From: Dolly Vargas [email protected]
Date: March 16 8:42:10 PM EST
To: Reed [email protected]
Subject: Lyrexica Offer
Are your ears ringing? Because I’ve been talking about you all day, darling. Lyrexica has upped their offer again:
Seven figures!
That’s right. One million dollars for your beautiful, shaggy head.
I know. I can hardly believe it myself. I’d like to think it has something to do with my amazing negotiating skills.
But I think it probably has more to do with the fact that your old buddy Cobb Cutler has made a complete jackass of himself on social media. Who is stupid enough to post that his divorce from a woman he barely lived with is more painful than the loss of his own father, let alone the death of his beloved dog? That’s simply un-American.
A guy with parents who tried to hoodwink a waitress with a phony stamp looks pretty good in comparison!
Be sure to get back to me soon, though. You can only ignore these big pharma phonies for so long.
Oh, and I finally figured out where I’d heard of Bloomville: A former colleague of mine, Tim Grabowski, left a successful job in IT to open up an antique shop or a bookstore or something ridiculously quaint like that. So be sure to tell him hi from me when you see him!
Anyway, did I ever tell you that you’re my favorite client? You and that brilliantly shiny head of hair of yours.
XOXOX
Dolly
Dolly Vargas
Vargas Talent Management
Los Angeles, CA
From: Reed [email protected]
Date: March 16 11:27:21 PM EST
To: Lyle [email protected]
Subject: Her
Dear Uncle Lyle,
I tried what you said in your last email about going back and reexamining decisions made when one was in one’s youth, then changing one’s behavior.
It didn’t work.
In fact, it was a huge disaster.
I saw Becky again today, and I actually convinced her to spend time with me alone—well, not alone, exactly. We went to Matsumori’s for drinks, and somehow drinks turned into appetizers, and then appetizers turned into dinner, and before we knew it—well, before she knew it, anyway, because I was hoping for it all along—we’d spent the whole night together.
Not like that. Get your mind out of the gutter. Ha, kidding, I know you’re not like that. Well, of course you ARE like that, but you keep it to yourself like a gentleman. We spent the evening together, but it was only dinner.
It was exactly like it used to be, only better, because neither of us had a curfew and we didn’t have to worry about finishing our homework (not like I ever worried so much about that).
It was like no time had gone by at all since we’d last been together—she’s exactly the same, only sadder, I guess, because of her dad dying, and her having had to take over the family business. Did you know she’s only ever been out of the state a couple of times? And never out of the country. She never had the money or the time. She wanted to know all about my trips to Scotland and China.
It made me feel good, thinking about taking her overseas. I could see us traveling together, showing her things she’s never seen before, being with her when she tries haggis and dim sum for the first time. Well, maybe not haggis, but you get what I’m saying.
Is it weird that I feel this way? Is it weird that I’ve traveled the whole world and met women from nearly every country, and the one I still have the most fun with and am most excited by is the one from my hometown, whom I’ve known since kindergarten?
Is it wrong that I want to take her away from her terrible job cleaning up other people’s messes and show her what she’s been missing? There’s an incredible world out there that she’s never experienced.
She’s never seen Paris. She’s never seen your orchids. She’s never seen the month of March without snow!
But somehow I think I managed to fall for the one woman who is more into books and binders than she is into private jets and beaches.
Still, after we left the restaurant tonight (which didn’t happen until closing time—they started putting the chairs on the tables, so they could sweep beneath them, which goes to show how deep into our own conversation we were: we didn’t even notice we were the only two customers left in the place), and started walking towards our cars, something came over me.
Maybe it was because the moon was shining and the air was so crisp and sharp in that way it never gets in LA because it so rarely dips below freezing. Someone somewhere in Bloomville had a fire going in their fireplace, and I could smell that good clean scent of burning pine.
Anyway, even though I know now that it was the worst idea in the world, I did something terrible:
I went in for a good-night kiss.
(Look, you’ve told me what went on in the Seventies on Fire Island. You can bear with me for this, which is tame in comparison.)
I was just feeling so happy and free and hopeful about the future . . . and, okay, maybe a little drunk from the sake and the smell of the burning pine.
And she looked so beautiful in the moonlight, and she was smiling, and I didn’t think it would be a bad thing.
So I reached out and took her hand and pulled her over to me, and she didn’t stop smiling, or anything. She just looked up, kind of inquisitively, like, “Yes?”
I couldn’t help myself. I cupped her face in my hands and I kissed her, the way I’d kissed her a thousand times before, back when we used to go out.
Only this time there was something different about it.
This time it wasn’t sweet and pleasant and fun, like I remember it being, the way I’d wanted it to be.
This time it was deep and dark and serious.
She didn’t turn it that way. I did. The minute I touched her, this . . . longing just about kicked me in the solar plexus. I don’t know any other way to describe it. All I knew was that this time, I wasn’t letting her go, and that this was a kiss for keeps, because even though it wasn’t like old times, it was. All the old memories of those nights in the boathouse and her bedroom and my bedroom came flooding back . . .
. . . only this was no trip down memory lane. It was a rocket ride.
I don’t think I ever would have let her go, either, if she hadn’t suddenly pushed me away—recoiled, maybe, is a better word for it. She recoiled from me—and gasped.
When she’d staggered what she must have decided was a safe distance (about ten feet away, which is nice to know. She feels like she needs to keep a ten foot parameter between us), she cried, her eyes blazing in the moonlight, “I’ve got a boyfriend, remember?”
Can you believe it? She boyfriended me!
I nearly lost it. Boyfriend? What boyfriend? We spent the whole evening drinking sake and eating spicy tuna rolls, while her best friend’s mother brought out special after special, such as miso-marinated black cod and hamachi kama, telling us how glad she was to see us, especially since “Leeanne” was on her way home and was going to be so glad to see us, too.
The implication was “see us back together,” as in “a couple,” and Becky never batted an eye.
Then, after we have the most explosive kiss in the history of time, the boyfriend suddenly matters?
And this boyfriend, let me tell you, I checked him out. You bet I did! He owns just about the lamest wine and cheese place you’ve ever seen. If it were in Palm Springs, you and all your friends would drive right past it since it would be filled with trophy wives in their yoga pants drinking pinot noir because their neurologists told them it won’t give them migraines.
Plus, he’s got a beard, and wears slim fit crewnecks to show off his biceps.
But she likes him anyway!
“Besides,” she goes on. “I thought we agreed to keep this professional.”
This was the best kiss of the century, and she wants to keep it professional!
What could I say? What could I do?
I know I’m the one who messed it all up.
But how could I have stayed ten years ago? I couldn’t. You know I couldn’t.
And deep down, she knows it, too. Just like she knows I couldn’t have asked her to come with me. Unlike me, she was college material. She got that great scholarship. She had to go.
That’s the real reason I couldn’t answer any of her phone calls or letters. What was I going to say? Ask her to wait for me? I had no idea how long it was going to take me to make something out of myself. That wouldn’t have been fair to her. It was better to make a clean break of it.
Enrique—you know Enrique—thinks I should have called her years ago, and that I don’t have a snowball’s chance of getting her back now.
He’s probably right. I’m sure he and the other caddies are taking bets on how badly I’m going to lose at the Palm because of all this. There’s no way I’m ever going to get my swing back or my head on straight in time for the tournament after this.
I don’t know what I was thinking. I told her I wasn’t here to rescue her. So what was I doing? It’s obvious she loves her life here. The way she talked about it tonight . . . she was interested in the places I’ve been, but more the way someone is interested in the plot of a movie they’d like to see someday, but aren’t feeling deprived for having missed, because they’ve seen plenty of other good movies.
God, why am I telling you all this? You didn’t even ask. You wanted to know how Mom and Dad are doing.
Well, the answer is bad. You should see the basement. It’s like a black pit of despair. How does anyone let anything get that way? I never want to end up living like that.
But Becky is going to save them. Because that’s what she does. She thinks someone might even be defrauding them. She doesn’t understand how they could have so little money and yet so little to show for it. She wants us kids to look into it. Because that’s another thing she does—rights injustices, or tries to, when she sees them.
I should have known it was going to turn out like this. I should have followed my first instinct, gone straight to Orlando, and just sent a check to help out Mom and Dad. I don’t know what I was thinking.
Okay, I’ve stayed up too late, writing this. Tomorrow I have to get up early to go to the house to finish packing. Also because the girls get up at the crack of dawn, which is apparently what small children do. They like to burst into my room screaming, “Wake up, Uncle Reed! Wake up!”
This is not as delightful as it might sound.
I don’t expect a reply to this. I’m aware that you’re busy with the Expo, and also that I sound like a lunatic. I feel like one. I feel like I’m going slowly insane. I got a huge endorsement deal today (for a pharmaceutical product. You would not approve), and I can’t even be happy about it, because what is the point of having a lot of money if the woman you love (or man, sorry to be gender-specific) doesn’t love you back?
I’ll be glad when this is all over, and I can head off to Florida and play and get this woman (person) out of my system for good.
Although actually it won’t be for good, because I doubt I’ll ever get her out of my system.
Anyway, sorry to burden you with all this. I’m going to bed. Good luck with the Expo. I hope your Phalaenopsis amabilis wins.
Love,
Your Favorite Nephew (although possibly not after you’ve read this),
Reed