Double Pop

by Jamie Bennett

  “On top of coming from a school that already gave them help, that already gave them so many advantages. That’s why I want my daughter to go there,” I said, then stopped dead, waiting for him to jump up and say goodbye, to run away, maybe screaming. But Luca just nodded. “I have a three-year-old daughter,” I said explicitly, thinking maybe he hadn’t caught what I’d told him.

  “Mmhmm,” he said, unconcerned. “I saw the child seat when I helped you out of your car.” He meant, when he had lifted me out of my back seat like I was a mere feather. “I was going to ask you about it. What’s her name?”

  “Nola,” I said, and then physically bit my tongue to keep from saying how wonderful she was. I was really the pot calling the kettle black when I made fun of the bragging parents on the college tour. I did mention a few things, like how she loved to swim, and that next year, she would start in pre-kindergarten at Starhurst Academy, where I taught and where he had attended. “Were you in the Starhurst Lifers Club? Pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade?” That was what I hoped for Nola.

  “No, no. I started in the fourth grade. I moved then from Italy and I had to, they didn’t say repeat, it, I had to be retained for that year because my English wasn’t good enough. It was good enough to understand American TV and for me to have perfect scores on my English tests at my old school, but not good enough to keep up in the fifth grade at Starhurst. It was hard, at first.”

  “I bet you had tutors for that, to help you catch up,” I said.

  “No,” he said, with a funny look on his face. “My father isn’t much for extra help. He expected me to learn, and I did, eventually.”

  “Where did you go to college?”

  “On the east coast.”

  I noticed he didn’t mention a name, which could have been because he was embarrassed by where he went, or else because he didn’t want to brag. I figured it was an anti-bragging thing.

  “Then I went to work in Italy, in Milan, for a few years,” he continued. “But I sold my company, and now I’m back in California to try something new.”

  I mentally tried to calculate his age, and he couldn’t have been more than a few years older than I was, if that. But he had already been able to own and sell a company? “What are you doing now?” I asked curiously.

  “I’m very interested in kids’ nutrition. At college, one of the places I volunteered was after-school care.”

  One of the places he volunteered. As in, there were many. And he liked kids? Or maybe it was just a résumé builder.

  “I was always so upset by what they were eating and what we had to give them,” he said. “The government food programs are not always good. And many kids eat whatever is the cheapest and easiest, even though it isn’t healthy for them. Their parents don’t have the option of fresh, nutritious food because of the expense or because it’s not available in their neighborhoods, or they don’t have the time to prepare it.”

  I knew how that was from my own childhood. My parents hadn’t bothered much about nutrition and my diet had always verged on the unhealthy. Ok, it was firmly in the realm of unhealthy. “Yeah,” I said, and looked at the plate where the frosted lemon bread had rested. All that was left were a few crumbs. Maybe it had been “for the table,” but it had all ended up in my stomach. “Nutritious food,” I said.

  “Not that eating a treat now and then is a problem,” he added quickly, following my eyes to the crumbs. “I don’t monitor what I eat, other than trying to make the best choices I can.”

  “Sure.”

  “And, of course, I don’t monitor what other people eat, other adults. Not at all,” he assured me.

  “Of course.” I pushed the milky, sweet coffee a little away from myself on the table, as if I hadn’t been busy sucking it down.

  “I really don’t. I’m interested in kids’ nutrition, especially lunches. That’s what my company is about. It’s a non-profit working on providing healthy school lunches to kids who can’t afford them.”

  “Pardon my ignorance, but does a non-profit mean you won’t make any money?” Because, how could you live like that?

  “A non-profit means, more or less, that it is an entity, an organization, that works toward a cause, a public benefit. It isn’t a money-making venture for investors. I could draw a salary as the CEO, but I’m not. The people who work for me there are paid, of course.”

  Now it was my turn to say, “Mmhmm.” Interesting. “So you live here, in the city?”

  He nodded. “I’m back to stay. I just bought a place in Cole Valley.”

  “Mmhmm,” I repeated. I was piecing this all together in my mind, and what it added up to was that Luca had to be rolling in it. He didn’t need to draw a salary, he could start his own non-profit, and on top of all that, he could afford to live—to buy—in San Francisco. So yeah, he probably wasn’t a part-time waiter as I had thought earlier. “Nice weather in Cole Valley,” I commented.

  That set him off talking about the city and places to live, and it gave me the opportunity to consider that sitting as we were on Chestnut Street, we weren’t currently anywhere near the neighborhood where he lived. I mentioned that fact.

  “This café is good. I’m picky about coffee. And it’s on your way back to Marin, easier for you,” he told me. “I didn’t mind driving over.”

  Ok, hold on. Something was just way, way wrong here. “Did you come all the way over here just to have coffee with me? Why?” I asked suspiciously.

  Luca looked surprised. And, like, completely confused. “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “Because we only met once before. And it wasn’t under the most, um, congenial of circumstances. For forming a relationship.”

  Now he looked horrified. “A relationship? No, no. No! I just got out of—I’m not looking for a relationship. At all. No relationship, none.”

  “Well, then, I don’t understand. You didn’t ask me to go get coffee in order to propose marriage?” His mouth opened but no words came out, and I started to laugh. “Luca, come on! You don’t need to worry around me. I’m the woman who you met on her way to a one-night stand, remember? ‘No relationship, none’ is pretty much my motto. I would paint those words on my wall except I’m a renter and I don’t want to lose my security deposit.”

  And thank Jesus, he started to laugh too.

  “I just meant,” I started, then couldn’t think of what I had meant. Why I had been questioning his motives in the first place. “I just meant…”

  “I thought we could hang out,” Luca explained. “Even if we didn’t meet under the most congenial of circumstances. Even when things were at their worst the other night, you took it right in stride. You were fun to talk to on the phone.” He shrugged, embarrassed. “I thought it would be nice to see each other. To get to know you better, to be friends.”

  It almost sounded like he was trying to convince me. And I had a sudden, odd thought. Maybe he was, I didn’t know, but maybe, possibly—maybe he was lonely? This cool, nice, normal, gorgeous guy? It seemed farfetched.

  “I guess I’m a little…I’m not sure how to describe it. At loose ends,” Luca confessed. “I’m figuring out my way, living here after time in other places. I’m a little, I guess, lonely.”

  Him, lonely? I had been right about that? Well, fuck. You just never knew.

  Chapter 4

  “So do you, Lanie?” I asked again.

  She was poking at her lunch, a very healthy, nutritious salad she had brought from home. I was munching on a stale potato chip from a big bag in my kitchen cupboard that I had been slowly chipping—ha ha—away at. Mostly all that was left were crumbs, and I was trying to finish the last bits so I could get rid of the bag. I could never bring myself to throw away food after all the scrounging I had done in my life.

  “Do I what?” Lanie answered, looking up and blinking in confusion. She had been completely on another planet since she moved in with her roommate, the guy she was in love with and had been for her entire life. I had pushed her to move into
the house he had rented to share it with him, thinking she could make a friends-with-benefits thing turn into her forever-girl fantasy, but now I wasn’t so sure. She hadn’t taken any of my tips, like seductively eating fruit (and who didn’t know the sucking the banana trick?) or walking around naked, or staring at his crotch and lip-licking, that kind of thing. Instead, Lanie was turning miserable as he dated another woman and went blithely on his way, not falling in love with her like he was supposed to be doing. And that was exactly the problem with having a relationship, or trying to get yourself into one. They never worked because, in general, men sucked donkey balls.

  “I’m asking if you know anything about Luca Visconti,” I said again. “Remember, the guy you introduced me to a few weeks ago?”

  “Luca? I mean, I guess I know some stuff. We went to school together for a long time, but he was a few years older. I remember he was good at…the trumpet? That was in lower school.”

  I nodded, encouraging her to tell me more.

  “I took ceramics with him in high school. By mistake, I soaked him with a ton of gross, wet clay when I didn’t put my pottery wheel together right.” She took another bite and stopped.

  I gestured for more. “What else? What was he like? What do you know about his family, stuff like that?”

  “Um…” Lanie absently twirled her fork in the air. “He played water polo in high school. He was good, and I think he played in college. His dad used to go to all the games. I used to go to all the games, too,” she admitted, and I knew it was because the guy she had been in love with, Brooks—the guy she was still in love with, and was now living with—had been a huge star in the pool. “I remember his dad yelling at him, I guess in Italian. He seemed like kind of a dick.”

  “Luca seemed like a dick?”

  “Oh, no, Luca was always nice. Even to me, and I was such a lost cause. No, I meant the dad. Why are you asking these questions?”

  “I told you he helped me the other night. I was just curious about him, I guess. He seemed nice, like you said.”

  “Yeah. But I don’t really know too much beyond that he was very patient when I sprayed him with clay, and he never teased me or said anything mean. We weren’t exactly friends and I haven’t heard much about him since except what I read in the alumni bulletins.” She stopped. “If you want to know more about what he’s been doing since high school, you should read those. They’re quarterly, and the school library has all the copies.”

  I stuffed the last chip in my mouth. “That’s a great idea. Thanks!”

  “Jolie, are you interested in Luca?”

  I quickly shook my head. “Not at all in the way you’re thinking, I swear. He’s hot as shit and he did me a favor, and he’s really nice to think about when I’m having some alone time at night, me and my vibrator.”

  “Jolie!” She actually put her hand over her ears. “I can’t believe you admit things like that!”

  “What? We both know I’m single and I plan to be man-free since my easy peasy, lemon squeezy failure. It’s just me and my mechanical boyfriend from now on. What’s the big deal?” I asked practically.

  She balled up her napkin. “Come on, we have a little while left of lunch. I’ll help you look at the bulletins in the library.”

  I mentally ran through the information we had gleaned later, while I was driving over to pick up Nola at her school to take us both into the city to have dinner with her father. I was so busy thinking about Luca, I wasn’t even fixated on this pretty monumental event of getting together with Ty. It had been a while since I had seen him, and it had been forever since we had gone to dinner.

  In fact, the last time we had sat down for a meal had been over fast food when I told him that I was pregnant. His reaction: turning white as a ghost, then saying, “What? You sure?” When I nodded, miserable, he shot back, “Listen, JoJo, you know that’s not gonna work for me,” and shook his head, like he was angry at me, like I had done it on purpose. He had stomped out and left me at the restaurant with no ride, and when I made my way home, I found that he had cleaned out all his stuff from the room we had been renting from his aunt. She then demanded that I leave immediately, also. I really, really loved his family.

  Yup, none of that was on my mind, because it was going through everything I had learned about Luca. Fact one: he had gone to an awesome college, as I had suspected, and apparently aced it, excelled in everything. But he didn’t say this about himself, or anything else, either; all the updates in the alumni bulletins had been from other people reporting on him. In college, the source was a fellow Starhurst grad who had gone to the same university. So the newsy tidbits about Luca ran like this: “Genie sees Luca V around campus and says that he is also doing great. Double major in econ and engineering,” and later, “Luca Visconti is the Player of the Year in the East Coast Division for men’s water polo and is on his way to becoming the highest scoring player in the school’s history.” As the college years went on, Genie wrote in to say that Luca had a serious girlfriend, that he was the president of various organizations, that he was graduating with honors, that, in general, he seemed to thrive there.

  Another fact: Luca had been engaged, but from what he had said to me, I was sure that he wasn’t anymore. Not to the college girl, but to another woman who had gone to Italy with him, or maybe he had met her there—it wasn’t clear in the two lines of text about it that Lanie had pointed out, eyebrows raised. Another Starhurst friend sent back the news after visiting him in Milan: “Luca Visconti’s company has majorly taken off. He lives in a sweet apartment in the Porta Romana neighborhood with his super-cool—and beautiful—fiancée.”

  Fact three: I had been right about the loads of money thing. The last snippet we had found about Luca didn’t say anything about the fiancée, but it did mention that he had sold his company to some huge European conglomerate for buckets upon buckets of cash. It said it in a much more refined way, but that was the gist of it. And it also said that he was moving home to northern California because unfortunately his father was very ill.

  “You know, most of the stuff in these alumni magazines is crap that people write about themselves, bullshit puff stuff,” Lanie had remarked. “But I did hear that Luca had been very successful, so I bet all this is true. I can ask Brooks if he knows any more.” She had gotten kind of dreamy and simultaneously excited when she mentioned her roommate’s name, but then our lunch period had ended, and we’d run to our classrooms.

  I also thought about my own high school while I drove, the school both Ty and I had attended (which I had finished, but he had left prematurely). I wondered what an alumni magazine from there would say about me and the other graduates. Of course, at a gigantic public school full of mostly poor kids whose families struggled like mine had, there was no such thing as a glossy, highly-produced quarterly journal dedicated to talking up the school, its students, and all the success of its alumni. If there were, I could only imagine what it would say: “Ty is still scamming money and thinks work is for suckers. Jolie is alone with her kid, still twisting around her life to accommodate the guy who deserted her when he found out she was pregnant!” It would have been a fun read.

  “Mama!” Nola ran at my knees when I went into her school. “Look what I made.” She pulled me over to a contraption in front of her cubby. “It’s all pieces of recycling,” she said proudly, saying each syllable of the word.

  “Wow,” I answered. “Look how big it is!” I eyed it. Huge, would be the right way to describe it. Like maybe it wouldn’t fit in my trunk.

  Nola explained all the different functions of her creation while I calculated how long it would have to sit in our apartment before I returned it to the recycling bins from whence it came. I listened for a while and then said we had to leave because we were going to San Francisco for dinner and it was far. “Far” to Nola meant outside of a five-mile radius from our apartment, so the city was practically another planet for her.

  “Why are we going to dinner there, Mama
?” she asked, her little legs trotting next to mine in the parking lot. The hood of her pink raincoat blew back in the wet wind and her curls went wild.

  “We’re going to meet a friend,” I told her vaguely, because I didn’t want to talk about her father. I would fix her hair, and mine, in the car. I felt the need for us to look our best tonight, to give Ty a good impression of how both of us were doing without him: we are just perfect, I wanted our hair to tell him. I got the trash project into the trunk and Nola into her seat, and we were on our way. The car felt even wobblier than usual but I tried to ignore it and drove as slowly as I could, and we sang songs as we went to cover any funny engine noises. Singing also prevented conversation, and questions about what we were doing tonight.

  I was being vague with Nola about all of it for several reasons. First, I still wasn’t sure that Ty would come through and actually show up. Very, very late on Sunday night he had sent me the name of a restaurant in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood with a time to meet and said, “Early enough for you?” But then, when I had texted him back repeatedly, and also called to confirm, he hadn’t answered. Knowing Ty as I did, it could have meant that he was just ignoring me, or it could have meant that he had left the state. I considered the possibilities as even odds.

  But I was pretty much over a barrel with the situation tonight. I didn’t want to tell Nola we were going to meet her father, in case he didn’t show, and I didn’t want to spring it on her if he did, just saying, “Here’s your dad!” when he walked into the restaurant.

  There wasn’t a good way to handle this, to handle anything about Ty in her life—or if there was, I hadn’t yet discovered it. We didn’t ever talk about him very much. I waited until she asked, and then said things like, “He’s very busy working in another place, that’s why we don’t see him.” Every time I said it, it made me want to cry, so I was glad she didn’t ask often.