Marge and one of Lester’s clients emerge from the shower, heading to the juice bar. I catch Marge shooting a satisfied smile over at my new girl. Somebody almost as lardy as her — at least in the young, white, and rich demographic — is a rarity in Miami Beach. Yet there’s the seed of an impression that Sorenson is perhaps different. Yes, that soupy air of depression hangs over her, and there’s something of the self-pitying victim about her that annoys the fuck out of me. But I sense that she really wants to get better; a defiant glint in her eye shines through the creeping dread.
After Sorenson leaves, with some reluctance, looking at me as if there’s some dramatic disclosure to come, other than “Same time Friday,” I burn four hundred cal on the treadmill, then drive home. No snooping press mofos, so it’s all good.
I fix myself a lunch of steamed broccoli and spinach, with a peanut-butter-and-banana protein shake (460 cal). My phone vibrates in the pocket of my shorts, the caller ID telling me it’s my dad. — Hey! My baby girl! What a chip off the old block!
— Eh, thanks.
— My heart was in my goddamn mouth when I heard. I said to myself: what in hell’s name was she thinking of, tackling an armed guy who was firing off rounds? Then I thought, she’s a Brennan: it’s the way she’s made. That was how it had to go down.
I love my dad, even though he sent me here to live with Mom when I wanted to stay in Boston. Of course, loving somebody doesn’t mean you can’t acknowledge that they can be a real asshole. He’s written a series of five police-procedural detective novels, all featuring Matt Flynn, a BPD dick turned PI. Each one has sold more than the previous, and the current has just made the New York Times bestseller list. He now does a bullshit feature on “Flynn’s Boston” for the Globe. As an ex-gym-teacher, he’s very driven. I don’t know why he worries excessively about his police credentials, or lack of. You only have to take a lardass cop to lunch to nail the procedural shit, the rest is a testimony to his writerly powers of imagination.
Dad’s dust jackets claim he was a Boston homicide detective for eight years. They’ll be laughing at that one in a few Mick bars in Southie. He served with the BPD, in uniform, for only three years before he was kicked out for “racist behavior,” following an incident at a warehouse in Dorchester. Some achievement that: Josef Mengele couldn’t get ejected from Boston’s finest for that shit. The real reason was that he took a dive to protect a higher-ranking officer. Dad used the payoff dough welclass="underline" he wrote a crime novel, which wasn’t too bad. Since that debut, he’s blossomed as the suburbanites’ choice; they can sleep easy knowing that his Boston tec protagonist, Matt Flynn, is out there protecting them, tying everything up in neat resolution. Yes, he’s metaphorically grown into that airbrushed jacket photo of him, looking like a chunkier, nightclub-bouncer version of Doctor Drew. I suspect Botox, but he fervently denies this.
— Thanks, Dad. It’s scary, looking back, but I just reacted.
— You sure did that! I’m so glad I encouraged you with all that kickboxing and tae kwon do. You saved two men’s lives, and probably your own.
I know Dad makes a living through crime hyperbole, but the truth in that statement makes me shudder. While I wasn’t the target, there’s no telling how an asshole with a gun might react once he’s spilled blood.
— I’m glad too.
— And I’ll tell ya someting else, I’m gonna make you rich, princess! I got contacts in Hollywood now. Been speaking to agents and producers about Matt Flynn screen and TV adaptations.
What to say to that? — Well, um, okay. . but you might be too late. A TV company has already been in touch about a pilot. In fact I’m just heading to a meeting in a little while. I’ve got a local talent agency working for me.
— That’s my girl. The Brennan get-up-and-go! But watch out for those guys, kiddo. Keep some native Southie cunning back in the locker room. You know what this wiseass Hollywood agent said to me the other day?
— No. .
— He said, “I see Matt Flynn as being a down-the-line project for the Damons, Afflecks, or Wahlbergs. Like a nest egg for those guys when the gym-rat stuff gets too much like hard work and the middle-aged spread hits and they can finally do that grizzled, lived-in shit.”
— Right. I get that.
— No, think it through, honey, and this is what I said to him: those guys are fuckin actors. By the time they’re ready to play hard-bitten, fifty-five-year-old BPD homocide detectives, they’ll be seventy, and I’ll be in an urn on somebody’s mantelpiece!
— Dad, this is taking on a morbid turn, like so many of your conversations.
— Well, the clock’s ticking. Give me a grandkid, honey; just do the nine months for your old pop. One that can make me proud. Hell, I’ll pay for the kid to attend the best schools. You’ll never see him. It.
Oh my God, I thought I’d get through a phone call without that old theme recurring. — You know what? Have you ever asked yourself why I become more dykish every time you address me directly? Like, since I was about six years old?
— Jesus, honey, don’t do this to your old pop. Anyway, lesbians do the motherhood thing, it’s all the rage, he contends. Dad knows I’m bi. He doesn’t like it, but at least he acknowledges it. Mom almost physically chokes when I mention it. She would send me for extreme ECT if she could. — Why should a woman be denied motherhood on the grounds of sexual orientation?
I’m about to retort that I could find a hundred men to impregnate me, but, disturbingly, the only face that pops into my head is Miles’s. — It’s on the grounds of choice, of not wanting my body wrecked. Of things like liking sleep, hard breasts, tigh—
— Don’t say “tight vaginal walls” for chrissakes. Remember I’m your goddamn father! I don’t have the gift of abstraction when it comes to you!
— Sorry, Pop.
— Think it through, pickle. Ticktock. Ticktock. That’s the way it is. The human condition, he wheezes, then sings in pain, — the cocksucking, evil, motherfucking, God-awful human condition. .
I let a brief silence hang, which he fills. — I gotta go now. But I’m in Miami next month hitting the Sunbelt part of the tour. Let’s hook up for some food, a good porterhouse for me, and a nice big helping of rabbit food for you. In the meantime, I’m gonna send you the website details for this insemination project. Think about it.
— Jesus. . Dad. . as you say, you are my father!
— That’s parental prerogative, honey, as you’ll hopefully soon know when you succumb to the force. Gotta go, angel. Love you!
— Love you, I tell him, with I think, reverberating in my head as the line goes dead. That man is beyond real.
My cal count is low today so I fix myself some tofu and couscous (around 450 cal), then do a routine of hand weights. After working up a decent sweat, I take a shower, before settling down in front of the TV. I try not to let it get to me, but it sucks not having cable, if only for the sports channels. The network news channels bug me, even if there’s nothing on me or the twins. It’s just that missing kid, Carla Riaz. She looks so small, frail, and angelic in that picture. I hope she’s okay. There are some evil motherfuckers out there.