Chapter Ten #2
Charlie stops walking, so Simon swings around to face him.
“Seriously?” Charlie asks.
“What?”
“You know what I did before Out There, right?”
Simon apparently left his entire brain on the highway north out of Phoenix, because of course he knows that Charlie got his
start on a show about car restoration. Teenage Charlie worked in a garage owned by a—“Dave owned the garage you worked at.”
“You watched the show?” Charlie looks shocked and a little pleased.
“I watched everything Alex and Samara did too.” There’s no need to admit that he watched every scene Charlie was in at least twice, trying to figure out what Lian saw that made Charlie worth the trouble.
There’s definitely no need to admit that by the end of the very first episode, the answer was obvious. Charlie is one of those
people who have a magnet in them that makes it impossible to look away.
“And this isn’t a stupid idea,” Simon says. “You’re doing due diligence before going to the police. This is the best you can
do.” He isn’t in the habit of being reassuring to anybody but Jamie—and even then, it’s hardly one of his strengths. But now
he has to because there isn’t anyone else around to do it.
“Okay,” Charlie says, tossing his empty paper bag into the nearest trash can. “Let’s keep walking.”
“How many pairs do you have?” Charlie asks when Simon swaps out the sunglasses he wears to drive (not too dark, polarized)
with the ones he wears when walking around outside in the sun (a bit darker, but not super dark).
“Six? Maybe seven. I don’t fuck with sunlight.”
When Simon realized that light—flashing light, bright light, light leaking through tree branches, the brake lights of the
truck in front of him at a stop sign—can sometimes trigger his migraines, he splurged on a few pairs of sunglasses. He spent
a dumb amount of money on Tom Ford Wayfarers, and an even dumber amount on a pair that’s allegedly identical to what Cary
Grant wore in North by Northwest. He even has a pair of aviators with pinkish-tinted lenses that he wears indoors when things are especially rough.
Simon and Charlie get recognized twice that Simon clocks, which is more than he might have expected, especially since Charlie is wearing a baseball cap and has a beard that ought to make him less immediately identifiable.
Charlie remembers why Simon’s here in the first place, and they take a bunch of selfies, one inside a bright orange convertible
that Charlie tells him is a 1970 Shelby, whatever that is. Charlie pets the car—actually pets it—and calls it a beauty, gorgeous,
just look at her. Something goes fizzy and awful in Simon’s stomach hearing the low rumble of praise. He decides that investigating
this sensation is not compatible with sanity. Instead he lets himself get hauled into Charlie’s side for picture after picture.
All Simon has to do is occasionally smile while Charlie asks car owners incomprehensible questions about engines and hubcaps
and chrome. Whenever Charlie talks to someone who’s part of this scene—for lack of a better word—he works in, “You haven’t
seen Dave Antonetti around, have you?”
Simon assumed Charlie’s show was basically scripted, the sort of reality television that’s an excuse to put attractive people
in front of a camera. But Charlie knows about this stuff.
Simon has to watch a few of these interactions before realizing that he’s . . . impressed, maybe? All he knows is that he
kind of wants to keep hearing Charlie talk about sourcing old car parts.
“It’s early,” Charlie says after yet another person tells him they haven’t seen Dave. “Not even noon on the first day. He
might show up later.”
None of that explains why the man hasn’t answered his phone in a week, but Charlie already knows that, so Simon keeps his
mouth shut.
Crowds of people, especially when they’re milling around, make Simon anxious and disoriented.
Today is no exception, but the fact that he doesn’t have to do anything helps.
Nobody has any expectations, and Simon has no goals, unless you count his secret goal of petting every dog that walks past—a goal Charlie facilitates by being the sort of person who can walk up to total strangers and ask about their dogs.
Whenever Simon gets stuck in a sea of people who, somehow, never learned how to walk at a reasonable speed and keep to the right, for fuck’s sake, there’s Charlie’s hand on the small of his back, steering him clear.
That hand—just the lightest pressure, barely even fingertips—is short-circuiting Simon’s brain. He tries to make a list of
reasons a person might repeatedly touch someone else’s lower back. His list is one item long.
For lunch, they go to a restaurant that’s clearly supposed to be the platonic ideal of American diners, with lots of chrome
and red vinyl, a neon-lit jukebox, waitresses in gingham dresses. The aesthetic is appalling, and Simon says so, low and bitchy
in Charlie’s ear. Charlie steps on his foot.
“Is this—this perpetual hard-on that people have for the fifties—the explanation,” Simon asks, turning in a slow circle as
they wait for a table, “for why we keep electing shitheads?”
“No,” Charlie says, “that would be racism. Hope that helps!”
“Is there a difference? Is there really?”
“This is cosplay. People can dress up as Darth Vader without being into fascism. Come on, you know this.”
Simon slowly raises his middle finger, then catches a pair of teenagers with their phones pointing at him and jams his hand into his pocket.
He was speaking quietly, almost whispering, so he doesn’t think they picked up what he was saying.
The owners of this restaurant probably don’t deserve to be called out by minor celebrities.
Simon can reluctantly admit that fifties-themed aesthetics maybe aren’t conclusive evidence of actual evil.
“You look exhausted,” Simon says after they’ve ordered.
“You say the sweetest things.”
Simon rolls his eyes. “It’s not an insult. It’s—” What it is, is concern, but Simon feels weird saying so. Two days of peacefully
not murdering one another does not constitute that kind of relationship. “I’m asking if you need anything. A nap. A break.
I don’t know.”
Charlie takes a drink of his soda and starts twisting the straw wrapper around his finger. “So, I’m not great with stress.”
“Wow, what must that be like.”
Charlie kicks him under the table. “I mean, you were there that first season. I’m not gonna do anything stupid. I’m just saying
that worrying about people I can’t help is, like, a problem.”
Simon’s faintly disgusted that Charlie’s managed to acquire an anxiety disorder or whatever fueled by kindness. Meanwhile,
Simon’s anxiety is fueled by absolute unadulterated frustration with the entire world, combined with a little bit of self-loathing,
just for variety.
“Why do you look pissed off at me? What the fuck?” Charlie asks, loud enough that the people at the table across the aisle
glare at him. Simon glares back.
“I’m not pissed off at you. I’m disgusted that you’re nice. You’re a good person. I’ve spent years wondering how you conned everyone into thinking you’re a saint and it turns out it’s just true. Gross.
And boring.”
Charlie’s whole face scrunches into this expression of bewilderment, like he’s not sure if what Simon just said was an insult. Simon wishes him luck in figuring it out; he doesn’t have a clue.
“Anyway, you’re doing well,” Simon says. “A missing family member would be ten-out-of-ten stress for anyone.”
Charlie gets very busy accordioning his straw wrapper. “Remember you mentioned your pills? Don’t offer me any. Like, even
if I freak out.”
“Sure.” Simon doesn’t go around offering controlled substances to people, so this isn’t a big ask.
“That stuff wasn’t a problem for me. I’ve never even taken any benzos—it was just alcohol. Well, alcohol, a little coke, some
pills. But I stay away from all of it now.”
“I’ve seen you with a joint in your hand.”
“Weed isn’t a substance,” Charlie says, frowning, like he can’t believe the depths of Simon’s ignorance.
“Sure,” Simon says again, because he’s the most magnanimous person alive and he isn’t going to tell Charlie how to navigate
his relationship with drugs. And also because he mostly agrees.
Charlie drags his fork through the puddle of ketchup on his plate. “I don’t think it would take much to get me hooked on,
well, basically anything.” He flicks his gaze up to Simon and leaves it there, steady. “My mom was—anyway, you know how you
stay away from more food than you have to? Same difference.”
“Got it.”
“I figure that if I ever need surgery and they want to give me narcotics, I’ll decide then what I want to do about it. I don’t
need to decide now.”
Simon isn’t sure why Charlie’s telling him all this.
It’s none of his business. In the past twenty-four hours, Simon has learned way too much about Charlie’s private life.
Charlie should be hitting the brakes, not dumping more sensitive information into Simon’s lap.
He studies Charlie’s face, trying to figure out what’s going on.
“Why are you looking at me like you’re expecting me to disagree? ”
Charlie gives him an incredulous look. “I don’t know, Simon. Maybe because I’ve spent seven years listening to you disagree
with everything I say?”
The disagreement went both ways, but Simon won’t say so, because that would be proving Charlie’s point. Besides, he wants
to make it clear that he isn’t arguing with Charlie right now.
“Giving you shit is my favorite hobby, but not about this.”
Simon doesn’t know if it’s a compulsion toward symmetry, or just not liking the sense that Charlie’s somehow outdone him,
but when he opens his mouth what comes out is, “My parents forgot to pick me up at school so many times, the principal used
to just take me home with him. It wasn’t, you know, neglect. It’s just that with two parents, two stepparents, two brothers
and three stepsisters with drivers’ licenses, it was hard to keep track of whose turn it was to pick me up.”
If Charlie’s confused about why Simon’s telling him this, he doesn’t let on. He just kicks Simon under the table again. Simon
kicks him back.
When they’re nearly done eating—a hamburger the size of a hubcap for Charlie, a vegetable omelet, hold the cheese, for Simon—Charlie
squints over Simon’s shoulder.
“I know that guy.” Charlie gets to his feet. “Hold on, be right back.”
While Charlie’s gone, Simon gets the check.
“That was one of Dave’s friends,” Charlie says when he comes back. He doesn’t sit down. “He hasn’t seen Dave but said that last year Dave stayed with a friend of his.” He holds out his phone, open to the maps app.
“Okay, sure. Let’s go show up at a total stranger’s house.”
“You can sit this out, you know.”
Simon produces his most withering glare and heads for the door.