—20— Diego
Diego
If that didn’t just blow the lid right off.
“Where’s the ladder? We need to dust the ceiling fans!” shouts Wyatt from the living room.
I’m putting shit away in the kitchen. “They look at the fans?”
“They most certainly look at the fans!”
Minutes later, he’s way up on a ladder with my tío’s handheld vacuum he somehow knew was kept in the coat closet while I’m pretending to give a fuck about curtains.
“Partway open,” he tells me from the top of the ladder, then changes his mind, “That one closed, and that one open. All the way. Catches the back garden the best in the evening sun.”
I pause. “There’s a back garden?”
He sighs. “Do you even live in the house you’re living in? Yes, there’s a—Have you seriously not been in the backyard?”
My mind flashes instantly to the night I snuck up to the fence and caught him on the phone with his sister.
“I’ll check the bathroom,” I decide, leaving the curtains alone.
Strangely, we circle back to the bedroom at the same time. We stare at the bed. Not sure if Wyatt’s having the same thoughts I’m having. That some snooty-ass family is about to sniff around here where we’ve done our monkey business more than once.
“Do you have any air freshener?” he asks.
I eye him. “Sure. I’ve got eighty different scents in the closet, right next to a black light wand our potential buyers can use to inspect the sheets.”
“While I normally appreciate your awe-inspiring sarcasm, you do actually want to get your aunt and uncle’s house sold, right?”
His question hits me like a bad odor.
I don’t like being asked that question for some reason. And I don’t care to answer.
So I grunt, “Room’s fine,” then head out to give the kitchen another looking over. After a few minutes, Wyatt joins me, quietly wiping at a smudge on the microwave.
The realtor doesn’t knock. She lets herself right in.
Giant curly hair and hoop earrings. Thin as a pole.
Cigarette hanging from her blood-red lips.
“Really?” she cries out, her voice raspy and weak.
“No one put in a pan of gosh’ed-dang cookies?
It’s get-‘er-sold 101, for God’s sakes! Didn’t your aunt tell you? ”
Wyatt saves me from coming right back at that woman by stepping in front of me with one of his customer smiles. “I’ve got cookie dough at my house next-door I’ll be happy to run and get.”
She lifts a crinkly grocery bag full of stuff I didn’t see she had and plops it onto the counter.
“Don’t bother, son. Picked up some pre-made crap from the Kroger one town over.
I’ll pop ‘em in the microwave, should do. What’s that ugly clunker doin’ out front?
” she asks suddenly, eyeing me. “Lottie sure didn’t say nothin’ about an ugly clunker sittin’ smack dab in the middle of the driveway. ”
I’m about to go off again when Wyatt says, “A passion project. I can cover it with a tarp.”
“That’s worse. Never mind. I’ll make up a story.” She pulls out a container of cookies from the bag, pops it open, helps herself to one, then frowns at us. “You boys don’t plan to stay here, do you? Buyers hate sellers skulkin’ around. Ruins my mojo, too.”
“Wouldn’t wanna ruin that,” I mumble, looking her up and down as my jaw sets tight.
Wyatt turns to me. “We can hang over at my house while the realtor’s working her magic.”
“Henrietta. That’s Henry with an etta. And I don’t do magic no more,” she adds, pointing at him with her half-eaten cookie. “Not since the incident back in ’98.”
Wyatt and I share a look.
“Yeah,” I answer him. “Your house.”
Henrietta grabs a plate down from the cupboard, spreads the cookies out onto it with her bare hands, and slides the whole thing into the microwave. I stare down at the crumbs she just scattered across the counter.
It isn’t until we’re in Wyatt’s house that I finally crack. “That whack job is who my tía and tío trusted with selling the house?”
“Should we eat something?” offers Wyatt. “I, for one, haven’t had a single bite since lunch.”
“I’m fine.” I go to the window and watch, annoyed.
He goes to the fridge and looks over at me. “You’re not gonna stand there and just—”
“Yes, I’m gonna stand here and just.”
He says nothing more, pulling something out to make.
No one shows up. I’m still staring out the window when he’s at the table with a salad.
I notice he set out two bowls even though I said I was fine.
Giving up at the window—whoever these mystery buyers are, they’re late—I take a seat with Wyatt, who’s already filling me a bowl even though neither of us said anything.
“Does it feel wrong?” I ask as he serves me. “Eating salad all of the time when you grow plants for a living?”
He frowns in thought. “I’ve wondered the same thing about farmers who eat their own chickens and cows.” He shrugs. “Then I just thank myself for not naming my salads, and we’re all good. Do you want something to drink?”
“A beer would be nice.”
He blinks. “I … I don’t think I have …”
“Doesn’t matter. Water’s fine.”
“I might have wine, if you want? Could open a bottle of—”
“Don’t, it’s fine.”
“Maybe some juice? I got apple, orange, pineapple, grape …”
“Wyatt.”
“Or I could take us to someplace like Tumbleweeds, get a nice beer and a steak? Or Pepperoni Pirate for pizza and—? Oh, I don’t think they serve alcohol. Maybe we could—”
“All I wanna do right now is eat George and chill.”
He looks down at his bowl. “You did not just name my salad.”
I jab a forkful into my mouth and chew, staring at Wyatt over the table, our ears filling with crunchy noises. He glares back at me for a second, then shakes his head and eats, too.
He insists on doing the dishes himself, so I’m left to just walk around the house.
The guy leaves so much of himself out in the open, it’s impossible not to see things.
Stack of mail by the door he hasn’t dealt with.
Church bulletin stuck under a lion paperweight.
Photos on the walls, one with him and who I assume to be his parents. He looks more like his dad.
I glance at the door leading into the garage again, thinking of his father’s collections of vintage car parts Wyatt hasn’t wanted to touch in ages.
I wonder if there’s something else going on between him and his parents he hasn’t really talked about, same as how I’ve not really spilled about my own.
For as much of an opened book as Wyatt is, I keep sensing the one or two chapters he intentionally leaves shut.
Not that he needs to open them or anything. He’s entitled to his privacy, and I’m not the prying type.
“Still no word from Henry-with-an-etta?” asks Wyatt.
I check my phone, then peek out the kitchen window. “Nope.”
“Maybe the buyers are late,” he suggests.
“Maybe she’s performing a séance in my living room. Incident in ’98?” I turn to Wyatt. “That was the realtor, right? My tía and tío aren’t being robbed blind right now, are they?”
“Didn’t you say your Aunt Lottie texted you a heads-up?”
Fifteen minutes late. I shake my head. “She called my dad’s car an ugly clunker. Twice.”
Wyatt folds his dish towel, sets it on the counter, and winces. “I kind of … used that word, too. Not the ‘ugly’ part. Um, sorry,” he quickly says when I look at him. “I didn’t know it’s your dad’s.”
After a second, I shrug. “It is a clunker. But it’s my clunker. It’s all I have left of him.” I lean back against the counter, eyes on the car through the window.
Wyatt’s voice softens. “It means a lot to you. That car.”
I shrug. “Of course it does.”
“You … You don’t really … talk about him.”
I can feel all the eggshells Wyatt’s walking over, bringing this up. Guess he’s been wondering for a while. Don’t blame him.
“We don’t have to …” He chuckles. “Sorry. I’m just … I was just curious. Because of the … the car.”
I’m still staring at it through the window. “Someday, I’ll get it up and running. It’s what he would have wanted. It’s my greatest project. Because it was his project. His baby.”
“You inherited the work, in a way.”
“Work of love,” I say, even though the words feel a bit heavy and dramatic coming from me. “Keep him close to me. No one else in the world seemed to care when he passed away.”
“Not even your uncle?”
I cross my arms. As much as I hate to admit it … “My tío’s fine. He loved my dad. May’ve been a hard-ass on me, but he loved his brother.”
Wyatt nods slowly at that. I watch him. He winces and, after a second of obvious hesitation, asks, “And … your mom …?”
My jaw tightens. “She left. What else is there to say.” I turn to the window again. After a minute, Wyatt does, too. We stand here in silence, the subject dropped.
Henrietta comes out of the garage to take a smoke break, then launches into a coughing fit, wagging her hand in front of her face as she grimaces, muttering to herself.
“The hell’s she smoking for? At the house she’s trying to sell? I’ll give her ten more minutes, and if no buyers show up …”
“How about we put on a movie?” suggests Wyatt.
I turn to him. “Huh?”
“Even if the buyers are late, they could still take a while to go through the house, ask their questions, all that. And we never just hang out, you and I. So why don’t we … put something on? Some movie you like. What do you like?”
I can’t remember the last time I had the patience for a movie, let alone just an episode of a series.
But the idea of watching something next to Wyatt.
On that little couch I spotted in his living room.
Is he inviting me to a “movie” so we can “watch” it while we do “whatever usually happens” when we “get too close”?
These thoughts alone help me forget whatever the hell might or might not be happening next door. “You pick.”
“Great! I’ll get the popcorn going.”
Ten minutes later, we’re on his couch, a classic red-and-white striped plastic tub between us overflowing with popcorn. And he’s put on a movie, some action adventure I already forgot the name of, and is eagerly curled up watching it.
I learn a few things real fast.