The Lifeguards(59)
MEX
Is this Kobe?
Kobe Nadkarni Who’s this?
MEX
It’s Joe
Kobe Nadkarni Why does it say MEX?
MEX
Scored a new phone. Found it on my doorstep, boi
Kobe Nadkarni Noice. Can u play?
MEX
Yeah loading in
Kobe Nadkarni Join my party
Lola Where should I send the money?
MEX
?
Lola Venmo?
MEX
One sec
MEX
Do you have V-Bucks?
Lola ??
Lola Venmo or PayPal?
Lola ??
MEX
Venmo @SalvatoreRevello
Lola OK
Lola Did u get it?
MEX
Yes
Lola OK when can we meet?
Lola tonite???
Lola Please
Lola 7-11?
Lola ??
Lola ??
Kobe Nadkarni You ready? Let’s go
MEX
One sec. People are sending me $$ for no reason!
Kobe Nadkarni Wut?
MEX
Rando wants to send me money. I gave my dad’s Venmo
Kobe Nadkarni Yur Dad gonna flip.
MEX
Yeah
Lola 7-11?
Lola Now?
MEX
Can you play?
Kobe Nadkarni Not rn
MEX
When?
Kobe Nadkarni Tmrw b4 school
MEX
OK
Domino I said OK for the 40. Venmo pls?
MEX
@SalvatoreRevello
Domino Got it?
Domino ??
MEX
Dude I am copping new Air Force 1s tomorrow.
Kobe Nadkarni Bruh
MEX
People be sending me $$
Kobe Nadkarni Joe, did you steal this phone or wut?
MEX
I’m a gangsta
-13-
Salvatore
SALVATORE’S PHONE BEEPED AND he glanced down: it was a payment of eighty dollars into his Venmo account, from someone named Lola. Salvatore frowned, assuming it was a mistake, turning the phone over.
He no longer smoked, and he’d already had the two beers he felt was an OK amount of beers for a weekday night. He’d be forgiven for sinking deeper into drinking—he was still a heartbroken widower, after all—but it was such a tired cliché. Salvatore’s father had been a medium-level drunk. A “functioning alcoholic.” While he was home in body, his Budweiser habit allowed him to disappear every night. Salvatore got the appeal, he truly did, but he didn’t want to be that sort of dad, especially without a wife to remember cat costumes and teacher conferences. Being a medium-level drunk dad required a present mom, and Salvatore didn’t have the luxury.
So he held an empty beer bottle and sat in his yard and watched the moon.
Salvatore had always thought that if he lived his life correctly, happiness would come. And maybe that was where he’d fucked up. He’d spent his life scared that he’d take a step wrong.
Now he saw: the happiness was the barreling forward.
That was it. The movement, the drive. He thought of Liza Bailey, of being young, of waking up next to a woman he’d met just hours before, touching hot skin.
Was it too late? Could he still gather strength, just throw himself at something, if only to feel that velocity again? What was there to lose, when you gave up on figuring it out…or worse, when you saw that there was no figuring it out?
It was the velocity.
His phone beeped again. What the hell? It was a forty-dollar payment from someone named Domino.
Salvatore stood and went inside, walked by Joe’s room and noticed the light on. He turned the knob and saw his son hunched over a glowing object. “Joe?” he said.
Joe dropped the object—it was a phone that Joe had plugged into his wall—and looked up, panicked. “I just found it! I just found it on our doorstep,” said Joe.
“Found what?” said Salvatore.
Joe held up a shiny iPhone. “People sent money,” he said, starting to cry. “I just wanted the Air Force 1s.”
Salvatore took the phone from his son. He wanted to leave, examine the call log. But he had seen what happened when parents, in the name of “protecting” their kids, stopped connecting with them. Sometimes, keeping a kid’s head above water depended on having uncomfortable conversations, hearing things you didn’t want to hear.