We all drink.
LITTLEST THINGS
I’m hazy on the details leading up to it – I think an abrupt end to the rainstorm – but everything starts with the song “Littlest Things” by Lily Allen as it plays over the speakers of all three houses.
…David and Kate silently walk hand-in-hand, David leading her up the stairs after hitting PLAY on his stereo. The storm had ended, the sun peaking over clouds with a bright yellow glow against the vibrantly-colored walls. She takes his glasses off. The two of them are passionate, concise, wrapping around each other as they fall onto the bed…
…Chris and Sadie start in the hallway past the front door not a minute after they’ve entered the house. She turns and stops him from walking any further, cracking her neck loud – then she tilts her head toward him with the most evil grin a woman can carry on a beautiful face. Chris gives a head tilt, less curious and more worried. And then she advances…
“So…” I call out over the music.
Bethany sits on my couch, checking her watch – I take this as a bad sign.
“I have to be home in two hours,” she informs me.
“That’s fine. We can just…”
She looks up at me, the fragility gone from her eyes. Often, when she speaks, it’s timid and calm; there’s a gentleness and, though the soft of her manner hasn’t left, there’s an almost frank look about her. I’m standing next to her, as I had been about to head to the kitchen for refreshments, but she stops me by running her hand under my shirt and up against the skin of my chest.
It brings me to my knees…
…Chris hits the wall hard enough to break the drywall, his arms up in defense as she tries to strike him twice more. He falls into the living room, spins on the floor, returns to standing – though retreating – as Sadie walks in, strike-after-strike-after-strike. He turns, moving forward, and grabs her by the hair on the back of her head. He pulls back and she yelps, punching him once in the chest. He grabs the arm, unaffected by the hit, and pulls it behind her back; his elbow blocks her other arm. Their chests are together. He pulls her hair back and to the side so he can kiss her lips. She kisses back, fiercely, and bites his lower lip. He bends his knee sideways and uses his kneecap to nudge out the back of her left leg, bringing her down – though, as she falls, she aims to knee him in the gut…
…and David and Kate climb under the thin white blanket of the bed. The sun has a clear shot of them through the window, illuminating every inch of skin through the covers. They stay under the blanket, him moving down between her legs – she grunts, eventually stopping him. She tries to lay him back to kiss his body on her way down but he stops her. They’re sweating. He’s on his back and he pulls her over him and close against his skin, kissing her lips as she straddles his waist. His hands move to her ass, her head lifts in a moan, and he bites softly at her chin…
…I’m kneeling beside Bethany, kissing her lips – that first lock into the unknown, when you can’t anticipate the feeling of that one person and their lips, their wandering hands, their moans or how they feel against you, how they taste and smell in such close proximity, how their inches, their idiosyncratic nooks and crevices and smalls and curves – there’s a refreshing orange-yellow light as our lips lock, the sun peering through the window to shine as if it’s come to sneak a look at us, and her fingers [—there’s a loud thud against the wall—] grab at my shirt, twist upward, and carry it over my head…
…the fridge rocks hard and hits the wall behind it. He lifts her and throws her onto the counter. She kicks but he deflects and moves in closer, ripping her legs open. Their clothes are spread everywhere, most of them torn and unable to be worn again. She ducks and opens the cabinet, aiming for his forehead. He narrowly dodges it, giving her a smile at the creativity, then puts his fingers around her throat, forcefully pushing the back of her head into the closed cabinet, her head leaning up when he releases, gently pecking at the sides of his neck…
…and he whispers, “I love you,” staring into her eyes, his waist pinning her to the bed, their hips thrusting. Her eyes stare back but there’s no look, no sign, and she says nothing while her eyes fall to the side…
…and I whisper, “It’s been a while,” to her but she scoffs, nodding with a wide-eyed expression meaning that it’s been a while for her as well, and I’m on my knees in front of the couch, between her legs, both of us clothed minus my shirt, our hands over-eager and brushing every surface haphazardly, and I find myself gasping for air since I can’t breathe while we kiss…
…“You don’t have to say it,” he lets her know as their hips have stopped grinding, “I just want you to know.” And his cheek caresses hers, his face near her ear, and he kisses the cartilage – it drives her wild. Her hands squeeze his ass, bringing him farther into her, and she whispers into his ear, “You’re a blo’y amazin’ mistake,” and she grinds harder, more intense, one of his arms wrapped around her back and the other cradling the back of her head…
…we’re on the floor, my foot pushing the coffee table away to make room. She has her shirt off and I reach behind her to unsnap her bra…and I twist…pinch…“It’s not working,” I say in all sincerity, and she reaches back, the bra unhooked instantly, causing me to stop momentarily, staring awestruck at her round breasts and petite nipples…then her hand lunges for my pants and I hustle to pull them down [—there’s a colossal bang next door as something large falls over, followed by an army of glass as it shatters and wood as it splinters and cracks—] but Bethany crouches in front of me, helping to undo the buckle as it, too, is giving me trouble. She snickers, moving to stand and undo her own pants, pushing me onto the couch so I sit up at a right angle and she bends down, putting a knee on either side of me, her bare breasts against me, and she dips a hand between her legs, searching…
…she had leapt onto him at full speed, the momentum and weight propelling him back hard until he hit the wood cupboard and it fell over; but they don’t fall and he supports her with his waist, legs, and arms, her thighs wrapped around him as they bang into each and every piece of furniture on their way to the upstairs bedroom…
THE SOULFUL CONFESSION
After Bethany leaves, I sleep away the afternoon.
When I wake, its nighttime and I feel refreshed, energized.
Instead of checking the clocks, I walk out onto my deck wearing only pants and stare out over the ocean. There had been a reason for ocean front property and it’s because of the way the ocean makes me feel. The crescent moon reflects off the black waves as they ride up the sand to crash against a short rock embankment; the endless tide, the sweeping force of the water, the vast, horizon-sprint of the black – it’s such an overwhelming feeling staring out at the ocean. It doesn’t rest and a current can grab and carry you miles with its gentle embrace, cuddling the life out of you as it draws you into a soundless void—
“I always hated you,” a voice says nearby, startling the life out of me.
David is sitting near the back of his deck, feet propped up on the banister. He has a beer lazily hanging on the side of his deck chair. His eyes have a hazy, half-focused, half-open glaze to them – it’s a look, though uncommon, that I recognize in my brother.
He’s drunk.
“Where’s Lizzy?” I ask out of worry.
“In bed.”
“You—” my mind slowly returns to his last statement, “you always hated me?”
“Yup. Surrrrre did.”
I walk over to the barrier between our decks but David snips, “Please go back to lookin’ at tha ocean, it’s easier if yerrr not lookin’ at me.”
And I return, as it’s easier to stare out over the ocean than at contempt.
“Why have you always hated me?” I ask in an exasperated tone.
This is the first time he’s directly addressed me in several days, not since the meeting. We’ve been in close proximity several times but I’ve always found his back to me or his eyes seeking details as far from my ga
ze as possible.
“Uhhh, well, the reasons change. First was cause our parents liked you more—and don’t you fuckin’ say odderwise,” he prevents me from cutting him off, though I hadn’t intended to since he was right. I was like them, nerdy and intellectual – and I always sought their approval; David, on the other hand, was the opposite, creative and outgoing (and disruptive and argumentative). The word “like” might have been inaccurate – the word “approve” might have been more apt.
“Now – and whiles you’er gone – I-I hated you ‘cause you almost got me killed. Guess tha’s abou’ the same reason I hate-cha now—‘cept before you hadn’t-hadn’t given such an awesome—such a cool life, such…like, the promise of it bein’ good from here’n out.”
David stands and stumbles to the barrier.
I turn to look in his eyes, and he stares back.
“Now yer gonna fuckin’ take et away – I can’t take anodder bullet, you mutherfucker. And Lizzy – she’s—it’s amazing she’s turned out so well after you FUCKING SCARRED HER FOR LIFE! YOU ASSSSSHOLE! YOU COULD HAVE WARNED US!” His voice is loud, a shade below yelling. He swigs from the beer, pulling it away abruptly, some of the liquid falling from his lips. It looks as if some thought entered his head that he had to get out immediately, but he doesn’t talk.
We stare a moment.
“And now,” he starts up again in such a disconcerting, forlorn voice, “now I hate you ‘cause all this…it’s over.” His voice rises to enunciate the melodrama, the overacting. “I can smell it like I can smell the ocean. This—” and it returns to sadness, his eyes cringing, “this whole thing is over. It’ll never be good with you in my life.”
In a short fit of rage, he throws the beer as far and hard as he can toward the ocean – it lands without a sound or splash.
Then he walks into his house, head drooping.
MILD COMPLAINTS
There’s a black Lincoln town car that catches my attention, just as Chris had told me before. It passes when I stop jogging and bend to tie my shoe. The driver must have noticed my shoe wasn’t untied because it speeds up. As it passes, I stand and try to focus in on the driver.
The windows are tinted.
The plate is out-of-state and unfamiliar but I get the numbers.
And then a BWEP-BWEP noise startles me.
A cop car pulls alongside the curb and Chief Armstrong looks out the window; then down as he fidgets in the car a moment. I’m not sure what he’s doing. The rear window opens a bit, closes. A moment passes, more fidgeting. The sound of a window opening on the other side of the car, then closing. Finally, Armstrong just opens the door and gets out of the car to stand beside me.
We’re on the sidewalk near the ocean, patches of grass beside us on its way to sand on its way to water. The sun’s out, the day warm and calm; the ocean, however, is startled and rushing, obviously flustered from the previous few days of storm.
“Where yah been?” Chief Armstrong asks, walking up to me. He’s asking politely, in a friendly way – but there’s a look in his tired eyes that’s noticeably serious. He holds a large Sheriff’s hat in front of his chest with both hands, and I look up into his eyes. His head always seems like a perfect rectangle, partially because his hat flattens his hair against his scalp.
“I had to take a trip out of town, just got back the other day. Sorry, my brother told me you were looking for me. It slipped my mind,” I recite, trying not to let it sound like the rehearsed apology that it is.
“See…” his eyes narrow as if he knows I’m lying, “Well, we’ve had some—a few situations since you been gone, maybe you should clarify a few things.” He watches my reaction with a smile that doesn’t fade or dim, but with such piercing eyes, such penetrating eyes, I’m slow to respond.
“Shoot.”
“First off, we got this so-called friend of yours pullin’ off some shenanigans down at the hospital.” And out comes Chief Armstrong’s notepad, which has countless pages filled in with scribbles; it’s different then the last one I had seen him using and I’m sure he rips through a notebook a day. “Chris Young. Do you know him?”
I nod.
“Said he was, ‘checking out the inside of an ambulance because he wanted to become an ambulance driver.’ Is that true?”
I…nod.
“Says he’s a teacher at your school. No record…” he narrows his eyes at me. “I let him off with a warning but what…what it appeared he was doing was committing a Federal offense.” He thinks a moment, looking at the same page of notes. “Does he do drugs?”
“No?”
There’s a pause between us.
“Was,” he starts, “was that a question?”
“No?”
There’s another pause.
“You tell your friend, I see him again – littering, lookin’ at me wrong,” he continues, still smiling, looking up from flipping through his notes, “anything, he’s got a book comin’ at him. Can you do that?”
I nod.
“Shouldn’t be hanging out with riff-raff like that,” he says practically under his breath, then adds louder, “You’re better than that. Now, maybe you can answer some other questions because we’re a little unclear on a situation that occurred recently involving one Roger Dupont.” He tells me the name without reading it; he knows it well and it’s been on his mind awhile.
He finds the page he’s searching for and looks at me.
I don’t respond.
“Name ringin’ any bells?”
“Uh,” I let my eyes look up, a sign a person doesn’t know something; I’m not taking any chances with the sheriff, “no. Not really. Why, should I know him?”
“It appears he knows you. He had a large amount of…” checks his notes, “…the poison is foreign, unidentified. Whatever it was, he had a lot of it in his system. Made him hallucinate something fierce before it stopped his heart. And,” he says, matter-of-factly, “one thing he kept saying was your name. Know why?”
“No,” I say, and I feel my eyes narrow like Chief Armstrong’s in studying my opponent.
“Mr. Ridley, you know what the margin of error is in astrology?”
I nod, furthering my attempt to say as little as possible from here on out.
“Well, the famous astronomer Calvin Trillin said that ‘the margin of error in astrology is plus or minus one hundred percent.’ What am I saying?—Don’t you have a degree in physics?” He checks his notes again (suspicious, as he speaks as though well-versed with the facts of the case) and I rejoin the living.
“Yeah, I went to the same school as my dad in Philadelphia. But you should know Calvin Trillin is a humorist, a writer – not an astronomer. And astronomy is pretty uh,” and I force a chuckle, “pretty different from physics. But, as for this man – what was his name?”
“Roger Dupont. Philadelphia, yeah, I saw that. Roger Dupont’s current address is listed in Philadelphia, too. Coincidence, I guess,” but he says it suspiciously, as if knowing it wasn’t. “Did you know Philadelphia P.D. wants you for questioning?”
“They what?” I ask, and he catches me surprised.
“Something about a break-in, nothing serious. Still have you listed, though. May want to make a few calls, clear it up.” Checks one last detail. “And it’s true you were out of town last week, from Sunday to Wednesday?”
I nod.
“And your brother tells me that you’re closing your school?”
I nod again.
“Why?”
“I have to go out of town, back to Philadelphia for something. Business related. I’ll clear up that matter you mentioned, with the Philly P.D.”
“Okay. And you don’t know the guy?”
He’s done with his notebook, flipping it shut, though the conversation isn’t over.
“Roger Dupont – I don’t think I’ve ever met him. He could have come in for free lessons or come to the bar when I was there but I don’t know…”
This causes an obvious turn i
n his wheels; it doesn’t appear to be sympathy, more appreciation of my shifting approach to the conversation. His eyes look over my shoulder and out at the ocean.
“It’s beautiful,” he says to change the subject, but he does so too fast and it almost sounds like he’s still talking about the situation with Roger Dupont. “I love it after storms. That smell…” He takes a deep inhale, and the salt of the ocean is extra pungent.
Then he turns and gets in his car without another word.
THE TEAM
The team and I have a video-conference.
“I’ll be there Wednesday,” I say and they both groan.
Travis is standing in the background. The room’s dim and his features are barely distinguishable. Steve’s up close to the laptop monitor, the eerie glow illuminating him in dark lines, the matted hair on either side of his head getting the worst of it – whereas Travis appears as an apparition in the background, Steve’s grody and not getting enough sleep.
“Sorry, I have unforeseen obligations. What have you got so far?” I ask to move the conversation along.
“So did I but you said we needed to be—” Travis says in a harsh, unfamiliar tone, moving closer to the computer, his black skin focused in the light of the webcam, but Steve stops him.
Neither says anything for a moment as Travis regains a bit of composure.
“We haven’t slept much, as it took us quite a bit of travel to get here,” Steve says in a low tone. “What I’ve gotten so far…” and he looks through some papers in front of him, “I tracked each of the hotels that Mans el-Ray Pasquale stayed at after he quit working for the congressional aide staff. It’s odd ‘cause, I mean, the guy has family in New Jersey but he doesn’t go to New Jersey, not once after he quit. He moved around for a month, a few days here, a few days there – it’s got to form a pattern, something. Part of his movements might follow the congressional staff for his former employer – but it’s flimsy. And it doesn’t make sense – why quit and then linger around your old boss? It’s counterproductive – even if they’re the enemy, why not stay close and gather information? And that’s not the weirdest piece of information. Tell him.”