by Lee Irby
“What kind of store?”
“The kind that sells cigs.”
“Sure thing. I could really use some coffee.”
She lopes past me and reaches my car before I do, as my ankles feel leaden and plodding. I don’t want her smoking in my Honda, although I don’t know that I have the courage to tell her so. But thankfully she takes a few last heroic puffs of her smoke, flicks it imperiously to the turf, and then crushes the butt with the toe of her canvas sneakers. I unlock the car and we hop in, and her tobacco breath reminds me of my father. She might smell like death, but she looks like an extra from a Van Halen video and suddenly I fear I’ve become a ghost forced to roam the land of the living in search of his intended grave.
“Get me out of here,” she mumbles as I start the engine. The car then lurches backward even though I thought I was in drive, and I nearly get us stuck in the ditch. I step hard on the gas and the spinning tires kick up dust from the dying grass, leaving behind us a murky cloud of particulate matter. I’m so nervous I feel like I’m sixteen again and on my first official date, with Hannah Anderson, JV cheerleader and fellow virgin, who now resides in Deltaville and heads up the local La Leche League chapter. These days she might be an advocate for public exposure of breasts, but I assure you in high school she kept her perky little boobies wrapped up tight.
Gibson has taken off her shoes and has her bare feet propped up on the dashboard, a rather intimate gesture that assumes a level of trust between us that doesn’t yet exist. But she does have exceedingly lovely feet, perfectly shaped, sinewy yet delicate, with toenails painted bright red.
“So where am I taking you?” I ask as we head north on Traylor Drive.
“Um, Manhattan?”
What if I reply with a resounding Sure? What a different sort of book this would be, the two of us renegades rolling north up I-95 toward Gotham, ready to throw our lives away for a weekend of debauchery. But of course I say no such thing, for many reasons. The wedding for starters, but also because I’m too chicken. Not spontaneous enough, according to Bev. Too careful. But these same attributes can come in handy in certain delicate situations that require extensive planning, e.g., a criminal enterprise.
“As enticing as that sounds, I would hate to miss the weekend festivities.”
Gibson erupts in mordant laughter. “Yeah, whatever. My dad is totally whack. You know that, right?”
“I’ve actually never met him.”
“See? Don’t you think that’s f-ed up? It’s so stupid. I like your mom and all, but she’s making a huge mistake.”
“It’s really not my place to pass judgment.” We’re now at the intersection of Traylor and Cherokee, a winding lane that follows the river that stretches out before us, the brown James, where America was born. We must go either left or right. “Seriously, where am I taking you?”
A forlorn sigh. “J. Sarge.” A local community college, named after J. Sargent Reynolds, scion of a prominent Richmond family whose fortune came from cellophane and aluminum foil, commonly used to prevent spoilage. In other words, to thwart the passage of time, Richmond’s real genius.
“Which campus?”
“Henrico.”
“Which is where exactly?”
She gets out her phone and taps on the GPS app, and a second later I’m being told to turn right by a caviling metallic voice. I’d much rather know the actual location of the campus, but Gibson is already pissy enough and I’m sure I’ll figure it out. I vaguely recall a J. Sarge campus out on Parham Road somewhere, in the heart of the suburban sprawl that is Henrico County, which I detest with my entire being. But at least I can stop at a mall and procure some white shoes.
It’s obvious that we need some music to brighten the mood. I fish out my own phone and plug it into the car stereo, but then comes the hard part—what to pick?
“What kinds of stuff are you listening to these days?”
Her answer surprises, even enchants me. “Old-school.”
“Old-school what?”
“Old-school anything.”
“Give me the name of a band.”
“The Fuggs.”
“Seriously? I love them, they were badasses, but I don’t think I have any. So you like early to mid-sixties? The Kinks? At some point I might’ve downloaded a few songs.”
“No, it’s cool. Just pick something. I’m pretty open to suggestion.” Ha! In one phrase Gibson disclosed the core of her existence, and yet I didn’t know enough about her at the time to understand she was revealing her authentic self. Throwaway lines often teem with truth, but few of us pick up on them. We cast our hooks in deep water in hopes of landing a big fish, neglecting the shallows where we can see the bottom.
“Bright Eyes?” I suggest in a near whisper, so as not to offend.
“Go for it.”
Go for it. How I would like to, Gibson! Just once in my life I want to be the one who grabs the gusto, tosses care overboard, and steams into port to plunder and pillage. Maybe I’ll release my inner pirate, possibly this weekend if not in a few agonizing minutes. Because really, what else do I have to lose? If I’m going down, why not with my hands caressing her shapely body? Admit it, you want me to. The honest among you will freely cop to the dark urge. Just hold on, these things take time.
I get the playlist cued up, still flummoxed by her appreciation for the Fuggs, an obscure band started by a poet. It makes me think better of her. The tunes come on, and Conor Oberst croons that it’s the first day of his life. Speak the truth, C.O.! I actually feel relieved that I’ve managed to keep my hands to myself, just like a normal person, which is a trick harder than it looks. I’m at my best when sharing music with like-minded enthusiasts, as Gibson appears to be. In a different world I would’ve been a DJ or a producer, not a teacher of composition who makes the young eat their intellectual vegetables.
But the positive vibes quickly end when Gibson makes a request that complicates matters in an unexpectedly unpleasant way.
“Can I borrow forty bucks? I’m totally broke and I really need the cash.”
“Sure, okay.”
“I’ll pay you back, I promise. Just until I get my driver’s license back and then I can get a job. Two more months and it’ll all be over, unless the judge hoses me like he did before. Because I wasn’t even drunk when I got pulled over. I blew a bullshit .09, which is barely buzzed.”
“I try never to drive when I’ve been drinking.” Sage advice from the wise head who knows a thing or two about evading the long arm of the law.
“I wasn’t even drinking that much. Like three beers, no biggie. But thanks for helping me out. You’re awesome.”
She lightly pats my shoulder, and even through my retro Wham! T-shirt I can feel the heat her body emanates, as though her beauty acts as a furnace whose fire she can summon whenever she wants. She asked for the money because she damn well knew I’d fork it over, that I’d be unable to say no. I wish I could summon the strength to refuse her, so that she might learn the limits of being gorgeous, except there really aren’t any when you’re eighteen, reckless, and breathtaking.
“I’m not awesome,” I croak helplessly as we wind along Cherokee Road, past waterfront compounds behind which sit riverfront monstrosities, although a few are more modest and belong to a time in the 1970s when the rich were just rich and not engorged with ill-gotten gains. Many of those humble abodes have been bulldozed to make way for overstated mansions, but the one that my friend John Graziano grew up in remains, defiant in its Brady Bunch tri-levelness, a dwarf relic in a city that has a chokehold on history. Remember that name: John Graziano. He’ll become a very important person in this tale.
“I really don’t feel like going to this class,” Gibson sighs.
“What class is it?”
“Retard math. Sorry, remedial math. It’s just me and this posse of dumb rednecks from Ashland, and the teacher is Romanian or Lithuanian and honestly no one can understand a word he says. And it lasts for three horrible ho
urs!”
“Poor kid! Three whole hours of learning!”
“Seriously, it’s the worst. You sit in there and see how you like it.”
“No thanks. I hear enough complaining from my own students.”
“You’re a teacher, right? I’d bet you’d be chill in class.” Her compliment perks me up, but she quickly stops flattering me to address what’s foremost on her mind. “Don’t forget to stop for smokes.”
“Is there a place near campus?”
“Yeah, for sure. Just don’t forget. I can’t handle retard math without a pack of cigarettes.” That I’ll be buying, apparently, with the “loan” I’m extending to her based on the collateral of a harried promise of future employment. Why do I always get myself into these situations? Am I powerless to say no? Am I that weak of a man? Of course not! I haven’t propositioned her yet, have I? Or made an indecent remark. The battle must be fought one skirmish at a time.
“Don’t worry, we’ll stop. I’d hate for you to suffer unjustly.”
“Your mom wants me to quit smoking. I know she’s right.”
“She is most of the time about most things.”
“Not about my dad she isn’t.”
“Well, she might have a blind spot there, but usually she reads people well. She didn’t like the woman I married and right now I sort of wish I’d listened to her.”
“I didn’t mean to sound harsh about your mom.”
Her apology actually seems genuine, not crafted from a trove of fake emotion. She even touches me again, with her fingertips on my forearm, grazing my skin the way a lover might tickle with a downy feather. Of course she’s not my lover—nor will she ever be. I promise, for the moment. There are websites you can visit if you want real action.
“No, it’s fine,” I grandly assure her. “She really wants what’s best for you. She has a good heart, which usually ensures disappointment in this world.”
“I don’t know, your mom is so sweet and she tries and all. Are you going to say anything to her?”
“About her wedding? Not on your life! I came down here to be supportive, wear a white suit, say cheese when told, drink too much at the reception, and then exit stage left as soon as possible. How she lives her life is her business. There’s no logic for why people fall in love, and so logic is never sufficient to argue against it.” What am I referring to here, my mother’s romantic situation or my own? It feels like I’m in my office on campus, meeting with an adventurous coed who’s come to me for advice, and yet beneath the polite veneer of academic jargon seethes the bursting sexuality of a young woman eager for experience. Just when I thought I could escape the craziness for a few days, it’s found me all over again.
“I’m never getting married,” Gibson announces as we make our way across the river, on a bridge named for Harry F. Byrd, one of Virginia’s most ardent segregationists, architect of the “massive resistance” to fight against integration. In other words, a hero. Bev has crawled into my head! It’s like she’s sitting right next to me, pontificating in her sharpest voice, the one that extracted my heart in a few deft cuts.
“It’s not for everyone,” I reply.
“Because it’s total crap.”
“You won’t get an argument from me. I certainly failed at it.”
“Do you know how many guys have already proposed to me? Seriously, I’m not lying. They’ve gotten on their knees, had a ring, begged me to say yes—three! The first time I was sixteen.”
I gulp down some much-needed air. “How old was the guy?”
“Tommy? I don’t know. Like twenty.”
Her first victim. I conjure an image of a lanky skateboarder with blindingly white teeth, taut muscles, a wispy mustache, omnipresent boner, meager life skills, poor impulse control, vague plans for the future, and the taker of her virginity. In the backseat of his decrepit Dodge, atop burrito wrappers and crushed cans of cheap lager, and afterward he thinks he’s in love with her, this angelic nihilist whose fleshy thighs slap together more or less keeping beat to the music.
“You turned him down, I take it?”
“Heck yeah! He was so dumb. Oh my God, he couldn’t remember his own phone number. But he was gorgeous.”
“Dumb and gorgeous,” I repeat absently.
“Then he got some skank pregnant and skipped town. He was such a slut and I was so stupid to fall for his lame game. I thought he was so cool because he’d gone to jail for selling weed.”
We’ve now entered Henrico County and the traffic on Parham Road slows to a crawl. It seems like every vehicle is a bulky SUV being driven by a woman between the ages of thirty and fifty-five. They’ve dropped off the kids at school and now it’s time to shop or work out, and all have cell phones affixed to their ears, as if each awaits final instructions from some unseen deity.
“There’s a 7-Eleven,” Gibson points out. I put on my turn signal and change lanes. I’m quite happy to stop because I need coffee, among other items. A well-regarded therapist, possibly a silver-tongued attorney. We all could use one or the other, am I right? Especially if we’re prone to confessing to crimes we never committed, the opposite of Kafka’s Josef K., the dumb bastard who keeps insisting he’s innocent while showing us how guilty he is! I am, on the other hand, a bundle of guilt searching out my offense, high and low, if only someone would charge me.
I pull into the pothole-pocked parking lot and squeeze into a spot between a lawn maintenance truck and a Hummer. Gibson falls still, making no move to get out of the car.
“Is everything okay?” I ask, pulling up hard on the parking brake. I constantly fear that my unoccupied car will roll down a hill, propelled by gravity, with me helplessly watching from afar.
“Can I get the money?”
The money! It had completely slipped my mind, and now the poor girl is having to beg all over again. “Oh, sure thing! I’m sorry, here you go.” I reach for my wallet and finger two twenties. She takes the bills like it’s the most natural act in the world, and I surmise that she’s had plenty of mooching practice in her short life. The money acts as an instant tonic and revives her from the doldrums. She launches herself out of the car with such force that I worry she’s going to damage the Hummer, whose owner has just come out of the store and stands slack-jawed with a steaming cup of coffee and one imagines a gathering erection somewhere in his seersucker pants as Gibson glides on by. Directly next to the 7-Eleven in this strip mall is a business aptly named Puritan Cleaners, and I wonder with much sardonic musing whether I can hire them to wash out and disinfect my libido. Because I’m enjoying myself a little too much, watching Gibson prance around. Just get the coffee, I tell myself.
Dark roast, probably seven hours old, who cares. I fill up a large cup, take it to the front counter, and place it by the register. But something feels wrong. A chill passes over me, a fleeting sensation some equate with the arrival of paranormal activity. I hand the clerk a five and start to look around. Where’s Gibson? Behind me in line stands the lawn maintenance worker, attired in ratty clothes, skin dark and leathery. The clerk lets the change drop into my waiting paw but I’m still craning my neck. No sign of Gibson. Did she go to the restroom? Is that even possible in 7-Eleven, which has always been an excretion-free zone?
Like a lost child I drift aimlessly, from register to candy aisle to the parking lot. She isn’t outside smoking. She isn’t in my Honda. She’s vanished into thin air.
4
Consider the following question: is Gibson dead?
Here’s the thing. I’ve already expressed my desire to confess, that I long for the chance to face my accusers, and that I demand to be held accountable for my actions, but confess to what? Face down which accusations? Let’s back up a little. I claim that Gibson just up and vanished from 7-Eleven, but how likely is that? Not very, I’ll submit. A more realistic scenario might involve me driving Gibson to Pony Pasture Park, where she could earn her forty dollars by fellating me beneath a towering sweet gum tree, and while her head w
as nestled on my lap, I put my hands around her neck and strangled the life out of her. Afterward, basking in the glow of homicide, I listened to Bright Eyes as I drove across the same river where I’d just dumped Gibson’s lifeless body, finally stopping at a 7-Eleven to buy a cup of coffee and hastily concoct an alibi.
Authorities can try to track down the driver of the Hummer who perhaps saw Gibson at the 7-Eleven, but good luck with no name or plate number to go on. So now you need to analyze my next maneuvers set against the backdrop that I’m possibly covering my tracks. Gibson is missing, that much is established fact.
Still don’t think I killed her? So when I call my mother to tell her that Gibson has absconded, you take me at face value, just a dutiful son reporting the grim news? But wait till you hear my mother’s reaction! These words literally come out of her mouth:
“I’m going to kill her!”
So much irony gets dropped on our heads it’s a wonder we don’t collapse from the constant impact.
“She’s always pulling stunts like this,” she continues. “She keeps saying she’s changed, but I don’t buy it, not for one minute. If it was up to me, I’d throw her on the street. Listen, I have to go. Call me if she turns up. Sorry about this. And thanks.”
“Don’t mention it. I actually was growing fond of her. She’s not a bad kid.”
“Who told you that?”
“We were having a nice discussion, and then she just took off without saying good-bye.”
“She’s been conning people her entire life, according to her father. Oh, it’s my turn. Bye!”
I should look for Gibson. Not because I think I’ll find her, but because a decent person would take the effort to help out a family member, and I’m a decent person. Or I was until not that long ago. Bev and I both thought that we could make the world a better place, but here I am, pulling into the parking lot of a strip mall just so I can go through the motions of looking for Gibson so that when her body is found, I can assert with moral vigor that I tried to locate her.