September 27, 2007
Who’s the Baby Daddy?
Margo didn’t call. Not even once. Barely mobile, I waited beside the phone, moving periodically to get food or a new bottle of whiskey. It’s a cordless phone, so I’m not entirely sure why I felt compelled to sit next to the base charger when I could get up and move around. Maybe it was her leaving; maybe it was the funeral. It was probably a combination of both. I just didn’t feel like doing anything. It was like being stoned, only without the light burning sensation in my chest.
I usually screen calls to avoid bill collectors, death threats, hangers-on, Vance Sloane, and other assholes I have no interest in talking to. But for the past two days, I aggressively pounced on the phone. Again, I’m not sure why, since I have caller ID and know any number she dialed would not come up as UNAVAILABLE, CROTCHBREATH LEATHER GOODS, or HECTOR’S SPITE PRODUCTIONS. I guess in the back of my mind, something made me think she’d be deceptive enough to call from a strange place in the hopes that I’d answer or listen to the VoiceMail.
One call surprised me. I got it around 4:15 yesterday afternoon.
“Margo?!” I said frantically.
“Is this Girth McDürchstein?” He had a deep, resonant voice with the slightest hint of a Mexican accent.
“Uh…yeah…” I got my OFF button finger ready, just in case.
“The same Girth McDürchstein who performed live music at the Quay Hole in Tucumcari, New Mexico, on…” He paused, obviously looking at some notes. “June 13th, 1992?”
“Prob’ly.”
“We should meet.”
“What’s this about?”
“My name’s Morty Melendez,” the gentleman said. “I’m a private investigator in Hollywood.”
“Oh?”
“I have some information that might interest you.”
“Is it about murder? Because I got cleared of—”
“Mr. McDürchstein, I assure you, this has very little to do with murder. There’s an IHOP off the lobby of the Best Western in Santa Monica. Meet me there tomorrow, noon.”
“I thought you said you lived in Hollywood—”
I heard an audible click, followed a few seconds later by dial tone.
The next day, I drove the hearse up to Santa Monica. After dealing with a bizarre parking attendant who didn’t quite speak English and wanted to charge me despite the FREE PARKING FOR IHOP AND BEST WESTERN PATRONS sign, I went down to the IHOP and told the hostess I was supposed to meet a guy named Morty Melendez. She had no idea what I meant by that and asked if I wanted a table for two. Fortunately, Morty had a booth nearby. He called my name and gestured me over to his table.
I sat across from him and nodded at the overstuffed manila envelope on his placemat/blueberry treasure maze. “What’s in that?”
“You should order something first,” Morty said. On the phone, I imagined someone looking like Jimmy Smits. This guy looked like a frightening hybrid of a young Fidel Castro and a 90-year-old gondolier. He wore a neckerchief, too-tight goldenrod silk shirt, and a tweed suit.
“Fuck you,” I said. “I just drove an hour in shitty fucking boulevard traffic. Tell me what I came here to find out.”
Morty sighed. “Fine.” He took a breath, then started. “You might not remember your night of passion, but unfortunately it was a night Isabela Rojas will never forget.”
“Why not?”
He slid the manila folder across the table. I opened it up and saw pictures of a little, beige-skinned girl at various ages. The last item in the folder? A paternity test positively identifying me as the father.
“Huh,” I said. “Wait, how’d you get my DNA?”
Morty leafed through the photos until he found a Polaroid snap of a cum-stained mechanical bull.
“Oh yeah,” I said, sighing with fond remembrance.
“She wants to meet you?”
“Who?”
“Isabela’s daughter, Renal.”
“Renal?” I wrinkled my nose.
Morty coughed. “It means something different in Spanish.”
“Why would she want to meet me?”
“You’re her father. She’s starting to take after you.”
He showed me a recent photo of a teenage girl dressed in assless leather chaps, an ultra-tight tanktop prominently featuring her just-budding breasts and erect nipples, and hair dyed black and pink and teased toward the heavens.
“My God…” I whispered.
“Now, I need to let you know your legal rights. You didn’t marry this woman. To my knowledge, you promised her nothing. You are not legally obligated to see her daughter—your daughter—and even if you do, you are not legally obligated to provide either of them with anything. That said, she’s in Los Angeles. Right now. In this hotel. Upstairs.”
“Right now?”
“We can go up there.”
“There’s a little too much going on here,” I said. “I mean, my fiancée—ex-fiancée—she just, like, died. A week ago. And now…you’re telling me I have a daughter.”
“Who takes after you.”
“Well, I mean, who wouldn’t? But there’s just a lot to process. I don’t…my wife left me. I’m one of the biggest stars in Kern County. I can’t deal with a kid.”
“She just wants to meet you. No expectations—”
“Maybe not from her. Look…I gotta go, sorry.”
He shoved the manila folder into my hand. I dropped a wad of cash on the table, muttered something about buying the girl a Wii, and scurried away from the IHOP, back to the hearse, away from Santa Monica, shit traffic, finally back in the Valley, in my apartment, and when I got there…
“Hello, Girth.”
“Margo?”
“I’m back.”
Written by Girth McDürchstein on September 27, 2007 4:28 PM
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