SIXTEEN
So Dad came in while Marisol was giving me a rubdown, and like seriously, man, he is the last person I want to see when I’m with Marisol, but he always comes in like she’s just part of the furniture and starts talking and he said, “There’s a woman outside to see Luke.” And then he looked at Marisol like he was afraid she’d figure out who and start talking it up around town. Well, first of all, Marisol already knew. I said, “Julie’s been sniffing around my big brother,” and Marisol said, “Yeah, she’s on the hunt for a new baby daddy because word on the street is that Brandon is moving to Colorado Springs.”
I really like the idea that Pine River has a “street,” sort of like we’re badass here instead of a bunch of yokels trying to make a living.
Anyway, I knew it was Julie outside because she’d already called the house twice today. Dad was upset about that, too, because man, she did a number on Luke a few years ago. They’d planned the whole wedding. I think she even had a dress, and then she dumped him because Mom was sick all the time, and dude, Luke moped around. I mean, Luke said that he got it, that the Kendricks had a lot of issues, and who would want to marry into issues? But he forgot that love is a two-way street, and he needed Julie the most about then, and she bailed on him. You know what they say, love is blind, and Luke, man, he could have used a white cane or a Seeing Eye dog. But dude, we’ve never seen him like that, and just between you and me and the wall, he was a total dick to all of us. And that wasn’t the end of it! I think she’s called him up four or five times since then, needing him for this or that, getting his hopes up, and then backing off.
That’s what Dad is worried about, because we can both see that it messes with Luke’s head. But I told Dad not to worry, and he said, “Are you sure? Maybe I should have a talk with him,” and I said, “No, no, no, don’t do that. No thirty-year-old man wants to have that kind of talk with his dad, and besides, I am so sure, because I know Luke better than anyone, and I asked him once, I said, ‘so, are you over Julie?’ And he said, ‘so over,’ and he wouldn’t have said that if he hadn’t meant it.”
Listen, I know Dr. Phil wants guys to communicate better because he says it every day on his show, but if I ever met him I’d ask him why, because guys don’t need a lot of words to get our points across. Luke said he was over her, and that means he is over her. Paragraph, period, close the book.
So Dad went away after that and Marisol said, “You think you know so much,” and I said, “I know you are craving my body like a chocolate sundae with whipped cream and caramel, so go ahead, baby, have at it.” And she said, “One day, Leo, you are going to talk too much,” and pinched my butt. Hard, man. There’s gotta be a bruise.
Later, after Julie left the pound cake she made for me, even though I’m not supposed to have stuff like that, and her baby pulled the tube out of my catheter, Luke came home from the ranch. He was a totally different man than the depressed one who’d left this morning. He said he took my advice—like who wouldn’t, certified genius here—and he said he’d worked it out, he’d bought us a little time. And then he casually mentions that Blue Eyes might stick around a day or so, but he says it so casually that I’m like ho, what’s up with this? I said, “What about Emma?”
Luke did one of those double takes like he had to remember who Emma was and said, “She went back to L.A.”
I said, “So what do you think? Blue Eyes isn’t going to sell us out after all?”
Luke kind of laughed, a little chuckle that said to me he had a secret, and he said, “Well, I don’t know about that, but at least I’ve got a few days to work on it.” I think he was going to tell me his plan, but then the phone rang, and Luke answered it before Dad could, and surprise! It was Julie. They talked and talked and I started to get a little antsy because man, Luke told me he was over her. But then I hear him saying he’ll be there at seven, and the next thing I know, he’s got on his good striped shirt and he’s headed for the door.
I said, “Whoa, whoa—are you going out with Julie?” And I said it like she had three eyes and no boobs. Neither of those are true, by the way. “Are you sure about that, man?”
Luke said, “Don’t make a big deal out of this, Leo. She needs some help with her car while her husband is out of town. It’s no big deal.” And he went out the door. Kind of vaulted out, like he thought I was going to ask some more probing questions. And I was. I don’t watch Dateline for nothing.
I turned up the Rockies and the Padres baseball game and I didn’t even notice Dad until he came around and stood in front of my chair with his arms folded and glaring down at me like it was my fault. “I thought you said no problem,” he said.
And I said, “Okay, let’s not panic. He hasn’t pulled out the ring yet has he?”
Dad said something terribly unkind to someone with motor neuron disease and stomped off. I have to admit, I was a little confused, too, because I would have sworn that Luke was into Blue Eyes. It’s just this vibe I’ve had.
Anyway, when he came home, I was still up, in my bed watching Top Chef and wishing I had some potatoes in a port-wine reduction. Luke looked pretty hangdog. He stood in the doorway of my room, leaning up against it, his hands in his pocket and he says, “What are you watching?”
“Top Chef. How do you feel about empanadas?”
He said, “Turns out, nothing was wrong with Julie’s car. She wanted to tell me that her marriage is splintering apart.”
“I’ve heard that,” I said.
He looked at the stained carpet (I mean seriously, were they processing wild boar in here before Dad and I moved in, or what?), and he said, “You know what sucks? What sucks is that after she dumped me six weeks before the wedding, it took me a long time to get over it. I mean, I labored like a damn ox to get past it, you know? I don’t like that she’s coming at me now. I don’t like it at all.”
I said, “Yeah, I know. So what are you going to do about it?”
I was hoping he’d say he was going to Kung Fu her ass, but Luke shrugged. He said, “It pisses me off that she can just give me a certain kind of look and I actually start thinking about it. I think, what if?”
Well color me speechless. I could have sworn that would never happen. But I figure that even geniuses have an off day every now and then. Every now and then, I said. You can trust ninety-nine point nine percent of what I tell you, and I am telling you if the Rockies don’t get some pitching talent this year, they might as well hang up their cleats because they won’t even come close to winning the division. You can take that to the bank.
Anyway, I said to my brother, “Luke, please don’t do something totally stupid. You know what Mom always said.”
He looked up, interested in that. “What did Mom always say?”
“She said never wear white underwear and a leopard doesn’t change its spots.”
Luke sort of peered at me like he couldn’t quite make me out, and he said, “So which one is a message for me this evening, genius?”
How obtuse can one guy be? I said, “Both. Just don’t do anything stupid. Julie may look good because you’ve been in the desert if you get my drift, but once a coward, always a coward, and she’s a coward. Mom didn’t say that, I did.”
He looked like he was chewing on that for a minute. He said, “Thanks for the advice. So what’s an empanada?”
Seriously, you’d think the guy grew up under a rock.