by Lila Shaara
May Wiley answered the phone after two rings. It took several exchanges before she understood who Harry was. She sounded moderately pleased to hear from him. When he told her that he was planning to be in Pennsylvania for the next few days, she didn’t immediately ask him to visit. “I’m bringing Dusty with me,” he said, and as he’d expected, that secured the invitation.
“How old is he now?” she asked.
“Fourteen. He’ll be fifteen in August.” He didn’t want to tell her why Dusty had so much time free before the school year was over but was a little disappointed that this didn’t rouse her curiosity at all.
“You should both come by one morning. Thursdays are best. Before lunch.”
Harry had expected an invitation to spend the night, or at least to have a meal. He thought, I’d forgotten how little they liked me.
“Make sure you call first,” she said.
Ann said, “When will you be back?”
“I don’t know, exactly.”
“We haven’t talked about what to do about our son.”
“There are only a few weeks of school left after his suspension’s up. We’ll be back by then. He’ll finish out the year here, then he’ll come back with me for next year.”
“Country schools? Come on, Harry.”
“I have it on good authority that they’re not so bad.” He wasn’t surprised she didn’t fight harder to keep Dusty with her.
“Are you seeing that waitress?” Harry poured himself another cup of coffee to buy himself a moment. She continued, “At least you didn’t say it’s none of my business. I guess it isn’t, but Harry, I hate to see you settle for someone just because they’re inferior to you. Even though I know it must be a boost to your ego.”
Harry said, “You’ve changed your tune,” but she didn’t seem to understand him, and he didn’t say anything else about it.
Dusty was sullen about the trip, but Harry was surprised that he didn’t get more resistance from him. Ann drove them to the airport. She gave Dusty a kiss on the cheek and ran out the automatic doors without a backward wave.
36
PAGE OF CUPS
A young man of principle; kind, an artist or a poet
After the seat belt sign went off, Dusty replaced his earbuds and closed his eyes. Harry found that the purple-checked pattern of the upholstery on the seats in front of them was oddly hypnotic when stared at for minutes on end; it made him think of Miss Tokay. He had to nudge his son several times before the earbuds came out again.
“What?”
“We’ve got to talk sometime, you know.”
“About what?”
Harry sighed, trying to keep his anger in check. It’s a good thing, he thought, that kids don’t know how much we suppress. It would terrify them to know how often their parents are close to being completely out of control. “You’re not stupid. You know perfectly well what.”
Dusty went for the earbuds again, and Harry grabbed them. His son’s hands were too big for his skinny arms. He’s going to be gigantic, Harry thought. I’d better get my bluff in now. “No more iPod till we both agree we’re finished. For the moment. Your mother bought you another one?”
“Grandma did.”
“I wouldn’t have. How many is it that you’ve lost now?”
Dusty shrugged.
“So what the hell is up with you? You spray-painted ‘rich bastards’ on the wall of the gym.”
“It was ‘rich bloated bastards.’ ”
My literate son, thought Harry. “I’m willing to concede that you go to school with a bunch of them, but you know what? I’m not home-schooling you. Neither is your mother.” At that, Harry couldn’t prevent the laugh provoked by the image of Ann sitting in front of Dusty in front of a chalkboard, pointer in hand. Dusty suddenly laughed, too, and for several minutes they both laughed harder and harder till the tears were rolling from their eyes. It took almost a minute for each of them to sober up.
“Good one.” Dusty leaned back in the seat and closed his eyes again.
“Not sleeping, huh?”
“Not too well. It’s okay, though.”
“Teenagers never get enough sleep. I didn’t. Unfortunately, I don’t now either.” He looked at the earbuds in his hands. “So what happened?”
“Nothing happened.”
“Was it that girl again?”
His son pursed his lips, his eyes still closed, and sighed. “No.”
Inspiration came. “Does it have something to do with all the sh—stuff you’ve been losing? Is someone ripping you off?”
Dusty opened his eyes, turned, and regarded him the way one would a hopelessly incontinent puppy. “You don’t say ‘ripping you off’ anymore, Dad.”
Two can play the sarcasm game, he thought. “Yes, that’s the important issue right now. Answer the question.”
“No one stole anything.” Harry waited, pretending to be Maggie, figuring if he sat and stared at his son long enough, he’d cave and spill everything. Dusty carefully looked out the window at blinding light reflected off cottony clouds. “I gave them away.”
Harry forbade himself from saying anything, although he wanted to yell questions. He “did a Maggie” as he imagined Dusty would call it and continued to look silently at his son.
“I met this guy. A kid. A little older than me. He was homeless. He smelled pretty bad. He borrowed my iPod.”
Harry dug a fingernail into his palm to keep himself from grabbing his son by the lapels and ripping the whole story from him at once. “Oh?” he said casually. “Where did you meet this kid?”
“At the bus station. When I came back from seeing you at Christmas. Mom was a few minutes late getting me.”
“She was?” Harry swore in his mind, loudly.
“I went back a week or so later. After school. I saw him again. He told me he’d sold it. He got forty dollars for it, and to him that’s a whole lot of money. So I said okay, and I gave him my cell phone.”
“What’s he doing at the bus station? Panhandling?”
“Yeah, I guess that’s what you call it. He has a cup and sh—stuff.”
Harry waited, every muscle in his body hard as stone.
“I went back every now and then. It’s kind of a long bike ride, but not that long. I kind of, you know, worried about him. There was an old guy who hung around some, who seemed to kind of look after him. Not his dad or anything. I asked.” Dusty seemed to think that this made the relationship more acceptable. It filled Harry with horror. “I talked to him a lot. I told him about Michelle calling me gay and all. I knew it was weird that I was friends with this guy. I thought about what the shrink would have asked me.”
Harry waited.
“And I thought it was pretty obvious. If this kid had been in my school, and cleaned up and all that, we might have been buddies. Or, like, if you guys were gone, it could be me. But I knew that Mom would absolutely freak if she knew I was friends with a homeless kid. Even one that was pretty cool, an okay guy, really. He’s not mean or a criminal or on drugs or anything, and we like all the same stuff, the same music, everything. That’s how we got onto the iPod in the first place. He liked everything I had on it.” Dusty looked sad, like an old man remembering his lost children, and Harry wanted to put his hands on his son so bad it hurt, to hold his hand or put him in his lap the way he’d done when the boy had been five. And then for no reason Harry remembered how much Dusty had loved his uncle Lawrence, and he felt like crying. But all he said was “What’s this kid’s name?”
“Jake.” Dusty swallowed. “I gave him another iPod and my Game Boy. I kept hoping he’d keep them since I knew he liked music so much. But he kept selling them. He needed the money.” Or his pimp did, Harry thought. Dusty went on. “I gave him my second cell phone, too.” He shrugged. “I didn’t have anybody to call anyway.”
Harry resisted the urge to say, You could have called me. Maggie’s warning still scratched at his brain; it’s not his job to make you feel needed. H
e said, “When did you last see him?”
“About a month ago. Then I went to the bus station last Saturday. He was gone. The old guy was there. His name’s Quick. That’s it, just Quick. Anyway, Quick said that Jake had gone home, but the way he said it was funny and Jake had said he didn’t really have a home to go to. But Quick wasn’t going to tell me anything. I asked the security guard there if he knew where Jake was, but he just looked at me like I was crazy, so I had to leave. I went back two more times. Even Quick was gone by then.”
Harry praised the stars that Quick hadn’t decided to grab Dusty and do to him whatever he’d done to Jake. But those stars hadn’t done much for the homeless boy. Dusty said, “Then I was at school, and it all seemed so weird, you know, the girls and their shoes and their hairdos and the guys with their muscles and their cars. Every time I saw someone with a Game Boy 2 or a PSP, I’d start to get all angry.” He shrugged again, his favorite gesture, at times his only one. “So I got a can of paint from Mom’s garage and went all mook on the place.” His face was red now, his skin uneven with the first sproutings of hair on his upper lip, a few curling under his chin. An ungainly and beautiful boy, thought Harry. He thought about what he could possibly do for the lost Jake. Nothing. It was a moment before he spoke.
“The trick,” he said, “is not to get caught.”
37
FIVE OF WANDS
Hard times ahead
“We should go stay with Miss Tokay,” Maggie said.
“But that place is full of termites.”
“It’s a real house. Termites or no, she’s got better locks. We’re not safe here. It’s just a matter of time before something bad happens.”
“Like what? We’re not breaking any laws, and this is America. People aren’t just going to come into our house and kill us or something. We don’t have enough to rob, at least not that anyone knows about. And this is a real house.”
“I mean it, Josie. We need to stay over there. Miss Baby and the girls, too. I don’t know if they’re in any danger, but we are. I talked to Miss Tokay this morning. It’s all right with her. I think she’d like the company, actually. Please, Josie. You might want to cancel all your appointments. For the next few days, at least.”
“I told you that that college man wasn’t going to work out.” The heat and the lack of alcohol in the house were making her cranky.
Maggie sat down on the couch next to her. Josie expected to be cajoled or given some reasoned argument to convince her. Instead, Maggie looked as hard as metal, blue eyes bright and flashing. “Staying in Miss Tokay’s fortress of a house is the only thing my retarded brain can come up with to keep both our asses intact. So please quit arguing with me and just do it.” Josie stared at her, fear in her belly now as Maggie added, “I love you, but you can be stubborn as hell when you don’t drink.”
When Jonathan Ziegart got out of the hospital, he was still very confused. He didn’t know what the woman had done to him. She’d done something; no one could find the slightest reason for the seizure, and he could remember almost nothing after the Olnikoffs’ party. The doctor had assured him that he hadn’t been drugged. Maybe, they said, some obscure allergic reaction to alcohol. He’d left them shaking their heads and no doubt thinking about ways to write him up to further their careers. He knew all about that and was having none of it; he refused to sign any release forms. After two days, they’d wanted him to stay, but he left “against medical advice.” He knew there wasn’t anything wrong with him. But he decided that his father’s handkerchief was never, ever leaving his pocket again.
Harry got a rental car at the Harrisburg airport, and within an hour of landing he and Dusty were on their way to a cabin that Harry had rented in the Tuscarora Mountains. They drove through deep hills and green fields, barns and cows punctuating the landscape. “God, it’s pretty here,” said Harry. Dusty didn’t answer. Near the state park where the cabin was, they found a small grocery store and a tackle shop, and bought supplies: food, charcoal, rods and reels, a large plastic bucket and some bait. At both stops, Harry had to coerce Dusty into coming into the store with him, making him leave the iPod in the car each time. Harry rang up each purchase on his credit card, wondering idly how long it was going to take to pay off the bill. A lot of it’s deductible, he thought. He imagined Maggie doing his taxes.
Josie suggested that Maggie leave the trailer when Roy came over. Maggie said, “Is he going to be driving that big truck of his?”
“That’s all he’s got, so I’d guess so.”
“Would he let me borrow it for the day, do you think?”
“If I ask him right, he’ll let you have it for keeps. What do you want with it?”
“I want to move some stuff from the temple. I’d need it for most of the day. He could use my car if he needs a ride while I’m gone.”
“You know how you could sweeten the deal.”
Maggie sighed. “I’ve got a lot to do. But okay, okay.”
Jonathan Ziegart felt real affection for the scrawny, sweaty man in front of him, although he didn’t know why. He was honest enough with himself to realize that it probably was because Darcy obviously thought so much of Jonathan, was so completely impressed by his stature and intelligence and air of authority.
“So, these folks are really that bad, eh?” Darcy said, perspiration decorating his upper lip.
“I’m afraid so, Mr. Murphy. I can’t say more at the moment. I know you understand why.” He knew Darcy didn’t, but he also knew that the man wasn’t likely to question him. He hadn’t let him look long at the paper FBI identification card that Jonathan had retained from his one-semester internship. They were at a chain restaurant off an interstate exit about twenty miles from downtown Stoweville. Darcy’s supervisor was ignorant of the meeting, which suited both men just fine. “All we need you to do is a stakeout. We just want to know the comings and goings in that house. Your van is known in the neighborhood. That’s to our advantage; no one will question why you’re there.”
“The fortune teller will. She’s quite the bitch.”
Jonathan couldn’t figure out why he seemed so afraid of a middle-aged hippie who lived in a trailer. “Has something happened that you’re not telling me? We need to know everything, Mr. Murphy.”
Darcy twitched as though something had stung him but said only “No. No. Not that I know of.”
This was such a peculiar response that Jonathan was going to pursue it, but the waitress picked that moment to ask them if they wanted anything else. Jonathan let Darcy answer, which he did only after a moment’s questioning stare at the younger man. “No, I guess not, honey, I guess not,” he said finally, and the young woman walked away with a disgusted look on her face. Jonathan resolved to leave a two-dollar tip, not small enough to earn her anger, not large enough to be memorable.
“I don’t like that place,” Darcy said. “I don’t want to spend any more time there than I have to.”
“Why not? It’s an unusual assignment for a civilian. But it’s not a difficult one, nor is it dangerous.”
“I know,” said Darcy, “I know. It’s fine. I’ll do it. It’s fine.”
Not only was Roy persuaded to let Maggie borrow his truck but he even helped her move some of the heavier items from the temple while Josie looked on, the sun shining on her hennaed hair. Roy said, “Where you goin’ with this stuff?”
“Better you don’t know.”
“Josie said you’d work on the tranny for me.”
“Sure, Roy. It’s the least I can do. I’ll be back with it tonight by dinnertime.”
38
SIX OF CUPS
REVERSED
Stuck in an unfortunate past
Darcy Murphy told his supervisor in person on Monday morning that he needed more time off; he looked unwell enough that the Little Shit didn’t require a lot of convincing. Darcy suspected that his supervisor was relieved he wasn’t going to be coming into the office again for a while.
On Tue
sday, he sat in the van, which wasn’t supposed to be used for personal business, but this didn’t count as personal business; he figured when everything was all over, the government would reimburse his employers for whatever wear and tear the van suffered. He worried that it would overheat because he needed to run the engine to keep the air-conditioning going; when he turned the motor off, the heat became intolerable within minutes. “I hate the fucking summer,” he said aloud. There was little traffic on the road, and what there was rarely stopped, just big rigs that sailed past twenty or thirty miles an hour over the speed limit, causing the van to rock in their wake. He had pulled onto the berm a hundred feet or so down the highway from the double-wide and had sat for two hours, alternately turning the engine off and baking, then turning the engine on and watching the temperature gauge climb slowly into the red. The tall black woman went in and out of the salon several times, once with two little girls in her wake. He must have nodded off, because a rapping on the window almost sent him bursting through the roof like a bullet. Her name, he remembered from his paperwork, was Thorpe. She made a rolling motion with her hand, and he lowered the window.
“What the hell you doin’ here?”
“Takin’ a nap,” he said, having had the answer ready just in case this very thing happened. He noticed that the heat gauge was reading alarmingly hot, so he turned off the key.
The big woman said, “This is a pretty funny place for it.”
“You don’t tell my supervisor, I don’t tell him you’re stealing nothin’.”
“I ain’t stealin’ a damn thing, as well you know, or you ought to by now. Damn electric company. I got a mind to lodge a complaint. It’s harassment.”
“I ain’t harassing nobody, woman. Leave me be.”
She waved a dismissive hand at him. “Pooh on you,” she said. “Wastin’ gas, that’s what you’re doin’. Should be ashamed of yourself.”
