by Owen Thomas
“Ah, you mean like the Grim Reaper. Ready to take possession of your soul.”
“No. Okay, that’s a little creepy. No. Not like that.”
“Well?”
“I was thinking more like Batman.”
“Batman?”
“Well not the Grim Reaper for Chrissakes.”
“Okay,” she says. “I’m Batman. Where does Gotham keep its movie theaters?”
We go to an 8-plex near Minerva Park. It is too early or too late for any feature except a cartoon about penguins and a movie I know nothing about called The Prizewinner of Defiance, Ohio. I vote that we go someplace else, but Caitlin has already handed her money through the hole in the glass.
“Hoping for explosions and gun play?” she asks, handing me the stub.
“Maybe. Yes. Explosions and gun play.”
“And some nudity?”
“Yes. Sex and explosions and gun play.”
“Predictable.”
“Yeah. So?”
“So, haven’t you had enough of the beaten path? The things you expect?”
“No. I’ve had enough terror and disappointment and jail time. All of which comes from the shit I don’t expect.”
She looks at me like I don’t know what in the hell I’m talking about. “If you say so,” she says.
The theater is completely empty. We sit dead center.
“How good could this be?” I ask.
“Doesn’t have to be good,” she says. “Good isn’t the point.”
“What is the point?”
“Change.”
“Change?”
“Yeah, change. I’ll be right back. You want anything?”
I decline, not because I don’t want anything, but because I’m broke. She strides back up the aisle and disappears, leaving me in the river of chairs. They arch from wall to wall in long dark rows, like small waves being pushed by a coming flood, each slipping over the edge of a cliff at the end of the known world beyond which, well, beyond which there be dragons. In my reclining, faux red velvet, cup-holder-equipped barrel, I bob and spin and wait my turn amid the spray and the roar of the open maw.
Caitlin returns with a large cup of something and a bucket so large it should require a feed strap.
“Here, have some. I can’t eat all of this.”
My hand is in up to the wrist before she even sits down.
“Should’a eaten those waffles, Dave,” she says.
I make sounds of agreement, trying not to choke. She pushes the cup under my face and I suck on the straw. It is all I can manage not to spray the seats in front of me.
“What the hell is that?”
“Oh, bit of everything.”
“Oh my God that’s bad.”
“Well what do you like, Mr. Picky with no money?”
“Basic Coke works.”
“Well it’s in there,” she says, looking into the cup. “Stop complainin’.”
“Ugh. Mom, can I have a dollar?”
She hands me a fiver and I go out and buy something that won’t dissolve my organs. When I return Caitlin has assumed the shape of a dishrag dropped over the seats. She feeds popcorn into her mouth a kernel at a time like she’s a Roman aristocrat eating grapes. I sit.
“A dollar twenty in change. You wanted change. Here’s your change.”
“Keep it. You’re the one who needs it. So Detective Shithead tells you that he knows about the Vanguard Academy…”
“Yeah?”
“And you tell me that because … why? Why is that important?”
“I told you about that whole thing. About getting kicked out. I was fifteen.”
“Right. But why is it important now?”
“Because he’s building a case that I’m, you know, a sexual predator. That it’s in my genetic makeup or something. That I’m predisposed. He thinks its evidence of guilt.”
“Do you?”
“Do I what?”
“Do you think it’s evidence of guilt?”
“What? No. My guilt? My guilt? There is no guilt. I haven’t done anything.”
“Okay. Calm down.”
“I didn’t do anything then and I didn’t do anything now. What are you saying?”
“Nothing. Just askin’.”
She drops another kernel into her mouth and chews contemplatively at the ceiling.
“Told your folks yet?”
“No. I haven’t told them anything.”
“Going to?”
“No.”
“Because…”
“Because… because that won’t do any good. That just complicates things.”
“Might help some things. Might get you some support. Or a better lawyer.”
“No.”
“Okay.”
“It doesn’t matter how good my lawyer is, Cait. When they find Brittany she’s gonna lie. Wait and see. She’ll pin it on me. Her uncle will force the test and the test will show sexual activity and she’ll have to give up a name and that name will be mine.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Because that’s just how things work for me, Cee Cee. That’s my life. I wander into the wrong place at the wrong time. That’s what I do. And then I get blamed.”
“Kind of a professional victim of circumstance.”
“Call it what you want.”
“Okay, but what makes you think she’ll lie?”
“Because fucking some punk named DJ makes her a skank but fucking her history teacher makes her a victim. I’m guessing she’ll choose victim. She’s done it before.”
“What. Had sex with a teacher?”
“Played the victim. Falsely accused.”
“You don’t know that.”
“She as much as told me.”
“She told you a lot of things, Dave. You believe them all?”
“Some. Hell, Cee, she basically confessed to breaking into my home to steal drugs and money. And some movies. And condoms. She told me about DJ and drugs and sex. And Richie. So when she says that she once said something to make people believe she was sexually assaulted then I’m inclined to believe it.”
“Yeah well she told you a lot of outright shit, too.”
“Like what?”
“Like what? How about that her dad is in the CIA?”
“FBI.”
“Whatever. How about that her violin belonged to her grandmother who played in the New York Philharmonic? You believe that?”
“I don’t know. No. I guess not.”
“Or the whole uncle-on-mom thing.”
“What if it’s true?”
“Oh, come on.”
“What? It happens.”
“Not so much with Columbus police officers. You’re just fantasizing about publicly humiliating this guy because you hate him.”
“I am not.”
“Yes you are.”
“No. But now that you mention it…”
“Here we go.”
“…if one had discretion on how hard to push a certain criminal investigation that was ridiculous anyway, and if one learned that the cost of making life difficult for a certain innocent rube was that the innocent rube would reveal…”
“Dave…”
“…would reveal at a press conference or at like …”
“You’re dreaming.”
“… or at the Columbus Police Department Christmas Ball, in front of the Mayor, that a certain esteemed detective was porking his own sister…”
“Give it up.” She throws popcorn at me. “You’re hopeless.”
“A guy can dream.”
The lights fade. We shut up and watch the previews, each of which seems out to capture some madcap zaniness run amok. I have become even more self-preoccupied than Brittany Kline. Each preview is really just another take on my own fucked-up life. There is the one about the hapless night watchman at the natural history museum, just trying to do his damn job, just trying to follow the rules and make it in the world, when the past liter
ally comes to life and tries to take a prehistoric bite out of his ass. There is the one about the compulsive IRS auditor who learns that his every experience and thought is created and controlled by a fiction writer seeking to entertain her readers with the cruelty of his existence. That, actually, would explain a great deal about my life. The writer in the movie plans to kill her character in the end, which I think might be preferable to the slow motion torture of my past twenty-four hours. I think maybe Stephen King might be my writer.
I have to work a little harder with the preview of the movie about the Deputy District Attorney who turns into a sheep dog. But I get there. There is a scene on an elevator in which a German Shepherd police dog sticks his nose up the ass of the main character. The German Shepherd’s handler – a cop in a SWAT uniform – says sit and the man who has just been violated dutifully sits. Not the dog; the man. That would be me. The preview ends on a canine meet-n-greet in a park and the question: Is there anyone who has not sniffed my butt? That about sums it up.
“Okay,” I say, leaning in, raising my voice over the wall of sound, “so she did some serious lying. Doesn’t that prove my point that she’s going to lie when she has to?”
“No.”
“What?”
“She told you the truth on all the shit that gets her in trouble, Dave. You said it yourself. She owned up to the whole big plan, none of which makes her look good.”
“The plan. That was too stupid believe. That was probably all a lie too.”
“Yeah, it was stupid all right. But I buy it. It was too stupid to make up. She is just a kid. It’s conceivable that she’d look to you for either drugs, or money or both. You took the drugs in the first place, remember? As far as she’s concerned, you were the last one who had them. So she slips in, gets her shit back, slips out, problem solved. Pretty good plan if you sixteen and not so smart.”
“That’s if I’m not home.”
“Right. If you are home, then she’s going to get you drunk and beguile you with her feminine wiles.”
“What feminine wiles? She’s sixteen.”
“Right. She’s sixteen. At that age a girl is either convinced that she’s the ugliest thing to ever walk the planet or that she can stop traffic with the bat of an eyelash. Reality isn’t even part of the equation.”
“True. Which were you?”
“What.”
“Ugly stick or traffic stopper.”
“Definitely the former.”
“I doubt that.”
“Sweet. The point is that as ridiculous as the plan seems, it’s actually plausible when you assume a very low level of sophistication, a very high level of self-indulgent fantasy, all shaken together with what sounds to be a fair amount of desperation.”
“And we know she wasn’t alone. There was a plan of some sort. Someone was waiting for her and followed us.”
“The mysterious DJ, I’m guessing.”
“Me too. That’s why she wanted me to drive her to the hospital; she knew she could bail out and that he’d be right behind us. She watched him in the rearview mirror the whole way. She picked her moment.”
“Okay, but here’s the point. She basically told you the truth about the stuff that gets her in trouble, you know, the big stuff – this whole ridiculous scheme of theirs. And she lied about things that just don’t really matter. About who her daddy works for and who gave her the violin. A three thousand dollar violin? Come on. And her uncle singing in the shower.”
“Oh that one’s definitely true.”
“Yeah, maybe, but who cares?”
“You should’a seen his face. Nope, that was a bulls-eye. He’s an ABBA freak.”
“Stop quibbling.”
“He belongs in a fucking sideshow.”
“All I’m saying is that you really shouldn’t be so sure she’s gonna lie about the sex. And if she does, she’s more likely to just completely deny it.”
“You’re forgetting the dreaded test.”
“Dave, ever stop to think that you may want her to have a medical exam. That could prove that you didn’t…”
“Condoms. They’re using condoms. It’s not about fluids. She’ll lie if she’s cornered. North is primed and ready to believe that I’m the type of guy who would defile his niece. Hell, he thinks I’ve got the history. There’s Vanguard. There’s Billy Rocks. There’s the scene in my driveway in front of my stupid neighbor. The condoms. The two of us in my condo. The lingerie, probably stained with her blood and mine. If she tells North it was me, then he’ll believe it. She’ll lie because she’s scared, or because she wants sympathy or because she blames me for everything.”
“Blame? Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Why? You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Right. Except take her drugs and get her and DJ in trouble with Richie.”
“And you think she blames you?”
“Hello? Remember my car?”
“She denied having anything to do with it.”
“She knew something about it. I could tell she knew.”
“You said she kissed you before she got out of the car.”
“Her kissing me is what keeps digging this fucking hole deeper.”
I know I am too loud. I look around for who might be listening in, but the theater is still empty.
“Right, it just doesn’t really sound like someone with a grudge.”
“That doesn’t mean anything. She was hot and cold all night. Far more often I got the feeling she wanted me dead. It was not a good night for her. I opened up her head on my coffee table. Not to mention the humiliation of rummaging through her backpack. And she came away with nothing. No drugs. No money. Just a concussion. And a ruined violin. Which means she’s in more trouble than ever with Richie. I think a grudge is entirely likely. I’m better off if they never find her again.”
“You don’t want that.”
“Yes I do. The only thing saving my ass so far is that there’s no victim. Hopefully she’ll stay gone.”
“You don’t want that, Dave.”
“Okay, no I don’t, but goddamnit…”
I shove a handful of popcorn in my mouth and chew with a vengeance, not knowing how to finish my own sentence. Caitlin watches.
“Look, odds are that when they find Brittany they find DJ. I bet North cracks him in about ten minutes. There’s your truth.”
“Doesn’t matter, Cee Cee. He wants me. North wants me. I’m already guilty in his eyes. Brittany and DJ, or whoever, are already cooking the story. They’re gonna serve me up and North’s gonna carve into me like a Thanksgiving turkey.”
“That’s the spirit”
“I’m so fucked.”
“Hmm. Guess so.”
“I thought you were trying to make me feel better.”
“That’s not possible.”
“Fine, what do you think I should do?”
“I’d start by praying that Brittany was lying about mad-dog Richie knowing where you live.”
“Fuck.”
The Prizewinner of Defiance, Ohio blares on everywhere around us. Caitlin settles in to try and figure out what’s going on. I try to watch but can’t. I try to listen, but can’t. I can only see the images and hear the sounds. Watching and listening suggest active human processes that are gauged toward a goal of comprehension. It is the distinction my father used to make between watching something on television, which he never did, and seeing it, which was regularly unavoidable. The difference between the two is in caring. And I don’t care in the least.
I look over at Caitlin whose slackened expression tells me that she has already disappeared into the movie; that she has wisely opted to plunge into a drama not nearly as sordid as my own and highly likely to resolve itself within a couple of hours. I remind myself that if I had not agreed to leave my front lawn for the lunch I did not eat and the movie I am not watching, I would most likely be in the stomach curdling stench of my living room trying to strip my home down to the studs
. Considering the alternatives, I am suddenly grateful to be anywhere but home. I could sit through The Godfather III. Rocky XII. Conan. Ishtar. Anything.
The most I can discern is that Julianne Moore and Woody Harrelson are stuck in an extraordinarily fertile marriage in 1950’s Ohio without any money to pay for the mortgage or anything else except Woody’s alcohol. He’s got chronic bad luck and a giant era-appropriate, aggressive chip on his shoulder about being supported by his wife. She’s got a plucky, unconventional optimism that just won’t die and manages to keep everyone just ahead of financial ruin by entering and winning consumer product advertising contests. After all, for every problem there’s a solution. All she needs to do is come up with a great jingle. Problem solved! Dr. Pepper to the rescue.
The closest I can come to connecting with the story is trying to imagine the jingle I will have to write to keep from getting skull-fucked by the state of Ohio. Not mid-Twentieth Century Ohio, where a note from a pastor and a promise to do better could go a long ways towards instilling some good will, but Twenty-first Century, post-911 Ohio, where most people – the jury of my peers – thought George Bush was a good idea. Not once, but twice. This will have to be some fucking jingle. An epic hip-hop symphony of a jingle so violently percussive that it will make ears bleed and so lyrically compelling that it will solve my problems by promising salvation and threatening damnation all in the same rhyme. My problems are too big, too toxic, for appliance and snack food jingles. I need the big-money jingle. A jingle to sell customized Hummers. A jingle to sell the deep-sixing of Social Security. A jingle to sell the next Middle East invasion.
After the movie, Caitlin seems satisfied in an all’s-well-that-end’s-well sort of way. Although I caught the gist of the story, it is clear to her I was not paying close attention and she has to recount all of the scenes that supposedly made the movie worthwhile. She seems to have some admiration for the prizewinning mom.
“I mean Evelyn could so easily have, you know, just surrendered to her circumstances,” she says as the vanbulance glides into the coming dusk. “But she just plain refused to sink. You know? She had other ideas about herself.”
“She didn’t really have any choice. Woody sure wasn’t stepping up.”
Cait tosses her cap onto the dashboard and runs her fingers through the length of her hair. She sees that I am looking. She smiles. Winks.
