Lovesick (5 page)

Manny Milken isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. He’s more like a spoon, or possibly a spork. I suspect he sustained too many blows to the head playing high school football. Last week, he told me that my point was “mute.” At our five-year high school reunion, he asked a roomful of alums what they thought of his “chick” jeans. Manny wouldn’t know chic if it smacked him upside the head. I told him white dungarees aren’t appropriate after Labor Day, but that he still looked “fetching.” Manny told me to shut up, then went home and “prolly” looked up
fetching
in the dictionary.

I sign for Gregory’s packages. The box secured with twine has neither postage nor a sender’s return address, just Gregory’s name.

“Gimme,” Gregory says about as nice as you can say that.

I reach over the counter and he quickly snaps the box from me with a shaky hand.

“Emmanuel, pull your truck around back. Andrew will help you unload.”

I meet Manny in the back alley. It takes him ten minutes to back up ten feet. He can’t risk scratching his baby—our love for cars may be the only thing we have in common. Right after we graduated from high school, Manny bought, repaired, and repainted a vintage 1965 Superior Cadillac ambulance and launched his own delivery service. Gregory gave him his first break. Soon, another independent pharmacy in Hercules signed on, along with a few grocers and a handful of restaurants that wanted to do takeout. It’s been nearly eleven years now, and to his credit, Manny’s carved out a decent little business for himself. Over the years, Gregory’s made plenty of cutbacks, but he’ll never drop our prescription delivery service. Partly out of loyalty to Manny and partly because Gregory thinks that it’s the little things that distinguish his independent pharmacy from the evil corporate chains.

Emblazoned across the side of Manny’s ambulance and embroidered on every white cotton short-sleeved shirt he owns is that lame slogan: “Milken Deliveries: Delivering More Than Milk-In California.” He thought that up all by himself. Just ask him.

If he backs his car up any slower, Gregory will have my head.

Let’s go, let’s go
, I wave my hands.

Since his years as high school lead tackle Manny has let himself go. He now sports one of the biggest potbellies I’ve ever seen on a thirty-year-old. These days, Manny must be pushing 280.

He pops the trunk and taps on the boxes with his clipboard. I begin unloading the toiletries and prescription meds. Manny, of course, supervises.

“The original version of
The Haunting
was on Turner Classics last night,” he says, scribbling something down—I can only assume smiley faces or basic geometric shapes. “Man, is that movie terrifying. Paige would have loved it.”

Paige does love her horror flicks.

“I was going to tell her to watch it, but I didn’t have her number handy,” Manny explains.

Gotcha. Why don’t I hustle those digits right up for you?

“Just tell her that we need to talk.”

“I’m writing that down,” I say, pretending to record the urgent message in thin air.

Manny Milken has spent the better part of his life pining away for Paige. It’s Manny’s fault that Paige and I didn’t get together years ago.

Back in the early ’80s, Paige and I went from
Star Wars
to star-crossed, seeing very little of each other in the decade that followed that fateful Halloween. It wasn’t until ninth grade that we actually became true-blue friends: Paige being “Day,” and me being “Altman,” we shared homeroom together, but it was Ma dame Kuepper’s French class where things really came together.

Madame Hedwig Kuepper still teaches at Willow High, a fireplug of a woman from Normandy, France, no taller than Dr. Ruth, with streaked blond hair tightly pulled back and pasted to her head like a sculpture.

I remember the first day of class. Paige was sitting right there behind me. It was first period. I was half asleep. Madame Kuepper turned to write something on the chalkboard, and I leaned back over Paige’s desk and silently let out a huge yawn. At the height of my stretch, Paige playfully poked me in both armpits. It was petrifying, really. I blurted out the only sound one
can
make when he’s been unceremoniously stabbed in both underarms during high school French.

From that day forward, Madame Kuepper considered me
“très bizarre.”

Paige sat directly behind me during all four years of high school French, and over time, we developed a system of signals to help each other with vocabulary. For example, when Paige mistakenly used the masculine form of a feminine noun, I might start massaging my neck and biceps. (I’m sure these idiosyncrasies played right into Madame Kuepper’s impression of me.) By sitting behind me, it was easier for Paige to tip me off if I made a mistake.
One swift kick to my chair and I knew:
Mais oui, naturellement, j’aime la … LE chat noir.

By sophomore year, I still hadn’t worked up the courage to ask Paige on a date; somehow I’d convinced myself that I’d only be ready to pop that question when I could order dinner for her in fluent French. But then the Crockett Indians were playing the Piedmont Highlanders. It was the last high school football scrimmage of the season, and out of the blue, Paige wondered if I’d like to accompany her to the game.

On paper, it had all the markings of a legitimate date—just the two of us (and the rest of the student body) … at night—but then Paige suggested we meet there instead of me picking her up, and when I arrived at the game, there were “others,” among them Paige’s older sister, Lara, and Lara’s best friend, Tyler Rich, both seniors.

It was five minutes into the first quarter of the game—Paige and I locked in an intense conversation over whether the first word or words in the Peter Gabriel song “Big Time” was “higher,” “hi there,” or “hey la”—when it hit me. The football. Or at least that’s what I’m told.

I would learn later that while it was the Piedmont Highlanders’ star quarterback who was responsible for launching the pigskin, it was
our
defensive linebacker, Emmanuel Milken, who, in attempting to block the shot, tipped the ball slightly upward, causing the torpedo to hit me smack-dab in the right temple. What happened next happened quickly. Through various witness accounts, computer simulations, and expert testimony, I believe the magic bullet then ricocheted off my noggin, smacked Paige square in the forehead, knocking her off her bench and across two rows of bleachers, and then returned off Paige’s face to pop me in the nose before coming to rest.

The crowd gasped. The game stopped. It all happened so fast, I think Paige thought I head-butted her midsentence.

“You okay?” I managed to blurt out before Lara and Tyler jumped on Paige, all Secret Service-like.

Paige said nothing. We were both seeing stars. Lara and Tyler helped Paige to her feet.

“Let me help …,” I said, stumbling to rise.

“You’ve done enough!” Lara insisted.

Through tunnel vision, I can still see Paige’s protectors dragging her away toward the on-site nurse, Paige crying, “Wait, wait, wait. Hold up one sec. I’m fine. I think Andy’s the one who’s hurt.”

“I’ll be no problem,” I screamed back, one hand cupping my bloody nose, the other rubbing the side of my head.

Paige and Tyler were tight after that, though she rarely mentioned him in French class. They dated off and on for the rest of high school and possibly beyond. It would take me ten years before I’d get a second date with her. Had Manny just kept his right meat hook to himself, everything would have been so different.

“Know what these are?” Manny says, reaching inside his de livery truck and dragging a medium-sized box closer with his fingertips.

My eyes widen. The orange and light blue lettering on the box is a town trademark. The red ribbon unmistakable. Memorial Day is only two weeks away. Crockett’s Red Rockets are back, baby!

“I’ve got Gregory’s supply right here. Can I interest you in a few freebies?” he says, tapping the contraband.

“No way,” I lie. “Those are for the children.”

“What-ever. You’re such a wuss. I got my own stash anyways. One box always manages to fall off the truck, if you catch my drift.”

“Nice,” I tell him. “So you literally steal candy from babies.”

“You should shut your piehole. I’m sorry I said anything to begin with.”

Once I’ve moved all the supplies, drugs, and candy inside, no thanks to Manny, I take my California-sanctioned fifteen-minute break.

The storeroom is windowless and I nearly break my neck tripping over Gregory’s boxes. The overhead fluorescents in here flicker uncontrollably, so I flip them off, pop on the computer monitor, and begin mocking up a simple diagram of what I plan to give Paige for her birthday. I draw the quadrilaterals. The one on the left is exactly five inches tall at its highest elevation.

I can hear Gregory in the next room talking to a customer about cough syrup.
The generic is the exact same thing
, I lip-synch along
with him. I know this monologue by heart.
If you want to pay twice as much for the brand name, be my guest, but they both contain the SAME dosage of dextromethorphan.
Gregory gets too much pleasure out of saying words like
dextromethorphan, pantoprazole
, and
fluvastatin.
Actually who
doesn’t
like saying
fluvastatin.

Paige is feeling tremendous anxiety about turning thirty later this month. She’s made it abundantly clear that she cannot be held responsible for what happens the next time someone asks her if she’s excited about turning “The Big Three-Oh.”

I complete the third and smallest quadrilateral and inspect my work. Paige is going to love this one.

Homemade gifts have gone over well in the past. Paige still uses that custom makeup case I built her for Valentine’s Day. The makeup applicator worked just fine up until the accident. (Three words: temporary eye patch.) Then there was the automated plant watering system. It took me three freaking weeks to snake those tiny hoses through the walls of Gregory’s living room, affix the timers and sprinklers, and install the elaborate irrigation system. Gregory was such a sourpuss about the whole thing, but Paige was quick to call the project a “moderate success.” Most of her plants were dying, anyway. Plus who paid the rental cost of the wet/dry vac? Me.

It’s going to take a few days to track down the supplies I need to build a proper prototype of my gift in time for Paige’s birthday. Meantime, Sid and I have some other collaborative projects to attend to.

The door to the storeroom wildly swings open. White light pours in like a portal to the afterlife. I fumble to find and eventually hit the on-off switch on the computer monitor. It’s hard to know how much Gregory’s seen.

“Altman! What are you doing in here? Are you disturbed?” he asks, clearing his throat and shaking his head, dumbfounded by my oddness. “Why are you sitting in the dark?”

“I’m not” is all I can think to respond.

“You’re not sitting in the pitch-dark?”

“I wasn’t. At that exact moment I just finished catching up on some Medicare stuff, shut the computer, and you walked in.”

Neither of us believes me. We stare at each other.
Hey, quick question: Could I have your daughter’s hand in marriage?

“What?” we both ask at the same time.

“Your lips were just moving, but you weren’t saying anything,” he says.

“Sorry.”

“We’ve got a line of customers and you’re in here doing who-knows-what. I need you back on the floor,” he barks. “I’m going to be here late enough as is.”

THE deal: I supply the car. Sid supplies the vacuum cleaner.

The car:
My car—“Hulk.” A swamp green 1995 Oldsmobile Series II Cutlass Supreme coupe complete with worn pleather bucket seats, one functioning fog light, multiple dings, dual air-bags, and a 3.1 liter 3100 V6 engine. This beauty can go zero to sixty in about twenty-eight seconds—roughly twenty-five seconds longer than it takes a Ferrari. The 1995 Cutlass Supreme is among the least stolen cars in the country.

The vacuum:
Sid’s vacuum. A red and chrome 1952 Eureka Attach-O-Matic swivel-top canister unit. Most of the original clip-on tools for this flying saucer went missing decades ago, but Sid’s garage is a treasure trove—a destination hot spot at the annual Crockett townwide yard sale—and he managed to dig up the original flex hose and upholstery nozzle, its ragged brush hanging by a thread.

This is what Sid’s thinking:

“Flat screwdriver!” Sid demands, holding out a shaky hand.

He’s just about managed to pry off the vacuum cleaner’s chrome top.

“Hammer,” he says with a surgeon’s tone.

A bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering plus four decades of building naval ships, and the man’s literally bent over a vacuum cleaner in his driveway smashing it to bits with a hammer.

“Why don’t I take that,” I offer, grabbing the hammer’s handle in the upswing. “You’re sure Cookie’s cool with us using this?”

“I just bought her a new one from Target, like, five years ago. She thinks I threw this hunk-a-junk out decades back.”