by J. M. Hall
After getting my coffee, I walked over to Drake and took a seat on the chair beside him. A few minutes passed, and not once did he look up from his phone. Looks like I’d have to break the ice myself.
“Drake?” I said.
His looked up from his phone, surprised but not exactly fearful. “Yeah, who are you?”
“My name’s Jesse Lockhart.” I offered my hand, but he didn’t take it. “I’m working with the Academy.”
He rolled his eyes and said, “Go fuck yourself.”
“You talk like you tweet. Relax. I work with the Academy, but I’m actually here to help you. And I’m friends with your uncle Robert.”
Yeah, I know who you are.” Drake said. “You were a student at the academy too, back in the day.”
I really shouldn’t have been so surprised that Drake had at least some idea of who I was. The Academy had always made a point to celebrate successful alumni, and to them, a public relations executive working out of Manhattan certainly fit that description. Perhaps Bobby had even mentioned me in passing once or twice -- though I’m sure he’d left some of the more prurient aspects of our relationship.
Drake slumped into his chair, turned his attention back to his phone. Surly, vulgar, indifferent to the world around him -- a typical adolescent, if there was ever a definition for one.
“Look, I know what went down with this Simone woman,” I said. “What I need to know is if you were the one who leaked the information to the press.”
Drake didn’t respond. Instead, he stood up, put on his coat and walked away. I waited a few moments, then followed him. He’d crossed the street and was walking along the New Hope-Lambertville Bridge by the time I caught up. A harsh wind whipped off the surface of the Delaware River, and the sun shone so brightly it damn near blinded us both.
“Wait up!” I said to him. “Look, just give me ten minutes.”
“I already told you to fuck off,” he said. “Was I not clear?”
I jogged ahead and cut him off in mid-step. “Hear me out.”
“And why should I?” He paused, sized me up from head to toe, utterly unimpressed with what he saw. “You’re one to talk, you know.”
I didn’t know what to make of his comment. What the hell did he know about me and my life, given that we’d just met? Whatever -- I didn’t have time to play mind games with a teenage boy. Once again, he tried to walk past me, but I wouldn’t let him go.
“Get the hell out of my way,” he said through gritted teeth. “My sex life is none of your goddamn business.”
“No offense, Drake, but don’t flatter yourself. I doubt you’re Simone’s first. Women that screw teenage boys have usually been around the block. On multiple occasions.”
Drake took a swing at me right then and there. I blocked the blow, grabbed his fist with one hand and twisted his forearm with the other. I held him in place, told him that I wasn’t going to hurt him, but that I wasn’t going to stand by and be a goddamn punching bag, either.
“I’ll let you go on three,” I added. “One…two…” I let him go, knowing that I hadn’t wounded anything but his pride. He rubbed his wrist, rocked his shoulder. He mumbled something under his breath. When I asked him to repeat himself, he told me that he was willing to talk.
“Where should we go?” I asked. “A little cold out here for a chat.”
“My parents will freak if they find out I’m talking to anyone about this shit. Let’s go to Bobby’s. He’ll be cool with it.”
The last place I wanted to find myself in was Bobby’s house, but considering the situation, I didn’t have much choice.
* * *
Bobby had traded in his cottage on the banks of the Delaware River for one of the spacious townhomes overlooking Main Street. Drake sauntered up to the front door and stepped right inside.
“He knows we’re coming,” he said. “Come on in.”
I took a breath, reminded myself that the focus of this afternoon was to speak with Drake, determine who he’d been speaking to, and whether or not we could divert the negative attention away from the Academy and onto Simone. She’d been the real villain in all of this. After all, what kind of adult has sex with a teenager?
If Drake only knew…
We found Bobby in the den upstairs. Drake, once again, collapsed atop an oversized chair and turned his attention to his iPhone. Bobby greeted me with a nod, then turned to his nephew.
“Let’s start from the beginning,” Bobby said. “And don’t leave out any details.”
“Shouldn’t you be out with your boyfriend or something?” Drake quipped. “Plenty of time on your hands these days.”
Looking at the two of them together, I couldn’t help but notice a certain physical resemblance. Same broad shoulders, the wavy blonde hair. Drake even had the beginnings of stubble across his cheeks and chin. Had Bobby been this surly when he was an adolescent as well?
“Let’s try this again,” Bobby said. “When and where did you and Simone first meet? Think you can manage that?”
“We met in art class. Then, we started seeing each other outside of school. Starbucks, the pizza place. After that… she invited me to one of her galleries.”
“She owns a gallery?” I asked.
“No, she sells her work at them,” Bobby said. “What next, Drake? You went to her show, started talking?”
“Yeah, pretty much.”
“And you were drinking that night, correct?”
I shot Bobby a look, one that told him that he was dangerously close to blaming Drake for what’d occurred that night. Simone had been the adult. She should have known better than to offer a minor wine in the first place.
“I had a glass of wine,” Drake said. “Or two. Didn’t like it, but everyone else was drinking, so I figured I’d give it a try.”
“When did the two of you first have sex?” I asked Drake. “Do you remember that? I won’t bother asking if she was your first.”
“She wasn’t!” Drake snapped, so forcefully both Bobby and I knew he’d been lying. “And it was after the gallery show that night.”
“She sure didn’t waste any time…” Bobby said.
Drake responded by throwing a pillow at his face.
“Drake, please,” I continued. “You realize what’s happened here, right? Simone committed a crime by sleeping with you. By giving you alcohol. By showing you pornography and--”
“She didn’t show me porn,” Drake said. “Get your facts straight, bro.”
I could feel the heat rising in my cheeks. Drake was right: Simone hadn’t shown him pornography -- but Bobby had certainly showed it to me. Was I projecting my own experiences onto Drake, even when Kurt told me to be careful not to?
“Right, of course,” I said. “My mistake. Drake, all I need to know is one thing: Did you at any point tell anyone about you and Simone? A friend? A blogger? Some stranger on Twitter you’ve never met in-person before?”
“For the last time, I didn’t tell anyone.”
I’d interviewed countless people connected to crises over the years, which gave me a good sense of who was lying and who was being truthful. Sadly, I still felt that Drake was lying -- and that he was doing so because he was afraid of what would happen to Simone if he confessed.
“Drake, if you did tell anyone, that doesn’t make you the bad guy,” Bobby said. “Simone is the one at fault here.”
Drake leapt off the chair, said that neither Bobby nor I understood what he and Simone had. He loved her, and he always would. Nothing would change that. And he wasn’t going to be the reason why she ended up in jail. He stormed off, leaving Bobby and I alone together.
“Well, that went well,” I said.
“You got more out of him than his parents did. It’s a start.”
“I didn’t get any closer to finding out what we need. Drake probably did tell someone about him and Simone. How could he not? It’s every boy’s fantasy to sleep with someone older.”
The corner of Bobby’s mout
h turned up in a smirk. “Is that a fact?”
“Oh, give me a fucking break.”
“Like it or not, we have a real problem on our hands. Without Drake’s cooperation, we’re not going to get anything on Simone.”
“Why hasn’t she been arrested yet?” I asked. “Pennsylvania state law stipulates that even if the age of consent is sixteen, teachers can’t have sex with students. Not until the pupil turns eighteen. It’s a felony.”
“Yes, we went over this in New York. According to the Academy, there isn’t sufficient evidence for the police to arrest Simone. And without Drake’s testimony, there’s not much we can do.”
“Great,” I said. “So what we have is a teacher placed on administrative leave pending an internal investigation. The Academy gets all the bad press, but in fact, Simone may never be arrested or charged with a crime at all.”
“That about sums it up,” Bobby said. “But it happened. I just know it.”
“That still doesn’t answer one outstanding question. Who the hell leaked this to the press? Did Drake tell a friend? Did the news spread until the police found out, at which point the press wouldn’t be far behind?”
“Lots of questions,” Bobby said. “Few answers.”
My head throbbed in frustration. Though local coverage of the so-called “love affair at New Hope Academy” had died down, the idea of David Winter running a feature story in Manhattan magazine would put this cluster-fuck on the national stage, at which point the Academy would have a real reputational problem on its hands. Sure, it would be great for Kurt. Victory & Associates would earn thousands upon thousands in crisis fees -- but the worst kind of reputational crisis is the one that lingered without any concrete resolution.
“What are you thinking?” Bobby asked.
“The next best course of action, assuming one actually exists,” I said. “Best case scenario is that Simone just agrees to leave the Academy on her own accord; Drake graduates and goes onto college; and the Academy puts protections into place to ensure this kind of thing doesn’t happen again.”
“And what are the chances of that scenario coming true?”
“Hell if I know,” I said. “You can’t really predict these things. Kurt will handle the PR needs for the Academy for now. I have some more investigating to do.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s time I spoke with Simone myself. I don’t know what this broad’s deal is, but I’m going to find out.”
Chapter 20
To date, I only had one friend left in New Hope. Most everyone in my graduating class had moved on to Philadelphia or New York, while others settled in D.C. or San Francisco. My best friend Logan, however? After traveling the world on his parents’ dime for two years after graduating from Stanford, he’d decided there was no other place he’d rather be than back home.
I arrived at the Raven a little before seven o’clock. The Happy Hour crowd was growing, a mix of men young and old, as well as the obligatory straight women who came because they wanted a night out without the risk of getting hit on. The bar itself looked like something off the set of Cheers: ornate carvings etched into thick woods, with matching bar stools and stacked bottles of liquor.
I walked up to Logan, tapped him on the shoulder. He wrapped me in a bear hug so tight I told him I might pass out if he didn’t let go.
“That’s the idea,” he teased. “Shit, how long has it been?”
“Four years, maybe? Last time we saw each other was the weekend I graduated from NYU. You always said you’d come back to New York to visit, but do you follow through?”
“I know, I know,” he said. “A lot going on down here. Real estate picking up again, I’m even thinking about opening a restaurant.”
“You? A restaurant?”
“Crazy, right?”
“You never shied away from being an entrepreneur. Then again, you’ve been fired from every job you ever had.”
“Oh, go fuck yourself! Mr. Manhattan Crisis Manager.”
We sat down at the bar; I ordered the first round. Logan had so many questions for me, ranging from how things were going in New York to what exactly brought me back to small-town Pennsylvania so close to Christmas. He knew I rarely visited either of my parents much anymore, not since they got divorced and each became so intolerable I limited my visits to a once-a-year pilgrimage in the spring.
“Well, I’m actually working, believe it or not.”
“Is that right?”
“I take it you’ve heard what’s become of the Academy these days? A little teacher-student sex scandal that’s been picked up by the local media?”
“No shit! So the Academy hired your firm up in New York to do damage control? That’s crazy! I mean, it makes sense, but still. This is insane.”
Logan had never been one to mince words, and even as his voice echoed through the bar and drew stares from the other patrons, he didn’t let up. I asked him to keep it down, that what we were discussing was of a fairly sensitive nature.
“No kidding, an art teacher banged a sixteen-year-old boy!”
I practically spit out my drink. Leave it to Logan to take what was a tense, damaging event and boil it down to its most prurient form.
“It’s a bit more complicated than that,” I said. “But yes, it seems one of the teachers at the Academy has a taste for younger men.”
“I know who she is, Jesse. Her name’s Simone.”
“Yeah, I know Philadelphia magazine ran the article.”
“No,” Logan said. “I mean, I know her personally. We’ve crossed paths a few times. She always seemed all right. She was just using teaching as a stopgap until she could earn enough money from her art to support herself.”
“Oh? And was she actually close to achieving that goal?”
“I’m not sure. I doubt she’ll have much of a future in teaching after all of this shit. At this rate, she better starting selling a lot of paintings -- and fast.”
Logan and I finished our drinks, and I offered to buy another round. He declined, saying he had an early day tomorrow, but was glad to catch up. We walked out of the Raven together, eliciting a few hollers and cat calls along the way. Seemed Logan was rather well-known in New Hope’s gay community. Perhaps they all thought I was his latest conquest.
“Easy gentlemen,” I said. “I’m not going to fuck him. The cheap bastard hasn’t even bought me dinner yet!”
We walked out the front door to a chorus of laughter and cheers. My one-liner reminded Logan that he wasn’t the only one who was capable of causing a scene, even if I preferred a bit more anonymity these days.
“The great mystery of Jesse Lockhart continues,” he said. “Just what is he up to in New York City? A day job at a PR firm, moonlighting as God knows what.”
“I have a Meth lab in the basement,” I said. “I use the profits to fund my Roth IRA. Retirement planning is a huge issue in this country.”
The hotel I was staying at was just off New Hope’s Main Street, walkable from the Raven, though Logan insisted on driving. The roads were dark and deserted, not unusual for a weeknight in rural Pennsylvania. His Audi purred like a tiger as we careened through the winding roads, with Logan taking the speed limit as a suggestion, not a law.
“Easy,” I said. “Not much use to my employer if I’m dead.”
“You are such a fucking pansy, you know that?”
“Remember the time you got pulled over and I had to sweet talk us out of getting arrested.”
“Good times,” Logan said. “Dude, what’s happened to you these past few years? You fucking disappeared. Boom! Vanished! Like you’re fucking Batman or some shit.”
“If you only knew…”
“What was that?” Logan asked.
“Nothing. Forget it.”
“No, you were totally reminiscing about something. Out with it.”
At one point, Logan was truly one of my best friends. We only grew closer after Vanessa had had the abortion, and after I’d fin
ally broken things off with Bobby. He knew about the former, but not about the latter. Funny that as one of few out kids at the Academy, Bobby never hit on Logan at all. He was attractive, gregarious, a self-starter who always seemed to march to the beat of his own drum.
“I’ve got a crazy life in New York,” I said. “I’d be up all night if I were to tell you all about it.”
Logan pulled up to the hotel, unlocked the passenger door. He put the car in park, leaned in and gave me a hug. It felt good, actually. One small moment of genuine affection, with no ulterior motives or envelopes of cash attached.
“One last question,” I asked. “Do you have any idea where I can find Simone? Where I might be able to bump into her?”
“Let’s just say Simone is into the kinkier side of things. You may find her at the Treasure Chest on West Bridge Street.”
“The sex toy place?”
He nodded. “I may have seen her there once or twice.”
“Who the hell buys sex toys in-person anymore? That’s what the internet is for.”
“Don’t shoot the messenger,” Logan said. “Just telling you what I know.”
The thought of trolling a sex shop was hardly appealing, but if it was a necessary evil to track down Simone, I would have to come up with a plan. I thanked Logan for his time, his help, and promised that we would see each other again before I went back to New York.
“You damn well better make the time,” he said. “I still want to know what’s really going on with you.”
“They’ll be time for that later,” I said. “But for the next few days, my life belongs to the Academy. They got themselves into this mess, and I’m the one who’s going to get them out of it.”
Chapter 21
Normally when I walked inside a hotel room, there was a client waiting for me. No such luck tonight. I kicked off my shoes, stripped down to my underwear, and collapsed into bed. Gazing at the ceiling, I couldn’t help but think back to the many hotels Bobby had taken me to during our time together, all in an effort to get himself laid.
Right on cue, my phone vibrated on the nightstand. With closed eyes, I reached for it and answered without even bothering to see who it was.
