by Chris Lynch
“If it was me? No,” I say as the boxer’s brother, Yang, makes me look like a crash test dummy being dragged by a rope behind a car.
“Right. And so here I am, walking dogs like I always do, working the stupid corner store like I always do . . . and let’s face it, like I probably always will do, in one form or another.”
“Aw, you won’t. Don’t say that, Junie. You won’t always.”
She stops abruptly there on the sidewalk, staring hard at me to make her point. She opens her mouth to speak, and Yin yanks her hard, and the moment is less momentous. But she will not be denied her point.
“What if I am, though, huh? Oliver? What if this is me, and I settle into it and, so what? Huh? What if that?”
The hellhounds are working into a rhythm that is challenging but manageable, and the two of us struggle equally down the road, staring each other up and down as we do.
Seconds pass that should not pass. Seconds more pass as I realize this, and seconds more before I even try to make up for it.
“So what?” I say. “So what, so nothing. Great. If you are you and you do this forever, then excellent, as long as you are you.”
I was dead before I got the first sentence out. She turns away from me, nodding, looking out over the lumpmuscle of dog ahead of her, and looking out beyond that, and whatever is beyond that.
“Okay,” she says in an awful crush of a nowhere voice, and I could cut myself. “Okay, O.”
“I mean it, Junie,” I say.
“I know you do,” she says. “I mean it too. I don’t have the ticket. Maybe I sold it from the shop. And I hope it makes the poor stupid sonofabitch happy, I really do.”
“Makes them and Juan happy,” I say.
A fair amount of quiet time passes. We make a big circuit of the block. Each dog dumps. Junie picks up both, slapping my arm hard when I try to clean up after mine.
“Mine,” she says. “They are my responsibility. And another thing,” she adds, slamming the two heavy bags hard into the trash can, “if I did win that lottery, I wouldn’t be passing that ticket on to that pocky old weasel, no way. Because if I won it, it would be mine. Mine matters. Mine matters as much as the money.”
I don’t respond, because response is not needed, not welcome, and I’m pretty sure not wise at the moment. We get to the door of Yin and Yang’s owners, and Junie grabs the leash out of my hand.
“But—” I say as the two bruisers make every effort to pull her apart and away and down, but she manages somehow to not let any of it happen.
“Thanks,” she says as she succeeds in wrangling them back inside, and I stand there staring at her absence for several long, long seconds.
• • •
That is the point at which Junie herself becomes a rumor to me. Calls go unanswered and unreturned. Texts likewise. I walk over to her shop two consecutive days, and on two consecutive days I lose the nerve to go inside, sensing that her wrath will not be preferable to her silence. I walk the streets where I know she has dog-walking arrangements, until I am certain the neighbors are keeping a diary of my suspicious movements.
I have to stop this. I have to stop. I need to move on. She doesn’t need me. She doesn’t need anybody. I am the one with needs. Beyond Junie Blue, I need . . . something. I am eighteen years old, it is hot summer now. The ocean is right there and the sky is right there and I want for nothing.
So what do I want?
I’m drifting. I know I’m drifting. Junie and Malcolm and the rest of the world seem to be getting on with things, but I don’t even know what things are.
“Meet me for lunch.”
It’s my dad, and it’s unusual. It is almost unheard of for him to be calling me in the middle of the workday, and it is utterly unprecedented for him to be asking me to lunch. Not that I couldn’t go to lunch with him whenever or wherever I wanted to. I could. I’ve never tested it, but I’m sure I could. It’s just that Dad doesn’t really eat lunches, from what I can tell. He eats opportunity. That’s what he says. He eats opportunity for lunch and burps dividends all afternoon.
“Really?” I say warily.
“Sure. It’ll be fun.”
“Fun? Okay, I like fun.”
“Sure you do. Everybody likes fun. See you at one.”
I hang up, stare at my phone, not sure it actually did what it just did.
Message beep comes ten minutes later as I shave.
Make it 1:45. Fun!
Fun!
• • •
The restaurant is amazing, right around the corner from Dad’s office. We are on, like, the fiftieth floor, looking out over the financial district and the port beyond and the rest of the world beyond that. It’s a twenty-five-minute train ride from our town to down here, or a thirty-five-minute car ride in traffic. Dad likes driving.
“How do you like it?” Dad says without indicating whether it is the obscenely lush menu, the view, the cold red draft beer he ordered for himself and then slipped to me, or the buttery cubed steak appetizers with three different kinds of dips that just arrived. Not that it matters.
“Phenomenal, Dad,” I say.
“Could eat here every day, couldn’t you?”
“I could if I wanted to have gout and diabetes and heart trouble,” I say.
“True. Well observed. You are a quick study, my lad. You know, there’s also a fantastic gym in my building. Pool, sauna, and everything. So, you could eat here every day and still avoid all that.”
“Having it all, huh, Dad?”
“Yep, kid, having it all. Or you could just eat opportunity for lunch every day, thereby having it all . . . and then some. All is nothing. Someday you’ll look at having it all as underachieving.”
“I can’t work down here, Dad.”
“Oop, sounds to me like someone needs another delicious illegal beverage.”
I laugh. He makes me laugh pretty much at will, and always has. It’s one of his superpowers, possibly his most deadly one, and the one I need to ward against the most.
“Listen, Dad, you are awesome at what you do. I could never in a million years get to the point where—”
“One afternoon,” he says, coolly taking a sip of his ice water with a straw. He loves his ice water with a straw, and it makes him look instantly boyish and innocent.
“What?”
“I could teach you everything I know in an afternoon. We’d still have time for a round of golf—which I will also need to teach you—before dinner.”
“I know how to golf, Father.”
“Aw, that’s cute. Anyway, the business side of the business. Here’s one of the main things about success, especially in my field, but it applies in every field of endeavor: Will trumps skill. Understand me? If you are willing, if you are driven, if you are prepared to do what it takes when you find out what it takes, you are going to mop the floor with the guys who have the skill without the will.”
“Huh,” I say, genuinely impressed while also a little unsettled. “Will trumps skill. Nice one, Dad.”
“Oh, kid, you wouldn’t believe how many of those I’ve got in my quiver. And, you come along with me and wait till you see how quickly your quiver gets filled. I’ll have you a quivering mess.”
Entrees arrive. Venison-mushroom risotto for me, veal chops for him.
“Am I selling? Am I selling?” he asks anxiously.
“Ah, Dad . . . ,” I say, and hope that says enough.
“You’ll think about it,” he says.
My venison is so vital, I feel it breathing inside me. I feel stronger already.
“I don’t think I will,” I say.
He visibly deflates, chews his veal more slowly. He adores veal, and I hate disappointing him.
“You could just try it, for a while.”
“What if I wanted to go to school?” I don’t—at least not as I sit here, I don’t. And he knows it because he knows me.
“I will take you to school, boy,” he says, poking a sharp knife in my dire
ction. “Come on. I will be your school.”
“Dad?”
“Fine. Then if you want to go to that other kind, with the students and the football games and the drug orgies, it’ll still be there for you.”
I just don’t know. I don’t know anything.
That’s not true. I know something.
It’s all about her.
That’s what I know. And it’s crippling me.
“Get me another beer, and I’ll think about thinking about it.”
“Okay,” he says, grinning and waving at the waiter. “But I have to warn you, I have an employment contract here in my briefcase, and it won’t matter whether you recall signing it or not.”
He does make me laugh. I do like his company. That is, spending time with him, as opposed to his business operation. There could probably be worse things.
“So,” he says as the pint lands on the table between us, glistening beads of condensation slaloming down its sides, “what do you know about this lottery ticket thing?”
I sigh. I am already sick of this subject.
“Well, from what I understand, one buys a ticket, picks some numbers, and then has about a one in triple-infinity chance of winning more money than one spent on the ticket.”
“Ha. Good one, O. But I think you know that I am referring to the rumors.”
“That One Who Knows has miraculously won the thing for a second time?”
“Well . . . no. That your girlfriend has actually won.”
“Are you going to finish that?” I say, reaching right over and spearing a veal chop that I bring to my plate. Passive aggression at its most tasty.
“Oh, by all means,” he says. “As for your girlfriend?”
“I don’t have a girlfriend, and I believe you know that.”
“Sorry, Son. But did she? Win? Does she have the ticket in her possession?”
I scoop a big spoonful of risotto and plunk it down onto his plate. I take a long pull on the beer. I take a bite of the veal chop.
“Is this you changing the subject?” he asks.
I take the lump of risotto back and pop it into my mouth. I return the empty chop bone to his plate.
“It was just a question, Oliver.”
“It’s none of my business, Dad. I hope she did win and that she’s going to be the happy heartbreaker for the rest of her life, but she didn’t win, and she’s working every possible shift at that stupid shop and she’s walking dogs to the moon and back, and I hope that that makes her the happiest heart-breaker in the solar system, but frankly I have no insight into this situation, nor into any other situation that involves Junie Blue, other than that every situation involves Junie Blue and every situation involving Junie Blue is making me blue.”
I take another gulp of the beer and peer over the rim of the glass at my chastened-looking father sipping his water through a straw.
“You’re upset,” he says wisely.
We stare across at each other for several seconds, both drink glasses remaining like shields in front of our faces.
And I laugh. “Yeah, Dad. I guess I am.”
“Love is like getting fat, O. If you take a long time building it up, it takes a long time burning it off.”
I shake my head at the depth of his wisdom. “It’s like fat?”
He laughs. “Yeah, that might not be my best work there.”
“You ever been fat, Dad?”
“Oh, God, no.”
“So, then, how—”
“Unless you’re still going with the metaphor. Simile? Whatever. If fat means love here, then, oh, God, yes. I am fat inside out for your mother. Make no mistake, Son. I am a blob for your mother.”
“Wow. What can I say? That’s just sweet as hell. And no, I don’t think I want any dessert, thanks.”
“Ah,” he says, calling for the check. In seconds he is paying and signing, and as I finish the scraps and dregs, he fills the conversational void. “So, you don’t believe she’s got the ticket?” he says casually.
“Thanks for lunch,” I say, and beat it out of there before he has even calculated the tip. He’s shockingly slow with numbers.
Six
I have just about convinced myself that I can move on. By “move on” I mean I can have thoughts that don’t entirely revolve around Junie. I can consider my father’s offer of a job for life—no—and the prospect of college—not yet—and what that leaves me for near-term options—beats the squat out of me—without my mind being paralytic with concerns and worries and speculations about the existence of lovely June.
And then my phone does that thing that it does. Message.
I’m coming over.
It’s from her.
And just like that, as if all the psychological masonry that I had just carefully tapped and pointed into place has been rocked with a 6.5 tremor, I come spectacularly to rubble again.
I jump out of bed, grab some clean underwear—that’s right, this time I was doing exactly the type of mind-clearing exercise they think I’m always doing—and I get dressed as if I am going to Wimbledon or boating or my own baptism, but in my bright beautiful whites I am confident that this is the sunny reboot of my summer right here.
The doorbell rings, and I hear my mother padding to the door—but sorry, Mom, I cannot be denied—and I take three stairs at a go and practically break my ankle at the bottom, but I wobble and careen to the door first and fling it open on the wrong, wrong, wrong shade of goddamn blackened Blue.
“What are you doing here, Ronny?” I say.
“Is that what passes for hospitality in this house?” he says.
“Yes,” I snarl.
“No,” Mom says, extending her hand to shake the beast’s big meaty paw.
“You have lovely hands,” he says, and he kisses one of them. A noise comes straight through my stomach wall, like when you need to retch but you fight it down. I won’t fight next time. “Lovely artist’s hands.”
“Is there something I can do for you, Mr. Blue,” she overpolites.
“Mr. Blue is a weenie Bobby Vinton song from the 1970s. I’m Ronny. Especially to a lovely lady such as yourself.”
She’s courteous, but she’s not a dope. “Yes, thank you. So, what brings you here?”
“An appointment,” he says.
“What are you talking about?” I say. “And what are you doing with Junie’s phone again?”
“You’re an inquisitive little chap today. As it happens, Miss June—hey, sounds like she’s naked in a magazine, don’t it? Anyway, she happened to leave her phone behind again.”
“Where is she?”
“Another holiday, I guess.”
“So,” Mom interjects.
“So,” he answers, “I pick up this business card, right. Your business card,” he says, pulling my mother’s card out of his breast pocket. “And it says right there on the back that there’s a sitting scheduled here this morning. And I remember, I was supposed to be having a sitting, so apparently it’s been scheduled for me. So, apparently, I better get myself over here. Can’t be upsetting the artiste, you know what I mean?”
“Where is Leona?” Mom says in a cool way that bears no resemblance to any version of her warm self I have ever heard.
“Home,” he says, all happy-smiley. “Where she’s supposed to be. Why do you ask?”
There is a crackling hot silence.
“Shall we get to it, then?” he says, that infuriatingly happy mug. He’s chewing all the scenery around, like an actor hamming it up for the cameras.
Mom sits in her usual artist seat with a grim determination I usually only associate with the day she does her taxes. The portrait’s subject, on the other hand, looks like he’s settling into one of the better rides at Disneyland.
“This is really a lovely place you have here,” Ronny says, taking everything in, the way I imagine a burglar would.
“Please face front,” Mom says sternly.
“Where’s June?” I say, standing over him
. This must look like an interrogation from an old war movie.
“I told you,” he says.
“No, you didn’t.”
“You know, you don’t have to be here, O,” Mom says.
“I don’t mind,” I say.
“What do you think about that lottery business, nobody coming forth to claim it?” Ronny says. Hard to tell who he’s talking to.
“Interesting,” Mom says.
“Interesting, yes,” he says.
Knowing this particular choreography, I jump ahead. “Why don’t you ask her yourself?”
“Think I didn’t try that already?”
“So, what did she say?”
He pauses. “I can’t repeat it in front of your mother.”
“Ha,” Mom says, a welcome spasm of joy in the middle of her determined sketching.
“Good for Junie,” I say.
“Shouldn’t you be out playin’ tennis?” he snaps. “Or cro-quet? That’s the kind of thing your people play, isn’t it? Cro-quet?”
“No.”
“Then why are you dressed like that?”
I look down at my bright and clean and sporty getup, which feels so embarrassingly inappropriate now and was probably embarrassingly inappropriate before—Junie would have mocked me more than anyone—and I am thrown back to my childish high hopes of earlier. I feel stupid, and bereft.
“You look lovely,” Mom says, making things infinitely worse.
I leave and go to my room, where I change into some jeans that are too heavy for the heat and a black button-down shirt that is the wrong color but the right material—linen—so I can look my version of tough while still surviving in breathable fabrics.
When I return to the scene of the art crime, Mom is already wrapping up the session. It lasted maybe one third of the time that Leona’s did, and who wouldn’t want to spend precious life minutes with the one rather than the other.
Ronny hops to his feet, anxious to see, certain of the drawing’s greatness already.
Mom quickly throws a smock over it.
“Oh, you can’t see this version of the work, Ronny. It’s far too preliminary.”
“You need me to come back for another—”
