Page 23 of Sapphire Sunset

“He’s not some entitled spoiled brat is what I’m saying. Atleast he didn’t seem that way last night.”

“Yeah, anyone can seem like a saint when they’re rubbing upagainst your boner,” Donnie said.

“Yeah because that’s whatsaintsdo!” Logan barked.

“Do you want my advice or do you just need to vent?” Donnieasked. “Honest question. I’m fine with either.”

“Both.”

“Be decent if he texts again. But don’t play with Sapphire Cove,man. That shit with Rodney, he clearly wants you to rat on his nephew or something,and that’s all kinds of trouble. The rest of this gig is good. The otheroptions right now? Not good. Like really not good. Not with your situation.Bartending and bouncing come with zero benefits, and you won’t clear enough topay for your dad’s surgery. You’re perfect for law enforcement, but that’s anuphill climb with a lot of training before you see thekindabenefits you need right now. And I’d put you on camera in a heartbeat if youwere down, but as I always say, the money in porn’s behind the camera, not infront of it.”

“Thanks…I guess.”

“All right, Igottago. I think mytwo lovebirds are camera ready. Call me later. And don’t work out for at leastforty-eight hours.”

“I’ll be fine,” Logan said.

“I’m not worried about you. I’m worried about the otherpeople at Luther’s.”

“You’re a prick, you know that?” Logan said.

“Yeah, but I’m your prick. Actually, scratch that. I make betterchoices than your prick.”

That was debatable, but Donnie hung up before he could hearLogan’s response.

“Mom, how are you with emoji?”

Her tuna-filled fork almost to her open mouth, Connor’smother glared at him through her librarian-chic eyeglasses, a look that toldhim he’d once more marred one of their regular Sunday brunches by posing aquestion unrelated to the sentence she was in the middle of. For a few seconds,the only sounds were the water gurgling from the lion’s head fountain above theswimming pool and the puttering of a turboprop flying low over the sea ofsloping Spanish tile rooftops that made up his parents’ subdivision in LagunaNiguel.

Then she did what she always did when she was getting readyto read him—she pushed her eyeglasses up onto her forehead. Her hair was a greatmane of gray locks with dirty blond highlights. She wore a loose khaki overcoatthrown over her flowing chartreuse peasant dress. It was her usual style, acombination of brightly colored, organic-looking fabrics around her ample frametopped off with a tasteful jacket of some sort that sent a sly message that shecould afford fine clothes but preferred to dress for comfort.

“Connor, it was already abundantly clear you weren’tlistening. Do you have to make it so obvious?”

“That’s not true.” Connor set his fork down as if she’daccused him of trying to steal it. “I was absolutely listening.”

“Oh, you were? Forgive me then. What was I saying?”

“More drama with your wine friends because you always insistyour weekend gatherings have some sort of educational purpose.”

“Wine friends? Lovely. Also, that seems like a veryextreme reaction to Melissa’s accusation that a true crime discussion clubwould be wildlyoff brandfor us. Whatever that means. Honestly. How canpeople bring themselves to speak of other human beings that way? We aren’tbottles of salad dressing, for Christ’s sake. It’s so superficial andmaterialistic. I mean, really. I expected more from Melissa. She used to doAgape.”

“Crazy thought, Mom, but what if, instead of discussing abook or a movie or a painting, you all, just…” Connor spread his hands wide asif he had brought her the sun as a gift. “…relaxed?”

“Dreadful. What’s next? Mah-jongg?”

His mother, like him, was a doer. A maker. She wrote out andbound her own cookbooks by hand. She’d organized all the many volumes in theirhome library according to the Dewey Decimal System. She had files for all her variousprojects, one of which was stuffed with pages torn from magazines on whichpeople, mostly models, did things she might enjoy doing someday—a file she’dlabeledFUN.

Fun that required a great deal of forethought and planning,apparently.

She routinely flew all over the world to dig wells and planttrees in countries many of her girlfriends back in Orange County would havetrouble finding on a map. In other words, she’d been a hurricane with severaldifferent, shifting eyes ever since retiring from teaching high school aftershe married rich. Sometimes the contrast between her and her Orange Countyfriends could make her seem like Eleanor Roosevelt trying to lecture theRockettes on aging and self-esteem.

“You guys only argue when you try to assign some neweducational value to the group. Wouldn’t it be easier if you let that part goand had wine?”

“Fine,” his mother groaned. “Relax into myself it is. Ishall aspire to someday reach your level of authenticity and meditative calm.By the way, dear boy, when did you discover the writings of Siddhartha? Was itin between your twenty-three Diet Cokes a day, or when you and Naser wereattaching pictures of every shirtless man on the Internet to your Pinterestboards?”

“I think this might be the end of our Sunday lunches.”

“You say that every Sunday.” She waved her hand through theair and renewed her attack on her salad.

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