by Jon Methven
What any of this has to do with me is unclear, his ranting more a confession than a plea for financial assistance. Russ is a distant friend, the classification that exchanges money for drugs with a sprinkling of social etiquette. Toby Dalton. The name sticks longer than anything else, his father a GPS mogul living abroad, no mention of a mother. An exceptional lacrosse player in his junior year, he came from another private school, the nanny chain claiming he was enrolled in Gopa through Russ and his father’s doing, the last school that would have him. The nannies say he lives in his father’s Chelsea condo where he regularly hosts parties for the Gopa student body. Everyone has heard about the festivities. Iliza and Tungsten have been ordered not to attend. Other than knowledge of who Toby Dalton is, they run in different circles.
He keeps on about a party. “What were you doing there, Russ?”
Snot and whimper, exhaustion, his body flailing as we shiver. “Toby Dalton. I’m the kid’s dealer.”
“Fuck, Russ.” This involves me, something about the Luderica perhaps. “He’s the captain of your lacrosse team.”
“Don’t you think I know it?”
I breathe in the surf, the chill of the April water stinging my nose. I am not wearing a jacket, a vest instead, dressed for a round of golf. We’ve both had too much to drink and I ingested an extra Luderica, hoping Russ would restock me this evening. The news and the wind clear my head, a shifting tide from the north from somewhere far away that implies cold fronts though I suspect sunshine in the morning. I make a mental note to mention the warm front shifting into the region on tomorrow’s broadcast, and then come to grips with the worst: Russ Haverly is dealing drugs to parents and students. According to the Gopa Ethics Handbook, I am required to notify the administration of this wrongdoing. Except I am one of his clients.
“These are kids, Russ.”
He laughs, rubs away snot. “They aren’t kids the way we were kids. You should see these parties.”
Russ lights a cigarette, which soothes him enough to stop the tears. He is late on payments to the Capra entity, up to a month, though he does not know the amount. He places himself at about $40,000 in the red; roughly what his star player owes him in drug money. It is a drop in the bucket for the Daltons, but after his latest expulsion from the Hortimer Academy, daddy Dalton has put a freeze on Toby’s assets. He gets an allowance each week, enough for a rich kid to eat. To augment his lifestyle, and for the thrill, Toby sells drugs to the Gopa student body. But he is a dealer lacking the ethical understanding that he must pay Russ for the narcotics, who will then pass it along to Capra, the way drug pipelines have been operating amicably for centuries.
Toby has photographs. If Russ gets him into the ECI program, Toby can show his father he has turned things around, made a real effort, and perhaps his dad will loosen up the purse strings. Only Russ cannot get him in. The other two members of the committee have said as much, and because there are only eighteen spots, all the Dalton money in the world will not buy Toby access. The more looming issue: Capra wants his money.
I am outraged that the drug pipeline we parents always fear will one day burrow a hole beneath our tutors and extracurricular activities and preparatory testing, instead exists out in the open, from the very source where I obtain my illegal fix. Selling to parents and nannies is one thing. Russ brought it into our school. And he was willing to pawn off one of the ECI slots to pay the bill. “I can’t believe this, Russ.”
“I’m in bad shape, Pisser. I’m using again.”
“We voted you in as a trusted advisor to the ECI committee. And you lobbied for Toby Dalton.”
“That’s not the point.”
“Sure, I thought you might put in a good word for Iliza and the others. These are good kids who you know. Instead you used your clout to stump for a pompous little fuck. How could you?”
Russ smokes his cigarette, watches me dangerously, an arrogant prep school dad missing the larger contours of our collusive unwinding. He needs me badly. He could never truthfully outline this request to Harry Sedlock. Rhen is on the lacrosse team. Harry would turn him into the administration. But it is not Harry that holds my concentration, gets my tribe stretching and sharpening spears and handing out war paint. The question of why, of all the people at Gopa, Russ Haverly is standing on a dock confessing to me.
I turn to Russ and understand him in the manner I know storm systems off the coast of the Carolinas making their way north, computer models of faraway winds, in ways I can predict that rain will be falling an hour from now but can still practically suggest a warm morning. He sees that I have snapped to the point of our meeting, a new round of tears.
“The pictures, Russ.”
He shrugs, speaks through the mewling. “I don’t know. Toby showed them to me fast, but I couldn’t tell for sure. I don’t remember anything from that night.”
“What do you remember?”
He inhales, nods. “I was naked in a shower. Bad shape, Pisser.” Snot bubbles in his right nostril and he wipes it away using the same hand holding the cigarette, sending a spark off his face into a fierce wind picking up charisma. He’s sobbing again. “There are girls, high school girls, in the shower with me.”
“Fuck, Russ.” I know it cannot be stopped. Russ Haverly will be fired, arrested, placed far away from high school children. He is the thing parents avoid when they decide to pay tens of thousands for private school.
“I promise to pay you back.”
“I don’t have that kind of money, Russ.” With the investment and Standcake and tuition, we have emptied our savings.
“Listen to me, Pisser.” He inhales deep, lights another cigarette, and walks down the dock. “You do not want these pictures getting out any more than I do.”
When the Luderica touches my tongue, the saliva begins to fragment the pill into chalky portions that become a liquid and get absorbed into my blood stream. From there they find the nervous system, specifically the gamma-aminobutyric acid, which slows everything and loosens my tension. Typically my eyes go blurry and stop working for a few minutes. I often drool, and once I pissed myself. My mouth goes dry and my penis gets extraordinarily stiff, although I cannot feel it blossom in my pants because most of my body is numb. After a few moments, my heartbeat quickens and I feel an itching that starts in my feet and moves up through my solar plexus and races through my spine, eventually into my brain. It is an itch I cannot touch, and it is where I know the Luderica is attempting to dig out the playfulness, but this is why the Federal Drug Administration has not approved it yet. This, and the massive erections, and also the blackouts, and perhaps the laughter. The pill digs into something unnatural, but it is not playfulness. It is native hostility, indigenous temper, the feral state of man.
Russ is still talking, blabbering an explanation for the photographs that are my concern as a father. At some point, I have bent down and retrieved my four iron, which I hold like a club, something else in charge of my mechanics and muscles. He does not see it in the darkness, apologizing and pleading for kindness.
“The girls in the shower,” I say, face toward the wind.
Russ shakes his head. “I don’t know for sure.”
“Iliza?”
“Toby says so. But I don’t know.”
I’m hollering, my voice erased over the black water. “Was she there, Russ?”
“I’m so sorry, Pisser. I never meant for any of this.”
He never meant to deal drugs to children and shower naked with my sixteen-year-old daughter in a luxury apartment in Chelsea. I do not ask if he’s having regular sex with her, how many people fit into a Dalton-sized shower, because none of it matters. The iron comes naturally, mechanically, and crushes his left temple, opening a four-inch gash that quickly covers his face in blood. The collision knocks his phone to the deck. Russ puts a hand in the air, as if attempting to hush the river that has grown wild during
our dispute, a rain from the east of the metropolis creeping toward Slancy.
I hit him again and he tumbles into the water, the still-lit cigarette afloat, a tiny lighthouse. According to an accurate model of water temperatures in the North Atlantic in April, we are looking at swimming conditions anywhere from thirty to forty-five degrees with a chance of warmer temperatures near the shoreline. While a conditioned athlete like Russ Haverly could survive easily for fifteen minutes, enough to get to shore, he is heavily soused on pills and liquor and spouting blood from two gashes in his head. Also, he does not know how to swim, a discovery I make after he’s in the water, paddling for life. I innately leap in to rescue him.
The water hits my body and instantly sobers me, allowing me to transition from my crime. I read somewhere that cold water is excellent for conditions inside my testicles, and I could mention to Laura that this late night swim has produced some fine sperm for future progeny. I grope through the darkness until I locate Russ. His face is covered in blood and he’s unwittingly drowning me with his attempts at survival, chaotically slapping at the icy water until I am submerged beneath his weight. Survival, kindness, safety, warmth, he has seen my daughter naked. It is the last thought that emerges victoriously, and I pull his head underwater by the back of his coat then use my legs to drown him. I do not let up until he is motionless in the surf, until I am certain he is dead.
Once on shore, the body is wet and heavy, not moving, neither of us. I am exhausted, freezing, cannot catch my breath. I am not physically fit enough for murder, but the tribe mobilizes. The rain and tide cascade toward Staten Island, and I am on my feet dragging Gopa’s esteemed lacrosse coach over land, below the clubhouse and the first tee, to reach the far end of the harbor where the tide will hopefully catch it and push it toward another shore. I pull the corpse by an arm through tall grass and litter and sewage, white bubbles shedding their peace as we pass, my adrenaline and heartbeat motoring us through, the muscles in my back and neck stretching and awakening—this is what it feels like to haul death, to participate in murder. South of the harbor, I walk it out until I am submerged to the waist, then push the corpse into the tide.
My cell phone is ruined, the screen a vague set of advice. I feel emptier knowing it is not my ally tonight. The flashlight works. I walk back to the dock and check for blood, but it is too dark to know what is blood and what is water. I retrieve Russ’s phone from the boards but I cannot turn it on, the battery dead. The boat and the golf bag are immediate concerns, and I am left furious with indecision. Why does Russ own a boat if he cannot swim? Why do I own golf clubs if I cannot golf? In matters of survival, neither of these items suffices. I toss the bag into the watercraft and struggle with the mechanics until I ignite the motor. It is my first time captaining a boat and I do not know what to do, I only know that it cannot be found near Slancy, a place where good people exist and do not deserve intruders like Russ Haverly preying on our children and turning up murdered. I am a good person. I have to drop off my kids at Gopa Academy in the morning. I am part of a Cooperative Marriage. I sit on two committees: Gopa Parents Think Recycle and Gopa Parents for Trees. I am a Zenith Member at VillageShop, in the market for a chess set and some petunias that will make the edge of my backyard pop.
The final memory is drifting away from the dock toward Staten Island. I have no idea how I eventually made it home or where the cell phone came from or what I have done, the night concealed in a blissful, pharmaceutical blackout. My last recollection of the evening: the things we do for our children.
Adjusting To Our Reckoning
Dawn breaks over the East River as I climb too quickly from the tent, my blood making oblong attempts for order as it rushes through my cerebrum. Clint Eastwood has arranged the bodies of four chipmunks and a small bird in a circular pattern, a Stonehenge of carnage. A truck crew from the cellular company gets an early start, the beeps and hums of the motorcade assessing the damage to its towers. Steam rises from my coffee at the edge of the patio. The motley sky suggests my mug arrived an hour ago when Laura and Iliza left for a breakfast at the school, yet the fumes seem new. I am dropping Gus this morning and sticking around to hand out Our Town flyers with Iliza, a father-daughter bonding event both of us are dreading.
The coffee settles my vision. Behind me, Rhythm runs naked through the yard. Clint Eastwood makes a beeline for the shed. “Naughty, Mister Pickles.” Jason watches from his back patio as Allie Sedlock coasts past on her bicycle, slim legs against peddles, a wave, her dinging bell the Slancy version of an air raid siren. The Hendersons’ house that borders me to the south is empty, the yard accommodatingly quiet, the way it always is, except for the cameras that whir as they capture our distraction. Everything in Slancy is in its natural order, other than my recollection from a week earlier—I bludgeoned and drowned Gopa’s former lacrosse coach. I have not shared the updated version of that night with Laura, who deserves to know.
My tribe stretches, my hand shaking so I cannot get at the hot liquid. It is not my implication in a murder I know was deserved, one I am not ashamed of and would do again if called to task. Instead, a mysterious shadow lurks inside my house. Iliza and Laura are gone. Gus roams the kitchen. I focus on the foreign body. Toby Dalton is inside my house, Gus gawking as though the greatest celebrity of his nubile world has materialized to serve him breakfast. He sits on a stool, sipping the same coffee he poured for me, entertaining my transgenerational recluse.
“Morning, Mister P.” His cheery voice as I arrive half-dressed from the backyard. “Left you a mug on the deck.”
“What are you doing here?”
“He came to give Iliza and Tungsten a ride to school,” Gus says. “He didn’t know about the theater breakfast.”
Toby lifts the mug. “I didn’t know about the thing. Gusser let me in.”
“I let him in,” Gus says, beaming.
Toby smiles, handsome, his shoulders broad and fit. Alone, I do not have the strength to strong-arm him, but the creatures that inhabit me do. “You came all the way out here on a Monday to take the girls back to Manhattan?”
“Beautiful morning for a drive.”
“I love a good drive.” Gus is dressed in knit pants, a floral top and a shawl, with worn-out slippers he never removes. He is psychologically stretched to play the part of a dead nanny, but he cannot disguise his eighth-grader thrill to be in the company of Gopa royalty. If he had any friends, he would brag. “You want another cookie, Toby?”
“Nah, little man.” He smiles. “Gusser has been feeding me cookies for the past half-hour.”
“Gus, go get ready for school.”
“I am ready.”
“Go brush your teeth.”
“I already did.”
Gus is not leaving. Toby and I stare across the kitchen.
“Where’s your car?”
“Visitor lot.”
“You don’t have a pass. They wouldn’t let in a stranger.”
Toby shrugs. “I talked my way in.”
“He talked his way in,” Gus says. “He’s giving me a ride to school today.”
“Both of you, Mister P.” I don’t blink. “I thought it would be nice to chat.”
“We’re taking the shuttle bus.”
“He’s got a convertible,” Gus says.
“We’re taking the bus,” I say louder. “Go put on a different shawl.”
“But dad.”
“It’s okay, little man.” Toby sets down the mug and rubs a hand through my son’s hair. Regardless of what it takes, the lacrosse tribe will learn to keep their filthy skin off my children. “Another time. I just remembered. I have an errand before school.”
He issues a series of snaps and handshakes, all of which Gus knows well enough, a promising development in his socialization, all things considered. Toby’s careful to exit without being left alone with me for even a minute, enough time to push
the BB gun muzzle into his aorta and snap off twenty shots, a wound to drain that arrogant smile. At the front door, he assesses the other yards, nodding that he might want one of these properties for his next birthday.
“I didn’t want to say this in front of the kid, Pisser.” He leans close, a sniff. “But you stink, old man.”
Forces Of Failure
On the bus, Gus is excited, bouncing off his seat, his boyish happiness a relief as he peppers me with questions. Are Toby and Iliza dating? That topic is never discussed with me, a mere father. Will he be coming to dinner regularly? It’s not possible. How come he didn’t know that Iliza wasn’t home? Toby’s knowledge of my daughter’s whereabouts matters little because something very bad is going to happen if he continues on this course. On Lustfizzle this morning, “94 Photos That Will Make You Love Carrots.” Devin Brenner has emailed a summary of last night’s Cooperative Marriage meeting, which I neglected to attend. Expect mostly average feelings during the morning rush hour with anxiety developing midmorning and turning into shades of failure. Wear your sunblock because the murder index is moderate to high. It’s been fifty-seven days since I misinterpreted the atmosphere.
I have begun regularly smoking cigarettes again, a habit I have not practiced in fifteen years. I glance down on the bus to see my left hand innately flipping an unlit smoke, the cadence of the activity relaxing. Gus does not mention it and I am able to conceal the cigarette before my neighbors notice. Inside Gopa, things are eerily similar to every other morning: eye drops, hand sanitizer, water bottles, sunscreen, hair gel, children with backpacks connected to ropes so they do not wander toward their own destruction. I am still quarantined in the stroller waiting area with the part-time nannies and drivers, though I notice that Topher has excused himself from our detention to freely stroll the lobby. I am better off in detention where I can eavesdrop on arriving parents. A bus driver smokes a cigarette, a habit I have taken up now that I’m down to just one pill. I join him for small talk, both of us familiar with the mechanics of multi-passenger transport.