Guy Langman, Crime Scene Procrastinator

by Josh Berk

  I’m playing with the magnifying glass, staring at the back of the card for some reason. I notice a dot in the lower-left-hand corner. I look closer. It’s not a dot, but letters, written in a tiny font! Like maybe two-point Times New Roman. I look closely, staring with the magnifying glass. It’s initials. My initials: GL.

  “Hey, Anoop, look at this,” I say. He is working hard, of course, examining the ever-living crap out of some whorls. “It says ‘GL’ on the back of my card.”

  “Why on earth are you looking at the back of the card?” he asks, peering closely and jotting notes in the fancy little leather-bound notebook he always carries.

  “Just look at the back of yours,” I command.

  He sighs his annoying “I’m humoring you, Guy” sigh again, but he looks anyway. “Huh,” he says. “It says ‘TK.’ ” I look up and see a smile run across Mr. Zant’s face. When he notices me looking, he quickly glances away and pretends to be seriously interested in a chart on the wall explaining which fish of the North Pacific are overfished.

  “Uh, wuzzu?” TK says. He had heard Anoop mention his name, so looks up, perplexed.

  “I wasn’t saying your name, TK,” Anoop says. “I was saying ‘TK.’ ”

  TK narrows his eyes.

  “My name is TK,” he says.

  “I just … never mind,” Anoop says.

  “Hey, Raquel,” I say, feeling bold, glad to have a reason to talk to her. “Are there initials on the back of your card?”

  She looks up from her magnifying glass, flips her hair in a gesture so cute that I almost faint, and turns the card over.

  “Yeah,” she says. “It says ‘MF.’ ”

  We all laugh. Okay, mainly I laugh. Why would Zant write an abbreviation for the filthiest word possible on a card? But wait: maybe it’s not that. My brain is churning away. I see a trend!

  HD, MF, TK, GL … “Mr. Zant!” I say. “Each card has initials on the back.”

  “Is that right?” he asks, faking like it’s news to him. He is being very kind to me. Apparently the fact that I am a dedicated practitioner of hard science (yeah, right) has compelled him to forgive me for the weird scene I caused the previous day. I resolve to be less weird. Or, you know, at least to try.

  “Everyone, please look on the back of your cards with your magnifying glasses,” I say. Saying “please” is classy, right? Girls like it? Maureen and TK flip their cards over while Mr. Zant grins his rakish smile.

  “Mine says ‘AC,’ ” Maureen says in her little hamster-squeak voice.

  “And, uh, this says, um, ‘RF,’ ” TK says. Hairston doesn’t say anything at first, but it’s pretty clear to me that he got his own card. It must say “PH” on the back. Wait, no: “HD.”

  “Yeah, mine says ‘HD,’ ” mumbles Hairston. “ ‘High Definition,’ oh yeah, maybe that could be my new nickname!” Shockingly, everyone ignores him. Good try, though, Penis-Head.

  “Do you see a pattern in this information?” Mr. Zant asks, smiling again. “A good deal of forensics work is recognizing patterns, whether in the whorls of a fingerprint or in the behavior of a killer.”

  “Those are everybody’s initials!” I yell. Again, volume control is getting the best of me.

  “ ‘GL’ is me, ‘AC’ is Anoop, ‘MF’ is Maureen, ‘RF’ is Raquel, ‘HD’ is Hairston, and ‘TK’ is, well, TK.”

  “That’s right, Guy!” Mr. Zant says. “Now, why do you think those letters are on those cards?”

  I have no idea. No one does. It is silent, the only audible noise being the click and purr of the AC overhead. (I mean the air conditioning, not Anoop Chattopadhyay. That would be weird if he were clicking and purring.)

  It is Raquel who speaks up. Smart girl. “Are these, like, our fingerprints?” she asks. She gestures for TK to hand over the card that reads “RF” and then compares her actual digits to the print on the card, checking whorls in the flesh, I guess.

  “This definitely looks like my fingerprint,” she says. “Freaking weird.”

  Mr. Zant just smiles and then slowly walks out of the room, sneaking away like we are dozing guard dogs he doesn’t want to awaken. Comments from the six of us go something like this:

  “So, wait: he did all this in one day? Scanned our prints and made these cards?”

  “And he didn’t know who would be back today. He must have done it for everyone who was here yesterday.”

  “He seriously needs a life.”

  “Or a girlfriend.”

  “I nominate me.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Isn’t it, like, illegal to collect our fingerprints? He needs a warrant!”

  “That’s only if you’re arrested.”

  “And if he’s a police officer.”

  “Is he?”

  “Didn’t you even read that form you signed? You consented to allow him to collect your fingerprints and DNA for educational purposes.”

  “Nah, I never read that kind of crap.”

  “Ew, he can collect our DNA?”

  “I bet you’d like that.”

  “Gross!”

  “So how did he get our fingerprints? What a freak!”

  Then we go silent for a minute. How did he get our fingerprints?

  Maureen, that bad MF, speaks up. “He probably lifted our fingerprints from the papers we signed yesterday,” she says. “With fingerprint tape or whatever. Then he scanned them into a computer and printed them out on these cards. And it’s not hard to print in a tiny font. I’ve done it before. Just use a word processor and set the font to like a two-point font or whatever.”

  “I knew it!” I yell. “Two-point Times New Roman!” I sort of like fonts. Most everyone looks at me like I am an idiot. Maureen smiles.

  Then Mr. Zant sticks his head back into the classroom. “Maureen is correct,” he says in a chipper voice, clapping his hands once. I guess he was listening from outside. Or he has the room bugged. “Did you enjoy today’s exercise?” he asks. The whole thing was definitely on the creepy side, but all heads are nodding. We agree that we kind of did enjoy the exercise. “I think we’re going to have one heck of a good year,” he says. Anoop agrees. He happily files the fingerprint cards into his notebook. I’m not so sure.

  “If by ‘good,’ you mean super-creepy to the max, Zant-O,” I say, “then we’re in agreement here, my friend. Yes-sir-ee …”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Later that day I am at home, writing like mad with a pen on an old notepad. The goal is to make a record of every single thing I can remember my father ever saying to me. Or, okay, every interesting thing. I don’t write down things like “Leave me alone for the next two hours, I’m planning on taking a crap the likes of which the world has never known.” (Actual Francis Langman quote.) Although really, even the meaningless things feel like maybe they mean something. Isn’t that what life is? A series of meaningless things? Some real gems come to mind, like the time I was upset about something and Dad responded by telling me that someday it wouldn’t matter. What he actually said was, “Some day this unpleasantness will just be an ant fart in the hurricane of history.” I’m writing that down. Writing and writing and writing.

  I haven’t worked this hard on anything in a while. I’m not one of those people who spend hours online, and I certainly am not known for spending serious blocks of time doing homework. What do I like to do most of all? Short answer: Not much. Long answer: Cartoons, video games, and bubble baths. I guess Anoop was right. If I get around to applying for college, it will be a pretty weird application. So Mom is surprised to see me working so hard.

  “What’s this mammoth project ya seem to be working on, GL?” she asks. I didn’t even notice her come in. I don’t know where she was, but she’s dressed nicely—a bright blue skirt-and-jackety thing with bright gold buttons. “War and Peace?” she cracks.

  When I tell her what I am actually working on—a collection of the wisdom of one Francis Langman—she rolls her eyes, twice. Dad has been dead less than ha
lf a year, but she has already moved past the grieving widow phase and has apparently found comfort in making fun of him as a way to bury her feelings. Hey, Dr. Waters, I don’t even need to go to Slippery Rock to figure that one out.

  “What time did ya start?” she asks.

  “As soon as I got home,” I say. “About three.”

  “Then I reason ya would have been done by about three oh’ nuthin’.” She laughs, then coughs. It echoes off the cathedral ceiling and creeps me out. I made her give up her pack-a-day habit after Dad died, but apparently the cough stays even after you quit. She’s young for a mom (way younger than her deceased husband) and young-looking for her age, but she sounds old when she laughs like this. It scares me.

  “Don’t speak ill of the dead, Ma,” I say.

  “Then we pretty much can’t speak of him at all, can we?” she says, her voice suddenly smooth again. She bats her eyelashes. That might sound like a harsh thing to say about your recently dead husband, but, like I said, it’s her way of coping. I’m pretty sure I am going to have a weird sense of what marriage is supposed to look like. And I don’t just mean that my dad was decades older than my mom, although there is that.

  “Mom,” I say. “Tell me Dad’s life story again.” I know a few things: dates and facts, names and places. I have snapshots, video clips, images of funny haircuts and tacky suits, and of course my own memories. But what about the nooks and crannies? When he was alive and would say, “Back in my day, son …,” I tended to tune him out.

  “Where, oh where to begin?” she asks. “Your father was born in the Great Depression, and he spent the rest of his life making sure ‘great depression’ described his effect on the life of everyone he met.” Funny. (Not really. And anyway, I know it isn’t true. Dad made everyone happy, ex-girlfriends excluded. In addition to that rather lengthy list, no matter who you were—from children to ancient war veterans, from crazy hippies to billionaire businessmen—all sorts and types loved Francis Langman.) The other part is true: he was born during the Great Depression. And the year I was born minus 1929 equals the fact that my dad was clinically old by the time I was born. Right around his sixty-something birthday. Viva Viagra! Okay, that is gross.

  “What else do ya wanna know?” Mom asks.

  “Everything.”

  “GL, words can’t describe that man,” she says. I can tell she is trying to change the subject, but I don’t feel like letting her off the hook.

  “Try, Ma,” I say. “What was his childhood like?”

  “In Newark? He probably had a regular childhood for a Newark kid in the 1930s.”

  “What does that even mean?”

  “How am I supposed to know? He lived many lives before he met me,” she says with a dismissive hand gesture, like a bird trying to flutter away. Her gold bracelets jangle. “Probably stickball, pool halls, smoking in the boys’ room. Hanging out with all the other Jews on Prince Street. Chasing girls.”

  “He was a stud,” I say, laughing. Why did I say that? It sets her off.

  “Oh, he was. I fell for him hard. He had a … a way about him …”

  I know where the conversation is going. Since his death, she doesn’t generally like to talk much about Francis, but she loves to tell tales of the romantic gestures that made up their courtship. Tales of song and dance, wine and roses, hot tubs and back rubs. Um, nope. Time to go up to my room. It seems I’m going to have to investigate the life of Francis Langman another way.

  Just as I get up to my room and climb over the mountains of clothes and other junk on the floor to flick on the Atari, my phone rings. Most people just text me—only one person actually likes to chat with actual mouth-words. I don’t feel much like the mouth-words, but I pick up anyway.

  “Aren’t you glad you signed up?” Anoop asks.

  “No,” I say, just because I don’t want him to be all smug. I can picture him. “Are you doing the smug chin?” I ask. He laughs.

  “Oh, you’re glad,” he says. “I can tell. You can thank me later.”

  “I can thank you never, Smug Chin,” I say.

  “You’re welcome, tool-supply store,” he replies. “You’ll be back.” I want to disagree, but I sort of know that he’s right.

  “Did you just call to be smug?” I ask.

  “Also because I miss the sound of your voice,” he says.

  “Nice.”

  “Also, I wanted to tell your mom I’ll be by later,” he says. And then he stops himself. He always used to pretend he was having an affair with my mom, which was gross but funny. He’s stopped since my dad died, out of respect, I guess. It’s not as funny now that she’s a single woman. Eesh. Just thinking about the phrase “single woman” gets me a bit teary. Screw it. I don’t care if Anoop wants to talk about boning my mom. Okay, maybe I care a little.

  I make small talk with Anoop for a little while longer, but I don’t much feel like it. I make some excuse to get off the phone and promise him I’ll see him tomorrow. I don’t feel like playing video games either, really. Man, there might really be something wrong with me. I think of Dr. Waters’s question: “Do you no longer enjoy things that give you pleasure?” At the time, I laughed because I thought she was talking about jerking off, but maybe there’s something to it. Maybe I am depressed. Crap.

  I feel like the walls of my room are closing in on me, so I go into the hall. It’s not any better. The whole house is smothering me. I realize what it is. It’s everywhere. My father. Even if Anoop hadn’t made that awkward little joke, I’d be thinking about Dad. It’s impossible not to think of him in that house—everything screams his name like a chorus of ghosts haunting my every step. Chairs and tables, even the carpet and the TV—all have a Francis Langman story. The crescent-moon coffee stain on the tablecloth. A drinking glass can set off a memory. Seeing one in the sink that Mom must have just had a drink out of earlier takes me back to some of the strongest memories ever.

  I’ll never forget the first time my father died. Or the last. Several of the ones in the middle are sort of a blur. But those two are the ones I will always remember. Francis Langman had a really dark sense of humor. There was nothing he couldn’t make a joke out of. And when he started to get up there in years, “pushing eighty with both hands,” as he would put it, everyone started giving him advice.

  “Stop smoking.”

  “Watch what you eat—no fatty foods.”

  “Get some mild exercise—nothing strenuous.”

  He joked that what they were saying was, “Try not to die today.”

  “Why don’t you just say that?” he’d ask. “Just tell me to try to avoid kicking it.” Usually my mom was the one giving him advice for healthy living, so she was the one on the end of his sharp comebacks. “Why don’t you just say ‘Frannie—you’re looking like you’re about dead. Why don’t you try and not die today?’ ”

  Mom didn’t really think it was all that funny. I sort of did. Although now, looking back on it, it wasn’t funny at all. Did I really delude myself into thinking that his end would never come? How stupid was I? But then again, Dad was the kind of guy who honestly seemed immortal. And after all, he did die many times.

  I guess I mean he “died” many times. It must have been after some fight with Mom over the contents of his nighttime ritual (two cigars and three glasses of whiskey with just a little ice) that he dreamt up the plan. I can now imagine his gruff voice as he says to himself, “If they think I’m gonna be dead, let ’em see me dead!” So one night—a rare night when I was actually out doing something (nothing exciting, just movies with Anoop)—I came back sort of late. And there was Dad, sitting on his tattered leather chair in the den with a frozen look on his withered face. His mouth was open, his eyes were fixed in a far-off gaze, and his empty glass had rolled to a stop on its side a few feet away. He was dead.

  “Dad!” I screamed, my heart rocketing in my chest. I said it several times, my words punching the quiet night air. My voice started high and ended low, a descending scale
of grief and sadness ending in a subsonic moan. “Dad! Dad! Dad! Dad …”

  Mom came rushing down from her bed upstairs. She often went to bed an hour or so before the old man. She was rubbing her eyes, clutching her sleep mask, and running down the stairs, her fancy new robe trailing behind like a superhero’s cape.

  I tried to find the words. Tried to say, “He’s dead.” But the vowels stuck in my throat. I could only gasp, a sick high-pitched hiss, like when you pinch the neck of a balloon and let the air out in a whine. “Nooooooo,” I finally said, the only word I could find.

  And then Dad started smiling, then giggling, then full-on laughing, then shouting.

  “You should see the goddamn looks on your goddamn faces! Why didn’t I think to bring down a camera! Ha-ha. Goddamn priceless.”

  I thought Mom was going to faint. I thought I was going to faint. But we just stood there, our eyes leaping out of our heads like the eyes of cartoon characters. We looked at each other and then at him, back and forth, still totally stunned.

  “Relax. I’m just yanking your chain,” he said. “You won’t believe how long I’ve been sitting here, Guy. I thought you said your movie ended at ten-thirty. What were you doing? Getting to second base with your boyfriend?”

  “Christ,” I said. And then I added, in a still-stunned whisper, “We went to the Berry Ridge Diner after.”

  “Well, let this be a goddamn lesson to you both,” he said. “I ain’t dying anytime soon. So quit worrying about me and let me live my goddamn life.”

  After that time, Dad “died” many more times. I can’t remember how many times I’d come home and find him playing “corpse” in some odd position or another. I’d gasp, and he’d always jump up with a laugh or an improvised song with an Irish melody: “Hey there, Guy / You thought I’d died / But your old man lied / Your old man ain’t never gonna dieeeee.” Sometimes he’d hop up and full-on break into a jig in his robe and underpants.

  Except, of course, for last May, when he didn’t …

  Every room of the house is weirding me out. I decide to hide up in the attic. This is a terrible idea. It’s weirding me out worse. It’s filled with Dad’s personal effects. Man, it’s so weird how after you die, your things become your “effects.” No one ever calls your things your “effects” while you’re alive, do they? Maybe when you go to jail. I’m totally going to start calling my things my “effects.” And I’m also totally going to start wearing an ascot. Dad has a bunch of awesome ascots among his effects. I can’t quite figure out how to tie one, but it still looks cool draped across my neck. I don’t look as cool as he did in all these pictures. There are a lot of pictures among his “effects.” I don’t think Mom has even gone through all this stuff. She jokes about him, but I don’t think she likes to think too much about him being gone. I think back to the funeral. She put those sunglasses on, covered her eyes, hid her tears, and that was that. Sunglasses are totally a symbol for not dealing with shit, right, Dr. Waters?