Story code: ST-000616
Part 2: He Knew Too Much for a Beginner
After that, I should have gone back to my other tables and left the birthday room to them, but family trouble has a way of pulling service staff into its orbit. Every time I passed the doorway with coffee, Grant had a fresh reason the dating profile could not be finished and a fresh mistake for someone else to clean up. Elaine kept her phone beside her fork now instead of letting it travel around the table. She would put on her reading glasses, look at one screen, then look at Grant, then ask one small question. He would answer with three bigger ones. “Do you want matches nearby or farther out?” he said. “I want the prompt fixed.” “If I go into distance, it could mess with your age settings again.” “I didn’t ask you to go into distance.” He spread both hands. “That’s what I’m saying. I don’t know the order this app uses.” Tessa was still stacking plates. By then she had built a second neat pile from the dessert saucers, though there was no reason to move them yet. “You knew the draft would stay open if Nina hit the X,” she said. Grant gave a short smile without looking at her. “I guessed.” “A pretty good guess.” He turned to me like I had been invited into a joke. “You ever say something right by accident?” I was collecting coffee cups. “Sometimes,” I said. “Not usually with buttons I’ve never used.” That left a quiet patch in the room. Elaine took her glasses off, folded them, unfolded them again, and put them back on. “Grant,” she said, “please just put the age range back where it was.” He rubbed his jaw and took the phone from the table with a sigh big enough for everyone to hear. Then he did something I noticed because it did not match the slow, baffled performance from earlier. His thumb moved in a fast straight path: profile, edit, preferences. He got there cleanly, then stopped and blinked at the screen like he had wandered in by luck. “Oh,” he said. “Maybe this is it. Or maybe not. These icons all look the same to me.” Tessa’s plate stack stopped midair. Elaine said, very evenly, “You found it awfully fast.” He backed out too fast, almost dropping the phone onto the tablecloth. “Because I’ve been poking at it for an hour. Anybody would eventually.” But he did not hand it to her. He angled the screen away and started narrating obstacles. “Now the photo section is loading weird. And if I hit save with half this stuff missing, it could publish. That’s what I’m trying to avoid.” “Then give it here,” Elaine said. Instead, he passed it to Tessa. “You do it. She’ll blame me if it goes live wrong.” That was the pattern all night. He made the tangle, then stepped back from it before it touched him. Elaine would end up trying to fix the settings with her glasses sliding down her nose, or Tessa would get handed the screen with no context, or I would get asked whether a button meant cancel or continue while balancing a tray against my hip. At one point Grant leaned over and said, “Don’t open the message filters first. That can lock the draft if location services are off.” He said it to Tessa in the same quick, exact tone he had used with me about the X. Tessa froze with her finger above the screen. “You said ten minutes ago you didn’t know where the preferences were,” she said. “I don’t know all of it,” he said. “I know random stuff.” “Random stuff like message filters.” “It came up when I was helping a friend.” Elaine’s fork clicked against her plate. Not loud. Just enough that everybody heard it. “Which friend?” she asked. Grant looked at the candle wax puddled on the cake tray instead of at her. “Why does that matter?” Nobody answered right away. I took the empty sugar caddy from the corner of the table and gave them another minute they did not use. Tessa unlocked her own phone, then set it facedown again without doing anything on it. She looked at Elaine. “Mom,” she said, “what exactly still needs to be done?” Elaine turned her own screen toward her daughter and me because we were the two people standing closest. The profile was almost complete now. The main photo was back. The prompt under My simple pleasures had one line filled in and one blank field under it. Lower down, the age range sat wrong, and a little shield icon marked message settings. “I need the prompt finished,” Elaine said. “And I need it set so only people in the right age range can message me. That was already on before dinner.” Grant made a sound through his nose. “That safety stuff is buried. It’s not simple.” Tessa did not look at him. “But you know where message filters are.” He shifted in his chair. “I said I’ve seen it before.” Elaine put the phone flat on the linen between them, not in anyone’s hand now. “Then show us where it is,” she said. Grant did not touch it. He reached for his water instead, took a drink, and set it down carefully. “I can point. I just don’t want to mess it up again.” That was when Tessa glanced at me, then at the phone, then back at her mother. She was still, which was new. All night she had kept busy so the room would not tip. Now she let the plates sit where they were. “Okay,” she said. “Then don’t do the whole thing. Just show me one step.” Grant’s eyes moved to the screen before anyone slid it toward him. He knew where he expected the next button to be. Elaine’s hand stayed on the table beside the phone, fingers spread against the cloth. I was at the doorway with the coffee.