Chapter Text
1:52 PM
On a Thursday
Philadelphia, PA
—
“Dude, are you okay?” Charlie asks.
Dennis lifts his eyes up from the glass he’s been carefully polishing for the last fifteen minutes. From time to time, he’s been holding it to the light to stare pointedly at Mac through it—for observational purposes.
“Yeah?”
Mac is leaning on the wall by the door, staring plaintively out the window. He’s mad. He’s so deliciously mad at Dennis. For the first time in months, Dennis can feel the tension building between them and it makes him want to kick his feet and twirl his hair like a teenage girl.
Charlie leans over the bar into Dennis’ personal space and squints at him, forcing him to lean back slightly.
“Your eyes look, uhhhh, wobbly.”
“What? Wobbly?” Dennis flutters his lashes incredulously.
“Oh yeah, I see it,” Dee agrees, approaching the bar, “you’ve got an asymmetrical thing goin’ on.”
“I’ve what?” he sets the glass on the bar and feels around in his pocket for his emergency compact. Flipping it open in one swift motion, Dennis stares at his chiseled reflection in the mirror.
“What the hell are you people talking about? I look perfectly well.” And this is a generous understatement! He used retinol last night!
“Mmm, no, no,” Charlie says, shaking his head, “you’re definitely drooping a bit.”
“Yeah, it’s like the whole right side of your face,” Dee adds. “Are you sleeping on your side?”
“Are you having a stroke?” Charlie asks at the same time.
“God damnit, no, I’m not having a stroke, and you both know I sleep supine.” He clicks his compact haughtily and slides it back into his pocket.
Charlie and Dee both nod, almost synchronously.
“Uh-huh,” Dee says slowly, “do you sleep well up there in the bell tower, or do you lay awake at night worried the Parisian citizens are going to slit your throat?”
Dennis clenches and unclenches his fists. “Dee, I will slit your throat.”
Frank blows into the bar, drenched in sweat. He’s wearing a white tennis set stained with something red—blood? This is not novel so no one is going to ask about it. Frank comes in here at least bi-weekly now drenched in blood; his own, someone else’s, most commonly a small rodent’s. “What are you all doing standing around?” he pants. “We don’t have much time!
Mac pushes off the wall and saunters over. “The hell’s he talking about?” he asks, brows furrowed. So pouty, Dennis thinks, and a twang of excitement courses through him. When they get home tonight, they’re going to have it out. He’s been waiting, poised like a cat, to jump on Mac—figuratively, of course—and say his piece.
“They’re going to be here any minute and you’re all just pissing around!” Frank yells. He removes his cap to wipe the sweat from his head. “Where are our decanters?”
“Decanters? What—” Dennis turns to Charlie. “See? I told you I thought there was lead paint chipping in your apartment. Look at him, he’s senile.”
Frank slams his hands down on the bar, “Dennis, my pickleball league is coming today, and you need to get your tits in order because we’re about to be overrun with wealthy white people in five.”
“Your pickleball league!?” Dee cries.
“Pickleball? What are you–” Dennis shouts at the same time, arms flailing.
Pickleball. It’s all coming back to him now, interwoven with other scheming from the previous week: Frank explaining that he and an old business partner, Randy, had established a league at a local country club (Paddy’s Paddlers); Charlie being particularly interested in the pickling aspect (followed by a thorough explanation from Dee that there is no pickling in pickleball); Dennis flippantly suggesting that they serve bottomless mimosas after the next game to squeeze some generational wealth out of the league of leathery ballsacks Frank will inevitably be recruiting (because Dennis is brilliant and only has good ideas); and Mac bringing up Colin, the wirey shorthair he’s been banging on and off since late July who is, like, a pickleball pro (because Mac is annoying).
“Jesus Christ, pickleball,” Dennis smacks his hand to his head. “Frank, your turnaround time on these schemes is getting untenable.”
“My turnaround time is incredibly efficient. You kids could stand to learn something from it.”
“Frank,” Charlie says, “uh, if I may interject, what brines should I be preparing for this venture?”
Frank turns to look at Charlie, his brow furrowing. “Uh, no, no brines Charlie—nothing is getting pickled.”
“Okay, uh, I’m confused then, because how else would you preserve the balls for the game?”
“They’re plastic, Charlie,” Dee says pointedly. “You’ll probably decompose before they do.”
“Then why—why is it called pickleball if no pickling happens, Dee? I don’t understand—”
“I don’t know!” Dee huffs, “I just know that there’s no brine involved, no pickling, none of that!”
Frank is rushing into the back office, fanning himself with his hat.
“Colin told me about this,” Mac interjects. Oh, brother. “It’s named after the last boat to pass the finish line in crew–it’s called a pickle boat.”
Dennis squints at him. “Mmm, you sure about that, buddy?”
“Yeah, I mean, Colin’s a really good player and I trust him.”
Oh Mac, always so trusting, so easily swayed by any man with a pulse and penis. Colin has a pulse at the very least which is more than can be said for some of Mac’s bedmates.
“You trust a man who unapologetically plays a racket sport?” Dennis says, cocking an eyebrow.
“Well yeah,” Mac replies, “there has to be a certain level of trust for you to, well—to fuck each other raw.”
There is a pang in Dennis’ stomach that he attributes to general annoyance and too much coffee.
Colin has a lot of qualities, actually, that might very well threaten the dynamic of their group. For one, he’s a veterinarian—yeah, really. He might not dig the rat situation Charlie’s been mitigating with a steel bat for the past two decades. He’s also 6’2” which—well, that’s just ridiculous. Leave it to Mac to date a freak. That makes Colin the tallest of them all, and mob mentality asserts that people will be the most prone to listen to him—it’s one of the main reasons Dennis has retained power for so long, so he just can’t have that. Finally, Colin is The Absolute Worst. He dotes on Mac with a softness that is almost volatile considering that it’s Mac, and he makes Dee laugh which is objectively the worst thing a person could do.
“I’ve actually done a little reading up on pickleball, myself, for leisure of course…”
Dennis googled pickleball on his phone the minute Mac mentioned that Colin plays it.
“...and from what I’ve learned, it seems the namesake for the game is the Pritchards’ family dog, Pickles,” he picks another glass up from the drying wrack and polishes it off coyly with his rag, “the Pritchards being the family that invented the sport.”
Mac raises his eyebrows at him, bewildered. “Well, that’s just not right, dude. Why would you name a sport after a dog?”
“Why would you name a sport after a boat?” Dennis shoots back.
Mac shrugs. “I don’t think you know what you’re talking about, bro. You’ve never even played it. Colin said it’s named after a boat, and Colin plays pickleball so he’s probably right. It’s named after a boat.”
Dennis is polishing a little faster. “Colin is a goddamn beanpole. It’s a miracle he doesn’t get mistaken for part of the net.”
Just as Mac opens his mouth to retort, Frank reemerges from the office carrying a crate full of glass decanters.
“Charlie, Dee—go downstairs and grab those fruit juices from the freezer,” he says, mustering whatever cursed old curmudgeon energy he has left to lift the crate onto the bar. “Dennis, do we still have Prosecco on tap from that Emmys scheme?”
They had been swindling a local film club into giving away a $500 gift card for Best Award Show Watch Party Pad, only for it to be bestowed upon the Sweetgreen on Fourth Street—at their watch party. Always a bridesmaid and never a bride.
Dennis shakes his head, “No, Dee definitely siphoned the last open one into her mouth before sucking off that film bro from Temple.” It had admittedly been Dennis that had sucked off the film bro from Temple, but that’s neither here nor there. Sometimes the bridesmaid fucks the groom. Life goes on. “We have to grab another from the keg room.”
“Mac, go help him,” Frank orders. He hops up onto a stool and begins to line the decanters up on the bar, still sweating like two rats fucking in a wool sock. “Everyone move your asses!”
Dennis spins on his heels at the opportunity to pester Mac alone. He’s admittedly chomping at the bit for the chance to escalate the pressure between them. It’s been so long since they’ve had a classic blowout fight, and anything he can do to agitate the situation will make it all worth his while later on when Mac is screaming at him, untethered.
--
As they push through the door to the keg room, Mac walks ahead, searching in the dark for the Prosecco keg.
“So you really like this guy, huh?” Dennis asks in a totally cool and disinterested way.
“Huh? Oh yeah, Colin is great.”
The way Mac’s mouth shapes Colin’s name irks him for a reason he can’t quite place. Mac’s mouth is generally irksome so it’s really not that deep.
“Yeah, yeah, I bet, I bet,” Dennis responds, pretending to look for the keg but not really looking at anything, actually. “Hey, did he ever get his car back from the impound lot?”
“Oh yeah, you know, it’s funny. They said his plates had been stolen?” Mac makes a rectangle with his hands to mimic a license plate. He always draws shapes with his hands when he talks, like a toddler learning to write. “They have him on a street camera driving to our place with them on, and being towed away without them. Isn’t that just bizarre as all get out?”
“Bizarre as all get out indeed,” Dennis agrees, dryly, unfocused, digging his tongue into his cheek.
When he had called the tow company to initiate the impounding of Colin’s Subaru Legacy, he admits, he had not been thinking proactively about the consequences:
Mac wrapping a large arm around Colin’s waist and saying, “Well, since you can’t go home, why don’t you just stay here tonight?”; Colin picking the movie that night, which was The Blind Side with Sandra Bullock, of all things? In 2023, no one actively decides they want to watch The Blind Side. It’s the kind of film you encounter at its halfway point when you’re flipping through cable and need background noise for your mid-afternoon existential crisis; Colin and Mac closing the bedroom door while the credits roll, leaving Dennis to stew in the flickering darkness of the living room—over having to sit through The Blind Side, of course.
“Here it is!” Mac says, pointing to a top shelf, “Can you help me get it down?”
They each take hold of a side of the keg and lift it. Their fingers graze as they set it on the ground and Mac stiffens. Here we go.
“Bro, you aren’t even touching it.”
Dennis sputters. “Come again?”
Mac furrows his brows at Dennis, looking between him and the keg, “You’re not even touching the barrel, man! You’re just lightly pressing on it with your fingers! I felt them—you barely helped me lift that thing!”
“No, I—no, what? I helped!” He certainly helped balance the keg for Mac to lift with his ape-like brute force, but were he to put any more pressure on his recent manicure, it would be game over. Ronda at Glosslab would be pissed if he came back to her with any chipping.
“You totally didn’t, man. You faked it. You’re a faker.”
“Have you ever known me to fake anything in my life?” Dennis chides, placing his hands on his hips in that bitchy way that he knows drives Mac insane.
Mac mirrors him then, hands falling onto his own hips, looking up to the ceiling with evident frustration. “Dennis, I swear to god—well, not to god but to somebody…”
Dennis laughs, shaking his head and hoping it plays off as cocksure (instead of deeply relieved that Mac is still easy to rile). “Have I angered you, Mac?”
Instead of rising to the occasion, Mac sighs, his arms dropping to his sides. “No, no, I’m not angry, I just have a lot on my mind, man.”
“Interesting,” Dennis drawls. It’s rare for Mac to have anything on his mind—or to think at all. Dennis should say this, but he’s too eager. “Anything you want to get off your chest, buddy?”
He can see Mac kneading his thumbs into his knuckles. This is light and playful! This is Dennis teasing Mac into threads of anger for the sake of the bit! He feels like he’s standing on the precipice of a most satisfying release—about to push Mac over and then grab his hand just before he falls.
After considering, Mac finally responds, “Nah man, not right now. Look, you don’t have to lift the thing with your dainty butterfly fingers, but would you just hold the door?”
Without another word, he lifts the keg onto his shoulders, giving Dennis pause to register that it’s his cue to let them out of the keg room. The way the muscles move under Mac’s skin as he holds the barrel is…repugnant. Dennis has to stifle a gag as they shift past each other in the doorway.
He can already picture those muscles contracting when Mac points his finger in Dennis’ face later that evening and gives him the business. It fills him with unrivaled nausea and pleasure. Is he a masochist? This isn’t news—why is he asking? Not right now, he replays in his head. But this evening, he knows, it is so on.
--
That afternoon, Paddy’s Pub becomes the official after-practice bottomless bar of Paddy’s Paddlers.
Elderly men and women with rough, tanned skin are brandishing mimosas and clinking glasses as they talk about…whatever it is old people talk about. Dying? Do they talk about dying? That’s all Dennis would be thinking about if he allowed himself to live long enough for his skin to sag.
A petite woman with large glasses and frizzy salt-and-pepper hair approaches the bar. “Can I get a tequila sunrise?”
“Tequila sunrise, comin’ right up,” Dennis hums, setting a glass on the bar.
Though it’s an older crowd, he supposes he can’t complain. Everyone is parched from their morning matches, and the tips are decent. It’s true that Dennis has never played pickleball, and why would he? I mean, look at him. But with this new customer base, and yeah okay, the Colin business, it might not hurt for him to expand his already robust skillset.
He doesn’t realize he’s overflowing the glass he’s pouring until he feels a touch on his shoulder.
“Jesus, where did you come from?” he says, jumping a little.
“What are you doing?” Dee is inquiring. She’s standing beside him, taking the decanter out of his hand.
“For someone with goblin feet, you’d think there’d be a sound when you tromp around” he continues, grabbing a wet rag to wipe down the bar.
“You sure you aren’t stroking out?” She’s looking at him in that way she used to when they were kids and she’d find him trying on Barbara’s heels (he looked great in them, by the way). It’s not a caring look so much as a mildly concerned one.
“I’m not stroking out,” Dennis snaps, “now what do you want?”
“Do we have any empty jars over here?”
“Empty jars, for wh…” Dennis taps the bar with his fingers in recognition, “is Charlie pickling?”
“He’s pickling,” Dee confirms, crouching down to dig around in the cupboard.
“And you’re helping him?”
“Yeah, sort of. Haven’t really found my angle yet.” She pulls a jar out in triumph.
“Your angle?” Dennis sputters, “You don’t have time for an angle. I need you up here serving drinks. You know, your job?”
Dee inhales through her teeth. “Oooo yeahhhh, would love to help you but you know how I feel about old people. Get Mac to help out!”
“You know I can’t do that, Dee,” he finishes off the tequila sunrise with an orange slice. “Here you go, ma’am. That’s $12.50.”
Dee stands up straight. “Why not?”
“Well, because, he won’t do it if I ask him. We’re clearly fighting.”
She squints at him. “Are you?”
He raises his eyebrows. My god, she can be so dense. “Yeah, I thought that was obvious.”
“No, I don’t think so. Actually, I assumed you two were getting along better.”
“Fascinating how obtuse you can be,” Dennis chuckles, “he’s very upset with me. Because I wouldn’t let him pick the music on the ride over here this morning, if you can believe it. He’s barely said a word to me all day. I mean, we’re doing a scheme about one of the most ridiculous sports of modern times, and he hasn’t told me even one joke about balls! Not even one!”
Dee smiles her sly bird smile. “Oh, I don’t think that has anything to do with you.”
“Out of twenty?” Dennis takes the petite woman’s cash and turns to the register to punch in the value, “Come on now, Dee. Don't be a simpleton. Everything has just a little bit to do with me.”
“No, this is about Colin.”
DING goes the cash register. When it opens, it hits Dennis square in his perfect hip. He straightens and flicks his eyes at her. “One more time?”
“This is about Colin, you idiot,” Dee says, “They had a date that made him nervous or something? Wasn’t really listening, but something like that.”
Dennis licks his lips. “They’re breaking up.”
“Huh? I don’t think—”
“Shhh, Dee. Shhh,” Dennis waves his hand to stifle her squawking, “they’re breaking up. And he’s taking it out on me with this whole spat about the music.”
This is delectable. Mac has been off in his wistful little world all day worrying himself into pieces about Colin. Dennis presumes it has something to do with commitment. Mac rarely ever follows through with his personal hobbies, hence the twenty unwatched martial arts DVDs taking up space on their TV stand, or the sourdough starter that’s been sitting in the back of the fridge for three years (Dennis should really throw that out). This lack of obligation has always carried over into his relationships.
Right, well, most of them. The only constant in Mac’s life is Dennis—will probably always be Dennis. There is not, has never been, room for anyone else.
Frank approaches the bar, then. “What it do, kids,” he says. Dennis makes a mental note that his shirt is still stained with blood and then deletes it because he needs to save space for plotting.
“Oh, I see you’ve met Maeve.” Frank gestures to the petite woman with the tequila sunrise. “Maeve, these are the infidels my whore wife gaslit me into believing were my children for thirty years.”
Meave laughs, evidently interpreting Frank’s ramblings as a jest. Dennis’ eyes shift to the hand she has placed on Frank’s shoulder. He doesn't have to look at Dee to know she’s clocked this, too. “You are too funny, Frank. It’s nice to meet you both.”
Dennis and Dee both nod politely. They’re doing that weird twin thing where their mannerisms sync up, and Dennis has learned not to fight it.
“Maeve is the league’s historian,” Frank says.
“That’s right,” Meave expounds, “I’ve been playing pickle for over twenty years. I can tell you anything you want to know about the sport.” She sets her empty glass down on the bar and turns to Frank, “I’m going to go find Randy, I don’t want him to overdo it with the mimosas.”
“Oh! Don’t forget your change,” Dennis says. He realizes he left the cash register open in all of his excitement and starts to count her cash back.
“Oh no, darling. You keep that,” she says. She smiles at them all, hops carefully off the barstool, and walks away. Something warm bubbles up in Dennis’ throat. A feeling! Wow! His brows thread at the sensation. The last person to call Dennis "darling" was his mother, decades ago when he and Dee were leaving for college. She also called Dee a dog-faced slut and threw a Valentino bag at her head but that’s not really what this is about. It’s about him. It’s been so long since he’s had a feeling!
“Did you see the pancakes on her?” Frank says leaning in. It’s unclear what part of her body he’s talking about. Dennis slumps. There goes the feeling. Gone but not forgotten.
“Jesus,” Dee cringes, “That’s Randy’s wife, isn’t it? That’s your angle here.”
Frank tilts backward in his chair. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You are such a scumbag, Frank,” Dennis snarls, “You’re going to, what, reel this woman in, get her wasted, sleep with her, and break up her marriage? I’d usually condone if not encourage this behavior but I don’t think we can afford to lose her as a customer if she tips like this!”
“Listen, you two keep your beaks out of my shit, alright?” Frank says, pointing a meaty finger at them, “I don’t nose around in your business.”
“Yes you do! Yes you do!” Dennis exclaims, his voice cracking.
“All the time!” Dee cries at the same time.
“There is a long game here that I wouldn’t expect you bozos to comprehend, but it will all be made clear, don’t you worry.” He reaches into the garnish center and pulls out an orange slice before Dennis can slap his hand away, “In the meantime, keep your noses down, collect those fat tips, and believe me when I say it’s all coming together!”
Dee and Dennis exchange a look and it’s like they’re nine again for just a moment, telapathizing with each other from across the dining room table about what household items they could hit Frank over the head with if it came down to it. Barbara’s good China plates had always sounded so promising.