The Boys of Summer

by Richard Cox

  The last thing he remembered clearly was sitting at the bar, sharing a drink with Alicia, touching her hand, caressing her fingers. He had expected her to welcome his advance, but instead she had jerked away from him, and a brief but unmistakable flash of disgust passed across her face.

  “You know Jonathan is interested in me again,” she had said.

  “Yes, we talked about this before.”

  “Then what are you doing?”

  “You never said how you felt about him.”

  “I don’t know yet. But he kissed me last night. It was nice.”

  “Then what are you doing here?”

  “I figured you wanted to talk,” she said.

  “About what, Alicia? I thought we covered every possible angle in that hotel room already.”

  “I mean about personal stuff. Like you and Meredith.”

  “That’s bullshit. You knew what I was suggesting when I invited you for a drink.”

  “I have to hand it to you,” she said. “You’re subtle.”

  “And you’re a tease.”

  “Does this honestly work for you? Since you’re a billionaire, you just proposition women like they’re whores?”

  “What’s the difference? Pay for it now or pay for it later. Pussy isn’t free.”

  Alicia stood up then, even though she’d barely touched her drink.

  “I’m going to chalk this up to you being drunk,” she said. “In the morning I’ll pretend like it didn’t happen. The three of us will probably be together for most of the day, so try to be mature about it, all right?”

  “Whatever.”

  She looked around the bar and gestured in a general way.

  “You’ve got a bar full of women wearing short skirts and too much makeup. Should be no problem for a gamer like you.”

  Now he remembered. There had been some kind of bikini contest at a different, nearby bar, and the girl he’d taken home had been the winner. She had curly brown hair and fake tits and a cartoonishly narrow waist. After two vodka Red Bulls and a shot of tequila, they had called a cab and stumbled their way to his hotel room. He also vaguely remembered a pouch of green tablets she had produced from her purse. Ecstasy. They’d taken the first one around 2 a.m. and the second one an hour or two later.

  So what time was it now?

  Between the blackout curtains, David could see a thin ribbon of bright light, so it was at least nine, maybe ten. The alarm clock was nowhere to be found. He slapped around on the nightstand until he found his phone and pushed a button to activate the display.

  “Fuck.”

  “What?” asked the girl. “Still cranky?”

  “You need to get dressed and leave.”

  “Why? What’s the hurry?”

  “It’s 1:30 in the goddamn afternoon. I’ve got shit to do. Get dressed.”

  David rolled out of bed and looked at his notifications. There were multiple texts from Meredith, from Erik, two missed calls from Jonathan, and one from another number he didn’t recognize.

  “Fuck,” he said again.

  “What crawled up your ass?” said the girl. She stumbled out of bed and reached on the ground for her clothes. As she bent over, David could see anything he wanted to see, and none of it interested him. He could not, in his entire life, remember feeling this hungover. He could not believe he had put himself in this position, in this state, considering the long day ahead.

  To alleviate the pain, he poured himself a bit of scotch and choked it down. The girl saw him drinking it and laughed.

  “Starting early today, are we?”

  The girl was pulling on her shirt and got it stuck on her fake tits. Her nipples protruded too far from their areoles and looked like little pink tubes.

  “Would you please get your things and go? Go down to the lobby and ask them to call you a cab.”

  He pulled his money clip from last night’s pants and held out a fifty for her.

  “Fuck you,” the girl said as she opened the door to leave. Light thundered into the room and David shrank away from it. “Asshole.”

  When she was gone, when the room had returned to the safety of darkness, he poured himself a little more scotch. All he needed was a tiny buzz to pull himself loose from the death grip of this hangover, and then he would stop. Any other time he would have just gone back to bed, but David had a feeling today was the day the pieces of this puzzle would fall into place. He could not afford to be unprepared.

  The first thing he needed to do was determine if Erik had delivered the necessary information about Todd’s father and son. But when he opened his texts, Meredith’s were on top. He couldn’t help but read them:

  Look, I’m sorry I just took off like that. But you’ve got to understand that what we have is special, and I can’t just sit back and let it die.

  I realize you have a lot on your mind, and now isn’t the time to reason through this with you. But I can’t just give up on us. Can you?

  Are you serious? This little time travel game you’re playing, this visit to the past, is so important that you’re willing to throw away what we’ve spent a year building? Why won’t you text me back? Or call??

  Fuck you, asshole.

  It was not lost on David that Meredith and the girl from last night had bid him adieu with identical language.

  The next two texts, as he hoped, were from Erik. One was an address for Christine Phillips, whose son was named Thomas. The other was for a Pete Willis, who lived in Windthorst, a small town south of Wichita Falls. If both locations checked out, Erik had come through like a champ once again.

  Now it was time to call Jonathan, but David was still woefully short on the energy required to convey information or make decisions. He was downing more scotch when someone knocked on the door. The room seemed to be orbiting slowly around him, which made the door seem to move as he approached it. Through the peephole he saw Jonathan standing there.

  The light was so bright when David opened the door that even squinting he could barely make out a human form in front of him.

  “David, what’s up? Are you all right? We called like three times.”

  “Sorry, man. I went to the bar after we talked last night. Met some girl and we got a little fucked up.”

  “All right. But did you hear from your friend? I thought we were going to track down Todd’s son and his father today.”

  “Yeah,” David said. “I did hear back. I have addresses for both. The kid lives here in town and the father lives in Windthorst.”

  “Well, that’s great! Do you want to go soon?”

  “I can be ready in like a half hour. Probably need to get some food. Did you guys have lunch yet?”

  “We did. But we’re happy to stop.”

  “All right. Let me shower and I’ll call you in a few.”

  “Okay. Hey, so what’s the kid’s name? Maybe I’ve got him in class.”

  David looked down at his phone and found the relevant text from Erik.

  “Says here his name is Thomas Phillips. That ring any bells?”

  David’s eyes had adjusted well enough to the light that he could make out the features on Jonathan’s face. It was clear from his expression that he recognized the name.

  “Holy shit,” Jonathan said.

  “What?”

  “That kid is in my sixth period. He’s the student who told me about what Bobby did at the restaurant. And he knew somehow we were friends.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “And I bet you he’s known about all this the entire time.”

  67

  The sun rose quickly in the summer, and so did the mercury; by lunch-time it had been almost one hundred degrees. Now it was nearly two o’clock and too hot to be playing miniature golf, but Adam was here anyway with his daughter, Bradie, after an earlier confrontation with his wife. It was the first Sunday in more than a year that he’d missed a church service.

  Rachel had already been out of the shower and getting dressed when Adam woke up
. Most Sundays they attended the ten o’clock service, but by then it was already after nine. He pulled back the covers, afraid he would find red dirt in the sheets, but they were clean. He stumbled to the bathroom and climbed into the shower.

  “Honey,” Rachel called from the closet. “Better hurry. We’re going to be late.”

  The water was hot, cleansing. He lathered a washcloth and began scrubbing. Scrubbed and scrubbed.

  After a few minutes, Rachel said, “Adam? What’s taking so long? We’re never going to make it.”

  He shut off the water and wrapped himself in a towel. Opened the door and stepped out.

  Rachel was looking at him. “Let’s go, honey. No time to stand there.”

  “I’m tired,” he said.

  “Yeah, I don’t think you’ve been sleeping well. You’re tossing and turning all night. It’s been keeping me up, too.”

  She darted around him, pulling on a blouse, punching in an earring.

  “Are you going to get ready?”

  “I’m tired, Rachel. I don’t mean sleepy. I’m just . . . tired. I don’t think I want to go to church today.”

  She didn’t seem to comprehend this.

  “I have a lot on my mind,” he added.

  “Let’s talk about it when we get back from service.”

  “I’m not going to service. And I don’t really feel like talking about it, anyway. I just want to rest.”

  This stopped her, finally. “Well, I’m not surprised you don’t want to talk about it, since we never talk about anything anymore.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means, Adam, that every morning you take off in that pickup of yours and I barely hear from you all day. And then you’re so tired you hardly talk at dinner, and then we just sit there and watch TV. You don’t talk to me.”

  “Rachel—”

  “I don’t know how it’s going with the houses you’re building. I don’t know how your meeting with the police went. I don’t know anything.”

  “I’m sorry if I don’t feel like rehashing all the crap I suffer through every day. I own this firm, Rachel, and ultimately no one is going to make sure the houses go up in time except me. There are a million little details I have to oversee every single day. I’m sorry if I’m working a little too hard for you.”

  “You don’t think I work hard? Taking care of our daughter and cleaning up after your stupid dog and taking care of this house? You think I just sit around on my butt all day?”

  Adam could feel his hands balling into fists. Fingernails digging into palms.

  “And for Heaven’s sake why do you have to cover yourself around me?” she asked him. “Always wrapping a towel around yourself. Are you afraid I’m going to see something I like? That I’ll want to make love to you, God forbid?”

  “Rachel—”

  “What are we doing, Adam? Is this our life?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about how you’ve wrapped yourself into a cocoon and completely shut yourself off from me. We hardly ever make love, we rarely talk, and then when something is really bothering you . . . Ever since your childhood friend went nuts at that restaurant, you haven’t been the same, do you know that? And I’m scared to ask you about it. You get up and leave the bed at night, and I keep seeing on the news about these house fires, and I’m scared to death to ask you where you go.”

  “You think I’m burning down houses?” Adam asked. “The man who builds them for a living, you think I’m burning them down?”

  “No, I don’t. But don’t you think the police might? Already one of your projects was destroyed. What if you’re hired to rebuild one of these others? Wouldn’t that give you a motive?”

  She was crying now, and the sound of her sobs broke his trancelike anger. Whatever else was going on in the labyrinth of his brain, Rachel was his wife. Adam had sworn his life to her. He stepped forward and took her into his arms.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I guess I’ve been a little freaked out lately. I hadn’t talked to Bobby in a long time, but he was my friend once. And now he killed someone, and he’s dead, and I guess I’m just a little freaked out. But I am not burning down houses. I promise.”

  She pulled her head off his chest and looked into his eyes. “Is that really it, that you’re shaken up about Bobby? You promise you aren’t holding something back?”

  How could he tell her the truth, that the past was driving him crazy? He didn’t think he was burning down houses at night but he couldn’t be completely sure. The red dirt on his feet obviously meant he’d walked outside somewhere. It was also true that whenever he visited the home he was currently building, he became eerily transfixed with the slab of foundation concrete. On more than one occasion he’d found himself paranoid, short of breath, feeling a strange urge to get himself a jackhammer and break the concrete slab into a billion tiny pieces. Because there was something underneath it. Something in the earth. Something terrible.

  “I’m not holding anything back,” he said to her. “I promise. I’m sorry if I’ve been distant lately.”

  “Please don’t abandon me.”

  “Honey, I’m not—”

  “I don’t mean physically leave. I mean in here.” She pressed her index finger against his chest, over his heart. “I love you so much. Just keep me close, okay?”

  “Okay,” he said, and kissed the top of her head.

  “I can go to service on my own today. Why don’t you stay home with Bradie? Or maybe take her to Putt-Putt? She’s been wanting to go for a month.”

  So here they were now, Adam and Bradie playing miniature golf at The Plex. His five-year-old daughter’s score was only two strokes worse than his own.

  The mini-golf course was a collection of odd shapes and silly challenges. On hole ten you putted up a slope toward three separate, volcano-shaped funnels, and at the bottom of each funnel was a hole that would swallow your ball and spit it out on the lower level. If you hit the center funnel, your ball would exit the pipe and head straight for the cup. Adam putted first, but his ball slipped past the first and second funnels, bounced off the far wall, and fell into the hole farthest away. It shot onto the lower level and missed the cup by two feet. After he tapped in for his par, Bradie hit her putt. Her speed was more accurate, barely slipping past the first funnel and dropping directly into the middle one. From there it disappeared underground, rattled beneath the surface, and then squirted onto the lower level, dropping straight into the cup.

  “Daddy!” Bradie screamed. “I made a hole-in-one!”

  “You did! You’re amazing.”

  She bounded toward him, blonde curls electric in the sunlight, and stopped in front of the cup. With concentration almost like awe, she reached in and scooped out her ball.

  “I made a hole-in-one.”

  In a situation like this Adam would normally have hugged her, but this time he didn’t. For some reason the thought of touching her disgusted him. He had the terrible feeling, if he took her into his arms, the result would be disastrous.

  “I’m only one stroke less than you,” she added.

  “That’s right. If Daddy doesn’t watch out, he’s going to get beat today.”

  Bradie stepped back and looked at him with suspicion. “That’s silly! I can’t beat Daddy. I’m only five.”

  For a while it seemed as if Bradie might really win. She caught him on the next hole with a two against his three, but then made a couple of fives in a row and fell behind again. The heat grew intolerable as they approached the eighteenth hole, and Adam was glad they would be finished soon. Bradie seemed to be doing fine, but he was suffering out here.

  And not just from the heat.

  His entire world seemed to be coming apart. He found it almost impossible to sleep at night, and when he did sleep it wasn’t anything you could call rest. He didn’t want to touch his wife, he didn’t want to touch his daughter, and every time he looked at Bradie he saw his dead sister. He saw
Evelyn, the little girl who had occasioned his fall from grace. He saw Joe Henreid’s glowing eyes.

  Adam had spent his life trying to make up for his childhood sins, but there was no amount of penance that could erase all the mistakes he’d made. The story was coming to an end, the pages turning ever more frequently, and sometime soon it would all be over. He would be forced to look himself in the eye and confront the reality of his life, of existence as a whole. What choice would he make? Death was inconceivable to him. But so, it seemed, was life.

  On the way home all Bradie could talk about was the hole-in-one.

  “It went straight in. I can’t believe it! It went underground and then straight in the cup!”

  Adam smiled at her. “Bradie is my little pro golfer.”

  “Straight in the cup! Underground and straight in the cup!”

  Adam wondered why she was so fixated with the underground part of the equation. You aimed for the middle funnel because it was the only way to make a hole in one. Who cared what path the ball took to get there?

  Except lately it seemed like things underground were becoming more important.

  “Why’d you do it, Adam?”

  He looked in the back seat at his daughter, that antsy little girl staring out the window.

  “Honey,” he said to her. “What did you just say?”

  Bradie looked over. “Nothing, Daddy.”

  “Didn’t you just call Daddy by his real name?”

  “Of course not. Is this a game? Are you playing a trick on me, Daddy?”

  “I am. Apparently it’s a fun game where Daddy hears voices in his head.”

  Bradie looked at him with her gorgeous blue eyes and laughed. Adam turned away from her and stared at the road.

  “It went underground and then it came out again!” his daughter fairly screamed.

  But when he looked back at her, Bradie’s eyes were focused out the window, watching the world go by. From this angle she looked so much like his dead sister, Christi, that Adam was forced to turn away.

  The problem with memory was that it was subjective and imperfect. Memories in your mind—unlike those in a computer—were colored by perception and could be altered chemically. Certain imbalances could create great discrepancies between what you thought happened and what actually happened. Although who could say with any certainty what really happened? Ever?