Hope Idiotic | Part 24
Hope Idiotic is a serialized novel. Catch each new part every week on Monday and Thursday.
To: thebergman79@hotmail.com
From: kellerinvegas@hotmail.com<Chuck Keller>
Subject: Re: Can You Go Home Again?
Louie, Louie,
I’m sorry about Michelle. You gave it a good effort. To answer your question, though I think it was rhetorical or metaphorical, yes. Yes, you can come home again. You should come home again. You can have your place back to yourself if you don’t want to live with me, though I am partial to this place and I have missed you. Things are going well with Lexi. Maybe she’ll let me rent her couch or something.
Yes. Come home. Neal misses you, too. You can pick right back up. You don’t need that city or that girl.
I think I might even have a job for you.
✶
WHEN MOST PEOPLE TRAVEL TO LAS VEGAS, they spend a week drinking and gambling and trading venereal diseases with strangers. Maybe they take in a helicopter tour of the Grand Canyon. Lou’s week in Vegas was spent interviewing for a job and repairing his house, which had been haphazardly battered and bruised by his best friend and tenant, a recovering alcoholic.
Beyond the garage-door sensors being ripped off, the doorjamb between the kitchen and the garage had been split by Chuck kicking the door open when he returned home too drunk to use a key. The house alarm system had never been activated, but it chirped each time a door opened. When Chuck passed out with the sliding patio door open all night, the incessant chirping eventually woke him, and he tore the system’s keypad from the wall in a drunken rage, leaving it dangling by the wires. The downstairs toilet was cracked into two pieces. Chuck said it happened when he was trying to clean around it—that he must’ve leaned on it too much. But Lou knew it was really because Chuck was too drunk to know what was happening. He must have fallen into it, probably breaking it with his thick skull.
“I’m sorry about the broken house, man,” Chuck said to Lou as they unloaded supplies from Chuck’s car—the one he bought from the repo man for three hundred dollars.
“Not a big deal. But you’re paying for all of it, and you’re going to be my errand bitch until it’s all done. I’d take it out of your security deposit, but you never gave me one.”
“You never asked for one.”
“I should have.”
“I probably wouldn’t have had the money for it anyhow.”
“Valid point.”
For the first time in more than two years, things in Chuck Keller’s and Lou Bergman’s lives were quiet, calm and cool. If it weren’t for the home repairs, they wouldn’t have known what to do with themselves. Chuck went to work, while Lou interviewed for the communications specialist position at Metropolis Grande, Palm Gaming’s multiproperty project—the largest private development ever, which was currently under construction, collected vitamin D on the patio by the pool and puttered around the house making little repairs until his assistant returned at around six o’clock. He didn’t want anyone else knowing he was in town. He didn’t want to have to explain the Michelle thing or discuss the possibility of a move back. Avoidance was now how Lou managed and ultimately eliminated stress.
And on Saturday, he turned thirty years old. Lexi, Natalie and Stephen, and I came to the house for a small barbecue. Lexi had seen the mess Chuck had made of the place and was impressed by how good everything looked.
“Put the last nail into the doorjamb about three minutes before you guys came over,” Chuck said with pride.
“I put the last nail in,” Lou said. “Chuck doesn’t know how to use a hammer.”
We spent the afternoon laughing, eating and telling stories. Natalie made an angel food cake and served it with strawberries, homemade hot fudge and whipped cream—Lou’s favorite dessert.
“How did you know?” he asked her, as she cut him the first piece.
“You three talk about everything. All I had to do was ask Neal.”
“It’s strange, the amount of shit I can store and recall in this mangled brain,” I said.
Without saying anything about it directly, we strengthened the case that Lou needed to move back to Vegas.
By nine, our intimate birthday party was over, and we headed home. Lexi left with us and continued cooing over the baby as Natalie gently strapped him into the car. Chuck and Lou lounged in the plastic Adirondack chairs on the patio. Chuck drank an O’Doul’s beer; Lou nursed a glass of orange juice.
“Oh! I almost forgot!” Chuck jumped up and ran back into the house. He returned a minute later with a gift bag. “Happy thirtieth, man.” Lou reached into the bag; he pulled out a bottle of scotch. “Sorry it’s not something nicer. It’s about all I could afford, but I know you drink it.”
“You shouldn’t be encouraging this. We’ve been doing so well with sobriety this week.”
“You’re welcome anyway. Besides, no one says that you had to stay sober. If anything, you should have an I.V. of that shit hooked up to your veins. A breakup, turning thirty. Red Letter Week for old Lou Bergman.”
The cockroaches scurried about. Chuck smashed a few with his foot. A few more with an empty bottle.
“I was too busy installing toilets.”
“Well, that’s done. Have a drink now.”
“Is it okay if I don’t?”
“Whatever man, it’s your birthday.”
“Let’s keep it here and save it for if I get the job and move back.”
“You’re gonna get the job. I already talked to Ling over in their HR department. She loved you. Said you were the best interview she may have ever had with anyone. Just gotta make it official, probably early next week. So, let me be the first to say, Congratulations, inaugural communication specialist for Metropolis Grande.”
“Thanks, buddy. I’m still not sure how this thing will work in this economy, but what do I know of business?”
They raised their beverages toward each other and took a drink. They sat quietly for a while, both of them staring up at the few dim stars they could see among the glow from the Strip. Lou broke the silence.
“Strange.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s not until I’m no longer with Michelle that a real job opportunity presents itself.”
“Yep.”
“I’ve hardly thought about her at all this week. I’m a little surprised that she hasn’t called, but don’t even really care.”
“Feel like a weight has been lifted from you, huh?”
“Yeah. Freedom. I finally understand why the Jewish people get so excited about being freed from bondage. It’s an amazing feeling.”
“Free of the accountability. Free from having to explain your moods.”
“Free from having to exhaust myself trying to act like everything is wonderful.”
“I think this is a good thing for you. Took a while to figure it out, but here you are. And I, for one, couldn’t be happier.”
“This feels good. I’m going back to where I was, but it feels more like a move forward.”
The cockroaches scurried about. Chuck smashed a few with his foot. A few more with an empty bottle.
“I don’t need her, right?” Lou asked. “I mean, everything I was—back when I was something—I did without her. All she did was hurt me. Even when she was being supportive, she’d remind me she was only supporting me because I needed to be supported. Like with money. God, I can’t even count the number of times she’d say, ‘I should be given sainthood for sticking by you through all this.’ Fucking bitch. She didn’t stick by me. She lorded over me.”
“You’ve got every right to be angry,” Chuck said. “But remember, you guys had good times, too. That’s why you stayed with her through all of it.”
“But I was so unhappy through most of it.”
“But you loved her. So there’s that.”
“I don’t think love matters, Chuck. It’s important, sure. But you can love someone with every fiber of your being, and if it doesn’t function, you’re fucked.”
“Like with Lexi.”
“What do you mean?”
“I love her. I mean I really love her. Everything about her. Even the shit I complain about, I love that stuff, too. Because she’s such a good person. It makes me uncomfortable. I’m actually uncomfortable with what a good person my girlfriend is. I feel out of place sometimes. The beer helps, but then, you know, it doesn’t.”
They both laughed knowingly. Lou picked up his shoe that he’d slid off earlier and slapped a roach dead with it.
“Besides, I miss Gina. I still want to be with her. When I think about marriage—which you know I don’t like doing—but when I do think about it, it’s easier for me to picture myself marrying Gina.”
“Come on. Really? Are you sure that’s not just because you can’t have her right now?”
“I thought that was it. But it’s deeper than that. Much deeper. An unfamiliar kind of deep.” He drank the last sip of his O’Doul’s “I’m gonna get another one. Want anything?”
“I’ll try one of those.”
Lou slaughtered maybe twenty or thirty more roaches while Chuck was inside. Let’s be clear: the patio wasn’t filled with roaches because the patio was filthy. Roaches roam the desert night the way mosquitoes swarm the nights of the midwest. Any man with his own pool in need of solace will do this. Another slap of the shoe, two more roaches dead, and Chuck was back. He was holding an envelope along with the two bottles.
“Check it out,” Lou said. “It’s like a roach holocaust out here.” Chuck handed him a bottle of the non-alcoholic O’Doul’s. He took a sip, looked at it and considered its taste. “Not bad.”
“Yeah. Tastes pretty much like beer.”
“Is it any cheaper?”
“Not really.”
“That’s bullshit. There’s no alcohol in here. It’s one less ingredient.”
“It’s the same as a twelve-pack of a regular cola costing the same as a twelve-pack of diet cola.”
“I think that’s bullshit, too.”
Chuck took his seat and handed Lou the envelope. “I wrote her a letter.”
“Who?”
“Gina.”
“This is it?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m supposed to read it?”
“Yeah.”
It was a love letter. Two pages front and back. It was unlike anything Chuck had written before. To Lou, the letter didn’t even sound like Chuck. It sounded like a lovesick poet. These were words that had been living in the most absolute depths of Chuck’s soul for twenty-nine years. They were raw and honest, and they began to make Lou cry.
Chuck had moved across the patio to the other side of the pool. He was sitting on the edge with his legs dipped in the water. He was staring at Lou, watching his reactions from a safe distance. No one likes to read anything when the author is right over their shoulder. And Chuck didn’t want to be so close that Lou felt he had to react a certain way. He knew that his letter was one that required the reader to fall into it completely. Any human distraction would disrupt the spirit.
When Lou finished, he looked up. The friends locked eyes.
“Really?” Lou said.
“Really.”
“It’s like I don’t even know you. But Jesus Christ, you’re beautiful.” He stood and walked to his friend, rolled up his jeans and dipped his legs into the cool pool water, too. The moon was out now, and it cast a gentle white light on either of their faces.
“And you mean all that for Gina?”
“Yeah.”
“You don’t think there’s any emotion in there that came from your feelings for Lexi? That there’s not a single sentence in these four pages that is meant for her?”
“I’ve never written like that until I had Gina in my life, then out of it. But…” he kicked the water, splashing it across its own surface. The new ripples careened into the moonlit nothingness of the water. “I want it to be for Lexi.”
“Maybe you should take a cue from me. Be single. I currently have no relationship problem ’cuz I’m not in a relationship. It’s worked for me well these last few days.”
✶
THEY STAYED OUTSIDE UNTIL A LITTLE AFTER 4 A.M., when Chuck polished off the last of the O’Doul’s. Talking, laughing, the usual. As they picked up the empties and marveled at the incredible number of roach carcasses, Chuck said, “I hope you had a good birthday, buddy.”
“I can say without any doubt that this one was the best. Really. Thank you.”
“I didn’t do much.”
“You did everything. You’re an incredible person, Charles Keller. You really, really are. I mean you still owe me a couple of grand in back rent, but other than that, you’re the most important person to me, Chuck. I love you.”
“If I say I feel the same way, will it just seem like I’m being polite?”
“Yes.”
So, Chuck hugged him instead. Minutes passed.
“I think we’re gonna be okay,” said Chuck.