Lila sits at the wet bar in my basement. I’ve just poured her a Beam and Coke. I drink mine on the rocks.
“Cheers,” I say.
“Cheers,” Lila says, raising her glass. She sips the bourbon, sets the glass down. “Thanks for letting me crash at your place this weekend.”
“Don’t mention it. When’s the wedding?”
“One thirty tomorrow afternoon.”
“Down at the Mormon temple in Louisville?”
“Yep.”
“Who’s getting married again, a cousin?”
“A friend.”
“Same thing.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Sorry, the jokes kind of write themselves.”
“Not the funny ones.”
“Come on, Lila. Laugh a little.”
“I’ll try laughing if you try being funny.”
“Fair enough,” I say. “One thirty, huh?”
“Yep.”
“Seems aggressive for a wedding, given that you’ll be kicking off the party around three. But I guess we are talking a Mormon wedding reception.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“At what?”
“LDS receptions can get out of hand.”
“And by ‘out of hand’ you mean aggressive square dancing, lemonade bongs, and innocently suggestive love anthems by David Archuleta?”
“Hey now, David Archuleta rocks.”
“No, he doesn’t. What the hell, Lila? Two years removed from being a lesbian band aid, and now you’re into Honduran-American LDS bubble gum pop?”
“Honduran?”
“On his mom’s side. I watch American Idol. I’m not a fucking communist.”
“So you thought the best singer won?”
“David Cook could belch a better song than David Archuleta could sing.”
“That’s not nice, Hank.”
“Whatever,” I say. “How much you want?”
“What do you mean?”
“For your lame-ass LDS wedding reception. A bottle of bourbon? A hip flask?”
Lila shakes her head. “I’ll take a hip flask.”
“And?”
“And the bottle.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“Do you have anything besides Jim Beam?”
“What’s wrong with Beam?”
“Nothing, if you’re nineteen.”
“I got something for you,” I say, turning to the glass shelves behind me. I grab a bottle, hand it to my stepsister. “Jameson 18 Year Reserve. I’ve been saving it for a special occasion, but you’ll have to do.”
“I’m flattered you think so much of me.”
“Do you want it or not?”
Lila grabs the bottle. “So what’s up with you?”
“Nothing really.”
“Jack is good?”
“He’s great. We don’t talk or see one another nearly as much as I’d like, but he loves it out East.”
“You okay with that?”
“Laura and Jack deserve all the time they need to figure things out.”
“Wow.”
“What?”
“That’s such an adult thing to say, Hank.”
“I’m thirty-seven years old. At some point I need to act the part.”
“Is it acting?”
“I hope so,” I say, grinning from ear to ear, Cheshire-like.
Lila leans in and kisses me on the cheek. “There’s my Hank.”
“He makes an occasional cameo.”
“Where’s your beautiful wife?”
“She and the kids are out shopping for the Christmas party.”
“You hosting?”
“Yes, unfortunately. Stan got us a killer deal on the caterers who did his office party.”
“He’s back in town?”
“More than he has been. He and Joan are actually talking about making another go of it.”
“No way.”
“Beth is deliriously happy about it.”
“And you?”
“I think Stan and Joan are two of the least compatible people on the planet.”
“You tell Beth that?”
“Hell no.”
“Good boy,” Lila says. “And the job at Talk Hard is going well?”
“Well enough.”
“I wanted to talk to you about that.”
“About audiobooks?”
“About your career. How’s the writing going?”
“It’s going.”
“It is?”
“Sure.”
“So you’re writing?”
“I’m dabbling,” I say.
“Define ‘dabbling.’”
“I got about seventy-five thousand words down of a memoir. Signed with an agent about a month ago just based on the first three chapters.”
“That’s exciting. You got a title yet?”
“Waiting for the Sun.”
“Oh, I like that. Double entendre, great metaphor for the story of a boy figuring out how to be a man.”
“All of the above.”
“You could even open with that Doors song.”
“I wish.”
“Why not?”
“The Morrison Estate is controlled by his dead girlfriend’s parents.”
“The Meg Ryan character in the movie?”
“Pamela Courson was her name. She died of a drug overdose three years after Jim Morrison, and all rights to Jim Morrison’s music passed to her parents. They hated Jim and blamed him for their daughter’s death. They consider any advances or royalties related to the Morrison Estate to be their daughter’s blood money and subsequently charge exorbitant licensing fees.”
“You blame them?”
“I applaud them.”
“Thought you might,” Lila says.
“Hawaii treating you well?”
“I guess.”
“Trouble in paradise?”
“Chris has just been, uh, writing and texting and calling me lately.”
“Oh God.”
“I miss her, Hank.”
“Of course you do.”
“What do you mean?”
“She’s your Laura. She’s your fucking stupid.”
“My what? Listen, you pompous ass, my life is not a reflection of yours.”
“I didn’t say it was. Everybody has a Laura, that one person you have no business being with that you keep going back to until the meat is completely stripped from your bones.”
“That’s pleasant.”
“That’s Laura.”
“So I should ignore Chris?”
“Hell no.”
“What?”
“You gotta let it play out.”
“Has anyone ever told you that you’re a fucking lunatic, Hank?”
“Pretty much everybody I know. Look, Lila, you’re a big girl. My advice to you is to not do anything half speed, good or bad. Half speed equals regrets. Full speed equals results.”
“Full speed equals disasters.”
“Yeah, but they’re awesome disasters. And if you give up on Chris, if you two give up on each other, it’s not like you’re going to walk down the next block, turn a corner, and find a better brownstone.”
“You’re doing that thing you do,” Lila says.
“What thing?”
“Where you start jumping from metaphor to metaphor, sounding all cool and evolved.”
“Hey now, occasionally I’ll use a simile or two.”
“Same difference.”
“Lila, love is like walking the streets of New York City.”
“And here we go.”
“Sometimes it’s beautiful, sometimes it’s little more than controlled chaos. Sometimes, the chaos is where the real beauty lies. But no matter what, there will always be scaffolding. There will always be building, rebuilding, demolition, renovation—often on the ashes of those who’ve failed before you. Perfection is for fairy tales. All you can do is buy the ticket, take the ride.”
“‘Buy the ticket, take the ride.’ I like that.” Lila drains her Beam and Coke, chews on an ice cube. She sets down her glass, arching her eyebrows at me for another round. “Hunter S. Thompson, right?”
I nod. “I’m sure as hell nowhere near that fucking brilliant.” Doing my best Tom Cruise impersonation in Cocktail, I top her glass off with a quick two-handed pour from both the liter of Jim Beam and the Coke can. All that’s missing is Elizabeth Shue and “Kokomo” by the Beach Boys playing on the stereo. I wish I could remember the name of that actor who played Cruise’s bartending mentor. I think he was Australian. I can picture him shearing sheep and bedding Rachel Ward—more the long-haired, loss-of-innocence Rachel Ward from The Thornbirds than the steely-eyed Against All Odds Rachel Ward, although both examples are infinitely hot.
“Don’t sell yourself short, Hank,” Lila says, raising her right hand to my face. She cups my face in her palm, rubbing my cheek with her thumb. “Never fear, we may let the scaffolds fall, confident that we have built our wall.”
I hand Lila a hip flask full of Jameson. “Pink Floyd?”
Lila pockets the flask, casts a dual shrug with her head and shoulders. “It’s Seamus Heaney.”
“Really?”
“And you call yourself an Irishman?”
“Right about now I’d like to call myself the lunchmeat in a Rachel Ward-Elisabeth Shue sandwich circa 1984.”
Lila chokes on a swallow of Beam and Coke. “Uh, what?”
“Yeah, sorry about that,” I say, laughing. “The metaphors inside my head tend to be a lot more bizarre than the ones on the outside.”
“Not to mention weirdly graphic,” Lila says.