by John Goode
“So you and Robbie, huh?” I asked once we were settled.
Sebastian nodded. “Yeah, so far, so good,” he said, giving me a brilliant smile that I’m sure had melted more than a few hearts in its time.
“Great,” I replied. “So what are your intentions with Robbie?”
He was in midsip, so he looked at me with his cup still raised, I suppose checking to see if I was making a joke. He saw I was not making a joke.
“Um,” he stalled. “Good ones?”
I gave him a smile back, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t as dazzling as his was. “Yeah, not a great answer. Wanna try again?”
“You’re joking, right?” he finally asked.
“I am not joking. What are your intentions with Robbie?”
He put his coffee down. “You do know I already went through this with his mom, sister, and uncle, right?”
“Awesome.” I beamed. “So what are your intentions?”
He cocked his head in confusion. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t under the impression you and Robbie were close.”
I nodded. “We’re not. So, your intentions?”
He chuckled, but I could tell it was nervousness over the uncomfortable situation. “Look, dude, I have no idea where this is coming from, but….”
“You know about Riley?” I interrupted him.
His chuckle died and I saw his eyes grow cold. “Yeah, I do. I also know what your boyfriend did.”
Nodding, I pushed on. “Great, then you know what kind of life Robbie has gone through. I don’t know if you realize how close he came to breaking from all that. He keeps his cards pretty close to his chest, so it’s easy to mistake his sarcasm as a personality trait and not the defense mechanism it is. So I want to make sure he doesn’t go through anything like that again.”
I let him digest that as I took a sip of my own coffee.
“So let me ask again. What are your intentions?”
“Bro, I don’t know where this is coming from, but I assure you I am not going to hurt Robbie.”
“Well, bro”—my voice got harsh—“I ask because I know who you are.”
His face got a little pale as he looked at me intently, trying to place me somewhere in his past.
“I know exactly who you are because I’ve met you a dozen times in my life.” He seemed to sigh in relief as he caught my meaning. “You’re a good-looking guy, great shape, charming as hell, and you think that means something. See, I know different.”
He said nothing, but I could see him trying to stare a hole through me as I talked.
“I know that all of that, your looks, your body, all of it, is going to just fall apart someday. Piece by piece it will fade and vanish, leaving what’s underneath left, and I’m asking you, what’s underneath all that pretty? Because Robbie deserves a lot more than just looks.”
He said nothing for almost a minute, just staring at me. Finally he blinked and asked, “Are we done? Or you have anything you want to add?”
“I said what I needed,” I answered, shocked he wasn’t going to say anything back.
“Great. Thanks for the coffee,” he said, getting up and walking out.
Well, that was useless.
Tyler
“SO WHAT was in the envelope?” Robbie asked me impatiently.
“I’m getting there,” I assured him.
“Well, get there faster,” he ordered.
“Okay, okay! I didn’t hear from her for a couple of days, which is odd for us. So I went by her work to see what was up and take her out to lunch….”
Tyler
THE BEST Buy had been built on the outskirts of town because the city council didn’t want it staining the pristine presentation of downtown. What that meant was that old people didn’t like change, and since they were still in power, what they wanted became law. Instead of making a shopping center in the middle of town, where small businesses like mine could benefit, it was built in the middle of Bumfuck, Foster, which made people do all their shopping once they were there. Going anywhere else was just too much of a hassle.
Linda said Best Buy was a soul-crushing place to work because the managers were hired by corporate and weren’t from Foster. That meant they didn’t understand anything about the people they were hiring to work for them. In a small town like Foster, people had a variety of responsibilities that Best Buy did not recognize as valid.
Did your family own a ranch and needed you at certain times to help out with it? Too bad; Best Buy didn’t care. Did you have a child who had to be picked up from school by three? Too bad—your shift was until four; get someone else to do it. I asked her how she’d handled working there so long, and she just looked at me like I was stupid and answered, “Because Kyle needs to eat.”
After that I just shut up and let it go.
I didn’t see her on register, which was where she normally worked before lunch. Instead her friend Sharon was there. She waved at me as I walked in.
“Hey, you,” I said, giving her one of my midrange smiles, the one that seemed to make women blush. Don’t glare at me. I may know nothing about being gay, but I understand that girls find me attractive. I can’t do a thing about that, but I can use it to my advantage. “Where’s your partner in crime?”
She cocked her head for a moment as she tried to figure out who I meant.
“Linda,” I reminded her. “Is Linda around?”
“Oh.” She shook her head. “She called in today. I’m covering her shift.”
That was odd.
“Where did she go?”
Sharon shrugged as she shooed me away from the counter for the customer behind me. “Welcome to Best Buy. Did you find everything you were looking for?”
“Why did she call in?” I asked her, ignoring the customer.
Sharon rang the lady’s items up. “Don’t know, she just said she had to take off for the day and could I cover for her.”
“Just like that?”
“Is that all?” Sharon asked.
“I guess so,” I answered, worried.
“She was talking to me,” the woman huffed as she pulled money out of her purse.
“Thanks, Sharon,” I called back as I ran out of the store. Something was wrong. I just knew it.
I got to my car and called her on my cell phone.
“Hey,” Linda answered, obviously driving.
“Where are you?” I asked, sounding way more like my dad than I intended. “I just came by your work to see if you wanted to go to lunch.”
“Oh, I took the day off,” she said in a tone I knew well. She was trying to make it sound way more casual than it was.
“Where are you? I’ll meet you for lunch.”
“I’m not in town,” she answered like she took off out of town all the time.
“Linda,” I said, again in my dad’s voice. “Where are you?”
“I’m crossing over into Oklahoma now. I’ll be back in town by Friday, Ty; just chill.”
“What the fuck are you doing in Oklahoma?” I almost yelled. “Is this about that letter?”
“I gotta go,” she answered, completely avoiding my question. “I’ll call you when I’m back.” Then she hung up on me.
She hung up on me.
What the fuck was going on?
Robbie
IF THIS fuck doesn’t hurry up, I’m going to slap the taste right out of his mouth.
And that has nothing to do with my previous issues with Tyler. These are all new ones stemming from the fact that he thinks he’s fucking Charles Dickens all of a sudden, telling me it was the best of times and it was the worst of times.
Oh, screw off with that look. I’ve read a book or two.
I’m half listening to him, half wondering how much force it would take to kill him if I punched him in the throat, when Sebastian comes in looking like he’s all kinds of pissed off. Tyler pauses and looks over at him, but I can tell Seb is having none of the Foster experience.
“I’m going to go back to t
he motel,” he tells me in a tone that translates his words as: “I don’t want to end up murdering someone in this town and spending the rest of my life at the mercy of the Texas legal system.” I know this because I spoke in that same tone for years after Riley died.
“What’s up?” I ask, wondering if it had been the best of moves to bring him along. I mean, we’re barely figuring out what we’re doing, and my mom, Nicole, and James make figuring hard enough. I’m not sure what I thought I was doing bringing him here.
No, that’s not true. I’m testing him, of course, something I thought I was done doing.
“I’m just tired,” he claims, which is bullshit because I’ve had extended carnal relations with him, so I know exactly how much stamina he has.
Oh, shut up. If you were sleeping with someone that pretty, you’d brag too.
To Tyler I say, “I’ll be right back,” and I walk Sebastian out of the waiting area. “Okay, what’s wrong?”
“I know these guys are, like, your friends and all, but I’m not a fan.”
How could he already have a problem with Matt and Tyler? I mean, Tyler has been in here with me the whole time, which only leaves….
Moose.
“What did he say?” I ask, gritting my teeth in anger.
“I’m not going to go running to Mommy when someone is mean to me on the playground.” He pauses for a second. “You know I don’t really think of you like my mom, right? I’m just saying that because I don’t want to sound like a little bitch.”
“What did Matt say to you?”
“Nothing.” Now he sounded like he was twelve. “I just don’t want to say something stupid and piss your friends off, so I’m going to go back to the room and wait for you.”
“Matt? You can say whatever you want to Matt, and if he gets mad, let him.” Seb looks at me to see if I’m joking. “I mean it. He’s a self-righteous asshole who thinks he walks on water or something. You can say whatever you want.” Another disbelieving look. “I mean it.”
“It won’t be nice.”
“Good.”
“I mean it.”
“Are you going to compare him to your mother?”
He thinks about it for a second and shrugs. “I might. She is kinda a bitch.”
God bless pretty people.
“Don’t hold back on my account,” I tell him. “If he wants to tussle, go all Lucy Liu on his ass.” He gives me a confused look and I sigh. “Okay, put Charlie’s Angels on the list of movies you have to see and go get him.”
He thinks about it for a moment and then smiles. “Okay. How’s it going in there?”
“If Jessica Fletcher doesn’t get to the point quickly, I’m going to suffocate him.”
“Who’s Jessica—” he begins to ask.
“Just go!” I say before he can make me feel any older.
Taking a deep breath, I turn and walk back into the waiting room.
I level a look at Tyler and say, “Just get to the point where she’s dying, okay?”
Tyler
THAT WEEKEND I drove by her apartment and saw her car in the parking lot. Of course she hadn’t called me, which worried me more than it pissed me off. I knocked on the door for almost five minutes before she answered.
She looked like hell.
If she had slept, it didn’t show on her face. Her clothes were wrinkled and it was obvious from the red eyes she’d been crying. She wasn’t surprised to see me, nor was she pleased.
“Tyler, not now,” she said in a weak voice. “I can’t do this right now.”
“Do what? Explain why you’re acting crazy all of a sudden?”
She snuffled a little and looked up at me with a sad smile. “We both know it isn’t all of a sudden.”
“Linda, what is wrong?” I asked, kneeling, trying to catch her eye.
“I screwed up,” she finally admitted. “I screwed up before, and now he’s going to have to pay for it.”
“Who?” I asked, confused.
“Kyle,” she said, looking up, tears falling from her eyes. “Kyle is going to have to pay and there’s nothing I can do about it.”
That made no sense to me at all.
“Kyle is fine in California. What did you do so wrong that it’s going to come back on…?”
“Billy and I never got divorced.”
And suddenly what she was trying to say made perfect sense.
Of course, the way you’re staring at me makes it pretty clear that it makes no sense to you, so let me explain.
In our senior year of high school, a new kid enrolled at Granada. He was the punk son of one of the ranch hands out on the Mathisons’ place and thought he was too good to be in Foster. He was butt ugly to me, but to Linda he was the very thing she couldn’t resist: a bad boy. They got together in a Sid and Nancy kind of way that only spelled doom for them both. She began smoking pot with him and the other loser stoners at our school. Weed led to more, and more led to her dropping out so they could be “together.” I begged her not to do it, but she was in love and assured me that behind closed doors, he wasn’t like I thought.
When she wound up pregnant, it turned out he was exactly like I thought, behind any door.
She moved back to Foster and had Kyle, and Billy ran for the hills so fast he might have caused a sonic boom. By that time her parents had given up on her and moved out of state; they offered to move back, but she refused. She thought she could raise Kyle by herself, and that meant by herself. I, of course, being me, had other things in my life, like me, my ego, and my issues, so by the time the dust settled, we were both back in Foster, and she had a kid and I had a busted knee.
And we rarely talked about that time in our lives at all.
I wasn’t that shocked to find she and Billy had been married. What stunned me was that it had been a legal ceremony and not just them saying vows while “November Rain” by G&R played in the background.
“So you guys really got married?” I asked dazedly.
“We were in Reno, and he wanted to prove he was in love with me and not the other chick I had caught him with.”
“Wait,” I said, rearing back. “You not just married that sleazeball, but you married him after you caught him with another woman?”
“It was a fucked-up time, okay?” she snapped. “I didn’t want to come crawling back to Foster or to my parents admitting I made a mistake. Everyone had warned me not to go with him, and I didn’t listen. At that point I was just betting more money on a bad horse.” She took a sobbing breath. “Tyler, I don’t need to be judged right now.”
“Okay, okay, okay,” I said quickly. “No judging. This is a no-judging zone.” She cracked a small smile, and I relaxed. “So what does this have to do with Kyle?”
“Somehow he heard of Kyle going to college, which of course made him think there was money to be had. And somehow he found out about the money.” I looked at her, confused. “The money Robbie gave the boys.”
Now it was starting to make sense.
“But he can’t sue for it or anything, right?” I asked, not sure how that went.
“I don’t think so. The summons was him threatening to divorce me and try to get some of the money, so I went to Oklahoma and told him that I was as broke as he was and that the money was Kyle’s and not mine.”
“Uh-oh,” I said, understanding.
She nodded. “Now he’s going to just attack and pressure Kyle endlessly for money. And you know Kyle—he always wants to do the right thing. What am I supposed to say? ‘Your father is a complete and utter waste of flesh. Ignore everything I said about giving people chances and tell him to fuck off’?”
“It’s a start,” I offered.
“You know he won’t,” she said, and I knew it to be true. “I’m going to have to go back up there again and threaten him to leave Kyle alone.”
“With what?”
She shrugged. “I haven’t gotten there yet, but maybe if I give him something, he’ll leave Kyle alone.” She began
to cry again. “I just don’t want Kyle to have to deal with Billy. That shouldn’t be on him.”
“You know he can handle this, right?” I said gently. “Kyle is a big boy.”
“Tyler, it’s bad enough that he lived his whole life knowing his father abandoned him. He shouldn’t have to deal with the fact that it might have been the best outcome for his life.”
“Billy won’t stop.”
“I have to try.”
And she did.
And now she’s dying for it.
Robbie
“HOW?” I finally blurted out. “Did he beat her up? Were they driving and he told her his name wasn’t Michael Vaughn and then they got hit by a semi? Why is she dying?”
He just told me a story that makes the Odyssey look like a dime store paperback and now he’s grasping for words.
“I guess she drove up there and tried to talk to him, and on her way back she fell asleep at the wheel.”
My hand went to my mouth and I felt my heart freeze for a moment.
“She went off the road into a ditch and….” He paused as he started to tear up again.
“She was in a car accident,” I said gently. “I got it.”
He shook his head and tried to compose himself. “It’s worse than that.”
“Worse?” I asked, confused. “What’s worse than crashing a car?”
He took a deep breath and said, “She hit her head pretty hard when she crashed. They’ve done all they could for now, but there’s a chance there might be some swelling building up in the back of her head….”
I felt my mouth go dry as a panic attack threatened. I forced myself to keep breathing and listen to him as he continued.
“The situation isn’t life-threatening right now, but they’re saying by the time it does get that bad, there might be brain damage.”
“Why don’t they just operate, then?” I asked, my voice sounding so far away.