Seth Baumgartner's Love Manifesto (14 page)

“W
hat're you parking all the way over here for?” Dimitri says. “The pool is practically on the other side of the complex.”

“If you don't like how I park, feel free to ride Audrey's bike next time.” My words come out sharper than I intend them to. The truth is that I'm afraid if Luz sees my bright red Camry, she'll put a cinder block through my windshield.

Dimitri glances at his watch. “It's just that I told Jill we'd be down around twelve. It's already half past.”

“Since when are you worried about being on time for anything?”

“Since I might get some nookie. In case I haven't mentioned it, Jill is hot. Smokin', actually. Come on, Seth, catch a clue.”

“Clue caught.”

“She says her friend Caitlyn—”

“Forget it.”

“Come on, you're not still off the market, are you? It's been more than a week since Veronica and you split up. Anyhow, she's a jerk. She flipped you the bird.”

“She flipped
you
the bird,” I say.

Dimitri and I walk along the sidewalk, side by side, our towels over our shoulders. The heat rises from the concrete and bakes my legs. It'll be good to get over to that pool.

“So what's the deal with your father and his girlfriend?” Dimitri says. “Why would he take her to Applebee's? That might be okay for high-school students—poverty-stricken college kids, maybe—but not when you're, like, forty and successful. Doesn't he know Bongiorno's Italian Restaurant is a better aphrodisiac than jalapeño poppers? Even I know that, and I never go on dates.”

Thinking about my dad with Luz makes my stomach twist up. “Nothing to tell,” I say. “I'm not going to confront him about it. As far as I'm concerned, it's a dead issue.”

“Dead issue, my ass. You rant and rave about it on your podcast every other night. It bothers you. It bothers you more than this business with Veronica. You won't be able to let it go, Seth. I know you.”

He's right. It's the furthest thing from a dead issue. I hate dodging Dimitri's questions—especially because we're about to go swimming in Luz's condo complex—but I'm still not ready to talk about it. It's one thing to blab about it on the podcast, even with Dimitri listening. Talking into a microphone distances me from everything. It all comes more freely, looser. But I just railed into Veronica. I got right
up in her face—something I have never done before. Was that me talking, or was it my podcasting personality? The words came like they do when I'm wearing the headphones and sitting behind the mike, concentrating more on my soundboard than on filtering the words coming out of my mouth.

“Do what you want,” Dimitri says, “but I'd never let an opportunity like that slide.”

“Opportunity?”

“Open your eyes, Seth. This is a total cash cow. I'd be right up my father's butt about it. I'd be getting all kinds of stuff out of the deal.”

“You wouldn't do a thing.”

“Sure I would. If it were my father, I'd take the guy out to dinner. I'd take him right to Applebee's—just me and him. Hell, I'd request the very same booth he sat in with his mistress, and I'd start laying out all the new rules: later curfew, bigger allowance, a case of beer each week, the whole bit. He'd be staring at me over his nachos—”

“Cheesy Bacon Tavern Chips,” I say.

“Whatever it is they serve over there. Anyhow, he'd be sitting on the other side of the table wondering if I'd gone completely insane, and I'd stop, look him in the eyes, and say, ‘I know about her.'”

“No, you wouldn't.”

“It's brilliant! I'd be getting that new iPod I've been looking at and that multimedia laptop. I'd be getting cable in my room, and if I worked it right, I'd be driving a car.”

“You don't even have a license,” I say.

“If I had a hand on my father's freakin' purse strings, I'd sure as hell get one.”

I want to ask him if he's given any thought to the effect the news would have on his mother, what it would do to his parents' marriage, how it would destroy Audrey, but Dimitri is on a roll. And one thing I've learned is not to get in the way of Dimitri when he's rolling. As he adds to his wish list of blackmail booty, we make our way across the road toward the fenced-in pool. Jill is sitting in the same chair she was sitting in the first time I saw her, the day Dimitri met her. She's wearing a tight white tank top with the word
Lifeguard
printed across it in bright red. Dimitri always goes after girls with big chests. It's like a prerequisite for him. But considering how much Windex it took to clean Dimitri's man-boob prints off the countertop at the pro shop, I suppose it's pretty equal opportunity.

A bunch of other people are sunbathing. Luz isn't one of them, and I relax a little. Now I only have to worry about her showing up between now and three thirty, when we have to leave for our shift at the club. Two kids wearing water wings are running around the pool. One leaps in and sends a splash high into the air. A girl in a pink-and-green-striped bikini who was lying on one of the recliner chairs jerks up, startled by the cold water. I can't help but stare. The girl is around our age. Her shiny dark hair is cut short in the back and gets longer toward the front. It seems to follow the line of her jaw perfectly. She's wearing huge rectangular sunglasses that make her head seem small, like a pixie's. The girl scowls at the kids, lies back down, and
turns her face back to the sun.

Jill waves at us, and it breaks my gaze. We wave back.

“So you'd blackmail your own father?” I say to Dimitri.

“Sure. It's not as though I'd frame him or anything. But if he dug his own grave and jumped in, I'd have no trouble standing over it with a shovel.”

“Just yesterday you were ready to blackmail me for a job. Now you're talking about blackmailing your own flesh and blood. Do I detect a trend?”

“Hey, you have to take the edge where you can find it.”

“Sounds like you can toss that MBA application right in the trash.”

“When I get into business school, I'll teach
them
a thing or two.” Dimitri puts his hand on the gate latch and stops. “So, I've been thinking about it, and I've decided I want to be on your podcast.”

“You what?”

“You heard me. I'll make up an alias—Billy Bob Poltroon or something. I'll be your occasional guest. You can interview me and get my opinions on love and all the stuff going on with me. How many downloads are you getting?”

“Around a hundred a day—give or take. Hey, someone even wrote a theme song for me!”

“Sweet.” I can tell Dimitri is picturing himself with the headphones on in front of the microphone. “So when do you want me to come over for the show?”

“I'm not sure….”

“Come on, I'm living the kind of life people dream about.”

“Who dreams about raking traps at a golf club and hovering over lingerie catalogs until two in the morning?”

“Come on,” Dimitri says. “Look at Jill over there.” She waves again. Dimitri is too busy with his story to notice, but I wave back. “You're wasting valuable airtime whining, bitching, and complaining all the time. Having me on, it'll be interesting—and maybe a little uplifting. I guarantee it.”

“How can you guarantee anything?”

“We'll go by number of downloads. We'll graph your growth over the previous few weeks, and if I don't make the show grow even faster—if I don't make that curve leap—I'm done.”

“You want to make a graph?” I say.

“Yeah. The
x
-axis will be time, and the
y
-axis will be number of hits.”

“And you call
me
a geek?”

“I'm not a geek; I'm more like a nerd.”

“What's the difference?”

“You have so much to learn,” Dimitri says, shaking his head. “A nerd is someone who's really into learning and studying. You know, like a bookworm. A geek is someone who is really into one particular thing—
Star Trek
, computers,
Dr. Who
, poker, whatever. Then there are dorks.”

“What's a dork?”

“A dork is the worst of the three. It's someone who has trouble socially. Some people are dorks but not geeks or nerds. Most nerds are dorks to some degree but not necessarily geeks. They all seem to travel hand in hand, though. All your podcasting makes you a geek. I'm a nerd because I'm always reading things—just things in general. I'm definitely not a dork. Neither are you, but if you don't get back in the saddle soon, you'll head down that path. And once you head down the path to dorkdom…” Dimitri shudders. “Well, I don't even want to think about what would happen.”

I'm beginning to think Dimitri would be great on the podcast. He's quick on his feet, he's funny, and he uses all kinds of colorful expressions. But that lame studio in the basement of my parents' house is my territory.
The Love Manifesto
is mine. The idea of adding a cohost feels weird, like I'd be less in control.

Dimitri rests his hand on the gate latch as though he won't open it until I give him an answer. “Come on,” he says, grinning. “Give me a shot.”

“I'll think about it.”

“Cool.” Dimitri lifts the latch and lets me walk into the pool area first. “Yo, Jill!”

“Hey, Dee-Dee!”

Dee-Dee? She calls him Dee-Dee? Dimitri lets her?

“This is my friend Seth. I told you about him.”

We exchange smiles, and I lean over to shake her hand. She lifts her fist, so we bump knuckles instead. Her tank top is doing very little to conceal her cleavage, and she's not
doing anything to help it succeed. I silently thank whoever invented sunglasses for helping oglers everywhere.

“Dimitri has such nice things to say about you,” Jill says, her words pulling my gaze back above her neckline.

I want to return the compliment, but what am I going to say?
Hey, Dimitri tells me your ass is like a juicy peach waiting to be bitten. Hey, my good buddy Dimitri always likes girls with big boobs, but you seem the nicest…personality-wise, that is…oh, and your breasts are nice, too.
I run through a few more options in my head until I decide it would be best just to smile.

Jill looks past me and blows her whistle. A shrill tweet pierces the air, and the two kids stop dead. “How many times do I have to tell you two little bastards? No running!” She stands up and walks toward the boys. Her ponytail, which is sticking out through the hole in the back of her cap, bounces against her neck. “You want to get kicked out? Want to sit in your stuffy apartments the rest of the day?”

Both kids shake their heads guiltily and begin to do that fast walk with stiff arms and legs that really is more like a run anyway.

Jill sits back down. “They can crack their heads open for all I care,” she says. “Their parents use the pool like a damn babysitting service. But if my dad comes over and sees them running—forget a sling—my ass is going to be in a plaster cast. Insurance nearly doubled last year when Mrs. Vandenberg slipped on the ice and dislocated her shoulder.”

Dimitri drops into the seat next to Jill. “Jill's dad is the
complex manager,” he says.

“And a real pain in the ass,” Jill adds.

“Aren't they all?” I say.

“All condo complex managers are pains in the ass?” Jill asks. “How many condo complex managers do you know?”

“No, I mean dads,” I say. “All dads are pains in the ass.”

Dimitri lifts his hands to the sky. “Say it again, brother!”

“Hey, Caitlyn!” Jill calls out. The girl in the pink-and-green-striped swimsuit lifts her head. “Come over here.”

The girl ties a sheer wrappy-thing around her hips, slips her feet into sparkly flip-flops, and walks over like she's on the runway for a Victoria's Secret fashion show. The pink and green together reminds me of watermelons.

I scowl at Dimitri, who just shrugs and smiles. I've been duped, totally suckered, but considering Caitlyn is the girl in the pink-and-green-striped bikini…

“This is Caitlyn,” Jill says. Dimitri and I introduce ourselves to her, and we all exchange smiles and waves and more smiles. Caitlyn lowers herself into a recliner and stretches out. A sticker shaped like a Playboy bunny clings to her right hip. It peeks at me above her wrap.

“What's that thing?” Dimitri says, pointing to the sticker.

“It's a tanning decal,” she says. “It's supposed to leave the shape of the bunny on me. You know, like untan or whatever.”

“Does it work?” I say.

“I don't know.” Caitlyn runs her fingers over the sticker. “I've never done one before. I just like bunnies.”

For the first time in my life—and possibly the first time in recorded history—I'm wishing I had been born a bunny sticker. With my luck, though, rather than ending up on a hot girl's pelvis, I'd have ended up on some three-year-old's overalls because he went poopy on the potty.

“Caitlyn lives in the complex, too,” Jill says. She points over her shoulder as if I might know the exact apartment. “Right down the row from me. We've been tight since, like, forever.”

“We were baby buddies,” Caitlyn adds.

Caitlyn pops in her earbuds and angles her face to the sun.

Dimitri pulls off his shirt and lies back on his chair. I can almost see the thin film of sweat set up shop on the dome of his belly.

“What're you listening to?” I ask Caitlyn.

She pulls out one earbud. “Huh?”

I point to her iPod. “What're you listening to?”

“Oh, just a mix I threw together last night.”

“You make your own mixes?” I say.

“Just some old songs from my laptop. The computer does it, really. I just pick the songs and the order and the software takes care of everything else—transitions and all that.”