Chapter Fifteen - Tyler
“Tyler? What’re you—?”
I put my hand up to silence Evan as I march past the fancy holiday dinner he and Robert are having with all the well-to-do gays of Las Vegas. I glance to see if Siegfried and Roy might actually be there in person, just because I’m curious, but they’re not. I don’t think.
“Sorry to interrupt,” I say. “Don’t mind me.” I keep marching down the hallway to the guest room (there are like five guest rooms, but I just mean the one I’m staying in), and stomp inside, slamming the door behind me.
I start looking for things I can punch. But it’s not my house. I just know I can smash through the drywall. No question. But it ain’t mine to smash. So instead, I wind up stalking the space like a caged tiger. (Shit, if Siegfried and Roy are here, I hope they stay away. I don’t want whichever one it was who got attacked by the tiger back in the day to have a flashback and freak out. With everything else I’m dealing with, I don’t need that guilt too.)
My fingers dig into my palms as I clench them into fists, and since I’ve stopped cutting my nails too, they draw blood that trickles down my wrists.
There’s a knock on the door as it opens.
“Dude? What’s—Holy shit, did you cut your wrists!?” Evan shouts, darting into the room, and grabbing at my hands to look.
I pull away and try to swat him off me. “No! No! I didn’t! Will you stop fuckin’ grabbing at me?”
He puts his hands in the air and backs away. “What’s going on?” he asks. Then his eyes widen and he leans his head back. “What happened? Did Maddie—?”
“No. No. God, no. That was great. We fucked.”
“You… fucked?”
“Yeah.”
There’s a moment. Evan nods as if processing.
“Were… her parents there?”
“When we fucked? No! Jesus. They were in the lobby.”
“OK. So?”
“We saw my dad.”
“Your—? You saw your dad?”
I nod.
“While you were fucking?”
“No, dude! In the lobby!”
This is the most ridiculous conversation I’ve ever had.
“OK, OK, got it,” he says. “So… Shit. How’d that go?”
“Fuckin’ great, man. We hugged and kissed like it was old times. Then we tossed a baseball around like in Field of Dreams. It was a goddamn Thanksgiving miracle.”
Evan sighs and nods. “Yeah. OK.”
“He didn’t recognize me.”
There’s a pause and Evan cocks his head.
“Come again?”
“You heard me.”
I sit down on the edge of the bed. After a second, Evan sits beside me.
“It’s weird,” he says. “I haven’t even really thought about your dad. It never occurred to me that you were bound to run into each other sooner or later.”
“Yeah, I hadn’t really thought about it either.”
“Do you wanna—?”
“Whatever you’re gonna ask… no, is the answer. I just wanna fucking sit here for a second and get my shit together. Fuck! Maddie and I had like a breakthrough, or whatever, and… shit.”
Evan sighs. (It strikes me suddenly that people sigh around me a lot. Like I make the whole fucking world exhausted.) “She was glad to see her folks?” he asks.
I nod. “Yeah. And then she and I talked and… But fuck it. There’s no chance she’s gonna wanna deal with this shit too, on top of everything else she’s already carrying.”
“Well, that’s stupid.”
“Yeah? Is it? If you were her and struggling with all your own crap, how would you like to take on somebody else’s bullshit problems too? I was trying to fucking be there for her. Not make her take care of a six-foot-three-inch man-baby.”
Evan kind of laughs, which sort of annoys me.
“What?” I spit out.
“I’m just picturing you in a diaper. Shit’s funny.”
I don’t know how he does it. I really don’t. But I kind of smile.
And then there’s another knock on the door and it swings open.
“Hey,” says Robert, standing there looking like the most well-put-together guy at the polo club. (I’m not just saying that. I know. I went to a polo match in Dubai.) “Sorry to interrupt,” he continues, “but—”
“I know,” Evan says. “We have guests. I’ll be right out.”
“No. That’s not… Maddie’s here.”
Evan and I both give looks that would best be accompanied by that sound Scooby-Doo makes.
“Seriously?” I ask.
“Yep.” Robert nods. And that’s all he says. (Something I’ve learned about genuinely successful people—as opposed to accidentally successful ones like me—they don’t use five words when one will do.)
I stand. Evan stands. Robert smiles, turns on his heel and heads down the hall.
I look at Evan. He shrugs at me. I start off to follow Robert. Evan stops me. He grabs one of my dirty t-shirts from off the floor, wipes the blood off my hands and wrists, throws the t-shirt down, pats me on the back, and sends me out into the hall.
As I reach the foyer (which I pronounce foy-YAY, because Robert does and I assume he knows), I find Robert standing with Maddie, who looks so beautiful to me that I want to fall on my knees. Because that’s what you do in the presence of beauty.
“Hi,” I say.
“Hey,” she says back.
OK. Salutations are out of the way. What now?
“How did you know…?” I begin.
“Just took a shot,” she says. “I, uh, Evan gave me the address when we saw each other and so…”
Evan steps over and gives her a hug. “Great to see you,” he says. “Oh, um, you met Robert, obviously.”
“Yes,” she says, nodding to him. “Hi. Beautiful home.”
“We like it.” Robert smiles back. “Evan, we should…”
“Yeah,” Evan says, “Sorry. We have… Um, if you guys wanna… you know, we’ll be in the dining room. Just, y’know, if you wanna.”
Then he and Robert head off, leaving us standing there. A beautiful red-headed angel, and Brad Pitt at the end of Kalifornia. (He looks pretty fucked up by the end of that movie, is the point I’m making to myself.)
“He really loves you,” Maddie says, meaning Evan.
“I love him too.” I do. I follow up with, “Where are your parents?”
“At the hotel. I told them to go on and eat without me.”
“Maddie, no. I—”
“It’s OK,” she says, stepping in toward me. “I’ll see them tomorrow. It’s fine.”
She looks down like she wants to maybe take my hand. Or maybe it’s just wishful thinking on my part, because she doesn’t.
“You didn’t have to come here.”
“Yeah,” she says. “No shit.”
“Yeah. So why are you here?”
“I dunno.” She shrugs. “To show you what a person is supposed to do when someone is in need, and make you feel guilty?”
A hint of a smile skitters across her lips.
“Oh, yeah?” I ask, also smirking.
“Maybe,” she says. “Does it?”
“What? Make me feel guilty?
She nods.
“A little,” I say.
“Good.”
We are now both smiling genuinely.
“So, what do you want to…?” I start to ask.
“Can we eat something?” she says. “I’m fucking starving.”
“You are so full of shit!” the big guy with the polka-dot bow tie and tan blazer says to his equally big and mustachioed boyfriend in the paisley smoking jacket.
“I swear to God,” says Mustache, “Gerry knows Cher’s stylist and he told Gerry that it looks just as good as a nineteen-year old’s!” (If someone heard just that part of the story, without context, Lord knows what they would think it’s about.)
Everyone laughs uproariously. Me and Maddie included. Evan and Robert’s friends are the most fun group I’ve been around in a long time. They keep giving me shit about my beard. Mustache is a salon owner and tells me that he’s “dying to get his hands on me.” Which in turn led his bow-tied boyfriend to shout, “Me first!” and again, laughter ensued. They just seem like a fun bunch.
They’re also all pretty drunk on wine and turkey.
“So, Maddie,” a bald guy with more rings than fingers says as he leans across the table, “what do you do? Model? You must be a model. You’re gorgeous! I would kill for that hair!”
“Bitch, you’d kill for any hair,” says a short African-American guy.
More laughter. But not from Maddie. Shit. What’s she supposed to say? She’s a stripper? She can’t tell them that she works in real estate drone…ing, or whatever it’s called. She doesn’t really. And if she presents that in front of Robert, like this… Fuck. She’s in an impossible position.
I’m just about to knock over a glass of wine on purpose to distract everyone when Robert chimes in and says, “We’re working together.”
If I could capture the look on Maddie’s face and hold it forever, I absolutely would.
“Really?” asks Mustache. “On what, do tell?”
“The Hoover Dam project.”
If Maddie had wine in her mouth at this moment, I swear she’d do a spit take.
The look on Evan’s face as he looks at Robert is one of absolute, unequivocal, pure love. Hell, the look on my face as I look at Robert is probably the same.
“In fact, Maddie,” Robert says, cool as the cucumbers in the cucumber salad (Which was really very delicious. There must have been some mint in the dressing. Anyway. Not important), “What I really need is some topographical coverage of it at night. Which is impossible to get any way other than the drone. When do you think you can make that happen?”
It’s like one of those old commercials where everyone stops what they’re doing to hear what the broker’s advice is. All heads turn to Maddie.
“Uh,” Maddie says. “This…week…end?”
“Great,” says Robert. And then just like in the commercials, everyone goes back to laughing and joking and eating.
Maddie turns to me and kind of whispers, “What. Just. Happened?”
“I think you just got into business with Robert Vanderbilt,” I whisper back.
“Jesus,” she says.
“Can I take you?” I ask her.
“What? Whatayou mean? Take me where?”
“The dam. If you’re really gonna go there this weekend, can I take you? I know one of the guys who watches it at night. I can get him to let us have full access.”
“I have a drone. I don’t need full access.”
“OK. Then can I take you because it’ll be pretty and nice and I’ve always been kind of obsessed with it and I just kinda wanna take you someplace and like do something with you and have it be cool and not weird and please don’t make me beg and come on don’t be an asshole lemme please just take you on a date to the Hoover Dam?”
She stares at me like I’m crazy. Which is the right stare to have.
“Did I say all that aloud?” I ask.
She shakes her head a tiny bit and laughs.
“My parents are here until Saturday afternoon,” she says. “And I have to…um…work…Saturday night, so…”
“Awesome. I’ll pick you up from work on Saturday.”
“I get off at five AM.”
“I’ll bet I can talk Pete into letting you off at midnight.”
Somebody asks me to pass the rolls. I do. I’m a gentleman.
“Tyler…”
“Come on. This is incredible and totally weird but still incredible. You just got conscripted into service by the most powerful real estate dude in Vegas. I thought this is what you wanted.”
She looks down at her plate. Pushes some peas around. “It is.”
She doesn’t sound sure. But before I can say anything to her, Bow-Tie tings his butter knife against his water glass. “Everybody. If I may…” He lifts his wine glass. “To Evan and Robert, for having us over to their warm, wonderful home. And to this glorious table of gorgeous people.” There’s some assorted joking about how gorgeous we all are. Then, “All of us here truly have much to be thankful for.”
I look at the table of happy people. I look at Robert. I look at Evan.
I look at Maddie.
Bow-Tie raises his glass high in the air and we all toast that which we have to be thankful for.
And for the first time in a long, long fucking time, I’m not faking it.