Stealing Candy

by Stewart Lewis

  “She might come by later.”

  “That won’t be awkward at all,” I say, and he laughs.

  He grabs us two beers from the half-size fridge. We clink, then drink. When he’s halfway done with his, he speaks.

  “You sure you want your own father in jail? I’m fine with getting the money. Or not, even.”

  “What do you mean or not?”

  “I’m saying I…we don’t really know what we’re doing.”

  I love that he says we and means it, even though he’s not being very positive.

  “I do. I know what we’re doing. Tomorrow we’re going to the beach. And then we’re going to meet up with Whisper, and one of us is going to convince her.”

  “What if we just get the money, on the DL. Then I put you on a plane back to your school…”

  I can feel my stomach turn. He’s not supposed to say this. It’s not following the script. I won’t end up on the cutting-room floor.

  “Levon, we’re in this together. You need me as much as I…”

  “Calm down.”

  My right leg is shaking slightly, and I can feel a drop of sweat run into my ear.

  “I am calm.”

  “Fine, we will go with your plan tomorrow, but that’s it. Everything after that’s an open discussion. My grandmother has visiting hours again in the morning so…”

  “I’ll go with you. I can wait in the truck if you want.”

  “That’s too risky. You can come in.”

  I hear some kids laughing outside. Going on with their lives. No extortion, kidnapping, murder, just kicking around a ball.

  I take a long sip of my beer.

  Levon goes into the bathroom, and I can hear the people in the next trailer. First they are fighting in another language—German maybe? Lots of harsh consonants. Then they are having sex. I turn up the volume on the old-school TV. It’s an ad for a credit score website. The song is actually pretty good—better than German sex sounds. By the time Levon comes out of the bathroom, the couple next door is finished, thank God.

  After a while, we both get sleepy. We lie next to each other on the one double bed, not touching. Eventually, he turns and takes me into his arms. He smells like soap and beer and something else I can’t quite describe.

  I sleep incredibly well, but I wake up alone. Levon is restless, doing push-ups on the trailer floor. He has turned the picture of the girl facedown, which allows me a secret smile.

  I turn on the TV again, scanning all the news channels, and find a short segment about us. They are claiming both kidnappers are still “at large.”

  So Jamal isn’t dead? Or maybe he snuck out of the hospital? The thought literally sends a chill through my blood.

  Levon says he’s going to get coffee and will be back in ten minutes.

  After he leaves, I call NRS and ask for Mrs. B, my drama teacher. She answers in a peppy voice.

  “Mrs. B here, what’s the word?”

  “Hi, it’s Candy Rex.”

  “Candy! We are worried sick. Where are you? Are you OK?”

  “I’m fine. It was just a prank, some friends of mine. I’ll be back after break.”

  “What? But a witness said you were forced. Candy, is someone there with you right now?”

  I see Levon through the trailer window, his T-shirt a little damp from his push-ups, getting into the beat-up truck.

  “No. I’m alone. I’m fine. I have to go.”

  “Wait. Candy—”

  “Bye.”

  I hang up before the call is traceable, although it’s unlikely that the cops have bugged her phone.

  I take a long shower, and as I’m drying off in the steamy, dated bathroom, I hear Levon come back. Through the crack in the slightly opened bathroom door, I watch him do more push-ups, his triceps forming taut ridges with each dip. Then he stretches each quad while a few drops of sweat run down his now-bare chest and over his midsection. His body should be used as a specimen of human perfection. A few minutes later, while I’m still drying off, I can hear him walk up to the other side of the door.

  “You OK in there?”

  I look in the mirror.

  “Yes,” I say in lustful tone I immediately regret.

  “Great,” he says.

  Great what? Great, why don’t you get your ass in here while I’ve got nothing but a towel on?

  “I’ll be out in a second,” I say, attempting to be serious.

  When I get out, he’s stretching his hamstrings. I sit on the bed, suddenly unsure and exposed. The truth is, he’s right. I don’t really know what I’m doing—but who does the first time you try something? This could be my moment.

  Our moment.

  Levon stands, wipes his temple with his arm, and heads into the bathroom.

  “Whoa,” he says, walking into the thick steam. I bite my tongue and wait until he shuts the door and turns on the shower to get dressed: bathing suit, jean shorts, and the T-shirt of some trucking company Levon gave me. It has his scent—woodsy but also sweet.

  When he comes out, we both move in a sort of domestic dance. It’s our routine. We can usually get ready to leave in seven minutes. If someone was observing on a hidden camera, it might look choreographed, but we’ve become a natural working unit. After today, who knows?

  The nursing home looks like the one from that movie with Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney, the title of which always escapes me. A brown brick building on a nondescript street, with a measly attempt at a front yard that’s overgrown and a sign with clouds in the background. You know it’s bad when the sign is the prettiest thing about the place.

  “Is that supposed to be heaven?” I ask.

  “Anything would be better than this dump,” Levon says. He parks. “Now, I’m just warning you. She’s not all there.”

  “I get it.”

  We have to sign in, and Levon tells the front desk lady that I’m his cousin. As we walk down the hallway, I suddenly wish I had my handheld. A woman stands in a doorway, looking off into space, tightly gripping a teddy bear by the neck, while four black guys play cards like it’s any other day. Columns of light from the windows wedge in, illuminating the dust in the air. We get to Levon’s grandmother’s room, which has a single bed and a frosted window that is long but only a few inches wide. It doesn’t open but casts a strange, sickly glow.

  I am shocked by how good she looks, considering. She sits on the bed with a Bible on her lap, her black-and-gray hair cut rigidly at her shoulders. She doesn’t look at either of us. There seems to be something on the opposite wall she’s obsessively staring at.

  “Did your father name you after the song?” I ask Levon, who nods, and at that very moment his grandmother gives me sharp look for a split second, her face coming into focus. Or maybe I imagined it.

  “So you were born on Christmas Day?”

  “Day after,” his grandmother says, still staring straight ahead. Levon looks at her like a boy who has just found his long-lost toy.

  “Gram! It’s me.”

  “I know,” she says, “but where’s your brother?”

  As easily as Levon perked up, he visibly deflates—the boy now realizing the toy doesn’t work. It’s so hard to watch that I have to look down.

  “I don’t have a brother, Gram.”

  She laughs, like he made a casual joke.

  I whisper to Levon that I’ll meet him outside, and this time I know she looks at me. Another razor-sharp glance, her glassy eyes alight, not unlike her grandson’s.

  When Levon gets in the truck, he lets out a long sigh.

  “Did it go any better?” I ask.

  He doesn’t answer, just shakes his head slowly.

  When we reach the causeway—the long bridge over the bay that connects downtown Miami to South Beach, past the cruise ships and the priva
te island homes—I put my hand out the window again.

  “She knows me at least,” Levon says. “When you mentioned the song, she lit up. I think if I’m around her a lot, she’ll start to come back.”

  “Yes! She doesn’t really seem that far out of reach.”

  “Of course, you never know about these things.”

  “That’s for sure,” I say without adding, like us.

  Chapter 25

  South Beach is nothing like the beaches in San Francisco. For one, there are thousands of people here. It’s a total scene. Women with fake boobs bursting out of their bikinis, college kids drinking warm beer, Cuban families eating meals spread on bedsheets. We go past the hotels, each with their signature umbrellas, beds, and chaise longues perfectly lined up in corresponding pastel colors. There are people selling everything: massages, necklaces, incense, bottled water, fresh fruit, brownies. Planes fly by advertising the clubs on banners flapping behind: DJ TIESTO @ LIV 11pm. TEA DANCE @ SCORE GO GO BOYS 10-CLOSE.

  The sand is bright white, and the water is turquoise and pristine. It could be described as paradise, if not for the giant cruise ships invading the bay, the long industrious oil tankers billowing cylindrical clouds of smoke, and the noisy Jet Skis carving through the water, leaving snake trails of iridescent gasoline.

  “Sensory overload,” I say as we find a small section of sand near the surf beyond the hotels.

  We sit down on the blanket from Levon’s trailer and start to eat the sandwiches we picked up at the café with Planet Earth painted on its door. Mine is turkey and cheese. Levon’s is roast beef. He picks the tomatoes off his and flings them onto the surrounding sand. Within seconds, some seagulls are fighting over them.

  “I don’t think tomatoes are good for their stomachs,” I say.

  “They’re survivors,” he says.

  “Like us?” I ask, not sure what I even mean. He nods slowly. I feel that now-familiar drop in my stomach, knowing that after today, after this week, this is all going to be over. One more year of boarding school doesn’t sound that appealing to me.

  As if the world is responding to my thoughts, I hear the now-familiar whoop of a truncated police siren as a squad car pulls right up on the sand. My whole body goes rigid, and my breath catches. I am ready to run but locked frozen. Two cops get out of the car, walking right toward us.

  Have they been following us the whole time?

  Levon didn’t hear the siren. His back is to the cops, and he takes another bite of his sandwich like nothing’s wrong. But then he stops chewing as he notices my hands shaking and sees the look on my face.

  “What the…”

  The cops are two feet away. They are beefy and mean looking, with shiny handcuffs and leather holsters. They walk by so close that one of them kicks sand onto my leg. I hold my breath until they pass. The cops are headed for a drunken woman in her underwear, sipping out of a brown paper bag. They approach her, ask her questions, then one of them grips the woman under her arm and leads her away.

  “Oh my God. I thought that was it. I thought they were coming for us.”

  The beach becomes paranoia land. We finish our sandwiches while intermittently looking over our shoulders for more cops or anyone who recognizes us. It feels like a dare to be out in the world. Still, I made that call to Mrs. B for a calculated reason. She will tell the authorities, and word will spread quickly. The story will die. I just hope she believed me.

  We lie in the sun for a while. Levon goes in the water first. From behind my sunglasses, I watch the way the water glistens on the muscles of his back, the way he shakes his head when he comes to the surface. He carries himself with sensual and effortless ease. It’s a shame he doesn’t like cameras. They would eat up every inch of him.

  As he lies back down next to me, catching his breath, our arms touch. It’s intensified, like I can’t feel the rest of my body.

  “Levon?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I called the school. I said it was a prank, voluntary.”

  “I appreciate that, but I’m not sure—”

  “Neither of us is going to jail.”

  The sun is so bright that I can’t tell if he’s smiling or squinting. He moves his arm so we are no longer touching.

  “So, what about your girl? Is she down with the Albuquerque plan?”

  “She doesn’t know about it.”

  He looks at me with his impossibly bright eyes and his cute half smile.

  “Well, I do,” I say.

  “That’s true.”

  A big-bellied Cuban man walks by with a bulldog on a chain. The sun slides behind a cloud, and all the brilliant colors of South Beach become rendered in shadow. Then a few seconds later, the sun peeks back out from under the cloud, and it’s like the electricity of the world is restored. I can’t help but feel hopeful.

  “What about this Billy Ray guy? He sounds cool. I like that song you played.”

  “He’s OK,” I say. “He’s a good friend to me. But there are no real fireworks.”

  He laughs. “What do you know about fireworks?”

  I think about us driving on the freeway, the window down, a rock song on the radio, him turning toward me with the tree’s shadows crossing his face, the wind blowing his hair, the flickers of light in his eyes, the twisted feeling in my belly.

  “A little,” I say.

  Chapter 26

  The French café has only four tables, and two big, droopy dogs are collapsed outside. From across the street, I can see that Marissa is already there.

  “OK, are you coming?”

  “I don’t think so,” Levon says.

  “OK, well, wish me luck.”

  When I approach the table, I notice she’s halfway through a scone and what looks like iced green tea. I order a hot chocolate, which seems wrong, but what is right anymore? I’m in Miami with my kidnapper, trying to get an ex-stripper to testify so my double-crossing father can go to jail. Considering all that, ordering a hot chocolate when it’s eighty degrees out seems totally normal.

  “So, what’s this project?” Marissa asks.

  “What?”

  “You said you had a school project.”

  I consider her, strands of her highlighted hair framing her delicate face. There is a small scar on her wrist, whitened over time. The cut is horizontal, a cry for help. A beacon of her stripper past. Yoga Woman is not fooling me, not now that I’ve seen the scar and the tramp stamp.

  “Marissa, I’m not here for a school project.”

  She doesn’t seem that surprised, like she may have known something was up.

  “So, what is it then?”

  “Does the date April 14, 2012, mean anything to you?”

  She sips her iced tea, letting an ice cube rest in her cheek before biting down on it.

  “No, not really.”

  “What about the name Whisper?”

  Boom. That does it. An emotional lightning bolt crosses her face, and then she eyes me like I am dangerous. She checks around the café for someone who could be watching us. It’s just the barista and an older gentleman in a suit with a coffee and the Miami Times.

  She is suddenly annoyed. “What is going on? What do you want?”

  “Well, remember I mentioned the Black Angels concert?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wade Rex is my father.”

  “Oh…kay…”

  “And I use that term loosely. He was barely a sperm donor. Anyway, on April 12, two years ago, there was an accident involving a limousine.”

  She gives me a blank face, not giving anything away. I try to channel the plucky journalist characters I like in so many movies.

  “Listen, Marissa. Someone was killed that night, and I’m not here to implicate you in any way, but you were the only other person there.”

  �
�What are you talking about?”

  “The homeless guy. He died. And my father was driving.”

  She’s still trying to give me her game face, but it’s not working. The lightning has returned. Her lip quivers; her left eye twitches. Watching her transform gives me adrenaline.

  “Do you remember Duke?”

  “Who?”

  “The driver. He was in the back with you. We need you to testify that my father was the one driving. Would you do that for us?”

  She flutters her eyes like something is caught in them, and then she stops, fixing her gaze on me.

  “Who is us?”

  “Me and Levon, Duke’s son. It’s a long story.”

  Marissa puts a ten-dollar bill on the table.

  “Look, that was another lifetime for me. I’m not—”

  “I know, but maybe this is a way of putting it behind you for good. Or at least to help us?”

  “Why would I want to help you? I don’t even know you!”

  “You help people every day with yoga. You don’t know all of them.”

  She shakes her head, gathering her things.

  “Look, we are going to see the detective tomorrow. Come with us. That’s all I ask.”

  She shakes her head like I’m being ridiculous. Then the door to the café opens, and Levon walks over to the table. They look at each other, he and Marissa, and it’s like the world stops around them.

  “I’m sorry… I have to go.” Marissa turns to me. “I don’t even remember…”

  “But you do, I think. I saw it in your face,” I tell her.

  “Please,” Levon says. “My father’s been in jail for almost two years.”

  “And you’re saying that was the night? With the limo?”

  “Yes,” Levon and I say in unison.

  She contemplates it for a second, and then says, “So what’s in it for you guys?”

  “Me? Good question. Well, for one, my lame-ass father will finally have to take responsibility for being such a major douche bag, and two, my friend Levon and his dad will get what they were promised.”