36
Movie-Magic Endings
THE FANTASY: Racing through airport turnstiles, total strangers helping in one’s last minute quest for love, a final joyous embrace celebrating the validity of one’s life decisions.
THE REALITY: . . . Not that.
All movies are lies. Period, end of sentence.
The dash to the airport thing—that romantic-comedy trope was always a single straight line. People cheered for the guy along the way; traffic moved fast enough for him to get there at a dash; security officers were won over by his heartfelt attempt to seize the moment and right his wrongs. Turns out that the reverse was a whole situation that amounted to two words: incredibly expensive. Norris had waited two hours too long to pull off the Band-Aid.
“Four hundred eighty-five dollar shipment fee?!” Felix exclaimed.
“Per luggage,” the desk attendant added apologetically. “It’s an international flight, sir.”
Norris’s two luggage bags had already been checked and processed through. The only way to get them back was for them to be processed to Canada and then flagged for a return at the Austin airport. Or, alternatively, Felix could drag the luggage home and ship it back to Norris.
“No,” Norris said. “You already spent a fortune coming to collect my sorry ass. It’s not worth it. Keep it there for me, please? If you have the space.”
“Why?” Felix said with a raised eyebrow.
“You know, for when I visit, maybe? Underwear changes are nice.”
Norris had a little brother out there. A tiny little human puppy that shared some of his genetic makeup, the poor little bastard. He wanted to see him someday.
“That’d be nice, son. Real nice . . .”
There was a beat of parental silence before Felix spoke again.
“I love you, son. You know that, right?”
“But I’m still paying for the ticket, right?”
“Oh, every last cent.”
Norris smiled.
“Love you too, Dad. Thanks for, y’know, showing up.”
“That’s a given.”
Felix’s hug was different from Judith’s. Stronger, yes, but also somewhat looser; fraternal but still present. Norris really didn’t have time to analyze or gauge his parents based on forearm density.
“You’re a given, kiddo.” He nodded firmly. “Your mom and I will be on your ass no matter where you go to college or what time zone you screw up in next.”
Halfway through the cab ride home, Norris decided on a stop before getting home to face the music with Judith. He’d waited too long to pull enough Band-Aids already today—and there was the distinct possibility that his mother would kill him the moment she saw him, considering she’d already discussed her exit path from Austin with her department head two days prior.
“Hey, Jim!” Norris said with an awkward wave, stepping into the restaurant and, of course, instantly catching the eye of the patriarch. He realized he had no idea how much Big Jim knew about the mess he’d made with Maddie.
“Oh, Norris!” Big Jim said, working himself down the narrow staircase from his office and sounding genuinely surprised. Pleasantly surprised even?
“What happened to Canada?”
“That’s kind of not happening anymore,” Norris started. “Wait, how do you know about this?”
“Well, ain’t that why you quit out of the blue? To go back for the treatment?”
“Treatment?”
“Yeah, is the P-word infection okay?” Big Jim said, leaning into Norris with a concerned, hushed voice. “‘Internal shaft boils.’ Isn’t the treatment only available in Quebec?”
Thank God there weren’t any radioactive puddles around Austin: Meredith would make a wonderful supervillain. Superman would be utterly screwed.
“The boils are better,” Norris confirmed through a clenched smile. “Thanks for the concern.”
Big Jim smiled back at him.
“Glad to hear it! She’s in the back,” he continued. “Don’t keep her too long, though! We’re short on the floor today.”
Norris found Maddie, folding lime-green cardboard sheets into perfect boxes, slapping a Bone Yard sticker onto each new box with the distracted dexterity of someone who had been doing this all her life. Her head was bopping along to whatever was currently playing on her headphones. Downward was a good word for her expression—and overall mood—the moment she spotted Norris at the door to the storage room.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
This was already going better than he could have expected, considering he wasn’t asphyxiating under Big Jim’s headlock.
“Meredith told your dad I quit because . . . I had an infection that needed care.”
Maddie hummed. “Who says it was Meredith?”
Norris faked a gasp that she instantly defused with ruthlessly dead eyes. She was in no mood for his shtick at the moment, it seemed.
“What do you want, Norris?”
So many things.
“I sat in a cab for forty minutes trying to figure out the best way to go about saying all this stuff, but I really can’t think of another way of saying it than just, y’know, coming out with it. Well, actually I tried texting Liam for advice on the way here, for something romantic or whatever.”
Norris took out his phone to read the evidence.
“All he had to say was, ‘Light doesn’t necessarily travel at the speed of light; the slowest recording of light speed was thirty-eight miles per hour.’ Like, what does that mean? I sincerely think the guy is high all the time. Anyway, rambling: Of course I knew it was a date. A really important date. Y’know: prom. I think that’s what was terrifying about it, maybe. This would be, could be, a real thing. And you could get bored of me just like . . . you could end up hating me. Or we could get along great. And all the options were equally scary to me. But scary in the best way, y’know? In fact, I think if we dated, it could be kind of, err, great?”
Maddie only blinked at him.
To be fair, that might have actually all been one breath.
“So would you please let me take you out on the awesome date you deserved? Because you’re a really phenomenal person and, um, I would really, really like to prove to you that I’m not a completely unredeemable asshole. Because getting to spend time with you is a really good reason to not be an unredeemable asshole.”
She looked at him for a moment, stack of key lime boxes still in hand. From what Norris could tell of her current facial expression, she might have been fighting off a smile or trying to remember the perfect monologue to eviscerate Norris that she and Meredith had no doubt rehearsed half a dozen times. It turned out to be neither.
“And also? I’m so, so sorry.”
She stepped around the counter.
“Look, Canada. Norris.” She smiled, carefully wrapping her headphone cords around her hand as to avoid any tangling of the wire. “I . . . appreciate the rantpology, but honestly? There’s an abs-to-drama ratio for boys, and you would need a sixteen-pack for me to want to deal with your nonsense.”
“I, um—”
“But thanks for the apology. I really appreciate it.” She gave him a small smile and sidestepped him, grabbing an apron off the rack and flipping it around her neck.
“Use the service exit, all right?” she added with a wink. “Cutting through the kitchens is strictly for employees.”
By the time Norris had made it back to the cab, a surcharge of twenty-five dollars had been added to his fare. Judith was waiting for him on the steps of their apartment building, phone at her ear, ranting in Creole. As soon as she clocked the cab, the phone was down in her pocket. Norris couldn’t be sure, but he was pretty sure that she actually cracked her neck—a sure sign of an impending dragging of her ungrateful son.
All movies were lies.