Seth Baumgartner's Love Manifesto (4 page)

“What is it?” Dimitri asks.

“Nothing important.”

I power off my cell and line up what should be a tap-in, but that woman's face keeps flashing through my mind. My hands are shaking, but I swing anyway. The ball makes its way to the hole and lips out, rolling farther away than when I started.

“Tough break,” Dimitri says. “Concede?”

“Sure.”

“At the tournament, a putt like that could cost you ten grand.” Dimitri fishes his ball from the cup with the head of his putter and kicks mine toward me. “Want to go double or nothing on the next hole?”

“No way.” I scoop up my ball and tuck it into the side pocket of my cargo shorts. “I've got a feeling I won't be swinging all that well this afternoon.”

I
've been hanging out at my desk in the basement all night. My cell phone sits silent next to me. It's not like I haven't been doing anything. It's not like I'm twiddling my thumbs like a total loser, hemming and hawing over whether to call Veronica. What I'm doing is setting up my podcasting studio.

Again.

Okay, and maybe I've been doing a little hemming. But hawing? I don't even know what hawing is.

With my final paycheck from Belgian Fries Express, I went out and bought a used large-diaphragm condenser microphone. It's miles better than the old, hunk-o-crap microphone I was using. That one crackled, gave tons of
p-pop
s, and pretty much blew chunks. Not to mention that this place looks more like a real studio than ever.

Now if only I could figure out a good hook for my podcast. It's one thing to play a bunch of music, but it's another to tie it all together, to keep people listening. That's the job of a good radio personality. Otherwise, people would just listen to their own tunes. I tried podcasting about golf a few times, but it was boring and was tough to tie the topic into different songs. I tried talking about B movies, but I ran out of things to talk about. Anyhow, I'm more of a Sam Raimi fanatic than a B-movie lover.

I hem a little more and glance at my cell phone.

I flip it open and scroll through the photos.

After I look at about a dozen old images of Veronica and one Dimitri took of his bare ass that I keep meaning to delete, I get to the mystery lady. The lines on her face tell me she has some miles on her. I figure she's anywhere from a rough thirty-five to a great fifty. Her teeth are white like Tic Tacs, and her skin glows in the overhead lights. The tiny beads of a green-and-yellow single-strand necklace follow the curve of her chest and disappear into her cleavage. It's not as painful to look at the woman as it was a few days ago, but it still stings.

“Seth, honey,” my mother calls from the top of the basement stairs.

I snap my phone shut. “Yeah?”

“Are you still upset about me mentioning you on the show last night?”

“No.” I say it too soon to be believable. After fielding a half dozen phone calls and deleting twice as many unread
emails titled
baby boy
, I had burrowed under my blanket and gone to sleep.

“Come on, honey, you know as well as I do that the whole reason my show is so popular is because I stay honest with my audience. Anyhow, I left everything in general terms.”

“How many baby boys do you think people figure Gayle Baumgartner has?”

“Will it help if I apologize again?”

“Couldn't hurt,” I say.

She takes one step down the stairs. “Okay, sorry.”

“I'll get over it,” I say.

“I'm going to bed now. I've got a busy day tomorrow.”

“Sure thing.”

“I need to be out early,” she says. “I've got a conference call with the Broadcasters' Council at nine. After that, I have a meeting at the club about the upcoming benefit for the Global Association for Diabetes.”

“Shouldn't it be the Global Association for the
Prevention
of Diabetes?” I say.

“What?”

“Never mind.”

“You'll have to fend for yourself for breakfast.”

“No problem,” I say.

I hear her come down a few more steps.
“Psst!”

I roll my desk chair to the base of the stairs so I can see her. “I'm taking a look at dogs tomorrow, too,” she whispers. “Do you have any suggestions?”

I consider her poor taste in men. “How about a girl dog?”

“A bitch?” She smiles.

The word sounds funny coming from my mother's mouth, and I get a charge out of saying it back. “Yeah, a bitch.”

I want to call my mother the rest of the way down the stairs and tell her what I saw at Applebee's, but that would be the worst thing I could do. Everything would explode. Accusations would fly. They'd file for divorce. There'd be all sorts of legal battles—custody and all that. Hate, anger, fights, you name it. They'd argue over every last detail. My mom would probably get the house, and my father would have to move to some apartment with mismatched furniture and a refrigerator filled with frozen dinners and takeout containers.

I can't be the one to ruin everything. I have to figure it out.

My father's slippers make their way across the kitchen above me. The ice machine hums. Cubes drop into a glass.

“Dad's coming up, too,” my mother says.

“Okay.”

I hear the cabinet door open as my father works at pouring himself a single-barrel bourbon. It's his drink of choice. I tried a sip of that stuff once when my folks were out; it tastes like rocket fuel strained through dirty socks.

“I love that you're working on your podcasting,” my mother says. “Just don't stay up too late. I don't want you sleeping all day tomorrow.”

“All right.” I tighten the knob on the microphone stand again, but I can't seem to get the mike to settle at the right
height. It's either too low or too high.

“Get to bed soon,” my father calls down to me. “You need to be out first thing tomorrow. Job hunting.”

“Okay!” It's the first time I let any irritation slip into my voice. When I do get my next job, I'm going to buy an O
N
A
IR
sign from eBay that I can install on the basement door. Then I'll buy a crate of lightbulbs and leave the thing glowing 24/7.

I listen to my mother tread down the upstairs hallway. My father follows soon after.

I boot up my PC and start doing sound checks for a while. I learned a lot of this stuff going to the studio with my mom. Before I was old enough to stay home on my own, my mother would bring me to work during tax season so that my dad could crunch numbers. I'd sit on one of the tall swivel chairs and look at all the lights, buttons, and sliders on the soundboard. Ken, the sound guy, taught me a lot.

I'm still not used to hearing my own voice through the headphones—I doubt I ever will be—but this new microphone kicks ass. It makes my voice sound deeper, richer. I bump up the bass on the soundboard and exercise the baritone in my voice by reciting James Earl Jones lines:

“Join me, and we can rule the galaxy as father and son.”

“Simba, you must take your place in the Circle of Life.”

The whole father-son theme of
Star Wars
and
The Lion King
gets the veins in my neck pulsing, so I Google “James Earl Jones” and “famous lines” and find some that seem
more appropriate. I like the one from
Coming to America
:

“So you see, my son, there is a very fine line between love and nausea.”

Love and nausea…I repeat the line a few times until I'm satisfied with my rendition and scribble the two words on my pad.

My cell phone buzzes in my hand, and I jump. I glance at the clock: 12:34. Veronica says you're supposed to touch something blue and make a wish when the numbers on the clock are in order like that, but with all the crap that's happened these past few days, I have no idea what I'd wish for.

I flip open my phone. Veronica's number flashes across the screen.

“Hello?” I say.

“Hey.” Her voice sounds distant. “Look, I've been thinking about what happened the other day. God, I feel awful.”

The idea that she might be calling to get back with me sparks in my mind, but I push that thought back down. No sense in letting my hopes get trampled again.

“Which part?” I say.

“All of it. You know, the whole thing.”

“Yeah, well, they say bad things happen in threes, so life's got to get better now.”

“Threes? What was the third thing?”

“Mr. Burks canned me after I got back from lunch.”

“Oh, jeez. I'm sorry. How many jobs is that this year?”

“You sound like my dad.”

“Sorry.” Veronica coughs with her mouth away from the phone. “So, did you figure out who that lady with your father was?”

“No.”

“Your dad paid cash for lunch,” she tells me. “I was hoping to get her name off a credit card or something. She ordered Onion Peels and a Pinot Grigio. You got the picture I sent, right?”

“Yeah.”

“You're sure you've never seen her before?”

“Positive.”

“I had Anders snap that picture when he brought over their food.”

The thought of Anders with his sideburns, plowlike jaw, and popped collar sends acid rushing through my veins.

“Don't worry,” she says. “I didn't tell him why.”

“Praise the Lord.”

“Look, Seth, you don't have to be a dick.”

“How should I be? The past few days have sucked.”

“Yeah…well, I'm sorry about that.”

“Can't I just see you?” I ask. “Just to talk. Maybe we can figure something out.” I feel pathetic begging, but I don't care. I need to feel like something is going right in my life. I underline the word
nausea
on my pad a bunch of times and draw a double-headed arrow between it and the word
love
. “What do you say? Just ice cream or a coffee or something.”

“I don't think so, Seth.” Her voice sounds wobbly. I can
tell this call is hard for her.

“Come on, Vee. Just a week ago we were attached at the hip, and now it's like I'm a tumor you had removed.”

“You're not like a tumor.”

“Well, you're making me feel like one.”

The silence gets long and uncomfortable, and just before I'm about to ask if she's still there, she says, “I just don't think seeing each other is a good idea. Maybe it'll be fine after a while, but not right now.”

“Why not?”

“It's just not.”

“Is it because you still love me? Is it because you're afraid that if you see me, all those feelings will come back?”

“Of course I still have feelings for you, Seth. I'm not some kind of monster. I just don't feel
that way
anymore.”

I underline the word
love
on my pad. I underline it again. Then I write the words
that way
.

“Helloooo?” she says. “Anyone there?”

“I'm thinking.”

“That's part of the problem,” she says. “You're always thinking, you're always brooding, but I never know what's going on in that head of yours. Sure, you joke around and all, but you never tell me what you're really feeling.”

“But I love you.”

“Oh, yeah?” she says. I hear her shift in her chair. “What is it you love about me, Seth? Name ten things you love about me.”

A thousand things rush to mind—the way her forehead wrinkles when she gets confused, that little squeak at the
end of her laugh, how she loves to spoon peanut butter on a banana before each bite, how she props her bare feet on my windshield when we're driving so that after a week or so the prints of hundreds of tiny toes light up when oncoming headlights shine through them. I want to say something, but all the words get jammed up. I can't possibly say them all at once, but each individual one sounds corny and lame and just not enough on its own.

I lean back in my desk chair and look at the bumps on the stucco ceiling. The light makes the ceiling seem like the surface of the moon.

“How about five?” she says. “Name
five
reasons you love me.”

Now the pressure is really on, and I'll feel doubly stupid—quadruply stupid—if I say something short of profound.

Still, nothing comes out.

I clench my jaw and fight down all the emotion welling up.

“I thought so,” she says.

I fight against the logjam in my brain, but the logjam wins. “I need some time.”

Veronica sighs. “Just forget it.”

The line goes dead. I scroll to the photo of the mystery woman again. What's wrong with me? Even my boring, pathetic, balding accountant father can get a girlfriend. I try to analyze each pixel on that tiny screen to figure out something—anything—about that woman. When I'm certain I'm not going to get any clues from it, I start toying
with the other features on my phone: the tip calculator, the time-zone thing, the lame Texas hold 'em game I downloaded for $4.99 the week I thought I might quit school and make a go as a professional gambler.

My phone is a piece of crap. The thing is almost four years old. It's the same one my folks got for me when I was thirteen—back when my mother was paranoid about me being abducted. She got me the one with the GPS in it so she could track where I was every moment of every day. It was weird carrying that thing around, like someone was breathing down my neck all the time. But I knew better than to turn down the offer. A phone is a phone.

Thinking about the GPS tracker brings James Bond's tracking device to mind again, and I can practically hear the gears whirring in my brain. Before I have a chance to stop myself, I bound up the stairs and head out into the garage. I forward my calls to my mom's cell, mute all the functions on my own phone, and tuck it between the seats of my father's Beemer. I head back inside to the kitchen. I flip the battery around in my mother's phone so it goes dead and tug the charger halfway out of the outlet. When she picks up her cell in the morning, she'll figure she left it off the charger. She'll figure she didn't plug it in well enough and leave it here when she heads out. That'll leave her phone—and her GPS tracker—for me until at least midafternoon—until she's done with her lunch with the Junior League alumni.

My dad loves to talk about how you can't accomplish anything unless you're up and out early. He says the way
to get ahead in life is to make your move before anyone else. He's always saying the early bird catches the worm. I wonder how hard it would be for the worm to catch the early bird. For me, Seth Baumgartner, to catch my father.