Guy Langman, Crime Scene Procrastinator

by Josh Berk

  “I don’t see any reason to hold on to it for, you know, sentimental reasons,” she says. “We really could use the cash flow. Everything is losing value. Strange times.”

  “Strange times indeed,” I say.

  “I think I could live to be one hundred before I finish sorting through the paperwork in his, you know …” Here she lets her voice fall away.

  Mom could never bring herself to say the word “will.” Never once. She could make a million and one jokes about Dad and say “dead” with no problem. But she refuses to say “will” in that context. I think I understand why. It makes the whole thing seem like a business transaction. She always worried that people thought she married him for his money, and she was very touchy about it.

  Dad’s death is still a shock to her, I think. How could it not have been? Just another day of Fran playing dead in his armchair. She came down to see him, to play the stupid game. She sat on his lap, she told me. She kissed him. And he was cold. And she knew. She knew.

  Should I tell Mom what Mrs. Fields said? How can I? How can I not? But I need to know more.

  “Tell me … tell me more about him,” I say. “About when he was young.”

  “I really don’t think I know much more than you, Guy,” she says. “So much of that happened before I was around.”

  “Come on, Mom,” I say. “How did a Jewish kid from Newark end up scuba-diving with Jacques Cousteau in the first place?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. That was your father, though. If he met someone once, they loved him forever. He went on a trip to the islands when he was young, and Jacques was there and somehow your father talked his way onto his boat. He could talk his way through a locked vault, your father.”

  Sometimes I hate my mom. I really do. She is a locked vault. Is she ever going to talk about anything real? How can your husband die and you just joke about it? Doesn’t she realize that it’s messing me up to never get it all out there? Of course I say none of this. The favor I ask for in return? Tacos from Taco City for dinner. Maybe I should have held out for something greater, but sometimes it’s the little things. After we eat, I go up to my room and write some more:

  “Rules for Living”: The Francis Langman Story

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “You must respect everyone you meet, yet fear no one you meet. No matter who they are, they don’t know what the hell they’re doing in this life any more than you do.” —Francis Langman

  Francis Langman was on a trip to the islands when he met Jacques Cousteau, the French seaman who made all those movies. Now that the author considers it, Fran probably cracked the ice with J. Cousteau with some sort of “seaman” joke. He probably bumped into him and then said, “Aw, man. Now I got seaman all over me.” That’s what the author would have done.

  Langman then talked his way into the Cousteaus’ inner circle and began taking scuba seriously. He used his knowledge of bagel-making to help with some sort of scuba valve. Bagels are boiled in a vat, and there are a lot of valves and tubes. It’s oddly rather like scuba—just with more cream cheese and less sharks. Both have a fair amount of tuna, I guess.

  Anyway, he invented the Langman valve. It’s still out there. You can look that up. It’s part of most every scuba system sold in the past thirty years. But the real money came from the treasure. It was a sunken boat from the 1600s. He kept some of it, sold some. He had a few ancient coins in the attic, supposedly worth a ton. He always told me never to tell anyone about them. Probably they are cursed.

  The next step was taking that money and buying real estate and stock. Which was cool for a long time, because property makes money without doing anything. “Property owner” is really a sweet lazy man’s game. But it sucks now, because Mom has to sell some of the properties. The main reason this sucks is because the author needs a ride to school tomorrow, and now he has to ride the stupid bus. Why doesn’t Mom deal with her grief? Why does the global real estate market have to collapse the one day I need a ride? Why did Dad have to die, anyway? I’m not saying the whole world is against me, but sometimes I really think it just might be.

  What is up with Jacques Langman? Psycho. What was he doing at the funeral? What is his angle? Where is he living? Can I use my bad-ass forensics skills to find him? And what do I say to him when I do?

  I fear this book is losing some of its literary objectivity. It’s just becoming Guy Langman’s Sad Journal, but I’m not keeping a feelings journal because you told me to, Dr. Waters. I’m not!

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The population of bus-riding students at Berry Ridge High is ridiculously small. Absolutely every student of driving age not named for Sir Guy of Goddamn Gisborne has a car and drives themselves. And everyone who is too young to drive hitches a ride from someone else in class or gets their parents to drive them. I think the parents like showing off in the parking lot even if they pretend they don’t like having to haul their kids in. The parking lot is like some sort of luxury car show.

  I walk down to the bus stop in the gray half-light of a wet morning. I wonder if the bus driver will even notice me here. There is never anyone at this stop, as far as I know. I haven’t taken the bus in years, and at first I couldn’t even remember where the bus stop is. Mom assured me that it’s in the same old place that it ever was—on the corner near the playground, across from Mrs. Martin’s huge white house with the pillars. Standing there in the shadow of that big house, staring at the towering maple trees—it brings back innocent memories of elementary school.

  The whole world seemed brighter back then. Cleaner too. Maybe the bus won’t stop. What would I do with my day? Just stand here. Maybe a nap on the bench. Maybe go down the slide a few hundred times. That’s all it took back then to feel joy. Amazing. Climb up, whoosh down. A slide—the sheer basic existence of gravity—was enough to fill your elementary-school-aged heart with glee. Shit is, to put it mildly, quite a bit more complicated these days. I spent a lot of time imagining the awesomeness of “being a teenager” when I was in elementary school. I thought it would be all parties and fast cars and hot girls. I thought I’d wear tank tops and jeans and lean against a car and that would be it. I even thought it would be great when I was old enough so that my parents would let me mow the lawn. Ha. Irony. Nothing is ever what we think it will be. That’s why I can’t get a boner about college—it’s just going to be more of the same stupid crap. I see the bus approach through my nostalgic haze and, unfortunately, it stops. Doesn’t even look surprised to see me. Mom probably called ahead. She would.

  I enter the bus, sizing up the pleasant and plump middle-aged lady bouncing behind the wheel. She’s wearing a sweatshirt with a picture of a cat wrapped in red yarn. Even the curls of her hair appear to be smiling. “Good morning!” she sings, the tune a chipper riff on the first three notes of “Jingle Bells.”

  I narrow my eyes. “I’m onto you,” I say. She laughs. “I’m not kidding,” I say. She laughs again. With some people, you just can’t win.

  I scan the bus. It is a ridiculous waste of gasoline with its enormous rattling engine and one hundred seats. Only a few seats are occupied. There are a couple of freshmen whose names I don’t know and one kid from my grade sitting alone.

  “Hey, Hairston,” I say. Who else but Hairston Danforth III? Penis-Head glumly blinks a weary hello. His black hair is uncombed, a messy pile of bed head. He runs his fingers through it while staring at me, then returns his eyes to the screen of his smartphone. Who knows what he’s doing on there. Rumor has it that Hairston is some sort of hacker. A genius at it. I’m not sure I believe that. There have been lots of weird rumors about Hairston since he moved into town a few years back. That he’s a millionaire. That he’s a heroin addict. A kleptomaniac. An arms smuggler. That he takes off his glasses and becomes a crime-fighting caped crusader. Okay, not really that last one.

  I think he’s just a lonely guy who likes farting around with computers and stuff because it’s easier than talking to people. Hairston is often dressed in
a peculiar fashion, and this day is no exception. He is wearing a sweater with dancing reindeer on it. Does he shop at the same place as the bus driver? Probably. “You ride the bus?” I ask. It is a dumb question. What tipped me off? The fact that he is riding on the bus?

  “Indeed, it would seem that I do,” he says. His voice matches his face. It is a dirge, a sad funeral march. For some reason, whenever anyone talks to me in that sad, slow way I get increasingly and annoyingly chipper. My attempt to balance out the yin and yang of the universe, I guess.

  “Why’s that, Harry?” I ask, taking the seat in front of him and tapping happily on the plastic seat.

  “My parents are out of town,” he says, with no trace of joy. “They are quite often out of town. Business trips and the like.”

  He is making it clear that he wishes not to continue this conversation. His eyes head back down to the screen of his phone. His voice has the sound of a door being locked behind you. I press on, driven by some inner need to be annoying, I guess.

  “So the parents are away on business, huh, Hair-Bear?” I ask. “What kind of business are they in?”

  “The family business,” he says. “The business of business of business.”

  This makes no sense, but I let it go. I just keep babbling. I don’t know why. “My dad got rich doing sea-diving and stuff. He has literal sunken treasure in our house. Coins and stuff in a cigar box in the attic. Crazy, right?” He shrugs. I press on, changing the topic just to keep talking, I guess. “You don’t have your own car?” I ask. “You’re a junior, right? You should be driving fast, wearing a tank top and jeans.”

  “I’m only fifteen,” he says, blinking his sad eyes.

  “Wait, what? How did you end up as a fifteen-year-old junior?” I ask.

  He looks up. His face shows nothing, a dull mask. He doesn’t even blink as we stare at each other for an awkwardly long time. I think I see his right eyebrow twitch, but that might just be in my mind. It’s a pretty impressive set of eyebrows he has. It really looks like they should have a heartbeat of their own.

  “Go on,” I say.

  “Must I?” he asks.

  “Yes,” I say. I have no authority to demand that he go on, but acting like you have authority in any situation usually works. I’d seen Dad do it a million times. Never felt like I could try it myself. Thing is, though, it actually works. On Penis-Head, anyway.

  “When I was in second grade, all the other kids teased me mercilessly,” Hairston says.

  “The Penis-Head thing?” I ask. He gives me a startled look, drawing his arms in toward his chest quickly.

  “No!”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  “Do people call me Penis-Head?” he asks.

  “You know that they do,” I say. “I mean, some people. Jerks, mostly.”

  “Yeah, I know they do,” he says. “I was just joking. You do. You call me that.”

  “Yeah, but I’m not a jerk. I’m just breaking your balls, Harry. It’s not your fault you can’t eat peanuts. Hey, look at me, I hate ketchup.”

  “Well, I wish that you would not, ahem, break my balls … And please don’t call me Harry. I hate that worse than Penis-Head.”

  “Really? Do I really need to call you Hairston Danforth the Third all the time?”

  “Just Hairston is fine.”

  “So, Just Hairston, what happened back in second grade?”

  “Just general teasing, I guess. The standard schoolyard torment that has become the fundamental architecture of my life.” Hairston talks exactly like an old man when you get him talking. It is kinda weird. Especially for a fifteen-year-old.

  “Kids are jerks,” I say, not knowing what else to say.

  He sighs, closing his puffy eyes, a gesture full of pain and too much world-weariness for someone so young. I decide to be nicer to Penis—Hairston—from now on.

  “The kids, they were mean,” he says. I guess we’re not done here. “I convinced my mother to lobby the school to let me skip a grade.”

  “Ah, I see,” I say. “She wrote a check, like with the peanut thing, and they let you skip to third grade?”

  “Something like that,” he says. “Oh, okay, exactly that.”

  “Did it work out for ya?” I ask.

  “How’s that?”

  “Was the third-grade experience more to your liking?” I decide to try to make myself talk like an old man to see if he can better understand me.

  “What do you think the third-grade experience was like for me?” he asks, again with the world-weary sigh.

  “I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the third graders were just as big of jerks as the second graders.”

  “Even bigger.”

  “Sorry to hear that,” I say. Thing is, I am sorry to hear it.

  “Which is why I’m on the bus. Parents are out of town. I won’t be sixteen until the end of the year. I have friends, but they all go to North Berry Ridge.”

  “Stupid North Berry Ridge,” I say reflexively.

  “None of our classmates is exactly dying to show up at school carting old Penis-Head around.”

  I almost feel like I should offer him a ride sometime. But it’s Anoop’s call, I guess. All I say is, “Sucks.”

  “The sooner I’m out of here, the better,” he says. He gestures toward the mostly empty bus, but I’m pretty sure he doesn’t just mean the bus. “For everyone.”

  “And the sooner you can get into that family business,” I say, ignoring that final low-self-esteem comment and trying to encourage Hairston to be happy.

  “The business of business,” he says, “does not interest me.”

  What does interest him? I don’t ask. Do I want to know? Not really. “Hey, you should come back to Forensics! It’s pretty fun.” Why do I say that? Do I even think it?

  “I do enjoy Forensics,” he says. “But I decided I did not wish to belong to any club which would have me as a member.”

  “Groucho Marx!” I say. “One of my dad’s favorites.”

  “Plus it cut into the time I reserve for my hobbies.”

  “Okay, sure,” I say. “Stamp-collecting, stuff like that?”

  “Something like that,” he says with an evil grin. Then he changes the subject. “Hey, sorry about your dad,” Hairston says. The bus swings to a stop outside of school. I am glad I don’t have to think too much about how to respond to that.

  “Okay, see you later, dude!” I blurt. I make my way past the empty rows. “School-bus lady,” I say. “I’m onto you.”

  “Have a great day,” she sings like it’s the final refrain of a great Broadway show tune.

  “I’m onto you,” I say.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Being Anoop-less, my day is lonely. Here’s there, but he’s not there. It’s especially bad at lunch. Where is he? I look around. Just, you know, taking in the sights. Enjoying the institutional orange-colored walls and the view of the parking lot. Shut up, I’m not looking for Anoop. I don’t care where he is. I think about trying to find Hairston, of all people, just to have someone to shoot the breeze with, but even he is nowhere to be found. It’s a weird feeling, the sensation that everyone in the world is avoiding you. The cafeteria is filled with a thousand little dramas, fights and teasing and studying and obsessive panic over stuff that pretty clearly doesn’t mean anything. Everyone is fixing their hair all the time. For what? I feel deep with these kinds of thoughts as I sit alone eating my pesto and leeks (or whatever).

  More deep thoughts: Maybe someday I’ll leave all the nonsense of life behind and go live on top of a mountain. What did Dad say about that, though? “People who try to escape life are really just trying to escape their own minds. Which is unfortunate because of how it’s strapped inside your head.” Something like that. True enough. Plus, mountains are really high up there. Not a big fan of climbing. And no matter where you are, you still have to look at your tuchus in the mirror every morning. I pass through the rest of the day having thoughts like this. Trying to
focus on literature, failing. Trying to care about Social Studies, failing. Trying to pretend I’m a real person living a real life. Failing.

  I do go to Forensics Squad after school. As soon as I enter the dungeon, the mood feels strange. No Anoop. I am wondering if Maureen will be cool toward me like she was when she offered a ride or totally weird to me like she was in the car. Was it her mom who made her act weird? Did people hear that I invited Penis-Head to come back? What if he shows up?

  Maureen Fields walks in. She catches my eye. No, not like that. It’s her outfit. She has on black and gray camouflage-patterned pants and a black army-style jacket studded with bright silver points up and down the collar. It gives her the look of a soldier with rounds of bullets strapped to her chest. Her books are crammed into an army surplus backpack that has been turned nearly black with scrawlings from what must have been a whole case of black markers. The only part of her outfit with any touch of color is her hair—the bangs of which have been bleached and then died a shocking pink. You wouldn’t dress like that unless you wanted people to comment on it, right? One would think. One would be wrong.

  “Hey, MF, nice look,” I say. She scowls. I can see her jaw muscles working. She is literally grinding her teeth at me. “I did not ask for your approval, Guy,” she says.

  “Dude, I’m just saying I like it.”

  “Don’t call me dude.”

  “What the hell?” I ask. “What did I say?”

  “I know you’re going to make fun of me, and I’m not in the mood to hear it. I could make fun of your outfit if I wanted to.”

  I am wearing the standard GL ensemble, the most classic outfit the world has ever known: white T-shirt, jeans, and Chuck Taylor sneakers.

  “I don’t want you to make fun of me, no. But I also feel like pointing out that I’m dressed in a way that is beyond reproach.”

  “Beyond reproach?”

  “Beyond reproach.”

  “Your shoes are untied.”

  “Why tie them? They’re just going to have to be untied again anyway.”