Bruce Wagner - I Met Someone

“Tell me! How. Was. It? ”

“Pretty fuckin’ great ,” said Larissa, with a seraphic grin. “Like, off the charts, major earthquake great. Like, insane .”

“Oh my God.”

—

Driving over to Hollywood to see his dad, Tristen was all nerves.

There’d been so much drama around the divorce. Derek tried to hide the existence of the twenty-three-year-old slut from Rafaela but she found out by overhearing one of their mom’s phone rants. The old man went ballistic, even though he knew he was officially fucked. Locked in a perennial war with his father — a war whose origin mystified him — Tristen lately adopted the strategy of vibing to Derek that he was judgment-free, thereby forging a truce, or at least waving the white flag of ceasefire. It wasn’t in Tristen’s nature to take a moral position anyway, even if he hadn’t been involved in a relationship mirroring that of his dad and the ho who practically shared his birthday.

Anyhow, he didn’t give a shit who Derek climbed in bed with. (He’d called him by his name since middle school, when he’d been ordered to — which creeped his little sister out, inspiring Rafaela’s contempt for Tristen, not their father.) He’d only seen him a few times since the breakup; Derek would get in touch if he had a particularly thorny PC or coding issue. Tristen felt warm and fuzzy that his dad seemed to trust him with his personal shit, in that Derek was well aware of his son’s malevolent online history.

One of the puzzles of his life was determining the exact moment Derek began to hate him. There had been good times, though it felt like a hundred years ago. In Hawaii once, when he was nine, he remembered how they both started laughing, and when his mom asked what was so funny, he and Derek just looked at each other and kept busting up and Tristen could tell it delighted her, like she thought it was a good thing, a nice thing that she was being excluded from the sacred, mischievous fellowship of fathers and sons. And it was a good thing; it was good and it was new. A good, new, special thing… Then there was that time in the hospital — was he six? — when some weird infection swelled up one of his balls to the size of a mini watermelon and Derek sat bedside, feeding him grapes he’d put in the freezer the night before. They got warm in his mouth really fast, like sweet frozen marbles, and his dad kept them coming. All had been well with the world…

The receptionist told him to wait.

The editing bay of the YouTube reality show Mental Real Estate (featuring eccentric houses) was in a suite of post-production offices on Gower.

Derek was a Tesla freak and Tristen wanted to show him the hybrid. Not that one had much to do with the other. Anyhow. He knew he shouldn’t have come without a heads-up but hoped the nature of the surprise would short-circuit his dad’s knee-jerk pissed-offedness. When he finally emerged, he looked like some sick, emaciated bull entering the ring. It was pantshit scary.

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

“Uhm, hello to you too,” said Tristen.

Something was wrong — maybe he was on drugs again. Opiates and speed were the daily vitamins of the editors of his generation but as far as Tristen knew, his father had been clean for years. He was way gaunt and sallow, though, with wet, stringy hair. Sounded like he was wheezing —

“I wanted to show you my car.”

“Your car? Since when do you have a car?”

“Out front. I’ll show you.”

Derek hesitated. He looked like he wished he was dead or wished Tristen dead or wished both of them dead. He stormed out in disgust, as if to minimize a scene at the workplace.

And there it was — like a thing expecting to be petted:

The Honda.

“See?”

“Where’d you get it?”

“Just… with some money I made.”

“Doing what ?”

“Computer stuff. It was cheap.”

“What’d you do, some bitcoin rip-off? You hack an ATM?”

“No-o-o-o,” said Tristen, unfazed. He pointed toward the CR-Z like a model on a game show. “It’s pretty cool. It ain’t a Tesla, but—”

“You shouldn’t have come by. I’m barely holding on to this piece-of-shit job without your little unannounced visits.”

“Okay.”

“Well, is that all you wanted? To show me your new car ? If it even is yours… Are you paying your mother rent? Your sister told me you’ve been staying there again. Are you giving her rent money?”

“Yeah, I am,” he stammered. “And I pay for groceries — not just mine, for the house. Anyway, I’m getting my own place soon…”

“Buying a little casita in the Hollywood Hills?” he said sarcastically. “You better not be into any illegal shit.”

“I’m not.”

“If you go to jail, my friend, you’re on your own . Your mother and I ain’t gonna rescue you. And you know what? I don’t believe you bought this car for a minute . Who bought it for you, Tristen?”

“ I did. I told you—”

“Because if some man bought it for you, some faggot , that’s even worse than fucking wire fraud or destroying people online or whatever the fuck it is you’re up to, okay? Because if a john bought you a car, that makes you a whore, right? Wanna be a whore, Tristen?” Derek walked over and tapped the trunk of the Hybrid. “You go, girl.”

A young woman covered in tattoos raced from the building. She looked like one of those pale-skinned, blue- and black-haired porn stars Tristen knew from the SuicideGirls tube.

“Derek,” she said urgently. “You need to talk to Manny.”

“I’ll be right in,” he said. Without looking at either of them, he said, “This is my son”—like the introduction had been mandated by law.

“Oh hi!” she said, startled, then all happy-faced.

“Hi,” said Tristen.

“I’m Beth.”

He was too upset to give his name.

“That’s Tristen — queen of the sporty hybrid,” said Derek. He spun around and walked back to the building. Beth followed.

On their way in, Tristen heard her say, “Manny fucking hates the first cut. He was just, like, screaming at me. He’s totally out of control.”

—

It really did feel as if Reina was still alive, which gave some concern.

Her death seemed more and more like a daydream.

Dusty feared her mother had “won,” that she would always walk the earth, haunting her in some form or another. If all the years of therapy meant nothing, if even her dying meant nothing, where did that leave her? Ginevra tried to console, drawing comparisons to those who were raised in a fascist country that finally lost a despotic ruler. There was much rebuilding to be done, not only of infrastructure but collective spirit. The therapist said that her feelings were normal and she needed to give herself time. But Dusty insisted she had no feelings. That was the problem.

The private line rang — Livia, with “some news.”

Dumbfounded, she blurted out, “Did you find her?”

“No no ! Not yet . I have other news.”

“Related though?”

“Yes.”

“Can I call you right back?”

A gal from Bartok was having a raucous hang with Allegra out by the pool, one of those casual, getting-to-know-you post-deal-signing playdates that were more about the fab house and the fab Dusty Lifestyle Experience than anything else.

She locked herself in the bedroom and curled up with the phone. “So what’s going on?”