Seth Baumgartner's Love Manifesto (22 page)

T
he Red Scare idles in front of Luz's apartment building. Cracked concrete steps and a closed door loom above me. My hands curl around the steering wheel. They don't want to let go. The sun beats down on the car, makes it feel like an oven in here. If it gets any hotter, I'm packing up and driving north until I drop into the Arctic Ocean.

My father and I only spent a few minutes at Luz's apartment building, long enough for her to calm down and for the three of them to talk for a few minutes. I stayed in the car, looking at my muddy golf shoes on my father's clean car mats. When we got home, my mom was waiting for us. When I saw the anguish in her face, I just walked over and hugged her tight. Then we went inside and talked for hours, the three of us. Ever since, it's been like a fog has lifted from our house, like the diseased layers of an onion have been peeled back to reveal the good parts underneath.

I paid the club for the damage I did to the green and decided to steer clear of the place for a while on account of the nasty looks I was getting from the old codgers in the locker room. But it's a small price to pay for immortality. Sure, I didn't get my name on any brass plaques, but people will be talking about what I did at that tournament for decades. It may rival Man-Boob Mickelson birdying five of the last seven holes in the 2004 Masters to beat Ernie Els by one stroke.

Audrey squeezes my leg. “You sure you want to do this?” she asks.

“Miguel has to be back at the base soon,” I say. “I'd rather do it this way than meet him for the first time at his going-away party tomorrow. There'll be too many people around.”

Dimitri taps my headrest from the backseat. “Yeah, but wouldn't it be easier to do it like that instead of this one-on-one stuff?”

“No way,” Audrey says. “Seth's got to meet him without everyone else around.”

Dimitri slouches in his seat. “Then why'd he ask us to tag along in the first place?”

Audrey turns around. “Haven't you ever heard of moral support?”

“Give
this
moral support.” Dimitri hooks his flip-flopped foot around Audrey's face. She smacks it away.

Two kids—the same two who were running around the pool when Dimitri and I were here—dart past my car. Both are laughing. The taller of the two takes a bottle of
sunscreen from the other. He squirts the word
fart
on the concrete with the white lotion and both boys continue on, giggling even harder than before.

A whistle pierces the air that cuts through the music playing from my speakers. It's Jill. “Get back here with my sunscreen, you little bastards! If I have to tell you one more time, I'm going to beat you with a pillowcase filled with nectarines!”

Jill sees my car and slows to a trot.

“Uh-oh,” I say. “Ex-girlfriend alert.”

“Jill is hardly an ex-girlfriend,” Dimitri says.

Jill comes up to my window. Her white crewneck covers her much better than the tank top she was wearing last time I saw her working. “Hey, what's up?” she says. “Going up to see the cougar?”

“Something like that,” I say.

“Seriously?” She looks up at Luz's window. “I was just kidding.”

“No,” I say. “I was just headed up there now.”

“Well, be sure to give me a full report.” Jill pokes her head into my window and surveys the backseat. “Hey, Dimitri,” she says. “You hiding from me back there?”

“Just chillin' out,” he says.

Jill pokes my arm. “Might want to keep a lookout for Caitlyn,” she says. “I hear her left knee is worse than her right.”

“I figure if I stay in the car she can't do too much damage.”

“How's the podcasting going?” she says. “I saw you
pulled down all the old episodes.”

“It wasn't right to leave them up,” I say. “Too much personal stuff. I did just apply for an internship at Haywire 98FM, though.”

“Cool,” she says. “Well, keep keeping it real, guys. I've got to unleash a whole load of freeze-dried ass-whoopin'. That was a brand-new bottle those kids swiped from me.” She leans farther into my car and looks Dimitri over. “You still have my number?”

He holds up his left hand to reveal a black smudge. “I was keeping it wrapped in a plastic bag when I showered, but it looks like I sweated it off playing golf.”

Jill snatches the felt tip from my cup holder. “Come here,” she tells Dimitri.

Dimitri leans forward and she writes her phone number backward across his forehead. “Now you'll remember to call every time you look in the mirror.”

“You really think Dimitri looks in the mirror?” Audrey says.

Jill laughs. “Call me,” she says to Dimitri. Then she darts after the boys, following the trail of sunscreen.

“What does she see in you?” Audrey says after Jill rounds the corner of the building.

“That I rock?” Dimitri says.

And it's true. Dimitri does rock.

“What about that girl from Oregon?” I say.

“Yeah,” Audrey adds. “What about Starbucks Girl?”

“Her?” I can see Dimitri's grin without looking. “I totally made her up.”

“I knew it!” Audrey cries out, laughing. “You're such a freakin' liar!”

My hand finds its way to the door handle. “I guess I've sat here long enough,” I say. “Time to do my thing.”

Audrey grabs my leg, this time more firmly. “You sure you don't want me to come up with you?”

“I'll be fine,” I say. “Once I push the doorbell, everything's out of my hands. It's just a matter of saying hi, right?”

Audrey leans across and kisses my cheek. A trickle of perspiration makes its way down her neck and over her collarbone. I want to get her alone and follow where it went, but I'm distracted by Dimitri patting me reassuringly on the shoulder.

I get out. The sun beats down on me.

It's strange. I spoke to him on the phone a few times, but meeting Miguel face-to-face still seems bizarre. After all, he's my half brother, a half brother I've never met. I didn't even know he existed until last week. He could have stepped on a land mine in Afghanistan and I would never have had a chance to meet him in the first place. I might never have found out about him at all.

This is important. Majorly important.

I cross the sidewalk and prepare to climb the apartment steps when a car pulls up next to mine. It is a silver Subaru, almost as beat-up as the Red Scare. The windows are down, and music is blasting. A skinny guy with a ratty beard and a rattier bandanna tied around his head gets out and pulls a bouquet from the backseat. Blue and white
irises with red tulips. The flower arrangement my father ordered for Miguel all those weeks ago.

I walk over and tip the guy five dollars.

“I'm only supposed to give the flowers to the person living at the address.” He looks down at the card. “Eleven-oh-three-D.”

“It's fine,” I say. “I'm going inside now.”

“You sure? I could lose my job—”

“I'm positive.”

The man nods and hands over the arrangement. “I'm way behind on my deliveries anyway. Thanks, man.” He stuffs the tip into his pocket and drives off.

I glance up the stairs, then back to my car. Audrey is smiling at me from the front seat. Dimitri is watching from the back. They both give me a thumbs-up. The flowers tickle my nose, so I shift the basket to my side. I gaze up at the apartment and climb the stairs.

When I get to the top, I take a deep breath and press the doorbell.

A
lthough in large part books are written in solitude, none are produced in a vacuum. If they were, it would get awfully crowded in the dust bag.

I'd like to thank my editor, Alessandra Balzer, and all the great people at Balzer + Bray. You let me do some unorthodox things in this book and I appreciate you humoring my wacky ideas. Thanks also to my agent, Linda Pratt, for connecting me with all the right people and introducing me to the lounge at the Algonquin.

The concept of podcasting would never have been familiar to me if not for my good friend and pioneer of all things technological, Mark Furnish. And Caleb Bacon, you picked up where Mark left off.

Thank you to self-proclaimed “bitzes” Maria Cruz and Maria D'Andrea for pointing me toward the right music. And thanks to Keiki and Robin Cabanos for working on
the first
Love Manifesto
theme song. You made me feel like a rock star.

Eternal gratitude to my team of incredibly excellent readers and critiquers: Laura Bowers, Loree Griffin Burns, Nancy Castaldo, Debbi Michiko Florence, Rose Kent, Liza Martz, Kate Messner, Coleen Paratore, and Leonora Scotti. All of you
are
rock stars.

Special thanks to Brian and Lisa Payne for lending me their wickedly awesome lake house for a long weekend, where I had nothing to do but stare at mounted animal heads and finish this book. And also to Eric Weinstein, the closest thing to a patron of the arts a writer could hope for.

And, of course, all my appreciation and love to my power plant, Elaine, and my two little wind turbines, Ethan and Lily. You three are the best renewable resources I can imagine.

Jacket art © 2010 by Polly Kanevsky

Jacket design by Polly Kanevsky