The Thing I Didn't Know I Didn't Know (Russel Middlebrook: The Futon Years Book 1) (10 page)

I immediately thought of a ton of reasons: for Katie, it was a chance to show off her new campfire recipes. For Ben, it was a chance to relive a moment of childhood magic. And for Clive and Leon, it was a chance to have a purpose, to be someone authoritative and special. Meanwhile, they all got a chance to sit in hot springs in the forest and eat ice cream cake before dinner.

But Gunnar really
did
want to find Bigfoot. He didn't want to hear what I was saying. So I carefully tried to put the paper lantern back on the light bulb.

"Yeah, you're probably right," I said.

"You think we're not serious," he muttered, even as he kept stuffing that sleeping bag. "You think this whole thing is stupid."

Wait a minute,
I thought. Ben and the others were the ones who had led Gunnar on, with all their talk of partial footprints and Bigfoot blimps. But now he was mad at
me
?

"No," I said. "I just meant—"

"Well, it's not! You hear me? It's
not
!"

He finished stuffing the bag. It was packed in so tight there was even room left over.

"Gunnar..."

"
What
?"

He stared at me, a look in his eyes that I'd never seen before, not on his face, not on anyone's. If I'd run into him some early morning on my way to an outhouse in Stehekin, I might even think he wasn't human.

This wasn't like Gunnar.

"Nothing," I said. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine. I'm just
fine
."

I looked over at Katie, standing nearby, watching us warily. Which I realized was kind of ironic. I'd started this venture thinking that we had the other crazy Bigfoot searchers to worry about, and now here they were worried about us.

By the time we'd packed the car, Gunnar had calmed down again. We said our goodbyes to Ben and the others, and Gunnar and I had a pleasant enough drive home. But I was still kind of freaked out. This wasn't like Gunnar's other obsessions, all the things he'd done in the past. Something about this one was different, but for the life of me, I couldn't figure out what.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The following Saturday night, Vernie invited me to a dinner party at her house. I hadn't been to that many actual dinner parties in my life, except sort of lurking in the background when my parents had them, but I knew enough to wear a button-down shirt and nice shoes. (But a tie? No, no tie, I decided.)

I admit I was nervous. I didn't know Vernie's friends. What if I said the wrong thing? What if I used the wrong fork? (Although, honestly, has anyone in the history of the universe ever truly cared if you use the wrong fork? And if anyone did, why would
you
care? It would just mean they were a total dick.)

Mostly, though, I really liked Vernie, and I didn't want her knowing just yet what a pathetic dud I was.

I rang the doorbell, and a tall thin man with white hair and long white goatee answered the door. He looked like a cross between Uncle Sam and a scarecrow.

"Hi," I said. "I'm Russel?"

"Well, come on in, Russel," he said, so I did. "I'm Elliott." And we shook hands.

Something smelled really good, but by that point, I already knew that Vernie could cook.

"Russel!" Vernie said, coming in from the kitchen. "You're here."

"I am," I said stupidly. I handed her a bottle of wine I'd brought—I knew enough about dinner parties to at least do that. But getting that whiff of how good dinner smelled and seeing her sleek blue dress and the silver combs in her hair, I was suddenly wishing I'd spent more than nine bucks.

"These are my friends," Vernie said. She nodded to the scarecrow-meets-uncle Sam. "Elliott Gutzman." I held out my hand to shake his again, and then I realized that we'd already "met" once, and I'd already shaken his hand. To his credit, he just smiled and shook it again.

"And this is Misty Meyers." She was short and sort of squat with wiry grey hair.

"Hi," I said, shaking her hand too. What was the deal with me suddenly spending all this time around old people? Just a coincidence, I guess.

Vernie stepped up next to me and put her hands on my shoulders, like she was presenting me on
American Idol
. "Russel saved my life," she said, then went on to explain what had happened that day at the lake.

Elliott and Misty oohed and aahed, and since it was something real I had done, not a finger-painting posted on the refrigerator, I was actually sort of proud.

Then someone else stepped into the room from the hallway—he must have been using the bathroom.

He definitely wasn't old. He was only a little older than I was, maybe twenty-five or twenty-six.

And he was so hot I almost needed my sunblock. He had dark hair and skin—he was Indian American—with a small, lean body and a cotton jacket (unlike me, he'd worn a tie). But he wasn't cocky-hot. It was more of an approachable cuteness, like Manish Dayal, except with more hair gel. I mean, he had dimples.

"Oh!" Vernie said. "Russel? This is my friend Felicks." Vernie was noticeably more excited than when she'd introduced me to Elliott or Misty.

Felicks looked at me and smiled, and I smiled back.

"Russel?" Vernie went on. "Felicks spells his name F-E-L-I-C-K-S. And Felicks? Russel spells his name with one 'l'."

Oh, my God
, I thought.
Vernie is trying to set me up!
What, did she think that every guy who spelled his name in an unusual way was also gay? Well, okay, she was right about that, but still.

The room had suddenly gotten very quiet, with Misty and Elliott looking at me and Felicks, then smirking at each other. They had to know this was a set-up too. For one thing, we were the only two guests under the age of sixty.

But honestly? I didn't really care. And my nervousness? It was suddenly (mostly) gone. That seems counter-intuitive, I know. Who doesn't get nervous when they're set up with someone else—especially when that someone is as adorable as Felicks? But there was something demystifying about it too. Now I knew what this dinner party was really all about, and maybe how to act. And truthfully? I couldn't remember the last time anyone had made such a big fuss over me about anything. And while I wasn't even close to being in Felicks' league looks-wise, it was flattering to think that Vernie thought I was.

"Now, Russel," Vernie said with a knowing little smile, "what's your drink?"

I joined in on her smile. "Whiskey sour."

She moved toward the bar. "Felicks?"

"Do you know how to make a Negroni?"

Vernie rolled her eyes. "Do I know how to make a Negroni?" And she turned and busied herself with the cocktails.

Felicks stepped closer to me, smiling, sizing me up. I wasn't as nervous as before, but I still couldn't help thinking:
Great
.
Not only is he a lot better looking than I am, he also already knows his "drink". And it's one that I've never even heard of.

"So how do you know Vernie?" we both said at exactly the same time.

Then we laughed awkwardly. So much for my not being nervous.

He sort of bowed to me, and I went first.

"Well..." I said.

"He saved my life!" Vernie called from over by the bar. Clearly, she was listening in. And if there had been any doubt before that this was a set-up—and there hadn't been—there
really
wasn't any now.

Felicks' eyes never left me. "Is that true?" he said.

I nodded, and then I (modestly) told the whole story again.

Felicks listened and nodded back, either duly impressed or faking it well enough that I bought it. Meanwhile, Elliott and Misty faded back into a conversation of their own.

When I was done telling the story, I asked Felicks, "So how do you know Vernie?"

"Oh, I was friends with her son," he said. "Back in high school."

"And now he works as a publicist," Vernie said, suddenly appearing and handing us our cocktails. "I ran into him at a screening a couple of months ago, and I saw how well he'd grown up, and I knew I wanted to be his friend."

"You have a son?" I said to Vernie. She'd never mentioned having kids before. But the second I said it, it occurred to me that he might be dead or a drug addict or something—that I might have just stumbled into something awkward.

But then Felicks said, "A daughter too." To Vernie, he said, "She's in Phoenix now, right?"

"That's correct," Vernie said. And before I could ask anything more about her kids, she turned and headed back toward the kitchen. "I need to check on dinner. Don't be shy with the smoked salmon on the coffee table!"              

This was odd. Was Vernie estranged from her kids? I glanced around the room, but I didn't see any pictures of people who could plausibly be her children. I couldn't help but wonder what the story was. I would've killed for a mom like her.

I turned back to Felicks and smiled again. I wanted to ask him more about Vernie's kids, but it felt like kind of a betrayal somehow. So instead we talked about how most publicists still didn't really understand social media.

*   *   *

Dinner was Beef Wellington with roasted vegetables and Yukon finger potatoes.

"My dear, it looks
amazing
," Misty said. And I have to admit, it did. I guess I'd heard of Beef Wellington before, but I couldn't have told you that it was beef wrapped in this elaborate pastry.

"Oh, it's nothing," Vernie said, before setting off on a ten-minute story about how incredibly complicated it had all been to make.

"You're as good a cook as you are a writer," Elliott said.

"Oh, please!" Vernie said. "You're the master screenwriter in this room, and you know it. Elliott was nominated for an Oscar."

"So were
you
," Elliott said.

"You were?" I said to Vernie, surprised. She had kids I didn't know about
and
she'd been nominated for an Oscar? What else wasn't she telling me? Did she have dead bodies chopped up and stored in pickle jars down in the basement?

Vernie shrugged it away. "Oh, please, for a short film. That was nothing. It doesn't count."

"Of course it counts," Elliott said.

"It does
not
." Then, with comic timing perfect enough to rival Melissa McCarthy, she hesitated for just the right amount of time and said, "We'll all watch the DVD after dinner."

Everyone howled.

We kept talking, and I learned that Elliott had been one of three screenwriters on a movie called
The Wonder of It All
that had been nominated for Best Original Screenplay back in the 1970s. I'd never seen it, but I'd definitely heard of it.

"The first time I met the other two writers was the night of the Oscars. Which tells you a lot about how screenwriting in Hollywood works."

It does?
I thought. What did it tell me? I didn't know, but I wanted to.

Elliott dished for a bit about how the leads of
The Wonder of It All
were totally fucking each other in real life, and how the actor deliberately pretended to dump the actress the night before they filmed this big, dramatic break-up scene—and she ended up winning an Oscar as a result, which, after they got back together, made the guy so jealous that he later ended up dumping her again for real.

Then Vernie said, "Oh! But let's not forget that Misty here has actually won a Tony Award."

"Yes, I'm one-quarter of the way to my EGOT," said the seventy-ish Misty, wryly, and everyone at the table laughed again. (EGOT is an acronym that stands for people who have won all four of the major entertainment awards—the Emmy, the Grammy, the Oscar, and the Tony. If there had been any doubt whether Felicks was gay—and there really, really wasn't!—there wouldn't have been when I saw him laugh at Misty's joke. Okay, yes, I suppose there are plenty of gay people who don't know what "EGOT" stands for, people like Boston, but I'll just say it: I probably wouldn't be interested in dating them.)

Then Misty told a story about a play she once wrote about Noah's ark, and she had it in her head that she wanted to use real animals on stage. At first, there was a sheep, a goat, and a llama, but the animals kept crapping and peeing, and it was a serious play, and everyone was convinced it would distract the audience. So she rewrote the play so it was a peacock, a ferret, and a dog, but they had exactly the same problem with the peacock and even the dog, who would get nervous and pee in front of the preview audiences. So finally, they cut the live animals completely.

"Then opening night came..." Misty said. "And the backstage toilet flooded."

We all cracked up.

"I kid you not! It really did. And that was just the start of it. The following morning, the critics all took another crap all over that play. One of them actually said, 'It would have been perfect if they'd dared to use live animals.' I should've known it was doomed from the start."

When we were finally done laughing, I said, "Your lives sound like they were so exciting."

"We're not dead yet!" Vernie said, and everyone laughed again.

I couldn't help but blush. "I just meant that your lives seem a little like movies themselves. So cinematic."

"Everyone's life is cinematic," Vernie said, taking a well-timed swig of wine. "You just need to know when to fade to black."

I looked at Felicks and smiled. He grinned back, dimples and all. That was a pretty great line, and we both knew it.

*   *   *

Dessert was chocolate fondue (deliberately kitschy). Vernie asked for my help carrying it all in from the kitchen.

"What do you think of him?" she asked me as she stirred the chocolate, barely bothering to whisper.

"He's great," I said, trying hard not to roll my eyes.

"Isn't he
adorable
? Just so you know, I considered asking him out for a little tea and sympathy myself." This was a reference to a famous play from the 1950s,
Tea & Sympathy
, where an older woman seduces a younger, possibly-gay guy, and I appreciated that Vernie didn't feel like she needed to explain the joke.

Her eyes found me again. "You're not mad, are you? That I set you up?"

"No. I'm actually sort of flattered." It was the truth.

"Grab the plates, would you? And the fruit?" This was a tray of strawberries, sliced pineapple, and orange slices for the fondue.

Together, we carried dessert into the dining room. As Vernie was passing out the metal skewers, I cleared a place for the fruit. But before I got halfway around the table, Vernie said to me, "Careful."

I looked. Elliott had been holding his skewer out to one side, and I'd almost backed into it.

"Oh, sorry," Elliott said.

"Oh!" Vernie said. "That's it! I just saved your life!"

I looked at her.

"Remember? I dreamt I was going to save your life?" She turned to the rest of the table and told them all about her prophecy.