“Son, you seem like an okay kid, as kids go. But you are barking up the wrong tree if you’re thinking about starting something with my daughter. She’s had some problems, as I’m sure you’re aware, and we’re focusing on straightening things out and getting on with life, which means college and preparation for college. That’s a full plate right now.”
Paulie takes a deep breath; he’s rehearsed this. “Look, sir, with all due respect, I’m not trying to start something. I was thinking of, like, ice cream or coffee.”
“I don’t think you understand.”
“Mr. Wells, do you know you’re famous?”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re famous.”
“Probably I am,” Wells says with a grimace. “I certainly made a splash the past couple of weeks in the media, jumping the gun on Mary’s ‘disappearance.’” He looks to the side.
“That’s not why you’re famous.”
Wells’ irritation is evident. “Okay, then why am I famous?”
“You’re like a legend,” Paulie says, “and not in a good way. I mean, you wanna know how kids talk about somebody who’s always in control? You’re, like, a teenager’s idea of a monster.”
Paulie notices the muscle at the top of Wells’s jaw turn into a small marble.
“Did you come here just to flatter me?” Wells says.
“I came with an offer,” Paulie says. “Look, I’m an almost-eighteen-year-old kid who doesn’t drink or smoke or take drugs. I have a B average, give or take a minus or two, and I am headed to the U next year. My grade average indicates I’m something of an underachiever, but I test well. I just got dumped by a girl I was on my a— I was over the top for and I’m not about to get into more mess. I have a father who plays around and that hacks me off, and a mother who allows it, which hacks me off even more. I take care of my body and I tell the truth whenever I can. I’m totally aware that if I spend any time with your daughter, you’ll check all that out and if I’m lying, you’ll know it before I come around again.”
“You tell the truth whenever you can?”
“Yeah, like with important things. Like, I wouldn’t tell you how dorky it looks to wear dark nylon socks with those shorts.” He nods toward Wells’s feet.
Wells follows Paulie’s gaze and for the first time in the conversation, smiles.
“So your daughter would be relatively safe and you’d buy some good will with kids at school, which probably doesn’t matter to you one way or the other.”
“Relatively safe.”
“We’re teenagers, Mr. Wells. We live in risky times.”
Wells stares at Paulie. “You are one ballsy young man.”
“You almost have to be these days,” Paulie says.
Wells turns and the door closes. Paulie shuts his eyes as he hears him call to his daughter. “Mary, you have a visitor.”
Paulie touches the soaked shirt under his arm.
“You called my father a dork?” Mary is amazed; just a little too scared to think it’s funny, but close.
“Technically I didn’t call him that. I said the socks were dorky. He may have extrapolated from that.” Paulie is smiling, feeling triumphant. “He got even, though,” Paulie says.
“How?”
“He gave me one of those looks.”
“Yeah,” Mary says, “he can do that. At least you got to his sense of humor.”
“So, you’re on furlough. What do you want to do?”
“He didn’t give us a lot of time. Jeez, a ten thirty curfew on a Friday night. What other seventeen-year-old girl has that?”
“Probably the YFC girls,” Paulie says, “but most of theirs are probably self-imposed.”
Mary smiles. “I know a lot of those girls,” she says. “They believe in what they believe, but that doesn’t always translate into what they do.”
“Justin claims biology trumps everything.”
“Speaking of biology,” Mary says, placing a hand on Paulie’s thigh, “we could go—”
“Not gonna happen.”
“I want to give you something to thank you. . . .”
“Not gonna happen.”
“I want to.”
The picture of taking Mary to the secret room at the strip mall begins immediately to cloud Paulie’s judgment, but the thought of being with Mary in the same place he was with Hannah. . . . “Not gonna happen.”
“I’m not asking you to fall in love with me, Paulie. You’re not with anyone and neither am I. What’s the harm?”
“The harm isn’t anything I would know about until it happens to me,” Paulie says. “Look, I’ve got flash photos of Arney-fucking-Stack and Hannah going off in my head every hour on the hour, and I’ll tell you the truth, I’m hanging with you partly as a ‘fuck you’ to them. I’ll probably never know your reasons for needing a trophy boy, so let’s call this a relationship of mutual convenience and try to have some fun.”
Mary’s face flushes. “I just thought . . . .”
Paulie takes a deep breath. “Look, Mary, I don’t want to be mean. It doesn’t look good on me and it doesn’t feel good. But I’m tapped out for being a nice guy right now.”
Mary sits back. “Okay, I get that. So what do we do?”
“You bowl?” he asks.
“He told you to fuck off? Wow, that doesn’t sound like Paulie.” Arney grips the wheel and pushes back against the seat, pressing down on the accelerator.
“He was pissed,” Hannah says. “No more pissed than I was.”
“Did you tell him how you knew who it was?”
“Not really, I just told him it wasn’t who he thought it was.”
Arney says, “Maybe I shouldn’t have told you. I didn’t mean to pour gas on the fire. You and Paulie were great. Half the guys I know wished they had a girlfriend like you.”
“You should have told me. Like I said, the one thing I can’t stand is to be lied to. And leaving stuff out is the same as lying.”
“Lying by omission.”
“Exactly. I don’t care what kind of a cool guy everyone thinks Paulie is, if he can’t be true to his word, I can’t be with him.”
“I know you’re right,” Arney says, “and no matter how cool he is, it isn’t cool to do that to the girl you’re with.” He’s quiet a moment, gazing out the windshield at the countryside moving rapidly past as they speed along the two-lane road miles outside of town. “He’s pretty pissed at me for hanging out with you now.”
“He should have thought about that.”
“Actually I told him that, not quite in those words. Guys who cheat always go with the impulse and then try to fix it. He should know that from watching his old man. Personally, I figured out a long time ago that bell is hard to un-ring.”
“Well, you and I have no strings.”
“Not for you, maybe,” Arney says. “But for me. I’m not like the Bomb, I can’t focus on more than one person. And that’s okay. I get it that we’re not a ‘couple.’ I just value loyalty above all else. I can’t do it any other way.”
“Arney, I’m not getting into anything.”
“Understood,” Arney says. “I know where you stand and I want you to know where I stand.”
A mother quail and several chicks dash onto the road, sense Arney’s car speeding toward them. Hannah tenses, looks at Arney, who doesn’t brake and maybe even accelerates a bit. In the side-view mirror one of the chicks flaps on the pavement while another lies still and squashed.
Hannah stares at him in horror, thinks she sees the hint of a smile cross his lips, but instantly he says, “Damn! I thought they were going the other way! I thought I could speed up and get around them. Oh, God. That was awful!”
Hannah sits back, stunned, not sure what she just witnessed.
“We better go back,” he says. “See if there’s anything I can do.”
“They’re birds, Arney. They’re dead.”
“I can’t believe I missed that,” he says. “They ran out and I though
t they’d go back. Jesus, I turned right into them.” He is visibly upset.
Hannah takes a deep breath. “Just drive,” she says finally. “We’ll get over it. Let’s just get to your parents’ cabin and forget it.”
.13
Arney Stack parks outside the Comfort Inn, leaves the car running, slings his backpack over his shoulder, and enters the front office. The girl behind the counter looks up and smiles, calls out, “Rick!” and continues reading People. Rick Praeger, a thin, dark-haired, handsome man in his early forties, wearing khakis and a knit polo shirt, emerges from the back office with a padded manila envelope and hands it to Arney.
Arney feels its weight, peeks inside, counts without removing any bills. “This isn’t right,” he says.
“Woody says there’s a note,” Rick says.
“About what?”
Praeger’s hands go up. “Just the messenger.”
Arney drives two blocks to a vacant lot. He pulls in, leaving the engine running, and opens the envelope. He dumps out the contents. There is cash—considerably less than Arney anticipated—and a short note: “Arney, you are a master at what you do and your contribution to our investment is invaluable. We couldn’t have found a better colleague. Your insight on this project has been uncanny. Unfortunately your part of the return on our investment hasn’t panned out this week. When you overachieve you are compensated. When you underachieve . . . well, John says that’s why it’s called a high-risk investment. With the remedy to this situation will come full restitution of agreed-upon monies.” The note is unsigned.
Arney slams the heels of his hands against the wheel. “Those bitches!” He sits a moment to calm himself, but an almost murderous rage burns inside. “And fuck John. This operation doesn’t exist without me!” He slams the wheel several more times. “Who’s taking all the fucking risks?” He accelerates onto the street.
Paulie marches up the walk to the Wells mansion. What am I doing? He thinks. Logs is right. I should steer clear of this.
“Hi, Paulie. She’s not here.” Becca, Mary’s younger sister by three years, stands in the doorway.
“Really,” Paulie says, though he’s actually relieved. “She said I should pick her up at six-thirty.” He glances at his watch.
“I don’t think she came home from school,” Becca says. I got here a little bit late, but I haven’t seen her.”
“Your parents here?”
Becca nods toward the house. “Mom’s at her exercise group.” Her voice lowers. “But the King is here. And he’s mad.” She steps onto the porch and in almost a whisper, says, “How did you get him to let you hang out with her?”
Paulie smiles. “Persistence, I guess.”
“Persistence around here would get most guys killed. You know Roddy Blackburn?”
Paulie nods. “Yeah, I know Roddy.”
“Well, tell him your secret.”
“Becca, your dad may be a hardass, but I know hippie parents that wouldn’t let their daughters go out with Roddy Blackburn. That kid was voted ‘Most Likely to Take a Life.’”
She looks back toward the door again, lowering her voice even more. “He’s a bandit, all right, but God.”
Paulie turns back toward his car. “Tell Mary to give me a call when she gets back,” he says. “If, you know, she isn’t chained to her bed.” He looks into the garage. The Lexus is missing.
In Period 8 the following day, Mary Wells’s seat is empty.
The quacking of a duck emanates from Paulie’s front pocket, and he extracts his iPhone to see a message from Justin.
meet me. impt.
where?
u pik
rocket
10
Paulie enters through the back, passes Justin and Josh Takeuchi carrying two cinnamon rolls apiece and a large fruit smoothie. He smiles. “One of those for me?”
“Might be for you,” Justin says, “but I’m gonna eat it.”
Tak smiles and pats his stomach. “Still operating in the minus,” he says.
Paulie steps behind the counter, pours himself a black coffee, and snags a piece of coffee cake. He joins Justin and Tak at the corner table in the back.
“What’s goin’ on?”
Justin takes a bite out of the first roll and a swig of his smoothie. “Went around Diamond Lake to Twisted Crick last night with some brothers,” he says and nods at Josh. “And Tak. Over to that spot where the Thumpers go on Fridays. Smoke some weed and get ready for finals.”
“Different kind of study group,” Paulie says. “What are you doing hanging out with these criminals, Tak?”
“You know, just gettin’ all UNICEF with ’em,” Tak says.
“Anyway, Arney came by with your honey and some other folks—”
“My ex-honey.”
“Yeah, her. We’re all getting baked, somebody brought some brew, and we just get talkin’ about shit.”
“Out to destroy the academic curve?” Paulie says.
“Yeah, we didn’t do a lot of studyin’ but Stack gets loose, starts talkin’ about chicks who got no core.”
“No core?”
“You know,” Tak says, “nothin’ to ’em. They just do what they have to, to keep going. To keep people liking ’em.”
“Some of the girls get pissed,” Justin says, “start callin’ him, like, a bigot.”
“That doesn’t sound like Arney,” Paulie says. “He can be a dick, but he usually keeps his ugliest thoughts under wraps and gets all cheesy about making people’s lives better.”
“Yeah, but we know how much bullshit that is. Always has been.”
“Yeah.”
“When you get fucked up like that, you don’t change into another person, just tell truths you don’t usually tell, right?” Justin says. “So Hannah’s startin’ to seethe and Stack says, ‘You could get yours back, if you’d get the guts to really leave Paulie Bomb in the dust. You know, walk the walk.’ Man, Murph about comes across the fire at him, but he backs up and says he was messin’ with her. Then he starts throwin’ out names—names of girls who weren’t there.”
“Like . . .”
“Girl that was cryin’ in P-8 the other day,” Justin says.
“Kylie.”
“Yeah, her. And the Virgin Mary.”
“Hey man, we’re not callin’ her that anymore.”
“Mary, then. Anyway, Stack says this time he thinks she’s gone for good.”
“What?”
“Says there’s no insides to her. Girl like that’ll do anything, he says. Said last time he thought she was just havin’ a freak-out, but he’s takin’ bets she’s down the road for good.”
“How the hell would he know that? She told me she hates his guts. No way she’s telling him anything personal. He was messed up, right? Bein’ all knowledgeable and shit like he does?”
Tak says, “Yeah but this was freaky. So freaky Hannah rides home with Jus and me.”
Justin nods. “By the time we got her home she was pissed past reason. Said she never should’a spent one second with him, that she was just pissed at you.”
Paulie sits back. “Gotta be careful what you do when you’re pissed. It can bite you later.” He laughs. “Besides, Hannah should know I do more damage being pissed at myself than she could ever do.” He takes a bite of the coffee cake, washes it down. “Hmm. So maybe I’m not ‘in the dust’?”
Justin raises his eyebrows.
“What else did Hannah say?” Paulie asks.
“Nothin’ important.” Justin looks straight at him. “You’re not done with that girl, are you?”
Paulie smiles. “Maybe they’d been talking about me. Maybe that’s why she was so pissed.”
Justin nods. “I wouldn’t get too cocky,” he says. “The way Stack was talkin’ she would have been pissed if she never met you.” He smiles. “But it could take a turn.”
“I won’t hold my breath,” Paulie says, though he would. “But I’m worried about Mary. I was kind of relieved when I
went to pick her up and she wasn’t home. I thought she’d at least tell me if things went haywire again. Her sister was there and I think her parents, but the house was dark last night when I drove by, so I’m hoping she came back and they all went somewhere. It would make sense that her dad would get her away from here.”
“That’d be nice, but I’m telling you bro, there was something wrong with the way Stack was talkin’. He sure didn’t think she was off somewhere with her parents. He knew some shit.”
Tak stands. “Man, I gotta get going and this man is my ride.” He punches Justin’s shoulder.
“This shit is crazy,” Justin says, shaking his head as he follows Tak out.
Paulie grabs a refill and digs into his backpack, dragging out his dog-eared copy of The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. As good a book as it is, his mind keeps drifting back to Hannah, hard as he works to keep that from happening. A half hour passes before he feels the quick vibration of a text.
It says, soryigot uontothis mitenotgetvack wouldsaymorbut beter udon’t no imstar danger watoverhead to manymistakesto
It stops mid-sentence.
Paulie goes cold. He looks quickly at the keyboard on his iPhone. Sory...sorry I got you onto this . . . into this. It takes almost a minute to make mitenotgetvack into might not get back. Imstar makes no sense however he looks at it. There is only a number—no name—but it has to be Mary. The only person in his life that got him into anything, besides himself, is Mary.
He punches in the number but it goes straight to the message center, which informs him that the Verizon customer does not answer. It does not take messages.
He punches Mary’s regular cell, leaving a message to “Call me,” then gets no answer on Logs’s cell or the Wells’s home number.
His mind scrambles, then he punches the keyboard again, puts the cell to his ear. “Dad?”
“Ah,” his father says on the other end, “my spawn. What’s up?”
“Buy you dinner. Gotta run something past you.”
“An offer I can’t refuse,” his dad says. “I took my car to get serviced this morning and didn’t get off in time to pick it up, so you’ll have to drop by and get me.”