Sunny wants all the friends to get together for fun.
Tonight.
See you. Later.
Post friends and fun
LIKED THE MOVIE. LIKED the food. Liked the company.
But wouldn’t you know it, all is not perfect in Ducky land.
Are you the only one who notices these things? The only one who feels the urge, the need to smooth it all over? The only one who wonders if he is imagining it all? Being hypersensitive?
In the course of friends’ night out you discover (or learn more about) Maggie’s Absent Without Leave status.
Your parents are AWOL physically.
So is Maggie’s father. (In Vancouver, working on a movie deal.)
Her mom, however, is home, but absent. She spends her time drinking.
Maggie has faced down an eating disorder. She sees a therapist. She is strong and getting stronger.
She is tough and brave and cool, and you admire her for it.
But you are taken aback at the diner post-flick when Maggie says, flatly, “My mom was loaded when I left. If I’m lucky, when I get home tonight she’ll be passed out and I won’t have to deal with her.”
This stops the conversation pretty much cold.
Maggie says, “She might as well not be there. If it weren’t for Pilar, the house would fall down around our ears.”
Amalia gives Maggie a quick sympathetic look and says, “Stay over at my house tonight, Maggie. You know you always can.”
Maggie ducks her head. “Enough. I’ve stayed over enough this week.”
Sunny offers her house too. Maggie says, “Thanks. I’ll keep you in mind if it’s too reeking at home. Plus, Zeke needs me.” her voice is bitter. Defeated.
You decide to change the subject. You say, brilliantly, “So, what is everybody going to have to eat?”
But it works. You plunge into a deep discussion of the menu. You can’t help but be relieved that Maggie dives right into the subject too. You also hope, once more, that no one notices your relief. You don’t want Maggie to think you’re thinking about her recent eating problems.
Even if you are.
You all order massive amounts of food. You hold your straw under your nose and do reviews of the green salad, the burgers, the fries, even the soda. “Fizzy, but with a subtle bouquet suggestive of sporting events and movie theaters,” you say.
You are embarrassingly pleased when everyone laughs.
Sunny says, “I bet you have a lot more hidden talents, Ducky.” She is leaning against you.
You put on a fake French accent and say, “Yes. I speak zeveral languages too, including ze language of luv.”
Everyone cracks up.
Except Sunny. She usually laughs the hardest at your jokes, especially lately. But now she just looks at you.
Why do you suddenly wish you had those dark glasses again?
You think of Sunny as being on pretty much the same page as you, but at the moment, you feel like she’s reading from another book altogether. You don’t get what the look means.
You smile and glance away and see Dawn and Brendan looking at you too.
They look at Sunny. They look at you.
They exchange glances.
You become busy with the soda and decide to leave the jokes to other people for awhile.
After all, you don’t have to entertain everyone else all the time, do you, Ducky?
It’s not your job.
Feeling self-conscious and stupid, you focus on making normal, low-key conversation.
Only now Sunny is laughing at everything you say. Or at least smiling.
How do you take this?
Is Sunny in ONE OF HER MOODS?
You decide to be cool. You concentrated on the others at the table, listening to them, not saying much.
You notice things.
One of the things you notice is when Brendan puts his hand over Amalia’s on the table, she slides her hand away.
When Brendan drapes his arm casually over the back of the booth (and her shoulders), she jumps up. “’Scuse me,” she says.
Dawn, Maggie, and Sunny immediately jump up too.
They all go to the bathroom.
It’s a girl thing.
Brendan and you look at each other but you don’t comment on it. Instead, Brendan says something about the A’s and you say something about the Dodgers.
Fortunately, the girls don’t stay away too long. You can only discuss so much baseball.
But Ted keeps you up to speed on it, since it’s what guys talk to each other about instead of about, well, the things girls talk about.
Don’t know why.
It’s a guy thing.
Late.
Later.
Aug. 21
Guy things. Friends.
I’m not very good at guy things. And I just don’t get it. It’s like all the other guys have this book of rules that someone forgot to give me.
Or maybe I got the book, but some of the pages were left out.
Or maybe I got a different book? Is there more than one book of how to be a guy?
Like, guys are supposed to be cool. Not too emotional. Bored with girl things. Shopping is stopping on the street to admire a set of wheels. Or a retrofitted Harley, maybe. Cooking is what you do with a microwave and a frozen pizza.
Guys watch sports on television. They play sports. They talk about “chicks” and “babes.” The gross, loser Cro Mags can get pretty graphic about it, thinking (pathetically) they’re being superstuds.
Not all guys are like that, of course. But most sort of fit along the spectrum. At one end are Cro Mags and in the middle are ordinary guys and…
What am I?
Am I a failed guy? So young?
Wait a minute: Just because I’m not IN LOVE with Sunny doesn’t make me a failure. And there are plenty of guys who cook (aka RICH AND FAMOUS CHEFS) and like cool clothes (ROCK STARS, MOVIE GUYS).
Still, if I understood this whole guy thing, would I feel so freaked out about Sunny?
I work in a bookstore. Where on the shelves is the book on how to be a GUY????
10:55 A.M.
Wherein You Learn that
You Can’t Tell a Book by Its Cover
You listen to a lame-o joke for the ONE THOUSANDTH time: Hi, read any good books lately?
You smile at the lame-o customer who looks like a walking sports-logo billboard (although you are not sure what the sports are, exactly-mountain biking and snowboarding, maybe?) And try to be glad that he is at least talking to you like a human being and not a robot only here to serve him.
You steer him to the…
Poetry section.
Poetry?
Him? It’s what he asked for.
Gotta shelve books.
12:30
Shelved. Boxed returns. Labeled boxes.
Whew.
Poetry guy STILL there.
Two books under his arm.
Head buried in a third.
You head in his direction to see who his poets of choice are.
It’s a mix. Whitman. Adrienne Rich. And Baudelaire.
Maybe I’ll have to check them out sometime.
MUCH LATER (As In, If Your Parents Were Around, They’d Be Saying Subtle Parent Things Like “It’s Getting Late”)
Mr. W snags you as you are pondering the poets.
“It’s slow for the moment,” he says. “why don’t you take lunch now, Christopher?”
“Okay,” you say.
You will check receipts later to see what poetry books went out in your absence.
You are headed out the door when you meet…
Brendan.
“I’ll sell you a book,” you tell him. “But then I’ve got my lunch break.”
“Come to the diner with me,” Brendan suggests.
You agree.
You are, you confess now, strangely nervous.
What are you going to talk to Brendan about?
You’ve never
hung around with him alone before.
You hang around with, let’s face it, girls.
The guys who are your friends? Two. Whom you’ve known forever. Jason, with whom you no longer have a thing in common. And Alex… away.
Being treated. For depression. And a suicide attempt.
These are your guy friends.
Sometimes you miss Jason.
You definitely miss Alex. But you’ve barely kept in touch with him and he’s not big on keeping in touch with you either.
You want him back. Better.
But meanwhile, girls are easier to be friends with.
Girls talk about things besides sports and (duh) babes.
You review your sports data.
You realize you pretty much used it up the night before.
What would John Wayne do???
Phone.
12:15 a.m.
Parents. They actually say when you tell them what time it is here: “It’s getting late, isn’t it?”
You say, “It’s Saturday night.”
Your mother says, “Oh? Did you have a date?”
“No,” you say.
The conversation pretty much loses it from there.
But you were writing about the bookstore.
Actually, cut to the diner. You and Brendan have done some sports talk on the way there.
After you’ve ordered, you reach deep and say, “who do you like in the WNBA?”
Brendan gives you a strange look. “Phoenix still rules for me,” he say.
Then he says, “but I’m not that big on sports.”
“Me neither,” you say, way too quickly.
To cover your major sports knowledge gap, you tell Brendan about the poet/logo jock and he laughs.
After that, you are not so worried about talking to him. True, it’s not like hanging out with Alex. With Alex you could go off about your fantasy of becoming a cowboy or discuss the latest baby-sitter/housekeeper your parents had left behind to look after you while they did their vanishing act.
But you had history with Alex and besides, you were younger then.
You no longer fantasize about becoming a cowboy.
And your parents no longer leave you with a baby-sitter/housekeeper.
Brendan actually asks you what it’s like not to have your parents around. You say living on takeout is not as much fun when it’s a 24/7 option.
Then, so you don’t sound as if you’re feeling sorry for yourself, you say that the freedom is great.
Brendan nods.
He doesn’t talk about his parents, so you don’t ask. (Can’t tell a book by its cover.)
You find yourself telling him a little about Alex. (Not a lot about Alex, though. Maybe the whole school talks about what happened, you don’t know, but he’s got a right to his privacy and you’re not going to talk about it. Besides, it’s hard to talk about even to your closest friends.)
So you chat and chew and Brendan tells you a little about his old school.
You ask, before you think, if his old school had Cro Mags in it and he looks puzzled.
So then you have to explain that Cro Mags is short for Cro-Magnon cavepeople.
“The jocks at school? Those are universal,” he says.
“I’m not sure if that is good news or bad news,” you say, and he laughs.
Ducky the entertainer.
Somehow, the conversation shifts around to the girls at school.
“You know a lot of them,” he says.
Bond. James Bond. A girl in every locker.
“Friends,” you say. “Somehow, this past year, we started hanging out and became friends.” You’re not sure how to explain it, other than that.
Luckily, Brendan doesn’t ask deep questions. He nods and says, “Well, about Amalia. Is it my imagination, or has she been a little distant lately?”
“Amalia,” you say. “Distant?”
He nods. “Ever since I came back from camp. She’s nice. She’s friendly. She laughs at my jokes and we go out. But she’s—I don’t know. It’s like she’s taken a step back.”
“Oh.” You decide it’s better not to mention you noticed it too.
“I don’t think there’s anybody else,” Brendan says.
He pauses.
Your cue.
“No,” you agree. You tell him you’re sure about that.
He looks relieved for a moment.
“She’s not like that,” you add.
“I didn’t think so,” Brendan says. “But for some reason I don’t feel as if I know her the way I did at the beginning of the summer.”
You’re not sure what the problem is either. “Give it time,” you say.
Lame, but serviceable.
Brendan nods. “It’s what I figured,” he says. Then he switches to you, as in:
B: What about you and Sunny?
D: ????
B: You know, like dating?
D: [Nervous laughter.]
B: Seriously.
So you tell him you’d never be interested in Sunny that way. And you know she wouldn’t be interested in you that way either.
Brendan says, “Don’t kid yourself. I’ve seen the way she looks at you.”
Those looks! Is that what they mean?
You want to slide down under the table and stay there.
You reject the whole idea. What does Brendan know?
You laugh again and say, “Why ruin a beautiful friendship?”
Then you say, “I’d better get back to work.”
You talk with Brendan about working in the bookstore on the way back. Your dramatic account of the shoplifter lasts most of the trip. Then you say good-bye to Brendan… although you can’t say good-bye to what Brendan said.
How could Brendan be so off base about you and Sunny?
Can’t a guy and a girl be friends without the whole world making something of it? Why is that so hard for the world to accept?
And Sunny would never go for it, anyway.
Even if it was a possibility.
Which it is not.
Aug. 22
Sunday.
Not. Possible.
No reason to go there.
You’re Ducky.
She’s Sunny.
You’re friends.
End of story.
Aug. 23
2:23 p.m.
Mondays at the bookstore are S…L…O…W….
Not that bookstores are usually party scenes.
Mr. W came in and opened the store with Sunny.
When you get here at 2:00 he bolts.
Leaving you and Sunny alone together.
Stop this.
You and Sunny and ninety gazillion books and a whole store full of people.
For a moment you are tempted to think about asking Jay (the friend formerly known as Jason) for his advice.
He dates girls. He listens to the Cro Mags talk about dating girls.
The girls who go out with those guys seem ordinary and nice.
(THEN WHY ARE THEY DATING CRO MAGS????)
Maybe Jay could give you some help.
Then you remember his stupid efforts to introduce you to girls. Any girls. As if girls were interchangeable. As if people were interchangeable.
You do not need Jay’s advice.
Besides, this isn’t a girl-guy thing. Just because Brendan said so, that doesn’t make it true.
He’s way off base. Out of the ballpark. In another game.
Jay would just start talking about what a “babe” Sunny is.
She is cute.
Well, pretty.
Beautiful, maybe.
Here she comes.
Stash this.
4:45
You have shelved books. Tallied receipts. Boxed returns. Unpacked books.
You are not going to vacuum. No housework at the bookstore.
Sunny has spent some quality time in the coffee room. The boxes of tea are in alphabetical order. The sink sparkles. She’s put hooks under the
cabinet to hang the mugs on, so they’re not jammed on the table with the coffeepot and microwave.
It now looks neat, clean, organized.
She brings you a cup of hot tea.
You discuss the coffee that the bookstore keeps on hand for Mr. W and employees.
Sunny says she has a plan. She is going to start using the petty cash and buying decent coffee when her father isn’t around. She’ll put it in the old coffee tins and maybe he’ll never notice that he never has to buy a new can of coffee.
It’s a plan, you concede.
“Meanwhile, I made you tea because the coffee is vile,” Sunny says.
“Tarbucks,” you offer and Sunny laughs. You notice that her eyes crinkle in a good way when she does.
Well, you’d noticed it before. Now you notice it again.
Stop. This.
Aug. 24
9:45 p.m.
Avoiding the Subject
“Hi,” Sunny says. “it’s me.”
“Hi,” you say.
Then you run out of things to say.
Sunny doesn’t notice.
Does she?
She tells you Maggie is hanging in there. She reports that Dawn wants to “explore more piercings” but that her father has said a big no. She says she dreams of owning a retro bowling shirt with her name embroidered on the pocket. She wants to find it just hanging on the rack. Or better yet, in a big bin of jumbled-up clothes, the kind that vintage stores put out for buck-a-bag sales.
“It would bowl you over?” you offer.
Sunny laughs. Hard.
Are your jokes that funny?
Or is this some girl-guy thing?
You are not ready for this. This is not for publication, but you aren’t ready.
At least, you’re pretty sure you aren’t.
You are not going to write about it anymore. You’re going to write about something else.
9:55 p.m.
Okay. You’re home now. You can stop thinking about the Sunny situation.
10:03
Anything else.
10:30
That’s it. You’re down for the night.
10:33
Well, at least you didn’t write about that subject again.
Aug. 25
Late A.M. Wednesday.
Park. Bike. You.
Thinking.
Are you laughing too hard at Sunny’s jokes?
Being around her makes you feel like laughing, generally. You feel, you know, pretty good.
Diary Three Page 27