Seth Baumgartner's Love Manifesto (12 page)

Intro Music: “Bleeding Love” by Leona Lewis

Hi there, and welcome to
The Love Manifesto,
and this is a special emergency report. Holy crap is this report special. Something so bizarre happened tonight that I couldn't get home fast enough to tell you about it. Excuse me, I couldn't get to the multimillion-dollar studio fast enough. Jesus! It stings like a sonuvabitch. Hang on.

Okay. There. I had to take off my blood-soaked shirt. I'm sitting here bare chested and wounded, doing this podcast because that's how important
The Love Manifesto
is to me.

So anyhow, I figured out where my father's mistress lives, and she came at me. I was sitting in my car at her
apartment complex, minding my own business, drinking my patented seven-layer cherry and Coke Slurpee mix, when the skank came charging out of her apartment like Wolverine and attacked me!

She clawed me right across the shoulder with her deadly talons.

I swear this woman is insane.

She must hone her claws to razor-sharp points for just such an occasion. I'm bleeding like a stuck pig over here—not that I've ever seen a stuck pig bleed or anything.

Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
: “Nobody makes me bleed my own blood—nobody!”>

So the question remains: What the heck is my father doing with this woman? Not only is she not my mother, but she is a raving lunatic.

Jeez, my shorts are soaked from the Slurpee that dumped onto my lap. Hang on while I take them off.

Okay, I'm back. It's a good thing this isn't a vlog. Otherwise you'd be able to see me in all my glory, wearing little more than my Chuck Ts and my stained-pink-on-the-front boxer briefs.

While I clean my wounds and deal with my uncomfortable crotchular stickiness, I'll play some music for you. This one is particularly appropriate. Stay tuned to
The Love Manifesto
for more exciting news as it
develops. As for me, I think I might need a rabies shot and a transfusion.

Oh, and if you're dying for another reason why I love my ex-girlfriend, here's one: She never clawed me across the shoulder or drew freakin' blood.

Outro Music: “Lyin' Ass Bitch” by Fishbone

“J
ust in case,” Audrey says. She hands me a small object wrapped in wax paper and begins to walk alongside me as I weave my way through the employee parking lot to the clubhouse.

“What is it?” I ask, peeling back a corner.

“Haven't you ever seen a sandwich before?” She hoists her bag higher onto her shoulder and starts working on the top button of her tuxedo shirt. “It's chicken salad.”

I check my watch. I'm already five minutes late. “Of course I've seen a sandwich before, but why are you giving it to me?”

“I thought you might get hungry this afternoon.”

“I'm hungry now.” I begin to unwrap the sandwich.

Audrey stops me and rewraps it. “Save it for later,” she says. “You don't want to walk into your first day of work jamming food in your face.”

“It's just Mr. Motta,” I say. “I've known the guy since I was, like, three.”

“You still have to make a good impression,” she says. “Anyway, you'll need the boost later on in the day. Blood sugar levels. All that.” Audrey begins working at her hair, pulling the braids back and tying them up with some kind of fastener. Before I have a chance to ask her any more sandwich questions, she heads off toward the rear entrance to the kitchen. “Toodles!” she calls over her shoulder.

I watch her disappear around the corner of the building, and I head to the pro shop. The bell jingles when I open the door. Mr. Motta is busy slicing into some cardboard boxes, pulling out stacks of straw hats. He doesn't look up, so I figure I've got a minute. Maybe I could eat just half the sandwich.

I peel back the wax paper so a corner is peeking out. The sandwich looks gorgeous. Two thick slices of wheat bread, lettuce, tomato, and a generous helping of chunky chicken salad.

I open wide and take a bite.

Words can't describe what I feel next. The sandwich is salty, sour, spicy, and bitter all at the same time. Something in it tugs at my innards, like my stomach wants to leap out through my throat. My tongue burns, and my eyes water. My gag reflex goes into overdrive and I frantically search for a garbage can. I burst back outside and hack my mouthful into the nearest planter I can find: hosta, daylilies, impatiens, and now a bite-sized chunk of chewed-up repulsiveness.

The.

Worst.

Sandwich.

Ever.

M
r. Motta slides a putter from the rack and hands it to me. His forearm muscles are thick and ropy from the thirty years working construction he's been telling me about all morning. “So, Seth, m'boy, I developed the system myself. There are colored stickers on the tags of every item. You know the colors of the rainbow?”

“Roy G. Biv,” I say.

Mr. Motta stares at me. “Who the hell is that?”

“Roy G. Biv? It's a mnemonic device.”

“The only pneumatic device I know of is a jack-hammer.”

“
Mnemonic
device.” I pronounce it slowly to make it clear. “It helps you remember stuff.”

“What's Roy G. Biv help you remember?”

“The colors of the rainbow,” I say. “Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet.”

Mr. Motta thinks on it a second. “What the hell kind of color is indigo?”

“No idea,” I say. “I'll look it up on Wikipedia and let you know.”

“Son, you are speaking a different language than I am. We don't have any indigo
or
violet here in the pro shop. We have purple. We have red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and
purple
.” He counts the colors off on his fingers. “The closer a sticker is to being red, the harder you push it. Red means it's a dead item—discontinued or off season and we're trying to unload it—or we have huge margins on it. I want you selling red items. I want you selling orange.”

I take a few practice strokes with the putter. It has a massive head and an offset face. The weight of it feels good in my hands, and the triangular grip fits my fingers perfectly. “Don't you want me selling things people need? Things that will improve a player's game?”

“That's secondary.” Mr. Motta wraps his girder of an arm around me and lowers his voice as if there might be some spy from another pro shop hiding under the clothing rack. “Seth, m'boy, first and foremost this establishment needs to turn a profit. Otherwise, when our contract runs out, the powers that be will lease this place to someone else—someone who'll hustle the bigger margin items and generate some income for the club.”

“But—”

“But nothing,” Mr. Motta says. “Bigger margins mean more money. Think red. Think orange.”

The idea of selling something to someone just to turn
a profit makes no sense. It seems smarter to put the right equipment in a person's hand. It's what will keep them coming back. Otherwise, members will just shop at Golf Galaxy out by the mall or buy online and pay forty percent less for the same equipment. People come to a pro shop for the pro—not margins, off-season gear, and Roy G. Biv.

“Don't fill your mind with selling right now,” Mr. Motta says. “Stay at the front counter for the first week or so. Haversham says you're good with the computer, so you should have no problem. The Golf-O-Matic software does just about everything you could want. It blocks out tee times in seven-minute increments, knows when all the leagues are playing, everything. Answer the phone and keep people happy. For the time being, that's your job.”

“Sounds easy enough.”

“It's damn easy,” Mr. Motta says, “until you screw it up. That's when all hell breaks loose. If you forget to enter a tee time, it'll jam up the rest of the day. And if that inconveniences any of the board members, you'll be dethroned faster than a coke-snorting beauty queen.”

I take my place on the stool behind the glass display counter. “Don't sweat it, Mr. Motta. I've got this covered.”

“Make sure you do.”

I start clicking around the screen. “This looks pretty simple.”

Mr. Motta comes around behind me and points at the monitor. “The times highlighted in green mean—”

“League play,” I say.

He claps me on the back. “Sounds like you have things under control. Just get that phone before the third ring and get those golfers scheduled in the open slots. If anyone wants to buy something, you send them my way.”

“Sure thing.”

“Now come on and help me get the new shipment of shirts on the table. This job ain't about sitting on your ass. The new polos with the embroidered club crest just came in, and they aren't going to sell themselves—not in those boxes, anyway.”

Me helping Mr. Motta means that I open all the boxes and fold and stack every shirt in size order, while he puts his feet up in the back office and drinks his blueberry iced coffee. Six big boxes need to be unpacked, so I get started.

Sort, sort, sort.

Fold.

Sort, sort, sort.

Fold. Fold.

And on it goes.

The phone rings only once, and I schedule Mrs. Noonan and her three friends for a two o'clock round. Dr. Kaback comes in with his wife for their eleven o'clock tee time, and they decide to take a cart. I toss them the key. Then I go back to sorting and folding. I hear snoring from the office. When I glance in, Mr. Motta has his feet propped up on the desk and his blue Callaway cap pulled over his eyes. I close his door so he'll stay that way.

If it wasn't for the replay of the 2004 Masters on the Golf Channel, I'd be snoozing, too. It's the tournament
where Phil Mickelson birdied five of the last seven holes to beat Ernie Els by one stroke. It ended Mickelson's reputation for being the “best player never to have won a major,” and boy did he do it with style.

As Phil takes his tee shot at the seventeenth, something hard cracks against my skull. I look down to see a golf ball rolling across the carpet. It disappears under the shirt table. I stand up, and there's Dimitri. His face glistens with sweat, and his shirt is soaked except over his belly-button depression.

“What the hell was that for?” I say.

“You're such a suck-up.”

I rub the growing bump on my head. “What'd I do?”

“How'd you get the number one cherry job at the freakin' club? I've been working here since I was twelve, and I'm not even in the pro shop yet.”

“And that's my fault because…?”

“It's not your fault, but I'm beginning to think these folks at the club are trying to keep the black man down.”

“In case you haven't noticed,” I say, “you're not black.”

“I know I'm not black—not even one-sixty-fourth on my father's side—but with my Mediterranean complexion maybe they
think
I'm black.” He holds his forearm next to mine in comparison. “It's still racist.”

“Do you wake up in the morning and challenge yourself to be stupider than the day before?”

“It just happens naturally,” Dimitri says. “Just do me a favor and put in a good word for me with Motta.” He
puts an arm around my shoulders, and I shrink back, not so much from the pain of my wound as from the stench. Dimitri smells like an incontinent skunk that fell into a crate of rotten eggs. I can feel his sweat soaking through my shirt, his smell permeating me. “I've been trying to get a job in the pro shop for, like, forever,” he says. “It's the only air-conditioned position at the whole club short of—”

“Short of catering. Yeah, I know.”

“And this is supposed to be one hell of a hot summer—global warming and all that. I can't take it anymore. I have to get out of the heat.”

“I'll mention it.” I move around the back of the counter and hoist myself onto the stool—partly to figure out all the features of the scheduling software, but mostly to get away from Dimitri's funk. I start sliding the mouse around and clicking on random buttons.

“Where'd you get the sandwich?” he asks.

I glance at the chicken salad sandwich, cut carefully from corner to corner, sitting on wax paper next to the register. A single bite from one edge. A shudder spreads through me. I slide it within Dimitri's reach. “Audrey brought it for me.”

“Audrey brought you a sandwich?” He picks up the unbitten half. “She's never brought me a sandwich.”

“You told me Audrey brought you food all the time.”

A guilty smile breaks out on Dimitri's face. “I said no such thing.”

“Sure, you did. You said it when we were playing golf a few weeks ago.”

“Oh, that was just a bunch of bullshit I made up to convince you to work here. Audrey has never given me anything I haven't paid for, except a headache. But about this sandwich…” Dimitri pulls the wax paper toward himself. “Even if she's Rachael freakin' Ray, which she's not, a girl doesn't bring you a sandwich without an ulterior motive. I'm going to have a few words with her.” He picks it up and takes a huge bite. He chews twice before his face twists up. He gags and lets the saliva-covered lump drop from his mouth into the garbage can. “That's freakin' terrible! How do you screw up chicken salad?”

“No idea,” I say. “It's just chopped up chicken and mayo, right?”

“Supposedly.” Dimitri takes a swig from his water bottle and rinses out his mouth. “That sandwich tastes like unwashed feet.” He takes another swig of his water and shudders. Then he leans across the glass countertop to get a look at the monitor. “Hey, can you download porn on that thing?”

I push him off the counter. “You got Windex and paper towels in your pocket?”

“Why?” he says.

I point at the glass. “You left tit prints.” A single belly crescent and two perfect boob circles fog the countertop like a ghostly smiley face.

Dimitri pushes out his chest. “They're man-boobs, thank you very much. And I'll have you know I'm proud of them.” He points to the television. “Mickelson there, he's king of the man-boobs. He's the patron saint of man-boobs.”

“Phil Mickelson does not have man-boobs,” I say.

“Come on, Seth, look at the guy.” We both examine Mickelson walking up to the seventeenth green. “The guy has got to be a C-cup at least. I know. I was raised around all those catalogs.” He cups one hand in the air and demonstrates as he speaks: “A…B…C…” Then he hold two hands up like he's going to catch a basketball. “D…At least I'm not parading around with some mysterious podcasting persona.”

“Whatever. I'm having fun with it.”

“Yeah, but
The Love Manifesto
?”

My breath cuts short, and I stop clicking the mouse. “You found it?”

“No, I just guessed. But come on, dude, how lame can you get?”

“It's supposed to be ironic.”

“More like pathetic.”

“How long have you known?”

“I found it last night, but I stayed up until the wee hours listening to all your episodes. Jeez, when they came out of that flower shop…I didn't know your father—”

“Shut up, all right? My folks are members here.” I look down at the monitor and go back to clicking.

Something hard cracks against my skull again, and the golf ball drops to the glass countertop with a bang. I hear Mr. Motta jar from his sleep with a loud snort. The golf ball rolls across the counter and drops to the floor.

“Jeez, what was that for?” I say.

“For not telling me about your father, dickwad. I'm
supposed to be your best friend.”

I finger the spot on my head where the second ball struck. Another bump is rising next to the first.

“And now you totally have to get me a job here,” he says. “I've got something to lord over you.”

“You're going to blackmail me for a job in the pro shop?”

“No, but I can
threaten
to blackmail you. There's a difference.”

“Blackmail?” Mr. Motta says from behind me. He staggers out of the office, still bleary-eyed from his nap, and surveys the tables stacked high with folded polo shirts. He gives a slight nod before saying anything. “What's all this I hear about blackmail?”

I fire a glance at Dimitri. “Nothing,” I say. “We're just kidding around.”

“Well, less kidding and more organizing. You fold a mean shirt, Seth.”

“I worked a few months at the Gap,” I say. “They make you unfold and refold everything each night even if it doesn't need it.”

“Is that right?” Mr. Motta rubs his gray stubble. “Then why don't you get to unfolding and refolding everything around here? Spiff this place up a little.”

“Sure thing,” I say.

Dimitri nudges me.

“Oh, Mr. Motta,” I say. “I could do a much better job of unfolding and refolding if I had Dimitri here to help out. He worked at the Gap, too.”

“Dimitri did not work at any Gap.” Mr. Motta runs his hand over the perfectly even rows of shirts. “He's been filling watercoolers and cleaning ball washers around here since his legs were too short to reach the pedals of the maintenance cart.”

“The Gap was a winter job,” Dimitri says.

“Don't yank my crank.” Mr. Motta looks me up and down. “But I've known you a while, Seth. If you say Dimitri is good for the job, I'll let Haversham know. He can start tomorrow.”

“Thanks, Mr. Motta,” Dimitri says. “You won't regret it.”

“That remains to be seen. One thing's for sure. You'd better not come to work looking like you do now, or you'll be out as quick as you came in.”

Dimitri looks down at himself. “What do you mean?”

“You're sweatier than a sumo wrestler's jockstrap. I can't have your salami smell all over the merchandise. Now get the hell out of here.”

“Sure thing, Mr. Motta,” Dimitri says. “Tomorrow I'll be clean and dry. Neatly pressed. The whole bit. I promise.”

“Now scram before I change my mind.”

Dimitri scrams. In fact, I can't remember ever seeing Dimitri move so quickly in his life. He must really want this position.

Mr. Motta winks at me. “Don't forget you have seniority over that clown, Seth. That makes you the boss.”

“I've only been here four hours.”

“Seniority is seniority,” he says. “When I'm not here, you're the boss.”