The Great American Whatever (22 page)

It is 10:59 p.m. when I see his dirty Saturn peep up from the top of our hill.

“No fair,” he goes, when he pulls up and I step in. “You got to clean up after my party.”

“I have some CK One upstairs. You want me to run in and get you some?”

But he doesn't, and I don't, and what we do is we drive back to the bowling lanes, so I can get my old Vans and give them back their bowling shoes and start to reset the world back to its old ways.

“Hey,” he says, “buckle up,” just as we're speeding past the high school.

• • •

Something about watching Amir drive stick shift is maybe the hottest thing ever, did I already say that? He is just so
forceful
with it.

“So,” he says. Now we're sitting in the parking lot of the bowling alley. It's late, officially very much not my birthday. Officially next year. “I was kind of surprised to hear from you tonight. I mean, after.”

“Yeah, well,” I say, “I felt kind of embarrassed about running away from your boat and I wanted to apologize.” Lie. I want to get laid.

“I'm really sorry that Carly broke the news about Geoff and your sister,” Amir goes. “It was seriously uncool of her. For the record,
I
had no ide—”

“Carly lives on gossip. It's just Carly being Carly.”

A bird spins itself in nervous circles right above Amir's windshield. It must be lost. It's too late for a bird to be away from its tree.

“Should we go back to my place?” He's already turning the car back on, and my heart starts to go faster than I want it to. I don't like not being in control, and it feels as if a riverboat is in my chest, churning against my stomach.

“Sure thing,” I say, practically like I mean it.

• • •

It takes a three-floor trek upstairs to an apartment covered in boxes for it to actually hit me that Amir really is going. He is not out of breath, but I am.

“Okay, hang out on the couch,” he goes, “and flip the AC on, for the love of God. I'm hopping in the shower.” I look up to see this perfect shirtless boy, his boxers puffed out the top of his shorts like a muffin, a small scar on his stomach existing only to show, in stark contrast, how flawless the rest of him is.

When he's gone, I take my own shirt off and hold my phone out far and look at myself in the reverse camera and oh my God I hope he likes truly skinny guys.

The shower
cheep-cheeps
off. I put my shirt back on. I debate about running for it.

“Should I put some music on?” he calls out, and I go, “Mhmm, okay,” and he returns in mesh shorts and a tank top and this Texas ball cap that makes me want to eat him, it is so cute.

Mesh shorts on guys are my weakness, by the way. Mesh shorts are the “coming attractions” of the hot-boy clothing world.

He sits on the sofa and hands me his laptop, and goes: “You have to pick what you want to listen to,” so I take Amir's laptop and though I guess I'm supposed to be picking out make-out music, instead I multitask and say: “
Morning Pages
, what's
Morning Pages
?”—looking at the only file on his desktop.

Amir reaches across and takes the laptop out of my lap faster than you can say calm down.

“Nothing,” he goes.

“Well, it's
something
,” I go, and he rolls his eyes and goes: “It's kind of like a journal. I wake up every day and write three tangential pages back to back.”

I smile my best sly smile. I've practiced it in the mirror for years. “Okay,” I say. “And yet you're going to school for
business
and not writing?”

He lies back on the couch and digs his feet underneath my butt, and it is very sweet.

“You should read me some of these
Morning Pages
,” I say, and he laughs and goes, “Oh, I so should
not
do that.”

I reach my arm back to lay it across the couch, and my elbow grazes a picture frame, which tips over and lands with a solid
clack
. I worry that maybe I've cracked the glass, but when I set it up again, it is not broken. It is a perfect unharmed photo of two guys—Amir, next to somebody Dad-age.

“Who's that?” I say, and the way Amir goes, “Oh, that's Evan,” I know it's over.

“How long were you together?” I'm not doing the flirty-mouth thing anymore.

“Well,
that's
presumptuous,” Amir says. He wiggles his toes and it tickles my butt. I squirm, but I don't laugh. This night has no clear ending; it's all middle.

I pick up the photo and launch an investigation. Clue number one: Evan is holding Amir's waist.

“A year and a half,” Amir says finally, and then: “Until he fucking
cheated
on me with one of his students.”

The AC clicks off. “Where is he now?”

“Back in Texas,” he says, and I go, “Back in Texas,” because I like when dialogue echoes, except not this time.

I am in a brain fog when Amir opens his laptop back up and turns on some music that sounds familiar—something rousing and orchestral and more cinematic, somehow, than straightforward trumpets usually are—and I know it I know it I know it, and finally I go: “Wait, don't tell me,” and Amir smiles and goes, “I wasn't going to.”

He gets up close to my face and kisses my forehead.
Chug-chug-chug
, the riverboat is back in my chest.

“Read something to me,” I say, because suddenly I'm back to being unsure if I'm ready to have sex.

“What do you mean?” he goes.

“Read me some of your work. Out loud.”

“Only if you do,” he goes, and he plops back onto the sofa.

“No way,” I go. “My stuff is junk and I don't have any of it on me.”

“You don't back it up in the cloud?”

“Well, yeah, but—”

He puts his laptop on my lap. Spotify is minimized. The trumpets continue to blat and cry.

“I'll read you the first page of my terrible novel if you read me the first page of your terrible screenplay.”

“No,” I go, “but I'll pull up some Vimeos of my old films with Annabeth and leave the room for fifteen minutes and you can watch whatever you want. Films are meant to be seen, not read.”

“Thanks, Mom,” he goes, and
that
is getting old faster than hot milk.

He takes the laptop back from me. “I've already watched all your films,” he goes, just like that, and I go, “Wait, wh—,” and he goes, “After that Celebrity game-night thing, I was all, ‘Who is that guy?' and Carly was all, ‘You have to see his movies.' ”

I stare at a crack across the blank wall of his apartment and expect it to open up and swallow me into a portal. Those weren't my movies. Those were
our
movies.

Change the scene. Switch the topic. Take control of the narrative.

It comes to me: “Elmer Bernstein,” I say.

It's just, Elmer Bernstein has a very distinctive cinematic underscoring style, and his music is drowning out this conversation on Amir's couch. (Thank you, Mr. Bernstein.)

“Correct.” Amir smiles. “You
are
good.” He double-clicks and then double-clicks again, and then: “I've never done this.”

“Um . . .”

“Read my work out loud.”

Oh! This is kind of fun. I can be the loyal guy Evan never was, and this will convince Amir to stay here. I will move in with him next year. I will work at Carnegie Library and watch DVDs all day. We will have brown babies because we will use his DNA.

“I'm waiting,” I say, pointing to the computer.

He turns the volume down on Elmer Bernstein and clears his throat and he puts his feet on my lap, and they smell just faintly faintly faintly like boy feet and something about that is very wonderful. Maybe I do want to have sex. It seems like I only want to have sex when I'm not thinking about it, and I only don't want to have sex when I am.

“Okay, so . . . ,” Amir goes, and I go, “Stalling!” and he goes, “No, wait,” and his eyes are scanning page one—just like mine always did right before I would read my first drafts for Annabeth—and he goes, “I'm not sure about this,” and I go, “Come on, isn't this the novel that got you into this prestigious program?” and when I say it out loud, I'm thinking about what it would be like for me to go to LA and be paired with some anonymous new director, and that's just one big fat no, right there.

The Wachowskis. The Ephron sisters. The Nolans. Q & A.

I've been alive for seventeen
years
; how is some brand-new director going to be able to decode all the nuances and jokes and not-jokes in my work?

“So . . . okay,” Amir says. He takes his feet off my lap and turns around so that his back is totally facing me.

“What are you doing?” I go.

“I just said I couldn't read it out loud if I was facing you.”

“Oh, yeah, of course,” I lie. The AC clicks itself off again. The Elmer Bernstein continues on a loop from Amir's computer, the same song on repeat. Trumpet, trumpet, trumpet.

“Chapter one,” Amir says, “page one
only
.” He faux-coughs twice and goes, “I can't believe I'm doing this,” and I go, “That's a compelling first line,” and he goes,
“Quinn,”
and I shut up.

“Marleek Tabasian,”
Amir says, his voice small,
“awakened earlier than she had in months because the heat was eating her from the inside out. This was unusual even for Lindandia, which was carved into the earth two thousand years after the Great Lindandian fall. . . .”

I hold my breath. His work is possibly . . . terrible, yes, that's the word, terrible, and so I put my feet against his back so that he feels he has my support. It's amazing how much you can fake, physically. Just ask Marlon Brando, who literally
couldn't really speak
and was the best actor of all time.

“Marleek's spirit mother, Tasia Tabasian,”
he continues, getting louder and unfortunately more confident,
“was already in the study, looking over the day's agenda. She startled at the sight of her spirit daughter, unclothed and floating.”

Oh, dear. I pull my feet away. Even my feet can't fake it in the face of this hokum.

But then something changes.

Amir's voice gets stronger and softer, at the same time, and I'm able to hear that his writing is stilted but ambitious, which describes perhaps the opposite of my whole life—articulate but lazy. You can tell he has created a world that he believes in, or wants his readers to, and by the end of page one, I am able to appreciate the fact that he is attempting something. That he is, at least, not hibernating.

“Okay, blah,” he goes, swinging back around, “end of page one. That's it. Ahh, I want to kill myself.”

“Don't say that, it was wonderful.”

“No, it wasn't,” he says, but he's not exactly looking away from me. “Your turn,” he goes, setting the laptop on my legs. “Page one of your screenplay.”

“No,” I say, somehow working a lighthearted laugh into the proceedings. “Seriously, no way.”

“Then you're not getting laid,” he goes, as if he's punishing me, which he is.

We have a staring contest and dammit he wins. Trumpets, trumpets, trumpets.

I open up a new tab and type in my cloud password and scroll through all my screenplays—and for a moment I truly do debate reading from
Double Digits
. When I open up the first page, I can't help at least smile at how very me it is.

But then I read this jokey character description that always made her giggle—the first scene of the screenplay started with me describing the title character as
“a fierce young warrior, and I don't mean ‘gay' fierce”
—and right here on this sofa, I can hear Annabeth cackling at that turn of phrase, and just,
no
: “I'm not doing this, Amir,” I say, letting my eyes rest on the phrase
fierce young warrior
. “Only my sister got to hear my bad line readings.”

I look over the laptop screen and Amir is pulling off his mesh shorts. “Are you
sure
you won't even read one
page
?” he says. He is in purple briefs. He is beautiful. He is both a badger and a butterfly.

Trumpets, trumpets, trumpets. (beat) (beat) (beat)

I lick my lips, not to flirt but to prepare. I close my eyes and count backward from ten, telling myself I'll know by the time I hit “one.” But I know by the time I hit “nine.”

“I'm just not ready,” I say. I look up. The smallest saliva bubble has formed on Amir's lips, and I don't care. His imperfections are his perfections. Ten beautiful fingers creep up over his computer, and when the screen clamps silently shut, the trumpets continue to play for one more moment, as if Elmer Bernstein's little orchestra of tiny people is trapped inside the laptop. Amir is shirtless, his tank top has disappeared, his hat is on the floor, his hair is matted down. He is smiling, but it is a sex smile, not any other kind. I know this instantly because nobody has ever smiled at me like this, and so it must be that.

“Well, I still think you're a genius,” he says, and I go, “Careful. If you keep saying that, I might believe you.”

He takes the laptop and puts it on his coffee table. It is in this moment that I understand that Amir is not a genius, himself—at least not at storytelling. I replay the first page of his novel in my mind, and I decide that a future in “business” might be good for Amir. He is not a genius, and rereading the first page of
Double Digits
to myself makes me wonder if in some small way I've been comparing myself to the great filmmakers too early in my career. Amir is older than me, but I am a more talented writer; this I know.