“Nah. She didn’t,” he said, looking crestfallen. “I was gonna wear it for Halloween.”
“Well listen,” I said. “I’ll come over a little later and help you look for it, okay?”
“Okay,” he said.
“How’s your mom doing?” I asked.
“She’s okay,” he said, turning to leave. By the way he said it, I could tell he’d been asked a little too much lately. “She said I have to go back to school soon.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said.
Alison returned an hour later, worried and distracted. By then I’d awakened Lindsey, who smiled at me and said, “Still walking off good sex, I see. How late did you stay up?”
“Late enough,” I said, plopping down beside her on the bed. She wrapped her legs around me and I pressed my face into the pocket of her collarbone. “Jack’s gone.”
“What?”
“He pulled the hinges out of the door and took off last night.”
“Shit,” she said.
“Yeah.” I found myself selfishly considering the implications that Jack’s disappearance would have on Lindsey and me. If Jack was gone, there was no longer any reason to stay at the Schollings’s lake house. We’d all go back to Manhattan, to our homes and lives, and the details and trivialities of daily existence would begin their subtle assault. I didn’t want us to be exposed to that yet. Lindsey and I had just been formed and we hadn’t had time to harden yet. We were still vulnerable. I wanted to keep us in the private protection of the mountains and the lake until we were better defined.
I was scared shitless of reality. That it might be something other than this.
With no idea of where to even begin looking for Jack, Chuck and I took the Taurus and drove into town, which felt more like doing something than sitting around waiting for Jack to maybe show up, which we left Lindsey and Alison to do. “I think I saw him,” I said to Chuck, who was peering intently over the steering wheel into the rain.
“What? Where?” he braked instantly.
“No, not now. I think I saw him last night.”
He flashed me a hard look. “You saw him leave? Why didn’t you stop him?”
“I was sleeping on the couch. I thought I was dreaming.”
Chuck frowned at me and then fiddled with the windshield wipers. “Brilliant,” he said.
“It may have been a dream,” I said weakly. “I’m not sure.”
“Whatever. I guess it’s all academic now,” he said, but I could tell that he was pissed.
Main Street was pretty much deserted because of the heavy rain, but we drove up and down the length of it anyway, peering intently at every person we saw darting between buildings or into parked cars. Every time we passed a restaurant or coffee shop, Chuck would stop and I’d run in and look around. Neither of us harbored any real hope that we would suddenly come upon Jack, sitting comfortably in a booth with a sandwich and a coffee, but like I said, we needed to do something. After we finished with Main Street, we started on Maple, checking every storefront and alley, but Jack stubbornly refused to appear.
“This is a waste of time,” Chuck complained as I climbed back into the car for the fortieth time. “He left hours ago. He could be anywhere by now.”
“You have a better idea?” I asked him, wiping my now-soaked hair out of my face.
“Anything would be better than this,” he muttered.
“At least you’re dry,” I said, wringing out my shirt.
“Yeah, whatever.”
We drove in silence for a few moments. “Okay,” I said, as Chuck executed a jerking three-point turn and headed down Maple again. “You’re Jack. You just escaped from the house. Where do you go?”
“If I knew that, I guess I wouldn’t be driving around in circles now, would I?” Chuck snapped at me.
“Excuse me, but what the fuck is your problem?”
Chuck pulled over in front of a corner luncheonette and threw the car into park. “I think I’m done with this,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Which word didn’t you understand? I mean I’m finished. I’ve had it with him, with all of this. I’m out of here.” He looked at me. “It’s gotten way out of control.”
“I don’t understand. You’re just giving up?” I asked.
“Don’t give me that shit, Ben,” he said angrily. “This is way more than any of us signed on for.” He looked away for a minute. “I mean, for how long and at what cost do we keep trying to help a junkie who doesn’t want to be helped?”
“He’s our friend, Chuck. Or maybe that doesn’t mean anything to you.”
“He’s a junkie!” he shouted. “Cut that self-righteous crap! He can have all the movie premiers and Hollywood blow jobs he wants, he’s still a goddamn junkie and as much as I want to help him, I’m not going to let him destroy my life along with his!”
“Listen,” I said, turning in my seat to face him. “Let’s not get carried away here.”
“No, you listen, Ben!” Chuck said, hitting the steering wheel in frustration. “I’m not the one getting carried away. We came up here for him, and what’s he done for us? He’s broken my nose, demolished their house and come closer to burning us to death than you might want to believe. I mean Jesus, what’s it going to take? Does one of us have to fucking die for you all to get that this isn’t working?” He stared at me, the veins in his neck throbbing, his face flushed with intensity.
“Nothing like that’s going to happen,” I said.
His eyes bulged and he hit the steering wheel again. “I don’t believe you, man.” He pushed open his door and stepped out into the rain, walking first one way, and then the other, kicking up a spray from the puddles in front of the car. I’d never seen Chuck lose it before. I stepped out of the car and approached him, sitting down on the hood of the Taurus which made my ass feel oddly warm in the cold rain.
“What’s this really about, Chuck?” I asked him, shouting to be heard above the rain, which fell in a frenzied patter on the street around us. “Why is this different for you than for me?”
Chuck turned to me, now completely soaked, his hair matted to his pink scalp, his face dripping. “Because I have something to lose!” he shouted at me. “I took a big risk, doing what I did back in the hospital.”
“We’re all taking a risk,” I said.
“Bullshit, Ben!” He spat out, his voice trembling with rage. “I could lose my residency, or worse! I could lose my license! Then what am I? What the fuck do you have to lose?” He pointed an accusing finger at me. “You hate your job, you hated your marriage. You had nothing, man. You come up here, it’s fucking summer camp for you! Your friends, your old girlfriend. You see Jack leaving, what do you care? Let him go. I mean, what the fuck do you have to lose?”
“Shut the fuck up,” I said.
He pushed the finger right up to my face. “Answer me, man. What do you have to lose?”
“Shut up!” I yelled, slapping away his hand. He swung it back in a fist and hit me across the side of the face, catching me completely off guard. I flailed out blindly as I fell, catching the collar of his jacket, which I pulled with me as I went down. He landed on top of me and began pummeling my sides furiously. Squirming on my back underneath him I punched up, hitting my elbows on the pavement each time I pulled back. He let out a bloodcurdling scream when my fingers swiped against his swollen nose and we rolled over into the glare of the Taurus’s low beams, wrestling and swinging wildly.
The gunshot was absolutely deafening, and the force of it separated us with a jolt. Standing above us under the awning of the luncheonette was a tall, hulking man in denim overalls, with a woolly, slightly graying beard and a pump-action shotgun which was now aimed directly at us. He had tattoos up and down his meaty arms and a bandanna wrapped tightly over his skull. He looked like a Hell’s Angels version of Paul Bunyan. “Just what in the hell do you think you’re doing, fighting in front of my place?” he asked. Sitting on our butts on the we
t pavement, we just sat there staring at the man and his shotgun. My ears were still ringing from the gunshot. “You going to answer me?”
I looked at Chuck, and then raised my hands over my head and began to get up, which isn’t as easy as it sounds. I made it onto one knee before falling back, my ass hitting the pavement with a wet plop. “I didn’t tell you to get up,” the man said. He made no move to lower the shotgun, which I found very disconcerting.
“Sir,” I said. “I’m sorry for the disturbance. We just had a minor altercation.” He turned to look at me, which also meant pointing the gun directly at me. Although it seemed highly unlikely that he was going to shoot me, I’d never faced the business end of a shotgun before, and I felt a cold stirring deep in my bowels. I looked around helplessly, but the street was completely devoid of pedestrians. Only a complete jackass would be out in this rain.
“You had a minor altercation,” he repeated, mimicking me. “I don’t know where in the hell you’re from, but it ain’t here.”
“No, we’re not.”
“Where then?”
“Can you put that gun down?” I asked him.
“I don’t have a gun,” he said condescendingly. “What I have is a 12-gauge, twenty-four-inch Winchester and one hell of an easy target.”
“Well, do you think you could point it somewhere else?”
“You didn’t answer me,” he said, pumping the shotgun, which made a dangerous clicking sound.
“New York,” I said. “Manhattan.”
“Big mistake,” Chuck muttered under his breath.
“You say something?” the man said, pointing the shotgun at Chuck.
“No sir.”
Paul Bunyan looked at us thoughtfully as we began to shiver in the rain. “You city boys thinks its okay to come up here to the sticks and carry on like that in a place of business?”
“No sir,” Chuck said. “We’re very sorry. Truly. And if you’d just let us get up, we’ll get out of here and you’ll never see us again.” His teeth were starting to chatter from the frigid rain.
The man considered us thoughtfully for a moment. “I’m going to go back into my restaurant,” he said. “I think the two of you need to sit here for a while and think about what you’ve done. I can see you from my window. If either one of you gets up off that street before I tell you, I’ll come out here and put some buckshot in your pants. You got it?”
We looked at him incredulously. “You’re punishing us?” Chuck said.
“Damn straight,” said Paul Bunyan, slinging the Winchester comfortably over his shoulder. “Teach you to respect someone else’s place of business.” With that he walked back into his restaurant frowning at us from his stool behind the counter.
“I don’t believe this,” I said. “We’re being disciplined by a redneck. This is a joke.”
“You want to get up first?” Chuck asked.
“After you.”
Neither one of us moved. As humiliating as it was for the two of us to be so intimidated by one guy, its was downright emasculating to be scared into place by him when he wasn’t even standing there anymore.
“You look pretty uncomfortable. That’s why I asked,” Chuck said.
“Yeah well, you hit like a girl.”
“And you fight like an old man,” he said with a grin. “If I’d known what a shitty fighter you were, I would have kicked your ass years ago.”
Although it was still coming down hard, our ears had adjusted to the sound of the rain, relegating it to a background din the way your eyes adjust to the dark, and we could now speak without shouting. I’m sorry, Chuck,” I said softly.
“It’s all right,” he said, rubbing his nose. “Like I said, you fight like a geezer.”
“No, really. I’m sorry about not considering what you have at stake here. You’re right, I had nothing to lose.”
“Hey,” he said. “I didn’t mean all that. Really.”
“No, you were right,” I said, leaning back on my elbows, my feet stretched out in front of me, and tilting my head back to swallow some rain. “I guess I hit rock bottom right before we came up here.”
“Ah, you’re okay,” Chuck said, assuming the same position. “You were just in a funk. Happens to us all.”
“Well, anyway, I’m sorry,” I said.
“Forget it. The truth is, this whole thing was my idea in the first place. I knew what I was getting into. Mostly.”
“That’s right,” I said. “It was your idea, you bastard. I forgot about that. This whole thing is your fault. I can’t believe I apologized to you.”
We lay there on the street for a few minutes and I had to laugh, in spite of everything, at the absurdity of the whole situation. Chuck turned to me with a smile. “I’m sorry I hit you,” he said. “I guess after getting the shit kicked out of me twice, I needed to just hit someone.”
“If you count now, it seems to me that you got the shit kicked out of you three times.”
“Now?” he asked. “I beg to differ. I was so winning that fight.”
“You were so not, tough guy.”
“I was pounding your sorry ass.”
“Uh, no. You were getting whupped, and I know that for a fact because I was there.”
“Assface.”
“Dickhead.”
The door to the luncheonette opened and we both ducked instinctively as Paul Bunyan stepped out under the awning again, sans the Winchester. “Soup’s on,” he called.
“What?”
“Minestrone,” he said. “You want some?”
“Are you kidding?” Chuck said.
“I never kid about lunch,” said the man, before stepping back inside.
We climbed to our feet, and I could feel a river running between my toes. “What do you think?” I asked Chuck.
“Soup sounds good,” he said with a shiver. “You buying?”
I shrugged. “Let’s go.”
We walked into the Schollings’s house around noon, dripping rainwater with every step. “What the hell happened to you guys?” Lindsey asked, staring at us.
“We got you some soup,” Chuck said, handing her a paper bag.
“Thanks,” she said absently, still staring at us, not speaking the questions in her eyes.
“I take it there’s no news?” I said, pulling my sweatshirt over my head and dropping it to the kitchen floor like a twenty-pound weight.
“No,” Alison said. Her face looked positively drained, her eyes frantic.
“You guys better get into a warm shower fast,” Lindsey said, putting her hand on my chest. “You’re soaked through.”
Chuck showered in the hall bathroom and I went into the master bathroom where I discovered that Alison’s parents took their showering very seriously. The shower was its own little room within the bathroom, behind a frosted glass door, with auxiliary heads along opposite walls so that you could be hit from five spots at once. I stood in the center with my chin to my chest luxuriating in the steaming assault of the hot spray. If I’d known about that shower when we first got there, I’d have logged some substantial hours in it.
I was still standing there fifteen minutes later, letting the water pound my chest and scalp, humming an old Thompson Twins song, when I heard the bathroom door open and shut. I looked up, hopeful that Lindsey had come in to join me, but then the shower door swung in and Chuck stuck his head in and said, “Hey dude, what’s taking so long?”
“Do you mind?” I said, slamming the door against his arm.
“Don’t be so sensitive,” he said with a chuckle. “I’m sure it’s very impressive when you’re aroused.”
“Fuck you.”
“With that thing? I probably wouldn’t even notice.” He then sat down on the toilet lid, having filled his dick joke quota for the time being. “Listen,” he said. “I know I got a little out of hand out there, but still, I meant what I said.”
“Which part?”
“The part about this having gone too far. The part about
it being time to cut our losses and go home.”
“Oh,” I said. “That part.”
“Yeah. Well, anyway, I think we should all talk it out, you know? Just kind of air out all of the opinions and see where the chips fall.”
“I agree. But maybe this time without the wrestling.”
“Deal. I think we should do it right now.”
“Well, I’m a little naked right now,” I said.
“Little being the operative word,” he said with a snort, standing up and lifting the toilet seat. “I meant when you get out. You are planning on getting out of there sometime soon, aren’t you? You’ve been in there for a half hour.” I heard the jiggle of his belt buckle.
“I know you’re not going to piss in here while I’m taking a shower,” I yelled at him.
“Just be glad I don’t have to take a dump, dude.”
I stuck my head back under the main shower head and tried not to hear him as he urinated. Keeping my eyes shut as the water flowed down across my face, I leaned against the cool tiled wall, tracing the grout with my fingernail.
“So things seem to be pretty good with you and Lindsey, huh?” Chuck said.
“Uh huh.”
“That’s good. I’m happy for you, man. She’s really much better for you than Sarah was.”
“Thanks.”
“Way hotter, too.” He did a little shake dance and pulled his pants up.
“Thanks again,” I said, reluctantly turning off the shower as he flushed.
“I never really developed a rapport with Sarah. I’m not sure why,” Chuck said, vigorously scrubbing his hands in the sink. He washed his hands the way he must have been trained to scrub in for surgery, which was something I’d never noticed before.
“Sarah hated you,” I said, stepping out of the shower.
“That may have been a contributing factor,” Chuck admitted, handing me my towel. “Here you go, junior,” he said with an exaggerated look at my crotch, just as Lindsey walked into the bathroom, her eyes widening in puzzlement.
“Am I interrupting something?” she asked with an ironic smile. I could be naked in front of Chuck and I could be naked in front of Lindsey, but somehow being naked in front of both of them was more than I could handle. I quickly wrapped the towel around my waist, wondering at how every so often life could feel exactly like an episode of Three’s Company.
Plan B: A Novel Page 18
