Final Exam

by Maggie Barbieri

  A really cool guy. Try building a marriage on that character attribute and you were doomed to fail.

  “You do know that he’s the campus pot supplier?”

  She looked at me and I could tell that she was in complete denial about that. “That’s not necessarily a fact.”

  “Amanda, there are many clues that lead me to believe that it is a fact. Wayne may be cool but he’s involved in some less than wholesome things.” I tried to impress upon her, without saying it outright, that he was not as cool a guy as she thought he was. “You’ve got a great future ahead of you, Amanda. Sticking with Wayne may not be the best idea.”

  By the set of her jaw, I could tell that she wasn’t on board with the idea of Wayne as the campus weed connection. We stayed silent, me not pushing it, and her considering what we had just talked about, I guessed. After a few minutes, she changed the subject.

  “Professor Bergeron?”

  I looked over at Amanda.

  “Would you come to my wedding?” she asked. “It’s in August.”

  “You’re going to get married?” I asked. “What about Wayne?”

  “I have to get married. I could never be with Wayne forever. My stepfather made that clear. I have to give up Wayne.” Her eyes filled with tears behind her glasses.

  I didn’t often agree with Costas and his ham-handed attempts at arranged marriage, but I was almost relieved to hear that the wedding would come off and she wouldn’t have to be stuck with slacker Wayne. I prayed that Costas knew something I didn’t and that the Amanda/Brandon match would be one eventually made in heaven.

  I leaned over and gave her a quick hug even though I wasn’t really sure she should go forward with the wedding. “I would love to.”

  “You can bring a date.”

  “Wonderful,” I said, thinking that the last wedding Crawford and I had attended had been Fred and Max’s. And we all know how that turned out. I hoped I wasn’t some kind of wedding jinx.

  I had one more thing I needed to know. “What’s your relationship with Costas like?”

  “I adore him,” she said quickly and seemingly sincerely.

  “Really?”

  “Really. He’s been very good to me and my mother. My father died when I was seven so he’s been in my life a long time. It was his idea that I go to St. Thomas and it was the right thing for me.” She sighed. “He’s a very good man,” she said in a way that made it sound like she had heard that from someone else. Her mother, maybe?

  I sank down in my seat and rested my knee against the dashboard. I noticed a car backing down the Brookwells’ driveway, its taillights twinkling in the black. It eased out onto the street, and I could see both Eben and Geraldine in the front seats, both staring straight ahead. They missed us entirely, so intent were they on looking out the windshield at the road in front of them.

  I looked at Amanda. “Showtime.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that we’re going to go over there and see if Wayne is in the house.”

  “I’ve already tried his cell phone like a thousand times, Professor Bergeron, and he’s not answering. If he was in Scarsdale, he would have let me know.”

  Like he did before? I thought. And was she really this naïve? I put my hand on her arm. “Amanda, Wayne is on the run from the police department. Everyone in law enforcement in this area is looking for him and he’s hiding. I’m guessing that the safest place for him to be right now is his parents’ house, even though I’m sure the police went through it from top to bottom.” I looked over at the house again. “Where else might he have gone?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “This is as good a start as any.”

  We waited a few minutes to make sure that the Brookwells had really left the area and then hurried across the street to the house. They had turned off most of the lights in the front of the house with the exception of the outdoor porch light, a light that was fancier and more ornate than the one in my dining room. I tried the front door, but it was locked. We went down the long driveway to the back of the house and saw that it, too, was black. Every light in the house was off. We stood on the patio, staring at the back of the house, me wondering if this was the worst idea I had ever had, and Amanda suddenly sobbing.

  “I’ll never see him again.”

  I didn’t want to disabuse her of that notion, because that would probably be a lie. She would see Wayne again, but not as a free man. I grabbed her by the shoulders and tried to talk some sense into her.

  “Those drugs were Wayne’s, Amanda. So because of Wayne, you were beat up and left in my closet. That’s not a man that you want to see again,” I said, but realizing that I wasn’t really getting through to her. She was shaking her head back and forth, not wanting to hear me. I didn’t want to raise my voice to make sure she got the point, so I continued whispering. “He’s no catch, Amanda.” I wasn’t sure she was better off with Brandon, but if the choice was between him and Wayne, I knew where my vote was going to be cast. I took her hand. “Let’s get out of here.”

  We started down the driveway, making it only a few steps when we heard someone whispering Amanda’s name behind us. I turned just as she did, and saw the shadow of a tall, thin man standing at the edge of the property by the fence that separated the house from the one behind it. I’d recognize that slack-jawed pot dealer anywhere.

  “Amanda!”

  She started off down the driveway before I could stop her, throwing herself into Wayne’s arms and kissing him. Me, I wasn’t so excited to see him.

  “Hey, Wayne!” I called. “Every cop in New York State is looking for you. What are you doing? Hiding in plain sight?”

  Wayne got closer and I could see the sallow complexion and the bags under his eyes. “Funny,” he said. He threw a thumb over his shoulder to a very elaborately decorated shed, one that looked like a miniature house. In fact, it was nicer than my house. “I live there. My parents don’t even know that I’m here.”

  I looked at the barn/shed, suitable for Snow White and her seven little people and looked at Wayne, six foot three if he was an inch, most of it made up of leg. “You live in there?” I asked incredulously. “What do you do for food? For bathroom needs?” I asked as daintily as possible. I didn’t really want to know . . . or yes, maybe I did.

  “I wait until my parents leave in the morning and then I use the house. My father still works downtown and my mother substitute-teaches most days. I go in, shower, eat, and get what I need. They have no idea.”

  I wasn’t so sure about that. I bet they did have an idea and they were keeping their mouths shut until they could come up with a better plan. Eben and Geraldine were lovely but they weren’t stupid. Anyone with half a brain could tell when someone else was eating their Cheerios.

  “Weren’t the police swarming this place?” I asked.

  “For a few hours,” he said, “but I hid.”

  “You’re a regular MacGyver, Wayne,” I said, a bit awed.

  “A what?”

  “Forget it.” Just the most famous Canadian action hero this side of Montreal. Kids today. No respect. “You’ve got to turn yourself in, Wayne.”

  He shook his head defiantly. “Not going to happen.”

  I ticked off the details that I had. “First of all, we know about the pot. We found it. The police have it. Add that to the heroin and you’re looking at some serious time. Then, you ran away from a police officer and a state trooper, so that’s some kind of crime,” I said, nonspecifically. I’d fallen behind on my Law & Order watching and couldn’t remember what violation category that fell under. Resisting arrest, perhaps? “Third, because of your nefarious activities, this girl that you profess to love”—I threw my arm around Amanda protectively—“has been beaten and left stuffed in a closet.” I paused. “I don’t know what she sees in you, Wayne. You’re a real gem.”

  Wayne stared at the two of us, his mouth agape. I thought that he knew about Amanda’s brush with the thugs already,
so maybe he was stunned at my recitation of all his crimes and misdemeanors. When he recovered from the shock, he asked softly, “Are you okay?”

  Amanda shrugged dismissively. “I’m okay.” It seemed like even though I had doled out the information that I had about Wayne in little snippets so as not to overwhelm her, Wayne was obviously losing his romantic luster for her.

  “Come with us, Wayne,” I said. “Give yourself up. It will be better for you if you do.”

  He turned and walked back toward the shed. “Not happening.”

  I went after him and grabbed his arm. “It’s happening. You can’t hang out here forever.” And then I went in for the kill. “And what if these thugs go after your parents? What then, Wayne?”

  I felt him go tense. “Don’t say that.”

  “They took your girlfriend, beat her, and stuffed her in my closet, where she could have suffocated. Suffocated, Wayne. As in died.” He slumped a bit and I could tell I was getting to him. “Why did they come after her, Wayne? Do you owe them money for the heroin?” That’s the part that I couldn’t figure out.

  “That wasn’t my heroin!” he protested again.

  I switched tack. “What about your parents? What if they come after them? Do they deserve this?”

  “This is not all my fault!” he cried. “That wasn’t my heroin. I don’t do that stuff. I don’t sell it. I’m just trying to make a living and get out of St. Thomas once and for all.” He wiped a shaky hand across his face. “How would you feel if you were me and living in a dorm with a bunch of rich kids with nothing better to do than party and get high?”

  I didn’t want to remind him that I taught those same kids and that not all of them were rich and/or constantly stoned.

  “I’m twenty-six. I should have a life by now.”

  “And why don’t you, Wayne? Why are you driving a car leased to your mother and doing a job that your aunt got for you? Why aren’t you on your own?” I turned and looked at Amanda, who looked as if she were hearing a lot of this stuff for the first time. She didn’t appear happy. What she appeared was disappointed.

  He continued walking toward the shed. “Leave me alone.”

  I let him go, watching him head back to the shed. I sneaked a look at a very depressed-looking Amanda, who was staring up into the black sky, lost in thought. It was very quiet because the thing about rich neighborhoods like this is that they usually are, cars traversing their streets only if necessary. Because of the dead quiet, the sound of the footsteps advancing on me from behind, fast and determined, sounded much louder than they should have.

  I turned and came face-to-face with Brandon.

  Yes, this plan was definitely ill-advised and about to take a turn for the worse.

  Brandon raced past me, nearly knocking me over as he cruised by. He got to Wayne in a split second, or so it seemed, and grabbed the much taller, yet thinner, man by the collar and threw him to the driveway.

  Amanda let out a bloodcurdling scream that I was sure alerted every neighbor in a half-mile radius that trouble was afoot. I was pretty sure that nobody ever screams in Scarsdale so I knew the call to the police was being made right now.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, and ran over to try to pry the two of them apart, getting tangled up in arms and legs and ending up on my ass on the driveway. I was shorter than Wayne but his excessive running left him probably only twenty pounds more than me; Brandon was stockier and a little harder to contain. Amanda was no help at all, screaming at the top of her lungs while standing to the side. “Amanda! Enough!” I called. The last thing we needed were the cops showing up and I was sure they were already on the way with the commotion on the driveway.

  I don’t know how I was able to do it—maybe the two of them realized it wasn’t really all that decorous to wrestle with a middle-aged college professor—but I managed to pull Brandon off Wayne, who jumped up and stood in front of the two of us, Brandon trying desperately to shake me off. He was strong, but I had three inches on him and held on tight, my arms laced through his; he struggled for a few seconds and then relaxed a little. “Calm down,” I said. “Now, what are you doing here?”

  “I followed the two of you here,” he said, panting. He made one more halfhearted lunge toward Wayne, but I held him back.

  I looked at Amanda. “And how did he know we were on our way to Scarsdale?” I think I already knew the answer but wanted confirmation.

  Even in the dark, I could tell that she had flushed a deep red. “I told him that we were coming here and I was going to break up with Wayne.”

  Wayne looked like he had been punched in the stomach. He bent over at the waist and tried to regain his composure.

  Brandon looked triumphant, and when I felt him relax even more in my arms, I released my grip. “See?” he said to Wayne. “She doesn’t want anything to do with you. Leave her alone.” He pointed at the middle of Wayne’s chest.

  Wayne approached Brandon and got in his face again. “I will not leave her alone. She doesn’t love you.”

  She looked at Wayne, her eyes filled with tears, her whole body slumped in sadness. “It’s true. I’m marrying Brandon. Just like I said I would.”

  That was a ringing endorsement for the union. “ ‘Just like you said you would’?” I asked incredulously. “How about ‘because I love him with every fiber of my being?’ Or ‘because he’s the love of my life’?” I asked.

  She looked at Brandon. “I’m sorry, Brandon. I never should have cheated on you.” She looked at Wayne. “I’m sorry, Wayne. I got confused.”

  “ ‘Confused’?” he asked. “Confused by what? Confused by him?” he asked, pointing at Brandon who crossed his arms, a smug look on his face. Clearly, he felt that he had won. “Why don’t you ask him about the business?” Wayne said.

  I looked over at Brandon, who looked more than a little confused. Whatever the bait was—and if indeed there was any—he didn’t take it.

  Amanda looked at Brandon. “What’s he talking about?”

  Brandon shrugged, looking genuinely puzzled. Either he was an incredibly gifted actor or he didn’t know what Wayne was talking about. “No idea.” He gave Wayne a confused look. “What are you talking about?”

  Wayne didn’t have a chance to respond because after hearing the wail of sirens in the distance, it wasn’t long before we all caught sight of two police officers, hands on their guns, sauntering down the driveway. I instinctively put my hands up. When I noticed that the trio of love-struck young adults didn’t and were looking at me like I had lost my mind, I dropped them slowly. “Good evening, Officers,” I said cheerfully. “If I were you, I’d cuff him now,” I said, throwing my head in Wayne’s direction.

  The two cops—both of the handsome, suburban variety—looked at me quizzically. The taller one asked me for more information.

  I explained further. “There’s a warrant out for his arrest. And he runs like the dickens so don’t let him get a head start.”

  Tall cop cuffed Wayne while the other got on the radio and called back to the station to check on my story. I suggested that he save some time and call Crawford, giving the cop his cell phone number. Wayne was vehemently protesting his innocence.

  “Do you want to tell her, or should I?” he said to Brandon.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Brandon said evenly.

  The cop talking to Crawford told Wayne to shut up so he could finish his conversation. I looked at Wayne, who had turned into something like a caged animal, one of the officers holding one of his arms.

  “I think you do,” Wayne said cryptically. The shorter cop, a buff, body-builder type, finished his conversation with Crawford, hung up, and read Wayne his rights. Wayne responded by bursting into tears. “It’s a mistake!”

  I decided that the best course of action would be to keep my mouth shut. I didn’t want to remind Wayne of the giant Ziploc bag of pot we’d found in his room; regardless of whether the heroin was his or not, the pot was enough to
lock him up for the time being. That, my dear Wayne, was not a mistake.

  The cops dragged him off, assuring him that he would get his one phone call as soon as they got to the station. I hoped his parents hadn’t gone too far, because their plans for the evening were going to be cut short by having to bail their youngest out of jail.

  Amanda was weeping softly next to me, taking in the whole scene. She looked at Brandon. “You should go home,” she said.

  I watched as Wayne was put in the back of the police car. He looked at the three of us beseechingly as the car drove away and I had another one of those moments where I felt sorry for him. Why did that keep happening?

  Brandon took Amanda in his arms and she started to cry loudly. I moved away from the scene, catching one last glimpse of him holding her at arm’s length and pushing her hair away from her face. He pulled a tissue from his pocket and wiped her tears.

  I continued down the driveway and crossed the street. Before I got in the car, Amanda called to me that she and Brandon were going somewhere together to talk. That seemed like a very good idea to me.

  I drove back to campus wondering why, now that we had found Wayne, I felt worse than I had before.

  Thirty-Three

  I tossed and turned most of the night, still saddened by the turn of events but relieved that Wayne was now in custody. I thought about him protesting his innocence about the heroin; he never said that the pot wasn’t his but he was adamant about the more serious drugs being in his possession. I’d have to ask Crawford about that. Was it normal to lie about something like that or did he think Wayne was telling the truth?

  I felt relief that this mess was coming to an end until it dawned on me that Merrimack and the rest of the housing office were going to have to find a brand-new resident director to replace me since Wayne was never returning. And I knew the wheels around here turned very slowly, and right now they had an RD—me—who wasn’t getting paid to do the job, something that would appeal to Etheridge and his penny-pinching minions. Surely they weren’t going to leave me here? Or were they?