“Nice, isn’t it?” Dwayne observed.
Boring, Patrick thought. How had he done this for four years?
“You’ll get used to it right quick.” John placed his hand on his friend’s. “Like riding a bike.”
They sat quietly, the only sound the evening wind, which, for Patrick, carried the echo of Grant’s probing questions: How did cavemen make tools if they didn’t have any tools? How do you kill a ghost? Why do I need a mirror to see my eyes?
Patrick leaned in to his wineglass. He could barely make out his reflection; the wine gave him a youthful, pinkish hue. “You’re going to have to change into your night-drinking shirt soon.”
John looked puzzled. Patrick pointed to his day drinking shirt.
Eduardo finished packing a bowl and held it up to the others. “Any takers?” He slid his lighter toward Patrick.
“I’m good,” Patrick said, even though he wasn’t sure that was true.
Patrick lay on his couch with his legs splayed, creating his custom nook for Marlene. She’d tired of her search for Maisie and Grant and slept soundly in this nest; sleep wasn’t coming so easily for Patrick. He was exhausted for sure, but too unsettled to fully relax. The house seemed wrong. The only toys on the floor were the dog’s. The Christmas tree was gone. That corner of the room had come to feel celebratory, now it looked dark, like depression, and he couldn’t muster the energy to move a lamp to shine light in its place. Perhaps he should have done a few hits with Eduardo before JED went home. Just to make him sleepy.
He thought about the hot tub, but instead opened his phone to his YouTube channel. Another slew of new subscribers. He hoped they knew what they were signing up for; at the moment he didn’t see his appeal. Now that the kids were gone, he wasn’t sure what to generate for content. Clips of Marlene, perhaps, snoring as she was now. In the throes of a dream, her legs moving as if she were running, tearing through the grass in the gentle shade of evening. That was good for one video, maybe two—people seemed to post a lot about their dogs. Should he post one of himself? Did anyone really care to see him? He replayed the first video he posted with Maisie and Grant, at Lulu’s with the cotton candy. It had four hundred and eighty-eight thousand views. Four hundred eighty-eight thousand people, he thought, who should find better things to do with their lives. He turned up the volume just to hear their laughter fill the house. Marlene lifted her head, alert, as if she’d been bamboozled. The kids were indeed here, hiding, and it might be up to her to find them. How could she have so easily given up the game? And yet, a quick survey of the living room made it pretty clear it was still just the two of them. No need to get down from a perfectly good perch on the couch. Patrick grinned a stupid grin, as wide as it was involuntary. Perhaps he was judging his new followers too harshly. Maybe they knew exactly what they were doing. Maybe this was the very best thing to do with free time. He watched the video of them from the party, from atop the mountain, and the others that he had posted. He scrolled back to a video he had shared of the final curtain call of The People Upstairs. Sixteen posts ago. Then a four-year gap where he was invisible. What had he done with his life in that time? Without documentation, how could he remember?
His phone rang, interrupting his dark thoughts. The word agent flashed on his caller ID. He stared at his phone, not quite sure he had the strength to answer. “Martha Mountain-Range?” he asked when he did, imagining it a hyphenated, married name. He’d exhausted his topographical knowledge, so he’d have to find a new shtick. “Do I have to send the dented one back? They would make iconic bookends.”
“There’s interest,” Cassie blurted.
It took a moment for those two words to register.
“Strong interest. It’s TV. Network. A family sitcom. It was going to be a single-father sort of thing—a modern take on Father Knows Best—but they saw your YouTube videos with the kids and they are freaking out. They would change the role to an uncle. Totally open. You meet. You dazzle them.”
“Gay uncle.”
“What?”
“Guncle. Can the uncle be gay?”
“They want you, Patrick. If all goes well, they would rewrite the whole thing for you.”
Patrick said nothing. He just held the phone up to his ear and listened to the sound of her frustrated breathing. It was like a meditation app that carefully slowed his pounding heart.
“PATRICK. In New York.”
Patrick’s eyes grew red and he tickled Marlene under the chin.
“This is it. This is what you wanted. Don’t you have anything to say?”
Patrick took one deep, sharp breath. “That ain’t it, kid. That ain’t it.”
“THE FUCK IT’S NOT!”
Patrick sat bolt upright. It had only been a few short weeks, but calling him late at night without apologizing? Bringing him offers? Swearing at him through the phone? Cassie was going to make one hell of an agent. He liked her in this moment more than ever.
Not that Cassie could see, but he conjured a wry smile. “I just hope I’m not a Dance: 10; Looks: 3.”
Cassie let fly with an infuriated wail that sang through the phone, as if wondering why she ever wanted this promotion at all. “What are you talking about?”
Patrick forced himself not to laugh; why was it so much fun to exasperate her? “I’m doing A Chorus Line, Cassie. I’m quoting your show.”
The frustrated clacking of a keyboard as Cassie continued undeterred. “I’ll see you in Los Angeles. Do I need to come get you? Escort you into the meeting? They
