“He’s her step-brother from her mother’s second marriage. He’s younger than she is. He works at the supermarket, too.”
“How much younger is he?”
Gloria looked away, straightening a pillow on Andrea’s couch. “Years younger. Believe me, Andrea, Blake isn’t too old for you. He’s a really nice young man, takes the time to help all the old ladies at the market. And he’s gorgeous, too. He’s got this thick head of brown hair and a body that all the ladies talk about.”
Andrea was tempted. Here was an opportunity to prove to herself that Doug didn’t have any hold on her. “No, Ma. You know I don’t go in for blind dates.”
“But I already told him you would, Andrea. I’ll never be able to show my face at the market again if you don’t at least see him once. Come on, Andrea. What’s one dinner?”
Doug’s image popped up in front of Andrea’s eyes again. His big brown eyes were half-closed, hazy with desire, and the sheet had slipped so low on his hips it might as well not even have been there at all....
“Okay, Ma. I’ll go.” I’ll prove once and for all that Doug’s kisses aren’t the only ones that make me so desperately hungry....
* * *
DOUG WENT to school early the following Monday. He entered the gym, calling out for Rich Peterson, the junior-high basketball coach. Rich doubled as the elementary gym teacher on Mondays. Doug had met him in the lunchroom several weeks before.
“Back here.” The words came from a little office at the side of the gym. Doug headed in that direction.
“Officer Avery,” Peterson said when he spotted Doug, and he got up from behind his desk to shake his hand.
“Call me Doug.” Even after all these weeks he wasn’t used to the respect he got from the staff at the schools. He was more comfortable with people calling him “pig” and spitting at him.
“What can I do for you, Doug?” Rich asked.
“I got a favor to ask you,” he said, shoving his hands into the pockets of his uniform trousers. He felt like a fraud cashing in on the reputation of his badge.
“Sure, Doug, whatcha need?”
“I’d like you to take a look at one of my students. The kid can shoot.”
“Sure. I’ll look. Who is he?”
“Jeremy Schwartz.”
“Schwartz? Are you kidding, Doug? That kid’s nothing but trouble.”
Doug’s jaw clenched as he bit back the response on the tip of his tongue. “He’s not the nicest kid I’ve ever met,” he said instead, “but he can shoot a basketball like I shoot a gun. He’s right on every time. Maybe if we give him something to do with himself, he’ll straighten out.”
The coach studied Doug. “You’re trying to find him one of those alternatives you’re always talking about, right?”
“Could be. But what could it hurt to take a look at him? If he’s not as good as I say he is, you’ve wasted five minutes of your day.”
“Have him here at lunch. I’ll take a look.” Rich walked back around his desk and sat down. “But he’d better be good....”
Doug decided to wait until lunchtime before approaching Jeremy. He didn’t want to give the boy any time to back out on him. But when they were seated at the lunch table and Doug broached the subject, Jeremy stood up, picked up his lunch tray and walked away.
Doug followed him to the trash can and then over to the window where Jeremy dropped off his tray. “What can it hurt, Jeremy? All you have to do is shoot a couple of baskets.”
Hope flashed briefly on the boy’s face, but it was gone so quickly Doug wasn’t sure he hadn’t just imagined it. “No way, cop. When you gonna get the picture? I ain’t no charity case.”
Doug followed Jeremy to the door of the lunchroom. “No, you’re not. But you’re one helluva good shot, Jeremy. What’s wrong with giving yourself a chance?”
“A chance at what?” Jeremy asked bitterly, stopping in the entrance to the lunchroom. “Look at me, and look at them.” He nodded toward the clean-cut young boys at the table nearest the door. “I ain’t gonna get a place on that team, and you and I both know it.”
“You’re never going to get any chances if you don’t try.”
“Go away, man.”
When Doug didn’t move, Jeremy pushed open the door and left the room.
He couldn’t force Jeremy to meet with Coach Peterson. He couldn’t force Jeremy to do anything—but he couldn’t give up, either. Lord knows, he’d tried. But Jeremy just kept coming back to haunt him. Here was a chance for him to do things over, to save a young man from the hell that had been his own life for too many years.
* * *
DOUG TOOK ANDREA out for an ice-cream cone after school that afternoon. It was November, and too cold for ice cream, but he knew she had a soft spot for the creamy confection. And he needed to talk to her.
“I’d like your opinion on something,” he said as soon as they were back in his cruiser licking their cones.
“Shoot.” She looked at him over the top her cone, and Doug felt his groin clench. Even in her uniform she took his breath away.
“What?” she asked when Doug continued to watch her without saying anything.
He told her briefly about his attempts to get through to Jeremy Schwartz. “I’ve tried everything I can think of and so far nothing’s working. Got any suggestions?” He took a bite of his cone.
Andrea stopped licking. “You can’t do it, Doug.”
He stopped crunching. “What?”
“You can’t abandon an entire classroom full of students to concentrate on one boy.”
Doug rolled down the window and tossed the rest of his cone to the birds.
“I’m not abandoning the class,” he said carefully. What the hell was she talking about?
Andrea bit into her cone. “You’re running that risk if you pick out one child to befriend over the others. You’ve already done more than you should have, approaching Coach Peterson like that. What if any of the other boys found out?”
Doug was getting angrier by the minute. “I don’t get it. I show them I care about them. I give to them all day, everyday. I get them to trust me—but I can’t help the one little boy who probably needs me the most?”
“That’s just it, Doug. If you lose even five of the twenty-five kids who are learning what you’re trying to teach them, would helping Jeremy be worth it? Five kids who have a great chance, for one who probably won’t make it anyway?”
He pounded his hand on the steering wheel. “How can you say that? How can you sit there and decide a boy’s fate, like it’s nothing more than old cat litter?”
Andrea threw out the rest of her own cone. She pulled a tissue out of his glove compartment and wiped her hands.
“Do you remember that last session I did in training?” she finally asked.
“Yeah. I remember,” he said. He remembered that he’d hated every word she’d had to say. He remembered her condemnation of people like him—druggies who walked the streets, too hardened to care about the people they were hurting. And he remembered again feeling that he’d never have the right to share the life of someone as soft, as lovely as Andrea Parker.
“It’s not right or good or easy. But it’s a fact. There are some kids we’re just not qualified to help. As wrong as it might be, there are some eyes that have seen too much, some emotions that have been too trampled, some bodies that have been stripped of their hearts.”
Doug heard her. He supposed she was right, to a point. But he knew he couldn’t give up on Jeremy Schwartz. He just kept wondering where he’d have ended up if Stan Ingersoll hadn’t broken some rules to help him. He owed it to Jeremy to give the boy the same chance Stan had given him.
He’d pursue Jeremy on his own time from now on. He’d make sure none of the other kids were slighted. But one way or another, he was going to help Jeremy Schwartz.
* * *
ANDREA AGREED TO MEET Mabel’s brother, Blake, at a restaurant in Gahanna, one of Columbus’s northern suburbs. Sh
e took a lot of time with her appearance, wearing the new outfit from her mother and fluffing her short hair until it bounced. But when she approached the table where she’d been told her date was waiting, she could hardly believe her eyes.
She supposed Blake was the heartthrob her mother had claimed he was, but he would need to add at least ten years to his age before he could even begin to get her attention. The boy still had peach fuzz! And not enough savvy to know that he should have shaved it before going on a date. The whole thing was ludicrous. If this kid actually had a paying job at the supermarket, he surely wasn’t more than the bag boy. Her mother had really gone too far this time.
Andrea saw Blake turning around, slowly scanning the restaurant. She ducked behind a potted plant. As soon as he turned back to the table she hurried back the way she’d come, out into the parking lot to her car. There was no way she was going on a date with a boy barely out of his teens.
She drove until she found a pay phone. Looking up the restaurant’s number, she had Blake paged.
“Hello?” A hesitant, wobbly voice came on the line. It sounded like it belonged to a sixteen-year-old. Give me a break, she thought with a weary shake of her head. She’d never be this desperate.
“Hello, Blake. This is Andrea,” she said, impulsively disguising her voice to sound like an old woman. Gloria was going to pay for this one. It wasn’t the kid’s fault he’d been born ten years too late.
“Andrea? Where are you?” he asked.
“Well, that’s just it, Blake. I’m not going to be able to make it tonight.” Andrea’s throat hurt with the effort it was taking her to keep her voice so unnaturally shaky. “My arthritis is acting up something fierce and I don’t want to be too far away from my pills. But I could make it up to you some other time. We could go to that nice cafeteria down by the medical center for lunch....” She laughed gleefully to herself.
“No! I mean, that’s all right, Andrea, really. I’m probably going to be moving back with my mother soon, anyway. But it was real nice talking to you.”
Andrea drove home slowly, a satisfied grin on her face. She wished she could be there the next time Gloria showed her face at the supermarket.
She knew she was breaking her own rules, but she called Doug when she got home, thinking that maybe they could meet for pizza and beer. For once in her life she needed to feel like a desirable woman.
His phone rang and continued to ring. Andrea listened to the lonely peal for a full minute before she finally had to accept that he wasn’t home. She shouldn’t have expected that he would be. After all, it was Saturday night. He probably had a date.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
JEREMY’S NEIGHBORHOOD smelled like unshowered bodies and hot cooking grease. Doug leaned against the wall of an out-of-business gas station, watching the Saturday-night action. There wasn’t much to see. Most of the things that happened in that neighborhood weren’t things people did for show.
Which was fine with Doug. The less he saw that reminded him of his adolescence, the better. He wasn’t there for a trip down memory lane. He’d just as soon never take that trip again as long as he lived. He was there to find Jeremy.
And this time Jeremy would see the man, not the cop. Doug was wearing his favorite black jeans—the faded ones with the hole just below the hip pocket—a black leather jacket with the sleeves pushed halfway up his forearms and a rolled bandanna around his head. He wasn’t wearing his wristband.
He scoured the neighborhood for a couple of hours, trying to ignore the sights, the sounds, the smells. He passed a group of rough-looking teenagers who were huddled around a fire in the middle of the sidewalk. They were all gazing silently into the flames, as if fascinated by them. Doug wondered what the current code name was for LSD, and then decided it hardly mattered. No matter what they called it, the trip was the same.
He crossed the street when he saw a McDonald’s up ahead, figuring he’d get himself some dinner before continuing his inspection. It might be a long night.
He was still half a block from McDonald’s when he spotted Jeremy. The boy was crouched on the side of the building, a white garbage bag in one hand.
Doug stopped, watching Jeremy from a distance, waiting to see what the boy was doing. It didn’t take him long to figure it out. He’d known a lot of kids who’d cleaned up trash for a meal. He’d done it himself. It was part of the initiation into hell.
Jeremy filled his bag and then headed to the back door of the restaurant. He pounded on the door once, probably harder than necessary, handed in the bag of trash and then went around to the front of the building to collect his “pay.” Doug hoped the boy was wise enough to wash his hands first.
Giving him time to get his food and sit down, Doug approached the restaurant. He spotted Jeremy immediately, sitting at a table back by the rest room, stuffing his face so fast Doug had to wonder how long it had been since he had had a decent meal. Except for the days when kids on assistance ate free, Jeremy hardly ever ate at school. He always said that he didn’t like the school’s food, or that he’d forgotten his lunch. Doug should have known better than to believe that old line.
He wondered why Jeremy even attended the school he did. Ghetto kids went to ghetto schools, that was the unwritten rule that everyone around there just sort of understood. Ghetto kids knew they had to get tough early on. Jeremy must have slipped through the system—the one exception that proved the rule.
Doug ordered his dinner, adding an extra order of french fries, carried his brown plastic tray back to the table where he’d seen Jeremy and sat down. He unwrapped his burger, took the lid off his cola, salted his fries and took a bite, never once looking at the boy across from him.
“Don’t bother, cop. It ain’t gonna work.” Jeremy’s words weren’t quite as sullen as usual. Doug figured his fancy duds must be doing their job.
Minding his own business, Doug ate his burger, drank his cola and finished half of his fries. He wiped his hands on a napkin, and pushed his tray away. It was no accident that the tray moved in Jeremy’s direction.
“The first time my father sucker-punched me across the jaw I couldn’t open it for three days. I lived on french fries the whole time. They were skinny enough to fit between my lips and didn’t need much chewing.” Doug said, looking at Jeremy for the first time.
The boy didn’t look at him. He didn’t respond to his comment, either, but Doug could tell by his unnatural stillness that the boy was listening to him. It was all the encouragement he needed.
“I didn’t get it much at first, when my old lady was around. She took most of his abuse back then, and I just had to stay out of his way when he was drinking. ‘Course, listening to her take his punches was almost as bad as taking them myself.”
Jeremy looked up, fire in his eyes. Bingo. The boy was feeling.
“So you got whacked now and then, cop. Lotsa kids do. There’re worse things,” he said bitterly.
Doug didn’t look away from Jeremy. He didn’t let the boy’s words push him away. He was finally making headway. “Yeah? Like what?”
“You’d probably barf up that burger if I told you. What kinda house did you grow up in, cop? One of them fancy little numbers across from the school, all painted up nice with a yard full of green grass? I bet your ma made roast beef for dinner every Sunday and baked cookies while you were at school, too. Go back where you came from, cop—you ain’t needed here.” Jeremy slid from his seat, picking up his trash from the table.
“Sit down,” Doug said. His voice was no longer kind or the least bit gentle. He grabbed a fistful of Jeremy’s old flannel shirt and shoved the boy back into his seat.
“Let me tell you a thing or two about life, boy,” he said. He leaned forward, pinning him with the same hard glare that had cowered drug dealers in his earlier life.
“This place is paradise compared to where I grew up.” Doug pointed to the littered street outside McDonald’s. “We didn’t have a house. We had two rooms in a building that should
have been condemned. My old lady didn’t cook or bake. She didn’t even bother to hang around. More often than not my Sunday dinner was the day-olds out of somebody’s trash.
“And before you start on him, my old man wasn’t much to speak of, either. The only time he knew I was alive was when he was trying to kill me. The rest of the time he was too drunk to know his own name, let alone mine.
“You want to talk about losing your dinner, I could tell you stories that would make you never want to eat again. I got memories in my head that would’ve sent some guys to the nut farm. I was seven years old when I learned about the facts of life. My old man was doing some girl on the living-room floor when I came home from school. He saw me, but he didn’t stop. He told me I could watch. Now you still think you got something to tell me I don’t already know?” He practically spit the last words at the boy. He hadn’t expected helping Jeremy to hurt so much. He’d thought it was a deed he would do, like arresting a thief or busting a prostitution ring. He hadn’t expected to feel anything.
“How old were you when she split?” Jeremy asked. His voice was low, hesitant. He stared across at Doug with a look too knowing for his years.
“Five or thereabouts.”
“I was six when my old man left us.”
In the space of nine words, Doug Avery opened his heart completely for the first time in more than twenty years. He opened his heart and let a troubled little boy inside.
“How many of you did he leave?”
“There’s four more, younger ‘n me.”
Doug remembered one of his pals from the old days, before he’d started trading in friendship for fixes.
“With you being the oldest, I bet your old lady leans pretty heavy on you, huh?”
“When there ain’t some guy there humping her.”
“I can’t make it go away, Jeremy. But I can help. I can understand. I can listen. I can feed you now and then. I can help you find a way out, eventually. But you’re going to have to trust me—to let me be your friend.”
Doug picked up one of his leftover french fries and lifted it to his lips.
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