Follow the Dotted Line

by Nancy Hersage

  “I’m glad you took this so well, Andy.”

  “Were you really that worried?”

  “You never know.”

  He was such a nice human being. Guileless in a way she, or any of the children she raised, could never be. Maybe that’s why she couldn’t help herself. “Yeah, well, I’m always a sucker for a good joke.”

  He was about to sip his beer but stopped. He looked genuinely flustered. “A joke?”

  She put a reassuring hand on his knee. “It’s unavoidable, Mike, given the situation.”

  This seemed to confuse him even more. His pale skin reddened. “What situation?” he asked, alarmed.

  “You know, the one where a Mormon walks into a cocktail party and turns some unsuspecting gentile into a Jew.”

  She watched him for a long moment, wondering if he were so earnest he might actually miss the funny part. Then a slow, rich smile dawned, and he raised his glass in salute.

  God, she sighed in disgust, I really am shameless.

  Chapter 13

  Cheeky Bastard

  She returned to her southern California townhouse late Sunday evening, after nearly a week with the wild ones, carrying an emotionally mixed bag. There was something exhilarating about the unfettered energy of the boys. Kids made it easy to feel needed. And even easier to feel loved. But it was also exhausting. And mind-numbing. Especially for someone like Andy, who lived so much of her existence inside her head.

  Most people have a narrative voice that accompanies them throughout their day. Andy had a chorus of them: cheering her on, pointing out her faults, offering up competing opinions on everything from how much she ate to how little she mattered. They were interesting voices, to be sure, sometimes illuminating and, just as often, partly cloudy. With age she had learned to control them, or maybe her maturing hormones had simply toned them down. Whatever the reason, she had made a satisfying peace with them and, in the quiet of her condo, enjoyed living with them in a way she never did in her youth. The boys had the power to drown them out, and now she couldn’t wait to catch up on what they had to say.

  Andy pulled into the garage, parked the car, and opened the door to a warm pool of midafternoon sun spreading across the kitchen floor. The southern exposure of her two-story plate glass windows made the entire downstairs feel like a gigantic, welcoming bath. She was imagining a wine spritzer in the wicker chair on the patio, when she stopped mid-step. Something was polluting the moment. She froze and surveyed a landfill of unwanted debris. Open beer bottles on the counter, smelling of sour yeast. Bags of chips stuffed into the trash, filling the air with eau de Dorrito. Encrusted bowls of salsa on the table. Pizza boxes carpeting the floors. Melted chocolate, shriveled olives, globs of gum, dried and discarded pots of cheese fondue. And hovering over it all, a pungent cloud of sweetness that was unmistakable to anyone raised in the ‘60s.

  As she stood staring at the aftermath of a truly epic party, she knew she should feel violated. She did. But more than that, she was wickedly curious. Could this possibly be Harley’s doing? She had seen his Jekyll. Was she now witnessing the consequences of his Hyde?

  “Harley!” she called out. Only an eerie silence answered.

  Bravely, she ran the gauntlet of garbage, including what appeared to be abandoned paper plates of food, all the way through the living room and up the stairs. She stood at the closed door to Harley’s room, put her ear to the wood, and listened for the sound of breathing.

  “Harley?” she whispered. No answer. She opened the door.

  Her catatonic nephew lay on his bed, looking like a teddy bear with rigor mortis.

  She moved closer and tried again, “Harley?”

  He opened his languid eyes and turned them slowly upward. She had never seen such wonderfully pathetic pupils.

  “I’m sorry, Aunt Andy,” he blubbered.

  “That’s a start,” she said, evenly.

  “You saw the kitchen?”

  “And the living room and the family room—”

  “I have been betrayed,” he said, cutting her off.

  To be fair, Andy had been relishing his explanation; it only seemed fair that he should come up with a killer. ‘I have been betrayed’ was not really what she’d been hoping for.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “The prayer meeting.”

  He made a feeble attempt to sit up but evidently couldn’t hold the position under the weight of all he had suffered.

  “I’m going to need more than that,” she said, plopping down next to him. “You better tell me what’s going on.”

  “I put up some flyers on campus. I called it A Midsummer Night’s Liaison with the Lord.”

  “Catchy.”

  “Thank you. That means a lot to me.”

  “Just go on, Harley.”

  “Well, the flyer was supposed to be sort of an open invitation for Friday night. I posted the address and said I would take donations at the door.”

  “Donations?”

  “You know, to share the burden. Of the refreshments. It’s what people in a community of believers do.”

  “Yes, I noticed that many of those donations are currently ground into my carpet.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Go on, please.”

  “Okay,” he said, getting up on one elbow to indicate how hard he was focusing on the task at hand. “So a lot of people showed up. I mean, a lot. Kids I didn’t really know. I think they thought it was a party or something.”

  “Friday night. Hard to imagine. Tell me how many.”

  “I think maybe a 100 people showed up.”

  “A hundred people?!”

  “I said, I was sorry!” he bellowed defensively. A lagoon of liquid began to fill his eyes.

  “Okay. Okay. Just go on.”

  He swallowed back the tremble in his voice. “They kept coming in the door. I couldn’t stop them. They brought liquor, you know. Bottles of it. And other things—”

  “Other things?”

  “Marijuana. I think.”

  “You think?”

  He covered his head with his hands. “I didn’t inhale any of the smoke. I swear.”

  From peons to presidents, Andy thought, it’s still the defense of choice. “Whatever,” she said, shaking her head. “Sit up, Harley.”

  He obeyed to the best of his ability.

  “Now tell me what happened next.”

  He shrugged his droopy shoulders and looked away. “You know what happened next.”

  “Oddly, I don’t, Harley. And you damn well better tell me.”

  “I called the police.”

  “You what?” she barked, grabbing his face and forcing him to look at her.

  “I dialed 9-1-1.” He was flushed, confused by her sudden attack. “I figured if I didn’t, one of the neighbors was going to,” he explained.

  “The police were at my house?” she seethed. “The Valencia police?”

  “Actually, the city doesn’t have its own force,” he rattled on. “They use the County Sheriff’s Department for domestic calls.”

  “Really? I had no idea,” she mocked. “Probably because I have never had a patrol car at my condo before!”

  Harley struggled to understand what he had done wrong. “But the police were great, Aunt Andy. Really great,” he said, forcing a smile.

  “Police are never great,” she pronounced.

  “But these guys were,” he countered. “I explained about the prayer meeting. I mean, about the poster on campus and the open invitation. And they understood. Everything.”

  “No, they didn’t.”

  “Yes, they did! They really did. I told them how it got out of hand. And they understood me. In fact, they thanked me. And then they came in and helped me clear all the people out.”

  Andy’s worry lines and crow’s feet swelled with indignation. “You let the police into my house?!” she yelled. “Did you learn nothing from watching all those crime dramas on television? You let the police
in my house?!”

  Harley held up his hands to deflect her onslaught. “But they didn’t arrest me. In fact, they didn’t arrest anybody. I swear! They just sent everybody home.”

  “And that was that?” she demanded. When Harley didn’t answer, she instinctively waited for the other shoe to drop kick her in the ass.

  “Har-ley?”

  Something new had come over him. His lips were trembling.

  “What else did the police do?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Harley!”

  “It’s not the police, Aunt Andy. It’s not the police.”

  “Well, then, what is it?”

  “I told you,” he said, as his entire body began to shake, “I’ve been betrayed.”

  “Betrayed? What are you talking about?”

  “I am talking about Our Savior’s Tabernacle University. This is not a good school, Aunt Andy. These are not righteous people!” he declared. A single tear ambled down his chubby cheek. Followed by a second.

  “Speak to me, Harley,” she said, suppressing her impatience.

  “These people—the ones at the party—have not been faithful to our beliefs.” Andy had never seen him this agitated. “It’s not so much the music and the dancing,” he explained with some difficulty.

  “Okay. Keep going.”

  “Or even the beer and marijuana.”

  “Okay. Okay. No comment. Now out with it.”

  “I can’t, Aunt Andy.”

  “Har-ley.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Oh, yes, you do,” she said, pointedly. “Believe me, whatever happened, you’re screaming to talk about it.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Yes. You are, Harley. And do you know how I know you’ve got something important to tell me?”

  He wrinkled his traumatized brow. “How?”

  “Because you haven’t cleaned up the mess downstairs.”

  “What?”

  Andy hadn’t spent all those years as the mother of teenagers without learning that kids either cover their tracks or they don’t. And when they don’t, they’re desperate for you to follow in their foolish footsteps until you find them cowering in some corner and force them into a full confession. “My house is a disaster, Harley, and you’re squirreled away up here in your room like you can’t move.”

  More tears began seeping from his lashes and onto his boyish cheeks.

  “You knew I’d be angry if you didn’t clean up, right?”

  He nodded.

  “You knew I’d want to know what happened?”

  He nodded again.

  “Then tell me.”

  The squinty blue eyes bubbled open and shut. His nose was leaking badly.

  “Speak, Harley,” she said. “I’m listening.”

  He drew a sleeve across his soggy face.

  Andy ripped off a pillowcase and handed it to him. “Blow,” she commanded.

  He blew.

  “Now talk.”

  “After everybody left, I heard noises in your closet,” he began. “In the master bedroom.”

  Ah, yes, she thought, nodding knowingly, as it all came together in a familiar gestalt; Andy suddenly knew exactly where this was headed.

  “What kind of noises, Harley?”

  “People. I mean, I heard laughing and stuff. I wanted everyone out, so I opened the door.”

  “And what did you find?”

  “I found two people in there.”

  “Um hum.”

  “With their clothes off.”

  “Listen, Harley. That kind of stuff just happens . . .”

  “Aunt Andy,” he sobbed, “they were completely naked, you know, and doing it on the floor.”

  Damn it, she grumbled silently. Now I’m going to have to fumigate. Haven’t I suffered enough? Then without thinking, she quipped, “Boys? Girls? One of each?”

  “What?” he screeched.

  “Nothing. Nothing, “she said, quickly.

  But the damage was already done. “A boy and a girl,” he howled, as if anything else would have turned him into a pillar of salt. “A boy and a girl!”

  Then in a perfect storm of insecurity and self-loathing, he threw himself face down on the bed again.

  “Okay,” she said, rubbing his back and cursing the lack of over-the-counter tranquilizers. “It’s all right, Harley. It’s all okay.” Then reluctantl, she added, “Come on, let’s have a hug.”

  As she opened her arms, he raised himself up from the mattress like a struggling jellyfish. Finally, he collapsed headlong into her maternal embrace, gushing his regret. As Andy sat their dutifully holding him like one of her own, she wondered, not for the first time, what this child was doing in her house.

  The pair spent the better part of the next three days restoring the house to its original condition. This required replacing a bathroom door, repainting the baseboards in the living room, and renting a carpet cleaner from the local supermarket. Andy soaped and vacuumed the violated closet twice. As curious as she was about how all those campus crusaders managed to wreak so much havoc, she decided not to ask. Harley, for his part, volunteered nothing. Still, he worked like a dog, and she found it harder and harder to be mad at him. She also decided to say nothing about the fact that, even though it was Wednesday afternoon, he had not yet returned to class.

  Home and hearth restored, Andy finally got around to mixing herself that long-intended wine spritzer, a concoction of cheap Sauvignon Blanc, grapefruit soda, and blended fruit. Glass in hand, she fell onto the living room sofa and jokingly told her assistant he should get himself one of the leftover beers. To her astonishment, Harley walked into the kitchen and returned with a brown bottle. Holy metamorphosis, she thought.

  “Well, it’s all cleaned up,” she said.

  “All cleaned up,” he repeated.

  “Feeling better?”

  He nodded and took a sip from the bottle.

  “Mitch asked me to dinner tonight. Would you like to come along?”

  Harley hadn’t been out of the house since that fateful Friday night, and she felt compelled to ask him along.

  He sipped again. “Will Melissa be there?”

  “Probably.”

  This time he took a swig. “Sure. That would be great.”

  He downed what was left in the bottle and announced he was off to take a shower—something else he hadn’t done in five days. Such was the power of The Impresario, she thought, and realized it was a good time to ask one of the hard questions they’d been avoiding. “Harley,” she called out, as he approached the stairs, “I was wondering, when are you going back to school?”

  “School?”

  “You know, OSTU?”

  But before he could answer, the house phone rang.

  “I’ll get it,” he said, jumping on his exit opportunity. “Don’t get up.” He pivoted, headed to the kitchen, and grabbed the phone. When he returned to the living room, he was holding the handset.

  “It’s somebody named Larry O’Dowd.”

  “Okay,” she said, reaching for the phone.

  He took a step back and put his hand over the mouthpiece. “Who’s Larry O’Dowd?”

  “None of your business.”

  “Seriously, Aunt Andy. He sounds gravelly.”

  “I don’t care how he sounds, Harley. Give me the phone.”

  He smiled for the first time since she’d returned from Idaho. “Come on, Aunt Andy. Please.”

  She stuck out her hand for the phone once again.

  He waited.

  She relented. “My private investigator.”

  “No kidding!”

  “No kidding. Now hand it over, you cheeky bastard.”

  The smile broadened. He gave her what she wanted and then came as close as Harley Davidson could to bounding up the staircase.

  “Larry?” Andy said, when he was out of earshot.

  “I got some info for you, Andy.”

  “Really? Anything i
nteresting?”

  “Most definitely the start of something interesting.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I’ve done just about everything the Pings will pay for. You’re going to have to do the rest.”

  “Okay. What did you find?”

  “It’s all in the files. I’ll overnight them to you.”

  “Are you going to tell me what you found?” she asked again.

  “No. I want you to read the files first. You can call me with questions. I’ve got a surveillance job starting in the morning, so I want to get these off my desk.”

  “Any idea where she—they might be?”

  “No. I’m still working on that. But you’ll find everything else in the files.”

  Chapter 14

  Worst Behaved Person in the Room

  Mitch made tortellini with a cream sauce. By the time they finished eating, Andy felt her arteries scream for mercy. She was sitting with Mitch, Melissa, and Harley at a long wooden table in her son’s Spanish-style dining room designed with arched windows, a red tile floor, and a ceiling with cross beams adorned by vines of hand-painted flowers.

  “I don’t want dessert,” Andy said.

  “What is it?” Harley asked.

  Simultaneously, Melissa and Andy answered, “Bananas flambé.”

  Mitch spread his hands in his signature it’s-what-I-do gesture.

  “And it’s not good for any of us. At least not for another thirty minutes,” Andy pronounced.

  “Let’s do the dishes first then,” said Melissa, rising to the task.

  Before Andy could offer to assist, Harley was on his feet. “I’ll help,” he said.

  “Good,” said Mitch. “Because I need to have a serious discussion with your aunt.” He eyed his mother. “On the patio, please. I’ll stop at the humidor on my way.”

  They met at the lounge chairs next to the pool. Mitch handed his mother a Swisher Sweet and lit up something more exotic—and expensive—for himself.

  “Do you think it’s a mistake to leave Harley alone in the kitchen with Melissa?” he asked before taking a seat.

  “He does seem besotted, doesn’t he?”

  “Besotted? Are you writing for the BBC now?”

  “No. But it’s a word that doesn’t get enough exercise. I sort of like saying it.”