Little Blue Lies by Chris Lynch Read Free Book Online Page A

Dad.”
    â€œSee, there it is.”
    â€œWhat’s a vocabulary got to do with anything, Dad?”
    Here’s one of the many things that make my dad singular. As well as I know him, I never know. Never know what serious thing is going to make him laugh. Never know what neutral nothing is going to pull him up all grim and serious.
    â€œ Everything . It’s got everything to do with everything. How you talk. How you carry yourself. How you present and how you relate. Those are the keys to absolutely everything, and you have got all that. You think I’m a success because I am some kind of financial wizard? Pffft. I don’t know bo diddly about finance. I know how to relate, Son, and that is what counts.”
    â€œThat’s ev—”
    â€œAnd golf,” he adds. “All that, and golf. That’s what counts.”
    â€œIf you unlock the car,” I say with folded prayer hands before my face, “I promise to give this a lot of thought.”
    â€œPromise?”
    My hands remain folded, my manner solemn. “Not really.”
    His manner goes perky. “I’m going to take that as a ‘We’ll see.’ ”
    We get in, and in seconds he is zipping his way up the boulevard and I have my window wide open, my head hanging out there doglike in the direction of the surf, the scent, the sacred stuff.
    â€œYou think Ronny Rat has done something bad to her?”Dad ventures when he feels enough time and wind have blown through my head.
    I pause. “I don’t know,” I say.
    He pauses. “You want me to go over and kick his ass?” he says.
    We both pause. But just.
    â€œBwa-hah-hah-hah . . . ,” we burst out together.
    â€¢Â Â â€¢Â Â â€¢
    Another vital sacred part of Sunday used to be the walk over to Junie’s neighborhood, to the corner shop, to buy a newspaper from her. It would be late in the day, and I would pass about five thousand copies of the same papers piled up in other shops along the way, much of the news already old, so it wasn’t the most practical of trips. But I always looked forward to it, always brought her something from my mother’s kitchen, since baking and soup-making were another part of the Sunday sacreds of our home life, even though Junie worked in a shop all day and could snack as much as she wanted to.
    But those snacks wouldn’t be my mother’s cran-blueberry muffins, that’s for sure, and they wouldn’t be her coconut crab soup, that’s for sure. And if, what-ho-lookit-the-time, I just happened to show up within an hour of closing time, then hanging around and being a pest followed by walking the lady home was just one more element making a sacred Sunday sacred, was it not?
    Until she told me to cut it out. Until she told me I had to leave her and her Sundays the hell alone finally.
    That left a bit of a hole, that did.
    â€œCome on. Come out and play some tennis. Stop the moping.”
    It’s my friend Malcolm, who has appeared quite mysteriously somewhere down there beneath my bedroom window. I am lying on my bed, not bothering the universe in any way and so reasonably expecting the universe to reciprocate. Malcolm has not interrupted a Sunday of mine since I stopped playing soccer and tennis after Junior year.
    â€œI’m not moping. I’m relaxing.”
    â€œYou’ll get hairy hands,” he says, really loudly. It has always been a defining characteristic of Malcolm’s that he seems to believe there is a dedicated line of communication between himself and whomever he is communicating with, and the world at large cannot hear.
    â€œThanks anyway, Malcolm.”
    â€œCome on,” he yells. “I have two rackets here and a full can of balls. Which is more than you can say.”
    I go to my window, kneel down, and press my forehead against the screen. “It’s Sunday, for God’s sake.”
    â€œSo? Is your