Rooke

by Callie Hart

  It really is a surreal kind of life, y’know. Weird, unexpected things happen all the time. Twenty grand continues to thump against the side of my leg as I walk across the bridge, taking my time, in no hurry, even though everyone else seems to be rushing like their lives depend on it.

  It takes me two hours to get back home. I find myself staring up at the building from the sidewalk, considering the yellowed light that’s on in the living room, shining out into the darkness. My father’s voice echoes inside my head, worn out and frayed a little, as though he can’t really decide why he’s even bothering to ask me the question he then posed. Why, Rooke? You have everything you could ever possibly need. Why would you do it? Why would you steal someone’s car? The bastard wasn’t really mad I’d been caught stealing. He was embarrassed that I’d been caught stealing cars specifically, that I’d committed such a pedestrian crime. If I’d been discovered red handed insider trading or performing some other white-collar misdemeanor, it would have been less humiliating to him.

  “Because cars are a solid,” I’d told him back then. “You can mistreat a car. You can drive it too fast. Too dangerously. You can scratch the paintwork. You can crash it into a guardrail. You can set it on fire, until it’s just a burned out, unrecognizable shell.”

  My father had paled at how uncivilized I’d turned out to be. Him in his fresh pressed, snow-white shirts and the set of seven plain, conservative ties he rotated through depending on what day of the week it was.

  I knew it even then; I was never going to please him, no matter what I did. He wanted conformity. Obedience. Respect.

  And all I wanted was something I could fucking destroy.

  SEVEN

  MOTHERFUCKER

  ROOKE

  5 Years Ago.

  Goshen Secure Center

  “You’ve lost weight.”

  I look at my mother, sitting across the other side of the table from me, and I have to literally bite back laughter. What does she think this is, the motherfucking Ritz Carlton? “I’m in juvenile detention, Sim. The food here is dog shit. The guards aren’t exactly giving out seconds either.”

  “All right. No need to be rude.”

  There’s every reason to be rude. I told her not to come. Back when they locked me away in here eighteen months ago, I told her very fucking specifically not to come and see me. She's adhered to my wishes all this time, so why the fuck has she shown up now? I know my mother is an attractive woman. I’ve had friends tell me they want to fuck her my whole life. So having her come here, where my cell mates have nothing to do all day long but try and find ways to get underneath each other’s skin, is just fucking perfect. Honestly. I know exactly what’s going to happen the moment I walk back onto the block. Someone is going to say something. Someone’s going to make some kind of suggestive comment about my mother, and I am going to murder them.

  “Where’s Dad?” I ask quietly.

  “He couldn’t get away from work, I’m afraid. This is a very busy time of year for him, Rooke. You know that.”

  Yeah. I know. I know that she wouldn’t have been able to drag him here kicking and screaming if her life depended on it. Richard Blackheath is a stubborn man. If he says he intends never to see you again, you’d better believe he’s going to be ghosting you for the rest of your natural life. I shake my head, laughing under my breath. Sim pointedly ignores me. “Your grandfather wants to visit you, though. He wants to come every other week and play chess. I told him you wouldn’t want him here, but—”

  “He can come.”

  She looks shocked. “He can come, but I’m not allowed?”

  “He won’t look at me like I’m a criminal when he occupies the chair you’re currently sitting in.”

  Sim sighs. “You are a criminal, Rooke. How am I supposed to be looking at you?”

  “I don’t know. Like I’m your son? Like I’m a human being?”

  She fiddles with the clasp on her purse. Unshakable Sim, shaken. She’s probably thinking about her own work she must get done when she gets back to her office. Either that or just counting down the seconds until she can leave. “I’ll let him know,” she says. “In the meantime, is there anything I can do for you? I can try and talk to Judge Foster. See if he can—”

  “No.” The word snaps out of me like a gunshot, violent and loud. Leaning against the wall ten feet away, Rawly, one of the nicer guards, puts his hand on his nightstick, giving me a warning look. “No. Leave me in here,” I say. “I don’t want your help. I just want to finish this, get out and start over again. That’s it. No appeals. No more lawyers. No more judges. Just no.”

  She doesn’t understand. I can see it in her eyes. “Okay. If that’s what you want…”

  “It is.”

  Nodding, she pushes her chair back from the table, clearing her throat. “I added some money to your commissary account. You should be able to get whatever you need, whenever you need it.”

  She doesn’t have access to my inmate trust account, so she can’t see that I haven’t spent a cent of the money she’s loaded onto my EZ card. There’s over two grand sitting on the damn thing right now. Impressive when you consider that you’re only allowed to deposit a hundred bucks at a time. I’d rather give the money away than benefit from it myself. I’ll go without smokes, snacks and all that other bullshit before I let her think that she’s somehow taking care of me in here.

  It’s rare that a family member leaves before the end of visitation, but I don’t try and stop Sim. I refuse to ask her to stay. She gives me an almost apologetic look, then walks from the visitation room, her heels clicking loudly as she goes. A number of guys follow her with their eyes as she passes their tables. I try not to notice. I hate the woman most days. I will resent the fact that she didn’t try and defend me when the cops came to arrest me until the day I die. But fuck. She’s my mother. It feels like having razor blades dragged down my back to have these bastards checking her out the way they are right now.

  Rawly escorts me back through a series of long, winding, narrow hallways with one hand on my shoulder. “Don’t let it faze you, kid,” he says. “Even my parents are assholes.”

  I say nothing. He slams the door closed behind him as soon as I’m safely deposited back on my block, and then it’s just me and them—thirty other teenagers who beat their high school teachers, set fire to municipal buildings, or stole cars and torched them like I did.

  For the most part no one fucks with me in here. I have a short fuse, so everyone steers clear. Everyone except Jared, that is. Jared Viorelli, eighteen, serving three years for assault. He’s as tall as me. As broad. As quick to temper. Maybe that’s why he will not quit trying to fuck with me. He feels like he has a point to prove. He sees me from the other side of the room and gets up from the game of poker he was playing, heading straight for me.

  “Don’t start, Viorelli.”

  “What?” He smiles, flashing uneven teeth. “I just wanted to congratulate you. I saw your mamma on the wa—”

  My fist connects with his face before he can even finish his sentence. I knew it was going to happen. I fucking knew it. I could have bet money that it would be Viorelli making the comments, too. My knuckles split open as I hit him again. Blood sprays across the bleach-clean tiles and Viorelli goes down, hitting the ground hard. I hear the satisfying clink and bounce of one of those uneven teeth of his as it flies out of his mouth.

  “Ahhh! Fuck you, Blackheath. You are a fucking dead man.” Viorelli turns his head and spits blood. Rawly’s back, then. He lays into me with his nightstick, striking me square between the shoulder blades, and I drop to my knees.

  “Down, down, down! Get down on the ground, Blackheath!”

  I oblige him, because laying on the ground is far more enjoyable than another blow from the hollow piece of steel he has in his hands. Jared continues to spit and swear and curse me out, but I don’t hear him. The sound of the other guards’ thundering boots as they hurry to help Rawly detain me is missing. I’m
deaf to the whoops and cries of the other inmates. In my head, all is silent. All is peaceful. Strange how violence is the only thing that will calm the raging storm inside me these days. I feel like I’m fucking drowning in blood and I don’t seem to mind one bit.

  Jared continues to scream threat after threat at me. I smile at him as I’m bodily lifted from the ground and carried away; my smile spreads even wider when I see that it’s not just any tooth I’ve knocked out of his head. It’s his two front teeth.

  That’s right, motherfucker. Prod an incarcerated guy about his mom. See what fucking happens.

  EIGHT

  INTERLOPER

  SASHA

  Two glasses of Sauvignon Blanc into book club, the doorbell rings. Alison, Kayla, Tiffanie and Kika are arguing over James’s anti-hero status—is he or is he not a redeemable character—and none of them have seemed to register the otherness of the doorbell ringing. We’re all here. We’re not expecting anyone else, and I’m shot through with a wave of anxiety. This isn’t good. People don’t just walk up the steps to my house and ring the bell. The place is too imposing and severe from the outside for sales people to ever try their luck shopping their wares, and, after many years of curt “no-thank yous” and slammed doors, the Jehovah’s Witnesses know better.

  “Did you hear that?” I ask the question incredulously, my eyes wide, hand tightening around the stem of my wine glass. Ali looks up from the battered book in her hand, arching an eyebrow at me.

  “Hear what?”

  “The doorbell. The doorbell just rang.”

  “It did?” Confusion appears on her face.

  I nod.

  “Well go and answer it then, you weirdo.”

  “Definitely not. I’m going to ignore—” The bell rings again, almost intuitively, as though whoever is standing out there on the front doorstep knows my game and doesn’t plan on letting me get away with it.

  “For god’s sake, Sasha, just go and answer the door. And grab another bottle of that Ridge & Sons white while you’re up, would you? We seem to be out over here.”

  I get to my feet, unsure about what will happen next. It’s been a really long time since I’ve interacted with people in this kind of setting. I have no idea how to be polite anymore. I’m just as likely to scream at whoever is at the door, as I am to invite them inside for a cup of coffee. My hand shake is back as I reach out for the door handle. I’d hoped that maybe this interruption to book club was a case of neighborhood kids playing knock-a-door-run, but I can see this plainly isn’t the case as I observe the dark, tall shape waiting to engage me in some way on the other side of the frosted glass.

  I open the door with my heart pin-balling around the inside of my ribcage—the most unpleasant, worrying feeling. And there, waiting grimly on the doormat, is a face I didn’t think I’d be seeing again. Rooke Blackheath? Oscar’s grandson? He looks older than he did under the stark strip lighting of the museum’s hallway. His hair is slicked back again, and he’s wearing a black button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, revealing a confusion of colorful ink on his forearms. Black jeans. Black boots. No jacket. There’s a bottle of red wine nestled in the crook of his right arm. Who the hell shows up to a house at eight thirty in the evening in November, in New York, without a jacket? What the—

  He smiles sharply, angling his head to one side, as if he’s waiting for me to say something. When I don’t, he shrugs one shoulder and sighs, looking off to the left, down the street.

  “Rooke?” I manage.

  “Yes, my name is Rooke,” he replies. “Well remembered.” He points the bottle of wine at me accusingly. “You’re Sasha.”

  “Sasha. With an A. No H.”

  “I didn’t say it with an H.”

  I snatch the bottle of wine out of his hand, stepping through the doorway and out of the house. “You did. I could hear it,” I snap.

  His face contorts, like he’s trying not to smile. “My apologies, then. Ask me inside.”

  I blink at him, utterly bewildered. “Why would I do that? I’m hosting a book club here tonight. It’s not…wait, how do you even know where I live?”

  A cloud of fog billows into the air as Rooke laughs. I’d forgotten about his loud, unashamed laugh. I can feel it in the soles of my feet. He holds up his other hand and in it is The Seven Secret Lives of James P. Albrecht. “Your address is inside,” he informs me. “On the…” He turns the book around and flips back the front page. “…Bleeding Hearts Book Club sticker that’s pasted inside. It also has your name and a best telephone number to reach you at. I thought showing up unannounced would be better than spoiling the surprise, though.”

  “Where the hell did you get that?” I try to grab the book, but I’m grasping onto his bottle of red and I’m also still holding my own glass from before, so the action is entirely impossible.

  “You threw it at me in the hallway remember? Outside my grandfather’s office?”

  “I didn’t throw it at you. I dropped it.”

  “Could have fooled me.”

  “You should have returned it if you found it.”

  “I am returning it. I’m returning it now. At book club.”

  “Sasha, who—” Footsteps thud down the hallway, and then Ali is peering over my shoulder, trying to get a look at Rooke. He seems extremely entertained by this whole situation. “Who is your friend, Sasha? Jesus, young man, you are not wearing a coat. You must be freezing. Come in before you die of pneumonia.”

  “He’s not going to die of pneumonia. He’s going to go home before—”

  Ali gasps, shoving me to one side. Her eyes are locked on the novel in Rooke’s hands, and she looks pleased as punch. “Wait a minute. Did you read this? Are you a new member of book club? Say it ain’t so.”

  Rooke grins, slapping the book into his palm. “I did read it. I hoped Sasha might let me join the group. She doesn’t seem very happy I’m here, though.”

  Ali rounds on me, her jaw almost scraping the floor. “No. No, no, no. You’re not making this poor guy go all the way home in the cold with no coat on when he’s read the book and he wants to join book club. What the fuck is the matter with you?” There’s an awful lot being said in that “What the fuck is the matter with you?” She thinks Rooke is hot. She thinks I’ve been holding out on her. She’s severely distressed that I don’t seem willing to let him inside the house, and she’s also threatening physical violence if I don’t.

  Basically, I am screwed.

  Slumping, I lean back against the doorjamb. I’m suddenly exhausted and unwilling to spend anymore time trying to figure out how this bizarre situation has come about. “All right. Fine. Come in. But this is a book club. There will be lots of questions about the book. You’re going to be in trouble if you haven’t actually read the thing.” I plan on making sure of it.

  He just smiles, nodding his head as he walks into my house like he’s been here a thousand times already. “Don’t you worry yourself,” he says over his shoulder. “I’m ready for you.”

  ******

  “The first kiss scene. What did you think of that?” Kika asks, leaning forward across the dining table toward Rooke. “Wasn’t it just so romantic?”

  I wait for Rooke to look uncomfortable. I wait for him to say something stupid. I’ve been waiting for the past thirty minutes while the girls have each taken it in turns to stump the guy, if only out of pure surprise that he is here, and he’s done nothing but eat cheese and answer all of their questions easily and without embarrassment.

  “Romantic?” he asks, chewing. “It wasn’t romantic. It was awful. They were down some dark, stinking alleyway. There were garbage bags spilling out of the dumpster, and there...oh my god. The rats!”

  “The rats!”

  Kika and Rooke say “the rats” at the same time, both of them laughing, and I want to punch a hole through the table. Who the hell is this strange alien creature who has invaded my comfort zone, and when, pray tell, is he planning on leaving? I would love to
know, but I can’t ask because all four of the other girls appear to be completely smitten.

  “How old are you?” Kayla asks. She sounds perplexed, like she can’t wrap her head around this young guy sitting at the table with us, spreading Roule onto garlic and herb crackers and drinking Pinot Noir like he’s some kind of goddamn grownup.

  “I am twenty-three years old,” he answers. “Nearly twenty-four, if you want to get technical.”

  God. I remember the days when I actually wanted to round my age up, too. Seems like forever ago. Kayla presses her hands flat against the dining table; it’s a weird thing to do, almost as if she’s trying to stop herself from reaching out to touch twenty-three-year-old Rooke. “That’s a great age,” she says, giggling. “I was dating this amazing keyboard player when I was twenty-three. He told me his band was going to be huge. He had the worst mullet ever. I believed him, though. I let him go down on me at the movies and my mother and father were sitting in the seats in front of us. It was really hot, and pretty fucked up.”

  “Kayla!” Ali looks stunned. “No way you did that.”

  “I did so. Jeffrey Saunders. My dad told me if I married him, our children would be mentally compromised and we wouldn’t be allowed to use the beach house in the Hamptons on account of Jeffrey’s Depeche Mode tattoo, so I dumped him.”

  I watch the conversation ping pong around the table, the girls firing questions at Rooke, Rooke answering confidently, as if being grilled by three women in their mid-thirties isn’t daunting to him at all. It’s certainly not how I assumed book club was going to go this evening, that’s for sure.