Kids These Days

by Drew Perry

“I’m not trying to,” I said.

  He said, “Alice has you keeping tabs on me now, right?”

  Up on the TV, more numbers went by, mostly losing bets. “Yes,” I said. “She does.”

  “Because of—” he said.

  “Because of everything,” I said.

  He nodded. “Can’t fault her.” The TV host had his sleeves rolled up like he was actually doing work. The show went to commercial. “Get this,” Mid said. “Carolyn wants us to go to couples therapy. She’s got all these conditions now, shit we have to do. We’re supposed to go sit down and pass the talking ball back and forth.” He looked at the blade of his knife. “And also Maggie needs tubes in her ears. The doctor told us yesterday.”

  “I had tubes,” I said.

  “Sophie started her period.”

  I could see where we were headed, could see this ended in fire. “Congratulations?” I said. “Is that what you say?”

  “Last month. She asked Carolyn not to tell me. But then Carolyn told me. Jane hasn’t started hers yet, and Carolyn says she’s freaking out.” He halved a lemon, then halved it again. “Shit,” he said. “Sixths.” He picked up another. “You know what I could go for? Six or ten days of real quiet. A vacation. Branson, Missouri. Or one of those Alaska cruises. Somewhere with no ice machines. No kids. No threats of bodily harm.”

  “I could do that,” I said.

  “You’re already on vacation,” he said.

  “I’m not. I’m working a Saturday, even.”

  “How many weeks is she?”

  “Twenty-two. No: Twenty-three.”

  “Subtract that from forty. That’s how many weeks of vacation you’re on.” He looked up at the money show, which was back on again. “This fucking guy,” he said, pointing up at him. “What does this guy even do? He just reads the shit out as it comes across. He’s like one of those books for the blind.”

  “He tells us things,” I said.

  “What things?”

  “We should buy stock in sugary cereals. We should not buy stock in napalm.”

  “You ever miss your job?” Mid said.

  Paychecks. Bonuses. A set of bright lines to play between. I said, “Depends on when you ask.”

  “Is it me?” he said.

  “No,” I said, and that was the truth. “Not all the time. Mostly I like this pretty well.”

  “But you’re gonna quit. I’m trouble. I’m the bad guy.”

  “I don’t want to,” I said.

  “Why not? You could do other things. You’ll land on your feet.”

  “I can’t even think of anything,” I said. “I’m just out here floating.”

  “You didn’t think of this, and it came along.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “but—”

  “What do you miss? When you think about it?”

  I spun a lemon around on the bar. “Everything,” I said. “I miss everything. Our whole life back there. I felt like I knew what that was.”

  “Even though you didn’t.”

  “I thought I did. I really thought I did. But maybe it was the same as anything else, and I couldn’t tell.”

  He nodded. “See?” he said. “That is what I’m talking about. That shit. That is the very center of it right there.”

  Pomar came through the doors with six or eight pieces of toast on a plate, a bowl of boiled shrimp, an institutional jar of mayonnaise. He’d stood a bunch of parsely up in a glass like it was flowers. “Here we go,” he said. “The works.”

  “Tell me how to do this,” I said.

  “Listen to the master,” said Mid.

  Pomar handed me a rubber spatula, unscrewed the huge mayo lid. “Thin layer of mayonnaise on a piece of toast,” he said. “See-through thin. Open-face. The shrimp over that. Two or three. Then lemon, then parsley. And here.” He banged a salt shaker down on the bar. “A little salt.”

  “That’s it?” I said.

  Mid smiled. “Just try it,” he said. He was happy and unhappy in the same moment. He scraped his lemons off to the side of his cutting board. He built his sandwich. We each did. The three of us ate. Whether it was a last supper or just communion, I didn’t know. But it was good.

  In the car, Mid got going again about wanting to buy in with Pomar. How if that ever happened, he’d get him to open up for breakfast. “We’d be famous,” he said. “We’d be in food magazines. That could be the only thing on the whole menu. Shrimp and toast. Nothing else. Come if you like it, go the hell someplace else for some crap biscuit if you don’t.” He was sketching out how it would work when we pulled into the strip center. The Crown Vic was there, his agents, but there were also two local squad cars, white with green lettering on the doors: ST. AUGUSTINE BEACH SHERIFF. “Oh,” Mid said.

  “What?”

  He was staring at the sheriff’s cars. “This seems bad.”

  The Twice-the-Ice was definitely stolen. The electric service coming off the pole had been disconnected, and the water pipe was cut all the way back to the shopping center. No water, though. At least whoever’d done it had shut the valve off. A little decency among thieves. The two sheriff’s cars swung around behind us and switched their lights on. “Yeah,” Mid said. “This doesn’t smell right. Something’s up.”

  Two men got out of the Crown Vic and walked toward us. It was the first time I’d ever seen Friendly and Helpful. They looked related—same shoulders, same walk. One of them tapped on the glass. Mid rolled down the window. “I hate to do this,” the one on the right said. Friendly, I decided.

  Mid said, “Then don’t.”

  “What happened to your windshield?” he said. “And your mirror?”

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  “I’m sorry they stole your ice machine,” said Helpful.

  “Who’s this ‘they’?” Mid said.

  “Whoever it was,” he said.

  “Do you have any leads?”

  “No,” Friendly said, leaning down. “But we need to go ahead right here and advise you to stop talking. If you want to. You have the right to not be talking, is what I mean to say.”

  “The right to remain silent,” said Helpful.

  “You gotta be kidding me,” Mid said. “You guys are awful at this.”

  Friendly said, “Please step out of the car, please.”

  Mid said, “Two pleases?”

  “I really apologize,” said Friendly. “Not our decision. Came from higher up.”

  “Where higher up?”

  “I’m sure you’ll be able to work it out,” he said. “The DA up here’s a good guy. If it even gets that far. This is mainly a formality.” He opened Mid’s door. “You want my opinion, they’re just trying to squeeze you, but it’s not ours anymore.”

  Mid said, “You couldn’t just give me a call, ask me to turn myself in?”

  “Flight risk,” Helpful said.

  “Flight risk?”

  “That’s what we were told.”

  “Where would I fly to?”

  Helpful pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket. I felt a kind of hush seep in around everything else. “Francis Middleton, the State of Florida hereby charges you with fraud by telephone, obstruction of justice, intent to conceal—”

  “What the fuck is fraud by telephone?” Mid said.

  “That’s what it says here.”

  “You had to write it down? You couldn’t remember it?”

  “Mid,” I said, trying to bring him back a little, trying to do my job.

  “Why aren’t you guys out somewhere looking for my ice machine?” he asked them. “Go do police work, would you?”

  “We did find some receipts,” Friendly said. “Might be from our perpetrator. Might have fallen out of his car.”

  “You two geniuses think somebody stole this with a car?”

  “Truck,” Helpful said. “Come on. Just get out of the car. We’ll take you in, get you charged, get you out on bond, get you home so you can start straightening things out.”<
br />
  “Bond? I thought you said I was a flight risk.”

  “Can’t work toward resolution if we never begin the work,” Helpful said.

  “Did you make that up?” Mid said. “That’s terrific. I need that needlepointed into my forehead.”

  “Mid,” I said again.

  “Oh, I really do not think so,” he said, and pulled his door back shut.

  “Mid,” said Friendly. He put his hand on the door, in the space of the open window.

  “I know who did it,” Mid told him. “It’s this pirate guy who works the deli at that new Publix. I know where he lives.”

  “We can discuss that once we bring you in.”

  “This wasn’t the deal,” Mid said. “This wasn’t the deal at all.”

  “What deal?” I said.

  Mid looked up at Friendly. “What happened?”

  “I’m sorry,” Friendly said. “Truly.”

  “But what the fuck?”

  “Listen. We went on and lost that tape. The one with your daughter. We misplaced it.” Delton. If Mid hadn’t burned through his fuses, he would now.

  He said, “You did?”

  “This morning,” Helpful said. “After we got the call about the change in strategy.”

  “Did you guys steal my Twice-the-Ice?”

  “We did not.”

  Mid looked at me, at the empty concrete pad. “Like forever lost? For real?”

  Friendly said, “For real.”

  “Thanks for that, at least.”

  “So let’s just get out of the car,” said Friendly. “Alright?”

  Mid picked at the smashed windshield. It would definitely leak in the rain. “Your kids getting tattoos?” he asked. He’d slipped into an eerie, careful calm, which made me nervous.

  Friendly said, “Not yet, thank God.”

  “You know Maggie had colic for a year?” Mid said to me. “An entire year. One full year with no sleep. Hard to believe you can survive a thing like that.”

  “We should get out,” I said, hoping there was still something I could do to keep the lid on. An officer showed up at my window, one of the sheriff’s deputies. His uniform was green. He didn’t knock. He just stood at the ready.

  “I’m not getting out,” Mid said.

  “You have to get out,” said Friendly.

  “No. I’m going home.”

  “You can’t go home,” Friendly said. “Not right now.”

  “Maybe I am a flight risk,” he said. “I might like the sound of that. It sounds fierce, you know? Dangerous?” Then he said, “Except I’m pretty tired. Are you guys tired?”

  Friendly said, “Sometimes I am.”

  “Fucking pirate stole my ice machine and you’re here talking to me.”

  “We’re on that, OK?” Helpful said. “That’s definitely a felony.”

  Mid said, “I’m feeling better already.”

  “We have those receipts. We’ll start there.”

  “Maybe you could make plaster casts of the tire marks,” Mid said.

  Helpful said, “There aren’t any tire marks. It’s a parking lot.”

  “Maybe it was done by helicopter,” Mid said.

  “I have to ask you to get out of the vehicle,” Friendly said. “Please. Right now.”

  Mid said, “I hate to disappoint you, but I just don’t feel like that’s what’s going to happen.” He took a long breath. He put both his hands on the steering wheel. He looked dead ahead.

  I could see Alice, could see Delton. Out in front of us somewhere, I could see the BOJ, age three, age seven, age seventeen. I said, “Don’t do it.” I didn’t even know what he was going to do. Helpful took a step toward the car. The deputy on my side knocked on the window. I got a metal taste in my mouth. I saw the Twice-the-Ice on the end of some long webbed straps, soaring away underneath one of those two-rotored Coast Guard helicopters that came up and down the beach while they were training for whatever the Coast Guard trained for. Mapping. Rescues. I saw Pete Brett at the throttle of that thing, flying it with a naked leg. And then Mid floored it. He drove us right across the empty parking lot, through the flowerbed next to the sign, over the curb and out onto the street. The bottom of the car scraped as we went over. When the wheels caught the road, they squealed. I turned around. One of the deputies had his hand on his hip, but nobody drew a gun. No shots were fired. Friendly and Helpful got smaller the farther away we got. Mid kept gaining speed, and there was no sound except the engine pulling harder and harder. Nobody chased us. They just watched us go. Mid ran a light at the end of the block, but nobody was coming. Nobody hit us. We were not killed. I couldn’t believe it. We were gone.

  At first, Alice hadn’t wanted a kid, either. In fact, while we were dating, I was the one who talked about having kids, who would sketch out what it could look like: evenings at a ball game, vacations in the national parks. She’d listen but say she’d never really imagined having kids. I used to tell her I could see maybe a thirteen-year-old girl and a ten-year-old boy, the two of them often enough friends, his sister explaining the world to him when he asked nicely. Someone he could eventually go to for bra-strap advice. But I was playing with dolls. It was for some other time. It was an easy fantasy to have.

  And then the morning after our wedding, driving east and headed for the beaches, for a quick honeymoon we couldn’t afford, Alice started talking. We were riding through the sandhills and the military bases, fighter jets coasting across the sky like impossible models. She’d had a dream the night before, she said, about one of our friends who’d been at the wedding, a woman so pregnant you thought she might give birth right there while we cut the cake. I dreamed she lost it, Alice said. The baby. I remember what the light looked like while she told me, all that new summer green, the silhouette of another jet taking off, another one coming right behind it. It made me want a child, she said. It made me start thinking about the rest of our lives.

  At that moment I wanted badly to think only about being married to Alice, about sitting by the hotel pool with a gin and tonic in an insulated mug. I wanted to think about driving home four days later, married, walking through the front door of our same house and back into our same lives, just glued together a little more firmly now. I wanted to think about putting a roof on in a couple of years. I wanted to think about sometime we might go to Italy. And I said so, a few days after we got back. I just want to be married to you for a little while, I said. I want to do that first. She said that was fine. She apologized, even. But we’d set some kind of clock, I knew: We were headed for Collar or Cholera, Orange or Orangina. No matter what game we made of it, I was pretty sure I knew where we’d end up.

  I said, “Mid, you have to go back.” He’d turned off A1A, and we were aimed inland. I was starting with reason. I felt nothing close to reasonable.

  “Forget it,” he said.

  “We can’t go on the run in this thing,” I said. “They can probably see it from space.”

  “I know that.”

  “We can’t go on the run at all,” I said.

  “I know.”

  “So we have to go back.”

  There was nobody behind us. There was almost nobody on the road at all. He said, “Let me ask you a question.”

  “OK,” I said.

  “Do you own a gun?”

  “What?”

  “Easy one, Big Walter. Do you own a gun?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Perfect. Neither do I. So we can’t really be on the run here. Nobody goes on the run without at least a pistol.”

  I said, “But you can’t really think—”

  “This is a planning session. All we’re doing right now is planning our next move.”

  “Mid,” I said. “This is pretty straightforward. They’ll find us, they’ll set up a roadblock—they have guns, alright? That’s who has guns.”

  “No real need to plan, then, under your plan.”

  “That wasn’t a plan.”

  He said, “Let me
tell you something about daughters.”

  “No,” I said. “No. I need you to tell me you’re in there, instead. Tell me you understand what you’re doing.”

  He was driving with his knees. He said, “How about you tell me something about what’s happening right now. How about I ask the questions?”

  “You’re driving away from state agents who tried to arrest you. Plus the St. Augustine Beach Sheriff’s Department. You’re resisting arrest.”

  “I’m fleeing the scene,” he said.

  “Whatever you want to call it,” I said.

  “Good. That’s what I thought was going on, too.”

  “This isn’t the kind of thing you get away with,” I said, watching gas stations go by out the window, pay phones bolted into the ground next to the air and vacuum pumps. I could dive out of the car, roll to a stop, call Alice. “Unless you plan on sailing to Cuba and living the rest of your life there. Which you’re not. Right?”

  “I’m not. But I like where your head is. Do me a favor and check in the glove compartment there, will you?”

  “What for?”

  “Open it up. I have something for you.”

  “What was all that back there about a deal?”

  “Just open up the glove, alright?”

  I looked inside. I found the owners’ manual for the car, a tire gauge, and a flashlight. “There’s a flashlight,” I said.

  “That’s handy. We might need that.”

  I held it out for him to see. “It’s not that big,” I said.

  He said, “Keep digging.”

  I found a box, like a check box from the bank, but taller. It was about the size of a brick. “This?”

  “That,” he said. “Yes. Open it.”

  I felt the engine in my spine. He checked both sides of an intersection as we came up to it, ran another light. The scrub outside the window smeared by. We were the only people on earth. I opened the box. Inside were hundred-dollar bills, all stacked up. They were squeezed perfectly into the space.

  “Happy birthday,” he said.

  “You can’t possibly—”

  “What that is,” he said, “is a little something nobody can ever find. A little something to tide you through.”

  “You definitely can’t do this.”

  “I definitely already did. Too late.”