Phillip

I pull the last-but-one cigarette out of the pack and light it from the one still hanging between my fingers. I inhale and let the cloud of smoke burst out of my mouth. The tobacco rushes through my head. My throat burns with the cigarette number...I lost count. It burns with bitterness of the tobacco and life and the loss I can't quite articulate. I put out the stub of the previous cigarette next to the small hill of them in the ashtray. The loneliness slips from my head into my gut: slimy and acrid at the same time. I make the next inhale long, so the smoke goes into my lungs, and I can almost feel it in the middle of my chest, soaking the pain I can't seem to get rid of, no matter how many of them I smoke.

"Phillip?" Nata's voice is close.

I jerk my head to the left and by the light of her porch see her figure appear from her side of the duplex. My fingers shake.

I take another drag.

"What's going on?" She comes up the steps to the dark corner of my side of the deck.

The flickers of fire on the end of my cigarette are the only lights on my side of the deck. I blow the cloud of smoke into the space between us, and she waves it away. "Your dad called."

"You mean Tom?" My voice is low and grave.

She puts her hands on her hips. "He told me what happened. Do you want to talk about it?"

"Interesting." I inhale one more lungful of smoke, hold it until I run out of breath, and unleash the bitterness. "He told you what happened, but he didn't bother to tell me."

"Apparently it was new. He was going to tell you, but you walked in on them." Nata takes a step to my chair. "I understand you are upset, but they are adults."

"Oh. Tom fucking Rachel? Yeah. That's the least of my concern. He might sleep his way through the entire Chicago, I won't care." I scoff. "Although now it makes perfect sense why he was so calm when I was sleeping my way through the female population of the country." I extinguish the cigarette on the wood of the table, punishing the wood, because I cannot punish the person who actually caused the hurt thrashing between my ribs. "He did it himself too. He just didn't want me to know, in case I stop thinking he was the perfect person, and I was the only shitshow in my family. Now I know we both are shit." I flick the butt across the deck. "Oh, well. We can't all be saints. Right?" My intonation challenges Nata to contradict me.

She takes a step back. "Are you drunk?"

"I wish." That would numb the pain and make me forget even if for a little how much I hurt. The ache inside me intensifies and I regret extinguishing my cigarette. I set the heel of my shoe on my knee and lick my lips. "We don't have any alcohol and once I got home, I didn't want to drive anywhere again. Not sure there's enough gas left in the car either." I pull the final cigarette out and locate the lighter next to the ashtray. "Getting stranded in the middle of the street somewhere in his car would be a fun little thing, but...solves nothing."

"So you are just back to smoking because your father has a sex life?"

I light up, take a drag, and spend as long as my lungs allow me blowing the smoke through my pursed lips. "I'm back to smoking because Tom Van der Heuvel is not my father."

"Not..." Nata covers her mouth with her hand.

"Yep." I roll the cigarette between my fingers. Telling her these words is like vomiting again after all you have left in your stomach is acid. "You were correct. My blood type and his can't be those of a father and son because we are...not."

"Ph...Phillip."

I suck on the cigarette as if one more hit would anesthetize my brain or blood or heart and let me be numb instead of swimming in the fiery pain that's spread into every corner of my body.

Nata takes the cigarette out of my mouth, stabs it into the ashtray, kneels in front of me on the deck, puts her head on my lap, and encircles her arms around me.

My heart quivers.

Phillip Van der Heuvel would be thinking about how sexy the position was and what he could do to Nata's mouth at this angle. But I'm no longer him. This Phillip cradles Nata's head and shoulders, and buries his nose in her hair, inhaling her scent that comes even through the stench of the cigarette smoke around us.

"I'm here for you," Nata says.

The acid burn that has been incinerating my sternum rises and scotches my throat in a cough that turns into a whimper. "Nata, I..." I don't know what to say that hasn't been said already.

"You don't have to talk if you don't want to. I can just hug you until you're ready."

I squeeze her tighter into me.

"You can cry if you need to," she says.

I shake my head into her hair. "I've never cried."

She lifts her head, and I move back.

"You've never cried?" Her voice is full of incredulity.

I can't see her eyes, but I bet they are open wide. "As an adult? No. I have not."

She leans away from me. "Not even when you watched a sad movie?"

"Especially not during movies. Who cries during movies?"

"I do." She attempts to stand, but I pull her toward me and sit her across my lap. She complies almost too easily.

"Like in the middle of a movie theater with all the people around you crying?" I brush the hair off her forehead and kiss the spot on her temple where my fingers just were. "Or at home on the couch crying while watching the movies?"

She catches my wrist. "Both?"

The bitterness in my center is no longer so distilled that it burns. I bring our hands down to her lap and clasp my palm around her thumb. Her skin is cool. Her skin is real and here and isn't lying. Nata is the person who doesn't lie. I breathe a short puff of air. "Are you telling me you have cried in the middle of the movie theater?"

Nata moves her thumb inside my palm, massaging the middle. She lightly touches her shoulder to mine. "How did this become about me crying when we should be talking about you and your dad?"

"Cause I'm good at this thing." I lift my chin and meet her gaze straight on.

Her lips twitch. "And which thing is that?"

The stale smoke is no longer around us. The night air is clear, and the sky is dark, with only the lanterns around the pool as the sources of light. I yearn for the same clarity in my head and my heart. But that's not happening today. I put my free hand on Nata's cheek and trace my fingers across it. "Diverting people's attention, leading the conversation to where I want, and getting people I agree with me?"

"I don't remember agreeing to anything," she whispers.

I point with my eyes to the two doors into the duplex. Mine and hers. "I talked you into agreeing to moving here."

"I didn't do it because of you." She slides her thumb out of my grasp. "I did it because I had nowhere to live."

"But also," I whisper back. "Because I'm fantastic at persuading people—and even you—to do the things I want."

Nata shifts on my knees. "Can we, please, get back to you crying?"

I put both arms around her and press her side into my chest. "There isn't me crying."

"You just found out that the person who you thought was your father biologically isn't." Her torso is rigid and unyielding. "I think that's a cause worth crying about."

"Let me be the judge of that."

"He was calling you," Nata pleads. "Why haven't you answered?"

"I have nothing to talk to him about." I rub my chin on her shoulder. "Not today." My fingers find her knee. "I need to have a strategy and understand what my take on this situation is and what I want my next step to be, so I can talk him into that." I dig my nails into the smooth fabric of her slacks. "I will not talk to him unprepared." She softens into me, as if her relaxing would make me more relaxed, and silently waits for me to continue. "I tried to do that and look where it got me. Catching him in bed with our housekeeper. I need a plan."

"A plan." She snickers. "I know something about those." She settles into the crook of my shoulder, her hair tickling my chin. "What points have you already come up with?"

"One." I swallow the remnants of bitterness.

"And what is it?"

"I need to find out who my biological father is."

"And how do you go about it?"

"Professor Mallard." I massage Nata's knee using it as my personal stress ball. "He knew Mom when she got pregnant. He might know who she was hanging out with, who her friends were. I need to get him to talk to me about Mom."

Nata nods her agreement into my chest. "Doesn't sound like an impossible idea."

I move my neck back and catch her glance. "It will be even easier with your help."

"What can I do?" Her brows furrow.

"Remember the date that you promised to go on with me?"

The crease on her forehead deepens. "I don't exactly remember promising anything."

"You like opera." I tap on her knee once.

"You know I do."

"Professor Mallard does as well." I tap on her knee again.

"Many people like opera."

I hum in thought. "I'm going to find out when he's going there next and get us tickets for the same performance."

"Because?"

My finger is now tapping restlessly on Nata's knee, counting forgotten. "Mom loved opera too." She stills my taping by covering my hand with hers. One of my knees takes over the stress and shakes in an unsteady rhythm. "We can bump into him. Bring up Mom. Invite him out for drinks or dinner or coffee and then...ask him."

"Not the worst plan, I must say." Nata moves her hand from mine only to press it onto my shaking knee. She wiggles her butt, to make sure she is no longer sitting on a shaky lap. "And I just happen to be free for the next two weeks."

"What?" I gape at her.

"I've been suspended," she says in a tone more appropriate to bragging than being upset.

My mind reels through the scenarios that would lead to something that would put her being suspended into a 'good thing' box for her. "For hitting Samson?"

"I wish. For ruining years' worth of research by leaving a brand-new employee unsupervised with the mice." Nata jumps off my knees, takes my hands, and pulls me up. "I'll tell you everything as you pick which takeout menu we're going to order from, because I don't think I can make one more decision today and I doubt either of us is cooking tonight."

"I can pick dinner." I hug Nata, as we take the tandem steps into my kitchen, the bitterness seeps out of me with every move. Even though the night is windless, Nata's presence is the wind pushing me forward. Nata. The best part of my plan is that she'll be there with me as I try to figure out who this Phillip is. Who I am going to be going forward.