‘So who got kidnapped from the school?’ said Noleen, breaking the silence. ‘If dicking around with statues is a calling card, then I betcha someone’s gone missing from Asshole, Idaho, same as someone vanished from Mama Cuento’s backyard.’
‘Nah,’ said Kathi. ‘Bran’s on a rampage. He’s warning his kid not to make waves or he’ll end up in the hog pen with his mom. Sick bastard.’
‘I reckon the kid offed his mom,’ said Todd, ‘and sent himself a belly button to throw us off the scent.’
‘What the hell are you all talking about?’ I said, thinking, reflective individuals, my arse. ‘Are you high? Why would a seventeen-year-old kid break out of some borstal in the middle of nowhere, drive thousands of miles in a pickup that must be stolen and kidnap a statue from the same town as he was just about to kill his mother in? Then drive all the way back and point the finger at himself with a belly button? There isn’t even time. He would have had to fly and hire the truck – plus a crane – and then fly back. Meanwhile, where’s his mother?’
‘See what I mean?’ said Noleen. ‘She’s got no clue where Idaho is.’
‘Why? Where is it?’ I said.
‘Just up a ways and turn right till the real estate gets less pricey,’ Kathi said. ‘Exactly where some Cuento bad boy would get banged up when his parents couldn’t take it anymore.’
‘Yay,’ said Todd. Then, at our puzzled looks, he went on: ‘Road trip!’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Yay.’
NINE
We never got there.
When I told the others we had permission from Blaike’s stepfather – not even permission; a request – to go and talk to him, Todd started cancelling clients left and right and Kathi texted Devin at college, offering bonus pay if he would take over the Skweek for a couple of days.
‘He’s supposed to be studying,’ I reminded her.
‘He can study,’ she said. ‘One of his buddies could film the professor and live-stream it right to Devin in the laundromat. Beats me why he ever hauls his ass all the way over town to sit in a theatre anyway.’
Me too, when she put it that way.
Todd was on the phone to Roger, saying, ‘But, babe, if I don’t tag along, there won’t be a man for this poor kid to relate to. Just Kathi – and Lexy, for God’s sake! His mom has disappeared. He needs to speak, man to man, to someone who understands.’
‘How come I get a “for God’s sake”?’ I said. ‘I’m an actual counsellor.’
‘What would Todd know about a disappearing mom?’ said Kathi. Which was another very good point. Todd’s mother, Barb, lived in Cuento and had an alert on her phone in case her beautiful boy did anything noteworthy, such as posting a review of a pickle fork on Amazon or saying LOL to a cat video.
‘Thank you!’ Todd was saying. Of course he was. Roger was the most patient and understanding husband I had ever seen in my life. Granted, I tended to get involved with marriages when they hit the skids, but I’m including friends, family and sitcoms in my tally. ‘Can I borrow your down vest?’ Todd was saying into his phone now. ‘And your L.L.Beans? And your green cap with the— Oh, you did? … Yeah, I know I did … Well, it was … Yeah, but who knew I’d ever be going to Idaho? … Well, I can swing by the thrift store and re-buy it. I’m sure it’ll still be there.’ He hung up.
‘That man’s a saint,’ I said.
‘My rainboots have a stacked heel,’ said Todd. ‘I might need to stop off on the way and pick out some—’
‘For God’s sake!’ said Kathi. ‘Stop being such a cliché. Right. Are we taking the small cooler just for drinks and finding diners for meals? Or the large one and pull off at rest stops with grills?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m not spending ten hours in a car with melting ice cubes sloshing around in a box in the boot. Be normal. Why do you think God invented Starbucks?’
‘Yeah, I’m not grilling at an Idaho rest stop in February,’ said Todd. ‘We’ll all get eaten by bears.’
‘Bears!’ I said. I had never encountered one yet, in my few forays down to the big sequoias or up to the huge ones. ‘I want to see a bear! And drive through a tree! Are there buffalo?’
‘There’s a casino called the Buffalo,’ said Kathi. ‘Just over the Oregon border. That do you?’
Even paring down the supplies to three personal coffee cups, a bag of beef jerky and a box of something called milk duds (that looked like rabbit droppings), it took us the rest of the day to reschedule our various clients, agree on the best weather forecast, translate the temperature guide to Celsius (for me) and pack enough warm clothes, hip flasks and snow chains to see us over the mountains. We were still bickering about audiobooks when the sun went down.
‘Middlesex!’ said Todd. ‘Like in that movie! With Barbra Streisand!’
‘Speaking of Barbra Streisand—’ I said.
‘I am not listening to some dude’s thousand-page creep-out about gender identity,’ said Kathi.
‘But that’s the whole point!’ said Todd. ‘The thousand pages. It doesn’t matter what goes wrong on the road, we’ll never run out of book. We could be stuck in the Donner Pass till spring and the one that ate the other two would still be listening when the thaw came.’
‘Could we?’ I said. ‘Could we really get stuck?’
‘I volunteer to be eaten first if we’re listening to Middlesex,’ said Kathi. ‘And don’t leave me to starve to death. That’s why so many of the Donner Party died. They ate victims of starvation with no fat left on them. Died of protein poisoning. Kill me good and early. Kill me now if you’re serious about that book.’
‘Yeah, but could we?’ I said. ‘Maybe we should take the big cooler, after all. Maybe we should throw in a couple of instant barbecues?’
‘I don’t want to listen to SNL sketches,’ Todd said. ‘Or David Sedaris.’
‘You better turn in your card,’ said Kathi. ‘Why don’t we let Lexy choose?’
‘BBC Radio 4 podcast,’ I said, without a moment’s hesitation.
Todd made a great fake-puking noise. ‘Baking with Dickens!’ he said. Which was accurate enough to put me in a huff, so I flounced off to the boat to download a good haul, planning to sit with my earbuds in, looking out of the window all the way to Iawherevero – then they’d be sorry.
Diego was outside his and Della’s room, scuffing around the edge of the car park like a kid from the thirties sparking his clogs on the cobbles. He was six now, and just beginning to stretch out, his legs getting a bit of length to them and his ribs poking sharply up out of the water when he floated on his back in the Last Ditch pool, but he was still as cute as when he’d been a chubby four-year-old, looking like a balloon animal. His eyes didn’t seem to be getting any smaller as his face grew, and his hair still shone like boot buttons and now reached halfway down his back.
‘You OK, baby boy?’ I said. ‘You waiting for someone?’ It bothered me that Diego never seemed to have any little friends over, even though he was sort of a kid with a swimming pool. If any of the kids in my primary-one class had had a swimming pool (indoor and heated, obviously), we would have carried them around in a sedan chair.
‘Nah,’ he said. ‘Just kicked out because Mom’s busy with You-Know-Who.’
I tried not to react. But I was kind of shocked that Della would put him out of the room to entertain Devin. It didn’t seem like her.
‘Hey,’ I said, ‘you know if Devin and your mom need some quiet time, you can come to the boat. Only, shout from the land, OK? Don’t try to jump over on to the steps if no one’s watching you.’
He screwed up his eyes until they were only twice the size of average eyes. ‘Devin?’ he said. ‘Why would Devin need quiet time with my mom?’
Shit. ‘To play Scrabble,’ I said. ‘I know how much you hate when we play Scrabble. Bor-ing, right?’
‘Nuh-uh,’ he said. ‘I like Scrabble, now I can spell. Does Devin play Scrabble with my mom?’
Shit. ‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘And if I’
m not there, or I’ve got a client, you can go to Todd and Roger.’
‘Todd plays Scrabble all the time,’ said Diego. ‘He plays it on his phone with people who’re not even there.’
‘Or you could go to the office and hang out with Noleen,’ I said. ‘We all love you.’
‘Why does Devin need me to go away?’ he asked. ‘Does Devin not love me? Did I upset him?’
Shit. ‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s just sometimes grown-up people need some time alone together.’
‘IS DEVIN DATING MY MOM?’ he said, louder than I knew he could say anything. ‘IS DEVIN KISSING MY MOM ON HER MOUTH?’
Shit. And, as if that wasn’t bad enough, the door of 101 opened and Devin himself emerged, reading glasses on the end of his nose and floppy textbook held open against his chest.
‘I hear my name?’ he asked. ‘Hey, li’l bro.’
‘ARE YOU DATING MY MOMMY?’
Devin gave me a look, just as Della opened the door to her room and fired a rapid burst of Spanish at her son. I caught a few words of it, including abogada several times. And then a young woman in a brown business suit and court shoes came to stand behind her in the doorway.
Shit. Della was talking to a lawyer.
‘ARE YOU DATING DEVIN, MOM?’ Diego demanded. He had his little fists bunched on his skinny little hips, which was just about the most adorable thing I had ever seen outside YouTube.
‘Don’t shout at me!’ said Della. She turned to face Devin, who held the open textbook higher up on his chest like a bulletproof shield. ‘Did you tell him?’ she asked. I shivered. She didn’t need to shout. She could whisper and people would still buckle at the knee.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Sorry. It was me. It was an accident. I thought you two were in there … together … and he was waiting.’ Not only my knees felt the ice of her new look. There was a shifting in the underwear department too, nether portion.
‘You thought I threw my son out into a parking lot to let me—’
‘It seemed surprising,’ I said.
‘I would never do that,’ said Della.
‘I know!’ I said. ‘That’s why I was shocked.’
‘I would never do that,’ said Devin. The lawyer gave him an appraising look.
‘I know!’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Are you a citizen?’ the lawyer asked Devin. I suppose an immigration attorney has got to have a practical streak a mile wide if she’s going to get anywhere, and I was glad that she had pulled focus from me at last, but I had to feel sorry for the woman as Della rounded on her, stared her down from inches away – they were still sharing a doorway – and said, in a voice colder than the Donner Pass in December, ‘He’s a student. Look at him!’
‘Hey!’ said Devin.
‘He’s wearing pool slides,’ said Della. I didn’t get the significance, personally, but the lawyer screwed her face up and nodded as if to acknowledge an inarguable point being made.
‘Hey!’ said Devin again. ‘You wear pool slides.’
‘At the pool,’ said Della, and she withdrew into her room again, taking the lawyer with her.
The three of us left standing in the car park said nothing for a moment. Then Diego piped up. ‘Why do you date mommies? Are you a daddy?’
It wasn’t the question Devin must have been dreading, but it used quite a lot of the same words, enough to freak him out completely and send him scurrying back into room 101, hopping and scuffing to keep the fateful pool slides on his feet.
‘Is he?’ Diego asked me, once the door was shut.
‘He’s the same age as your mom,’ I said. ‘Pretty much.’
‘I thought he was a big boy,’ said Diego. ‘He goes to school. Is he a man?’
‘Men go to school,’ I said. ‘It’s a special school called a college that daddies go to. Mummies too.’
‘Mummies go?’ Diego said. ‘Do zombies go?’
‘What? Oh! No, I mean mommies.’
‘Do vampires go? Do werewolves go? Is Devin safe there?’
‘He’s fine,’ I said. Safer than with Della, in that mood.
‘He’s no good at combat,’ said Diego. ‘I can beat him. I can beat him with a sword and a lightsaber and ninja skills and—’
‘He’s fine,’ I said again. ‘It’s a very sweet thing that you care about him. I’m sure he cares about you too.’ This was because I could see the shadow of Devin’s feet on the other side of his door and I knew he was listening. ‘You could do worse!’ I said to the feet as, hand in hand, Diego and I walked away. ‘I’m going on a trip,’ I said to the little boy. ‘With Todd and Kathi. I’ll miss you till we get back.’
‘You can call me,’ he said, and I battled to hide my smile. Kindness in a six-year-old doesn’t need flattened by smirking.
‘I might just do that,’ I said. ‘Thank you. Now, are you coming round to the boat or into the office? Except Noleen is tidying and she might sweep you into a bin bag and put you out for the dustmen.’
‘You talk funny.’
‘Or are you going up to the Skweek? Kathi might squirt you with Mr Muscle and tumble you dry, though.’
‘Is that a big boy or a daddy?’ Diego said.
‘Mr Muscle?’ I said. Diego laughed as if I’d cracked the funniest joke ever, with perfect comic timing. I loved six-year-olds. This one, anyway.
‘No, silly Lexy,’ he said, when the paroxysm was finally over. ‘Him. Is he a big boy or a daddy? Because daddies aren’t supposed to cry.’
I looked over to where he was pointing, which was the collection of outsize wheelie bins for landfill and recycling. Skulking half hidden behind the blue one was a skinny youth, with his head down and his hand going up and down compulsively as he wiped his nose and cleaned it off on his jeans. Drug dealer, I thought, and felt sorry for him. If someone was trying to do drug deals in the forecourt of Noleen’s motel, he was about to get a short lesson that would stay with him for the rest of his life.
Then he looked up. I knew those ice-blue eyes.
‘Blaike?’ I said. I hunkered down to Diego. ‘Sorry, baby boy. We can’t hang out. Go and see if Kathi’s got pocket treasure, eh?’ There was always something small and interesting that had fallen out of an item of laundry, and Diego was usually first in the queue to scoop them up. A painted tin battleship, less than an inch long, had been his high-water mark, never to be matched for thrills, but he kept hoping.
I walked very slowly over to the bins, as if Blaike – I was sure I recognized him – was an injured animal.
‘Blaike?’ I said again. ‘Honey? What are you doing here?’
‘I can’t stay there anymore. They’re sadists and abusers and there’s no way I should be there,’ he said. ‘So I came home but I can’t go home home, because she won’t listen and he won’t even answer his phone, so I came here to see if you would come with me and tell them. They don’t pay any attention to me. But you kicked their asses over the divorce that time. So maybe you could kick their asses again, for me?’
I stared at him, aghast. Was it possible that he didn’t know anything about anything and he had just coincidentally left school and come to Cuento right when his mum was being kidnapped and a statue was having its toes lopped off? It certainly looked that way.
But that couldn’t be right. ‘Blaike, honey,’ I said. ‘Did someone send you an anonymous belly button?’ I certainly hoped so, because it was quite a confusing sentence for him to hear otherwise.
‘That was the last straw,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know what it was when I posted it, then it started trending and these really scary women were making threats and I had to get away. Please tell me you’ll help.’
What the hell was I going to do? He was a minor and, if he’d been sent to school, then I couldn’t be harbouring him. I guessed. I flicked a glance back at Della’s room. That lawyer in the brown suit would be able to tell me.
‘You’re not going to believe this,’ I said, ‘but we were just on our way to see you.’
&nb
sp; ‘All three of you?’ He had stopped crying and now he cleared his nose with a rich, liquid sniff. But he swallowed it without even looking around for a good place to spit. Maybe the boarding school had been good for him. He’d been an unpleasant brat at fifteen when I first met him, sniggering and slinking around. His only visible talent had been finishing off drinks at parties without anyone noticing, until he passed out or threw up. Two years later, even dirty and tired, he looked more … wholesome.
‘All three of …?’ I began. Then I got it. ‘No, not your parents and me. My partners and me. Your stepdad asked us to come and talk to you.’
‘What about?’ he said. ‘What did my mom think of that? She’s weird about you still, sometimes. When you’re in the Voyager or if one of her friends comes to see you for something. She can be kind of weird.’
I didn’t hate this version of myself, always getting press coverage and amassing new clients from Brandeee’s social group. But I rose above it. ‘Weird?’ I said. ‘Just about that? Or in general?’
‘My mom?’ said Blaike. ‘Where do I start? Do you know why she sent me away?’
‘I’d like to hear,’ I said. ‘But I’ve got to tell you something.’
‘And at least I know you won’t judge me,’ Blaike went on. ‘You just said you’ve got two partners, right?’
‘Business partners,’ I told him. ‘But no, I won’t judge you. Of course not. But … I don’t suppose there’s any chance you’re eighteen, is there?’
He was gone before I even knew he was moving, blasting past me and taking the corner of the swimming-pool chain-link like someone on a luge.
‘Blaike!’ I shouted after him. ‘Sorry! You can … trust me,’ I finished under my breath. The kid had good instincts; he knew the only reason to ask his age was if I’d been planning to tell his parents where he was, unless he’d reached the magic number.
Scot on the Rocks Page 9