by Lee Irby
“His car’s in the shop.”
“He doesn’t work? It’s the middle of the day.”
“You’re not at work.”
“I’m a college professor. We never stop working.”
“Well, he works, kinda sorta.”
“Which means what, he slings a little weed?”
“Whatever, you don’t care anyway, so don’t pretend like you do.”
“I don’t care what you do on your own time, but this weekend is my mom’s time, and so you can’t do anything to screw it up for her. Agreed?”
“You need to talk to Graves, not me. I’m chill.”
“Why do I need to talk to Graves?”
“He’s the one you should be worried about.”
“Because?”
“I don’t know, get off at Forest Hills.”
I long to be back with Leigh Rose and laughing in the lap of her luxury, not running some fool’s errand with a troubled teen so that she might find her benighted paramour. Yet I might be blowing this all out of proportion, because Gibson is guilty only of skipping a class (compared with my crimes). She’s probably high as a kite, but when I was her age, I inhaled and snorted whatever substances I could get my hands on. How far removed from Leigh Rose is Gibson anyway—or Lola, who would walk over hot coals to cuddle with Thor? Still, I’m entitled to more answers than she’s provided thus far.
“Where did you go this morning after you took off?” I ask, waiting at a red light.
“Band practice.”
“Seriously? Why didn’t you tell me? I was in a band back in the day.” Not technically true, but enough that it avoids being an outright lie. I jammed a few times with various musicians but never made the plunge to join an organized band.
“I don’t know. I was just in the mood to flex and that campus brings me down so much. I hate saying good-bye to people. It’s so fake.” Then she points, giving me directions. “Keep going straight. He lives like five minutes from here.”
Oddly enough, we’re approaching the parking lot of O’Bloom’s, where my mother called me during her panic attack. Again, nothing overly remarkable in that, as O’Bloom’s is an Irish pub that has been open at that location for several decades. But Gibson adds an interesting twist that I couldn’t anticipate or fully comprehend. “Oh, my mom works there.”
“Your mom?”
“She’s the bar manager.”
“At O’Bloom’s?”
“Yeah. I don’t see her car, though. She must be off. Wait, no, she’s there.”
“Do you want to stop in and say hi?”
“No thanks. She hates me.”
“I doubt that.”
“She seriously does.”
But then I begin to wonder whether my mother’s panic attack in the parking lot of the restaurant where her future husband’s ex-wife works wasn’t purely coincidental, that the poor woman had come here on a stakeout—but why would she do that? I debate whether to ask Gibson if she’s privy to any insider information, but the kid seems poised on a knife’s edge already and doesn’t need one more issue to handle. I don’t want to make a mountain out of a molehill, and I am curious about this band of hers, so I change the subject.
“So what’s the name of your group?” I ask, trying to mask my enthusiasm so that I don’t come off like an aging hipster.
“Hazzie Mattie.”
“I like it.”
“I think it’s lame but Dog won’t change it.”
“Who’s Dog?”
“This guy. He started the band like a year ago. He’s a total dirty-foot hippie, and he has this friend of his named Trey who thinks he’s a great guitarist but he basically sucks. I tell Dog all the time we need to boot him out, but Dog is lazy. Drives me nuts.”
“What do you play?”
“I sing.”
“Awesome. Have you had any gigs yet?”
“Like at parties and stuff. Nothing that pays.”
“That could change, though. The only way you lose in life is to quit.” And I should know, being an expert in the field of failure.
“That’s why I need to drop a demo off. This guy I’ve been hanging out with, he can get us booked at the National.”
“The National? Whoa, that’s a big-time venue.” The National has hosted a wide array of acts, from Juicy J to Ted Nugent. It would be a coup for an unknown group to get within a hundred miles of that stage. Somehow, though, Gibson seems capable of pulling off miracles. Or have I just invested her with special powers?
“I know, right? That would be huge.”
“I’m speechless. Way to go, kid.”
So it appears that I’ve totally misread Gibson, whose truancy wasn’t fueled by antisocial hostility but by a desire to make music. Not only that, she was willing to walk across the city of Richmond to deliver a demo on the vague and unrealistic hope of getting onstage at one of the best venues south of D.C. But outlandish fortune can aim her slings and arrows at strange targets, and with her badass look, Gibson will generate interest from the slimeballs in the talent agencies. I admire her pluckiness, her determination. She doesn’t seem to have a fallback plan, no contingency to attend college for four years. So in that way, she isn’t like Leigh Rose or Lola at all. Or me.
“I’m glad I can help you,” I offer with true fondness. “I’d love to hear some of the demo. Is it on a CD?”
“Yeah, but you need to turn right at the next block. We’re almost there.”
Forest Hill Avenue has become Semmes Avenue, named after Admiral Raphael Semmes, who headed up the Confederate Navy during the Civil War. Ghosts are everywhere you turn in this city. The neighborhood has taken a few steps down the socioeconomic ladder, and soon enough we’re driving down a street populated with little ramshackle houses and small apartment complexes constructed of dull red brick. We pull up in front of a neatly maintained one-story home that stands in contrast to the other downtrodden dwellings surrounding it, and once again I feel as if I owe Gibson an apology. Even if this guy does sell dope, he keeps his lawn trimmed and presentable.
“I’ll be right back,” she tells me. “This won’t take long.”
I watch her skip off with her backpack slung over her shoulder, and I feel like a proud parent dropping a kid off on the first day of school. But I’m totally unprepared for what comes next. Life often lulls us to sleep, makes us drowsy with the promise of unbroken tranquillity, only to stir us from our peaceful slumber with thunderous claps of doom that at first sound like the gentle drops of an afternoon shower, quickly growing in intensity until we can hear nothing else but the thud of dread. I’m sitting in my car, window rolled down so that I don’t waste gas, getting hot, but feeling good about my prospects. I even decide to check my messages to see how Lola has responded to my very brave plea for her to leave me alone.
Her reply: Do you love her?
Love is something Lola knows precious little about, evidenced by the fact that she’s convinced herself that we are in love, that our relationship has a future, that we’re perfect for each other. She can sleep with whomever she wants and I will sit in stony silence while she describes for me every vivid detail of her wanton lust. But just because Lola’s concept of love is stunted and badly deformed doesn’t mean that she can’t feel the pain of rejection, and so I must take care not to injure her. One day she’ll realize that we both ventured into insanity and she’ll never speak of or to me again.
I care for her very much.
I don’t want to lose you!!!!!!!!!
I’m not going anywhere.
Except perhaps to prison. And prison is where I belong. While in his Rome jail cell, the radical theorist Antonio Gramsci urged us intellectuals to remain in “permanent revolution,” to use our hallowed positions to jolt the masses into insurrection. Though I preach the gospel of critical theory to my students, and fulminate against the oppressors who enslave us, I’ve done almost nothing to advance the cause of freedom. In my private life, I’ve perpetuated sexually demean
ing stereotypes and indulged in utterly bourgeois perversions (without getting an erection, mind you).
I hear the approach of a car and glance into the rearview mirror. To my great surprise I spot a police cruiser. Here’s my unexpected chance to become ideologically pure! The Hegemon has arrived, the embodiment of Foucault’s “carceral state,” and by all accounts I should waste that pig.
What tough talk from a lowly writing instructor! But isn’t becoming a cop killer the ultimate union of Theory and Practice? The white-and-blue cruiser rolls to a stop and parks in front of my Honda. My chest tightens and my mouth gapes in terror. Sweat is now literally dripping from the end of my nose, and I grip the steering wheel as though the car is careening down the side of a mountain.
Get ready for the curveball.
A female cop gets out of the police car, and she is extremely attractive, so pretty and sexy, with straight blond hair and a lithe body, that I wonder if she doesn’t work for an agency that sends out strippers to remote locations for birthday and bachelor parties. But she has a very real service revolver clipped to her side, and instead of killing her in the name of a proletarian revolt, I want her to slap handcuffs on me and begin an aggressive interrogation. So much for my ideological purity! When the Hegemon is a hottie, all bets are off.
But she pays no attention to me and instead makes her way directly to the house where Gibson is dropping off the demo. She’s the one who’s going to get busted? Not me? How is that even possible? And what about the permanent revolution?
A hundred different panicky images simultaneously blow up in my brain, and I struggle mightily to formulate a contingency plan—knowing full well that it’s a felony to interfere with official police business or obstruct justice. A lawyer—Leigh Rose must know one. I have her number but I decide to wait just in case I’m totally misreading this situation, which it turns out I am, and by a considerable margin. The first anomaly arises quickly. The cop doesn’t knock on the front door, but opens it and proceeds inside, which from my extensive knowledge of TV police dramas I know is highly irregular. Don’t they usually need a warrant?
Then, nothing. No backup arrives, no one comes out of the house. Several minutes lapse by, during which I become confused and filled with mounting anxiety. Do I have the right to ask if my almost-stepsister is okay? Asking a question isn’t the same as harboring a fugitive or helping a suspect escape. But I don’t want to get caught up in this dragnet, no matter how badly I desire to confess to a beautiful woman in a uniform. They say patience is a virtue, which I lack in abundance, but in this situation I force myself to sit tight, even if I understand almost nothing of what’s going on.
More minutes drag by. Nothing reveals the paucity of imagination like an unforeseen crisis. We frequently encounter unscripted moments that defy our expectations, and most of us fumble for an adequate response, often trotting out the same tired clichés our taxed brains depend on for solace. I continue to assume that Gibson is in legal trouble of some kind and hence construct my view of this situation around that hypothesis without ever entertaining alternatives. I can’t fathom that a female police officer would show up for any other reason than making an arrest.
Lola’s genius lies in seeing past the surface and getting to the substrate, the grainy truth we missed because its texture is too coarse for our delicate hands. She might think: a man and a woman, joined by another woman, equals threesome.
My jaw drops to the floor of my Honda. No, I say to myself. This can’t be. But think of it. The cop didn’t knock! She proceeded directly inside the house as if her arrival was expected. Her gun wasn’t drawn. No backup has been summoned.
I still refuse to buy this version of events, despite the fact that observational data support it. Lola has clearly infected my ability to think rationally and now I find perversions in the least likely places. I cling to the belief that any second now, Gibson will walk out of that house and we’ll drive home. What happened inside will remain hidden from me, and perhaps that’s for the best.
But they really need to wrap it up because it’s getting on toward one o’clock. I don’t want to intrude on Gibson’s private business, but she promised this errand wouldn’t take long. If she indeed is inside having an orgy, then she is an even bigger liar than I am. I’d leave her here save for the emotional trauma her absence would cause…let’s be clear…I don’t go to the house motivated by prurience. I’m no peeping Tom. I’m a dutiful son doing his level best to stitch together a family torn and frayed by death and divorce, not to mention drug use and mental illness. I could have knocked on the door first without peering through a window, but there is a cop involved and I want to ascertain the full extent of the unfolding situation before interjecting.
Nervously, but with the skilled precision of a jeweler, I press my face against a pane of glass that looks into a den of sorts. But I see no one inside, so I walk along the east-facing side of the humble home, with its cracked paint blistering in the sun, and reach another vantage point. But a blind has been drawn over this window, and I can see only through a sliver at the very bottom, roughly an inch wide. I can make out a bed, and a nude female figure reclining—or is that what I crave to see? Lola invited me to hide in a closet while she worked her charm on some witless sperm bank of a boy, but I never agreed to that, to make our relationship come alive in the real world, which like the Monster in Frankenstein might threaten to overwhelm the master.
Through the window I can hear a man’s voice. “Put the gun down, Theresa.”
Those words push me back as if I’d been shoved by a drunk at a bar. I stagger, regain my balance, and then lean in again for one more view, which reveals the same truncated tableau.
“Let the girl go,” the man says. “She’s got nothing to do with this.”
“You were fucking her in our bed!”
“Let her go.”
“I hear something. Somebody’s outside.”
I duck down beneath the window, my knees planted in the dry grass and my eyes turned heavenward. I try to remain as motionless as possible and become a lifeless statue, which in Richmond is the default setting for most Southerners and thus comes easily to me. I’m hiding in plain sight! Nothing conceals me and I’m a sitting—no, squatting—duck. And I’m ready to die, for the bullet to buzz through my septic brain and drain it of all the accumulated soilage. But from my new position I can’t hear what the others are saying and wait in agonizing ignorance. What if gunshots start blasting and none are for me? I’m spared but Gibson dies? I who have nothing left to live for and she whose whole adulthood sparkles before her? I can’t even call 911 because the person with the gun, this Theresa, is a cop.
I creep along the ground like a sloth foraging for fallen fruit, with the vague plan of getting back to the Honda. I literally can do nothing to alter the outcome, and in this helplessness I find surprising strength. What’s stopping me from going in there? Or at least knocking on the door? Perhaps just the pounding of my fists on the wood will knock some sense into this Theresa, who must’ve found Gibson in bed with her man and then promptly lost it. Not that I blame her! No, I’m the last person who can look askance at those consumed by jealousy, even to the point of homicide. Under different circumstances, I might’ve been able to help Theresa work through the dark, swirling storms of emotional upheaval. One might dream of revenge, but exacting it? Actually snuffing out the life of a person you once loved because they love another? So not worth it, Theresa.
Emboldened by impotence—on so many levels—I stand up and walk directly to the front porch, fully expecting confrontation, conflict, Man vs. Man—or in this case, Man vs. Woman Who Is a Law Enforcement Officer and Armed. Talk about use violence to propel the plot. I’ve arrived at the verge of a bloodbath, the kind of cinematic shoot-out that Hollywood execs swoon for, and the question is: how high will the body count go? Or will Theresa order me at gunpoint inside, where she’ll force her cheating boyfriend/husband to watch as she makes love to me out of pure spit
e? Will the cold barrel of a gun finally make my erection obey? I don’t mean to diminish the danger I’m in. But honestly, the thought does cross my mind.
I’m not even at the front porch when the door swings open and I see the female cop, who I’m guessing is named Theresa, standing there with a fierce scowl on her tearstained face and the pistol hanging limply at her side.
“Get in here,” she barks at me, pulling on my arm.
“Can you explain to me what’s going on?”
She shuts the door behind me and I’m standing in the den, darkened and reeking of pot. I see no sign of Gibson or the man, and that worries me. Has she killed them? Am I next on the hit list?
“You drove that little bitch here?”
“She said she had to drop something off.”
“Here’s what’s gonna go down. You’re gonna get in your car and drive away. Understand? This never happened. You need to tell that whore to stay away from my house or there’s gonna be even more trouble.”
“Where is she?”
As if on cue, Gibson emerges, dressed and looking terrified. She’s obviously been crying. Behind her is the man, who is very tall and broad shouldered, chiseled in the way of a natural athlete, long limbed and irate, judging by his brooding, hooded eyes. He’s wearing no shirt, revealing a ripped abdomen covered with ink. In short, your typical stud. I’m guessing erectile dysfunction isn’t one of his issues.
“Get out of my sight!” Theresa screams at us. Gibson hurries to me and out of brotherly instinct I reach out for her and she puts her head on my shoulder, where it comes to rest as if it’s been filled with lead. We share a very brief but touching moment of sanctuary, forged from a bond of terror, before we scurry out of that house, two lucky rats fleeing a sinking ship. But wait, because even though it seems as if we’ve escaped danger, there comes yet another twist of the knife, this in the form of a text from Lola. I check my phone really quickly once I’m in the car, just to see if my mother has contacted me. Nothing from her, but ominous words from the Wild Child, Lola:
I’m driving down there. Should take 10 hrs. We really need to talk because I love you and I don’t want to live without you and I won’t live without you.