“We’ll be staying with my grandma,” he told me. “At least for a while. She’s got this estate outside of Stockholm.”
“It’s not an estate,” said Kjersten. “It’s just a house.”
“Yeah, well, if it was here, it would be considered an estate. She even paid for our plane tickets. We’re flying first class.”
“Business,” corrected Kjersten.
“On Scandinavian Airlines, that’s just as good.”
That’s when I realized that somewhere between yesterday and today, Gunnar had already made the move without anyone noticing. His head was already there at that Swedish estate, settling in. Getting the rest of him there was now just a shipping expense. I marveled that in spite of everything, Gunnar was bouncing back. Suddenly he was looking forward to something other than dying. He wasn’t even wearing black anymore.
I helped Kjersten sort through things in her room, which felt kind of weird, but she wanted me to be there. I’ll admit I wanted to be there, too. Not so much for the sorting, but just for the being. I tried not to think about how quickly the day was moving, and how soon she’d be heading out to the airport.
“There’s a two-suitcase limit per person on the flight to Stockholm,” Kjersten told me. “After that, there’s an extra charge.” She thought about it and said, “I think I might have trouble filling both suitcases.”
I guess once you start parting with all the things you think hold your life together, it’s hard to stop—and then you find out your life holds together all by itself.
“It’s just stuff,” I told her. “And stuff is just stuff.”
“Brilliant,” Gunnar said from the next room. “Can I quote you on that?”
Later in the day Mr. Umlaut came by with a U-Haul to take away what few things didn’t sell, which wasn’t much, and to say his good-byes.
It was cordial, and it was awkward, but at least it happened. A ray of hope for the danglers.
“He says he’s got an apartment in Queens,” Gunnar told me after he left—which I suppose was a giant step up from a room at a casino—so maybe our little visit did have some effect after all. “He says he’s looking for a job. We’ll see.”
Later that day I got a call from Mr. Crawley demanding that I come to
“You will report at six o’clock sharp,” Crawley said. “Tell no one.”
Which of course was like an invitation to tell everyone. In the end, I only told Kjersten, and asked her to come with.
“For our final date, I’m taking you to a fancy restaurant,” I told her. “And this time no one’s grounded.”
When we arrived, I discovered, to my absolute horror, that Crawley had installed something new to complement the ambience. On the restaurant’s most visible wall was a giant framed poster of me pouring water over Senator Boswell’s head. There was a caption above it. It read:
It just made Kjersten laugh, and laugh and laugh. I tried to tell myself this was a good thing—that she needed to laugh far more than I needed, oh, say self-respect?
Wonder of wonders, Crawley was actually there—in fact, I found out he had been there on a regular basis, training the staff, through various forms of employer abuse, in how to run a top-notch restaurant. When it came to the poster of me and my victim, he was very pleased with himself. “I also rented several billboards around the city,” he told me.
“Where?” Kjersten wanted to know. I was a little too numb to hear the answer.
“Are we done yet?” I asked Crawley. “Can we eat now?”
“Oh,” said Crawley, “but the festivities are just beginning.”
Waiting in the restaurant’s second room was a film crew from
Kjersten was instantaneously starstruck, and suddenly what began as humiliation became something else entirely. “You knew all about this, didn’t you!” she said to me.
I neither confirmed nor denied it. Today I was getting more mileage from silence than from ignorance.
I wasn’t quite sure what this was all about, or why Crawley had requested my presence, except to maybe show off the fact that he somehow dragged a celebrity in through our doors ... but then someone bodily grabs me, puts me in my white busboy apron, and someone else puts a pitcher of water into my hands. I stood there looking dumb, one episode behind the program.
“Roll camera,” the director shouts, and Jaxon looks at me, doing the bring-it-on gesture with his fingers.
“C’mon, what are you waiting for? Do I get an official welcome, or not?”
I can see Crawley grinning and wringing his fingers in anticipation in the background like Wile E. Coyote, and I finally get it. So does Kjersten.
“Omigosh!” says Kjersten. “You’re going to dump water on JAXON BEALE!”
It’s the first time I ever heard Kjersten, star of the debate team, say “Omigosh.” All at once I realized that, for this wet, shining moment, our roles were truly reversed. Not only was I Mr. Mature, but now she was the goofy fourteen-year-old.
“Well,” I said, smooth as a Porsche on ice, “if my buddy Jaxon wants water, then water he shall have.” I strode up to him as Kjersten squealed with her hands over her mouth, and I said, “Welcome to
He stood up, shaking the water off, and for a second I’m worried that maybe he’ll get mad and punch me out, but instead, he just starts laughing, turns to the camera, and says, “Now,
From here, I didn’t need a road map to know exactly where this was leading and why. Crawley had paid Beale a small fortune for this publicity stunt, and it was money well spent. Say what you want about Creepy Crawley, but the man is a marketing genius.
“It’s all about spin,” Old Man Crawley said while Jaxon Beale signed a waterlogged autograph for Kjersten, and other arriving guests. “There are lots of egos out there. Once this piece airs, celebrities, politicians, you name it, will be climbing over one another to get drenched by you.”
Thanks to our celebrity encounter, it became a date to remember. Even more special, because I knew it would be our last. I tried not to dwell on that, though, because we’d shared enough sad occasions together. We deserved for this one to be happy. I ordered in Italian—I don’t speak it all that well, but I can order like a pro. Still on her Jaxon Beale high, Kjersten was all gush, flush, and blush for a while. “I probably looked so stupid!” she said. “Like one of those lame adoring fans.”
“Naa,” I told her. “You’re cute when you’re embarrassed.”
By the time dessert came, everything settled down, and the dating balance was restored. It was different now, though. For the first time, I felt more like her equal. Maybe now she saw me that way, too—and it occurred to me that a relationship isn’t about being two distinct kinds of people—it’s about feeling comfortable in whatever roles the moment required.
I guess that’s why my friendship with Lexie survived through Norse gods and echolocation—we always seemed to be what the other one needed.
“Tell you what,” Lexie told me as we sat in her living room one afternoon, planning her grandfather’s next kidnapping. “If we both happen to be in between relationships, I see nothing wrong with going out to dinner, or a concert now and then.”
I think it was good for both of us to know that as long as we were both there for each other, we’d always have a social life, even when we had no social life.
On the morning of the Umlauts’ flight to Sweden, we had a funeral.
I’d like to say it was symbolic, but, sadly, it was all too real. Ichabod, our beloved family cat, finally went to
