First, my name is Leo, not Leonard, but Marisol refuses to acknowledge that when she’s mad. Second, of course I am using them. It’s not like I can go out and get a job and buy my own van, is it? People, I have to rely on my superior cunning and exceptional good looks to get through my own little hell on earth, and that’s what I told Marisol.
So anyway, I am lying in bed with my legs stretched out as far as they’ll go so they don’t freeze in a crooked position, and I hear Luke come in. Even though I was watching Shark Tank and was totally into this one guy’s innovative sippy cups (I have some similar ideas that will probably require a patent), I couldn’t help noticing the voices in the living room. Sounded to me like Luke, Dad, and Marisol were having a “conversation” which is never a good sign.
Sure enough, Luke popped his head into my room, but I was ready for him.
He said, “What are you watching?”
Like it wasn’t totally obvious. “Shark Tank.”
“Oh, is it Shark Week already?” he asked, because Luke can be totally clueless sometimes. I mean, really, how can one person be so ignorant of important pop culture trends?
“Different shows, different networks,” I told him, and honest to God, I tried not to sound condescending about it. “Let’s just jump to the finish line here. What do you want?”
Luke looked kind of taken aback, and he said, “Geez, Leo, I just want to talk.”
And he proceeds to talk about how I don’t really need wheels, and that if I want to embark on some big fundraiser, what I really need is a new chair, especially if I am going to talk the Fed Ex guy into helping me out on the sidewalk like I did the other day so I could zip down to the ice stand at the end of Poplar Street and sweet-talk my way into a snow cone. Cherry limeade, my favorite. I even got the cute teenage girl to hold it up for me so I could eat it until Marisol came bouncing down the street like a beach ball and cussing at me in Spanish because I didn’t “tell her” that I was “going out.”
Anyway, Luke reminded me that the bread delivery van gets me to Montrose and the doctors, and he said it like that’s high on my list, like he doesn’t know they’re total downers in Montrose, always talking about new seizure meds and feeding tubes and heart monitors and breathing machines.
I just let Luke do his big-brother, I-am-here-to-fix-everything talk, and then I said, “Luke, it’s like this. The Methodists figured out how to get me into the Broncos game, which is super cool, but they can’t figure out how to get me to the game. I have to go to the game, Luke. If I don’t have that game to think about, I end up thinking about other less fun things, you know? Do you know how hard I’ve had to work to make it happen? And I did it. I did it from a goddamn chair. But I can’t roll up at Mile High Stadium in a bread delivery van. That’s not cool, Luke, so not cool. I have to have wheels! The Broncos are playing the Patriots! If I miss that game, go ahead and yank the tubes out of me, because I’m done.”
At first Luke looked freaked out, like he thought I was really going to yank the tubes, which, you know, to get my point across, I would consider. Hell, I have considered it. But then Luke figured out I was more interested in seeing the Broncos play than offing myself, which, at this point in time, would be an accurate assessment, and he said, “But that’s a lot of money for the folks of Pine River to come up with.”
And I said, “Well yeah, but I will figure it out.”
Luke looked at me like he’d never heard that before, but finally he reached over and he rubbed my gnarly, twisted foot, and he said, “Yeah, I remember. If anyone can figure it out, it’s you.”
Like, hello. Everyone knows that.
“Maybe you can put that ginormous brain of yours to the ranch,” he said, because he was trying to change the subject. “We’ve only got one wedding lined up. If we don’t get some business in the next couple of months, we’re going to have to rethink things.”
After all that mess with Dad practically giving away the ranch to Grant Tyler, who then up and died and left it to his three daughters, who didn’t know each other, and Luke quitting his job in Denver to come home and figure it all out, and deciding okay, maybe the ranch should be this event thing, and now he tells me they have one little wedding on the books?
I told him that I couldn’t solve all of his problems, and he said, no one asked me to solve his problems, and I said, get your hand off my foot, dude, or I will take it off for you, and some other stuff that brothers will say to each other when they’re annoyed, and I was annoyed.