But the good news is, I ran into Dante. Dante is a seventeen-, eighteen-year-old kid who has cancer. We usually run into each other when he’s doing chemo and I’m having some doctor tell me I need a feeding tube and after that, probably a breathing machine, and other crap that I don’t listen to unless Dad gets upset about it. Which he does, a lot. He’s getting soft in his old age. I tried to get him to watch the WWE with me, but he said he didn’t like wrestling. Who doesn’t like wrestling, I ask you? Chicks and old men, that’s who. Give me some six-year-old boys or some thirty-year-old men, and it’s a party when the WWE is on.
Originally when I met Dante and they had said maybe he didn’t have that long, he and I were going to use his trip from Make-A-Wish Foundation to go to the Broncos game. But Dante totally blew that by going into remission. He said he was super sorry, that he wanted to go as much as me, but I have my doubts about that. I told him not to sweat it, that I would work my magic to get us the tickets. You know all about that already, so I won’t bore you with the riveting details of my genius this time.
Yes, Marisol is right, I like to hear myself talk, especially if it’s about me. But in my defense, there’s nothing very interesting going on in Pine River. I mean, I’m it.
Anyway, I’m back in Montrose with a guy nurse, and I saw Dante walking around with an IV, and I said, “Hey, what are you doing back here, trying to get a date?” Turns out, Dante’s cancer is back, and that sucks. But on the other hand—and this may sound selfish—the only time I get to see him is when he and I are both in Montrose, him getting chemo, me getting some nurse eye candy.
I am happy to report that Dante is feeling pretty good and he is totally stoked about the game. I told him about the van we’re going to get—red, with twenty-inch chrome wheels, and some kick-ass flames painted on the side. But Dad was sitting there, and as he is the King of Wet Blankets, he tried to tell Dante that we weren’t painting flames on the van. I winked at Dante and told him later that Dad doesn’t know I’ve already got that lined up from a buddy I went to school with. Dad thinks it’s weird to drive me around in a red van with flames on it, but he’s, like, fifty-or sixty-something and is out of touch with sexy.
Anyway, I could see I was getting Dante’s hopes up with this talk of the van, and he said, “Dude, you’re going to be like the sickest wheelchair in the nation!” He didn’t mean sick like MND sick, he meant sick as in totally cool. So now, I have to deliver, and I’ll be honest, I’m a little worried about it because the Methodist ladies are a little slow on the uptake.
They started off by selling raffle tickets for things like dinner and a movie. It doesn’t take a genius to know they’re never going to get me a van like that, right?
That’s okay, I’m on it, using my considerable brain capacity to think things through. One day, Luke comes home or over—who knows if he lives here or not anymore, right? Get married already!—and he says, all serious, “Dude, you better have a tight rein on that committee.”
Like I don’t. Like I am going to entrust my van to a bunch of women. Don’t make me laugh. Seriously, what do women know about vans? Nothing, that’s what. Now, don’t get your panties in a wad, it’s just biology. You wouldn’t trust me to choose the new furniture for your living room makeover, would you? I rest my case.
I said to Luke, “I’ve got my fingers all in that pie, bro. We’re working on a silent auction. I just need a little help rounding up some excellent prizes.”
He said, “Like what?”
“Helicopter skiing,” I said. Honestly, it just popped into my mind, but that’s what happens with MND, brilliant and clever thoughts are constantly firing away.
But Luke was like, “Helicopter skiing!” As if he totally wouldn’t do that. Of course he would. I never knew anyone who was as fearless as Luke. He said, “Where are you going to get that?”
I said I didn’t know, but the Methodists weren’t going to find helicopter skiing, and that was a problem because this auction needed some pizzazz to get the van.
And Luke said, “Well, I think you’re going to have a bigger problem than a lack of pizzazz, Leo. Libby Tyler has joined the committee.”
Now, see, this is where the wheat is separated from the chaff. While everyone else might see a problem, I see something totally awesome. In fact, I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before! What that committee needs is a little bit of all-American competition, so I was totally pumped when Luke told me that. He wanted to know what I was grinning about, and I told him I was going to turn Libby and Gwen loose on each other, and he said I was an idiot, that there was nothing worse than two women in a catfight. I said I thought it was sexist to suggest that women in competition were automatically a “catfight,” only because I heard that on the Katie Couric show. Between you and me and the wall, there is nothing that turns me on more than two women duking it out.
Yeah, okay, there might be something that turns me on more, but this isn’t that kind of story.
So Luke goes on, telling me what I knew about women he could put on a postage stamp, and, of course, in waddles Marisol, and she has to get in on the act and agree.