World Gone Water

by Jaime Clarke

  “This is Charlie,” JSB said. “He’s a good guy.” JSB slapped me on the back with a force that propelled me forward. That JSB knew my name was an unaccountable thrill.

  “Very nice to meet you,” the woman said.

  “Here are the keys,” I said dumbly.

  The woman disappeared into the kitchen and JSB followed her, reappearing with two cans of soda. “For the road,” he said. I took the cans, wanting instead to be invited for dinner, to eat from expensive china and hear conversations littered with references to JSB’s friends: Ivan Boesky, the Wall Streeter who was eventually busted for insider trading; Michael Milken, the genius junk bond financier at Drexel Burnham whom the government charged with securities violations (my economics teacher at Randolph, a former broker at Drexel, first introduced me to the idea of junk bonds, and to the name Michael Milken; he began every class by pulling a bottle of Pepto-Bismol from his leather briefcase and chugging a healthy swig); or Sir James Goldsmith, the billionaire merchant banker. I relished the idea of annotating this fantasy dinner conversation with what little I knew about anything, indicating gently that I was willing to learn, wanted to be an apprentice.

  My new ranking among the runners was quickly apparent when Teddy approached me about a mission JSB wanted carried out. The noose was tightening around Buckley Cosmetics, it seemed, and JSB was making plans for life post-Buckley, having rented office space up the road for a real estate consulting firm. Few knew that JSB had handpicked a group of executives to move with him to this new business, and he wanted to furnish the new offices with furniture from the Buckley offices. So as not to alarm those employees who were not in the know, the furniture would be moved before and after working hours, JSB and others placing a small orange sticker on items that were to be moved up to the new offices.

  Secrecy was an essential element of the transition, and Teddy deputized me and Lance, another runner, for this very important responsibility. At first, Lance and I moved effortlessly, making a run in the morning and one in the afternoon; the offices up the road filled quickly with expensive furniture. We moved silent as cat burglars until a marble credenza we could barely lift wouldn’t fit in the elevator.

  “Should we even be doing this?” Lance asked me, exasperated. Lance had, from the outset, agreed to the mission simply because he wanted the overtime.

  “I’m sure it’s fine,” I replied, unsure if it was or not.

  “Then why do we have to sneak around like this?”

  I smelled revolt and did my best to quell it. “Teddy wouldn’t involve us in anything underhanded,” I said, a truth Lance couldn’t deny.

  Lance waited with the credenza, which we parked in the atrium of the small office building, the other occupants glancing at it curiously as they filed in for another day at the office, while I called Teddy to apprise him of the situation. The twenty or so tenants seemed to know that Jay Stanton Buckley was moving into their building, and they watched from their windowed offices as Lance and I brought expensive piece after expensive piece through the front door, up the elevator, and down the hall to the newly rented corner offices.

  Teddy’s instructions about the credenza did not make Lance happy.

  “This is ridiculous,” Lance said as I relayed Teddy’s directive to take the credenza to the unused stables on JSB’s property.

  The code for the back gate was the same as the code for the front, and we committed the combination to memory as we punched it in time and time again, the gates opening slowly as we ferried the overflow of furniture to the stables. Three or four runs in, Lance asked to be relieved of his overtime duties, and Teddy took his place without comment, gabbing with the Tongans who landscaped JSB’s property while we unloaded our take in the crisp fall morning air. I hoped JSB would remember my stamina when he made the move from Buckley to his new offices.

  My interest was more than simple employment: If I could catch JSB on his next upswing, a new life could be made, I guessed.

  The government had caught wind of JSB’s intention to flee, and upon my early arrival one morning I was met with the unhappy news that the FBI wanted to talk to me and Lance and Teddy. In fact, Teddy was already being interviewed in the conference room in legal. I sprinted across the compound to find out what was going on, a wild look in my eyes, bumping into William, a Southern lawyer who worked for JSB.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  I explained to him what was happening and he called me into his office and shut the door.

  “What’s the truth about the furniture?” he asked, sitting behind his desk.

  I told him the whole story, about Buckley’s new offices, about the moving expeditions before and after work, about the stash of furniture in JSB’s stables. A horrified look clouded William’s face. In the short time that I’d known him, I’d come to know that he was an aboveboard guy who did not tolerate dishonesty.

  “My advice is to tell them the whole thing,” he said. “It’s a felony to remove property from a bankruptcy estate.” It was the first time I understood that Buckley Cosmetics had filed for bankruptcy, rather than having the impression that it was an option. William’s words were not the legal comfort I was searching for. I wanted him to jump out from behind his desk, outraged, ready to defend me against the crush of a maniacal government run amok.

  It occurred to me that I might be in real trouble and I cursed JSB for putting me in a vulnerable position.

  The conference room door swung open and a red-faced Teddy charged out, asking over his shoulder, “Should I get a lawyer?” The two young, fresh-faced FBI agents answered that that was up to him. Teddy spotted me coming out of William’s office. “The boys had nothing to do with it,” Teddy added.

  “Thank you for your time,” one of the agents said, motioning for me to take a seat at the conference table.

  The legal conference room was a naturally dark room, its eastern exposure partially blocked by the accounting building across the compound. The FBI agents did not turn on the lights, but took their seats across the table from me. The credenza populated with tiny crystal tombstones commemorating Buckley’s various product launches caught what light was available, twinkling like a constellation behind them.

  “We already know from Teddy about your recent activities,” the one agent said. “We just want to hear it from you.”

  The agent’s use of Teddy’s nickname frightened me.

  “Are you aware that what you’ve done is a crime?” the other agent said. “One felony count for each item removed.”

  I looked the agents in the eye. I wanted to let them know that their tactics didn’t scare me, but it wouldn’t have been the truth. I told them what they wanted to know. Teddy had failed to mention the cache of furniture on JSB’s property, and I drew them a detailed map, providing them with the gate code, the last ounce of loyalty draining from my body.

  I’m Good for One More

  A ringing phone in the middle of the night is always bad news, but when Talie’s out with her friend Holly, it’s always the same bad news. “Charlie,” Talie’s voice falters on the other end. “Will you pick me up?”

  I try to rationalize, try to say it might be something else, too drunk to drive, lost her keys, anything.

  I wish Talie would’ve called Dale, but Dale wants to marry Talie and something like this might change his mind, even though Talie has never said she wants to marry Dale.

  I’d like to see Dale handle this one.

  The scene at Holly’s is as predictable as it was in high school, and I get into my old routine: ask Holly how Talie is, how it happened, who this time, where she is now.

  For a change, Holly isn’t acting groggy, like she doesn’t know the details.

  “It was this asshole from Texas,” she says, crying.

  Cowboys. I can’t stand them. Many cowboys have seen the inside of Holly’s apartment, which looks newly cleaned, each magazine and remote control whisked back to its proper place in anticipation of after-hours company. It’
s not me she had in mind when she cleaned earlier.

  “She didn’t do anything,” Holly is saying, defending Talie’s behavior. I haven’t even accused anybody and Holly is spinning the defense—this is how bad it really is.

  There’s common knowledge between us: I think Holly’s a slut, so she can’t help but not like me. The first time I was hauled out in the middle of the night, my sophomore year (there was a guy who had Talie’s shirt off in the backseat of Holly’s car), Holly didn’t say anything to me. Instead she stayed in her room while Talie explained very rationally about the four maybe five tequila shots that had poured her into the backseat of Holly’s car.

  Now I’m listening to what Holly’s saying, marking her words, “innocent,” “charming,” “seemed,” “drunk,” “outside.” The last word I hear makes me wish I were outside, listening to the little sounds the night makes when everything is where it should be in the world.

  Holly can’t force the narrative together and she breaks up, crying to the point of heaving, but I know no matter how bad it is in here, behind that door, inside her bedroom, it’s much, much worse.

  Talie’s on the bed in the dark and I go to her.

  When I wrap myself around her, she smells of alcohol and says it feels like she’s hurt for real. She doesn’t say anything else, doesn’t cry. I don’t either.

  “It’s okay,” I tell her.

  She says my name with a weak voice.

  “Yes?”

  She’s silent, whimpering a little, and I let up on my grip, gathering her around me, waiting for what’s next.

  It’s the first time we involve the police.

  I love that Talie isn’t embarrassed by the questioning, the photography. Talie answers the questions as they’re asked. I listen to the description of the perpetrator, hear his name, how it happened. I hear the words “not my fault” and I wonder about them, keep hearing them over and over.

  I’m asked some questions too. Being in the police station creeps me out.

  The officer seems to suspect everything, what we’ve said, how his desk is arranged, the way the sun starts coming up outside his window, people he works with saying hello.

  They want to talk to Holly too.

  I give my answers, saying things like “I can’t say” or “I don’t remember.”

  I remember coming close to being here once before but don’t tell the officer. A friend of Talie’s, in from out of town, some guy she knew once from somewhere. He left town before I got a chance to confront him. Talie didn’t spare me anything. The way she told it, he was all over her, but not at first. At first, always, everyone is innocent.

  We are finally released into the early morning and I drive us home in silence. Talie leans her head against the cold window but doesn’t close her eyes. I wish we were on our way to dinner, or to a movie, or to anywhere but Arrowhead.

  Thankfully, JSB has left for the office before we get back.

  “How can you sit there and take it?” Talie asks, standing in the kitchen.

  I ask her what choice I have.

  “You can stand up and do something,” Talie says. “Are you going to let this happen to me again?”

  “I’m not letting anything happen,” I tell her. I want to get out of the kitchen and into the living room, but Talie has me trapped. “Why didn’t Holly try and stop it?” I ask.

  “She did try,” Talie says, yells. “She climbed on his fucking back, but he knocked her out.” She starts to cry but won’t let me comfort her.

  “I don’t want you to hang out with Holly anymore,” I say, half saying it, floating a test balloon.

  “What?” she asks.

  I don’t let her scare me off my point.

  “Everything bad happens when you’re with Holly,” I point out. “I just would rather you didn’t—”

  “She’s my friend,” Talie says. “She tried to help me.”

  “I don’t believe you,” I say, a statement that confuses her, and she backs down.

  “I can’t believe you won’t do something about this,” she says. The phone rings and it’s Holly, my argument over. Talie recounts our early-morning activity and I’m forgotten in the kitchen. I’m planning my escape when I hear Talie in the other room, “Oh, really?” loud enough to know that it somehow involves me.

  “Well, someone’s going to do something,” she tells me, hanging up the phone.

  “Who? Holly? She’s done enough.”

  Talie shakes her head. “Dale.”

  “What’s he going to do?” I ask.

  Talie just shrugs. “He’s going to do what any man would do,” she says.

  “Not a rational man,” I say, getting mine in too.

  “Whatever,” she says, her key to many victories in our past. The phone rings again but I don’t wait to hear who it is, imagining it’s Dale, calling to detail his plan of action.

  The bar at the County Line is two deep all the way around, and I have to wait a half an hour for a small table in the corner. Several at the bar fit the description Talie gave the police, any or all of them looking capable. The one on the dance floor, some honkytonk with a halo of sweat from his hatband, becomes the focus of my investigation. For a moment, I fear for the woman he is dancing with, but then he turns, faces me straight on, and his weak jawline and sloping nose exonerate him.

  The two women behind the bar, older, late forties and all sex, are making the drinks so efficiently the drinking at the bar seems to increase, heated talk rising up toward the ceiling fans, where it’s spun around and forgotten. Two cowboys at the table next to mine rise up suddenly and one’s on the other, knocking over their chairs. I’m ready for the riot, the beer and the bad energy flowing through me, when the jukebox quits midway through a Hank Williams tune.

  “God damn it,” someone yells, a body moving through the crowd. The jukebox is plugged back in and then the brawlers are shown out. I’m ready to leave, satisfied with having made an effort, hoping it brings redemption in Talie’s eyes, when I spot the suspect sitting at a table in the opposite corner, quiet and alone.

  First off, he’s smaller than I pictured. Talie’s description made him out to be large and bulky, yet he’s nicely wedged in the corner, out of sight. He doesn’t seem to be looking around and doesn’t look up when someone backs into an empty chair at his table. Someone else asks if they can take it, and he lets them.

  I forget what he’s done for a moment and understand why he did it. In this place, Talie and Holly very easily would have been the most attractive—if not the only—women around. If I were this guy, and those two let me buy them a drink, let me dance close with them, twirling in the cake-clumped sawdust, I wouldn’t have expected them to say no, and I probably wouldn’t have believed them when they did.

  Keeping an eye on his table, I call the police, who tell me to stay where I am, which is what I plan to do. I’m going to wait ten minutes, giving the police some travel time, and then approach him, maybe push him around some. The other option is to charge at him with a broken bottle, a move I’ve never made, unsure if I’d be able to actually stab someone, something I’m pretty sure you’d have to be sure about before breaking the end off of a beer bottle.

  I’m admiring the different-shaped bottles at the bar, sizing each up for grip, and when I look back at the table in the corner, Dale is leaning into the guy. No one seems to notice, none of the backs at the bar swivel around with interest. Dale hoists the guy out of his seat and drags him toward me.

  I’m not happy to see either one of them.

  “Charlie, meet Shane,” he says. Shane is struggling in Dale’s grip and doesn’t look at me. It strikes me that Dale isn’t surprised to see me.

  Shane is dragged to the parking lot, more by Dale than by me, but I get a hand on him too. What exactly Dale has in mind isn’t known by me, but whatever it is, it’s going to take place in the darkened end of the blue-and-yellow-neoned pavement. Shane is forced to hug a telephone pole while Dale ropes his hands together. />
  “Do you know this guy?” Dale yells at Shane, pointing at me. Shane sees me for the first time and doesn’t recognize me. “Do you?”

  “No,” Shane says. “Fuck no, I don’t.”

  “You raped his sister,” Dale reminds him.

  “I didn’t rape her,” Shane says, which sends Dale off, a few kicks landing in Shane’s stomach, landing him on the ground.

  I’m bothered that Dale refers to Talie as my sister, which she obviously isn’t, instead of as my girlfriend, and it’s definitely something to ask him about later, but I’m too impressed by his heroics, and the old feeling of admiration I had for him from Talie’s letters returns.

  “Charlie, get what’s on my seat,” Dale says.

  I walk slowly to Dale’s truck, hoping the police will show up before this goes into real violence. I pick up the baseball bat on Dale’s front seat. The aluminum is cold and round and I heft it over my shoulder. I hit a piece of asphalt from the parking lot into the trees. The bat lets out a ping when I connect, and the sound travels to distances beyond where we’re standing.

  Shane cries out as I slam the door. A few guys stumble out of the County Line but make so much noise they don’t hear anything.

  Shane’s in bad shape now, his pants thrown up on the car next to us, a beer bottle wedged mouth-first up his ass. The thought occurs to me that whoever was drinking from that bottle earlier had no idea how it would be repurposed.

  “It won’t be as bad if you say you’re sorry,” Dale is telling Shane.

  I don’t think Shane buys it. I don’t.

  “Man, I’m telling you, I didn’t rape her,” Shane says, crying, I think.

  Dale whips the bat out of my hand, swinging it again and again in the air, warming up. A car pulls up behind us, the headlights shining so that I can see a few swallows of beer left in Shane’s glass tail.

  Holly and Talie get out and Talie gasps when she sees Shane.

  “Dale, don’t,” Holly says. “Don’t do it.”