Chapter Nine #2
If Alex looks like a baby, Charlie looks like a fetus. He’s twenty-one or so in this episode. His shirt’s off, of course,
and he’s missing half the tattoos that Simon’s gotten used to seeing.
When Simon thinks of Charlie a year before this episode, arriving drunk to set and ramming his truck into the director’s car,
wrecking his trailer and punching people in bars, it feels like he’s hearing about a kid stealing someone’s blocks at preschool.
Twenty is more than old enough to be responsible for your actions. Still. That first season, Charlie wasn’t much older than
Nora is now, and the biggest problem Nora has in her life is what to major in at Brown. Simon, at that age, rage-cried when
his roommate deleted a season of Drag Race from the DVR.
“You were a kid,” Simon says.
Charlie makes a derisive sound and changes the channel. It’s a commercial for a truck that somehow looks like it’s going to eat all the other vehicles on the road.
“Is there anyone you want to see while you’re in town?” Simon asks. “I can keep myself busy.”
“God, no.”
“Your mother doesn’t still live here?” Simon isn’t sure if this is a dangerous topic, but Charlie’s brought his mother up
a few times today.
“She’s in Provo. Has a kid in first grade.”
Simon’s brothers are twelve and fourteen years older than him. They considered the age gap mortifying; Simon considered it
solid proof that he was the midlife accident of a couple already well on the way to divorce court. A twenty-year gap is something
else entirely.
“Was she very young when she had you?” Simon asks, with the feeling of stepping out onto thinner and thinner ice.
“Yup,” Charlie says, no elaboration.
Simon might not have anything like social skills and he might not even be nice, but even he can tell that Charlie has practically
handed him an annotated autobiography. There’s a too-young mother. There’s some time—more than once—in the foster system.
There’s a much older stepfather who didn’t let Charlie eat his fucking food. There’s no mention whatsoever of grandparents
or a father or anybody else.
This is the fourth or fifth time today that Simon’s had to come up with a non-asshole response when presented with some tragic
detail of Charlie’s childhood, and it isn’t getting any easier. He rolls over so they’re facing one another across the gap
between the beds and just says, “Charlie.”
“Yeah.” Charlie’s looking back at him, his expression serious. Simon doesn’t know how he’s supposed to look away.
Something on the television must catch Charlie’s attention, because he sits up and leans in. Simon, curious, does the same.
It’s the sort of homemade-looking commercial Simon hasn’t seen in years. A pair of kids are eating corn dogs in front of a
sky blue convertible that looks like it’s from the fifties. Then there’s a map of Arizona with a dot roughly in the center
and text reading Classic Car Show, along with the dates for this coming weekend—tomorrow and the next day.
“I’m an idiot,” Charlie says. “He goes every year. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that.”
“Because there’s no reason in the world for you to commit the dates of car shows to memory?” Simon suggests. “And also because
cell phones still work at car shows? I mean, I’ll be the first person to admit that I’m not familiar with the customs of the
old car community, but I think you’re still allowed to make contact with the outside world.”
Charlie doesn’t even rise to the bait. “It’s five o’clock. I could be there by eight. Where are my shoes?”
Simon hears the I and doesn’t know what to make of it, just that he doesn’t like it. He also doesn’t like the idea of Charlie getting behind
the wheel of a car after spending an entire day alternately driving and panicking. “Or we could leave first thing in the morning,
be there by ten, and you’ll be able to search the place in daylight. But. If you want to leave tonight, I’m driving.”
“I can’t—”
“Bullshit.”
“But—”
“It’s final.”
Simon doesn’t know what it means that they’ve gotten so good at arguing that they can do a speedrun through a fight.
Charlie takes out his phone and—presumably—tries to call his stepfather again. He hangs up after ten seconds.
“Room service,” Simon suggests. “Then sleep.”
But Charlie’s on his feet now, pacing as much as he can in a room that contains two beds.
“I didn’t mean to steamroll you. Look, if you need to get on the road now,” Simon says, “then that’s what we’ll do.”
“No, you’re right. There’s no point going tonight. But that doesn’t mean I can be normal about it.” Charlie rubs a hand over
his jaw. “I’m going downstairs to see how bad the gym is.”
“Good idea.”
“Want to come?”
“To the gym?” Simon doesn’t recoil but it’s close. “On purpose?”
Charlie appraises him, a skeptical once over, as if he doesn’t already know exactly what Simon looks like.
“I swim,” Simon explains, speaking slowly and calmly, because Charlie is laboring under a great deal of mental stress if he
thinks Simon deliberately breaks a sweat. “I don’t lift weights. Sometimes Jamie makes me do Pilates,” he adds, aggrieved.
“Great news. If this is like most hotel gyms, there will be no weights to lift. Four treadmills and an elliptical, maybe a
rowing machine.”
Charlie’s wringing his hands, and it hits Simon that Charlie doesn’t want to go to the gym alone. Or maybe he just needs some
kind of validation that going to the gym isn’t a bad idea. Well, it’s not like Simon has anything better to do.
“Okay, fine.” Simon brought exercise clothes, mainly because Jamie helped him pack and Jamie has a lot more faith in Simon’s interest in cardiovascular health than he has any reason to.
In the gym, Simon sets a treadmill to a speed slightly slower than he might use to walk Edie and tries to remain unaware of
Charlie, three machines over, wearing a sleeveless T-shirt that isn’t even a real garment. He texts Jamie, telling him that
he’s on a treadmill.
Jamie: gonna need a picture of you with today’s newspaper
Simon: ha ha, it gets worse
Simon: I think I’m here, on an actual treadmill, to give Charlie Blake emotional support
Jamie: wow
Jamie: everything ok?
Simon: Yes, stop worrying and send me pictures of my dog
As Simon looks at two dozen pictures of an untraumatized and unbothered Edie, he realizes that what he told Jamie was the truth.
Today has been . . . okay. Maybe better than okay.
His anxiety is at a low ebb, which doesn’t necessarily mean anything, but he’d expected it to be through the roof.
Usually Charlie annoys him—or, maybe, unsettles him.
And that makes him cranky, which makes it more likely that something will set his anxiety off. But none of that’s happened today.
Simon: Remember when you sprained your ankle at Coachella? And I wasn’t a total wreck about it?
Jamie’s then-boyfriend hadn’t wanted to leave the festival, so Simon drove out to pick Jamie up, collected Jamie’s belongings,
told off Jamie’s asshole boyfriend, drove Jamie to the emergency room, and brought him home. Usually, any one of those events
would be enough to crank his anxiety all the way up to ten. But somehow, the fact that it was all for someone else changed
things.
Right now, he’s trusting that Jamie will be able to connect the dots without Simon needing to actually type “Charlie’s pretty
fucked up right now,” because that seems like a breach of privacy.
Jamie: first of all, you’re never a total wreck. But, yeah, you’ve always been more patient with friends than you are with yourself.
Simon wrinkles his nose. That isn’t the point he was trying to make at all. Nobody has ever called Simon patient. And implying
that Charlie is his friend is objectively deranged.
This is all obvious to Simon, but he has a feeling that if he types it out, Jamie will call him and list all the ways he’s
being ridiculous.