by Alex Wellen
“I’m getting hitched,” I say, trying to downplay the news.
“Congrats! Who’s the lucky girl?”
He knows exactly who she is. Sid couldn’t be any more immersed in our lives. He watched Paige and me fall in love. Gregory is his best friend; he is mine. Sid and Cookie are Paige’s god parents. “Brewster men make boys,” Sid is always saying. Paige is the closest thing Sidney and Cookie Brewster have ever had to a daughter, and they spoil her rotten.
“I’m thinking I’ll pop the question in the next couple of weeks. I’ll need your help with the final arrangements,” I tell him.
Sid’s eyebrows poke out over his massive sunglasses. Only now does he realize that I’m serious.
“Final arrangements? This ain’t a funeral, kid. It’s great news, but what’s the rush? It’s only been a few months. You sure you’re ready for marriage?”
Sid has asked me this question before, and this is the first time that I’ve had a suitable enough explanation.
“Because I’ve got proof,” I say, slapping my pie chart on the table.
Sid’s expression swiftly goes from playful to disturbed. Sid lifts his shades and holds the chart up to his nose to get a better look.
“This is horseshit!” he says, laughing and tossing the chart on the table.
“Hold your horseshit,” I tell him. “I made this chart for you. Right about now I bet you’re wondering why I didn’t just do a simple list of pros and cons like a normal person—”
“There’s nothing normal about this, Andy.”
“Indulge me for a moment.”
“I don’t like the looks of this chart. I don’t even understand it.”
“Each slice signifies a different factor influencing my decision to propose, by percentage. Take this slice labeled ‘Timing.’ It occupies about 10 percent because it’s more important to the engagement formula than, say, ‘Necessity’ which occupies 5 per cent of the pie,” I explain.
“Do you have any idea what it costs to throw a wedding?” Sid asks.
“I thought the father-in-law pays.”
Sid flashes me a disapproving look.
“Kidding. Geez, where’s your sense of humor?”
“Be funny. Then I’ll laugh.”
“Look, I’ve been saving. We’ll be fine. Unless you think we should elope.”
Sid reacts to the word elope like he’s just heard nails across a chalkboard.
“Don’t you still have student loans left over from pharmacy school?”
“I’ve got twenty years to pay them,” I say, brushing him off.
“You’ve got it all figured out, don’t you.”
“I’m thinking a small wedding.”
“Well, then, you’re thinking too much. You’ll have whatever wedding you’ll have … within reason. It’s not your job to figure that part out. Your job is to help Paige realize her fantasy.”
Sid lets the words linger.
“You heard me, right?” he confirms. I nod. “I did it for Cookie and you’ll do it for my goddaughter.” He looks back at my pie chart. “What’s this big slice labeled ‘Points’?” he asks hesitantly.
On our third or fourth date, for some unknown reason, I started awarding Paige points for various feats. For example, she got points the day she bowled a turkey (a miraculous three strikes in a row); Paige got points that time she split aces and doubled down in blackjack; just last week she got points for slurping down a dozen slimy bluepoint oysters. After “I love you” no three words bring Paige more joy than “You get points” (although “You were right” and “I am sorry” are a close third and fourth).
For me, I explain to Sid, this is how love adds up.
Sid hates this system.
“Does she ever award you points?” he asks curiously.
“No, but she could. Paige likes points, really.”
“Uh-huh,” he says with skepticism. “Okey doke, so I think we’re done with this little chart of yours.”
“Just indulge me for two more minutes,” I plead.
I pull out a thick black Magic Marker. “Take these two slices,” I say, using the marker to point to “Pressure” and “Posterity.” “I’m not getting peer pressure to get married, and I’m not getting married for show. Then there’s ‘Sex.’”
“Hold your horses,” he tells me, raising the stop signal.
“All I’m saying is monogamy doesn’t scare me.”
“And ‘Guilt’?” he asks of the corresponding slice.
“None whatsoever. I’m not proposing because I feel like marriage is ‘the right thing to do.’ I’m not caving to Paige’s demands. I want this. ‘Necessity’ isn’t a factor, either. Paige isn’t pregnant. I’m not proposing because I’m tired of the dating scene. I’m popping the question because I want to marry Paige. We’re not getting married because it’s convenient. ‘Fear’ doesn’t come into play, either. I’m not worried about ending up alone. I’m ready, Sid. She’s ready.”
“You’re brilliant, kid, but a moron when it comes to relationships.”
“I don’t understand …”
“Then let me put this in terms you will: you’re trying to solve the unsolvable.”
“Tell me one factor I’ve missed,” I insist.
“Look at me, Andy.”
I look at him.
“No formula, no pie chart, no miracle calculation is going to give you the answers. Take it from someone who thrives on math: there ain’t going to be a solution at the bottom of the page that you can place in a neat little box. You want to marry Paige? I’m thrilled. You think she’s ready? You’re ready? I can respect that. But not this,” he says, swatting the pie chart away like a gnat.
He slowly takes off his shades to look at me. The sunlight hurts his eyes like pins and needles. They begin to tear.
“So what does the father of the bride think about all this hooha?” he demands.
“Don’t start.”
“You need Gregory’s blessing,” Sid says. “That part is not up for negotiation.”
“The guy doesn’t think I’m competent enough to drop pills in a plastic bottle; you really think he’s about to consider me worthy enough to marry the ‘apple of his eye’?”
“And the alternative is what?”
“He brought this on himself by hiring me in the first place.”
“Now you’re talking nonsense.” He chuckles. “You’re punishing Gregory because he gave you the job that landed you the girl of your dreams? We both know Gregory had little to do with it. You had your mind made up when you came back to Crockett in the first place.”
“I’m sorry, but I’m not giving Gregory the satisfaction of rejecting me on a whole new level,” I tell him. “You’re being a total hypocrite. Look at what happened to your own grandson when he asked his future father-in-law.”
Jordan, Sid’s grandson, was ridiculed for asking permission. Something along the lines of: “Our daughter is not a piece of property. We don’t treat her like chattel. And please don’t tell me you’re expecting some sort of dowry. Abigail is an adult. I suggest you ask her yourself.” Jordan did, Abigail said yes, and they lived happily ever after, but not before her father struck “obey and honor” from their wedding vows.
“That man is a hippie tree-hugging commie,” Sid says of Jordan’s father-in-law. “He doesn’t count. You ask the father for his blessing because that’s what us old geezers expect. Why do you ask for my opinion when you don’t even want it?”
“This would be so much easier if Paige were just your daughter.”
“Don’t say that!” he says loud enough to startle the next table.
“Drink your tea,” I suggest softly.
Sid is on all sorts of heart medicine. I need him to stay calm.
“What am I going to do with you?” Sid laments, clearing his throat.
“Gregory doesn’t make it easy,” I mumble, gulping down my latte.
“You’re no walk in the park yourself,” he responds. “Level with me, kid:
how are the two of you getting along?”
“Pretty good,” I lie.
“I’m blind, but I’m not deaf. I hear the way you talk to each other.”
“Just don’t tell him I told you what I’m going to tell Paige.”
“And the wedding? The grandchildren? You plan to enter them into a witness protection program?”
My stomach gurgles from anxiety. Everything’s starting to unravel.
“I think Gregory hates me,” I whisper.
“He doesn’t hate you,” Sid insists, softly. “Do you know Elie Wiesel?”
“I’ve seen her around the pharmacy.”
“She is a he, and I highly doubt you’ve seen Elie Wiesel trolling the aisles of Day’s Pharmacy. Wiesel is a famous writer and philosopher, a Holocaust survivor. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in the 1980s. He’s famous for saying a lot of very smart things, but one of my favorites is ‘The opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference.’”
Sid studies me. “Just talk to Gregory,” he says. “Gregory is a good, generous man—more generous than you’ll ever know. You need to have a relationship with him. It would make Paige happy and earn you—whatever you call ’em—‘points!’”
Staring blankly at the table, I run the back of the Magic Marker along a grain in the wood. My chest hurts.
“Do you love her?”
“You know I do.”
He snatches the marker from my hand, pulls off the cap, and starts drawing across my stunning masterpiece.
“Can you not do that?” I beg.
“You want the perfect formula? You think you’re ready?” he asks.
Sid draws a big, thick jittery “G” around the circumference of my chart. “From where I’m sitting, you missed the biggest factor of all: Gregory. He takes the cake … or rather, pie.”
CHAPTER 3
ILYS
THE six o’clock news is eleven minutes out. When I see Paige approaching, I punch up a random Web page to hide what I’m doing. Look busy.
“Okay, bring it on,” Paige goads. “What’s tonight’s word?”
Paige drags her pointer finger across my back as she heads for the nearby printer. She stands there, sorting television scripts.
“‘Chewbacca,’” I tell her.
“That’s impossible,” she says with a slight snort.
Paige and I have a long-standing relationship with Han Solo’s burly seven-foot four-inch fur-covered Star Wars sidekick. I met Paige one unseasonably warm October evening, twenty-three Halloweens ago. I was six. Paige was seven. Return of the Jedi was still in theaters and a monster hit. I must have run into a dozen Darth Vaders that night, but I was the only Chewbacca in all of Crockett. Drenched in sweat, the gorilla suit sliding off my shoulder, the furry mask tucked under my free arm, I rang doorbell after doorbell. At one house on Alhambra Street, the door opened, the angels sang, and there she was—a vision in white. The flowing robe cinched at the waist, her hair twirled up like Cinnabons glued to the side of her head, Paige was my Princess Leia.
“Put on the head!” she screamed. Paige enjoyed giving out the candy almost as much as eating it.
I complied, and she shrieked with delight, dumping the whole bowl of candy corns in my pillowcase.
“That’s enough of that,” Gregory told her. Our fathers nodded to each other politely. Everyone knew Gregory from the pharmacy.
Chewbacca and Leia up in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G. Since then, I’ve often wondered whether all along, Princess Leia was just using Han Solo to get to Chewbacca.
Our love has always been forbidden.
“Fine, you want a different word?” I tell present-day Paige. “How about ‘kumquat’?”
She thinks about it. “Can we go back to ‘Chewbacca’?” she wonders. Paige is entitled to a twenty spot if she can figure out a way to surreptitiously slip the word kumquat into her on-air report this evening. Last week she managed to sneak in carnivorous. A month ago it was pinky.
“I love you,” she says with a tender kiss on the cheek, and then she’s gone just as quickly as she appeared: off to the tape room, to the edit bay, to the voice-over booth, to check in with the line producer. She has six, no, five minutes to get her segment approved, cut, and loaded for the six o’clock news. On the scrap paper next to me, I memorialize her drive-by affection with a small slash mark, adding it to the column with three others.
I’m Paige’s ride home this evening. Just like I was last night, and the night before. I’m here because, yet again, her car, affectionately known as “The Vomit Mobile,” was, how do you say, “indisposed.” Three months ago it was the alternator, last month the exhaust system, and now, Lordy it’s the dreaded transmission. At this point, we might as well just put Ollie’s Auto Shop on retainer.
Paige never should have bought that Matchbox car in the first place. I tried to change her mind; I reminded her about the cool-off period, about buyer’s remorse, but she wouldn’t listen. There was no remorse.
“You sure you’re supposed to feel every crack in the road?” I pleaded with her as we circled the block on the test drive.
“Aw yeah, they told me that’s how the manufacturer sets the suspension on these sport vehicles, tight, like a stock car,” Paige said.
Little did we realize this convertible would also get the same mileage and provide the same storage space as a Formula One.
Despite all the headaches, to this day, Paige has never regretted her decision to buy the two-seater, though the down payment did clean out her life savings and place her fifteen grand in debt. It would be so easy to resent the fact that she didn’t listen to me, but I don’t. For everything there is to hate about this car, I love what it represents: Paige knew what she wanted and she went for it. I wouldn’t have had the guts. She bought a manual transmission without a lick of experience driving stick. She signed the final paperwork and didn’t even know how to drive her dream car off the lot. Amazing.
“Fine, if this is the Vomit Mobile, then you’re Barfman,” she told me on the herky-jerky drive home.
“Guess that makes you Hurl Girl.”
Paige is so fearless sometimes.
She earned points that day. She got points for buying the car, points for attempting to drive it, and points for having a sense of humor about what was likely an abysmal mistake. To night, it’s points (and cash) if she manages to insert a coded message to her lover on live television.
TV anchor Pamela Worth takes her seat at the anchor desk. The newscast starts in three minutes. It’s Wheel … of … Fortune, and this is her last commercial break to tease tonight’s top story. I’m about to be on TV! I am part of the newsroom backdrop—my silhouette is hard at work on a breaking news story. A thin, translucent scrim separates me from Worth. The inference: Behind me, Andy “Scoop” Altman is doggedly tracking the people responsible for to day’s cat-up-a-tree. When he knows more, faithful viewers, so will you.
The lights flip on, the camera rolls, and I’m frozen. I begin pretend-typing.
“Tonight, breaking news: the Food and Drug Administration pulls a popular hypertension pill off the shelves,” Worth announces. “Details at six.”
I stare at Worth’s profile, and Worth stares uncomfortably at the teleprompter. She’s overestimated the length of her script. Her eyes dip to her desk, but the camera stays trained on the bald spot of her scalp as she nervously shuffles a few blue sheets of paper.
You’ve got four more seconds, Pam. Hurry up! The least you can do is tell viewers the name of the drug so they don’t take it. The depths local news will go to increase ratings. A common eating utensil could kill you. Find out which one, at six.
The screen dips to black. Vanna White is back, flipping me the “B.” The blinding lights of the flash camera turn off. Worth unhooks her microphone and earpiece, and casually walks away.
As it turns out, Gregory and I got wind of Pamela Worth’s “breaking news” ten hours ago. We received the pharmacy wide warning that said Simpson Pharmaceuticals
was being forced to recall its hypertension medicine, Betapro, after tests revealed that instead of lowering blood pressure, the key ingredient—beta-blockers—actually increased the risk of heart failure. Blood pressure medication that raises your blood pressure. Unbelievable.
“Are the two of you making nice?” Paige asks, appearing suddenly, clasping a few small videotapes in one hand. She musses up my hair, and then gently pats my playmate’s flat-screen monitor.
“Please address him as Mac Daddy,” I say of the computer.
Paige introduces herself and then informs both of us that her report—Arnold Schwarzenegger is rumored to be reprising his role in the next Terminator movie—was bumped to the last news block thanks to this big Betapro story. Paige’s story is now “the kicker”—television-speak for that light entertainment story that TV producers save until the very end of the program to keep viewers viewing. Paige’s piece on “poodles in poodle skirts” had to be my favorite.
“Do you mind waiting?” she asks.
Where else would I go? What else would I do?
I tell her of course. It’s Thursday, which means pizza and Scrabble. Paige is a Scrabble fiend. Everything is set up and waiting for us at my apartment. The board, the racks, the tiles, the lazy Susan, the wine, and the pad memorializing Paige’s record: 82 wins, 54 losses. Her first twenty wins shouldn’t count—that was before I realized that she was taking one too many tiles. Show me in the rules where it says you only get seven letters, she demanded. Oh.
“I love you,” she adds sweetly and then runs to get makeup.
Hearing these three precious words, I draw a diagonal line through the four slash marks on my pad, and hot key back to the beautiful diagram-in-progress on Mac Daddy’s screen.
That’s five “I love yous” so far today. Based on historical data and some simple extrapolation, we’re on track to hit seven: a typical count despite an atypical Thursday. Most Thursdays, neither of us works, and the ILYs are flowing and plentiful, but today someone got sick at the news station, and Paige agreed to fill in. When you’re freelancing, you take what you can.
I’m counting on Mac Daddy’s massive left brain to help me figure out which day of the week would be best to pop the question. Before he tells me that, he informs me of an embarrassing truth: Paige averages way more ILYs than I do. Physical meetings, telephone calls, and e-mail, all told, she says it approximately 2.5 times more often than I do.
