“Haylie. I told them they should go with a classic like Phyllis or Opal, but nobody listens to me.”
“I can’t wait to meet her,” I said.
“You’re going to love her.” He checked the time on his phone. “We should get going. I wanted to be as early as possible just to make sure I was an imposition.”
“Really?”
“Come on.” He got up. “I’ll tell you about it in the car.”
When I walked outside, there was a vintage red Camaro sitting in front of the house with the top down. “Damn.” I shook my head.
“What?”
“How many cars do you have?”
“I don’t keep track.” He jumped in and leaned over to open my door for me.
“Thank you.” I got in, and he put the car in gear. I wasn’t expecting him to fly so fast down the driveway. It jerked me back. The force of the wind pulled my hair back and sent it streaming behind me.
“Is this your first time in a convertible?” he asked when he pulled past the security gate.
“Yeah, it is.” I had to yell over the wind.
He glanced my way, then slammed on the gas when we turned onto the neighborhood street. The rush caught me off guard and sent my head flying into his lap. “You can stay there if you want to.”
“I’m all right. So, what is this crap about your brother? Is it something I should know?”
“It’s like I told you. The whole family is using their phone tree against me. The old ladies get together and fret over why I haven’t found somebody, and the guys all look at me like I’m a pervert, as if half of them weren’t already cheating on their wives. It’s bad. My brother took me out to dinner a couple days ago and drilled into me about how people are starting to talk, and how I need to find somebody to make my life complete. Normally, I wouldn’t care what he had to say, but he’s really rubbing it in. So I decided to bring you.”
“Why do they care so much?”
“I don’t know.” He turned back to the road. “I don’t even really care. I just want to show off. Is that bad?”
“No, if they’re jerks to you, let’s throw it in their faces.”
“See, I knew you’d get it.”
We wound through the foothills, into the city, then south towards the suburbs. Andrew lived in a nice, upper middle-class neighborhood. The houses were large, but not too large, with tailored lawns and cobblestone façades. Everything was stylized. The sidewalk was red brick, and the street lamps had been designed to look like old gas-burnin
g lanterns.
When we pulled up, several cars were already parked in front of the house and across the street. Jake parked next to the driveway. “He lied about the time.” Jake sounded disappointed.
“Why would he hold a barbecue so early?” I asked when he walked around to open my door.
“You’ll see.”
Jake walked me up to the front door and rang the bell. Everything was sterile and uniform. The houses all had the same front doors, and every house had six pink tulips in front of the main window. Every little detail, save for tiny changes in floor plan and structure, were exactly the same.
“They’re good-looking cookie-cutter houses, aren’t they?”
“Twice the price of a normal one, too.” The door cracked open, and Jake put on his best smile. The woman that answered it was short, with a poof of blonde curly hair, wearing a denim dress over a white blouse. She rolled her eyes and walked inside without saying anything.
“That’s Andrew’s first wife,” Jake said loudly enough for her to hear. Then he dropped his voice to a whisper. “She thinks I’m the antichrist.”
I struggled not to laugh. The front room was designed to be a showroom parlor with straight-backed antique furniture and a decorative tea set sitting on the faux marble table. It made no sense to me why anyone would set up a room that they couldn’t sit in. It was pretentious beyond imagining, and it was a sure sign of neurotic housekeeping.
We followed the woman down the hall into the kitchen, where she had an entire island filled up with every type of meat imaginable. “The food will be ready soon,” she said and went back to chopping a mountain of onions.