This Is Where We Live - By Janelle Brown Page 0,24
at his paper place mat, where the previous occupant had doodled a purple daisy in stubby crayon. He aligned the paper with the edge of the table, seeking some kind of manageable order to counterbalance a conversation that had—as always with his father—immediately veered off course. “No! Things with Claudia are great. Why did you say that?”
“An invitation to lunch is an invitation to unload,” Max said. He bared a wolfish smile for the waitress who was delivering their meals—flax-seed omelet and green tea for him, BLT and a boba tea for Jeremy. “Happy conversations happen over alcohol or sugar. Lunch is a virtuous sort of meal, problems that need to be witnessed in the stark light of day and all that.”
Jeremy shifted uncomfortably in his chair, fumbling a piece of bacon out of the sandwich as a delay tactic. He hadn’t wanted to go there yet. He wasn’t sure he was even going to tell his father at all. He’d called Max last night out of an impulsive, abstract desire for the presence of some sort of parental figure, and since Jillian wasn’t around anymore Max would have to do. The minute he’d made the date, he’d regretted it. You didn’t come to Max for solace of any sort—get-togethers with his father tended to be terse affairs, bracketed by Max’s aimless self-satisfaction and Jeremy’s uncharacteristic impatience—which was probably why Jeremy hadn’t made real plans with his father in almost six months.
But looking at Max, now, he had a sudden epiphany. There was a ridiculously easy—if somewhat personally painful—solution to this problem, one Claudia hadn’t even jotted down in her notebook. Why hadn’t he thought of this sooner?
“I need to borrow some money,” he blurted, “Claudia and I. Our mortgage went up and we need to find some more money fast or we’ll lose the house.”
Max threw his head back and released a wheezy whoop of glee, walloping the table with one fist for emphasis. “They got you on the house, did they? Why do you think I never bought one? Did I not teach you a thing?”
Jeremy didn’t answer. He stared into the opaque depths of his boba tea, a drink he had chosen not because it tasted that good but because of its interactive appeal. It was not just a drink; it was a toy. He sucked hard, and a little nugget of tapioca shot up the straw to land on his tongue. It had the texture of dried glue, and he chewed on it vigorously, annoyed.
Max eyed him more soberly. “I taught you how to roll a joint. I remember that. You were fourteen and your mother nearly had a heart attack when you told her, you little snitch.”
“And clearly that skill has been improving the quality of my life ever since,” Jeremy said, failing to properly muster the appropriate sarcasm. It was true that his ability to roll perfect joints had served him well, once upon a time. The roller of joints was always at the center of things, the bestower of favors, all eyes eagerly focused on the paper in your hands, marveling at your ability to turn it tightly and swiftly into an aerodynamic tube. A well-rolled joint pleased your bandmates and helped you get girls. Not that this mattered much in his life these days.
“So how much do they have you for?” Max asked. He disassembled his flax-seed omelet, on the hunt for a solitary shiitake mushroom.
“We have to come up with an additional twenty-two hundred or so a month. I thought maybe we could borrow—six months’ worth from you? About twelve or fifteen grand?” Fifteen grand didn’t seem like an untenable number, but as he watched Max’s eyes dart north with surprise, he began to wonder if maybe he’d underestimated how big the sum really was.
“And what happens after six months?”
“It gives us enough time to figure something else out,” Jeremy said. “My band’s almost done with our album, and once we get it finished we’ll start making money. Or Claudia’s next film could get off the ground first.”
“Claudia is a sweet girl. Pretends to be an artist, but really she wants the same things her parents did: nice house, nice car, stable income, two-point-three children, vacations in Hawaii. Born and bred in conventionality and will never truly escape it. It’s like a brand on her skin, S for square. Not her fault, probably.” Max idly stirred the shredded omelet about on his plate.