Lawn Boy(6)

Thank God, he finally relented, leaving Nate and me in relative peace, a peace that lasted for a while, anyway, until Nate set his sights on dessert.

“I said no. We can’t afford it.”

“You said anything!”

I should have given in. It would’ve lengthened our stay, if nothing else. But as it was, I knew I’d be hitting up the Money Tree by the twenty-third and taking a 30 percent hit on my paycheck.

“Forget it. No dessert.”

That’s when Nate snatched up the saltshaker.

“Relax,” I said. “You can have some Oreos when we get home.”

Before I could persuade him further, he hurled the saltshaker across the dining room, and I mean winged it like King Felix. It whistled past some old geezer’s head so fast that he didn’t even look up from his soup before it crashed against the far wall, not three feet from Remy at the wait station, shattering a glass picture frame.

Nate went pale when he saw what he’d done. The dining room set to buzzing. Remy and the hostess immediately started tending to the broken glass while some guy with cropped hair and an earring, who carried himself like the manager, started striding purposefully toward our table. I was standing before he got halfway there.

“What seems to be the problem here, gentlemen?”

The guy’s voice threw me. Turns out he was a she, at least I think, just kind of butch.

“My brother’s developmentally disabled,” I explained, for about the nine-thousandth time in my life. “He’s got impulse-control issues. One time he hugged the neighbor’s cat too hard.”

“Is he okay?”

“He broke its spine.”

“I mean your brother.”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Are you okay, sir?” she asked Nate, slyly confiscating the pepper mill.

Without even thinking, I fled, leaving Nate with the manager, and the next thing I knew, I was kneeling on all fours, grazing elbows with Remy, close enough to smell her pancake-batter scent, as she plucked glass off the carpet.

“Ugh, this is so embarrassing,” I said. “Here, let me get it.”

“I’ve got it,” she said.

“He does that sometimes. It’s hard to see it coming, you know? It’s not like a daily occurrence or anything. Look,” I said, and I could see in her eyes she knew what was coming. “I know this is weird timing, but sometime—”

She stopped me short. “Maybe you should go check on your brother.”

I felt like an asshole. Why the hell was I flirting at a time like this?

“Oh yeah, right, my brother.”

Remy stood up and walked away with her tray of broken glass.

As it turned out, order had already been restored to the dining room by the time I was halfway to the table. In fact, Nate was apparently getting chummy with the manager, who was still poised at the end of the booth.

I could feel myself blushing from anger and embarrassment.

“Your brother and I were just chatting,” the manager said.

“Is that right?”

I was giving Nate the stink eye big-time. I know it wasn’t fair to blame him for my falling flat on my face with Remy, but I couldn’t help it. If he hadn’t thrown the saltshaker, it never would have happened. If I wasn’t stuck looking after him my whole life, who knows how many girlfriends I might have had.

Remy avoided us after that. We finished our meal in silence, and the manager cleared our plates. It was the manager who brought us our check, and the manager who cashed us out.





I Am Not a Virgin Don’t get the idea I’m batting zero. I’ve just been in a bit of a slump since I lost my virginity six years ago. Not that I was lighting the world on fire back then. Gina Costerello just happened to fall into my lap junior year. Actually, Nick sort of pushed her there.


Gina Costerello was a senior, and not unattractive in a horsey way. She was at least three inches taller than me, which was enough to put her out of my league. At least in my memory, Gina always wore dark sweaters with big boobs inside. Not to say that big boobs were important to me. They seemed like an awkwardly designed utility more than anything. Gina’s were hard to ignore, though.

It was Nick who was standing beside me that cool spring night in the woods at Rob Vosper’s birthday kegger—Rob Vosper of the underaged tattoos and the older brother named William who was in a band that gigged semiregularly in Seattle, the same older brother who dated Gina Costerello for three weeks the previous year.

“Dude,” said Nick. “They look like baby seals.”

“No they don’t. They don’t look anything like baby seals.”

“I’ll bet she’s got those smooth silver-dollar nipples.”

“Stop,” I said. “She’s gonna hear you.”

“No way. She’s shit-housed, dude. Hey, Gina,” he called. “Gina Costerello!” And then he promptly darted off toward the keg.

Gina turned in my direction sluggishly, her big brown eyes swimming for focus in the whites.

“Do I know you?” she said.

“I’m Mike. I sit next to you in home economics. We were partners for the pizza thing yesterday. You actually burned me,” I said, volunteering my wrist.

“Oh,” she said. “Sorry.”