Andrea is late coming to lunch, which allows the others to go over the arrangements for her party. Bunny passes around the birthday card for them all to sign. Teacher announces that he has made eight paper hats.
“I’m not wearing a paper hat,” Bunny says, and Chaz says, “Me neither.”
Teacher’s eyes fill up fast and his chin quivers, but he recovers when Chaz says, “Okay, okay. I’ll wear a hat.”
Any good that is done here is the good they do for each other, and Bunny wishes that she, too, could acquiesce about the hat. But it isn’t possible.
Howie worries that one pizza won’t be enough. “Eight people, eight slices. Suppose someone wants more than one slice?”
Teacher points out that it’s highly unlikely, really no chance at all, that Nina will eat a slice of pizza. “So someone can have two,” he says, and with that, all talk of the party stops because Andrea is there, holding out her hands, fingers splayed, for everyone to admire. Unable to settle on any one pairing of colors, each fingernail is painted a different color. “Like a bowl of jelly beans,” Teacher effuses, and then inexplicably, he begins to cry. Not that anyone here needs a reason for crying, but it could also be that he is still distraught about the hats, and his crying now is merely crying delayed.
Bunny tells Andrea that her fingernails look fabulous, which is not what she really thinks.
“I wanted to do something happy,” she says. The corners of her mouth twitch, and she quickly covers her face with her hands. It would not be unusual to have more than one person per table crying, but none of them, not even Josh, has ever seen Andrea cry. Then her hands fall away and, like magic, her eyes are dry, her smile is back, but it is not as if it never happened.
“They got hamburgers for lunch,” Chaz says. “With fries.”