Little Blue Lies (10 page)

I drink down my coffee, and that is that.

“This is serious, Maxie. Shit, this is serious.”

“Could be it's not even her, since she's said nothing to me, or to you. Maybe it's just an honest oversight and she's not even involved. Maybe some old crock just has the ticket lodged in the crack of his crusty underwear someplace.”

“Jesus, Max.”

“Sorry, Mr. Sensitive. People are talking, however.”

“She would have told you, though.”

“O, she hides her
coffee
from me.”

“Oliver,” Mom calls from the other room.

When I get there, she and Leona are making plans for another sitting, more coffee, maybe some golf. The ladies have to be off so they can beat the beast home and not spoil the
surprise
. I'd bet he's not a fan of surprises. On the way to the door, Maxine and I exchange winks and knowing glances—and I don't even know what they mean.

What I do know is, I have to try.

“Wonderful people,” Mom says as the door closes.

“Indisputably,” I say, headed straight up the stairs.

“Where are you off to?”

“My room.”

“Already? But you just came down. . . . Oh.”

“Mom! Cripes. No.”

I don't have time to address my tattered in-house reputation, as I must try to contact Junie. I dial her number, and it rings out. It does not even give me the opportunity to leave a message. I throw the phone onto the bed and start pacing.

I get a text message signal.

What?
She snaps.

I return serve.
Do you have something to tell me?

Yes. You're dumped
.

You'd think that would get easier. Nope.

Where are you? Can I see you?

Bet you can if you squint and use your imagination.

Is there something wrong with me for sort of enjoying this?

Come on, Junie. This is hard.

At it again, are ya?

Right.

I phone her once more. She picks right up, laughing.

“I did forget how much fun that could be,” she says.

“Good. So that's settled. We are back to being a fun couple.”

“We're not, actually.”

“Is it the basketball team?”

“Well, sure.”

“Punch line? Please?”

“Um, no. Punch line is, just, no. Don't be a pain, O, huh? Please? I got things I need to do, for myself, that's all.”

“I want to see you.”

“I want to see you, too.”

“Where are you?”

“Walking the dogs.”

“That's not a place.”

“Walking the dogs on the moon.”

“Please?”

Pause.

“You gonna ask difficult questions and make a nuisance of yourself?”

I have to laugh. “Junie Blue, you know that our entire relationship was driven by exactly those things. Of course I am.”

Click.

Desperately, frantically—which means I press one button and shake the phone like I'm strangling it—I try to call her back. It rings out, unanswered.

“Dammit, dammit, dammit,” I say, strangling the phone and stomping all around my room. The phone's death rattle sounds, fortunately, just like my text alert.

Ipswich Street. The two big Boxer pups, so you better behave. Woof.

I am feeling altogether apprehensive but not altogether hopeless as I barrel down the stairs and out toward Ipswich.

Does a rotten-rich lottery winner walk other people's dogs?

•  •  •

“Does a rotten-rich lottery winner walk other people's dogs, numbskull?” Junie says as the one boxer, Yin, jerks her along the sidewalk.

“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 direction. “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.”