by P. E. Ryan
They set up the card table and the banner poles. True to Mike’s word, this time around the scam didn’t seem to have much to do with the “cause.” There were pamphlets describing lepicarthia, but it wasn’t even mentioned on the banner Mike unfurled and affixed to the polls. SOMEONE WILL DRIVE THIS CAR HOME TODAY!, it read. $5 PER TICKET! Next to the fishbowl, he placed a box of ballpoint pens.
Garth took the Superman costume from his backpack and pulled it on over his shorts and T-shirt. He was stepping back into the sneakers Mike had bought him when a hand tapped his shoulder.
He spun around. Jackie was standing next to him on the asphalt, wearing nothing but a pale blue bikini and a pair of low-heeled pumps. She’d pulled her hair up into ponytails that sprang out from either side of her head. “Tell me the truth,” she said. “Do I look trashy?”
“No. You look nice.”
“Like I said, you’re a gentleman. I knew you’d be honest.”
“Would you, um, tie me?” He gathered his cape out of the way, turned his back to her, and she tied the straps at the neck of his costume.
“You look nice, too,” she said.
“I look like a joke. I wore this for Halloween when I was eleven and can still fit into it now.”
“That doesn’t make you a joke. It just makes you small.”
He groaned. “You’re right. What makes me a joke is the fact that I’m willing to put it on.”
“You’re doing it to help sick people. That sounds like something Superman would do, if you ask me.”
“So.” Mike closed the trunk, pulled off his sunglasses, and froze when he saw Jackie in her swimsuit. “Yeowza.”
“What’s wrong?” she asked, looking down at herself.
“Nothing. Absolutely nothing.” He lifted a large double roll of raffle tickets and wagged it at them. “Let’s get the show rolling. You’re next to the table,” he told Garth, then turned to Jackie. “And you’re on the car—assuming it’s had a chance to cool down.”
“On the car? I thought I was going to be in the car.”
“Well, you can be in it if you want to, but you’ll draw more attention, you’ll get more…exposure out here, where people can see you.”
“That’s true.”
“Just lose the shoes.”
She stepped out of the pumps, tossed them through the open window into the backseat, and walked around to the hood, which she scooted up onto backward.
“That’s the spirit,” Mike encouraged her. He glanced at Garth. “How about you? Feeling the spirit?”
Garth just blinked at him.
“Okay, you both know how a raffle works. People write their names and phone numbers on the companion tickets, and then at four o’clock we draw a name, end of story. It’s pretty simple.”
The costume itched and was tight under the armpits. Plucking at it, Garth felt his irritation simmer. “But the foundation,” he said, “the one in need of funding, so they can research lepicarthia—they’re willing to just give away a car in order to raise money? That doesn’t really seem cost-effective, does it?”
Mike darted his eyes from Jackie to Garth. “How it works,” he said carefully, “is that the good people at Pontiac have donated this car to the cause. Could you make a little effort to look like a superhero?”
“What are you supposed to look like?” Garth asked.
“The man in charge.” Mike scooped a few pamphlets off the stack and turned toward the people crossing the parking lot, headed for the fair. His voice kicked into its professional volume. “Five dollars, folks! One ticket! You’ll help out a good cause and might drive this beautiful baby home today!”
He didn’t drop their money into the fishbowl but kept it in various rolls in the pockets of his trousers. The fishbowl slowly filled up with companion raffle tickets. During a lag when not many people were passing by, he tore off a long ribbon of tickets and tied them in a loose knot around Jackie’s bare shoulders.
“That makes it look like they’re going to win me!” she observed.
“Whatever gets their attention,” Mike said.
She laughed. She repositioned her legs, renewed her smile, and waved at a family crossing the parking area. “Help fight the cause!” she hollered. “Get a free Firebird!”
Garth fanned himself with a pamphlet and, prodded by Mike’s stare, heard himself saying things like “Make a difference!” and “Change the world!” He felt more than ridiculous. He felt resentful, and ashamed. And, he realized as he stared out at the small crowd, he felt angry. How could he be the same person who’d walked home on air last night? At what point did he become such a contradiction? And who was he more angry at—Mike or himself? “Spend five bucks and feel better about yourself!” he hollered.
Mike walked right over to him and muttered, “Knock it off,” then returned to his position on the other side of the table.
Jackie scanned the steady flow of people and speculated on who might be with the newspaper, who might be a magazine bigwig, and who (wouldn’t it just be the coolest?) might be a scout for the Fashion Network.
And so it went. The fishbowl slowly filled with tickets. Mike’s pockets bulged with cash. He bought them hotdogs and sodas for lunch, but Garth couldn’t bear the thought of eating. As the sun beat down, “Pop Goes the Weasel” played over and over and over again, each note like a finger tapping against his brain.
At long last they were nearing raffle time when he heard someone say, “Look, up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane!”
He couldn’t keep the sneer from curling his upper lip as he turned toward the voice. Shut the hell up and buy a ticket, he wanted to respond—but there, standing next to a stooped, gray-haired man wearing a VIRGINIA IS FOR LOVERS T-shirt, was Adam.
14
Garth opened his mouth, but no words would come. What was there to say, after all?
Great to see you. How do you like my cape?
Forgot to mention, I’m a superhero on the weekends.
Do these tights make my legs look thin?
The gray-haired man was smiling playfully, as if Garth were an adorable little trick-or-treater on his doorstep. Adam was smiling, too. He said, “And I thought you were just a mild-mannered animal lover.”
“Hey, hey, hey!” Mike called out. He’d spotted Adam and was crossing in front of the table, leading with his hand. “It’s great to see you again!”
Adam shook his hand. “You, too.” He turned to the gray-haired man. “Granddad, this is my friend Garth and his uncle, Mike.” And to them: “This is my granddad, Mr. Varick.”
“Call me Jim,” his granddad said.
“Mike Rudd,” Mike said, and pumped Mr. Varick’s hand. “Great shirt, by the way.”
“Thank you.” Mr. Varick glanced down at the slogan. “I’ve lived in Virginia my entire life, and I’m still waiting to find out if it’s true. They’re keeping that one a secret from me.”
“Ha-ha. Me, too, I’m sorry to say.”
“Who’s your Vanna White?”
“That’s Jackie.”
Jackie flashed her teeth and waved from the hood of the car.
“You folks heading into the fair?” Mike asked.
“We’re on our way out,” Mr. Varick said. “My bones are rattled. Adam forced me to go on the Scrambler and the Tilt-a-Whirl—twice each.”
“It was your idea,” Adam said.
“Oh, that’s right.” His granddad snapped his fingers.
Adam turned to Garth. “This is what you call ‘boring old chores’?” He didn’t sound like he was challenging Garth; he actually sounded impressed.
“What’s the charity?” Mr. Varick asked. He’d taken one of the pamphlets off the stack and was examining it.
Mike jumped on the question. “Lepicarthia. Ever heard of it?”
“I haven’t, but that doesn’t mean anything. My wife, rest her soul, used to accuse me of living in a bubble. This is probably just one of those things that never penetrated it. Nice to see
some people are out doing good in the world while the rest of us goof off.” He turned to Adam. “Isn’t that right, Mr. I-Insist-on-Riding-the-Giant-Slide?”
“You were the one who insisted on the giant slide.”
Mr. Varick snapped his fingers. “Oh, that’s right.”
Adam leaned into Garth and said in a low voice, “It’s great to see you, by the way. Last night was…amazing.”
“Thanks. I mean, yeah, I had a really great time, too.”
“And you should have just told me this is what you were going to be doing today. I think it’s really cool.”
Garth couldn’t help himself. He shook his head—just barely—and said, “No, it’s not.”
“What time’s the raffle?” Mr. Varick asked, dropping the pamphlet back onto the table.
Mike shot his arm out and looked at his watch. “In about fifteen minutes. You folks could still get in just under the wire, if you want.”
The older man dug out his wallet, selected a ten-dollar bill, and asked for two tickets. Mike handed them over, along with a ballpoint pen, instructing him to write his name on the back of each one.
Watching the exchange, Garth felt an uneasy churning in his stomach and he felt queasy all over again.
Adam reached over and tugged on his cape. “You look miserable, Superman,” he teased.
“I am.”
Then Adam leaned in so close that Garth felt his breath against his ear. “What I meant to say is, you seem miserable. You actually look pretty cute.”
But at the moment, cute didn’t cut it. Cute was for puppies and stuffed animals. You didn’t want to make out with cute; you wanted to pat it on the head.
Adam just smiled at him and said, “Let me do my part for the cause, too.” He reached into one of his pockets and produced a five-dollar bill.
“Don’t,” Garth said, his face burning.
“I can’t resist. Every charity should have you working for it. The world’s problems would be solved in, like, a week.” He extended the money in Mike’s direction.
“Don’t,” Garth said again—to both Adam and Mike.
But they ignored him. The money went from Adam’s hand to Mike’s, and then down the rabbit hole of Mike’s pocket so quickly it might have vanished into thin air. “Good man,” Mike said, and spun the roll. “Have an extra ticket, on me.”
Garth fantasized once again about faking a heart attack. But the raffle was about to take place, and Adam and Mr. Varick were sticking around.
Be still, my beating heart, he thought. Still as in a heart attack. Kill me.
By four o’clock, most people who’d purchased tickets and filled in their names and addresses had gone on their way: into the fair or home. About two dozen had decided to stay for the actual drawing. Mike looked at his watch, clapped his hands together to draw everyone’s attention, and announced that it was, at last, “giveaway time!” He carried the fishbowl over to Jackie, who seemed to have given up on being discovered as a model for the day and was stretched out on the hood as if she might take nap.
“Would you do us the honors?” Mike asked.
“Me?” she asked, sitting upright. “I get to pick?”
“Please.”
She reached into the bowl, swam her hand around for a few moments while mugging for the small crowd, and produced a ticket. Mike snatched it from her before she had a chance to look at it, then made a great display of looking at it himself, holding it first at arm’s length and then right up close to his nose.
“Zero-zero-two-seven-six-eight-five!” he called out.
Several people in the small crowd sighed with disappointment.
Mr. Varick squinted at each of his tickets. “I guess Lady Luck’s not smiling upon me today.” He glanced at Adam. “How about you?”
“Me, either. But I’ve never won anything in my life, so I’m not surprised.”
Mike repeated the number, then turned the ticket over and read the name out loud. “Lester O’Neil?”
A raspy voice suddenly boomed over the parking lot: “Lester O’Neil! Lester O’Neil! That’s me!!”
A portly, red-faced man in sunglasses and a baseball cap pushed between two bystanders and waved his arms in the air. “That’s me!” he hollered again, and lumbered toward the Firebird.
“We have a winner!” Mike announced with excitement.
A few people clapped. Most of them were already starting to walk away.
“My baby.” The portly man had reached the front of the car now and was bent forward, caressing the grill with his thick hands.
“Hurray!” Jackie cheered, and smacked her hands together. But a moment later she wasn’t clapping. She was staring at the man, peering at him suspiciously.
“Congratulations to Mr. O’Neil!” Mike said to the crowd.
“Well,” Mr. Varick said to Adam, “let’s head out. Maybe Lady Ice Cream will smile at us on the way home.”
“Sounds good.” Adam stuffed his worthless ticket into his pocket and turned to Garth. “Too bad you can’t come with us.”
“Yeah,” Garth said. “Believe me, I wish I could.”
“Call me, okay? And I’ll see you on Wednesday.”
“I will.”
Jackie scooted forward a few inches, reached out with one bare foot, and tipped the baseball cap off the man’s head. “Marcus,” she snapped, “what are you doing here?”
“Winning a sports car,” Mr. O’Neil/Marcus told her. “What about you?”
Jackie looked from him to Mike, back and forth a few times. “He’s one of my customers,” she said to Mike. “You were talking to him the other day.”
“I was?” Mike asked.
“At the bar where I work. I saw you talking to him.”
“I don’t recall ever seeing this man before.”
Adam, Garth noticed when he chanced a look over his shoulder, had stopped walking and appeared confused. Mr. Varick also looked to be confused. In fact, every one of the dozen or so people still lingering in the vicinity had the same befuddled expression on their faces—except for Jackie, who looked angry.
“You don’t even have a license,” Jackie told Marcus. “You can’t win a car!”
“I can, too!” Marcus spat. “I won it fair and square!”
“Then where’s your ticket?”
“I don’t need a ticket! Ask him!” He pointed toward Mike.
“All I did was pick a name,” Mike said, palms raised.
“This man is a low-down creep,” Jackie told him. “He’s one of my customers. I caught him with his hand in my tip jar a month ago.” She looked down at Marcus again. “You can’t just pop up out of the woodwork like some…muppet…and drive this car away! There are people who gave good money to charity and one of them deserves to win it fair and square!”
“Okay, folks, show’s over!” Mike piped up. “Thanks for being here. Thanks for giving, and thanks for caring.” He shot Garth a look and stirred a finger in the air as if to say, Let’s wrap this up.
But Marcus just glared at the lot of them, raised a wide fist and brought it down on the hood, producing a loud, metallic whump.
“Wow,” Adam said from several feet away.
When the fist landed a second time, Mike grabbed Marcus by the shoulder and spun him around. “Back off!”
“You said this car’s mine!”
“I did not,” Mike hissed. “I said show up, get fifty bucks and cab fare back to the city. How could you have misunderstood that? Why would I just give you a car, you stupid hick?!”
“Methinks something stinks in Denmark,” Mr. Varick remarked.
Adam glanced at his granddad, then at Garth.
“I can explain,” Garth said. But he couldn’t.
There was a prolonged moment where Marcus just blinked in the warm air, his face as red as cranberry juice. Then he launched forward, head-first.
Mike deflected him, shoving him sideways in a manner that sent him sprawling into Garth’s path. When Garth attempted t
o jump out of the way, Marcus grappled for something to keep himself upright. That something was Garth’s cape—which tore away from the costume with a sharp tug at his neck. The man hit the pavement hard, still clutching the fabric and looking like a felled matador.
“I think every one of them’s stewed,” said one of the remaining spectators.
Jackie was scooting off the hood. “I am not stewed, mister!”
Mike jerked open the driver’s door, hollered, “In the car! Both of you!” and ducked behind the wheel.
They left everything behind: the card table, the fishbowl, the banner and poles. Jackie no longer had any interest in the “seat of honor.” She’d climbed into the back, leaving the front for Garth, who buried his hands in his face as they sped away from the fairgrounds.
“Marcus is a creep, I already knew that,” Jackie said, anger fueling her voice, “but now I’m thinking you’re just a creep of a different kind.”
“I’m not a creep,” Mike protested. “I’m a struggling businessman.”
“And what’s your business, exactly? Being a creep?”
“Don’t say that. You had a good time today, didn’t you? You enjoyed all the attention, sitting up there feeling pretty.”
Garth slumped miserably in the front seat. His neck stung from the cape’s having been torn free—as if someone had halfheartedly tried to strangle him. He would never be able to look Adam in the eye again. That was a very bad thing, since in the big picture the two of them would surely run into each other at school next year, and in the small picture (which somehow felt much larger than the big picture), he wanted to do nothing more than be alone with Adam, making out with him as they’d done less than twenty-four hours ago.
Mike had helped make so much possible in his life, and just as swiftly he’d ruined it. He might as well have helped Garth find a new face and then immediately cut off the nose.
And, like Jake Gittes in Chinatown, Garth liked his nose. He liked breathing through it.
“What are we doing here?” Jackie demanded when they rolled to a stop in front of his house on Floyd Avenue. “This isn’t where I live.”
“It’s where we live,” Mike told her. He sounded exhausted. “I’m getting your pay for today, because I forgot to bring the cash with me this morning. I’m assuming you don’t want it all in fives and ones.”
