by Meg Howrey
Luke wants to look in his father’s room. He puts his hand on the doorknob. For a moment he imagines that Mark has rigged some kind of booby trap over the door, a jar of marbles, or a net, and that he will get caught snooping and Mark will send him back to Delaware in disgust. Luke tries for a few moments to think of a plausible excuse for going in his father’s room, but cannot think of any. He also does not want to try the doorknob, in case he finds the door is locked, which would hurt his feelings.
“I wanted to see inside your room,” Luke now imagines himself saying to Mark. “I wanted to find out more about you because you keep asking me about me, but you never really tell me anything about yourself and we’re supposed to be getting to know each other, not just you knowing me.”
Luke turns the doorknob and opens the door slightly. Nothing falls. Because his father has not rigged the door, or locked it, Luke feels that it would be more noble not to look inside. He shuts the door quietly. You could misinterpret the significance of objects really easily, he reminds himself. If he hadn’t known that his father had been given boxes of things as gifts he might have looked in the garage and thought his father was some kind of thief, because who kept eight boxes of expensive watches in their garage? And if he tells Mark later, “I wanted to look in your room, but I didn’t,” that will be much better. Because that would be evidence that Mark could trust him.
Luke believes in having evidence. Without evidence, you just have hope, which is nice, but not reliable.
Luke does not tell his father about wanting to look in his room, but when Mark informs Luke the following morning that he wants Luke to meet the girl he has been seeing, that he’s made plans for them all to go to dinner that evening, Luke feels that his respect for his father’s privacy has been rewarded by this inclusion of Luke into Mark’s personal life. So far the only friends of Mark that Luke has met have been the people that work for Mark.
“She’s great,” Mark says. “Aimee. You’ll like her.”
“My sort-of-ex-girlfriend’s name is Amy,” Luke tells him.
“Sort of?”
“Mostly we just hung out in a group,” Luke explains. “As friends. But sometimes we … kind of …”
“Does she spell her name with two ‘e’s?”
“With a ‘y,’ ” Luke says. “Where does your Amy put the ‘e’s?”
“At the end.” Mark shrugs. “There’s also an ‘i’ in there. What happened with Amy with a ‘y’?”
Luke shrugs.
“Yeah,” Mark sighs. “I hear you. That happens.”
Luke is getting ready for this dinner now, physically at least, although mentally he feels a little unprepared. Luke puts on the vintage shirt Aurora gave him for his birthday. Mark had said, “Dinner is casual, jeans are okay,” so Luke puts on the nicest of his jeans. He goes back to the bathroom and gingerly applies a few fingertips’ worth of Aveda Anti-Humectant to his hair. Mark had stocked Luke’s bathroom with a number of products. All his life Luke had shared a bathroom with his sisters, and thus carried a basic assumption that anything with writing in cursive on it was not for him, avoiding pretty much everything but toothpaste, floss, and hand soap. Some of the products Mark has gotten him have writing in cursive, but the cursive says “For Men,” or “pour les hommes.” Luke really likes his bathroom, and makes an uncharacteristic effort to keep it neat.
Luke decides to wear the leather jacket Mark gave him. He notices for the first time that the label inside the jacket says “Gucci.”
In the living room, Luke finds his father sprawled in one of the leather armchairs, watching the Discovery Channel.
“Am I okay?” Luke asks, indicating his clothes. “Do I need a tie or something?”
“You look great. Don’t change a thing. Aimee is going to be late.” Mark reads a text off his phone. “Traffic.”
They are not picking Aimee up. She is driving over herself, and then Mark will drive them all to the restaurant. Luke wonders if this is because Aimee is going to spend the night. His father has not said anything about that, and Luke wonders if he should say something himself, let Mark know it is okay.
Sara has had occasional “men in her life,” but they stayed on the periphery of Luke’s visual field, in other cities, or mixed in with the group of his mother’s friends. They never spent the night. Luke does not think that Sara has ever been actually “in love” with any of her male friends, although he’s not sure that he would know what that would look like anyway, since Sara is a very loving person in general. Luke has never seen Nana “in love” except with God, or Aurora “in love” except with ideas. He has seen Pearl “in love,” but that had been indistinguishable to Luke from Pearl “in hate.” He has not been “in love” himself. Luke is not quite sure how he should treat Aimee, as someone significant, or not.
Luke and Mark watch the Discovery Channel and learn that all the female wildebeests in the Serengeti ovulate in the same week. Luke tells Mark that this can happen with human females that live together, and that the phenomenon is called “the Wellesley Effect,” after the college where the research was conducted.
“Does that happen in your house?” Mark asks.
“Around the fifth of every month,” Luke sighs. “Everybody gets a headache and cries if they drop something. Sara’s got some kind of tea that she makes for it, though.”
They watch the wildebeests’ annual migration, which includes a dangerous plunge across a crocodile-filled Nile.
“Whoa,” they say, simultaneously.
Aimee arrives at last. Mark greets her at the door, saying something Luke can’t quite hear. Luke stands up. Aimee is tall. She is wearing shoes with heels, high heels, but Luke estimates that even in bare feet she must be at least five feet ten. She is glossy and gold and white and when she takes the two steps down into the living room, her bracelets jangle, her high heels click.
“A Christmas ornament,” Luke thinks confusedly, and then, looking at her slender ankles, “A reindeer with bells on.”
“Hey there!” says Aimee. “You must be Luke.”
“Hi,” says Luke, holding out a hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” she says, advancing on him melodiously. Luke wonders if Aimee is going to kiss his cheek, like she had his father’s. Luke feels panic, then disappointment, as Aimee simply shakes his hand.
“You look gorgeous,” Mark says to Aimee. “That’s a killer dress.”
“Omigod,” says Aimee, launching into a story about the dress. It had seemed so simple on the hanger, but once in the dressing room, Aimee had come undone. She had not known which way was front, which way was back, whether to slide it over her head, or step into it. The dress had a lining too, which complicated matters, and the hooks were meant to go on the side.
“I’m used to people just shoving things on me,” she says, to Luke. “If you put me in a dressing room by myself I’m a mess.”
“Don’t believe her,” Mark says to Luke. “She’s the least helpless person I know.”
“Oh shut up, you.” Aimee puts her hands on her silky hips. “Luke, your dad gives me such a hard time. I need you to be on my side, tonight, okay?”
Luke nods. He is trying not to imagine a naked Aimee in a dressing room.
“So is that the real reason you were late?” Mark asks. “You were stuck inside your dress?”
“Hello! Traffic!” Aimee shrieks, launching into another tale, about the guy who had cut her off on Melrose, about how men can never understand the difficulty of driving in heels, about dropping her phone under the seat while she had been trying to text them, about the gymnastic move she had had to execute in order to retrieve the phone.
Luke listens, laughs, relaxes. He does not think Aimee will require complicated signal decoding. She reminds Luke of a certain type of pretty girl at his school in Delaware. He knows girls of this order require a high amount of communication, and it is helpful to keep straight all the subtle fluctuations of friendship that hap
pen with their girlfriends (“I’m over Janis, she’s being totally judgmental about Carrie and Kyle”), but that is not difficult for Luke. This Aimee is taller, more glamorous, and older than Delaware Amy, but Luke feels he has got her general archetype in hand.
“Okay, let me look at the two of you side by side,” says Aimee.
Smiling, Mark moves to stand beside Luke. Mark poses, shifting his weight to one leg, crossing his arms in front of his chest, raising his chin and cocking it at an angle. After a second, Luke imitates the stance, puffing out his chest.
Aimee laughs.
“Omigod, Mark, he looks just like you. But, did you teach him a face?”
“A face?” asks Luke. He likes Aimee very much, for saying that he looks like Mark.
“A photo face,” says Mark. “Aimee showed me how to do it. Observe.”
Luke turns to his father. Mark lowers his chin, narrows his eyes, half-raises one eyebrow, and slightly curls the corner of the opposite lip.
“Wow,” says Luke. “That’s pretty impressive.” He thinks that his father looks cool, and tough, and like he’s doing you a favor by smiling. Luke would like to have this face in his arsenal.
“See how I maintain photo face while in motion,” Mark says, through his teeth, swiveling about on one foot. “Incredibly, I am able to move laterally in a 180-degree arc while still maintaining my sexy eyebrow thing.”
“You have to get one.” Aimee taps Luke lightly on the shoulder. “Now that you’re in LA you need to get your camera face.” Aimee rolls her reindeer eyes at Luke. “I’m kidding, of course. Just be yourself.”
“It’s impossible for Luke to be anything but himself,” says Mark. “He doesn’t have a fake bone in his body.”
“See?” demands Aimee, to Luke. “That’s his passive-aggressive way of telling me I’m fake.”
“No, that’s my way of admitting that I’m a fake,” says Mark.
The restaurant next to the restaurant they are going to is lit up in front with a row of lights and an abbreviated red carpet, backed by a temporary cardboard wall, advertising something Luke has never heard of. Photographers are clustered around this, and behind them, little clusters of people. Seeing this, Mark says, “Ugh.” A valet attendant leaps forward at the car, but there is an immediate swarming action of photographers from the other restaurant toward them.
Two large and impassive-faced men sporting secret service–style gadgetry step forward from behind the valet, holding out their arms, nodding at Mark. Wires connected to earpieces disappear into the back collars of their dark suits.
Luke had constructed a similar device for himself as part of his Halloween costume last year. He had dressed up as a bodyguard to go with Amy’s costume as Vampire Paris Hilton. They had gone to the school’s “Vampire Dance” as friends, although they weren’t really that, either. Luke’s social position in school is somewhat fluid, and while he was at that point mildly friendly with some of Amy’s circle, he had never talked to Amy much beyond a few exchanged quips during English class. Luke had not considered asking Amy out. He had been thinking he might ask out Keiko, who was in the Archery Club with him, and had been his lab partner in AP Chemistry.
But, “What are you going as for Halloween?” Amy had asked him one day in October, before English.
“I don’t know,” Luke had said. “I always used to do something with my sisters, but they’re both at college now. Last year Pearl and I went as Che Guevara and Frida Kahlo.”
“Pearl was always really creative,” said Amy. “I remember when she and Aurora went as beauty pageant contestants, only they had, like, pieces of meat glued on them.”
The meat had actually been soy bacon, and needed to be taped on, as attempts at rubber cementing had failed.
“I was Donald Trump that year,” Luke offered.
Amy laughed.
“So what about you?” he had asked.
“Well, Kristin and I were going to go as sort of Vampire Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan. But now Kristin is going out with Matt, and they’re doing something together. I guess I could still go as Vampire Paris by myself. To school, I mean. I don’t want to go to the dance by myself.”
“I could go as Vampire Lindsay with you,” Luke joked. “That would be scary.”
From there it had been a simple matter to arrange that Luke would bring Amy to the dance, dressed as her official bodyguard. She loved that Luke got so into it, getting a huge suit jacket from Goodwill and stuffing the shoulders and chest to make himself appear suitably imposing. Creating the earpiece out of an old rotary telephone cord. Escorting her to all her classes during the day, instructing other students to stand back, keep away, Miss Hilton had no comment. At the dance, Amy had dropped the real Louis Vuitton handbag (containing the fake stuffed dog wearing a rhinestone collar) in order to put both her hands on Luke’s back as they slow-danced. She had rested her head against Luke’s stuffed chest, and asked him if he would be her bodyguard every day, it had been so much fun.
“Okay,” Luke had said, tentatively. “I’ll protect you.”
And Amy had pulled Luke into her group, where he was generally considered her boyfriend, although Amy herself had asked that they “keep it casual.” In practice, this meant that Luke never knew whether an evening with Amy would end with a chaste hug or something more dynamic. The bodyguard image had been difficult to maintain. In his home life, Luke understood that while he was technically “the man” of his house, in reality this entailed not that he protect his women from the world at large, but that he protect his women, systematically and specifically, from each other. Executive power on his part was not needed, nor would it have been tolerated. Luke’s dominant attributes—understanding, empathy, compassion, his disinclination to be judgmental or demanding—had never really been the right sort of thing for Amy, who desired firmness, decision making, aggression. He is almost aware of this.
Now, paused in front of the restaurant, Luke observes his father, who is not significantly, in terms of width, much smaller than these actual bodyguards; his father who has impersonated bodyguards in movies without the need of padding; his father who is now confidently presenting his “photo face” for the cameras, one hand on the back of Aimee’s slim back.
“Mark! Over here! Mark! Aimee!”
Luke hovers behind, until Mark looks over his shoulder, releases Aimee and moves beside Luke. Aimee, solo, pivots so the paparazzi can photograph the back of her dress.
“Who’s the kid, Mark?” someone calls out.
“My son, Luke,” Mark answers, and slings an arm around Luke’s shoulders, which are still covered by the leather of Mark’s old jacket.
Luke smiles blindly into the flashing lights. To his surprise, someone calls out his name.
“Luke! Over here!”
“You okay?” Mark mutters, through his teeth.
“Quiet. I’m making a face,” Luke mutters back. Mark doesn’t laugh, because he’s making a face too, but he squeezes Luke’s shoulder appreciatively.
Inside the restaurant, they are greeted by a collection of sari-clad women.
“Good evening, Mr. Franco, we have the cabana table ready for you.”
The restaurant is a large square, broken up into different levels by platforms and hanging curtains. The right side of the square descends into a crowded bar area. The cabana table is a three-sided banquette arrangement, with swags of fabric looped back in such a way as to indicate privacy without actually granting it. Mark guides Aimee into the middle seat. Luke and his father sit facing each other.
“Sit next to me,” says Aimee, patting the place next to her.
“Not enough room for my manly frame,” says Mark, but he scoots a few inches down, and Aimee scoots a few inches left, so they are wedged into the corner. The pose gives them, like the curtains surrounding their table, an impression of intimacy. Aimee shimmies under Mark’s arm, and places her cell phone on the table next to her water glass. Mark rubs Aimee’s bare shoulder, and puts h
is cell phone on the table next to his napkin.
Luke asks Aimee some questions about herself. He discovers with minimal prompting that Aimee is from Portland, Oregon, and has three brothers, five nieces, two nephews, and a pug named Misty. She spent a year in Paris, but she’s too curvy for runway modeling, is not willing to starve herself, and believes it is better to be in Los Angeles where there’s more work for her “look” and where she can get more into acting. She turns down roles if they are too slutty, but is sometimes told that she is too “sexy” for parts that she wants, so there is a certain amount of frustration involved. She is a Pisces, likes red meat and eggs although pretends to be vegan in public, ascribes her vague religious beliefs to Buddhism.
Aimee checks in with her cell phone repeatedly, reading texts and tapping out replies, occasionally flipping the phone around to show Luke a picture of the nieces, of rock formations in Joshua Tree where she shot a car commercial last week, of Misty. Luke demonstrates an ability to retain the names of Aimee’s friends and relatives, and nods sympathetically to the difficulties imposed on Aimee by the vagaries of modeling agents, casting directors, and “the media.” Encouraged, Aimee abandons her corner and slides closer to Luke to show him more pictures: of friends, of herself sporting a head full of giant rollers, of Misty in different poses.
Mark orders dessert for Luke and coffee for himself. Aimee slides back around to Mark and pummels his chest.
“You’ve totally let me talk my head off,” she says accusingly. “Look how I’ve completely bored your son.” Aimee shimmies under Mark’s arm again, who kisses the top of her head but says nothing.
Throughout dinner, Luke has been thinking over his relationship with his own Amy. He would most likely NOT have gone out with Amy if Pearl had been around to observe and comment. Pearl would have denounced Amy as being vapid and brainless, which Amy was not, and pointed out to Luke that Amy was only using him to get back at her ex-boyfriend, which was partially true. Luke had not even been particularly physically attracted to Amy. He had been attracted to Keiko, whose long black hair and skill at archery Luke had greatly admired. But without Pearl to hector him, Luke had been free to fall into what was relatively easy and carried no potential emotional cost.