A Proper Knowledge by Michelle Latiolais

Author:Michelle Latiolais
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bellevue Literary Press
Published: 2010-10-26T00:00:00+00:00

“Hey, I remember you,” the valet says, jokingly, taking Luke’s keys. “You’re that guy who likes to valet twice.”

“What, you don’t have a mother?” Luke asks him coolly.

“Not a problem, man,” he says, “not a problem,” but Luke doesn’t meet his eyes, nor those of the young valet closing his mother’s door—the young valet who just an hour before had been throwing punches into the air above the sidewalk.

“I’m sorry,” he says to the hostess as they enter the restaurant. “I didn’t call. I thought we’d be early enough.” But now they aren’t that early, and Luke starts to think of some other restaurants—Joe’s on Abbot Kinney—before the hostess says “Follow me” without looking at him. He doesn’t like this restaurant, but Louise does, the goofy porcelain dishes, the beaded napkin rings. It’s all a little too “gotten up” for his taste, perhaps not exactly a ladies-who-lunch place, but almost, and with a bitchy primness that doesn’t seem to bother Louise but that sets Luke’s teeth on edge.

“Why do you like this place?” he asks after the hostess has gone, leaning across the table, whispering. “It feels like housewares at Neiman Marcus.”

Louise looks at him and smiles. She picks up her napkin and shakes it out. She takes her time laying it across her lap, her bracelets chattering. Her face is calmly portentous. “Yes?” he says.

“Even Janey likes this place ...” she replies slowly.

“Yes?” he says again, now amused. He opens the menu, then turns it over to find the wine list. Not a good sign, a one-pager. What a snob he is, but still, they live in California, for God’s sake! It’s not as though this state doesn’t produce any wine.

“He is not only a wonderful bartender; he’s just fine to look at.”

Luke casts his head around, looking at the bar. “Him?” he asks, chucking his chin at the cut of beefcake holding a cocktail shaker high above his head, giving his deltoids the itty-bittiest workout. “Janey has the hots for him, or just you?” he asks. What a show Los Angeles was.

“We share ... which is rather becoming in a young woman, don’t you think?”

Luke laughs, and it seems a long time since he’s laughed, and laughed with his mother, who can be great company and who is very funny at times. He doesn’t remember hearing of Janey ever being attracted to someone, of her ever making mention of someone’s looks—sexual mention—man or woman. Is this true, he wonders, or has he just not been around for it? “How is Janey?” he asks. “I haven’t seen her in awhile.”

“She’s fine, Luke, and it’s better that she has this job. You know that.”

He hold his hands up, a show of giving in, surrender—they have made their decisions without him. Fine, whatever. “Any sign of a boyfriend?” he asks. “A girlfriend, anything?”

“No. I guess she’s still all ours that way, but I think it’s fine. I really do. Neither of us knows what Janey saw before the age of fifteen—I’m not even sure we want to know—but there are maybe some hurdles there for her to get across.

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