“Hello, Marty,” Ted said as he entered. He hadn’t seen his dad in some years, and this was bad. It was a shock how skinny and gray he was. He had been an athletic and handsome man, and he now seemed to glow, but not in a healthy way, like he’d been irradiated. He had tubes going up and around his withered arms and legs. His skin looked thin as a greyhound’s, like it might tear. “And you are?” his dad said.
“Good one.”
They immediately fell into an old toxic rhythm.
“You look like shit, Lord Fenway.”
“Thank you. You, too.”
“No shit. Yankees win?”
“Yeah, they did.”
“Fuck me running. Twelve Seconal. Ten Quaalude. And yet here I am. Immortal till October.”
“Yeah, you’re the new Mr. October, I’m told.”
Marty nodded at Mariana. “Mariana’s a spic, Teddy.” Oh boy. Ted looked apologetically at Mariana. “Like Luis Tiant, like Juan Marichal and Roberto Clemente. Spics got more juice than whitey.”
Ted shook his head. “Don’t say that word.”
“What word? ‘Juice’?”
“No, not ‘juice.’”
“‘Whitey’? You prefer ‘honky’?”
“No. Not ‘whitey.’ You know what word.”
“Oh, ‘spic,’ that’s just an abbreviation for Hispanic. If you say it fast, that’s what you get—hspnic, hsspic, spic…”
“That’s not how, that’s not an abbreviation. It’s a racial epithet. Am I right, Mariana, it’s offensive, right?” Ted was aware that he had just rolled the r in Mariana like he was trying to honor the Spanish, and how stupid that must’ve sounded.
“Well,” Mariana said, baring her white teeth again, “asking me if the word’s offensive is more offensive than the word itself. Being oversensitive betrays a hidden bias and underlying insensitivity.”
“Preach,” Marty said.
“‘This city is crawling with spics.’ That would be offensive. But, say, ‘Mariana—mira mira, my beautiful spic,’ can be nice to hear from a charming man like your father. Among friends, words take on private meaning. You’re a writer, right? Context. Tone.”
“All in the way you tell the story?” Ted anticipated.
“Yes,” she said, “all in the way you tell the story, that’s right. That’s exactly right.” And then she added, for good measure, “Whitey.”
“Whitey! Snap! Dass it! Game set match—the glorious spic,” Marty shouted, then laughed, then groaned. “Ow, shit. Laughing’s a motherfucker.”