THE BRO-MAGNET (7 page)

“Oh,” he says wisely. “What? Red Sox fan?”

“No,” I say. “Lesbian.”

“Oh!” Enlightenment dawns. “Oh.” Disappointment. Then: “Well, that’s a shame.”

“Not really,” I say.

“How do you figure?”

“Well, if I worked with her and she liked guys but I never got with her, that could be depressing – you know, picturing her doing stuff with guys other than me. But this way…”

A light dawns in Steve’s eyes. “Free fantasy!”
“You got it,” I say. “Exactly. Like, if I picture her with some other girl, who am I hurting? Not even me.”

“I like the way you think, Johnny. Now about those season tickets. The Yankees? Opening Day?”

“Oh geez, you didn’t say it was for the Yankees,” I say, feeling relieved. Do I really want to go to any game with Steve Miller? “I’ll have to pass on that.”

“But they’re amazing seats!”

“I’m sure they are. But, you know. The
Yankees
.”

“I know, I know,” he says. “I wish it was for the Mets but they’re the firm’s tickets.”

“Well,” I say, “I guess you can’t control the taste of the people you do work for. Speaking of which, you working on any interesting cases lately?”

“Oh God.” He runs a hand through his already disheveled hair, making matters worse. “I’m working on a terrible case right now.”

“Tell me about it. What’s so terrible?”

“This young guy, maybe twenty, not his first offense, he’s going down on a whole mess of charges and I can’t think of any way to help him out.”

“What’d he do?”

“He got pulled over in a random check. The arresting officer’s looking over his license and registration – nothing wrong there – when suddenly he spots some tools in the backseat and decides to take a closer look. Turns out to be burglary tools, so the cop keeps looking, finds a few items in the trunk that sure look like stolen goods along with some marijuana in the glove compartment.”

“That’s rough,” I say.

“And how.”

“You’re telling me.” I say this, not because it necessarily makes sense for me to be the one saying it in this context but because it’s a guy thing to say, the kind of thing we guys say to each other to show support. I suspect it’s like sorority sisters jumping up and down and squealing when they see each other – minus the cheerful aspects, of course.

“The terrible thing is,” Steve goes on, “my client’s such a good guy.”

“Well, wait a second. If he committed armed robbery, maybe not such a good guy.”

“But that’s it. He wasn’t armed. And anyway, it’s burglary, not robbery.”

I’m tempted to hit myself in the forehead for saying something so stupid. Of course I understand the difference between robbery and burglary.

Steve continues about his client. “He just does these…
things
sometimes but he doesn’t even own a weapon. He doesn’t believe in violence.”

“OK, that is nice. And really, the marijuana charge? Why do we even charge people with that shit anymore?”

“I know, I know. But like I say, he’s going down this time, hard. He’s got those priors, and with the quantity of charges – ”

“Wait a second,” I say. “I read about this case.”

“You did?”

“Or maybe I saw something on the TV. One of the two. You say he was pulled over on a random check?”

“Yes, but – ”

“Was he speeding?”

“No, he was well below the limit, but – ”

“Was he driving erratically? Was there anything at all wrong with his car – a tire low on air, a taillight out, anything at all other than just a random check to cause the cop to pull him over?”

“No to everything. He hadn’t even smoked any of the pot in a long time, but – ”

“Oh my God, the vehicle itself wasn’t stolen, was it? Because if it was, I don’t think we can get Mr. Nice-Guy Burglar off.”

“No, it was his car. The license and registration all checked out. But – ”

“But nothing! This is so easy!”

Steve Miller practically drops his coffee mug. “It
is
?”

“Yes! All you need to do is open up a can of constitutional whupp-ass on the D.A. and that arresting officer.”

“
What
?”

“Constitutional whupp-ass! You say, ‘My client’s rights have been violated!’ You say, ‘My client committed no illegal acts that raised probable cause that he should have been pulled over in the first place!’ You say, ‘You are trampling on the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution! This is a clear-cut case of illegal search and seizure. What’s next? Police entering private homes randomly, without search warrants, in the hopes of finding evidence of crimes? What is this, the old Soviet Union?
Are we now living in a martial state?
’” 

I’m out of breath and Steve’s stunned.

“Really?” he says. “I say all that?”

“Well, hopefully you say it better, since you are the attorney. But basically? Yeah.”

“I don’t know what to say,” he says.

“You mean my argument’s that off-base?”

“No, it’s that
on
-base. That’s the thing – how could I have missed that?”

“Welllll…”

“Well, what?”

I don’t know how to say the following because: 1) it’s a hard thing to say to someone you barely know and 2) I don’t want to lose this job, but…

“The drinking,” I say.

Steve raises his eyebrows at me.

“I’m not saying you have to give it up entirely,” I continue before I lose my nerve. “But, you know, maybe cut back a bit? And maybe not every night?”

I don’t know what he’s going to do. Hit me? Fire me? But then his eyes mist over.

“You’re absolutely right, Johnny. No one else has had the guts to say that to me, but you’re absolutely right.”

Geez, I hope he doesn’t hug me right now. He’s probably got booze coming out of his pores from the night before.

But no, he doesn’t try to hug me. Instead, he does the guy thing. He clears his throat loud, pushing the emotion away.

“So, about those Opening Day tickets. I know it’s just the Yankees and not the Mets, but they really are amazing seats. They’re those ones right behind home plate.”

“You mean the ones that go for something like eight hundred dollars per seat per game?”

He nods.

“I’ve read about those things. Those really are some great seats.”

“Well?”

“I don’t know. I get kind of busy come April.”

“But it’s for Opening Day.”

“Yeah, well, I’ll think about it.” What I’m really thinking is: Do I really want to go to a game with Steve Miller? I mean, sure I’d love to sit in those seats, even to see the Yankees, but what the hell would we talk about all night? It’s not like we’ve got anything in common.

“Good enough,” he says. “I’ve got your card. I’ll give you a ring when it gets closer to Opening Day.”

* * *

“So, what was that snort about?” I finally ask when Sam and I break for lunch a few hours later.

“It’s just: Only you, Johnny.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Do you think Steve Miller asks everyone who does work on his house to go to the ballpark with him? You think he asks the maid to go to the opera? You’re painting that guy’s living room. You’re doing blue-collar work for a white-collar guy and he’s all, ‘Ooh, Johnny, will you be my best friend?’”

“He didn’t ask me to be his best friend,” I scoff.

But she ignores my scoffing, instead going on with, “ ‘Will you go to Opening Day with me?’ I swear, if the guy wasn’t already married, he’d be asking you to be his Best Man.” 

“Ohhhh, go listen to Allison Iraheta.”

A month after Billy and Alice’s wedding, it’s a fairly seasonable March evening and it finds me standing package in hand outside the door of their new house.

The call came from Billy three days earlier.

“Alice and me’d like you to be our first dinner guest,” he said.

“Really? Both of you?”

“Well…”

“Wait a second. You sure Alice wants me there too or was this just your idea?”

“Well, when I suggested it, she didn’t exactly say no way or threaten to divorce me, so…”

A note on why Billy and I talk the way we do, Alice and Sam too. Even though we live in Danbury, it has been pointed out that we sound like New Yorkers. This, I say, makes perfect sense. Danbury is a small city, a melting pot of many cultures with a multitude of sounds and smells, but for those of us who’ve spent our lives here it’s a different story. While Danbury is technically in the state of Connecticut, it’s home to the last several highway exits on I-84 before you hit New York State. On top of that, we’re only an eighty-minute train ride from New York City. Hey, if you came from a place whose nickname was Hat City, said nickname having been rendered meaningless when John F. Kennedy refused to wear a hat to his inauguration, thereby decimating the hat industry in general and the industry that was then the city’s pride and joy in particular, you’d be reaching for straws too. Let the rest of the state talk like they’re part of New England. In Danbury we’ve got our own agenda.

Knock, knock
.

My hands are sweaty as I knock. I don’t know why I’m so nervous. This is just dinner – me, my oldest guy friend and his new bride. I tell myself being nervous is stupid but I’m relieved and maybe just a little disappointed when Billy answers the door alone.

“You made it!” he says. He says this like it should have been hard or something.

“Well, you know,” I say, “it’s not like I had to drive to a whole other town or something. What’s this, like seven minutes from my house?”

“Come in,” he says.

As I step past him into the house I think that my friend looks nervous too for some reason. I also notice that he suddenly looks older. We’re exactly the same age, but his hairline’s starting to recede a little bit, he’s got a slightly well-fed overlap of his belt that I don’t remember ever seeing before, an honest-to-God striped polo shirt with not a single stain on it, and I swear there’s a crease in his chinos. He looks, for want of a better word, married.

“Hey, I like what you’ve done to the place,” I say following him into the living room.

This is not a strictly accurate thing to say since, as far as I can tell, they haven’t done anything with the place, unless you call stacking pictures to maybe be hanged later against the walls and scattering a few pieces of lawn furniture around the center ‘doing something.’ But it is what you say when you’re invited into a new home. I mean, what’s the alternative? ‘I
don’t
like what you’ve done with the place’?

“This is just temporary.” He waves his hand. “Between planning the wedding, the wedding itself, the honeymoon and having to sell both our places and buy this one, we haven’t really had time to make firm decisions on the interior design.”

“You have had a busy year,” I acknowledge.

“Plus, Alice wants everything to be just perfect. She says there’s no point in rushing to buy things just to fill space. She says if we do that, we might only end up regretting our hasty purchases. And then where’ll be? We’ll either have to live among stuff we hate or sell it all and buy new all over again. Alice says it’s best to wait until we find the exact items we fall in love with.”

No doubt. It sounds like Alice says a lot. Geez, I don’t remember her being so chatty growing up.

“Well, when you’re ready to paint the place,” I say, surveying the Navajo White walls, an unimaginative color I hate when it comes to walls, “hit me up. Speaking of Alice, where…?”

“Oh, they’re in the kitchen.”

“Wait a second. ‘They’re’ – ”

And then I notice it for the first time. The sound of feminine chatter and laughter. Whenever I hear that sound of women chattering and laughing, paranoid as it may seem, it sounds to me like they’re planning something. A coup maybe.

I lower my voice, hiss at Billy. “There’s another woman in there. You and Alice aren’t trying to fix me up on a blind date, are you?” I would like a woman of my own but blind dates can be so humiliating.

“What?” Billy takes a step back, like he’s afraid I’m about to grab him by the polo collar and punch him in the nose or something. “God no. Alice would never be a part of trying to fix you up with someone. I’ve suggested it before, like maybe with one of her available friends, but she says absolutely not. She says you’re unfixupable. In fact, she didn’t really want to have you over tonight at all but – ”

“But I asked her to,” a feminine voice says.

I turn around and standing there is Three Sheets.

* * *

Three Sheets looks much better without the purple maid of honor dress, the updo hair and the bleary eyes.

But I don’t notice that right away. I’m too busy looking at Alice.

Alice looks better than I’ve ever seen her. With her chestnut hair pulled into a high ponytail and no makeup, she looks even better than she did on her wedding day. Marriage agrees with her.

“Oh!” I say. “I almost forgot!” I hand over the package I’ve been carrying, a brown paper bag.

Alice gingerly opens the folded-over top – I don’t know what she’s expecting, snakes in a can? – and extracts my present.

She holds it up for all to see.

“That’s great!” Billy says with genuine enthusiasm.

“Wow,” she says, “a six-pack of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. You shouldn’t have.”

“Hey,” I say, feeling pleased with myself that I remembered Aunt Alfresca’s advice when I was little to never go anywhere empty-handed, “I figured it’d be rude, you having me to dinner and all, if I then went and drank all your beer on you.” 

“Well, you definitely outdid yourself.”

Three Sheets takes a step forward. “I wanted to thank you.”   

“For…?” I’m not so sure I want to know.

Maybe Alice doesn’t either, because she breaks it up with, “Here, let me go put this on ice and get us something to eat.” She casts a meaningful look at her cousin. “You going to help me?”

“Oh. Right!” Three Sheets says.

That’s another thing about women. At any given social occasion, they can’t travel from one room to another solo. It’s like they never heard of divide and conquer. To them it’s all safety in numbers like maybe there’s a masher waiting between the stove and the chopping block or something.