Meeting Your Makers: Heart of the Cards

The transplantation of a foreign species into my domestic environment went about as swimmingly as I could have ever expected.

For one, the moment that we hopped out of Stella’s barbie-pink coupe and pulled up to the garage, she recognized the muffled girlie pop song prattling on through the door. Then, when we stepped in and saw Dad sprawled half-naked on the floor, she had no problems curtsying, introducing herself, and inquiring into his musical tastes. Miss “Estella Joanne-Diore Pulasky-Zamenhoff” was very impressed at my father’s breadth of knowledge of corporate teen pop from before I was born. Dad, characteristically, told her to pick one name only and hand him a flathead screwdriver.

This started a conversation about his equipment, about all of which she could name off the top of her head—a feat that even I hadn’t managed to accomplish in all my years of wrenching my hourly “allow-wage” from his greased-up hands. When asked how the hell she knew all that, Ms. Pulasky-Zamenhoff was quoted as saying:

“Watch your tongue- the Lord’s always watching, you know. And I suppose it must have been all those summers I spent at NASA bootcamp.”

Both parts of her answer set Dad a-chuckle.

“You’re alright, kid,” were his exact words, if I recall correctly.

Almost immediately after, all me and Anne-Marie could do was stare slack-jawed as the two candidates for Most Yokel of their respective graduating classes exploded into a spirited discussion about the applications of flash-fusion and all the ways they’d almost killed themselves with incomplete electrical circuits. By the end of the breathless bantering over a camaraderie forged in blowtorch-burns and ‘if you were anymore nuts, I’d bolt’ puns, Dad had come up with the following deal:

“Alright, I’ve decided,” he said, proudly scratching down along his happy trail. “I’m chaperoning the little lady to Thousands’ Night if she’ll take me up to Madison for the week.”

Anne-Marie and I practically chest-bumped on the spot.

“But I wouldn’t happen to have the funds for a venue like that. And we’d be buying last-second tickets, no less.” Stella protested.

“What?” asked my girlfriend, “Did you blow your scholarship on boys and bibles already?”

Before Stella could sneer back, Dad answered, “Don’t worry about a thing, kid. I’ve been meaning to get out of the house more, so the tickets are on me. Plus, Thousands’ Night was the last place me and Richard ever played.”

Stella’s eyes were, like, actually watering as she spoke, “But I simply couldn’t accept such an offer without remuneration.”

“I always need an extra pair of hands around the workshop with this useless lug around,” Dad replied, thumbing to me, “So you can tell your mom you’ll be working it off in my extra-special summer internship program for ‘practical engineering in the arts’. Besides, it oughta be good to get some hand’s experience after sitting through all those stuffy lectures.”

And that was that.

By some miracle, we’d secured the car and the cash. All that was left to do was secure Anne-Marie’s time. So we bid Dad adieu, leaving Stella in his care for the day as the two of them talked out the flourishes on his latest sculptural abomination. As I was walking out the door, though, Dad’s exposed stomach came jiggling into place in front of me. Heaving, he pulled me aside, looked me dead in the eyes, and put on his best impression of an 80’s blockbuster narrator:

“We all die in the end, kid. So just love. Relentlessly, stupidly, wastefully. Yeah, that's it. Just love.”

I shook my head as if I got whatever collage of references he was going for, and followed Anne-Marie out.

She was still stomping her feet into her shoes as she muttered, “Glad that nightmare’s over with.”

“Yours, maybe.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, that depends on whether the name ‘Raisa’ rings a bell.”

I think that was my mistake.

Yeah, that moment in particular where I messed up real bad no-not-good. Because not but an hour later I’m getting tag-teamed at the bowling alley to the tune of Brian’s endless, rhythmic pushups nearby.

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me she was this hot! No wonder you chose her.” Raisa says, laughing innocently.
“Yeah, Goggles,” Anne-Marie adds. “Were you jealous she’d try to steal me from you or something?”

Both of them are ahead of me in the set by no less than fifty apiece. It’s bad enough that everyone present has seen a side of myself I’ve tried my best to keep hidden, and worse yet that they each have a unique superpower when it comes to embarrassing me. And I have to drive every single one of them back home in Little Red.

“No,” I reply, “I know I’m way too hot and cool for anyone to leave me.”

“Well it’s certainly not your personality,” Anne-Marie says, snickering.

“Or your elephantine ego,” Raisa replies.

“Or-or-or,” Anne-Marie adds, “Whatever it is that passes for your junk down there.”

Raisa gasps with a hand to her mouth. “Don’t tell me that his thing is just as weird as he is.”

“That’s not true,” Brian calls out, “He’s got a nice one, R-dog!”

The cherry on top was that Raisa was already R-dog to him.

“And how would you know that?” Anne-Marie asks with a frown, before shaking the rhetorical question away with a, “Nevermind, I don’t think I want to know.”

I clasp my hands together and beg, “Can we please just focus on the reason why I brought you all together today?”

“Yes,” Anne-Marie replies, “I think it’s high time we talk about this humiliation kink of yours.”

Raisa giggles.

Anne-Marie continues, “So I know four hands are better than one-”

“Eight hands, technically,” Raisa says.

“Thanks, hot stuff. But even if I have six more hands than usual, there’s no way we can clean a whole highway in just tomorrow afternoon.”

“You never know,” I say, waggling my brows, “I’m quite good with my hands, after all.”

“Computer, verify that information,” Raisa replies.

In a cold, electronic tone, Anne-Marie says, “Results negative, captain. Subject appears to be a big fat stinky liar.”

They burst into laughs like a pack of firecrackers.

Well. As much as it hurts to be cussed-out like a third-grader, I can’t deny that it’s nice to see the two of them getting along. Plus, with Brian here, it’s like I’ve brought an emotional support animal. And said animal appears to be done with his pushups:

“Hey bro,” he says, looking like he’d just come out of Drake’s pool. “How’s the thinking going?”

I glance towards the girls, who’ve submerged themselves in a bubble full of compliments and where they got what they’re wearing today.
“Mhm,” Anne-Marie says, “It’s all thrifted. Even the boots.”

“No way, those look so nice.” Raisa gasps, “And my abuela used to take me thrifting all the time!”

I grimace. But Brian seems to be perfectly content.
“She’s a nice girl, bro,” Brian says.

“Huh?”

“R-dog.”

“Yeah, she really is.”

“You two, uh, ever dated, bro?”

My head jerks atop my neck. “Yeah, briefly. How could you tell?”

“There’s just a vibe bro, y’know. Like, the way you guys are pretty close, but you’re also chill with letting each other be close to others.”

“Isn’t that just a friendship?”

Brian shakes his head. “It’s different, bro. Like for egg-sample-”

I refuse to correct him on principle.

“Example-” he corrects himself.

Attaboy.

“For example,” Brian says, “Me and A-dog went out on a couple of dates once.”

“Really.”

It feels like I’m in a parallel universe right now where today started with a sunset and ends with the end of the world.

“Really, bro,” Brian confirms, nodding. “I mean, it never like, worked out or anything. We just thought since we’d been friends for so long and we couldn’t find anyone else, it might be worth a shot, bro.”

“Huh.”

“Mhm,” Brian continues, “But it didn’t feel right to kiss or hug or any of that stuff, so we called it off, bro.”

“And then what happened?”

Brian looks confused, and for the first time it’s not his fault. I’d asked a rhetorical question after all.
“Well, bro. That was a long time ago, but it’s like we’re brother and sister now, y’know. It’s like going through that weirdness together made us closer ‘n stuff.”

I’m a bit at a loss for words—and not just because I just heard Brian use the non-slang version of “bro” for the first time. And though I react with a fairly minimal, “Yeah, that makes sense,” I can’t help but find myself once again impressed by Brian’s emotional intuition. He’s like the textbook definition of a low-intelligence, high-wisdom build. No- that’s not right. Brian’s both wise and intelligent. It just works a little differently for him than for the rest of us.

So I add, “Thanks for the talk, B-dog. You’re, like, a real brother to me too, bro.”

“Bro,” he replies, his voice quivering.

But Anne-Marie’s voice cuts right through our corny little bromance corner:

“You two done making out yet?”

“N-no,” I fire back.

“Were they really making out again?” Raisa asks. “Guess the first taste wasn’t enough.”

I feel like I’m about to have a heart attack. “You mean you told her about Drake’s party?”

Raisa shrugs. “I’m still a little bit out of the loop, to be honest.”

“Relax Goggles,” Anne-Marie waves a hand. “The entirety of Northwest Elm has heard about what went down at Drake’s party.”

Which, I suppose, was the intent of my original plan. But still…

“Anyways,” she continues, “Let’s talk shop. If we factor in morning packing and the time it’ll take to get everyone together, we’ve got roughly 6 hours from noon to get my mom’s crappy road-cleaning out of the way if we want to make it to Chicago by sunset.”

Raisa frowns. “My twin brothers once tried to impress the same girl by out-volunteering each other. Let’s just say that the one that went for road-cleaning lost the race.”

“C’mon,” Anne-Marie says, “We can’t give up now. I am not giving my entire spring break to a smelly backwoods highway.”

“I don’t even have the whole break to myself,” Raisa replies, groaning. “My dumb older brother wants to fly our family all the way to Spain to see relatives. Some third cousin of ours is having a big, fat Sephardic wedding, so I can’t weazel my way out of it.”

Silence befalls the four of us as we take a moment to process the impossibility of the task ahead. We’re about to embark upon hours of manual labor under the late-April sun, and there’s a chance that none of it’s going to be worth the effort. Things seem bleak, and I can feel the color bleeding away from the moldy corners of the bowling alley. That is, until Brian announces:

“Bro.”

“Not now, B-dog,” Anne-Marie fires back.

“No, bro. I have an idea.”

Her eyebrows go up.

“Yeah, like what if,” Brian says, pausing to count on his fingers. He loses track once, twice, and then gives up on the gesture. “Forget the numbers, bro. What if we just ask everyone else to help? I can get Moe and the guys.”

The girls’ faces light up.

“I can’t believe I didn’t think of that…” Anne-Marie whimpers. “B-dog, you’re a genius!”

“Nah, Og-dog’s the real smart one. If it wasn’t for him, Moe wouldn’t be in charge of the guys, bro. Drake wouldn’t ever agree to something like this.”

Raisa nods. “Without Ogden, I’d never have met the boys. I’m not sure they’d want to touch grass on a Sunday, what with the gaming marathon they were planning, but if Ricardo folds, so will the others.”

“What are you thinking?” I ask.

Raisa shrugs, then sighs. “If I flirt with him a little, I’m pretty sure he’ll do anything I want.”

“That’s evil,” Anne-Marie replies, “I love it.”

“So we have the boys and the guys,” I say.

“I can ask my Dad too,” Brian says.

And before we can ask him to clarify which one, he adds:

“He’s still got some landscaping gear laying around that we can use.”

“Wow, this is really coming together,” Anne-Marie says, “And if I say it’s a good photo op, I’m pretty sure I could get the besties to come too.”

“So it’s decided then,” I reply. “One for all and all for one.”

I place my hand on a nine-pound bowling ball that happened to roll up out of the gutter machine between the four of us. One by one, so does the rest of the group.

“To the nine-pound promise,” I say, in my best swashbuckler’s impression.

Everyone repeats, “To the nine-pound promise!”

“And y’all better be ready for pickup by nine in the morning tomorrow,” I add. “Or there’s going to be hell to pay.”

Anne-Marie smirks, and replies:

“You don’t call me Mornin’ for nothing.”