by P. E. Ryan
For a moment, Garth couldn’t keep track of the point he was trying to make. His own reasoning seemed to be circling back on itself, redirected by what Mike was saying; it was like a snake eating its own tail. He said, “So you want people to trust you, but that makes them ‘stupid,’ and you don’t respect ‘stupid’ people. Where does that leave you?”
Mike sat back on the couch. He raised his eyebrows, waiting. “You had a question?”
“Yeah. But before I ask it, I want to tell you, too, that, while I’m grateful for how you nudged me to get to know Adam, I’m also really mad that you took Adam’s—and his grandfather’s—money. They were just saying hi,” Garth emphasized. “That’s all. You pushed them into buying tickets.”
“I didn’t push anyone. Do I need to remind you of why we were out there in the first place?”
“No. But do you see what I mean? Even if everything else was taken out of the equation, even if we were both the happiest scammers in the world, couldn’t you just let them go, make fifteen dollars less that day and not embarrass us and ruin my prospects with Adam?”
“I didn’t ruin anything,” Mike countered. “That drunken numskull Marcus sent the whole deal toppling. Plus Jackie and her big mouth. But think about what you’re asking me. Are you saying that maybe it was okay to take everyone else’s money but not theirs? Because that sounds a little skewed.”
“I’m not saying any of it was okay!” Garth snapped. “I just don’t get it. I just don’t see—I mean, how much money did we raise, anyway? All three scams, sum total.”
“A pretty penny.” Mike had one leg crossed over the other. The elevated foot was stirring the air now. His mouth, during the pauses in between his speech, was locked into place by a clenched jaw.
“I’m just thinking it can’t have been that much money—not life-changing money—when you put it all together, and I don’t understand why you’d want to go to all this trouble. I know you want to help us out, but why like this?”
“That’s your burning question?” Mike cleared his throat. When he spoke again, his voice was at a volume several notches louder than before. “You know, when I pulled up in front of your place, I knew the three of us weren’t so close precisely because I wasn’t that tight with your dad before he died. And I know I own a big part of that. And when I started talking to you and finding out what’s really going on, I thought, Look at him. He’s a great guy. And he’s afraid to walk around in his own skin because his mom is sending out signals that the world’s going to beat him up if he opens his mouth. All due respect to your mom, but at your age you should be learning how to enjoy the world. How to grab it with both hands and see how great, how much fun it can really be.” He paused and took a deep breath. “So if your burning question is, ‘Hey, Mike, why’d you take an interest in my well-being, and why’d you suggest scamming as a way of helping us out?’ the answer’s pretty cut and dry: because I care about the former, and because I enjoy the latter. It makes me feel alive, okay? It’s what I do.”
“Actually,” Garth said, “the burning question is, ‘Where’s the money?’”
Mike’s entire body—right down to his swirling foot and his expression—froze for a moment. Then the foot resumed its motion. He shifted his head from one side to the other. “Do you honestly think I’d steal from you?”
“I’m just asking.”
“After all we’ve been through together, you think I’d steal—”
“You taught me how to steal!” Garth snapped. “Why wouldn’t I think that? By your own reasoning, I’d be stupid to trust you. Stupid me, right? I overheard those phone calls you made to Stu and whoever it was—Marty—and it sounded like you have a debt to pay off. So I’m just wondering, where’s the money we raised?”
“Man,” Mike said, and let his gaze drift toward the window. “Man, oh man. You never know where the day’s going to take you. Suspected by my own nephew. That stings.”
He wasn’t answering the question. He was shaking his head, wobbling his foot, shrugging his shoulders in dismay. But he wasn’t answering the question.
Garth opened his mouth to ask it again—but before he could, there was a loud pounding on the front door. Hutch scrambled, jumped down to the floor, and began to bark.
“Police!” a voice yelled. “Open up!”
“Oh, no,” Mike said. He stared wide-eyed at the door for a moment. He moved toward it, but hesitated. He glanced at the hallway, the kitchen, the back door.
“Police!” the voice hollered again.
“Oh, no,” Mike repeated, then dropped his voice to a whisper as he took hold of Garth’s arm. “Do me a huge favor. Don’t answer that, okay?”
“But—”
“Don’t answer it. There’s no law that says you have to answer a door when someone knocks, is there? Not that I know of, anyway. Just don’t answer. No one’s home! You’ve got to do this for me.”
The pounding continued. Mike pulled Garth into a hug and whispered into his ear, “You’re a really good kid. I don’t blame you for being suspicious.”
A moment later, he’d disappeared down the hall and into his room.
Surely their voices—maybe even their footsteps—had been heard from the front porch. As Hutch continued to bark, Garth felt the panic rising within him. Would they just knock all afternoon if he never answered? Would they break the door down?
He stepped toward it. Took a deep breath. Flinched as the pounding grew louder, and finally reached forward and unlocked the dead bolt.
When he’d opened it only a few inches, he peered out at a narrow blade of a face, a shock of white-blond hair, a spray of whiskers sprouting on the chin.
Jackie’s boyfriend.
He wasn’t dressed in a police uniform, but he was holding a badge.
He was huffing and hard-eyed, peering into the apartment over the top of Garth’s head. Thankfully, he was alone.
“You’re not the police,” Garth said.
“I’m a security guard,” the boyfriend snarled. He stuffed the badge into the back pocket of his jeans. “It opens doors. Where is that slimy, lying bastard?”
“He’s not here.”
“Like hell he’s not. Tell him to step outside. Tell him I want to talk to him.”
“Listen…” Garth grappled for words. “This is private property. I’ll—I’ll call the real police if you don’t leave.”
“Come out, you wuss!” the guy shouted over Garth’s head.
Could this situation get any worse? Garth wondered.
Of course it could. Things could always get worse. Things seemed made, by their very design, to get worse.
A car rolled to a stop in front of the house.
The station wagon. His mom: home from work and already getting out from behind the wheel, her eyes on the porch and her face a billboard for concern, confusion, and worry.
16
“Who are you?” she asked, coming up the steps. Jackie’s boyfriend spun around as if Mike might have suddenly materialized. His hands were still drawn into fists. “The guy who’s kicking ass and taking names,” he said.
Garth stepped out of the apartment and shut the door behind him.
“What is this about?” his mom asked. “Garth, open the door.”
“He wants to see Mike,” Garth said, still holding on to the doorknob, “but Mike’s not here.”
“The hell he’s not,” the boyfriend said.
“Mike’s not here?” his mom asked.
Garth shook his head.
“That’s a load of crap. He hit on her and he cheated her out of her pay. The whole raffle was one big con job. I’m telling you, I’m not leaving here till I lay into the son of a bitch.”
She looked from the boyfriend to Garth and could no doubt tell from the sinking look on her son’s face that there was some weight to the accusation. Her shoulders lifted as she drew in a breath. “I don’t know what you’re talking about or who ‘she’ is,” she said, turning back to the boyfriend, �
�but if you’re taking names, take this one: Sonja Rudd. I live here, and I’m telling you that if my son says Mike isn’t home, he isn’t home. You have a foul mouth and you’re not intimidating anyone with it. Please leave.”
Wow, Garth thought. He’d been expecting inquiry, panic, even outrage. He stepped aside and gazed at her with admiration as she opened the door.
“You,” she said out the side of her mouth, “inside.”
He was following in her wake when he felt a skinny hand closing around his forearm.
“You were there, too. I saw you in his car when you came and picked her up. I was going to come after you, too, only you’re just a shrimp and Jackie told me you’d been twisted, like her. Now that I look at you, I’m not so sure.”
“Don’t”—Garth jerked his arm free and then shoved both hands against the boyfriend’s chest—“call me shrimp.”
The guy didn’t weigh much. He danced backward down the three steps and barely managed to keep his footing when he got to the sidewalk.
Garth slammed the front door behind him.
When he turned around, his mom was standing in the middle of the living room, staring at him.
“That was quite a performance.”
“Yeah, that guy was a psycho.”
She dropped her purse and car keys onto the armchair. “I was talking about you. Where is your uncle, anyway?”
“I—I didn’t think he should come out. I thought there might be a fight.”
“He’s letting you fend off his problems now? Mike!” she called, glancing into the kitchen and then walking down the hall toward the guest room. “We need to talk.”
Garth sank down onto the couch. He stared at Hutch, lying on the floor next to the coffee table, and dreaded the argument that was about to erupt from the back of the apartment. The dog offered him a sticky-eyed look of concern.
Let’s see you smooth your way out of this one, Mike.
But when his mom came back into the room, she was alone. “Something you want to tell me?” she asked. “Your uncle really isn’t here.”
“He’s not?”
“His things are gone, too.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Do I look like I’m in the mood to be making jokes? There are a couple of books in there, and his dirty sheets, but that’s it.”
When did he pack? Garth wondered—and then realized it had to have been while he was over at Lisa’s house. Which meant Mike had already decided to leave before Garth had confronted him. He must have crept out the back door while Garth was on the porch.
Garth stood.
“Where are you going?”
“I just want to check something. One sec.”
He walked into the kitchen, leaned forward over the sink, and looked through the window at Stafford Avenue. The Camaro was gone.
“I don’t understand,” he muttered—though, in fact, the situation was becoming all too clear to him. He turned around.
She nodded toward the couch. “Neither do I, but I’m going to. Because you’re going to explain it to me, right now. For starters, who in the world is Jackie?”
His mom was a tougher audience than Lisa had been. She wasn’t just shocked; she was aghast. She wasn’t just dismayed; she was horrified. And she wasn’t just irritated by his participation in the scams; she was livid.
“Wait a minute,” she said when he was in the middle of telling her about the dog scam, “what day of the week did this happen?”
“A Monday,” he said. “The shelter’s closed on Mondays, so Ms. Kessler is only there in the mornings and evenings, to feed the dogs and let them out. So she didn’t know we borrowed a couple.”
“How did you manage that? You work on Mondays.”
Which was how she found out he’d quit his job at Peterson’s nearly three weeks ago.
Halfway through his recounting their meeting Jackie in The Single Slice, she interrupted him again. “You didn’t ever go to any of those historic sites, did you? Those museums and local attractions?”
“No,” he admitted.
“I wondered where all the sudden interest in history was coming from. Turns out it wasn’t coming from anywhere. How big of a fool does that make me?”
“You’re not a fool, Mom.”
“Not anymore. I guess I’m going to have to start questioning everything you say.”
“You don’t have to do that!”
“Never mind. We’ll get to that later, after I sort all this—Hold on…he took you to a bar?”
And so it went. She listened and questioned, listened and challenged, her brain leapfrogging around as she tried to keep track. And she got angrier by the minute. “So you thought this was a better way to earn money for your college fund than having an actual job?”
“Mike guaranteed the money would beat minimum wage. And it was better than shoveling rats for that creep, Mr. Peterson.”
“You told me you liked Mr. Peterson. You told me you liked that job.”
“Well, I didn’t. I couldn’t have hated it—or him—more.”
She sat back in the armchair and massaged one of her temples. “And you honestly thought you’d be able to do something with this money—pay for tuition and buy books—with a clear conscience? That you’d be able to live with yourself?”
In truth, he hadn’t thought that far ahead. Mike, he realized, had had the effect of rendering the present as the only moment in existence, damn the future, damn the past. Now that he was gone, the present felt more damned than anything else. Unable to answer her question, Garth repeated instead, “Mike guaranteed—”
“He guaranteed? I wouldn’t bet two cents on any guarantee or promise from Mike. Your dad was right about him. This is why I tell you not to trust people with your secrets, with your private business. Because you’ve got people out there like your uncle who are looking to squeeze whatever they can out of you. I have to say I’m glad Mike’s not here right now or I’d put my hands on his throat.”
Any other time, the image of his mom trying to strangle someone would have been comically absurd; at the moment, she looked angry enough to do it.
“Look me in the eye and tell me something: Exactly when did you get it into your head that it was okay to lie to every single person in your life?”
“I don’t know!” he said. “You’ve just been working so hard lately, and I wanted to do something to contribute more than just my pathetic salary.”
“Don’t try to make this about me, Garth. This is about you, and your uncle.”
“You know what? It is about you, Mom. As much as it’s about Mike and me, it’s about us.”
“And how do you figure that?”
“Because—” He dragged his hands through his hair, then sat forward and anchored his elbows against his knees. “This is the twenty-first century.”
“Thanks for the update. What does the century have to do with anything?”
“I’m not going to keep living in the closet! Do you know what the last four months have been like for me? Living a lie about who I am, not even discussing it with you—like it’s some kind of secret, when I tried not to make it a secret so you and I wouldn’t grow apart? And knowing my mom was the one who wanted that?”
She looked down at her lap. “You certainly seem to have been capable of living a lie and keeping secrets lately.”
“That’s what I’m saying! Maybe one thing made the other possible.”
“I don’t think that’s fair. I try the best I can with you, and I think you know that.”
“And I think you know I can’t stand hiding who I am! I’m not asking you to march in some ‘gay pride’ parade with me, or put a rainbow sticker on your car, or tell your boss, ‘I have a gay son.’ Just try to accept the fact that I can survive being who I am.”
“I have accepted who you are,” she said evenly. Without looking up, she added, “I just haven’t dealt with it yet.”
He was both nervous and upset. He was forgetting to breathe. He s
ucked in air, and chose his words carefully. “Lisa knows.”
“How does Lisa know?”
“Because I’d already told her before I made my promise to you. And my friend Adam knows, too. He’s the one I was with the other night, when I was supposed to be at Lisa’s.”
“I see.”
“I like him,” he said. “A lot. Like, I want to date him. But I don’t know if he ever wants to see me again.”
That last part had slipped out in the heat of the moment. He’d already decided the story was colorful enough without mentioning that Adam and his granddad had been at the fairgrounds to witness the raffle disaster.
Thankfully, his mom didn’t ask what he’d meant by the remark.
“How did you meet him?”
“Through Mike.”
“What did Mike have to do with it?”
In for a penny, in for a pound. “He took me to the gay bookstore near Carytown. He bought me some novels and magazines and a really cool movie—don’t worry, none of it was dirty. He saw how miserable I was, and he did something about it.”
“So he did all that, knowing how I felt,” she observed.
“He thought Dad would have wanted—”
“Mike doesn’t know a damn thing about what your dad would have wanted. They weren’t close enough for him to have known. And that’s beside the point, anyway. It’s not Mike’s place to take things into his own hands like that.”
“But do you see what I’m saying, Mom? I know I promised not to tell anyone, but it was killing me. And Mike saw that. I couldn’t make any gay friends, I couldn’t…”
“As I’ve tried to make clear,” she said, “you aren’t big enough to defend yourself if someone—”
“What if this is as tall as I ever get?” he snapped. He’d obsessed over that worry a million times, but he’d never spoken it aloud. “It could happen, you know. Should I stay a closeted little freak for the rest of my life? Do you want me to be miserable?”
“Of course not.” Her eyes were damp now, he noticed. So were his. She got up from the armchair and moved to the couch beside him. When she reached out and put her hand on his shoulder, he flinched. “Since when did you become so jumpy around me?”