Jake & Conor - 6. Chapter 6

The next time I saw Donna, Garth had flown back to Arizona. She said, “He really liked you guys! Can’t wait to see you again.”
“Great!” I said, wondering if I sounded convincing.
“He said we should all go to Hawaii.”
Right: Garth. Conor. Sand. From Here To Eternity without me.
“He’s harmless, you know,” she went on. “He can flirt all he wants, but he won’t follow through. Not when I’m around. Half the time he doesn’t realize he’s flirting.”
I wanted to tell her something, but I didn’t know her well enough. I wanted to say, “You may know Garth, but I don’t know Conor.”
In May, after the pre-planning for our second series wrapped up, Conor asked again about Europe. I really wanted to go – I’d never been outside the United States – but I finally had to beg off. I’d bought a new car and had paid cash, though it was only a Toyota. But I still had a college loan. “I should pay it down,” I explained.
“Well, I’m gonna go.”
“That’s great. You’ve said you’ve traveled with friends.”
“It won’t be as much fun.”
“Can we do something cheaper? Explore California? There are lots of things I haven’t seen.”
“I have.”
He left little to negotiate. And I had another problem: my parents wanted to visit again.
“You’ve got another break coming,” Dad said on the phone. “Want to see Mexico?”
How could I say “no” to Conor and “yes” to my folks?
“Take him with us,” Dad suggested.
“It sounds too easy.”
I asked Conor.
“I’d rather explore LA,” he said, glumly.
“Is it Mexico you’re against?” I asked. “Or my parents?”
“Yes,” he said.
Only a fool would enter that swamp.
“Bad timing,” I told Dad.
So Conor made plans for Italy, and my parents bought plane tickets west.
“Will we meet him at least?” Mom asked.
I checked everyone’s schedules.
“He leaves before you get here and doesn’t come back till you’re home.”
“Does he really exist?”
“Oh, yeah!”
“Sounds like he’s in love,” I heard her say as she passed the phone to Dad. It was something Conor and I had never discussed.
But unsnaking the tangle of trips still left a problem – my apartment. I’d lived in it for over a year. Minimalism bought off my parents the first time. This trip they’d expect more.
“How can you spend money on furniture and not on Europe?” Conor rightly asked.
What’s it called when you’re stuck between a rock and two hard places?
“I won’t spend a lot. Maybe five hundred bucks. That wouldn’t cover plane tickets.”
“It won’t buy an end table, either.”
His apartment was all marble and glass.
“You don’t know how I live. It just needs to look comfortable.”
That, and the promise of dinner at a local restaurant I’d been recommending, convinced him to make the drive again. Since he’d already seen Donna’s place, my lay-out and the knotty pine were no surprise. Still, he entered my apartment as though it were a nuclear dump, then surveyed it without speaking.
“Well?” I finally had to ask.
“Less awful than I thought.”
“What’d you expect?”
“Animal House.”
I laughed. “Come on! You’ve seen me dress.”
He shrugged. “Lots of guys can pick clothes to impress people, then don’t care about how they live.”
“You know how organized I am.”
“My nephew rolls the shirts he’s worn, then irons them when he needs a ‘clean’ one.”
He had a dark view of men. He had an odd view of people in general, sometimes. It made him funny, but was occasionally hard to be around.
“I’ve always been neat,” I went on.
“That wasn’t a question.”
“Then why wouldn’t it carry over?”
He grinned. “Let’s just say I’ve been stung before.”
Still, once he approved my apartment, he had nothing to add.
“We live so differently,” he told me. “We have separate tastes. I couldn’t live without a doorman. And valet parking. And the advice of a decorator.”
“I was thinking a small couch.”
He tried to picture this.
“Where?”
I pointed to the area. “And some bookcases.”
“Here?” he asked.
“The other wall.”
“This is too weird,” he insisted. “I don’t talk this way with guys.”
“It’s called ‘pleasing your parents.’”
“I wouldn’t know.”
Something else I let slide.
“And if I change the posters,” I went on.
He laughed. “Posters aren’t art.”
“They’re framed.”
“Still.”
He glanced around again. “The place is so serious, Jake. Dark.”
“It’s brighter during the day.”
He couldn’t see it. I decided to trust myself.
I went back to Ikea, looked at everything on sale, but felt it was all too temporary. I looked at “real” furniture in a “real” furniture store, but it was too expensive. I chanced a couple off-beat design shops. But for what was in style, I could badly paint garage-sale rejects. And who could live with that?
While buying some inexpensive track-lighting – quietly admitting my place might be a bit dark at night – I lucked on a tiny furniture store and found a small, masculine couch. The price was also terrific – three hundred bucks.
“How come?” I asked.
“For one thing, it’s a floor sample. For another, it was made locally,” the tastefully-dressed saleswoman said. Then she tried to sell me a black-marble bar. “Very popular with guys.”
I took the couch and realized some steel Ikea bookcases I’d seen might not look so flimsy if I swapped the thin glass shelves for heavier plexi. I got a low black bookcase for behind the couch and two more for the wall facing the gas heater.
That had to be painted: it was six-foot tall, tan, and belonged in an RV. I wanted Jaguar green but found the only heat-resistant colors were silver, black, white, and the primaries used to mark engine blocks. Flat black was a compromise, though I used the dark green to hide my bathroom’s uneven walls.
“You’ve turned into a decorator,” Conor said, laughing, when he inspected the place.
“No way! If it’s the least bit fussy, Dad will shoot.”
“Great safety net.”
He had a point.
“What’ll you put on the shelves?” he soon asked. “All your books are east.”
He had another point. And I wasn’t about to ship them west – partly from expense, more so I wouldn’t lose them in a quake. But remembering Conor’s advice about the place being too serious – and overly influenced by the movie Big – I hit Goodwill for “guy” toys: Car models. Sci-Fi monsters. Trains. Leaving work one afternoon, I noticed a stack of architectural photos near a dumpster.
“What are these?” I asked an old guy, probably a stagehand.
“Studio art. Before they had film clips to introduce scenes, they used oversized stills.”
“You’re throwing them out?” They were hand-colored history.
“No one wants old stuff.” He seemed to take it personally.
I rescued two undamaged pieces – a five-foot section of commercial shops and a three-foot strip of old brownstones. There was some corporate art, too – framed, but with shattered glass. I took three modern pieces.
“Now you’re a bag lady,” Conor joked as he helped me load my car. Then he casually added, “If you don’t want the brownstones...”
I’d hit my five hundred bucks and inched a bit past it. Then Conor brought me a pair of chromed ice-tongs on a mahogany plaque, and a funny bronzed nanny’s shoe. And an old wooden wall phone and a clunky pine model plane.
“Your decorator’s idea?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t have thought of them myself.”
But I could tell he was lying.
He stayed overnight before leaving to Europe. As a going away present, he gave me a set of wind chimes.
“Where am I going to hang these?”
“In your kitchen. From the beam over the phone.”
“How’d you know I’d like these?”
“You constantly clang the ones in my office.”
“I’m that easy?”
He grinned.
We’d gone out to dinner to celebrate his birthday early, since it came while he’d be in Italy. I’d given him my present in advance – a first edition of an early Joan Dideon novel.
I was properly rewarded.
When my mother arrived, she also approved the changes. Dad barely noticed, which was great, no comments from him often being the best. After a day to rest off their flight, we slowly drove down the coast, toward Cabo San Lucas. Mom spoke some Spanish, so we hoped to get by, though as it happened we easily made ourselves understood. An additional surprise: my folks paid for everything. I wasn’t use to that kind of pampering, but my youngest brother was finally out of law school. Dad had money again.
“Happy in California?” Mom asked one evening. We were lounging on a hotel porch, watching the sunset.
“Yes.”
“No regrets for leaving teaching?”
“None.”
“Any thoughts about kids?”
“Leave the boy alone!” Dad warned. Then he waited for my answer.
“None,” I admitted, figuring I’d get a speech.
“Good,” she said. “We’re too young to baby-sit.”
Go figure parents.
Our trip ended sweetly, and I had a week afterwards to relax. Then Conor came home.
“What’d you bring me?” I joked at the airport.
“My love.”
Separate vacations are a wonderful thing.