Lovesick

by Alex Wellen

  “Not all bacteria have a scent,” I theorized.

  Paige rolled her eyes and laughed. I was breaking her down.

  Cheese is supposed to mold. She tried. Butter can stay out for days.

  “You win, queasy peasy,” Paige said. Then she threw on a blue sundress, some heels, and a happy face, and we headed out.

  The hostess at The Dead Fish, Maggie, greets us with a warm smile. Paige and I casually know her—she graduated a year behind us and runs with Belinda and Cleat’s crowd. I didn’t recognize Maggie at first. She dropped the Goth look, took out the obvious piercings, and let her hair go long.

  Maggie tells Paige how sorry she is to hear about Gregory. She gives Paige a tight hug. I want to brag that Paige and I are engaged and show Maggie the ring, but there is no ring to show, and not since our telethon at the Thistle Dew has either of us boasted to anyone about getting married.

  Maggie seats us by a bay window overlooking all three bridges: the Al Zampa, the second Carquinez, and what’s left of the first. Over the last week or so, I’ve heard Sid speak of the loss of his best friend and the demolition of the 1927 Carquinez Bridge in the same breath, as if somehow the timing was more than coincidence. Gregory and the bridge happened to be about the same age. “The end of an era. The loss of a legacy,” Sid remarks wistfully of both friends.

  Deconstruction of the Carquinez is over for the day—thankfully—or Paige and I wouldn’t be able to hear ourselves think.

  From our seats, I have a clear shot of the C & H Sugar factory. The largest smokestack in the center sputters white puffs. Further down the river, you can just about make out those undeveloped warehouses that Ruth Mulrooney inherited. Early in our relationship, Paige and I used to park in the deserted lot next to these old wooden buildings and neck.

  The Dead Fish’s polished blond woods, mellow lighting, small plastic palm trees, folksy service, spectacular view, and tasty meal only modestly raise Paige’s spirits. She and I need to talk about everything and we discuss nothing. The pharmacy, the house, the debt, the wedding, our future—all on hold. To fill one of the lulls, I tell Paige that Sid and I now have nearly a dozen PMPs. Sid’s been sending out query letters to major manufacturers all over the country, I tell her. You never know, I remind her. Paige listens politely, nodding at most of the appropriate points in the conversation. Her swollen, sleep-deprived, makeup-camouflaged eyes are fixated on the scenery. She is a million miles away. It breaks my heart when she passes on the chocolate cake.

  As we coast down Crockett’s main drag, the radio fills the silence with country music. I see our turnoff, and as I reach for my turn signal, Paige waves me through.

  “I’m not ready to go home yet,” she says softly, slinking deeper into Hulk’s bucket seat.

  Before long Pomona Street turns into Eckley Drive, a ten-mile unlit windy, narrow, scenic road that runs alongside the Carquinez Strait.

  “Maybe we should just elope,” she kids.

  “Totally,” I agree all surfer-like. “If we stay on this road another fifty miles we’ll hit Interstate 5 South. From there we can take Route 58 East to I-15 North. Two bathroom breaks and we could be in Vegas by sunrise. We could crash with my folks or stay on the Strip. I’ve always wanted to try the Venetian.”

  I’m talking too quickly.

  “It sounds so easy,” she says faintly. Paige closes her eyes.

  “Here’s what I’m going to do. I’ll keep driving in this general direction, and if at any point you determine I’m headed the wrong way just say the word.”

  I remember wanting to marry Paige Day in 1983. Something happens to a man when the first time you meet a woman she’s dressed as a princess in a white flowing gown. I received complete confirmation a decade later in Madame Kuepper’s high school French class. Paige was the only reason I kept taking French, despite my C average. Because of Paige I joined French Club, and eventually ran for treasurer. Paige was vice president, and my first order of business was suggesting we stage a coup. But Paige was far more diplomatic. Drunk with power and now directly hooked into the French Club’s funds, she arranged a field trip to San Francisco so all eight of us could spend the afternoon eating chocolate fondue.

  After graduation, Paige moved to Sacramento to work for a local television station. She did TV stints in St. Louis, Reno, Omaha, Los Angeles, and eventually returned years later to Crockett to tend to Lydia.

  We stayed in touch after high school, but over the years, the letters and e-mails trailed off. The first time I saw Paige again was on my first day of work at Day’s Pharmacy. She popped in to see her father. Gregory was so busy showing me the ropes, he didn’t even notice Paige and I exchange a quick, friendly wave hello, and a familiar smile. It was as if we’d been planning this ten-year reunion all along.

  I kept looking for opportunities to ask Paige out, but Gregory was always lurking. Then one day, I called the news desk where she works and managed to pry her schedule out of an unsuspecting intern; I drove all the way to San Francisco that day, and waited outside the studio, all stalker-like, with a bouquet of tulips. She agreed to go bowling with me that weekend. To avoid tipping off her father, we took separate cars and met at the alley.

  This was our first, second, or third date depending on whether you counted the French Club fondue trip or the high school football incident. Lacing up my bowling shoes that night, Paige asked me, for the first time, if I knew what really happened the night Manny Milken tipped that pigskin in my face.

  “Everyone thinks it hit me directly in the face, but it really ricocheted off yours first, didn’t it?” Paige prodded, taking a swig of beer.

  “It did,” I confessed. “I cushioned the blow. Thanks to Manny, I still can’t remember anything before my seventh birthday. I still have the bump to prove it,” I said, taking her hand and rolling her fingers over the lump.

  “No way!” she screamed. “Me, too. Feel mine,” she said, guiding me to the tiny bump near her hairline.

  We tried to keep our forbidden love a secret for as long as possible with winks and nods, hand signals and kicks, SMS messages and Facebook. But then one day Gregory walked in on us in the storeroom. We could have been doing anything, but as it turned out, we were just talking and—gasp—holding hands. It was all the confirmation he needed. Earthquake-wise, I was anticipating “the Big One,” but there were no blowups or lectures. In fact, he never brought it up again. “Plausible deniability”—I think that’s how Gregory used to deal with most aspects of our relationship.

  We coast down Eckley Drive. We’re five minutes closer to Las Vegas than we were five minutes ago. There are no streetlamps on this back road. It’s pitch-dark aside from the occasional clearing in the trees where the moonlight bounces off the river. I check to make sure that Paige is wearing her seat belt. She is, but I still take the country road slow. I’m not familiar with these parts.

  “I don’t want a Vegas wedding,” she concludes suddenly.

  “Neither do I,” I fib.

  “I don’t want any of this,” she says.

  I try not to take that personally. She gently bunks her head against the passenger side window.

  “Tell me what you do want,” I whisper.

  “I love you,” she says. “You’re such a good person.”

  No, I’m a terrible person. I asked you to marry me and it killed your father.

  “There is one thing that would help me,” she says, taking a deep breath. “Can we agree to put this wedding on hold?”

  I pull over to the shoulder of the road and stare at the steering wheel.

  “Say something.”

  “Indefinitely?” I ask.

  “No, ‘on hold,’ just for a while.”

  “Three days ago you convinced me to break my lease,” I say, confirming no cars are coming in either direction. I begin turning the car around. “They’ve already started showing people my apartment, you know.”

  “I must sound like a crazy person. I know I’ve been out of my mind
, but I’m thinking clearly right now. I want to be with you. I want you to move in. I want us to be married. But I can’t think about a wedding right now. I don’t want to think about all the things this wedding can’t be. How my mother won’t be there to see me in my dress. How my father won’t walk me down the aisle. All my life I’ve dreamed of this day, but right now, planning this whole event fills me with … dread. Who knows, maybe tomorrow I’ll feel different. Maybe we’ll elope. Maybe we’ll get married next Thursday. I promise you that you’ll be involved in the decision, but it would be such a relief, right now, if I knew that you were okay with this nonplan … plan.”

  Far off in my rearview mirror I can see a car approaching. Hulk is now pointed toward Crockett, but we’re sitting idle, in the middle of the road.

  “All I’m asking you is that we … wait,” she says.

  That word. The crabmeat, green beans, vodka, and tonic become unstable in my stomach. It gurgles, breaking the silence. Paige asks me whether I just said something. I’m going to be sick. I need some air. I need to get us out of the middle of the road.

  I roll down the window and put Hulk in drive. The air feels good.

  Paige puts a hand on my knee. I speed up. The other car’s head lights fall off my rearview mirror, but the next turn comes up on us quickly. We skid slightly and right before we slam into some random roadside car, the driver flips on his high beams.

  Paige screams, slamming her hand down and bracing for impact.

  We miss him by what must be millimeters, and after a moment, I manage to get us off the shoulder and onto smooth pavement.

  “Sweetheart, you’re upset and you’re driving erratically,” she informs me.

  “I’m driving fine. You saw how that car jumped out of nowhere.”

  The car in question pulls out behind us and I hold my breath for the inevitable siren.

  “He’s following us,” I inform her.

  “Oh, no. Did you hit him? Were you speeding?”

  “Like it’s possible to make out a speed limit sign on this road.”

  As I slow down, he speeds up. The car is right on top of us now, and through my rearview mirror, the make and model look oddly familiar. This looks like the same blue Impala I saw turning around in Gregory’s driveway the other day.

  “I think that’s Principal Martin,” I inform Paige, glancing quickly over my shoulder to confirm.

  Our high school principal Harvey Martin retired right after we graduated.

  Martin is waving his hands wildly. He cuts back and forth into the neighboring traffic lane. The sixty-year-old hothead is making signals like he wants to pass.

  Yeah, right. I gas Hulk and we take the next two curves fast. My car fishtails. Paige squeezes the door handle for dear life with both hands.

  “What’s wrong with you!” Paige yelps. “Maybe he’s trying to tell us something, like we have a flat tire!”

  Paige could be right. I let go of the wheel.

  “WHAT ARE YOU DOING!” Paige cries.

  “We’re on a straightaway. If something’s wrong with the tire, Hulk will pull to one side,” I inform her.

  “Yeah and yank us right into that ravine. Ten and two!” she cries.

  I grab the wheel with both hands. There is another car quickly approaching in the opposite direction.

  Now Principal Martin is laying on his horn in long, irritating blasts.

  “Just let him pass,” Paige yells.

  Paige straightens up in her seat and wrenches her neck to see the deranged yahoo herself. Suddenly, Martin slams his brakes. A moment ago, he was tailgating us, and now he’s far off in the distance, frozen on the road. The approaching SUV whizzes past us in the other direction. I double-check the rearview mirror and Principal Martin and his blue Impala are gone as we glide into Crockett.

  What the hell? Paige and I wonder, pulling over.

  “That was strange,” I laugh nervously.

  “Ya think?”

  “That was definitely Harvey Martin.”

  “Do you think he’s okay?” she asks.

  “Has he ever been ‘okay’? Maybe we need to call the police.”

  “And say what? I think he is the police,” Paige realizes. “Didn’t Principal Martin join the sheriff’s department or something after we graduated?”

  “I didn’t see any sirens.” I shrug.

  After a long pause, Paige asks: “Are we okay?”

  Is she referring to our heart-to-heart or the latest episode of America’s Craziest Car Chases?

  I pat myself down. “Très bien. Et tu?”

  “D’accord. But are we ’d’accord, you and me?” she asks tenderly.

  “Let me get this straight,” I say, shaking my head. “You want to move in together, but we put the wedding on hold?”

  She nods.

  “So you want the milk for free?”

  “Yes. I want the milkman for free.”

  I nod.

  “You get points, Andy Altman. Big points.”

  WE PULL into Paige’s driveway. Parked in my spot is a tan Mercedes I’ve never seen before. It’s a sedan, probably from the 1970s. I can now make out the green bumper sticker across the back fender: POWERED 100% BY VEGETABLE OIL.

  Paige unbuckles her seat belt and leans over to kiss me softly on the lips. I can hear Lara’s obnoxious laugh from here. We aren’t even through the front door before Lara screams, “Finally! He was about to leave.”

  Tyler Rich stands up to greet us. He is unshaven, and taller and thinner than I remember. But maybe he’s always looked that way. Despite his crunchy-looking exterior, a few details divulge his inner richness: jeans ripped in just the right places, a designer T-shirt, that perfect auburn tan, and plenty of hair product. I wish I had Tyler Rich’s shiny black hair. But the tiny patch of hippie whiskers under his lower lip I can do without.

  “Pay Day!” he cries with joy.

  Paige protectively reaches for my hand.

  He steps closer, lowering his voice. “I don’t know what to say. I came as soon as I heard.”

  Gregory died two weeks ago.

  “Where were you guys?” Lara asks, as if we’ve done something wrong.

  “Tyler, this is Andy,” Paige says, raising both our hands together in the air like I’m a prizefighter. “This … this is the man who kicked your scrawny little ass in the contest for my love.”

  She doesn’t say that last part.

  Tyler reaches over to shake my right hand, but Paige hasn’t let go, so I’m forced to reach out to him with my left hand and squish together his fingers all unmasculine-like.

  “Hi, Tyler Rich.”

  To Paige and Lara, he’s Tyler. To me, he’ll always be Tyler Rich.

  “Andrew was two years behind us,” Lara jogs his memory. “You remember senior year: he was there when Manny Milken creamed Paige in the face with that football.”

  “It wasn’t Manny’s fault,” Paige corrects her. “And Andy got hurt, too.”

  Enough about me. I squeeze her hand tightly.

  “Nice to see you again, Andy. After all that, who would have thought you two would end up together,” Tyler Rich concludes. “This really is incredible news.”

  “It’s really not news at all,” I inform him. “Paige and I have been dating for, like, ten months and a week.” What am I, three and three-quarters years old? I want to add that we’re engaged, but I’m not sure we are.

  “So how long you back for?” Paige wonders out loud.

  “Maybe for good,” he informs us.

  “Tyler’s renting a luxury houseboat at the marina,” Lara coos.

  Lame-o-rama.

  “A forty-footer,” she adds. “He gave me a walk-through this evening.”

  I’m sure he did.

  “What’s the boat’s name again?” Lara begs.

  “The Lobsta Mobsta,” he crows.

  Lara thinks that’s hilarious.

  “Does it run on vegetable oil?” I ask him.

  “Excuse me
?”

  “It’s just I saw your veggie machine in the driveway and I didn’t think forty-foot houseboats were exactly eco-friendly.”

  “Go Andy Altman,” Tyler cheers. “Just for that, I’m going to buy some carbon credits online. You know it’s important that we all take steps to minimize our carbon footprint.”

  Lara nods.

  This guy is full of greenhouse gas.

  “You three are invited over for dinner anytime. I’ve got plenty of room. The place sleeps six,” he says.

  We’ll pass, cabin boy.

  I grab Paige’s wrist with my free hand, and I extricate my crushed hand from her death grip. She doesn’t even seem to notice.

  “I’d love to,” Paige says. “Right now, though, we have so much to do, settling Dad’s affairs and all.”

  Lara shakes her head. “Sis, you’re being a bad host. Sit!” Lara directs Paige. “The guy’s been waiting here for you for like an hour.”

  “More like thirty minutes,” Tyler Rich corrects her.

  Tyler Rich tells us about how he dropped out of Cal State Sonoma after his sophomore year to work as a copywriter at an Internet startup company in San Jose called Sort. The company invented a search engine that could list your search engine results starting with the most recently added links. It was such a good idea that Google gobbled up the company laying off—but paying out—all of its employees.

  Tyler Rich has never had to worry about money but Sort’s golden parachute gave him permission to spend a few years roaming the Earth. As I listen to him babble on about months of living off the fat of the land, sleeping in the wilderness, and hitchhiking through Washington State, he sounds less like a mountain man and more like a homeless one. And still, the Day sisters are completely enamored with Tyler Rich’s au naturel lifestyle.

  “A few weeks back, it felt like it was time to come home,” he informs us.

  I thought you rushed back as soon as you heard about Gregory.

  Job-wise, Tyler Rich tells us he’s weighing his options: the San Francisco Bay Guardian is looking for a new “greener living” blogger, and the Bay Area cooperative, Rainbow Grocery, is accepting applications at its new Berkeley location. Tyler Rich has the Lobsta Mobsta through the end of August.