by P. E. Ryan
When Adam turned around, he moved directly in front of Garth and kissed him.
For a moment, Garth thought there’d been some mistake. How was it possible that Adam wanted to do this at least as badly as he did—maybe even more so, if he was bold enough to instigate it?
The hand Adam had been using to rub his own neck circled Garth’s now and cupped the back of Garth’s head.
“…Please talk to me,” the singer breathed, “won’t you please talk to me.”
When they drew apart, Adam looked as surprised as Garth felt.
“I have to admit, I’m proud of myself,” he said through a little laugh.
“Yeah?”
“Well, I wasn’t sure if I was going to be brave enough, and I wasn’t really sure if you wanted to…”
“Are you serious? It’s all I’ve been thinking about for the last hour. The last week.”
“Well”—Adam cleared his throat and dipped his head sheepishly—“I’m just glad one of us had a little experience to contribute. It helped, I think.”
“Yeah,” Garth said, suddenly embarrassed. “Thanks for that.”
Adam blinked. “I was thanking you. I’ve never kissed anyone before.”
“Come on!”
“You mean you haven’t either?”
“Never! I thought you would have, because Lisa mentioned you’d dated someone—” Garth stopped himself. Great strategy, he thought. Bring up the ex.
“Yeah, well—no. We never actually kissed. That’s how far that got.”
Garth glanced over at the laptop and saw that the screen saver had come on: a shifting spiral of colors against a sea of black, like some new life-form that couldn’t decide what shape to take. Adam’s hand, he noticed, was no longer on the back of his head; it was on the mattress, the fingers softly drumming against the bedspread. “I really liked that song,” Garth said. He took hold of the hand, lifted it, and put it back where it had been. “Can we listen to it again?”
His mom was in bed when he got home. Mike was stretched out on the couch, watching an old black-and-white movie on television. Hutch lay beside him, sound asleep. Without moving his head, Mike lifted his arm and brought his watch up to his face. “Missed it by ten minutes.”
“Missed what?”
“Your curfew. Don’t worry—your secret’s safe with me.”
“Thanks.” Garth started across the room.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, where are you running off to?”
He glanced toward his mom’s closed door, then whispered, “Bed. I’m tired.”
“Tired, huh? So were you profitable tonight with you-know-who?”
“Profitable?” he repeated. “You’re asking me if I was profitable?”
“Yeah. You know.” Mike lowered his own voice to something that was almost a growl. “Did you make ogress-pray on your ate-day?”
Garth didn’t feel like talking about it. That surprised him, because walking home from Adam’s house, it had been all he could do not to tell strangers on the street how great his evening had been. If he’d had Hutch with him, he would have chatted the dog’s ear off with details—about how he and Adam had made out for the length of the entire album they were listening to, about how they had plans to get together again on Wednesday, after Adam’s granddad left. But suddenly he didn’t want to share the night’s events with anyone. Or, he didn’t want to share them with Mike. The date (he was confident enough now to at least think the term) felt like a very private thing. It felt personal, and to just brag about it to his uncle—the way he’d overheard guys at school brag about the girls they’d gone out with—felt…wrong. “We had a good time.”
“You watched the movie.”
“We watched the movie.”
“And?”
He was standing next to the television, his keys in his hand. “We talked.”
“And?”
Garth just looked at him and offered a shrug.
“Come on,” Mike said. “I’m not asking for a laundry list of your carnal activities. I’m just your cheering section here. Did you at least get to second base?”
“I don’t know what the bases are. I was never too good at sports.”
“All right, crankmeister. I can see you’re in a grand mood. Why don’t you sit down and watch some of this with me? It’s Double Indemnity—remember that book I was reading when I first got here? I told you they made it into a movie about a million years ago? This is it. I know Barbara Stanwyck doesn’t float your boat, but Fred MacMurray might do something for you. He tells the whole story with a knife wound in his gut, bleeding from beginning to end.”
Garth looked at the television. A baggy-faced man dressed in a trench coat and a fedora was approaching a blond woman in a grocery store aisle. “No thanks. Let Hutch out before you go to bed, will you?” he said, palming his keys.
“Fine. Abandon me. I’ll get by somehow.”
I’m sure you will, Garth thought.
13
His mom was at the table sipping coffee and staring at the newspaper when he walked into the kitchen the next morning. Without thinking, he took a mug from the dish drain and filled it. “Hi,” he said, the word stretching into a yawn.
“Since when you do you drink coffee whenever you want to? It’s not Sunday.”
“Oops. My bad.” He removed the top of the pot and dumped the coffee back in, then rinsed the mug out and poured himself some orange juice instead. “You’re working today?”
“I picked up some extra hours at the hotel. One of the women I work with, Gina, is finally starting her maternity leave, so I put in for some of her shifts. Time and a half.”
“Don’t wear yourself out,” he said, and yawned again.
“Thank you for your concern.” She turned the paper over, glanced at the back of it, and then rolled it up and tapped it against the table as if she were contemplating whacking him over the head.
“What? It’s orange juice.”
“How was your evening?” she asked pointedly.
“It was fine.”
“Lisa called here.”
He felt the muscles in his face tighten. He gulped down a mouthful of juice, dragged his hand over his lips, and said, “Did she?”
The newspaper tap-tap-tapped against the table. “I was a little surprised, of course, because I thought you were at her house.”
“I thought I was going to be there, too. I had a change of plans at the last minute.”
“I asked her,” his mom went on, “‘Isn’t Garth with you?’ She said no, and when I asked if she knew where you were, she said she didn’t have the slightest idea and that I should ask your uncle.”
Thanks, Lisa. “She’s jealous of Mike,” he said a little too loudly. “Isn’t that dumb? She’s my friend; he’s my uncle. Why should she be jealous of him?”
“Where were you?”
“With a—a different friend. Maybe that’s why she was jealous. Jealousy eats some people up, have you ever noticed that? It’s pathetic.”
“Garth.”
“Yeah?”
“I want to know who you were with, and why you lied to me.”
His mind raced. For a fleeting second, he considered telling her. Adam could just be a friend, right? A guy he met at school, someone he hadn’t mentioned before, but still just a friend. They’d sat around and watched a movie. Was that a crime?
“Billy Strickland,” he blurted out.
“Billy Strickland?”
“Yeah. I was at Billy’s.”
She didn’t look convinced. “I can’t remember the last time you even mentioned him. How is Billy?”
“Same old.” The only guy in school who was proud of being able to belch the entire alphabet. Garth couldn’t stand him. Why, out of all the names that were floating around in his head, had he come up with Billy Strickland?
Because Billy was the last friend his mom would have suspected him of having a crush on, that was why. Not that she’d ever laid eyes on Adam, but if he’d sa
id Adam’s name, she would have asked about him, and Garth didn’t want that topic hanging between them like a piñata ready to be burst open.
He did the only thing he could think to do: he grabbed his mental shovel and dug himself down another foot. “I really don’t want you to run yourself down with all these extra shifts, Mom. I can always ask Mr. Peterson for more hours.”
“I’m running late,” she said. “I was waiting for you to get up so I could hear what you had to say, and now that I have, I need to get to work.”
“What do you mean? I told you where I was. I just had a change of plans, that’s all.”
“We’ll talk more tonight.” She let go of the newspaper and pushed up from the table, reaching for her purse.
“Mom—”
“I don’t have time, Garth. Especially not for lies.”
“I’m not lying! I was with Billy Strickland!”
“And I was with the King of Prussia. We’ll talk this evening when I get home.”
The “King of Prussia” had slipped into his room while they were talking. After his mom had left for work, Garth slinked to the back of the apartment—angry at both himself and her, and worried about what lay in store for him that night—only to find a swath of blue and red fabric draped over his desk chair.
Superman. Halloween, circa the sixth grade.
Mike appeared in the doorway.
“What’s this?” Garth asked.
He rested a hand on the doorjamb right over the top of Garth’s height mark. “I just want to make sure it still fits before we leave the house.”
Garth looked at the costume. He looked at his uncle. “No.”
“What do you mean? This is it, last time, I promise.”
“I’m not in the mood.”
“That’s ridiculous. I’ll bet you’re in the mood to make money, aren’t you? I’ll bet you’re in the mood to rake in some cash. Believe me, the dog gig was much more successful because of the costume.”
“I don’t know if this makes sense to you or not, but I just don’t feel like dressing up in the Superman costume I wore when I was eleven. It’s humiliating!”
“It’s a step up from Scooby-Doo. Who doesn’t love Superman? He’s faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than—” He paused, and examined Garth with what almost seemed to be respect. “You made a home run last night, didn’t you?”
“This doesn’t have anything to do with last night.” (Somehow, it did.) “I’m just saying I’m not in the mood, okay?”
“This is our swan song,” Mike pleaded. “Our last hand. Our…finest hour.”
Garth rolled his eyes.
“I saw that. Seriously, this is it. After today, we’ll retire, and before long I’ll be gone and you’ll be longing for the days when I was around and it was the Mike and Garth Show. Trust me. Would you just try the thing on so we know whether or not it still fits?”
Was he persuasive or just persistent? Garth couldn’t tell anymore. There was something so eager, so hungry about Mike; he really and truly seemed to like what they were doing—to such an extent that pulling the plug on him was nearly impossible.
The costume fit. The legs rode a little high and hugged his calves, but otherwise it was fine. Mike even tried to hard-sell him by commenting that he probably looked better in it now, with a little muscle on him, than he had when he was eleven. But Garth ignored him, pulled the costume off, and shoved it into his backpack.
Outside, Mike walked straight past the Camaro and unlocked the driver’s door of what looked to be a brand-new Firebird. It was cinnamon-colored, and spotless.
“What’s this?” Garth asked.
“Rental.”
“What do we need a different car for?”
“Because even my wheels aren’t slick enough for today’s operation. Get in.”
Garth slumped in the passenger’s seat as they rolled down the street. He was truly over this. And though he couldn’t have said exactly why, it was somehow connected to last night. To the progress he’d made with Adam. It wasn’t that scamming conflicted with Adam, but that this Garth conflicted somehow with that Garth. But Mike was the guy who’d made both those Garths possible. “I have no idea what lepra-whatever-you-call-it is supposed to be,” he said. “And I don’t feel like making up a bunch of phony details. Or pretending I have it. Just so you know.”
“Lepicarthia. Boy, for someone who had what I can only assume was a hot date last night, you sure woke up on the wrong side of the bed. The beauty of the lepicarthia idea, if I do say so myself, is that lepicarthia doesn’t matter. No one’s going to care, because their eyes are going to be on the prize. Well, the prize, and the ornament on top of the prize.”
He pulled a manila folder from in between the console and the driver’s seat. When he flipped it open in his lap, there was Jackie’s 81/2 x 11 head shot: her bright eyes and broad smile, her hair teased up into twice the volume it had had the other day. Mike turned the photo over and squinted at the information on the back. He handed it to Garth. “What’s that say?”
Garth started to read it to him, beginning with Jackie’s eye and hair color.
“Just the address. The rest I’ve got memorized.”
She lived less than ten minutes away, though her neighborhood had a far different—and rougher—feel to it than the Fan District. When they pulled up in front of the clapboard house, Mike tapped the horn.
The screen door opened and a skinny young man stepped out onto the little square of front porch. He had a narrow face and a shock of white-blond hair, and he was clutching something small and black in one hand.
“Jeez Louise,” Mike said. “Is he armed?”
“Um, no, that’s a remote. They’re legal in Richmond, as long as you have a permit.”
The door swung open again and Jackie appeared. She was dressed in a tight pair of acid-washed jean shorts and a billowy brown blouse that didn’t quite cover her stomach. A tote bag was slung over one shoulder. She practically skipped down the cement steps to the street, where the Firebird sat idling.
Watching her approach, Mike sighed under his breath, “Hel-lo, beautiful.”
Garth switched to the backseat. Jackie poked her head into the car, offered them each a cheery “Hello!” and then tried to coax Garth back into the front. “I can sit back there,” she said. “I can! Really, I don’t need much space. Come on out of there, now.”
“We want you to sit up front,” Mike said. “It’s like the head of the table, the seat of honor.”
“Wow.” She dropped into the bucket seat. “Look at me! Seat of honor!”
“What I want to know,” Mike said, “is, could you be any prettier on this gorgeous day?”
“Maybe.” She turned around and smiled at Garth. “You’re a gentleman to let me sit up here. That was megasweet.”
“Everything he knows, he learned from me,” Mike said.
“Seriously,” she told Garth, “those manners will take you far with the ladies—just make sure they’ve got enough class to appreciate them.”
Garth smiled weakly and thanked her for the advice.
Mike sank his foot down onto the gas.
She lit a cigarette, held it outside of the car, and talked incessantly: about how backstabbing the modeling business could be; about her slimy, flirtatious boss at The Single Slice; about her boyfriend, who worked as a security guard and had the day off but who didn’t want to come out to watch her work, which had irked her, but she’d already forgiven him because “only losers stay mad.”
“He doesn’t like the fair, anyway,” Jackie said. “He says it’s a breeding pool for pickpockets because he lost his wallet there once. But I really think that’s what happened—he lost it. Nobody put their hand in his pocket, I’d bet five dollars on it.”
“We’re going to the state fair?” Garth asked.
“Yep,” Mike said.
“The one at the fairgrounds?”
“Is there another one I don’t know about?”
“That’s right,” Mike said. “Prime exposure. As soon as we make a little pit stop.”
The fairgrounds were on the outskirts of town but weren’t exactly in a remote location, as the other scam sites had been. Garth pictured himself dressed in the Superman costume and Lisa appearing out of nowhere. Spotting him. Lifting her camera. Click.
Was there any possibility of aborting his involvement at this point? He could fake a stomachache or a sudden flu, maybe, demand to be driven back home. He could fake a heart attack or narcolepsy or…lepicarthia.
Jackie turned around again and smiled into the backseat. “This whole deal just feels magical,” she told Garth. “You know what I mean?”
“S-sort of,” he offered.
“One minute I’m pouring drinks at The Single Slice, and the next minute my career’s got a fresh start. I’m just so thankful!”
“We’re thankful. Aren’t we, Garth?”
He clutched his backpack to his stomach and stared out the side window. Just one more time, he thought. Our last hand. Our finest hour.
Right.
Mike pulled onto the shoulder of the road just outside the fairgrounds. “Hold tight while I do a little installation,” he said, and then reached beneath the seat and brought out a pair of glossy, corrugated placards that read WIN ME! in bright blue letters. He pulled a stubby screwdriver from the glove compartment, got out, and replaced both the front and back license plates.
The parking area was less than half full. He steered them into the middle of the lot and parked diagonally across three spaces. “We’ll set up here,” he said. When he turned off the engine and opened his door, they heard an ice cream truck song emanating from the other side of a tall chain-link fence. The song was “Pop Goes the Weasel.”
“We’re not going in?” Jackie asked.
“No cars allowed in there, unfortunately,” Mike told her. “And it’s all about the car. And you, of course.” He glanced at Garth in the rearview mirror and said, “You know the drill.”
