Magnificent Vibration (25 page)

“
I
’m spending way too much time with this planet,” thinks the OSB. “I shouldn’t be playing favorites.” But it is a magnificent piece of work, if the OSB does think so him/herself. “And then along they come pissing and pooping all over it, needlessly slaughtering its elegant and beautiful flora and fauna, again if I do say so myself.”

Mid-reverie, a sudden thousand-light-years-wide supernova (waaaay on the other side of the universe) catches the OSB’s attention, as thousands of inhabited
planets are deep-fried with radiation in half a Plank-unit, killing all life forms.

“Shit . . . ,” says the OSB, “. . . happens,” then turns his/her attention back to the Beautiful Blue, Green/White Majest . . . “
Earth
.”

T
he morning following my horrific discovery of all those mind-melting images of naked, hairy, unwashed men hiding under the bed of my wife’s lying, cheating Twitter page, I drive to work, angry and scared at the same time. There were so many guys—where do I start? Do I go around exacting physical revenge on them all like a true bad-ass and probably end up in the hospital myself with major breakages, lacerations, and contusions, or do I tell them how much they’ve all hurt and saddened me, like a little wussy-baby? Either way it’s a daunting prospect. I have no model for this, as far as how I ought to behave. But then I realize I actually do. I’m my mother, and my wife is my father if he had access to a Twitter page. And I am stunned by the unfortunate synchronicity of my life. Am I done with women now, the way my mother was finished with men after all my father’s crap? I don’t think so. I’m too young. And Woody is too needy. All I want to do right now is go home and curl up in the fetal position in a corner with Murray. But I have to face Ned the Head. I take the long, scenic route to work. I tell myself I’m doing this to figure out how best to address this frightful situation, but honestly I think I’m trying to avoid it altogether. Maybe he’ll call in sick.

A
lice and I stare from the car, our mouths open in shock. I have piloted the Kia through traffic so thick and tangled that from the air it must all look like an earthworm orgy. I’ve just had the world’s worst-ever photo taken so that for the next fifteen years my passport will show everyone that I am actually an eighty-five-year-old, inbred, fat-faced pig-fucker. Alice and Lexington Vargas both laughed out loud and unkindly when, disenchanted, I dropped it on the dashboard of the car after a hasty and embarrassed exit from the local Mail Boxes Etc. It sits there mocking the kind of mildly good-looking thirty-two-year-old I thought I was.

Now, as L.V. hauls his substantial frame out of the groaning Kia, it is his house we are staring at, thunderstruck. It’s in the
hills
of La Crescenta, and it’s a magnificent, beautifully groomed hacienda that would fit three or four of my little ex-houses inside it.

“Dude!” is all I can say as he walks around to my window.

“Oh, yeah,” he answers, as if my reaction isn’t the first of its kind that he’s encountered. He leans against the hood of the Kia, and I
think there will be a Lexington Vargas–sized ass-dent in the bodywork when he is done telling the story he looks like he’s about to tell.

“That’s a pretty cool house,” I tell him unnecessarily.

“My dad left it to me,” is his explanation.

“Wow, what did your father do?” asks Alice through the window opening.

“He was a doctor. UCLA recruited him from the hospital he was working at in Mexico City and brought us all here because he’d invented a new heart surgery technique and they wanted him to teach it to their doctors,” answers L.V. who has just received a very large upgrade in my judgmental and easily-impressed-by-money mind.

“Then what are you doing groundskeeping at a high school?” I don’t
think
that’s an offensive question. I check. No, he doesn’t look offended, but he has shown himself to be pretty resilient to my sometimes-rash, clueless-white-boy assumptions based on his ethnicity.

“I was the ‘bad’ kid of all my brothers. I ditched school and then had some trouble with the cops. Messed with drugs and stuff, y’know,” he answers, and although he’s read to us about this life from his copy of
Magnificent Vibration
, I don’t really know, but I nod my head like I do.

“My father gave me this place in his will and set up a trust fund that only takes care of the upkeep of the house and grounds. I can’t touch the money for anything else, and I can’t sell the house or raid the trust until I’m sixty-five. He made it so I
have
to work. He thought it would be good for me and teach me to be self-sufficient. He covered all the bases. Tough and from the Old Country, but whip-smart.” He finishes his story and stands, leaving as I suspected, an ass-dent in the paper-thin bodywork of the rent-a-Kia.

“I’ll catch you guys later,” he says, waving casually, and walks up the impressive pepper-tree-lined driveway.

The decision to spend the week or so it will take me to get my passport in our separate digs and do some heavy contemplating and evaluating on our own was not an easy one to reach. We have become intensely and deeply connected, dependent and protective of one another in the short time we’ve been together. It’s amazing to me. Other than to Josie, I’ve never felt this connected to anyone. Arthur has been noticeably silent, so we are just moving ahead based on our own best guesses. The round-trip tickets to Scotland have already been purchased via my whining bitch of a MasterCard, so I wouldn’t really call them
paid for
, but we are booked and committed to this very odd trip. We’re all wondering, “Why Scotland?” but I am secretly as excited as a Loch-Ness-Monster-obsessed twelve-year-old boy to be getting this close to the Magical Mystery Lake. We both watch as Lexington Vargas unlocks the front door and enters his spec-freaking-tacular house.

“I hope the one you’re inheriting in Inverness looks like this,” I joke to Alice.

“I don’t think the Spanish ever made it that far north,” she says with a tired smile. I fire up the Kia-hamster.

With misgivings I drop her off at the Oakwood. I tell her I’ll miss her. She kisses me on the cheek. I blush. She gets out and is gone.

Now for the difficult part of the day. I begrudgingly turn the reluctant auto toward my ex-house and my ex-wife. The good news is, I will see Murray, if only briefly,
and
tonight I’ll get to sleep in my own bed—the one that Alice has recently vacated. Pretty sure I won’t be washing the sheets. It smells like her. I already checked.

I sit parked outside my little ex-house for a while. Damn, it looks even smaller after seeing the Spanish castle Lexington Vargas lives in. And I don’t even live in this one anymore. I stay in the car ’til Murray
senses my presence (how do they do that?) and stands up at the living room window, smiling. As I walk toward the old homestead, he jumps down and runs to where I know he is waiting behind the front door. I ring the doorbell to my own house as a visitor for the first time. It’s a strange, disorienting feeling. Murray barks. I hear a muffled but definitely male voice yell, “Shut up, Murray.” How dare some dude talk to my boy like that? This is already not going well. Charlotte finally cracks the door and Murray shoves his nose through it to get to me.

“Hey Mur-mur.” I choose to say hello to my dog first because he is the only faithful one in the entire building.

“Bob?” questions Charlotte with a disagreeable look on her face.

“Hi,” I answer, but it’s not the answer she’s looking for.

“What are you doing here?” she is certainly not at all huggy-buggy as Murray finally gets enough of the door open and bolts out to me, jumping, whimpering, and barking.

“Jesus, Murray. That dog’s a pain in the ass since you left,” she says.

I want to remind her that I didn’t leave, I was kicked out. But it’s just semantics.

“Who is it, babe?” says some guy who’s been sleeping in my bed.

“It’s Bob, my ex,” she calls back to whoever is sitting in my chair.

“What do you want?” she asks.

“I need to borrow one of our . . . one of the suitcases,” I tell her while trying to stop Murray from clawing at my crotch.

“Frank and I are flying to Hawaii in a week. We’re going to need both of them,” she answers matter-of-factly.

“Who the fuck is fucking Frank, and tell him to buy his own fucking suitcase!” is what I (again) want to say, but instead I say, “Oh.” And silently wonder if I’m paying for this fabulous vacation to Hawaii
while I drag my ass and two new friends to the sub-zero, bone-chilling Highlands of Scotland.

Murray bounces around me like Tigger, oblivious to my pain.

I hear Frank get up out of my fucking chair finally and I listen to his footsteps on the wooden floor that I laid down with these two bare hands, thank you very much, as he comes to the door. He’s not at all what I expect. He’s not a big, tough, hardcore, Harley-riding bro like the half-naked and mostly tumescent guys on Charlotte’s Twitter page—he’s kind of a weeny nerd like me. He even has horn-rimmed glasses that make him look like friggin’ Poindexter. What the hell? She dumped me and went out and shacked up with another guy just like me? What happened to Ned the Head and Rob the Knob, Jake the Trouser Snake, and Russell the Love Muscle?

“Hello, Bob,” says Frank. He is so much like me. Completely noncombative and agreeable. Why didn’t she just stick with me?

“This is my boyfriend, Frank,” says Charlotte needlessly. I think to myself, Isn’t a “boyfriend” something a sixteen-year-old has?

“I strongly suggest that you get your skinny cracker ass out of this nightmare before she fucks your life up and starts screwing around on you, too!” Yep, of course it’s my inner voice, but I suck it down and instead say, “Hi, Frank. Nice to meet you.”

Nice to meet you? Really?
Nice
to
meet
you? I figure maybe when I’m ninety years old and no longer give a shit what people think and don’t care whether I offend anyone or not, I’ll finally have the
cojones
to say what I mean. Or in another life, maybe.

“Wow, Murray seems to have missed you,” says Frank cluelessly.

“Yeah. He’s actually
my
dog,” I say, and I guess when it comes to my dog I have no problem standing up for him or me.

“Why don’t you take him?” Charlotte throws me a bone. “He’s not really fitting in well with us.”

I am ecstatic and pissed at the same time. I think (but don’t say) “He’s not ‘fitting in’ well with you? He’s not a secondhand couch you bought at a swap meet, he’s a DOG!!!”

But I really want him so instead I say, “Wow, that’d be great!”

I came to get a suitcase and I leave with Murray. That’s what I call a seriously good deal.

Charlotte heads to the kitchen to get his food and dish. Frank and I look at the floor in uncomfortable silence. She seems to be taking forever.

“It’s turning out to be a beautiful day,” says Dopey.

“Yes, it is,” answers Bashful.

Thankfully the Wicked Queen arrives back with the goods before any more of this banal drivel can be uttered.

When Murray sees his only possessions being handed to me across the threshold, he suddenly gets it and bolts for my car. I think he’s as happy as I am.

“Thanks,” I yell back as I follow him to the Kia.

“
That’s
the
car
you’re driving?” throws out my ex in a derisive tone. But she doesn’t know what this common but awesome automobile has been privy to. Some pretty wild shit. And I don’t feel bad the way she probably intended me to feel.

“It’s the best car I’ve ever rented,” I toss back as I open the door and Murray jumps into the back seat with a look that says “Please, let’s just go!”

I step on the hamster pedal and we zoom away from the House of Heartbreak forever. Together.

I am so happy that I break into song. It’s
The Murray Song.
I’ve sung it to him all of his short life.

Murray’s got a bum it’s kind of stinky,

And a little tiny wiener it’s a pinky.

But when nature calls, you can see he’s got no balls

When he lifts his little leg to do a tinkie.

And that goes straight into:

Murray, Murray, bo Burray

Banana fana fo Furray

Fee fi mo Murray . . .

“Oh crap, we almost made it, Mur. Too bad your name starts with an M, huh, because that last line busts us every time.”

And he thinks this dopey song is as funny as the first time he heard it four years ago. I look in the rearview mirror and he is smiling at me with his chestnut-colored eyes.