by Joe Clifford
Sam was with a small group of friends. As usual, she was dressed like the female version of Duckie from that old 1980s movie, argyle vest and scarf, jangle rings, black boots. I waited for her to lip sync “Try a Little Tenderness.” Except Elmer’s didn’t have anything as cool as Otis Redding on the jukebox. And Sam was way cooler than Jon Cryer.
I didn’t want to interrupt her night out with friends, and I wasn’t in the mood to be around a large group, but when Sam saw me, she peeled off from her crew to catch me before I could escape.
“Hey,” she said, taking my hand, like we’d known each other twenty summers. “How’s your friend?”
I’d forgotten I told her the truth about going to look for Jacob. Not like I was a liar. But for expediency’s sake, in such situations, I was more likely to skip over intimate details and make up a convenient excuse.
“No new news,” I said. “Jacob hasn’t come home.” I tried to locate a clock, as if knowing the exact time would provide a better update.
Sam turned back to her friends, who slouched too cool for school, a flat pitcher between them, probably talking about some lousy, boring movie no one could possibly like. They had those kinds of faces. Pretentious. One of them beckoned for her to return. I waited for her to invite me to join and was already running through the excuses to say no thank you. Even though I wanted to be near Sam, I disliked her friends, who were the type of people I’d spent my life avoiding. It wasn’t their fault. I’d endured too many superficial conversations. I knew how this played out. After a few polite questions about what I did, the collective would veer back toward familiar topics, shared backgrounds and experiences that had nothing to do with me, rehashing the night so-and-so did this or that, prompting howling laughter, way more raucous than the memory deserved; and I’d be lost in the shuffle, chuckling and wincing, eyeing the door, plotting the least awkward moment to ghost.
Instead, Sam leaned in close, breath hot on my ear. “I was about to have a cigarette,” she said. “Keep me company?”
Cigarette smoke had always made me nauseous. I still hadn’t gotten that beer, which I couldn’t take outside anyway. But I wasn’t passing up a one-on-one with Sam Holahan.
Elmer’s gaudy yellow neon splashed fluorescent on the cracked asphalt, exposing a small parking lot in urgent need of repair. Angry tufts of crab grass spat back through fissures, weeds rejected from the underworld. Chewed-up butts littered the ground in between the crumpled packs of Marlboros and single-serving vodkas from the liquor store across the street. Random, discarded garments, a tee shirt, pair of underwear, weighed down by a thousand rainstorms, dried out and affixed to the tarmac.
Sam lit up, affecting a pose I’d seen a hundred times in films, the one where the woman’s arm is cocked and wrist flung out, smoke blown in the opposite direction, a flirty smile on painted lips before she said, “I only smoke when I drink.”
I didn’t care if she was a chain-smoker. In that moment I didn’t care if she was a junkie.
“I wondered when you’d ask me out, Brandon,” she said. Which was the first real proof that last night’s almost-trip to Thee Parkside had, in fact, been a date. Then, as if catching herself—or maybe remembering there were more pressing concerns: “Tell me about your friend.”
Without hesitation, I launched into my mom and dad and that whole convoluted mess, how I’d moved in with the Balfours, watching helplessly as Jacob came unglued. I’d never been much of a talker, and I wasn’t in the habit of unloading personal problems, but as I talked about how I’d grown up, the way Sam was listening, really listening, it made me talk more, confide. The more I talked, the closer she moved, until she was touching my arm, her face full of compassion, drawing me in. Which created this conflict inside me. There I was, talking about this screwed-up history—my mother and father, Jacob, his father’s suicide—conversation I wouldn’t burden anyone with, least of all the girl I had such a massive crush on, but it was that kind of night, a soft summer night with soft summer lights, and I could smell the beer and nicotine on her breath, and it wasn’t turning me off. I was getting…not aroused. Under the circumstances, that would’ve been gauche. But I was feeling something. And she was feeling it too, evidenced by the flushness to her cheeks, the way our hands started touching, soothing, caressing.
Then the door opened and one of her friends passed along two pints, which we weren’t supposed to be drinking outside. I wasn’t one for flouting laws or breaking rules. The girl gave a winking nod, and I felt exposed, like Sam had been telling her about me before I walked in. Self-conscious, I needed that beer more than ever. I practically pounded it. And for a guy who didn’t drink, one beer that fast messed with your perception.
After that, time seemed to pass quickly. Cars arriving, people leaving, lights streaming, tracing. Then we were back inside, just the two of us, away from her friends, most of whom had bailed, at a back table, talking about life and love and dreams. Intimate. And it wasn’t just me opening up and sharing. After I concluded an abridged version of my screwed-up start (I left out the harshest and most harrowing parts), Sam was telling me details about her life, vulnerable, tender details: about her turbulent childhood; about how her father had had an affair and how she’d gone to live with her mom after the divorce and how it affected her trust in relationships.
Next thing I knew it was last call. Lingering students scattered. Sam and I didn’t move. We’d been talking for hours. I knew what I was supposed to do.
I’d never been great in these spots. Picking up girls had never been my thing, but this was my moment. All I had to do was ask if she wanted to come back to my place. That simple. I was trying to find the rights words. That was when Sam leaned over and kissed me. She kissed me. The first thing that came to mind was that old Echo and the Bunnymen song, “Lips Like Sugar.” This one summer long ago, when Jacob and I were planning to start that band, we spent a sweltering July mining old alternative music. Obscure college bands from back in the day of alternative’s infancy. Bearing Witness, The Connells, Material Issue. Music made before we knew what music was. We considered it research for the group we’d be. Old school in the modern age. Like what MGMT became. Maybe Foster the People. We thought we were doing homework, research for developing a sound. I didn’t know why I was thinking about pulling mp4s and that time to pretend, all the while kissing my dream girl.
I wasn’t drunk. I was buzzed. I’d had a couple. Maybe I was drunk. I was in that perfect state of…happy. I’d gone from this crazy, savage day, one of the worst of my life, everything out of sync, time, place, order, and here it had morphed into one of the best nights I could remember. I knew how cheesy I was being. This wasn’t a movie where the guy gives up future plans to stay behind in his lousy hometown to see if true love can work. I mean, it wasn’t Garden State. In a week, I’d be gone. Nothing could get me to stick around Cortland. Not even Sam Holahan.
I didn’t ask Sam to come home with me that night, I didn’t press as hard as a lot of guys would have, and I went home alone.
I woke to the sounds of activity bustling below, silly smile still plastered on my goofy face. The morning light glided in, birds chirping, breeze lushing. Lips like sugar…
Hopping up to make coffee, I added grounds, poured water, and switched on the maker, back against countertop, fingertips drumming with newfound rhythm. My cell was on the table. I flipped it over to see the time. There were several missed calls from a number I didn’t recognize. Normally, I wouldn’t call back an unknown number, but today was not normal.
Stepping outside to the walkway, I peered over vacant lots where ripped plastic bags rippled on stumps, pressed against chain link.
When the operator answered “Utica Police Department,” I knew the message that waited for me. I stuck around for confirmation anyway.
They’d found Jacob’s body.
CHAPTER SEVEN
When I pulled in the Balfours’ driveway, the authorities were already there. Three
squad cars and another that was unmarked, framed by the well-coifed suburban fauna that was supposed to ward off scenes like this. This was why Mrs. Balfour moved the family to the nicer part of town, away from narrow streets, alleyways, and brown brick, the sneakers draped over telephone lines—to escape the sirens, instability, and madness. Only to see tragedy prove impervious to manicured lawns and vegetable boxes.
Officers streamed in and out of the canary yellow house, their starry sleeves carting cardboard boxes, evidence retrieved, piled high and ready to be cataloged. Like this was a big-city crime scene with a mystery to solve.
Not that there weren’t questions. Where had they found Jacob’s body? How had he died? Nobody told me anything on the phone except my best friend was dead.
A cop stopped me on the front steps. Lording his diminutive stature above the iron railing, he squared his stance, inquiring about my business there. The whole affair felt over the top, the opening sequence to a bad cop show, and that’s what I was thinking about, Hollywood tropes and fabrication, the analytical approach that comes with advanced literature classes, searching out the meaning of everything—why the moors at dawn? Why are the drapes blue? Which might’ve been why I was slow in answering. The officer took my pensive response as a challenge to his authority. I didn’t make a habit of fighting with police, but this cop—Officer Rafferty—wasn’t making it easy. Danzig short with a vocabulary maxing out at about a dozen words, most of which revolved around no, he landed a long way from original. I’d met dozens of Rafferties in my life, unimaginative bullies with limited vocational possibilities. It was either this or maybe high school guidance counselor. Talking my way around a man of such stunted intelligence shouldn’t have made getting inside a problem, except this entire ordeal had me all messed up, unable to elucidate. I couldn’t formulate a coherent thought or get an articulate word out, and without either, he wouldn’t let me in, even after I managed to explain the Utica Police Department contacted me. The impasse turned into a shouting match, and the commotion brought to the door a detective who cleared up the confusion and waved me inside. Stalking the steps, I glared at Officer Rafferty, which was, admittedly, immature on my part, but I was aggravated. He didn’t notice.
Mrs. Balfour sat at the table, a pair of uniformed officers standing at attention by her side, sentinels stationed around the besieged queen. The whole scene was so surreal. On the walls surrounding us were the same see-through cupboards I’d grown up with, housing the same healthy cereals and whole-wheat pastas, the organic cheese crackers snuck into my lunchbox as special treats. There was the landline phone, mustard yellow, cord dangled in curly cued piggy tail, covered in dust because no one called landlines anymore except telemarketers. Same refrigerator, microwave, blender, magnets celebrating cherished family moments. The kitchen and house looked the same, but it wasn’t. Everything had changed.
No sign of Chloe. Still at school, I figured. I made my way down the hall, squeezing between the photographs of dead people. A cop stepped aside so I could tell Mrs. Balfour how sorry I was and hug her, another guest paying respects in the receiving line. Neither response felt adequate. I searched for the right words, the tools to comfort and console—I didn’t suffer an inability to express myself—but I couldn’t think of anything fast enough before I was ushered away, whisked into the adjacent dining room, where a woman detective waited.
The detective introduced herself as Rachael Lourey and asked me to take a seat. At the long dark table affixed with gleaming plates no one ever ate off of, glasses from which no one drank, I could see Mrs. Balfour sitting in the next room, shattered.
For as long as I’d lived with the Balfours, the dining room was like this: staged. A tall grandfather cupboard loomed behind, stacked with commemorative plates, teacups, and other fancy stemware. On the walls, the whimsical signage and folksy artwork, old timey sayings about the meaning of community and villages, hand-stitched doilies about the human heart, blond-haired, blue-eyed Jesus keeping watch. Given the circumstances, these details broached absurd. The Balfours were far from rich, but Mrs. Balfour had done her best to decorate the home with elegance. Not coming from money or aristocracy, she lacked the blue blood birthright and intrinsic taste that comes with it. Her attempts at interior decoration felt hokey, cheesy, canned. The sincerity was genuine, and intentions mattered. Sitting there, however, among the framed pictures and crocheted affirmations, embroidered witticisms about what it means to have a home and be a family, I felt like a fraud. Because I had neither. And what I’d been gifted, I’d neglected.
Detective Lourey didn’t speak, content to study me with extreme prejudice and judgment. More cops ascended the staircase to my left, up to Jacob’s room—while more descended toting armfuls—hard drive, computer, assorted boxes—which distracted me, the frenetic energy of movement. I saw peeking out the top of one of the boxes the pale blue stock of Jacob’s homemade zine, Illuminations. I had the strangest sensation, as if I were watching an overlay, a sheet of tracing paper laid atop the original, resulting in translucent obfuscation. What was the reason for such a thorough investigation?
The detective knocked on the table, calling my attention, as if I’d been the one derelict and causing the delay.
After the perfunctory expression of condolence for my loss—my loss being nothing compared to Mrs. Balfour’s—the detective started peppering me with her questions, zero to sixty like that.
“When was the last time you had contact with the victim?”
“Maybe a year?”
“A year?”
“We weren’t close.”
“I thought you were Jacob’s best friend.”
“I wouldn’t say that. Necessarily.”
“Necessarily what? You weren’t his friend?”
“No, I was. You said best friend.”
“You’re objecting to the classification you were close?”
“I’m not objecting to anything.”
“Is there a reason for the hostility?”
“I’m not being hostile.”
“You sound upset.”
“I am upset. Sorry if my answers are brusque.”
“Brusque?”
“It means—”
“I know what it means. How old are you?”
“Twenty-three. Same as Jacob. What’s that got to do with anything?”
“What can you tell me about Minnesota?”
“Its top export commodity is soybeans and corn.”
“Do you think this is funny, Mr. Cossey?”
“No. Why would I think it’s funny? My best friend is dead. There is nothing funny about this. I’m not laughing. I’m not even smiling. What kind of question is that?”
I could only throw up my hands, the conversation a whirlwind, the scenario a circus, the give-and-take of two people not on the same page, or even in the same book. Water meets oil. Pickles and sponge cake. Pete Davidson and Ariana Grande. Things that didn’t belong together. The only information the police had divulged on the telephone was they’d found Jacob’s body, information relayed at the behest of Mrs. Balfour. I was there to help. I didn’t need prompting—my first move would be to see Mrs. Balfour—although sitting there now, under intense fire, that police phone call was sounding more like a demand than a request, answering questions an on-the-record response to a formal inquisition.
Because of my contorting facial expressions, Lourey eyed me with increasing suspicion. Her questions had me squirming, overthinking and second guessing what I was doing with my hands. Time sped up, playing with perceptions as the exchange circled around again to more questions I couldn’t answer, which had me acting guilty, like when you walk out of a pharmacy or super-mart and the shoplifting alarm sounds, and even though you know you didn’t do anything wrong, the panic sets in, that sensation you’ve been caught. I couldn’t slow my pulse or get my heart to beat regularly, distress fueling more anguish, a snake eating its own tail. I was answering a detective’s
questions concerning a death—of course I was acting odd! That wasn’t on me. The detective’s entire approach—her formality, the severity of tone—left my mind painting pictures without all the facts, rendering a skewed portrait.
“Are you listening to me, Mr. Cossey?”
My mind circled back to the first question she’d asked when I sat down, a word she’d used.
“Wait. You said ‘victim.’”
“Excuse me?”
“When we first started talking. You referred to Jacob as the victim. Does that mean foul play was involved?”
“Who says that?”
“What?”
“‘Foul play.’ You don’t sound like a twenty-three-year-old college student.”
“I work at a convalescent home. Perhaps I’ve picked up the lingo, lexicon, World War Two vernacular—what’s that matter?”
“Are you always this confrontational?”
“I’m sorry, Detective. I don’t feel as though I am being combative. You say ‘victim,’ it implies malicious intent. Is that what happened?”
My brain ran wild through all the seedy and squirrely sections of town, which defined half of Utica, places that could devour a man like Jacob. An abandoned factory, a welfare hotel, under the bridge, face down in a river. Jacob liked to roam. I recalled the summer he made it to Plotter Kill, the nearby preserve, where a ranger found him perched on a rock, naked, cradling a tree husk, crouched like the pineapple king, barking at the moon.
“What can you tell me about Minnesota?” the detective asked again, ignoring my question.
“What’s Minnesota got to do with any of this?”
“That’s where Jacob Balfour’s body was found.”
I waited for the punchline because this had to be a joke. Plotter Kill Preserve was forty minutes away; Minnesota was a twenty-hour car ride. Jacob didn’t have a car. He didn’t have a license, far as I knew. When I lived with them, his mom picked him up and dropped him off everywhere. After I got my license, I was tasked with drop-offs and pickups to and from school. Anytime Jacob disappeared into the night, he did so on foot. The occasional hitched car ride, short bus trip. He kept a rusty old bicycle hidden in the woods. But you can’t pedal eleven hundred miles on an interstate in less than a week, and I didn’t see anyone, even a lonely trucker, picking up a headcase like Jacob and driving him across state lines, not in his current condition. Or maybe that’s exactly what happened. Jacob accepted a ride from the wrong person, a homicidal maniac… I tried shutting off my brain from taking me to such dark places.
