But it was all confused and I was mad as fuck.
My hand, my left hand, oddly, considering I was right-handed, swiped at Arnie’s blue wraparounds. They went flying, exposing Arnie’s fox-colored eyes and thin eyelashes.
“Fuck? Dude?”
“I mean it. That’s my daughter’s nanny.”
What does that even mean?
Fuck that. I didn’t know what that meant and it didn’t matter. I only had a debt to white-hot rage. I put my finger in his face.
“Any single human being who takes care of my daughter is off-limits for tit-shaking and face-fucking.”
Nice going, using Nicole like that.
Arnie put his hands up like some wronged party. A guy who’d stepped into a pile of shit from someone else’s dog.
Maybe he had. Maybe what I felt had nothing to do with him.
“You know what?” he said. “You want me to keep it in my pants, hire an ugly one, yo. Don’t be dangling some bombshell bitch in my face and say I can’t even talk about touching it.”
“It? You forget where you’re from?” I admit I carved off a little of my voice coaching to make the point. “No Redfield boy talks like that. Your mother didn’t raise you to call a lady it.”
“Don’t you tell me about home. When was the last time you went home? Buddy redid the bar, and you didn’t even go see it. You have nieces and nephews telling all their friends Uncle Brad’s famous, and I bet you don’t even know what they look like. I bring them presents when I go. No.” He wagged his finger at me. “Don’t you tell me shit. I love this life as much as you, and I still make it back home.”
You know how that hit?
It hit below the belt, right where Faye Sweeny kicked me in fifth grade and I passed out. Arnie wasn’t Faye though. She sent me a handwritten note apologizing. Arnie went right back in.
“Buddy fixed Margie up.” Slap. Sunk the six. “Your nephew’s graduating high school. He can act, you know? Biggest talent in Redfield since you.” Slap. Sunk the one off the seven. “And how about taking your daughter around?”
“You know what, you fuck? You sit around here telling me what to do? Want to live my life? I have a three-hundred-page script to memorize and a fucking kid. Sure, let me take a vacation in Arkansas. Great idea.”
Arnie threw his hands up. “Fuck this shit.” He took a step away from me and swooped up his glasses, then pointed them at me like some community college professor. “I’m your friend. Until you die, I’m your friend. With or without the house. I don’t like outsiders and I like the life here. But you gotta take care of what’s yours.”
Fuck him. I couldn’t get home. I didn’t have long before I was shooting on location in Asia, and you don’t just leave a movie in preproduction. It wasn’t the money. Not my money, at least. Hundreds of people had planned the shoot and without the lead actor no one had jobs.
I wondered if I had time to talk my nephew out of acting.
Did I have time to go back? If push came to shove, could I visit? Bring Cara and Nicole?
I didn’t want to go back. I didn’t want to see the street I grew up on, because it was still fucked up. My parents wouldn’t move. Fixing up their house and my sister’s just made them nice houses in a town that was like a prison.
And I was different now. Leaving was frowned upon. Sure, my friend Buddy was happy for me, but he was going to give me shit that I thought I was better than him. He married his eighteen-year-old girlfriend when he knocked her up and here I was with a secret kid. Party boy. California dude. Shot down from the sky.
Since when do you care what he thinks?
I didn’t care, and I never judged him or anyone.
I should have brought Nicole first thing. I didn’t care what they thought, but they’d think I lost my manners. And they’d all ride me because I’d knocked up a girl. Like Buddy did. Like Dad did.
They’d forgive me because I was like them. No matter what I said, the thought of that bothered me. I’d worked too hard to be better. Do better. Make more of myself.
And I didn’t care what they thought—but I did.
I couldn’t pull it apart. I was getting tense. I hated being tense.
“What’s on your fucked-up brain, Brad?” Arnie asked after missing the seven. I’d taken too long to think about it.
“I forgot your birthday,” I said.
“It’s tomorrow.”
I leaned down to take my shot.
“Party, then. Right here.” Sunk the seven. “But swear, Arnie. You keep your hands off the help.”
“On my honor, dude.”
I nearly laughed out loud.
Nicole’s voice came from the kitchen as she ran into the billiards room.
“Daddy!” She said the word like a demand, both feet planted. She had an open blue Sharpie in one hand as if she’d been in the middle of drawing.
“Yeah, sweetheart?”
“Miss Blakely says we got invited to Sam and Bonnie’s?”
It took me a second to remember Sam and Bonnie were two of Mike and Laine’s kids.
“If she says so.”
“I want to wear the suit with the flower right here.” She pointed to her neck, getting a blue dot on her chin. Arnie laughed and bent over the table. I put the pool cue down.
“Can I have that?” I held my hand out for the marker. She twisted her whole body to keep it away from me. “Nicole. Sharpie doesn’t come out. Give it to me.”
She pursed her lips and held her chin out like a weapon. Did she get that stubborn pride from my side or Brenda’s? I’d never know.
“Do you need help?” Blakely asked from the doorway, reaching for the marker. “If you take it, the waa-mbulance is going to pull up.”
I held my hand out to stop her. “I got it.” Flipping my hand around, I put it out to my daughter. “The pen. If you want to wear the bathing suit with the flower right here.” I poked where she’d left the blue dot. She softened a little, but not much.
“Miss Cara and Miss Blakely hid it.”
Blakely cut in. “It’s a size eight. It looks like a shopping bag on her.”
“I grew!” she shot back at her nanny before turning to me and holding her hand up as far as it would go, the Sharpie wedged between thumb and forefinger. “I’m so big. So so big.”
Behind me, I heard clacking balls and the hollow sound of one of them sinking. I lost interest in nine-ball and Arnie. I just wanted to see how big that suit was.
“Okay, big girl. Give me the marker and let’s go take a look at the suit.”
“Pinkie promise I can wear it.”
I held my pinkie out and Nicole hooked hers over mine. How bad could it be?
She passed me the marker and I gave it to Blakely.
“Nice work negotiating the hostage, sir,” she said, snapping the cap on.