Seth Baumgartner's Love Manifesto (6 page)

“Then what's your excuse?” I say.

“Excuse for what?”

“Why don't you have a girlfriend? Why haven't you
ever
had a girlfriend?”

“I did,” Dimitri says. “Two summers ago. Clarisse. The one from—”

“Yeah, the one from Oregon. Starbucks Special.”

“It's true.”

I lie back on the scorching wood of the picnic table and close my eyes to the sun. It definitely doesn't suck to be unemployed in the summertime. Okay, it's true I could use some gas money and some dough to buy a few choice items. But there is something to be said for chilling at Poindexter's and tanning all afternoon.

But gas money wins out.

“Do you know if there are still positions open at the golf club?” I say. “The thought of going back to the mall makes me want to hurl.”

“Go down and talk to Mr. Haversham,” Dimitri says. “There are always openings for the crap jobs. The trick is to try and pick something where you'll meet tons of girls.”

“I told you. I'm not interested in hooking up with members' daughters.”

“Why not?”

“Rich girls?” I say. “Forget it. Too high maintenance.”

“But you're a rich
guy
. It's a perfect fit.”

“We're not rich. My father does the books for the club. We get a major break on membership.”

“Have you ever seen my house?” Dimitri says. “Compared to me, you're rich.”

I can't say anything to that. Dimitri's family isn't what I'd call poor, but his house is small. It's in one of those old blue-collar neighborhoods near the highway, which I guess fits, being that his father is a welder and his mother works in the lingerie department at Macy's.

My dad is just about as white-collar as you can get—too-tight knee-high black socks that leave pressure rings around his calves and everything. As for my mom, she's as corporate as you can get: a rising star in broadcasting, number one source of advertising dollars at the station, and on the board of three different local charities.

The sun bakes my face like my head is under the heat lamps at Belgian Fries Express. I put on my sunglasses, and my retinas thank me. My hand traces the outline of the cell phone in my pocket.

“Are you serious those girls hated the idea of the podcast?” I ask Dimitri.

“Well, no, actually. A few of them just shrugged. Audrey and some other girl said it was cute.”

“Cute?”

“Cute and interesting.”

I sit up. “Cute and interesting is good.”

“And the brunette with the braids said you sounded deep.”

“Deep.” I glance at the girls. They're most of the way through their soft-serve cones. The brunette's hand
is covered with melted ice cream and rainbow sprinkles. “Deep is good.”

“Deep is real good, but you need your downtime, remember?”

I can't take it anymore. I pull out my phone, flip it open, and check on my father. His car is at the intersection of New Scotland. He's turning right. I need to get my mom's phone back before she gets home from the club. I'm risking getting snagged, but this is too important.

“You doing anything right now?” I ask.

“What'd you have in mind?”

I pull out my keys and jingle them. “Just a cruise around town. No big whoop.”

“I
can't really tell.” Dimitri squints at my mom's phone some more. “It looks like he's stopped on New Scotland Avenue—somewhere near the elementary school.”

I run through all the businesses I remember in that neighborhood and all the reasons he couldn't possibly be going to them:

Optician: He doesn't wear glasses.

Italian deli: Prosciutto gives him indigestion.

Gas station: He only fills the tank at that place where it's a nickel cheaper.

Hair salon: He's not the highlights-and-perm type.

Wine shop: Mom usually takes care of that.

Anyhow, there's nothing in that part of town he couldn't get right where he works. Nothing he'd need to run all the way over here for during lunch hour. I hang a left onto Ten Eyck and step on the gas to try to beat the light on
Matilda, but the car in front of me slows down when it turns yellow.

I stomp on the brakes. The shoulder strap tugs at my shoulder. The antilocks vibrate under my foot. Dimitri braces himself against the dashboard with his hand. My car comes to a stop inches from the car in front of us.

“What the f—?” he says.

I pound the steering wheel. I pound it again.

“Who cares what your father does on his lunch hour, Seth? What's with all the espionage?”

“I need some tunes.”

Dimitri connects my mp3 player and, as usual, “Dueling Banjos” cranks out of my speakers. For some reason that song is stuck on my iPod. Whenever I turn the thing on, it plays full blast. It doesn't come on at the beginning, either, when the banjos are quiet and slow; it comes on right in the middle when the instruments are going apeshit, when those banjos are really dueling.

“Jeez, Seth!” Dimitri says. “Haven't you figured out how to get this freakin' song off here yet?” He forwards to the next tune.

“Still working on it.”

“Isn't that song from that movie? What's it called?
Deliveryman
or something?”

“
Deliverance
,” I say. “Never seen it.”

“My dad told me never to watch that one. He said it would scar me for life.”

“How bad could it be?” I say.

Old movies are the last thing I want to talk about right
now, but Dimitri has no idea how close I am to throwing up, screaming, or doing something completely insane, and I want to leave it that way.

“
Deliverance
,” he says. “It actually sounds sort of uplifting.”

The light changes. I head up to Marwill and take a right. “Any movement on the GPS?”

Dimitri studies the screen. “Nope.”

“There's a convenience store down that way and a pizza place,” I offer.

“Those are farther up,” Dimitri says. “He's closer to the firehouse. Maybe he's volunteering.”

I don't even bother responding to that one. We head down Academy Road, and I hang a left onto New Scotland. My hands are starting to shake, so I grip the wheel tighter.

“You haven't answered my question, Seth.” Dimitri wiggles my mom's cell phone in the air. “What's with all the
Bourne Identity
crap?”

I hate lying to Dimitri, but what choice do I have? This is stuff I definitely don't want anyone else to know. I can just see us sitting at a restaurant when we're thirty, both of us with our jobs and our lives. Maybe we'll still be best buds, maybe not. Maybe we'll both be married, maybe not. But none of it will matter. Regardless of what happens between now and then—what schools I've gone to, what degrees I've gotten, or how many millions of dollars I've made—all that Dimitri will think about is how I'm that guy whose father cheated on his mother.

So I tell him the first lie that pops into my head.
“Anniversary,” I say. “My folks' anniversary. It's next month.”

“So what?”

“So my mom thinks my dad is going to forget again. He's forgotten three of the past five or something.” I snatch my player from Dimitri and skip to a better song, then drop it into the cup holder. “My mom asked me to keep on my dad's back about it so he won't forget.”

Dimitri's stare practically burns twin holes into the side of my face. “Are you serious?” he says. “You made me leave that carload of grade-A hotties at Poindexter's and drive across town in your four-hundred-degree car to see whether or not your dad is buying your mom an anniversary gift? Couldn't you have just asked him?”

I get a heavy feeling in my stomach because I have to drag out the lie some more. “It's their twentieth anniversary coming up,” I say. “It's important to her.”

“Is that cotton? Jade? Sapphire?”

“Huh?”

“You know. That list of traditional and modern anniversary gifts? It's on the back of every Hallmark calendar. What's twentieth?”

“I don't even know what you're talking about.”

“Then how are you supposed to help your father get your mom a gift?”

“I'm not supposed to help him pick a gift,” I say. “I just have to make sure he gets one. I think she'd be happy with a ream of printer paper.”

“Paper?” Dimitri puffs out a laugh. “That's
first
anniversary, traditional.”

“This is important to my mom,” I say. “You know, that he remembers.”

“If it's so important, why is she on your back to dog him about it? It should only matter if he remembers on his own.”

I'm out of lies, so I fiddle with my sun visor and ignore his question. The light at New Scotland turns red, and I give my brakes another workout.

“Easy on the pedal there,” Dimitri says. “I just never took you for a Stormtrooper is all. I had you pegged as Chewbacca.”

“Chewbacca?”

“What's wrong with Chewbacca? He's cool.”

“As if,” I say. “I'm Boba Fett all the way.”

“You ain't no Boba Fett, Seth. If anyone is Boba, it's me.” Dimitri turns the air-conditioning to full blast, plants his arms on the dashboard, and airs out his armpits.

I make a left onto New Scotland.

“Are we coming up on the dot?” I gesture to my mom's phone. “Are we getting close?”

Dimitri peers at the screen. “Damn close. He should be right ahead of us, a few hundred yards.”

I slow the car and roll up New Scotland Avenue. Before long, I make out my father's Beemer. It's facing us from the opposite side of the street, parked in front of the flower shop. I had forgotten all about the flower shop. It's the one my parents used when my grandfather died back when I was seven or eight.

I remember listening to my grandfather talk to my dad at the hospital. He said that when he croaked he wanted a simple funeral—no fancy stuff. Plain pine box. Graveside service. In fact, he told my father, “Jam a hambone in my ass, let a dog drag me around, and bury me wherever that dog lets go.” Nonetheless, when the funeral came, my mom insisted we do a few nice arrangements—something tasteful and cheery.

I hang a right and hook around the block so I can nose out of one of the side streets. A wall of shrubs and a fence provide perfect cover.

“There are, like, a million spots over there,” Dimitri says, pointing toward the flower shop. “You don't want me walking in this heat, do you? I'll have a stroke.”

“I'd rather park here.”

“Okay, Jason Bourne.” Dimitri unbuckles his seat belt and reaches for the door handle. “Off we go.”

I grab his arm, maybe a bit more urgently than I should. “Hang on,” I say. “Let's just see what he comes out with.”

“Who cares?” Dimitri says. “Either he's getting her flowers or he's ordering her flowers. Your dad doesn't strike me as a Beanie Baby sort of guy.”

“It's like you said. I want to see what he does on his own. You know, without my help.”

Dimitri slouches in his seat. “You're acting freakin' weird.”

I let the car idle. Dimitri fiddles with the music until he finds a song that suits him. While we're waiting, I scan the area. There's no sign of a green Integra with a F
OR
S
ALE
sign
in the window, which takes a load off my shoulders. But it also makes me wonder why I'm sitting here. Even if he's in there buying flowers for his girlfriend, he could always tell me they're for Mom. And what would I do if I did snag him in the act? Would I just run up and clothesline him? Would I curse him out? Or would catching him just make him sneakier the next time around?

I clutch the steering wheel until my fingers go numb. The truth is, it won't matter what he's holding when he comes out of that store. He could come out with a giant heart-shaped Mylar balloon with the words
For My Beloved Concubine
printed across it and tell me he bought it for Mom as a joke. The man obviously has no trouble lying.

“We have movement,” Dimitri says, his hands curled in front of his face as though he's holding a pair of binoculars. “Suspect is on the move. And…holy crap, who's that?”

My eyes swivel to the flower shop just in time to see my father start down the porch stairs with one arm around the mystery lady. She walks snug against his body like he's sheltering her from the sun.

Dimitri taps my leg a few times. “Who the hell is—?”

“Shhhh!”

My father leads the woman to his car and opens the passenger door for her. There's no doubt it's the lady from Applebee's. She lifts a red rose to her nose. Her shoulders rise and fall as if she's taking a deep breath. My father helps her into his car, shuts the door carefully, and walks around to his side.

I know I should go over there. I know I should confront
him. Throw myself onto the hood of his car or something. What better time to do it than when she's with him? Yet something glues me to my seat. All I can do is stare.

“What the hell?”

“Shhhhh!”
I say again.

Within seconds, my father's taillights go on and he pulls away. He disappears around the next corner into the maze of Albany's side streets.

Some free download-of-the-week from some nobody band starts to pump from my speakers. I tell myself to delete it as soon as I get home. I'm glad it's not a song I'm likely to hear again—on the radio or anyplace else—because my mind will always associate it with seeing my father walk out of a flower shop with some woman who is not my mother.

When my father's car is long gone, when the song is over and I'm just staring at an empty parking space, Dimitri taps me on the shoulder. “Who was that woman, Seth?”

My head barely shakes from side to side. “Probably just his secretary or something.”

“Why would he be buying his secretary a rose in the middle of the summer?” Dimitri asks. “Administrative Assistants' Day is in the spring.”

“Drop it, all right?”

“Today is Canada Day,” he says. “I heard it on the radio. But I don't even think Canadians buy flowers for Canada Day. That's more of a picnics-and-parades sort of holiday.”

“Just drop it.”

“Hot secretary, though.”

I glare at Dimitri and he shuts up. He turns off the music as if he knows how much I can't stand to hear it.

I pull out onto New Scotland Avenue and hang a right, away from where my father drove.

Dimitri raises his hand like he's asking my permission to speak.

“Yeah?”

“Maybe she's helping your father pick out an anniversary gift for your mom and the lady in the shop just gave her that flower. You know, a day-old rose or something.”

My brain scrambles to fill in the blanks—to make Dimitri's explanation work. And it might have worked if I hadn't seen the two of them at Applebee's or if Veronica hadn't seen them all over each other in the mall parking lot. Or if my anniversary story wasn't utter bullshit. My parents' anniversary isn't until February.

“Yeah,” I manage to say.

The truth is that my father has no good reason to be here. And he especially has no good reason to be here with that woman.

I grab my mother's cell phone from Dimitri and scroll through the saved numbers. I get to the one Veronica gave me—the one she got from the F
OR
S
ALE
sign in the mall parking lot.

“What are you doing?” Dimitri asks.

My thumb hovers over the Send button. “I was thinking of taking a look at a used car.”