#6. Patrick and Wendell

#6. Patrick and Wendell

The next day was a lot like the last. Patrick barely said a word to Susan all day. He was sitting at home, anticipating another boring night, when his friend Wendell called.

Wendell had been Patrick’s roommate in college and had done even less with himself than Patrick had since graduation. Wendell was an artist and refused to be anything else. Having never entertained any illusions of living on his own after graduation, he moved back in with his parents and immediately got to work painting full-time. At this point he had only sold one work, through a coffeehouse gallery, for $20. It was his least favorite work: a 5″ by 8″ daffodil floating above a green field, backlit by moonlight provided by a vanGogh rip-off starry sky. He bought a DVD of Dude, Where’s My Car? with the profits.

“Hey man,” Wendell began, as always.

“Hey.”

Around a group, Wendell was quite gregarious. Until he got warmed up, however, he came across much more as hard thinker, slow talker. “So . . . I heard they’ve got cosmic bowling down at 10th Street on Tuesday nights.”

“Listening intently.”

“And, uh, dollar drafts.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“Well, what do you think?” Wendell asked.

“Of what?”

“What do mean, of what?”

“I’m kidding. Sure. When do you want to go?”

“I was thinking . . . now? You know, if that’s cool with you.”

“Now’s good,” Patrick replied.

“All right.” Silence.

“You need me to pick you up?”

“Yeah man, that would be great. Mom and dad are on a cruise.”

“Okay. See you in a bit.”

“Okay.”

Wendell lived half an hour away, in the next town over. His parents had a terrific ranch-style house there, with a spacious basement apartment that had been his studio for the past two years. It had been Wendell’s dad’s idea to install an exterior stairwell leading directly down into the apartment, so he could enjoy the semblance of independence. April said his parents were just asking for Wendell to never grow up, but Patrick often thought it was a pretty nice setup. The parents barely charged anything for rent, and he didn’t have to worry about utilities or even food. He didn’t have to maintain a car of his own because he just borrowed the family sedan when he needed to, and rode his bike the rest of the time. He was just free to do what he wanted, be it painting or relaxing or making out with a new girl every month. Wendell’s shaggy good looks and carefree lifestyle would be enough to make Patrick intolerably jealous if Wendell weren’t such an infuriatingly decent human being.

Patrick didn’t bother knocking, just pushed the door open and started down into Wendell’s lair. Clothes, canvases, paint, toys – remote control cars, Legos, Nerf footballs – crowded a narrow pathway leading back to the entertainment center, where Patrick invariably found his friend when he came over.

Patrick stopped beside the couch, where Wendell sat staring at the TV. He was watching some Japanese game show in which, at the moment, people dressed in bright green and pink jumpsuits and helmets were storming through walls of huge white paper panels, hoping to miss by luck the one panel in each wall with brick behind it.

“Oh, man,” Wendell muttered to himself, as a middle-aged man smacked his helmet into the wrong panel and fell to the ground. His body was framed with animated chirping birds.

“Hey,” Patrick said.

“Holy shit,” Wendell replied, dramatically throwing his arms into the air. He turned to see Patrick standing by the couch.

“Guess you didn’t see me.”

“Geez louise, Pat. I can taste my heart,” Wendell said, pointing to his throat.

Patrick laughed. “Cosmic bowling?”

Wendell shook off his shock, put his thumb up. “Right on.”

They got into Patrick’s car and began the trek all the way back toward the vicinity of Patrick’s apartment, which was only two minutes from 10th Street Lanes.

“So what’s new?” Patrick asked.

“Um.” This was often Wendell’s response when asked a serious question, followed by at least half a minute of silence as he mulled over possible responses. “I broke my vegan streak.”

“Was it red meat again?”

“Yeah. I always seem to go all the way when I break the diet. Never fish, not even eggs – steak, it’s always what does me in. My grandparents sent us the meat, straight from the farm. Oh, holy of holies, this cow. This was delicious bovine. This was meat nirvana.”

“It’s okay. I understand.”

“No you don’t. You can’t really appreciate meat until you’re a vegan.”

“What about Denise?”

“Um . . .” long pause, “her best friend died.”

“What?”

“Yeah, her best friend since fourth grade. So she dropped out of school here and went back home. Couldn’t handle it.”

“Wow,” Patrick replied. “Was that hard to handle? I mean, for you?”

“Uh . . . no. No, at that point we’d only been on two dates. I don’t know at what point the best friend dying is rough on the significant other, but I wasn’t even significant yet anyway.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Yeah, she told me in an e-mail.”

“Oh.”

“Damn, she was cute. I finally found a girl with two good dimples, and . . . oh well. Maybe I should concentrate on eyes next. I’ve always wanted a girl with aquamarine blue eyes. I wrote in my diary once when I was four that when I got married it would be to a girl with aquamarine eyes. Or a mermaid. You know, actual marine life, but with breasts. This is the girl I will find cosmic bowling. I can feel it.”

Instantly Patrick began thinking about Susan, and what it had been like to have her pale green eyes all to himself for the better part of an hour. He smiled, half at Wendell, half at the face in his mind.

“I’ve never seen a mermaid bowl,” Patrick said.

“Fine, just the eyes, then. You’re right, it’s a far more realistic goal.”