Hope Idiotic | Part 31
Hope Idiotic is a serialized novel. Catch each new part every week on Monday and Thursday.
ON CHUCK’S TWENTY-NINTH BIRTHDAY, HIS BROTHER DARRYL CAME TO TOWN. Having gotten a hold of his finances and as much of his life as he could, Chuck had the bright idea to complicate things by moving Darryl from Cayuga to Las Vegas to live with him.
“Do you mind the extra tenant?” he asked Lou on the phone.
“Do you?”
“Getting him out of that place is the only chance he’s got at being even halfway normal. I’ve already got a job lined up for him.”
“Trash collector?”
“Close. You remember Paul Sandoval?”
“Superfriendly frat guy from college? Yeah, what about him?”
“He’s running a distribution facility now, over near the airport. Ships third-party stuff for online companies—mail-order types of companies. Got Darryl filling boxes on the assembly line.”
“It sounds kind of perfect for him.”
“It should be. He’s never had a job before, so we’ll see how it goes. Do you mind if he uses the your bike?”
“What bike?”
“The bike in the garage.”
“There’s a bike in the garage? What’s it look like?”
“Two wheels. Blue.”
“I forgot about that thing. Yeah, go for it.”
“Great. Because I can’t drive him everywhere. Although now that I think about it, I’m not sure he knows how to ride a bike.”
To celebrate his birthday, he, Lexi and Darryl went to Bella’s. There was a moment between his second and third beer when Chuck felt entirely at peace. He and Lexi were going to make a go of it—for better or worse, his brother was rescued from the black hole of the Keller broken home, and it seemed that the tempestuous days were behind him. In that moment, at that dinner table, all that was before him was his beautiful girlfriend, his sweet and simple brother and the vast desert landscape spreading off into the distance.
✶
THE DARRYL EXPERIMENT PROVIDED POSITIVE RESULTS. Chuck saw an incredible difference in his older brother. He had introduced him to his friends, made sure he picked up a bar tab or two, took him shopping and showed him how to roll the sleeves of his button-downs so he looked more fashionable. Darryl was, in a word, socialized.
Then the cell phone bills started coming in. They were far beyond the cost of the plan Chuck purchased for Darryl. It was a family package he’d set up. The bill should have been two hundred dollars a month, with plenty of minutes to use between the two of them. Chuck figured Darryl didn’t have anyone to call other than himself, his parents, maybe his job and maybe Lexi, which is why a $1,052 amount due on the statement was alarming.
“Who have you been calling?” Chuck asked Darryl.
“No one. Oh, I called work once. And I talk to you.”
“Darryl, I’m looking at the statement right here. There’s a long list of numbers here. Numbers I don’t call. Numbers that begin with 900.”
“What’s that mean?”
“That means that you’ve been calling 900 numbers.”
“Oh, yeah. I call those sometimes.”
“Sometimes? There’s over… 30 calls this month. Why are you calling sex hotlines?”
“They’re not sex hotlines.”
“What would you call them?”
“I talk to girls.”
“About what?”
“Me.”
“What do you tell them?”
“I don’t know. Oh, I tell them about living in Las Vegas. And my job.”
“And what do they tell you?”
“That they like me. And that they’re naked.”
“That’s a sex hotline.”
“I’ve had sex.”
“Okay.”
“With a girl, too.”
“I imagine.”
“We didn’t use a phone.”
“Jesus Christ, Darryl. You can’t call these numbers anymore unless you want to pay for them yourself.”
“I can’t afford a thousand dollars.”
“Neither can I! That’s why you need to stop. Look, I’ll pay this one, but if it happens again, I’m taking your phone away. We only have a certain number of minutes to use, and these 900 numbers don’t count toward those minutes. If you want to talk to girls, we can go to a bar, or Lexi can bring friends over here.”
“Those girls don’t want to talk to me.”
“The only reason these girls want to talk to you is because you’re paying them to talk to you.”
“They seem nice.”
“I don’t give a shit. No more. Understand me? No more.”
“Alright, Chuck.”
“I kept showing up late to my shift. My boss told me that I shouldn’t come in if I was always late. So I didn’t go in anymore.”
The next month, the bill was even bigger. But Chuck didn’t take Darryl’s phone away. He did have to borrow money from Lexi to cover the cost. And then Darryl got fired. But that was news to his brother.
“Why can’t you give me five hundred bucks to help pay Lexi back?”
“I don’t have five hundred bucks.”
“Why not?”
“Because my bank account is empty.”
“How is that possible? You’re not paying rent, you rarely have to pay for groceries or dinner. You can’t be losing your paychecks because you have direct deposit.”
“I don’t get paychecks.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Oh, I’m not going to work anymore.”
“Again, what the fuck are you talking about?”
“I was fired.”
“What!? Why? When?”
“I kept showing up late to my shift. My boss told me that I shouldn’t come in if I was always late. So I didn’t go in anymore.”
“Why were you late?”
“It takes a long time to walk to work.”
“Why aren’t you riding the bike?”
“Oh, I broke it”
“What the fuck, Darryl!?”
“I hit a curb and flipped the bike. I landed on the grass, but the wheel and the bike got all bent.”
“So where’s the bike now?”
“Oh, I threw it away. In a dumpster behind work.”
He was tired of asking why, but Chuck had to get to the bottom of this. Call it curiosity, call it a journalistic commitment to get the whole story. Call it masochism.
“I didn’t want you or Lou to get mad at me for breaking it. So I threw it away,” said Darryl.
“We could have fixed it. No one would have gotten mad at you. Accidents happen.”
And after five months, the Darryl Experiment had proved that Darryl could never be fully functional on his own. It was painful for Chuck to realize, but the hard fact was that Darryl was as doomed as his mother was, and it was better for him to be with her back in Cayuga, where his mom and dad could turn a blind eye to his phone-sex addiction and unemployment. Chuck bought a plane ticket for Darryl and sent him back. Lexi drove them to the airport. On the way back to the house, Chuck cried just enough for one tear to streak the surface of his cheek.
“You tried,” Lexi said.
✶
WITH WORK SLOW FOR BOTH OF THEM, and Chuck clearly in the dumps about his brother, Lexi suggested they get out of town for a bit. A long weekend, she said. Just the two of them. Her treat.
She bought two tickets to San Francisco, booked a room for three nights at a chic hotel. They dined at the city’s best restaurants, walked the hilly streets, chased cable cars and laughed a lot. They had amazing hotel sex in every position on every surface in their suite. They split a bottle of champagne and fed each other strawberries. It was the only alcohol Chuck had on the trip, and he didn’t even finish his second glass. They talked about marriage. For the first time in their decade-long relationship, Chuck was open to the idea.
“But, I have to get my shit figured out just a little bit more,” he said.
Lexi agreed.