it’s “because it doesn’t change.” Or his favorite expression, every time he walks in the front door, just after he’s taken an inhale deep enough to suck all of the air out of the place: “It’s like coming home.”

I suppose it makes sense that since they grew up together going there, Scott would love it as much as Brett, but when he asks me to meet him there, although I say yes without hesitation, I feel a stabbing in my heart.

I walk in, and Scott’s sitting at the counter with a seat saved next to him. He waves me over and smiles awkwardly. I feel bad for the kid and wonder which ex he ran into. None of them stick out in my memory, because none have lasted all that long, so this is actually somewhat surprising—this sudden need for a chat about a girl.

“How’s the burgeoning artiste?” I ask.

“Not burgeoning so much,” he says, with a shrug.

“Why not?” I prompt. Scott’s really talented, and yet he sits on his ass in college, waiting for someone to discover him but never putting his stuff out there. He needs to enter shows and really push himself—or maybe start on a comic book, which is one of his real dreams.

“I need a partner” is his excuse. “Without Neil Gaiman, Dave McKean was just … Dave McKean. Together they made The Sandman. Without the story, I just draw pictures. I need someone to make it all make sense.”

“Well, until you find that person you should keep drawing,” I tell him. “You’re too good not to be exercising that muscle.”

He laughs. “You said ‘exercising that muscle.’”

“Ugh.” I groan. “Why do I try?”

We make small talk from the time I sit down until our burgers arrive. Rather, his hickory burger and my grilled cheese sandwich. Scott peels back the paper his comes in and starts in on a Brett-like seminar.

“You only peel back as much as you need,” he says. “They wrap the burgers in this paper for a reason, and if you unwrap the whole thing and try to eat it, it falls apart. I love watching rookies come in and take the whole thing out.”

He snickers as he nods toward a guy three seats down doing what Scott just warned against. It’s a sloppy burger, that’s for sure. Better, the guy is hunching his shoulders to try to conceal the damage, so it looks as though he’s praying over it.

“There’s never an off day in this place,” Scott marvels, as he opens his mouth extra-wide to take a bite. “The burger is homemade, yet it tastes exactly the same every time. But not in a fast-food, McDonald’s way.”

“I get it,” I interrupt. “You love it here. You love the place, you love the burgers, you love the waiters, you love the institution.”