Lawn Boy(4)

I don’t know why I keep this old photo around, but it serves as a constant reminder of where I came from. Not that I really need one. I could just as easily look out the window. But sometimes, as with Nick, I wish I could go back and tell little Mike Mu?oz a few things, tell him to relax and leave the worrying to the adults. Tell him he’ll find love and security one day, if he can ever figure out where to look for it. And maybe I’d tell little Mike to start by looking outside himself instead of within the murky, undefined recesses of his heart. In my experience, a kid doesn’t gain much through introspection. A kid gets more by throwing a ball or wrestling with a dog or burning anthills with a magnifying glass. Sometimes I wish I could just go back and tell little Mike Mu?oz to quit biting his fingernails and have some laughs.

That’s what kids should do, they should laugh. If there’s a better, righter sound in the whole world than the laughter of children, I don’t know what it is.





The Flying Saltshaker What I like most about Remy is that she seems comfortable in her own skin, like she’s not trying superhard to impress anyone. She’s not apologetic about being a waitress at Mitzel’s, and why should she be? I hate that everybody is so self-conscious about how much money they make, and how much freedom their big important job allows them, and all the cool places they go, and how good looking their kids are, and all the sexy pictures of jumbo shrimp and giant margaritas they post on their Instagrams. Remy’s not like that. When she tells you to have a good day, you feel like she really means it.


Of course, Nick doesn’t find Remy attractive, but what does Nick know? He’s got something negative to say about almost every girl I’ve ever tried to get with, even though he’s the one always pushing me. According to Nick, Shannon (the ticket taker from the AMC 7 in Poulsbo) looked like a pteranodon. And yeah, she kind of did, but that didn’t bother me. I’ve got nothing against a slight cranial crest. It’s not like she had wings. I was more bothered by the fact that I had nothing in common with her. According to Nick, Amy (the checker from Rite Aid) looked like Matt Damon. Personally, I thought she looked more like Hilary Swank, but that’s beside the point. The real disconnect with Amy, once again, was that I had nothing in common with her. Nick called Monica from the bookstore “Skillet,” because she looked like someone hit her in the face with a skillet, which was not entirely true. But the thing with Monica was, she didn’t really read books, even though she worked at a damn bookstore. She may as well have been selling bathroom tile. I guess I don’t see the point of dating somebody just because. Sex doesn’t seem like enough.

The lone exception that Nick was ever willing to grant me was Shelly, the barista at the Coyote Coffee drive-thru on 305, to whom Nick assigned “semihot” status, from the neck down, anyway. He said I should “hit that shit,” even if her face was “butter.” And maybe I could have, if my heart had been in it. But the truth is, things always felt forced with Shelly, what with me ordering three coffees a day at the drive-thru window and trying to start conversations based solely on customer familiarity. With Remy, I don’t feel quite as much pressure. The familiarity was there the first time I sat in her section, and it seems to grow with every visit.

Since Mom was working, I had no choice but to bring Nate with me when I went to Mitzel’s the following night. This was bad news, of course, on a number of levels, not the least of which was a financial one. In case you didn’t know, mowing lawns doesn’t exactly make a guy rich. You’d think Nate would be grateful for a free, fancy meal. But let me tell you, coaxing him inside was no easy task, though the drive to the restaurant went relatively well. It wasn’t until we parked my truck that things started to go south in a hurry.

“This isn’t fucking McDonald’s!” he shouted.

“Shhh,” I said. “You can have anything you want.”

“You said McDonald’s!”

“Shhh. Look, they’ve got all kinds of cheeseburgers here. They’re huge—way bigger than Mickey D’s.”

“You said Big Macs!”

“Shhh.”

Clutching two menus, the hostess arrived just in time to run interference.

“Two of you tonight?”

“Yeah.”

“Remy’s section?”

“Uh, yeah, sure, I guess that’ll work.”

I swear, the hostess rolled her eyes as she shuttled us briskly to a booth in the middle of the dining room.

“How’s this?” she said.

“Not McDonald’s,” grumbled Nate.

“Great,” I said.

Begrudgingly, Nate turned his attention to the sticky picture menu.

“Anything you want under twelve bucks,” I told him.

“This one,” he said, pointing to the prime rib dip.

“That’s fourteen. Try the bacon cheeseburger. It’s only eleven.”

“This one!”

“Shhh. Calm down.”

“You said anything!”

“Fine,” I said, heaving a sigh. “But no dessert and no soda.”

He stiffened in an instant, thunderheads gathering behind his eyes.

“Okay, soda. But no dessert.”

On this occasion, it was Remy’s arrival that saved me.

“Oh, hey,” she said, fishing her pen from behind an ear.