How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship & Musical Theater

by Marc Acito

  You can almost hear the Dragnet music: Dum-de-dum-dum-duuuum!

  I can't fucking believe it. In the last eight months we've engaged in underage drinking, reckless driving, illegal drug use (on federal property), unlocking and entering, blackmail, fraud, forgery, and embezzlement, and we're getting nailed for grand theft Buddha.

  Detective Bose places a large box on a desk. “We collected evidence all last summer,” he says, then proceeds, without the slightest trace of irony, to pull out Paula's communion veil, Doug's jockstrap, Aunt Glo's flowered bathing cap, an empty bottle of Southern Comfort, a breakfast tray, and a Hawaiian lei, each one catalogued and sealed in a clear plastic bag.

  “I was wondering what happened to that bathing cap,” Aunt Glo says.

  Detective Bose continues: “We almost had an ID on the car last summer, but then the crimes tapered off and became more random throughout the fall until, of course, said Buddha disappeared entirely.” He makes it sound like the Buddha had been murdered. “So when some of our officers saw a vehicle fitting the description today, naturally we had to bring Mrs. D'Angelo in for questioning.”

  I clear my throat. “It's my fault, sir,” I say.

  Detective Bose turns and looks at me. “Did you take it, son?”

  “Well, not exactly, but I'm the one who had it and I should have brought it back and I'm really, really, really sorry.”

  “You're only sorry because you got caught,” Detective Bose says.

  “Oh, detective, have a heart,” Aunt Glo says. “It was just a stupid prank. Even Maya Angelou had a little incident with a statue of St. Francis when he was a kid . . .”

  “Ma . . .”

  Detective Bose taps his clipboard. “It's all right,” he says. “The owner of the Buddha has already told me that she won't press charges, so long as her property is returned to her.”

  All eyes turn to me.

  “You're not going to believe this . . .” I say.

  I'm right. He doesn't. I call Kathleen so she can confirm that the Buddha was indeed stolen, but her machine picks up, which must mean she's seeing cryents. Aunt Glo asks Detective Bose to give us a chance to prove our story and, with a little coercion from Father Angelo, he agrees, telling us we have four hours to come up with the Buddha.

  Angelo takes Aunt Glo home while Natie, Doug, and I pile into the Lincoln Continental Divide with Paula, who lectures us all the way to Kathleen's about our foolishness and how we violated the basic tenets of Creative Vandalism. Good thing she doesn't know about the blackmail, fraud, forgery, and embezzlement.

  The Wagon Ho is in the driveway, which must mean Kelly is home. I tell Paula, Natie, and Doug to wait in the car while I slip into the house, opening the front door as quietly as I can so the cats don't freak out. As I pad around the first floor in my socks I can hear the muted monologue of the cryent in the basement, a sad song with the volume turned down. Kelly's nowhere to be found, so I tiptoe up the stairs to see if she knows Kathleen's schedule.

  The therapeutic murmur actually seems to get louder as I ascend the stairs and for a moment I think there must be some vent I don't know about when I realize that the noise is actually coming from Kelly's bedroom. I follow the sound down the hallway to her door, which is slightly ajar. I stop to listen and hear a groan. Figuring Kelly went home sick, I open the door a crack to see if she's okay.

  She's not alone.

  Kelly sits up in bed and yanks the sheets to cover her naked torso. “Shut the door! Shut the door!” she screams.

  I do as I'm told.

  “No, you cheesehead, with you on the other side.”

  Out of the corner of my eye I see that the source of the moaning is under the sheets with her, between her legs, to be precise. But in her panic Kelly's rammed her knees together, trapping the poor guy, who makes low-voiced grunting sounds like he's being suffocated. “Get out, goddamnit, get out!” Kelly yells.

  I assume she means me and not him, so I yank hard on the antique doorknob and dislodge the door with a huge clunk. I dash out and slam the door behind me, mortified yet dying to know who the hell is trapped between Kelly's legs.

  From the inside of the room I hear Kelly say, “You stay here something something something . . .”

  A deep voice answers, “That's stupid. At this point something something . . .”

  The voice sounds familiar, but I can't quite place it.

  “Don't call me stupid,” Kelly says.

  “I'm not,” the voice answers, “it's just that something something something . . .”

  I hear Kelly's footsteps, so I fly down the stairs to get away. As I round the corner who do I see standing in the entryway but Kathleen.

  “What the hell are you kids doing,” she says, “practicing for the rodeo?”

  “KATHLEEN!” I scream like I'm Fran Nudelman. “I'M SO SORRY TO BOTHER YOU!” It's an automatic teen impulse: no matter what your friends are doing, you cover for them and ask questions later.

  “Edward are you all right? What's gotten into you?”

  “I'm . . . uh . . . uh . . .”

  An idiot, apparently. I can't think of a thing to say.

  “Uh . . .”

  Kathleen glances up the stairs behind me and says, “Do you two have any idea what's wrong with him?”

  You two? Who are you two? I whirl around and there, on the landing next to Kelly, stands the person who, just moments ago, was being suffocated between her legs.

  It's Ziba.

  Somehow I'm able to babble the tale of the Buddha to Kathleen, all the while trying to rethink my entire perception of Kelly's and Ziba's sexual orientations. “It's really simple,” I say to Kathleen. “If you could just come down to the police station and explain to them that the Buddha got stolen, everything should be fine.”

  Kathleen looks down at the floor and bites her lip.

  “What?” I say. “What is it?”

  “You're not going to believe this . . .”

  She gave it away. To one of her cryents. I can't believe my shitty luck. The gods must be punishing me for my evil ways. “I'm sorry I lied to you, sweetie,” Kathleen says, “but this woman has had such a hard life and she actually admired it one day, and, well, frankly, it really was such an eyesore . . .”

  “Where is it now?” I ask.

  “At her house in Battle Brook. Listen, I'll just call her and let her know you need to come get it. She'll understand.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “If not, that's what therapy is for,” she says and goes to hunt for the phone. I turn to Kelly and Ziba and give them a wide-eyed, openmouthed look, the Internationally Recognized Signal for “Since when are you two muff divers?”

  In a dead-on impersonation of Ziba, Kelly gives a shampoo-commercial flip to her hair, and murmurs, “Edward darling, don't look so shocked. You're not the only one around here who's bisexual.” Then laughing her machine-gun laugh, she turns and smiles at Ziba with both rows of teeth.

  Holy Lesbos, Batman!

  I'm about to get the whole story when Kathleen returns. “She's not answering,” she says, “but she should be home by the time you get there. I'll get you the address.”

  Of course we get lost, driving past row after row of bail-bond places, check-cashing stores, and taverns advertising topless dancers. The shops all have those metal gates that pull down to protect them from burglary, and every bus shelter and traffic meridian is covered with gang graffiti. Suffice it to say, none of us are too happy to be in Battle Brook so close to sundown.

  Kathleen's cryent lives on a treeless street where houses aching to be painted hover near cracked and crooked sidewalks, as if they were afraid to move too far away from the light of the streetlamps. But the house is easy to find owing to the fact that there's a Buddha on the tiny front lawn. Paula makes me and Doug go alone while she, Natie, and the happy couple wait in the car. I open the gate on the hip-height chain-link fence around the property, noting the BEWARE OF DOG sign, and go to the front door. The do
orbell doesn't seem to work, so I knock, then leap out of my skin when the dog to beware of starts howling on the other side of the door. No one answers.

  “What time is it?” Doug asks.

  I check my ankle. “Seven-thirty.”

  “We've got to be back in Camptown in half an hour. We're going to have to take it.”

  I hesitate, wondering if perhaps this Buddha has been stolen enough, but I've got to admit he's right. I open the gate and we lift the Buddha together. Paula flounces out of the car.

  “What do you think you're doing?” she says.

  “We've got no choice. We've got to take him now.”

  She glances around. “But what if someone sees?”

  “It doesn't belong to her anyway,” Doug says. “Now, c'mon, open the trunk.”

  “I don't want anything to do with this.”

  “Fine,” I say. “I'll take full responsibility. Just give me the damn keys.”

  We load the Buddha into the trunk and I get behind the wheel to drive, with Paula sitting between me and Doug in the front so she can criticize. We've just turned onto the main drag when I see red lights flashing in my rearview mirror. Everyone starts talking at once.

  “Someone must've called the cops.”

  “I told you this would happen.”

  “Pull over, pull over.”

  “Shut up, just be cool.”

  “Isn't there some law you can't be arrested for the same crime twice?”

  I become hyper-aware of my driving, as if pulling over properly will somehow earn me extra credit with the cop. I take a long inhale through my nose and try to relax my hands and feet the way my mother showed me to when she was in her Yoga phase.

  I look in the side-view mirror and see the cop get out of the squad car. He's youngish with an unintelligent look about him, like a basset hound. I roll down my window.

  “Hello, officer,” I say, assuming an expression that I hope is interpreted as serious yet innocent.

  “Evening, sir.”

  I'm always embarrassed when people older than me call me sir.

  He shines the flashlight in the car. “Are you aware that one of your taillights is out?”

  I can feel everyone in the Lincoln Continental Divide exhale with relief.

  “Is that so?” I say, giggling a little. “Oh my, how do you like that?”

  “I'm going to have to give you a ticket for that.”

  “Of course you do,” I say. “Absolutely. Yessiree. Go right ahead.”

  “May I see your license and registration, please?”

  “Certainly,” I say. I reach into my back pocket and pull out my wallet. “Here it is,” I say, handing it through the window.

  “And the registration?”

  I turn to Paula, who gulps audibly.

  “It's in the trunk,” I say.

  “In the trunk? What's it doing in the trunk?”

  I tell him the truth. “We needed room for the almanac.” I'm aware how dumb this sounds.

  “Would you step out of the car, sir?”

  I get out. He flashes the flashlight in my face, presumably to see if I'm wasted. Even though I am sober, I try to look even more so.

  “Would you please walk slowly to the back of the car and open the trunk for me?” The cop follows me to the back of the car and stands next to me as I put the key in. I lift the lid, and the cop jumps back, drawing his gun.

  “Don't shoot, don't shoot,” I scream.

  “What the hell is that?” he yells.

  “It's a Buddha.”

  The cop takes a closer look. The Buddha smiles back at him, like he's thoroughly enjoying this latest adventure. The cop puts his hands on his hips and shakes his head.

  “Why the fuck do you have a Buddha in your trunk?” he says.

  “Uh . . .”

  From the front of the car I hear Paula shout, “We're Buddhists.”

  “Get your head back in the car,” the cop yells.

  She ducks back in.

  “That's right,” I say, “and . . . uh . . . carrying a Buddha in your trunk is . . . a sign of good luck. It's like the Buddhist version of a St. Christopher medal.”

  The cop takes the registration, and goes back to his squad car to make a report while I stand next to the car feeling conspicuous and stupid. “A 1972 Lincoln Continental blah blah blah, registration number blah blah blah, Buddha in the trunk . . . that's right, a Buddha in the trunk . . .”

  It's not long before a second squad car shows up. A pair of cops get out of that one and all three advance toward me.

  That can't be good.

  “This statue is reported stolen,” the first cop says. “I need you to place your hands on the back of the car.”

  I can't fucking believe this.

  He pats me down, then handcuffs me. That's right, handcuffs me.

  The second cop walks over to the driver's side window and points his flashlight inside. “Okay, one at a time, each of you step out of the car. You first . . .”

  You know when you're driving along the highway and you see a cop forcing people to abandon their car and you think, “Hmm, must be a drug bust”?

  Yeah, well think again.

  It's just like on TV. The cop recites our Miranda rights, then holds our heads as he puts us in the back of the squad car, the girls in one, the guys in the other. Natie nearly gets us pistol-whipped when he tries to explain, so we just keep our mouths shut as we're driven to the county jail.

  The county jail. Cue the banjo music from Deliverance.

  There we're fingerprinted, made to empty the contents of our pockets, and sent off to his and hers cells. Cells. With bars. That lock.

  I nearly shit my pants.

  Everything in the cell is made of concrete: the walls, the floors, the bench, the guy standing guard. The only other thing is a lone toilet stationed in the middle of the room. Now there's a metaphor for the state of my life if ever there was one.

  There's a guy asleep on the concrete bench. He's got a hollowed-out skull of a face and broomstick arms lined with track marks. “Alas poor Yorick, I knew him Horatio,” Natie whispers.

  “This isn't funny,” I hiss. I turn and gaze at our new roommate. Natie's right. With his bald head and paper-thin skin, he does look like the skull from Hamlet. From five feet away I can see the thick vein at his temple pulsing. Without warning, Alas Poor Yorick opens his eyes. I jump back and grab Doug for protection. But the guy doesn't seem to see anything.

  “Is he blind?” I ask.

  “Nah, I think he's sleeping with his eyes open,” Doug whispers.

  “Ca-ree-py,” Natie says under his breath.

  Alas Poor Yorick's vacant, rheumy gaze is way too Night of the Living Dead for comfort and the three of us back away as far as we can get, plunking ourselves down on the concrete bench at the other side of the cell.

  Doug buries his face in his hands. “My old man is going to kill me,” he says.

  “Not if this guy does it first,” Natie whispers.

  I can't believe it's come to this. I grew up in a house with a circular driveway, for Chrissake. How did I end up in jail with Skeletor? Finally, to our relief, Alas Poor Yorick shuts his horrible yellow eyes and rolls over, his shirt riding up to reveal bruises on his back.

  “It's always nice to get out and meet new people, isn't it?” Natie says.

  I use my one phone call to contact the Camptown Police Department but, what with getting confirmations from both Kathleen and her cryent, it takes over an hour and a half to get us released, which is sufficient time for me to envision my entire future working in the prison laundry and fending off knife attacks from scary guys in hairnets.

  The girls are standing in the parking lot next to the Lincoln Continental Divide when we get out. “Are you all okay?” I ask.

  Ziba flicks her cigarette on the ground and rubs it out with her foot. “We learned all about prostitution from these two hookers,” she says, like it's yet another tedious high-school class she
had to sit through.

  “And venereal diseases,” Kelly adds.

  “It was absolutely fascinating,” Paula says. “I hope I can remember it all for my acting.”

  Paula.

  “You guys were lucky,” Natie says. “We watched a heroin addict choke on his own vomit.” He frowns at me like it's my fault.