Little Blue Lies

by Chris Lynch

  We never even keep score. We just hit back and forth, and it’s fun, and it’s exhausting. Great sweaty exercise, and soothingly simple.

  “And when you score?” I say wearily.

  “Umm, let’s see. Okay, how’s this? We’ll keep score like a regular tennis game, fifteen, thirty, forty, game. Only we’ll use letters. J, U, N, E, and when I win, you have to step aside and let me ask her out. Deal?”

  “Well, hey, that sounds like a pretty good deal. But you should also consider these other two options. I could beat you to death with a tennis racket. Or we could just hit back and forth for a while and you can talk or shut up however much you like.”

  He waves his racket like a surrender, holds the ball up, preparing to serve.

  “I’ll take option three there,” he says as he launches a serve my way.

  We are good at this. I had almost forgotten how good we are at this. Not tennis per se, although I’m not bad at it and Malcolm is well above average. But the tennis talk, tennis tit for tat that always evolved from one of these sessions and caught us up on things no matter how out of touch we’d been.

  “Your serve is still sharp,” I say right after smacking one into the net.

  “I told you,” he says, raising another ball, “I still play all the time.” Thwack.

  “Right”—thwack—“with Ronny Blue.”

  “Among others.” Thwack.

  We rally for quite a while now, and this is when I like it best and it reminds me of what I have missed without realizing I missed it. We hit stride, and the rhythm of our baseline returns is musical and soothing and exciting all at once. He’s using his superior skill to make sure I get balls I can return cleanly, and I return the favor by returning them.

  I had missed a lot of life, I think, while I was lost in June. Maybe now I will start getting it back.

  Though I’d just as soon not.

  “So, Mal, you gonna tell me about the Ronny Rat connection or continue to jerk me around?”

  “I’d really prefer to jerk you around for a while more, if you don’t mind.”

  “I don’t mind,” I say. And I don’t. Because for a guy who’s jerking another guy around, he doesn’t seem to be enjoying it all that much. And because the resulting wordlessness is making our scuffling, thwacking tennis sounds all the richer. Malcolm and my parents and whoever else was involved in arranging this were right. This is a kind of tonic for me.

  After a rally of about fifty consecutive shots each, I put another one into the net. As I retrieve it, I feel talk is once again appropriate, at least the kind of meaningless chatter that used to be the fuel of these breezy warm long afternoons. “Did you hear that One Who Knows won the lottery. Again,” I say.

  “That’s the rumor,” he says.

  “Rumor? Malcolm, don’t you know that with One Who Knows there are no rumors? Have you ever heard a rumor about that guy that turned out not to be true?”

  I am standing at the net now, like I’ve come up for a volley, and I can see an unexpected seriousness on his face.

  “I suppose,” he says enigmatically. “I hope not. Maybe not.”

  I stare at him. He shrugs. I go back to my baseline.

  I serve. Into the net. I serve. Long, but returnable. We rally again. Then he does some blurting among the hitting.

  “I asked her out.”

  “What?”

  We keep hitting, keep talking.

  “I asked her out.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  We start hitting harder.

  “And?”

  “She said okay.”

  I hit one really hard. Over the twelve-foot fence and everything. Malcolm starts to retrieve it.

  “Don’t!” I shout. “Get back there. Use the other ball.”

  He serves. We rally.

  “So?” I say.

  “So I went over to her house. That’s when I met Ronny. Started talking about tennis. Turns out he’s a keen tennis player and—”

  “I don’t care about you and Ronny and tennis!” I shout, missing one return completely, then picking up a ball and throwing it at Malcolm. Then in a fit of inspiration I throw my racket at him too. It bounces to a landing at his feet.

  “You did say you wanted to know—”

  “That was before. Nothing else matters now!”

  He is walking—very bravely, under the circumstances—toward me at the net with my racket. Even more bravely, he is grinning at me.

  “Malcolm,” I say in the kind of supercalm voice that only ever seems to come out of people going criminally insane, “there are very few matters in life that are genuinely life-or-death, but explaining that smirk to me right now is surely one of them.”

  “Dammit, boy, if your love-puppy thing isn’t a sight to behold,” he says, handing my racket across as either a peace offering or suicide.

  “Which makes you twice as evil for trying to tear it up.”

  “First, I wasn’t tearing anything up, since you were already split. Second, I had no idea your precious love was quite as spectacularly pathetic as this. Third, the joke was on me all along, as it turned out she agreed to see me just to get updates on you. Which I didn’t even have, so I guess the joke was on her as well. And I suppose, from the cross-eyed mental on your face right now, the joke was on you, too, although you appear not to see the funny.”

  I somehow missed Malcolm’s company?

  “So, Mal, if you already asked Junie out, and in fact sort of did go out with her, what’s with all the asking my permission?”

  “Well, I had a guilt attack. And while it all ended innocently enough, and she was clearly still into you, and remember you did dump me and all, I still felt like I needed to sort of make good. You know, like when a guy puts an extension on his house without getting permits, then applies for them retroactively so that he doesn’t get into any trouble. This is me retroactively eliminating any trouble. So, that’s that, then. Want to go to a movie tonight or hit the amusement park for old times’ sake?”

  I feel like I’m already at the amusement park, old times or not. Head is rattling, stomach swirling like I’m on the Tilt-a-Whirl for the first time again.

  I find myself staring at the tennis racket in my hands, turning it over and over.

  “I’m not even sure if I’m supposed to hit you now,” I say.

  “I don’t think you are,” he says.

  “Maybe later, then. You’re confusing me so much right now that I have to reserve the right to come to my senses and clock you one later.”

  “Of course, of course,” he says, then reaches across the net and slaps me on the neck. He leaves his hand there and squeezes. “You two are awfully cute. Weird as shit, as far as couples go. But damn cute. Why’d you break up, anyway?”

  “I wish I knew. From the sound of it you probably know more about it than I do. What did she say, anyway?”

  “Are we done playing?” he asks.

  Knowing how hard it can be to get a focused story out of Malcolm when he is not swinging a racket, I push him in the direction of his own baseline.

  “Serve,” I say. And I know he knows I mean more than a fuzzy yellow ball.

  Not that there were a million details to be learned from the great date, but what was there was enough to put a little lift in my heart, and to prompt me to have him repeat a couple of choice moments three times.

  “Sounds like she likes me better now than when we were together,” I say.

  “Yeah,” he responds with a small chuckle. “I’d say you guys are in great shape.”

  “What am I going to do, Mal?” I ask. I’m sitting cross-legged at the net, looking up at him as he does a decent job of juggling two tennis balls with one hand.

  “That’s a very good question, O. Are you not still planning to go into your dad’s business?”

  I was never planning on going into my dad’s business, because I was never planning on going into anything at all. I’ve been short of anything one mig
ht call direction during the whole period when my peers and classmates have been finding their callings one by one. College, military, trades, crime, it seemed like everybody I knew had it figured; good, bad, but not a single one indifferent. Except me.

  “I was never planning on going into Dad’s business, Mal. And anyway I wasn’t even asking about that. I meant about—”

  “College?”

  Malcolm is going to college. He never had any doubt.

  “I meant Junie, man.”

  “Oh, she’s planning to go to college. But she’s taking a year off first. To work and save some money. She wants to go away. Far, far away, like multiple state lines. Not me, though. Plenty of fine schools within laundry and pot roast distance of home, is how I’ve always seen it.”

  “Is it juggling, Malcolm, that does this to your brain? Because you’re telling me a whole load of stuff, stuff that I already know, stuff that you already know I know, and stuff—more important—that I never even asked you about.”

  He lets the balls drop and bouncety-bounce on the ground between us. He stares at me.

  “I think it probably is the juggling, man. I’m with you now, though.”

  “Thanks. I’m talking about Junie. Where she is. Where we are. And, literally, where she is.”

  “To be honest, I don’t know the answers to any of that. To be also honest, maybe you need to stop obsessing about Junie Blue and just get on with stuff. Like figuring out what you’re gonna do with the next critical phase of life. Junie will be fine, man. She’s as tough as nails and hotter than the sun’s ass, and if there is a more winning combination than that, I would like to know where it can be purchased. You, on the other hand, are currently lacking in dynamism.”

  It’s true enough. I am lacking in dynamism. It’s also true that Junie is hard and together and probably a whole lot less in need of me than I am in need of being needed—so, what, honestly, am I worried about?

  Myself, maybe?

  “Let’s go home, Mal,” I say.

  “What?” he says when I hop to my feet in a burst of negative dynamism. He follows me off the courts, and we head up the road together. “Did I say something wrong? Are you going to banish me from your life again?”

  “I never banished you. And I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

  “Cool. Though, come Labor Day you’re gonna be the banished one when I head off to college. Unless you come with me. Come with me.”

  I could. We were accepted to the same college, and we both accepted our acceptances. The difference is, Malcolm always intended to go, and I just needed something to show my parents to keep them from talking too much about what I was going to do. It wasn’t a wildly successful plan, since I don’t think it fooled anybody. But still, it’s there.

  “We’ll see,” I say.

  “You know, O, you’re not really believable even when you’re trying. And that one was just lifeless.”

  We both laugh at my lameness. Then he drifts behind and sticks the butt of his racket into the small of my back like a gun.

  “Come on, you,” he demands, “make a move. Or else.”

  I almost wish it were as simple as a shotgun life.

  We walk more or less like this all the way back to my place. Not the gun-in-my-back part, but still in the style of escorted prisoner. I don’t know what’s in it for him—a laugh, probably—but for me it serves the purpose of allowing me to be on my own without being alone. Good man, Malcolm.

  “Thanks, man,” I say, pivoting in front of my house in a crisp, military way that says clearly there will be no invitation inside. Even though he deserves one. Even though I could really use him. “I had fun.”

  “Yeah,” he says. “Fun. It’s written all over your face.” He points at my face, in case I’ve forgotten where it is.

  “Really?” I say.

  “No,” he says. “You look like flaming crap, Oliver.”

  That’s crossing a Rubicon there. Even my parents almost always call me O, or Son, or something like that. If I get called by my actual name once every six days, that’s going at quite a clip, and since Malcolm hasn’t been around, the clip has been clipped to nearly nothing at all. It always means something when he uses it, even if I rarely know exactly what that something is.

  “I don’t,” I say with exactly the conviction a flaming-crap face would give it.

  He puts all the tennis gear down, right there on the sidewalk, where any old type of harm could come to his precious racket—also a blue-moon occurrence. He puts both hands heavily on my shoulders.

  “Go inside. Watch a movie. Eat. Have a bath. Google yourself. Google yourself until you go blind, in fact. Then change the sheets, have another bath, or maybe a shower this time. Then get some real sleep. You need a shave and a haircut. Don’t do those things for yourself. Tomorrow a.m. I’ll come by and we’ll go get buffed up, all right? Sound good? All right?”

  I’m thinking about all the various constituent parts of that plan, or at least I’m trying to think of the various constituents.

  “All right,” I say.

  But truth is, all I can hear inside is Junie Blue, Junie Blue, Junie Blue, Junie Blue echoing like a cuckoo’s call around the vast forest of my skull.

  Mal collects up his stuff and walks off silently.

  “Thank you so much, Malcolm,” comes the whisper-voice from behind the screen.

  “Jesus, Mom!” I snap, and march inside.

  Four

  Malcolm was right about my being pathetic. He must have been. Otherwise why would I have gone into the house and followed his instructions to the letter? Most of them, anyway, as I was pretty tired and too distracted to be really up to much.

  “Appearance is half your problem, O,” he says as we turn onto Ocean Boulevard. “Maybe even more than half.”

  “Is that so?” I say.

  “That is so. Trust me, you’re gonna be a new man after this. Then you can dispose of that old man you got going there, because he frankly stinks.”

  “So, a trip to Santo’s is going to change everything?”

  “Everything.”

  This is a remarkably bold claim, since not only has this establishment had previous opportunities to make a new man of me, but it is as responsible as any other place in the world for the me that I already am. On the outside, that is.

  I got my first ever haircut at Santo’s. I don’t remember it, but I know this to be true, because I got all of my haircuts here, and the first haircut I do remember, I was maybe four years old and Santo himself hauled out this wooden plank and laid it across the arms of the barber chair to make a booster seat because even with the chair pumped up as high as it could go, the old duffer still had to stoop to clip me.

  And an old duffer he was. Santo was an old man when I was four and twelve and fifteen, until he retired or whatever it was he did, but it didn’t matter because he always worked side by side with another old guy just like him—and two or three rotating other old guys when times were good and all four chairs were buzzing. Then he retired or whatever it was and he was replaced by another Santo, and it was like there was this workshop someplace where they just turned out replicate barber Santos, which suited everybody fine.

  And the place was never actually called Santo’s, because it was and still is officially called the Beachcomber Gentleman’s Barbershop. Perfectly named. Great big front windows as big as the mirror wall, and if you look to your right from one of the chairs, you get the most spectacular view of the beach, and if you look to your right to see the beach while getting your hair cut, Santo would always sharply grab the point of your chin and whip you back around to proper haircuttee position.

  Almost everybody who came into the place had sand in his hair, especially on a windy day, and this is possibly why all the combs and clippers and hair tonics and whatever Santo would attack you with always had the grittiness.

  A gritty kind of place, to be sure.

  Because the smells of sand and salt and the seaside
stuff and the smells of the barber business, circa 1927, always swirled together in the atmosphere of Santo’s in such a reliable balance as to suggest somebody on staff was tasked with the job of creating exactly this olfactory singularity. Singular. It exists nowhere else, I am certain.

  Also gritty because that’s how Santo’s sees itself. A little bit dangerous, a little bit fringes-of-society atmosphere is part of the charm of the place. Even if it’s not entirely believable, not always charming.

  “Heya, kid,” the old guy says, springing out of his chair on a quiet Monday morning.

  We’re all kids and we always will be. Kid, kidnik, kiddo, regardless. It was this way with the original Santo, and it is this way with Santo IV or whoever we have here.

  “The kids, kid and kiddo,” he says, just as happily as if we were his actual grandchildren coming to see him for the first time in a year.

  “Hey, Santo,” Malcolm says, giving the old boy a big hug. “I saw you, sitting there staring out at the waves.”

  “Of course I was staring out at the waves. They’re waves, for cryin’ out loud. They’re frickin’ beautiful. Does that make me a bad person? I don’t think that makes me a bad person. First customers of the week, you kids. Sure I stare at the waves. Gets me in the mood, in the spirit, so I can do my best work. For you. All for you.”

  “Hey, and we appreciate it. That’s why we come back, right?”

  “Right,” he says. “And what are we in for today?”

  I step up. Malcolm points at me with his thumb.

  “Kiddo,” Santo says, taking me by the arm like I’m the little old guy and he is helping me into the chair, “how did you let it get like this?”

  Malcolm laughs out loud, throws himself into a chair with a newspaper and a good angle to see me in the mirror.

  Santo does this thing—I suppose the same thing a sculptor does when he starts on a project. He clips, a tiny bit, a nothing bit, then steps back and looks. Goes to a whole other part of the head, snips a clip, steps back, looks, tilts his head, looks, comes back in for more. Like he is waiting for the proper image to suggest itself to him, to emerge from the chaos that is my currently configured head.