Lawn Boy(34)

I could tell he was sincere, and I would’ve gone. God knows, I could’ve used a party. Anything to forget the financial bloodletting at the casino, my unemployment, my miserable prospects, and the rest of it. I truly had nothing to lose by going with Tino. But somehow I just couldn’t let him see how bad things had gotten. I guess somewhere in me, I still needed to feel superior to him.

“Sorry, man, I’m wiped. Got a bunch of stuff on my plate tomorrow.”

“No problem, Miguel. We drop you off.”

The whole drive to my house, I tried to talk myself into going with them. How could my night possibly get worse?

“Hey, Holmes,” said Tino. “The old lady misses you. Same with Truman. His boxwood look like shit, ese. It look like a fucking dog pruned it. Lacy was stupid to fire you.”

“Yeah, well.”

“He got to find a better lawn man, too.”

Ramiro promptly punched Tino in the shoulder.

“Shit, is true, mi primo, your edges suck!”

The little guy socked him again, and Tino just laughed.

“Sorry, but you ain’t Miguel, mi primo. Miguel is el mejor. It means, you the best, vato. You a pro.”

I can’t say I didn’t appreciate Tino saying so, just not enough to change my mind about going with them. It wasn’t until Rocindo pulled up in front of the house that I remembered Tino would likely be looking for my truck.

“Shit, ese, whose Bimmer?”

“Uh, yeah, that’s my boss’s car.”

“Nice,” he said. “Where you working, vato?”

“All over. This and that. Production, import, export, that kind of thing. Anyway, thanks for the lift.”

Rocindo tipped his cowboy hat, and Ramiro smiled.

Tino still had questions, though, I could tell.

“Well, gotta go,” I said, climbing out. “You guys have fun.”

“Gimme a call, ese. You still got my number?”

“Sí,” I said.





When You Make Other Plans When the day arrived to finally take Remy out, I was down to twenty bucks, which equated to two movie tickets—no Milk Duds, no popcorn. I thought about hitting up Freddy for a loan, but desperate as I was, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I considered calling Remy and telling her I was down with the flu. But I decided I was done lying to her. If I had any hope of ever being with Remy, she’d have to accept me for what I was—broke.


So I bought a seven-dollar bottle of wine from Albertsons, along with some lunch meat, some bread, some cheese, and a couple of nonorganic Honeycrisp apples. I made sandwiches and cut them up into dainty squares, and sliced up the apples, and brought two mugs and some napkins and a bottle opener from home. I packed it all in the closest thing I could find to a picnic basket: the green tackle box I’d bought at the flea market. I rolled up a blanket, some newspaper, and some kindling and stuffed it in my old backpack from high school.

Remy was already waiting in front of the tribal visitor center when I arrived at five thirty. Her hair was different, but I couldn’t tell you how exactly. It might have been the light, but she seemed to be wearing more makeup than usual. She had a little wart under her eye, which I’d never noticed before, and a skin tag on her arm that looked like a toasted Rice Krispie.

“What a great idea, a picnic,” she said, clutching my arm. “I had no idea you were such a romantic.”

I was terrified almost to the point of nausea as we walked down the steps and crossed under the pier heading north, toward the same spot where, a few weeks earlier, I’d seen Suquamish as never before. I was hoping to recapture some of the romance of that night. The gentle lapping of the surf, the crackle of the fire, the crying of the gulls, riding on the briny air. This is what I imagined for Remy and me as we nibbled our sandwich squares and sipped our wine and made easy conversation.

But conditions were different this time around. To begin with, it was pretty windy, and the tide was way out, and something stank, like maybe a dead sea lion had washed up on the beach somewhere nearby. Also, it was threatening to rain. And not only were the sand fleas infuriating, but I also couldn’t get a decent fire going to save my life.

We ate the sandwiches, anyway, and made quick work of the wine. Remy did most of the talking while I blew on the fledgling fire. She told me about her two weeks in Wenatchee, and seeing her old friends and being glad that she’d moved on instead of getting stuck in Wenatchee, which didn’t sound so bad to me. There was a river and a brewery and mountains that were green in the spring and snow covered in winter.

Lousy fire and sand fleas aside, things were going pretty smoothly until it started to piss rain. We tried to pretend we didn’t notice for a few minutes, but eventually the smoke from the smoldering fire became unbearable.

Now what? Totally broke and no more wine. I definitely didn’t want to invite Remy to my house. What could be more unromantic than watching TV with Freddy and Nate? I scrambled for a solution as we made our way south toward the pier. The shed was beginning to look inevitable until Remy arrived at another prospect, equally as mortifying.

“Let’s duck into that bar,” she said, indicating the Tide’s Inn.

“You don’t want to go there,” I said. “Trust me.”

“It’s a bar,” she said. “It’s dry.”