Men, Women & Children (16 page)

Patricia looked at her watch and said, “Well, it’s getting kind of late. Are you spending the night there? Has her mother okayed this?”

Brandy had used Lauren as an excuse a few times before. Lauren had been her best friend since early childhood, and although they didn’t attend the same junior high school, they maintained a close friendship.

Lauren’s parents were less strict than Brandy’s. Although they didn’t condone their daughter, or any of their daughter’s friends, engaging in questionable behavior under their watch, they had no interest in completely policing their daughter’s activity, online or otherwise. From time to time Lauren’s parents recreationally smoked marijuana and saw nothing wrong with it.

Lauren herself was similar to Brandy in her social standing at Dawes Middle School. She had a few friends whom she had known since grade school, but she seemed to have been left out of the popular crowd once the seventh grade started the year before. She didn’t mind her position in the social structure of Dawes Middle School, though. As long as she could maintain a few close friends like Brandy, she was content.

Brandy sent Lauren an e-mail detailing what her actual plans were and requesting that Lauren be an accomplice in whatever cover story might be necessary. Lauren had used Brandy as a cover story twice before, and the two of them clandestinely met with two boys from Lauren’s school in the basement of one of the boys’ houses. Nothing happened with the boys, but Brandy enjoyed being able to live her life out from under the eye of her mother. In this case, Lauren agreed to cover for Brandy if her mother should call the house looking for her.

Brandy said, “Yeah, her mom said it was okay if I spent the night.”

Patricia said, “Do you want your dad to take you?”

Brandy said, “He’s asleep in his chair. You don’t have to wake him up.”

Patricia said, “I can take you.”

Brandy said, “You really don’t have to. It looks like you’re pretty hard at work on whatever that is.”

Patricia, in an effort to be more trusting of her daughter and to allow her to spread her wings as a young adult, said, “Okay, but take your cell phone so I can track you and call me when you get there.”

Brandy said, “Okay.”

When purchasing a cell phone package for her family, Patricia made sure to get one that included GPS tracking capabilities from one master phone to all other phones. Her husband, not one to use cell phones, left his sitting on the kitchen table, eternally plugged into the wall. His GPS icon on Patricia’s tracking screen was always at home. Her daughter’s locations were more varied: school, Lauren’s house, the mall, the movie theater, and so on. Patricia knew the exact routes to each of these locations on her phone’s GPS map, and any deviation from the known path would surely be cause for concern. Brandy knew this as she rode to her bicycle to her friend Lauren’s house. Once there, she called Lauren, who came out and met her on the front porch. Brandy gave her the cell phone and said, “I just called my mom and told her I’m here. Just keep the phone in your room, and if she calls, just tell her I’m in the bathroom or something and I’ll call her when I get out. Then send me a message on Facebook and I’ll call her from Tim’s house.”

Lauren said, “You’re just going to be like, ‘Hi, let’s hang out, and by the way, can I use your computer and be logged into Facebook the whole time?’ That’s a little weird.”

Brandy said, “My laptop’s in my backpack. He won’t care.”

Lauren said, “You can’t call from his house. Your mom won’t recognize the number.”

Brandy said, “I’ll just tell her you got a new phone and I had to use yours because my battery died.”

Lauren said, “But why would I change my number?”

Brandy said, “I don’t know, you got a cheaper plan or something.”

Lauren said, “Your mom will see right through that. What time are you coming here?”

Brandy said, “Whenever I leave, I guess.”

Lauren said, “Which is?”

Brandy said, “I don’t know, midnight or something.”

Lauren said, “Okay, I’ll leave my window open, just crawl in. I won’t be able to open the door without waking up my parents.”

Brandy said, “Okay. Thanks for helping out.”

Lauren said, “Whatever.”

Brandy got on her bicycle and rode to Tim’s house, hoping that her mother wouldn’t call her cell phone but knowing that, in all likelihood, she would at some point.

D
awn Clint had no interest in Kent Mooney meeting her mother on a first date, so she instructed him to send her a text message when he was at her house and she would come out. She received the text at 7:33
P.M.
and said good-bye to her mother, Nicole, who said, “This one sounds nice. Don’t do anything stupid.” Dawn offered no response. She knew that Hannah was in her room doing something, so she didn’t bother to say good-bye. Dawn told her mother that she didn’t know how late she would be out and that she’d left money for pizza on the kitchen table. She checked her makeup one final time in the hallway mirror and left.

Kent was standing near his car. She wondered why he wasn’t in the driver’s seat. As she approached, she said, “Why aren’t you in the car?” Kent said, “I was just getting the door for you,” as he opened the passenger’s side door. Dawn wondered if Kent might actually be a genuinely nice guy. When she left Los Angeles, she’d thought a move back to Middle America might yield a larger field of nice guys. To date, it hadn’t. She had almost given up hope of finding one, assuming she would have sexual relationships with whichever men were the most attractive to her until she was no longer desirable, and that by then, with luck, her daughter would have some kind of lucrative career in entertainment that she could manage, nullifying the need for a man in her life. Kent was the first nice guy she had met.

Once in the car, she said, “So how have you been since our PATI meeting?”

Kent said, “Pretty good, I guess. Just working and doing the usual stuff. You?”

Dawn said, “Yeah, I guess pretty much the same thing.”

Kent didn’t know how to continue the conversation, and after a few seconds of silence he began to fear the date was already going badly. Dawn assumed Kent was nervous and took it upon herself to forward the conversation. She said, “So where are we off to tonight?”

Kent, realizing that his choice of restaurant might not be appealing to Dawn, said, “You know, I didn’t even think to ask if you like Indian food.”

Dawn said, “I love it.”

Kent said, “Okay, good. The Oven okay, then?”

Dawn said, “Yeah, I love that place. Not that I go that often, but I’ve been, you know. It’s really good.”

Kent said, “Yeah, I used to go all the time—” and stopped himself from finishing the sentence with what would have been
with my wife
. When selecting a location for their dinner, Kent had decided to make it a place that he and his wife used to frequent, in an effort to force himself to forget her, to make the things they held sacred become more meaningless to him, to rid his world of places that she held some sway over. It wasn’t fair to Kent that she got to move to a place where neither of them had ever lived or even visited. For her there were no taboo restaurants, no stores that conjured memories of them buying groceries together, no street corners that held phantoms of conversations they had in the rain because the keys were locked in the car. Kent needed to start taking the places in his town back, and the Oven was one of his favorite restaurants. He hadn’t been since Lydia left him.

Once at the restaurant, they ordered a bottle of wine and several dishes to share. In the beginning, their conversation was light and innocuous. By the third bottle of wine, they were discussing things that carried slightly more weight. Dawn had recounted the entire story of her time in Los Angeles as an actress and how Hannah came to be conceived. Kent had divulged to Dawn that, until recently, he had fostered hopes of some reconciliation with his wife. It was this topic that prompted Dawn to say, “What made you start thinking differently about your ex-wife?”

Kent said, “Honestly, I know this will probably sounds like a pickup line or something, or maybe it’s showing my hand a little too early, but . . . meeting you was kind of part of it. The night we met, I realized I was wasting my time on my ex-wife. Pretty much every night, up until that night, I’d sit in my living room watching TV and wondering what she was doing. That night, I wondered what you were doing.”

Dawn wasn’t quite sure how to react. She felt it was sweet and trusting of Kent to tell her something that personal, but it also seemed to her that Kent might be placing too much importance on her and whatever relationship they might be about to begin. Then again, she thought, wasn’t she placing a similar amount of importance on him and the possibilities he held for her future?

Kent took her lack of an immediate response as a bad sign and said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have, I mean, that was way too much wasn’t it?”

Dawn said, “Uh, no, no,” and in that moment decided she was going to see where this relationship with Kent—with a nice guy—could go. She was going to choose to align herself with the possibility that what he was saying was genuine and heartfelt and not be scared by his willingness to be open with her. She continued, “It was actually about the most flattering thing a guy has ever said to me, believe it or not. I think it’s really sweet.”

They shared a smile and the conversation turned to their children. Kent told Dawn about Tim’s decision to quit playing football and how disappointed he was in his son. Dawn told Kent about Hannah’s passion for acting and her plans to help her daughter in any way she could. She omitted any details about her daughter’s website, assuming that Kent, or any normal person, would find it strange or possibly morally negligent. Dawn went on to explain her living situation, how she and Hannah lived with her mother. She was embarrassed by it, to some degree, but she admitted that she didn’t see the scenario changing anytime soon. She had thought about moving back to Los Angeles at some point, but it seemed pointless unless she was moving there to help Hannah navigate the entertainment business when she was a little older.

As they left the Oven, Kent considered it to have been a successful first date. He enjoyed Dawn’s company, and she seemed to have enjoyed his as well. Approaching Kent’s car, Dawn said, “You want to go get a drink somewhere? It’s still kind of early.” So they went to a bar a few minutes away, and at Dawn’s behest played a touch-screen game called
Erotic Photo Hunt
that was featured in a small monitor near the bar. It was fun. Kent realized, while touching a woman’s fake third nipple in the game, that he hadn’t had fun in a long time. He decided that he wouldn’t try to kiss Dawn at the end of the night, that he wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize the possibility of a second date with her.

After the bar, Kent drove Dawn back to her house and walked her to the door. He said, “Well, thanks for coming out with me. I had a really good time tonight and if you’re up for it, I’d love to do it again sometime.”

Dawn said, “There better be a date number two,” and then kissed him. They were both slightly inebriated, and they tasted alcohol on each other’s mouths as they kissed. Kent found Dawn to be a good kisser and Dawn found the same to be true of Kent. She was the first woman Kent had kissed since his wife. It was foreign but enjoyable. Even though he hadn’t kissed his wife in more than a year, he still vividly remembered every aspect of her technique and could easily compare it to Dawn’s. He found Dawn to be superior, more sexual somehow.

The kiss concluded and Dawn said, “Call me tomorrow.” Kent said, “I will. Have a good night,” and then turned and walked back to his car. Dawn went inside and answered the standard questions from her mother and her daughter about how the date was and then went to her bedroom. She took out her cell phone and composed a text message thanking Kent for the date. She debated whether or not to press the send button. Her initial impulse was to delete the message, not wanting to seem overly enthusiastic and risk scaring him off. This is what she would have done with any other man with whom she’d gone on a first date. But, reminding herself that she was going to let herself get involved this time, that she was going to give in to her impulse to be open and allow herself to feel something for Kent, she overcame her inhibitions and sent the text message.

Kent received it on his drive home. He liked Dawn. While driving, he replied to her text message with one that read, “Had fun, too. Sweet dreams tonight,” which made Dawn smile.

B
randy Beltmeyer and Tim Mooney sat on his bed watching episodes of
Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!
that Tim had saved on his digital video recorder. Brandy’s laptop was powered up on the floor next to them, and she was logged into her Facebook page awaiting any message from Lauren about her mother having called.

Tim and Brandy had yet to touch each other. Tim was unsure about how to escalate what he assumed Brandy assumed was a friendship to a level that would warrant any kind of touching. He didn’t necessarily have any intention of doing anything sexual with her. He had fantasized about Brandy laying her head on his chest as they watched television and stroking her hair or maybe kissing. Once again he conjured thoughts of “The Pale Blue Dot” and various other scientific essays, theories, and opinions about the nature of our universe that explained our insignificance and said, “You know, we could, uh, lay on my bed if you want.”