by Owen Thomas
Zack waited for the water to slip back down the beach and then excavated a semi-circular trench in front of us that the ocean would never respect. He piled the dark cool tailings over my ankles.
“And then one day, as I was sitting on a pile of sand just like this one staring out over the same ocean, there appeared Vance Cassidy, dripping wet with a surfboard under his arm preaching the gospel of the Pacific Ocean and reciting from the great apostles of American cinema. Knew every line of Cool Hand Luke, backwards and forwards.”
“The mentor appears.”
“No. The identity appears. Being no one myself, I became him. I became Vance. I am not the product of a choice, Tilly. All nature abhors a vacuum. Vance and I went swimming and Zel Wippo simply drowned in his own nothingness. Zack West emerged, toweled off, and never questioned who he was in the world. Ever.”
“And now?”
“I’m …” he looked around him gesturing hopelessly. “Fucking marooned. On an incredibly small island, where my only worth is in hosting a party that never stops and pretending for the amusement of adolescents. If the party ever stops, or if the teenagers get distracted, then the island sinks into the sea and there is darkness once again.”
“Jeez-Louise, Zack. What has gotten into you? You’re drunk.”
“I’m not drunk. I’m a little high, I’m not drunk.”
“Like hell. Pot doesn’t do this to you. You’re on something.”
“I’m not drunk.”
“So leave the damn island. Do whatever you want to do. Be … whoever you want to be. What’s stopping you?”
“I’ve tried. It’s like trying to escape the gravity of the earth. It’s like Michael Corleone trying to quit the business. This is who I am now. It doesn’t matter if I hate it or how bad I want out. This is who I am. I’m not a Jew. I’m a fabrication meant to fill an empty space. I’m … this. Whatever in the hell this is.”
“What does your dad think about it? Do you talk?”
“He came out here. It’s already been ten years now. I can’t even believe that. He wanted to take me back.”
“Long Island?”
“Israel. He said I was killing him. He felt betrayed that I had done my mother’s bidding. I refused. He started calling me èbhah, which is Yiddish for abomination. I was the unclean thing in the eyes of God.”
“A bit harsh.”
“You could say that. My Aunt Lucy stood him down and sent him packing. He went back to New York. After making it clear what he thought of me.”
“And he lives in Israel? Among the chosen?”
“No.”
Zack rammed the heel of his foot into the beach, forcing a flange of water to fold in around it and backfill the gouge in the sand.
“So?” I asked after too long.
“He was chosen by God to step off the Hudson Bay Bridge.”
“Jesus.”
“Yaweh.”
“It wasn’t your fault. You know that. Right?”
“Been a lot of water under that bridge. It is what it is. I don’t think about it.”
It was fifteen minutes before either of us said anything. I watched him throw sand at the ocean as he excavated a circular trench around his body. It was as if he had forgotten I was there.
“I’ve never seen this side of you,” I said finally. And I hadn’t. He looked up, almost surprised, and then knocked the sand off his hands, letting it rain over his knees.
“Because you don’t really know me. And because there is no me to know.”
“This is getting just a little silly and morose.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” I leaned over and kissed him. “I and about a hundred million other women and gay men around the globe think you’re the hottest thing since the do-it-yourself orgasm.”
“What about the straight men?”
“They all secretly want to be you.”
“Poor saps. What about your dad?”
“My dad? For about the first time ever in my life, I think he approves.”
“No shit? I make the grade with the old man?”
“Let’s put it this way. My dad and I don’t talk, so everything I know, I get from my mom. And she says that whenever your name comes up he tends to stay in the room.”
“That’s a good sign?”
“Trust me. She said once or twice he has even nodded with approval. Her interpretation, so it’s instantly suspect. I couldn’t care less, you understand.”
“Yeah, I got that. Not a good track record with parental approval.”
I stuck out my hand.
“Wandering Jew, meet fucked-up, ingrate, slut bunny.”
“Ouch,” he said, shaking my hand and wincing. “That bad?”
“That bad.”
“I’d take Rabbi Fish any day.”
“Oh, fuck you.” Zack splashed me with water from his mote.
“Okay, maybe not Rabbi Fish.”
“When was the last time you were home?”
“Long time.”
“Michigan, right?”
“Ohio. All hell has been breaking loose over there. Really weird. My dad kind of disappeared for awhile and my older brother was in some legal trouble and mom got all obsessed with anti-war politics. I barely recognize them as my family.”
“Go back for a visit. Patch things up.”
“In the middle of a spin cycle?”
“Sure.”
“No thanks.”
“So call your dad on the phone. At least you’ve got one.”
“Fuck him. I don’t care what he thinks about me and I don’t care to let him run me over with his judgments about my life. Okay … why are you laughing?”
“Me?” Zack looked away, turning into the darkness, and then back again with a comically grave expression. “I mean, me?”
“Yes. You, mister woe-is-me, self-loathing-Jew, whiny-mega rich-action-god who doesn’t think that’s quite enough identity. You.” I swung myself over his legs, my back to the sea, unable to keep from smiling. “Why… the fuck … are you laughing? Is something funny?”
“I think you just contradicted yourself.”
“I did not. How?”
“How can he run over you with his judgments if you don’t care what he thinks?”
I looked at him and saw how the light from a sliver of moon filled his eyes like the sea filled sockets in the sand. Water washed in around us, seeping down and away in wet fingers. He was right, of course. But I was young, and far too good at deflection in those days to be bullied by the truth of things.
“You a shrink now?” I asked, slipping my blouse over my head and tossing it into the sand.
“Nope.”
I pushed him back onto the beach and went to work on his trunks.
“Then you know what you can do with your opinions.”
They found us before we were finished. Six of the Zack-Pack regulars, the ones who always seemed to refuse to go home, insisted that the party was just getting started if Zack would only attend to his hosting responsibilities.
“Company,” I said and I felt Zach sigh heavily beneath me.
I confess to not liking any of them very much. Their affection for me was nothing beyond the tolerance one affords an interloper protected from on high. None of us tried very hard. That we had been discovered in flagrante delicto was of little consequence to the Zack Pack regulars, who were far too drunk to care and far too determined to be dissuaded by manners. Much to the delight of his entourage, Zack showed no modesty in the act of gathering my clothing. As I dressed, he led them away into the darkness, swinging his trunks on a finger.
The sounds of a scuffle and shouting rose above the breakers and I could tell that some contingent of the search party was attempting to drag someone among the remainder down the beach and into the surf. I sat in the sand listening to Zack’s voice above the others, raucous and indomitable and full of bravado, growing fainter and fainter as the scythe of bone in the sky slit the darkness and stars
spilled out over the ocean, until at last his voice was gone entirely, leaving only the dark water, the bright fishes of youth, and the undertow of inevitability.
CHAPTER 33 – David
“You know that stuff will rot your brain.”
Dick and George look at me hard from across the room. As busy as they are of late administering the Pax Americana colonic to the entire planet, they take the time to communicate their disappointment at seeing me again in the Westerville Police Station. The Vice President especially, who glares at me with such dark determination that he looks like he is making elaborate plans for my severed head.
I do not respond to Detective North who sits below and in front of Dick and George, and across the table from me. He is filling out his shirt and eating cashews out of a red Buckeyes coffee mug. He does not pull the nuts out of the mug with his fingers, but “drinks” them in a few at a time. He chews his beverage and looks at me impassively, waiting for a response, but I give him nothing. Time fills with silence.
In front of him sits a thick, green, well-worn file folder and I know that its contents must pertain to me in the most ominous of ways. To keep from screaming I alternate my depth of field between Chuck North in the foreground and Dick and George in the background. Dick looks to me like he is biting down on something sharp.
We are in the same interrogation room as before. I cannot believe I would ever have a sense of familiarity about such a place. I actually feel relieved to be here – the place of tenuous but technically presumptive innocence – and out of the holding cell – the place of, well, iron bars and concrete. Between the noisy confinement and a miscreant named Stevie given to colorful lectures on our Constitutional right to expose genitalia in public places, I was happy to leave the holding cell, even if it meant coming back here.
“People think dope is harmless, but it’s killing your brain cells, Dave, plain and simple.” He fishes around in the cup with his finger. “And I really don’t think that’s such a good idea in your case.”
“Is she here yet?” I ask with a little extra contempt.
“Do you see her here, DJ? That’s what your friends call you, isn’t it?”
“Some.”
North puts his hands in the air as if to demonstrate his friendly intentions. “So, DJ, Relax. We made the call, she said she’s coming, so she’ll be here. Okay? If you don’t want to wait with me up here, I can take you back downstairs to wait with Stevie. You want to do that? ‘Cause Stevie wants to be your friend for life.”
I don’t answer. He already knows the answer and he knows that I know he already knows. So I look around the room. On the white, dry-marker board to my right someone has written “3-10, 10-15, 15-30, 30-life, no parole” in failing black marker.
“Just making conversation, Dave. We don’t have to talk about your drug habits.”
“I don’t have a drug habit.”
“Right. Whatever you say. I know you don’t want to talk about your girlfriend or fiancé or whatever she is, so let’s talk about the weather. Or whatever. Sports. Politics.” He jerks his thumb over his shoulder at the framed portraits on the wall behind him. “You like where this country is going with these miserable fucks still behind the wheel?”
I must betray some surprise because he smiles in a knowing way.
“What? Thought I was a tighty-righty-god-almighty Bushie, did you?”
“You do fit the profile.”
“Oh, the profile. The professor has a profile? What is it? White, male, law-enforcement, clean cut, and preferring bourbon to pot, or just general dickishness?”
“All of it.”
“I see. Well, my peeps are from true blue Pennsylvania; how does that fit your profile? Got two brothers over in Tikrit looking for WMD’s that don’t exist. Got a niece destined to inherit the effects of a national education policy virtually guaranteed to leave her behind. I sure as hell work in the same economy that you do, Dave. I’m not your daddy Hollis or his banking buddies, that’s for damn sure. I don’t even own a set of golf clubs. You think I want to privatize Social Security? And if it’s the whole law and order thing that’s got you confused, how do you think I feel about Jack Abramoff?”
“Who?”
“Stay tuned. He’ll be big. He’s gonna make it rain Republicans. As for my general dickishness, you got me there, but it’s completely apolitical and I come by it honest. So there you go. The man on the wall does not have much political capital with me. No one owns me. I voted for Bush as the lesser of two evils, but I was really very unhappy about it, that’s my point. I’m not a Bushie. I was a Lieberman guy.”
“You think Bush was the lesser of two… wait… Lieberman?!”
“Yeah. Lieberman. What… did you mistake me for a godless, self-loathing liberal with an over-compensating moral-intellectual superiority complex and delusions of fiscal responsibility? Sorry, Dave, not my value system.”
“You think Turncoat Joe is not a self-loathing liberal?”
“Hey…okay, look. You sound like my ex-wife. Lieberman is as far right as they come before the gray matter starts to drop off and as far left as you can get before moral depravity takes over. Boy, you Democrats… What a fucking train wreck of poor political instinct you guys are.” He takes in another mouthful of nuts and points at me with his mug hand. “You guys are all self-destructive impulse tempered by a completely fucked-up sense of identity. No wonder you have a drug problem, DJ.”
“I do not …”
The door opens to reveal the impressive girth of Glenda Leveau clad in a lavender pantsuit with matching pumps. Her hair is like a plume of jet-black soot exploding from a pastel volcano. Her shoulder-slung, soft leather briefcase is a bright, magma-inspired orangish-red.
“Speak of the devil,” says North conspiratorially.
Denial that I have been caught conversing with the enemy prevents me from changing course and I continue my protest, proving North’s point about poor instincts.
“I do not have a drug problem,” I say without looking up.
“Dave, you smell like Bob Marley’s sofa.”
Glenda’s jaw has come unhinged in the open doorway. “What… in the fuck…”
“Relax counselor,” says North looking up at her and leaning back in his chair. “Your client and I were just talking politics. Nothing more. Right Dave?”
“Lieberman?” I ask. “Really?”
“Hey, your guy couldn’t even manage an intern without a national scandal.”
“Enough!” The door slams and Glenda thunders across the room. The bag drops loudly to the table and she towers over us. “That… is… enough. You, detective, know better than to examine my client on any subject outside of my presence.”
“Counsel, it was stupid small talk. We were waiting for you. So drop the indignation and have a seat.”
Glenda squares her prodigious shoulders to North and rests her hands on her hips. North sighs and gestures to the chair in front of her.
“Glenda, we really weren’t,” I start, but she cuts me off with a sideways look.
“And you, Mr. Johns, are this close to a public defender. Do you understand what the fuck I am telling you?”
I nod silently.
“Good. Chuck, do you intend on arresting my client?”
“Intend? No. That’s already done, counsel. Arrested and booked.”
“For?”
“Possession. Good shit, too. Warrant search of the house and car. Not really what we set out to find and not enough for intent to distribute, which is a shame, but we got him cold on possession.”
“What did you set out to find?”
“DJ knows. Don’t you DJ?”
I have no idea what he is talking about.
“Let me see the warrants.”
Glenda sits down and holds out her hand to him, looking at me appraisingly as she does. Her nose wrinkles and I can see the olfactory confirmation register on her face.
North opens the file and extracts a stapled sheaf whic
h he hands over. “Your copy,” he says.
Glenda studies the warrants and we – North, George and Dick and I – wait in silence for her to finish.
“A violin. You were looking for a violin. What, her violin I’m guessing?”
“Where’d you put the violin, Dave?”
Glenda looks over at me with both a warning and a question on her face and I shrug in response.
“He doesn’t have a violin. Why are we talking?”
“Because I’ve still got a missing girl to find.”
“We’ve been all through this, Chuck.”
“Maybe. But I told you that if she did not show for that recital …”
“But nothing has changed, Chuck. Not on this end. Everything he told you still holds. You think he has stolen her violin? What kind of bullshit reason…”
“I’ve got new evidence and I want his reaction. The easy way is a polite conversation. You know all about the hard way. I’ll play it any way you want.”
Glenda rotates to me.
“You know anything about this?”
I shake my head and she turns back to North.
“Okay. Let’s have it.”
North puts down the cup and reaches into the file, extracting a manila envelope. He straightens the metal clips, inverts the envelope and lets a pink plastic book slide out and onto the table.
“Brittany’s diary,” he says. “My sister found it two days ago under the mattress. This is now one worried mom.”
A diary. Shit. This can’t be good. A diary. What’s in the diary? This is not… shit, a diary. She wrote about me? Me? In a diary? What is there to write? Shit. This can’t be good. Why else would he be bringing it up? It must say something about me. Something bad. Shit. Grab it. Grab it and just start ripping. Bathroom is around the corner. Go for the toilet. Go for the toilet. A diary? Girls still keep little pink diaries? What happened to the blogosphere? What happened to Facebook? What happened to MySpace? Well, Facebook happened to MySpace. Shit. A diary? Under the mattress?
