Bruce Wagner - I Met Someone

Mom and Dad grew introspective.

“Boy,” said Larissa. “That’s a tough one.” She looked toward Derek to pick up the thread.

“That thought has kept me up at night,” he admitted.

“Were you close? Were you close to your son? What was your relationship like?”

Derek took a deep breath and mused. “We had our rough patches… like fathers and sons do. We’re both pretty headstrong, and the road wasn’t always smooth. But I’d have to say yes , we were close.” He turned to Larissa and smiled; she smiled back, squeezing his hand. “And now”—a catch in his voice briefly interrupted him as Derek patted his heart with his free hand—“now we’re closer than ever.”

The audience melted.

Dr. Wrigley stared into the camera and said, “We’ll be right back, with the amazing story of Derek and Larissa Dunnick — and their son Tristen — on this special edition of ‘What They Did for Love.’”

—

He moved back to the house in Mar Vista.

Larissa had her trepidations but it made sense financially. Anyhow, the whole deal was especially good for Rafaela, whose life had been upended by divorce, and now by the trauma of her brother’s death; what was good for her daughter was good for Larissa. Even with the smoking hole left by Tristen’s amputation, it was starting to feel like old, better times.

She’d been worried that Tessa would take a shit on her for letting him come home, but nope, she was down . She’d been totally amazing — Larissa’s hardcore cheerleader. Her BFF gushed for three weeks about how amazing she looked on The Dr. Wrigley Show .

After Jeremy cashed them out, he disappeared from their lives but it was all good. Larissa got busy turning up all kinds of funding — it was crazy what was available out there in the public and private sectors. Chasing health-care hardship monies was pretty much her new, full-time gig and she thought she could totally make a career out of it. To top things off, they even started getting random IATSE checks sans EOB (explanation of benefits), which she assumed had been generated by Tristen’s hacking exploits.

Things were looking up for Derek as well. The response to his appearance on the “What They Did for Love” segment was overwhelming. He got cards, calls, and emails from people he worked with a hundred years ago and a lot from folks he’d never met. He took a bunch of meetings for potential jobs — one over at the C.W. for iZombie , one for Mountain Men , and one with an FX producer whose sister died three years after getting a heart-lung transplant, not from complications but from being run over in a crosswalk (the bus driver was texting). Equinox gave him a free two-year membership and he was working out with a trainer, an Iraq War vet with a prosthetic leg who was donating his services in exchange for Derek mentioning him in magazine profiles.

He even heard from Pastor Wayne. It was at least ten years since they’d spoken. Derek’s new heart really got a workout when he took that call (apparently, everyone at the nursing home where the pastor lived was deep into The Dr. Wrigley Show ) because for the first few minutes, while the nonagenarian offered his respective condolences and congratulations over Tristen and the “new ticker,” Jeremy waited for the shoe to drop, the one that would prove his ex’s random theory about Tristen and the pastor having been in touch. He kept steeling himself for and by the way, son, part of the reason I’m calling is to let you know that I reached out to Tristen right before his accident and informed him of the Lie. For God told me that was what I must do because the end of my life is nigh; perhaps I should have told you and Larissa of His glorious plan, but which wouldn’t have bothered Derek, not at all, because he really didn’t give a shit, no, the real reason he got spooked by the call — apart from bringing him back to that incredibly shitty time when Larissa’s betrayal was fresh and he’d beaten her up and wanted to die — was on his former wife’s behalf (of all people), lately he’d been feeling her pain, the whole encrusted theme was always such a sore spot for her, Derek’s horrible behavior hadn’t helped, had made everything so much worse, but right now he really needed her, needed Larissa in his corner, thought he might even be falling in love with her again whoa thus having little tolerance for whatever might carry them backward from the (very good) place they were currently in, anything smelling of old shit could do it, could carry them away, especially anything that picked at the Tristen scab (a phone call from the pastor to Larissa would do it, something Derek wasn’t able to control), he just didn’t want to see Larissa hurt anymore, that was an authentic feeling, yes, no, he couldn’t afford to have her walking around hurt —now that the old once-marrieds were sort of getting married again, or at least engaged, they had to keep looking forward not backward, forward was where the money and the future were, and lately the money and the future looked fucking bright . Still, as the pastor mumbled on, Derek half resolved, for Larissa’s (and OCD/closure’s) sake, to put it to him point-blank—“Hey pastor, didja ever happen to talk to Tristen? I mean, did he reach out to you or did you reach out to him ? In the months or days or even hours before he passed?” Which suddenly struck him as insane because how would Tristen have even known of the preacher’s existence? Larissa never met the man, though of course knew of him through Derek’s encomiums about the importance he’d played in “saving” their family… but right while they were on the phone it came to him with manifest clarity/incontrovertible authority that the whole Pastor Wayne/Tristen confab conspiracy theory was nothing but a bogus, guilt-trippy jerkoff fantasy, so he wound up skipping the due diligence. What surprised him most was that Larissa hadn’t brought it up since she first mentioned the crackpot theory. Derek thought she’d have been seriously on it, you know, in a hurry to track down the old man and give him the third degree, but to his surprise, she let it ride. Another funny thing he noticed was that ever since the fatal phone call wherein Tristen apprised him that he had proof of the secret that had been kept from him all those years, Derek felt lighter, like a load had been lifted off his shoulders. The more he thought about it the more he regretted not having told Tristen the truth years ago (ironically, it was the pastor who urged him not to, who nearly commanded that he refrain)… though maybe in actuality he felt lighter because that piece of shit fag was finally, permanently out of the picture. Derek also noticed that he still didn’t think of Tristen as “dead”—he’d been dead to him for so long as it was — he just thought of him as being out there floating somewhere , but floating with the knowledge that Derek wasn’t his father , nor ever had been. No, if he was going to feel shitty or paranoid about anything, it wouldn’t be that , not anything to do with the kid having found out whatever before offing himself: no. The major thing fucking with Derek at this time was an ever-present fear that with Tristen’s demise the encrypted walls had come down and he was now more vulnerable than ever to an exposé of the IATSE fraud that had been perpetrated to maintain their health insurance. If that was uncovered, it would be a nightmare… though maybe not . In his head, he spun the revelation and subsequent criminal charges into gold — the Dunnicks would get a shitload of press, some bad, but most eventually good, probably great, maybe he’d wind up becoming the face of some kind of half-assed cultural flashpoint Obamacare kerfuffley bullshit, to wit, the desperate measures ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances must resort to in an era when one-percenters buy $125 million apartments they never even move into and rent yachts for $600,000 a week while regular folks are forced to commit felonies in order to get catastrophic care and literally keep their lives and families together, bla… That’s right, he might become an Everyman hero, representing the Hell yeah! mentality. Gotta do what ya gotta do, specially when it comes to your kids and your health. Fuckin’ Derek Dunnick’s a rock star! His son’s the one who did it anyway, right? Hacked into the system? Hell yeah! That’s how much he loved his dad. That heart should have come with a fucking gold medal. Still, it’d be a huge hassle if it ever came to light, so even though they thought about it, Derek and Larissa made the decision not to poke around in whatever ginormous, larcenous, impenetrably cancerous folderol was hidden in Tristen’s computer. Not that they’d have known how or where to even start or what the fucking point would have been viz whatever panicky, unformulated goal… so they just decided out of sight, out of mind , and when Jeremy returned Tristen’s Mac they locked it up in a cabinet in the basement. Derek laughed about that to himself. It was a total sign of how old and useless you were when you thought you could keep a laptop’s secrets by tucking it away somewhere like an old toolbox.