Overturned

by Lamar Giles

  In my absence, she and Gavin got closer. She overexplained the whole thing during our first outing, wanting to tell me face-to-face, worried I’d be mad at her for forgiving his betrayal. It’d been too long. I’d been too alone. I missed my friends. My response to her confession: “I look forward to being your officially licensed third wheel.”

  As Mom’s comfort grew, I was allowed more excursions. Safe things. I didn’t dare tell her what happened to me at the Vista vs. Clark’s Magnet School basketball game.

  It was an evening contest. I’d been granted an 11:00 p.m. curfew. I rode with Molly and sat in the stands with the Vista faithful, nervous at first. There was some side-eye, whispers, but ultimately, my former classmates let me be. I used to go to school with them, and used to be worth their time and ridicule. Now I was only visiting.

  Gavin was a three-sport athlete, and he dominated this competitive season like he did the first. Molly cheered every sunk layup, jump shot, and free throw. She was only slightly louder than me. When the coach called Gavin to the bench for a much-needed break, he waved at the stands. To her. Us. I mouthed, I want a dunk.

  He mouthed back, You got it.

  I don’t know if he fulfilled the promise.

  Two minutes until the half, my phone lit with a text.

  Davis: Are you here at the clark game?

  Me: yes. are you?

  Davis: Can you meet me outside?

  I craned my neck toward the exit. Should’ve recognized how weird it was. If Davis was back in town, why reach out like this? But I wanted to see him. Despite the dead man’s hand and whatever part he played in all that happened, I didn’t want him beaten and bleeding on the High Roller Room floor as our last joint memory. I told Molly I was going to the bathroom.

  Outside, it was chilly, barren. A sea of parked silent cars. All wrong.

  A Lincoln limo pulled up to the curb, stopping with the opaque back window directly before me. The glass whined down, Big Bert spoke.

  “I’d like a word.”

  Run.

  Recognition of his voice dropped me into a sprinter’s lunge. Him leaning into the light, showing me his face, rooted me in place. He was not the Big Bert I recalled.

  Sunken cheeks, dark circles under crackling red eyes, skin a shade of yellow that couldn’t be blamed on hazy lamppost light.

  “Please,” he managed. Followed by the wet rattle of things tearing loose in his chest. That cough hurt me.

  I didn’t move, couldn’t look away.

  “You don’t have to be scared. Call whoever you want. Tell them where you are. I’ll leave the door open while you sit. I’d come stand with you, but that’s hard for me now.”

  Standing was hard?

  “I’m sending a group text to everyone I know.” I held my phone so he saw my thumbs twitching. “Outside with Bertram Carlino. If I’m not back in ten minutes, send the Navy SEALs.”

  He chuckled; it didn’t sound much better than his awful cough. “Funny girl.”

  It’d be funnier if he knew I didn’t send that text. If I had, Molly would come running with reinforcements ASAP. Despite our history, I was intrigued.

  The limo door swung open.

  I sat, keeping the toe of one sneaker on the asphalt for a hasty retreat, if needed. The weight he’d lost since I last saw him … unsettling. His suit draped his frame like a blanket, as if there were room for someone to join him in it and snuggle. Anyone calling him Big from now on would do so out of tradition. Or obligation.

  “Are you all right?” There was no way he could say yes.

  “I hope to be.”

  “Are you following me?”

  “No. I’m here for the game. My business has a sports management arm, and I’m told Clark’s point guard is one to watch. I”—he coughed, lighter this time—“loved basketball as a young man. I wanted a good night.”

  “Then you saw me.”

  “Then I saw you.”

  “Nice move faking like you’re Davis. That’s not creepy.”

  “I’m sorry for that. I was hoping to move past deception this evening. It was careless of me to start that way.”

  I squirmed. An alarming thought popped in my mind. “Is Davis okay?”

  “His mother tells me he’s adjusting well to the change.”

  “He’s in New York?”

  A nod.

  “Without his phone, I suppose.” Now that the fear dulled, disappointment set in. I wanted to see him. There wasn’t much I wanted lately. “What is this?”

  “I’m sick, Nikki. I was diagnosed with lung cancer three years ago. I won’t have the chance to say I’m a four-year survivor.”

  Not shocking. Did a dying man have anything to lose? I shifted closer to my open door.

  “I’ve done a lot of wrong in my life,” he said, “and I’ve been making amends ever since I was diagnosed. You may not know this, but I hired Daniel Harris to take on your father’s case.”

  “I knew. Nice after you let him go to jail in the first place.”

  “I didn’t mean—” He reconsidered his words. “I should’ve done something sooner.”

  “You mean you should’ve set up some other fall guy sooner.”

  “I went about it wrong trying to convince Nathan to take a deal. I thought things could be okay for everyone.”

  “Except John Reedy.”

  He leaned forward quicker than a fleshy skeleton should. I suppressed a flinch. Bert said, “John was my friend, too.”

  “I hope I never have a friend like you.”

  His turn to flinch. He grew smaller before my eyes. “John, me, your dad. We were supposed to be the guys in this town. Kings. We met as young men, each of us with different resources, a different angle. Andromeda’s Palace was our start, and our finish.”

  “The Poseidon Group.”

  “You know about it, then?”

  This was my first time hearing any of this. If this was a trap, I was caught. “Not much.”

  “My background led to prime real estate opportunities. Your father’s card skills were lucrative, and gave him access to heavyweights in town. John’s potential, it never shifted from underworld dealings. He didn’t evolve. Grew bitter at your father and me because we did. But I don’t think that’s why he turned on us, cheating our own establishment right in front our faces. He was just the first of us to admit what we all”—coughs erupted, machine-gun fast—“knew. Three heads can’t wear one crown.”

  That hacking continued, alarming the driver, who lowered the black partition. “Sir, are you—”

  I cursed. “Oh no. No way.”

  Delano, the goon who’d manhandled me, in my home, was driving.

  “Close the partition,” Bert wheezed. The divider rose between us again.

  “You sent him to my room! That’s your way of making anything right?”

  A few heavy, labored breaths passed before he answered. “He had instructions not to harm. He didn’t, did he?”

  “You’re insane.” I couldn’t leave his rolling tomb fast enough. “I’m gone.”

  “Wait.”

  “If you don’t tell me what you want right now, I’m calling the cops.” Phone in hand, touchscreen lit, I dialed a 9 and a 1, let my thumb hover.

  “Your charges will be dropped, as will any pending against your friends and classmates. I’ve called in favors. You’ll be able to go on with your life. And … and you’ll see I’m not pulling strings for my own benefit anymore. Evidence against Cedric is stacking up by the day. My lawyers will do their jobs, but his case will play to a just conclusion. As Nathan intended.”

  “My dad didn’t intend to die.”

  “None of us do. Not like this.” He waved a pathetic hand over his gaunt frame.

  Then something mean inside me got it. What all this was about. Why he was here.

  “You’re confessing.” Not like criminal, but church. This car was his confessional. I was the priest.

  “Your indulgence is a comfort. But there’s
something else I’m seeking. I was wondering—hoping—that you’d see this talk as a good-faith gesture and consider a request. I was hoping you’d persuade my son to call me.”

  Oh, you sad, sad man. “I haven’t spoken to Davis in months. I don’t even have his number in—”

  A business card protruded from the car, pinched between his index and middle fingers, trembling as if the thick paper was a flake of heavy steel. An odd sense of politeness made me take it, and I made out the ten digits scrawled on the back clearly, despite the low light.

  “If you have his number,” I said, “call him yourself.”

  “He doesn’t answer for me.”

  “Use somebody else’s phone. You know that trick.”

  “As soon as he hears my voice, he hangs up.”

  “Then I can’t change his mind.”

  “You can! He cared—cares—about you a great deal. You both hate me the same. If I can sway you …”

  I spun the card back at him, unconcerned if it hit him in the chest or wedged in his eye. “And you think you’re not pulling strings for your own benefit anymore.”

  He called after me, desperate and worn, coughs punctuating his speech in strange places. “Nikki. I am. Sorry. Please. Will. You forgive me?”

  I kept walking, and when I spoke, it wasn’t loud enough for him to hear. “I might. But you’ll never know.”

  I didn’t make it back into the gym, settling for a bench by the concession stand. Too shaken to make it further. A worried text requesting my whereabouts led to Molly joining me. I told her the crowd was overwhelming after being confined for so long, not a total lie.

  “You wanna go home?” she asked.

  “If that’s okay.”

  “Always.”

  We left, and there was no limo in the lot. At home I found Mom curled in bed, watching renovation shows on HGTV. She said, “You’re early.”

  I kicked off my shoes, crawled into the bed, nuzzled my face into her shoulder, and looped my arms around her.

  “Hey,” she said, alarmed. “Is something wrong?”

  “Nothing at all. I just love you.”

  “I love you, too. Can’t help thinking there’s a follow-up.”

  There was. A condition that we’d never, ever be so at odds we couldn’t tell each other what we felt. I didn’t need to explain, though. She and I were better than that.

  All of the things Bertram Carlino promised came to pass.

  The following Monday, my mystified and ecstatic lawyer called. The city dropped all charges against me. I’d practiced my surprise face in the mirror and pulled it off pretty well while Mom shouted, and danced, and thanked the lord above.

  A week later the top news story: Bert Carlino watching his oldest son taken from the Nysos in handcuffs on charges of murder and racketeering.

  Three days after that, Bert made the news again when the cancer won.

  The Poseidon Group was no more.

  Molly lay in the hammock, fingers laced behind her head and elbows splayed. She stared up, sunshades protecting her eyes, and sunscreen keeping her from roasting on this unusually hot February day. “What do you think that cloud looks like?”

  Gavin splashed in the pool like a toddler. Not swimming exactly. Actively not drowning. “Which cloud? There are a bunch.”

  “That one.” She still didn’t indicate which.

  From a comfy deck chair, I had selected on a me/Mom/Tomás Home Depot trip, I sipped ginger ale through a twisty straw, guessed wildly. “A rabbit.”

  “Wrong. It’s obviously Spider-Man.”

  “Yep.” I pushed my drink aside and began shuffling a card deck I’d brought poolside. “Obviously.”

  Gavin said, “Peter Parker or Miles Morales?”

  “I don’t know, the one who does this.” She thrust her wrists about in exaggerated gestures that were either web-shooting or interpretive dance.

  Gavin attempted a backstroke, sank, resurfaced sputtering.

  “Be careful.” I sped up my shuffle, worked in more intricate tricks. False cuts, shooting a card airborne and letting it drop back into the deck like a pop fly into a catcher’s mitt. “I’m not getting my hair wet saving you.”

  “This is different,” Gavin said.

  “How?” Molly asked. “You’ve always been a terrible swimmer. She’s always been no-nonsense about getting water on her hair. Why did your mom buy a house with a pool?”

  Gavin said, “No. I mean not hanging in the Loop.”

  I stopped shuffling. “Better?”

  “Mostly. It’s way better than the three of us crammed on a bench in a forever-nicotine cloud. Also”—he seemed at a loss—“just different.”

  I couldn’t say I knew exactly what he meant. How can you ever know exactly what someone else means? Even your best friends. I felt a change, though. Molly’s sudden quiet convinced me she did, too.

  Molly wasn’t going to UVA, but Gavin was. Given their new status, the logistics of that arrangement were fuzzy. I wasn’t going to ask for clarity. Not my circus, not my monkeys.

  My Vista Rojo days were over, over. I’d keep getting tutored through the spring. Next fall, it was new-kid status. The Meadows, maybe. Or Coronado. Or I’d let the tutor see me through graduation. With all the individual attention, I could finish early, then travel some. Mom’s recommendation.

  Selling Andromeda’s was huge for us. Even after all the debt (and my legal fees), there was money left over unlike anything we’d ever seen. I could go anywhere, do anything. No more chains, and no more rock to attach them to.

  My new backyard, with the deck, and the pool, and the stainless steel grill Tomás might fire up later was crazy spacious. Certainly an upgrade from the shoulder-to-shoulder smokers’ bench. Me here, Molly there, Gavin in the pool … there weren’t great distances between us, but that change I felt might mean the gaps were larger than we knew. And growing.

  That was okay. Friends shouldn’t stay together forever. Bertram Carlino taught me that.

  “Different.” I shrugged. “Good thing we adapt well.”

  Molly kept finding obscure figures in the clouds. Gavin managed floating for a solid four seconds before near-death, and I returned to my first friends, the cards. Tranquility that couldn’t last. That’s not what my life was.

  My phone rattled in the chair’s cupholder, reminding me.

  I picked it up, went numb. “Guys.”

  They perked, listened. I pushed my phone at them. “It’s Davis.”

  Gavin reacted poorly, with colorful language. Then he washed his hands of the whole thing—literally, with pool water—and continued his kiddie splashing.

  Molly’s response was much more nuanced. “How do you feel about it?”

  “I don’t know.” I reread the message for the ninth or tenth time.

  you might not recognize the number. this is davis. i won’t text again if you tell me to go away.

  I knew he’d come back, for a short time if nothing else. Bert’s funeral was two weeks ago. He and his mother had been in all the news footage and in the papers. Davis kept his head down and hand up to block the good shots. He couldn’t hide from me. I clicked off the article without reading it. Couldn’t click away from him. I’d thought of him ever since.

  The number Bert tried giving me, I didn’t remember it. If I knew it, at some point I would’ve reached out first. When my emotional pendulum swung away from that desire, cutting an arc toward Davis using Gavin against me, I was relieved for my lack of a photographic memory.

  He hadn’t forgotten mine.

  Molly said, “You could tell him to go away. Like it says.”

  “I know.”

  “But you haven’t.”

  “Do you think I should?”

  She raised her palms defensively. “Does what I think really matter here?”

  “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to see what he wants.”

  Molly cupped a hand to her ear. “Speak up. You’re mumbling.”

  Me: hey.<
br />
  Davis: you didn’t say go away.

  Me: no. what’s up?

  A new text bubble started, stopped. Started again. A tickle in my stomach turned to a twist, then full-on anxiety. What was he going to say to me? Molly crammed herself into my chair somehow so she could see, too.

  Davis: i’m going to the scene of our first crime tonight. if you bring burgers, i’ll bring the picnic blanket—aka the car.

  We turned to each other so fast, Molly and me bumped foreheads.

  “Ow,” I said, rubbing the point of impact. “He wants to meet.”

  She had a stink-face, prodded her own potential bruise. “Jeez, Tate. We already know you’re going. Get your burgers, and I’ll get my nunchucks. ’Kay?”

  I got In-N-Out burgers. You can’t go wrong with In-N-Out burgers. Molly insisted on hanging at the Walmart a couple of miles away. With her nunchucks.

  He waited in the same spot we’d had that night. No fancy sports car, but a simple Chevy sedan. I wouldn’t have recognized him if he’d been in it … but he was on the hood, knees pulled to his chest, eyes on the sky.

  My approach was slow in my sweet new Mazda. He didn’t know this car. I could keep driving, and he’d be none the wiser.

  Plus, the flutter in my belly would make it tough eating burgers. What if he was mad at me? He had to be. I was mad at him sometimes. We might fight. This was so stupid. Go home, Nikki. Go home.

  Those thoughts and more were mudslide thick. I pushed through them, angling my car into the space next to his. I grabbed the food bags in the passenger seat extra tight, willing the shakes away.

  If it was bad, I’d leave. That was all.

  He slid off the hood, greeting me as I exited my vehicle. We met between the cars, a tight space that forced us against our respective vehicles so as not to touch.

  “You came,” he said.

  “You sound surprised.” Like I didn’t consider passing him by. “Your hair’s different.”

  Sweeping a hand across his new buzz cut, he shuffled a bit, shyer than I remember. He deflected. “I’m glad you showed. I’m starving.”