I Love You, Luke Piewalker

Chapter 4

4

“How was the fashion show?”

“Lame. Nothing new and fresh. Did you bring Mr. Darcy?” Gretchen asks.

“I am not going to pull it out here.”

“It’s a book, Jayne. I’m not asking to see your penis.”

“Jayne is going to show you her p***s?” Luke asks, placing food before us. We’re at one of the food truck’s three metal outdoor tables, the one with the perpetual RESERVED FOR EMPIRE ROYALTY sign on it.

Oh my God. “Shut up, Gretchen.”

“She won’t, Luke, but I’ll show you mine,” Gretchen coos, pulling on the white string of his apron.

“But then you’d tire of me and put me out in the back pasture with Daddy’s thoroughbreds, and I would wilt from lack of riding,” Luke says, his index finger bowing suggestively. He plops extra sugar packets on the table.

“Go away, peasant.” Gretchen shoos him off. “You. Book. Give. Now.”

“You’ve read enough.”

“I didn’t get to finish the scene.”

“There’s nothing left to finish.”

“Uhhhh, yeah, there is. Let me see if they finish right!” She throws her head back and lets out a yowl.

“God, you’re such a child.”

“I’m going to reenact Meg Ryan’s diner scene if you don’t give me the book.” She scoots her chair back, fluffs her enviable blond hair, and braces both hands on the table. s**t. She’s gonna do it. Wouldn’t be the first time. And the lineup at the food truck would really enjoy this show.

“Troll.” I hand her the journal and dig into the bacon chowder, my eyes down so I can’t see her reaction as she gets through the … deed.

Within a few pages, she fans herself. “This is really good.”

“Quiet, you.”

“No, Jayne, I mean it. You should come to my writers’ group.”

“No.”

“Why not? Why do you always say no?”

“Because. I don’t want your writers’ group to read this stuff. I didn’t even want you to read it.”

“Yes, you did, or else you wouldn’t have left it in your bag for me to find.”

“Uhhh, maybe if you’d stay OUT of my bag, like a normal person.”

“I needed a tampon.”

“Liar.” I scrape the bowl for the last chunk of bacon.

“That s**t is so bad for you.”

“Mmmmm, I know.” Slurp.

“Why won’t you come to my writers’ group? What if I said you don’t have to share anything?”

“Do they serve bacon?”

“I’m serious, Jayne.”

“So am I.” I dab at my mouth with the napkin. “Your people wouldn’t appreciate me just sitting there. I’d have to contribute.”

“Not at the first meeting. Please? Try it?”

“I can’t.” Gretchen stares at me, steals a chunk of my bread. “Be careful. Those carbs might make your heart explode.”

“Why can’t you? What, because Mommie Dearest might find out? Seriously, Jayne, you’re a grown-up. You need to stop listening to the bullshit your parents poured into your ears.”

“You don’t know anything about it.”

“Are you kidding me? I’ve been to your house a million times. ‘Writers are sad sacks. Do you know Hemingway died drunk and alone?’”

“We all die alone. Drunk if we’re lucky,” I say. “And he killed himself. So, yeah.”

“Or here’s my favorite—‘All that money on a journalism degree, and you write obituaries? Your father and I thought you’d be a real reporter.’” Gretchen changes her voice to match that of my nasally sister. “‘Yes, Jayne, dear, why don’t you go to Afghanistan or Iran like that Amanpour woman? Or, ‘You know, you’ll forever be waiting for the band to get back together. You could be homeless before then.’ What does she even mean by that?”

Sigh. “She means that I should stop waiting for something miraculous to happen. Writers are always waiting for their big break. Like, how a band, once parted, hopes it will get back together so they can relive their glory days.”

“Ohhhhhh. That makes sense. She may have a point.” If Gretchen hadn’t been my best friend since before we sprouted boobies, I’d leave. “Come on, Jayne—your sister picks people’s zits for a living. HOW is that more glamorous?”

“Her new Jaguar tells you how glamorous it is.”

“I wouldn’t do her job for ten new Jaguars.”

“Yes, you would. And speaking of the band, I have a name for you,” I say. Neither Gretchen nor I have an ounce of musical talent, despite the fact that our parents subjected us both to piano lessons. But we often talk of our fictional band.

“Hit me, sister.”

“Tauntaun Parade.”

“Really?”

“What—you don’t like it?”

“What the hell is a Tauntaun?”

“A reptomammal from the planet Toth.”

“None of those words were English.”

“They were all English.”

“Jayne, it’s a little … geeky.”

“What’s wrong with geeks?”

Gretchen snorts.

“Ladies? Anything else?” Luke is back, a small white bag in hand. I grab my journal away from Gretchen and shove it in my purse. With my luck, she’d read an excerpt to him. To the entire lunch crowd.

“You trying to get rid of us?” I tease.

“You? Never. This one, though …” He bobs his head toward Gretchen.

“You want me. All the boys do.” Gretchen looks past Luke and nods. “Your sister seems to be giving the customers extra-special treatment these days.” Leia is leaned over the food truck counter, lip-locked with a guy sporting a very stiff blue Mohawk.

“How does he get it to be so sticky-uppy?” Gretchen asks. Luke slaps his damp towel at the guy’s backside. Mohawk Man jumps and unhooks his tongue from Leia’s.

“Luke! Seriously!” Leia whines.

He turns back to us and plops the small package on the table. “For coffee break later. Vegan brownies, as promised.” And then he’s gone, chasing Mohawk Man away and yelling at his lazy sister to clean something.

Gretchen opens the paper sack and shoves her patrician nose inside to suck in the chocolaty fumes. “Oh God, these are going to be good.”

“Don’t get boogers on the brownies.”

“Booger brownies are my favorite,” she says.

“Up, child. I have garage sales to advertise,” I say.

I have to drag Gretchen down the street, away from the windows with the new fall pretties beckoning her credit card. “Down, girl. Bad Gretchen. No shopping.” The trees are pulling on their autumn wardrobe, one branch at a time, the Portland air hinting that this year’s Indian summer will be brief so that fall may assume the stage. Mother Nature is still a little undecided about what she wants out of life—do I give the humans enough sun to inspire short sleeves, or do I make the little bastards cart around a sweater? I keep a down coat and extra socks at the office, just in case Momma Nature has a meltdown. Never know when Father Time is going to skip town again and leave her with all the stormy offspring.

While our office is within the purview of what we’d call “downtown,” we’re sort of in that seedier, outskirts part, the redeveloped buildings stopping before their shiny infection reached us. Like someone drew a chalk line on the sidewalk and said, “No more clean lines or pleasing façades past here.”

We have mere minutes before Surly Brian locks us out.

“Oh! I have something for you!” she says, stopping at the corner. A large man smelling of onions and foul armpits stands too close. He sways and bumps Gretchen. “ExCUSE me!” He belches loudly in her direction.

From her bag she extracts a yellow rubber duck, the orange bill painted with big red lips.

“She’s cute,” I say.

“She’s talented.” Gretchen takes the duck from my hands and pushes a little button on its underside. It vibrates against her palm. Gretchen beams. “Personal massager.”

“Is that—is that a vibrator?” I whisper.

“Do you love it?”

“Oh my God, Gretchen, no! What the—”

“I’ll take it,” Belching Belchman says.

“What?” we say in unison. His lunch is in his beard.

“I like rubber ducks. And vibrators. I’ll take it.”

The crosswalk chirps, signaling our go-ahead. Gretchen pulls me across the street, the duck still buzzing.

Yes. I like ducks. When I was three, I got lost in a petting zoo. My father found me in a little shed with a family of baby ducks snoozing in my lap. Which is where my love for real feathered babies started. Now that I’m a grown-up, I spend weekends volunteering at an animal sanctuary in Tigard. Dogs and cats and horses and two pot-bellied pigs and a goat named Fang—and ducks. My ducks. Domestic rescues from Westmoreland Park—people think it’s cute to adopt baby ducks, but then the babies grow up and they poop a lot and get into everything so the owners drop them off at the massive casting pond in Westmoreland. Unfortunately, the park already has an established duck and goose population, and the domestics don’t fare well against their wild cousins. I helped with these rescues, so they’re “my” ducks.

But the rubber duck collection, that was sort of an accidental thing. At nine, a cute boy from London moved into our neighborhood. Naturally, we fell in love. For my tenth birthday, he gave me a yellow rubber duck with a Union Jack painted on its wings. I still have it. And the ducks are something my family only sort of makes fun of. I wasn’t allowed to collect Star Wars stuff because “throwing money at toys intended for nerdy boys who eat paste and never get dates is wasteful.” Address your hate mail to my mother.

However, I do not need a duck that vibrates. In fact, it sort of ruins the entire thing if I consider putting a darling, sweet rubber duck anywhere on my body.

“Too weird, Gretchen.”

“Okay, forget she vibrates. Look at her little painted-on necklace—and her name is Valerie Vibrato! See? She’s so cute and Italian!”

“Mm-hmm.”

“She’ll be our little secret. Put her on the shelf above your monitor so you can smile when you have Whiny McWhinersons on the phone.” Which reminds me. I have to call the grieving daughter back about her father’s screwed-up obituary. Offer her a free pen.

“Speaking of vibrating, what do you think of Hipster Food Critic?” Gretchen asks.

“Apparently his name his Holden.”

“Oh, so angsty. His parents couldn’t have been more obvious? Wait!” Gretchen stops mid-sidewalk. “Holden Caulfield is in love with a girl named Jane, isn’t he? Oh, this is so perfect.”

“Shut it,” I snarl.

“I, for one, would never name my children after book characters. Too much pressure to live up to.”

“No, your children will have proper snob names like Todd and Blair.”

“And yours will be named after Star Wars characters. Your son, Han Solo, and your daughter—God, I’m not nerdy enough to know any girl Star Wars characters.”

I could tell her there are many: Padmé, Jaina, Deliah Blue, Mara Jade. “I’m never having children.”

“Right. That would require S-E-X!” She shouts the spelled-out word, turning the heads of the office drones in front of us making their own way back to their respective holes in the ground. “You know, if you keep writing scenes like those in your magic journal, you could be on to something, Jayne darling. Maybe it’ll break down some of that voodoo standing in the way of a little SVF: sexy v****a funtime.”

“Gretchen! Shut up!”

“Wait! That could be our band name! Sexy v****a Funtime.”

“Seriously … please.”

“Is therapy doing you no good? Why are you so uncomfortable with the word v****a?” Again, she says it loudly enough that the two dudes in front of us look again and smile widely. She’ll have their phone numbers before Surly Brian has the key out of the door.

I ignore her the entire way up the stairs, glaring instead at the red soles of her very expensive shoes. Elevator’s broken. Again. Sometimes it works, but you take your life into your own hands in that ramshackle steel box. I don’t even want to know how a few frayed cables actually hold it up. Plus, the camera in the corner? It invites Gretchen to be her embarrassing self. Once she did a strip tease in the time it took us to go three floors. Always looking for her viral video breakthrough.

In the interim two hours, I ignore her f*******: and text messages and the rubber bands she shoots across the aisle. And when I don’t eat the vegan brownie she plops on my desk at three o’clock, she knows I’m pissed.

“C’mon, Jaynie, you know I was kidding. I’m sorry for saying the V Word and embarrassing you.”

“Again.”

She wiggles Valerie Vibrato in front of me. I slap it away.

“Why do you do that?” I say.

“Why does she do what?” a male voice interrupts.

“Food Critic, did you sweep your desk for bombs yet?” Gretchen spits.

“Leave him alone, Gretchen. Remember, he’s new. We have to be nice to him.”

Gretchen snorts. “Hey, when I was new, no one asked me to lunch or invited me to join their secret club.”

“That’s a lie. I invited you to lunch and we’ve been in the same secret club since grade school.”

“Oh. Right. Well, girls only.” Gretchen stretches her arms in front of Holden. He looks down at her boobs and smiles. “Those girls? Dream on.”

“Well, I have to go to a new Italian-Asian fusion eatery over on Hawthorne tonight. The table will be for two. Any takers?”

“You’re just shooting wide here, hoping that one of us will say yes?” Gretchen says.

“Tough crowd.”

“And you have no other friends in your real life who you can ask?”

“Trying to lay the foundation for strong ties within the office environment. Looking for future alliances.”

“You get that from your Tony Robbins’ eight-disc set?”

“I was going to ask to borrow yours, actually,” Holden says. I giggle.

“Whatever your game is, Food Critic, I don’t eat carbs. So I’m out.”

“Don’t brownies have carbs?” Holden asks.

“These are magic brownies.”

Holden looks at me. “Jayne? Free dinner? I’d say good company, but that’s for you to decide.”

Gretchen sticks her finger down her throat.

“Thanks. I, uh …”

“She can’t. She has a meeting tonight.”

“Oh. What kind of meeting?” Holden asks. I stare at Gretchen, not sure what meeting I have.

“A writers’ group. She’s one of our rising stars.”

“Really? What do you write?”

“Wait,” Gretchen says, her hand against his plaid tie, “we do not want to hear about your crushing stack of rejections from your epic dragon-meets-vampire-overlord trilogy.”

“You should read that trilogy. It’s really something else.” Holden laughs. “Okay, well, maybe another time, then. Ladies.” He bows. The chain holding his wallet swings as he walks away.

“I’m not going to your writers’ group tonight.”

“Yes, you are. Or else I’m going on all the social media sites and telling people you’re writing erotica.”

“You wouldn’t.”

She pulls her phone out of the slender front pocket of her skirt. “Wouldn’t I?”

As I stuff the brownie in my face and watch Gretchen’s teeny ass sashay away from my desk, the realization hits again: I need new friends.