I close my laptop and roll on my side. After the long nap I took earlier, I must still be clearing a heavy-headed haze, losing track of time. Did I fall asleep to the ASMR? Was I restarting the video after already running through it? Maybe it was all in a dream.
I rub my jawline, my thoughts turning to Autumn.
Cracking her clever poem and fantasizing about her in my bed occasionally flared me back to life this week. I’ve kept her close, using her gorgeous face as a visual each night to stroke myself to sleep.
“Dylan, get up!”
I let out a hard exhale. “I’m coming.”
“I’ll warm up your truck. Don’t fall back asleep!” he yells.
I roll out of bed and dress for the party. Long underwear, a gray hoodie, black jeans … black boots, black coat, and of course, my knife. Forgetting to take it back from Sean before driving into the unknown with Autumn was risky. Somehow, a girl I know nothing about has me whipped.
• • •
Sean sips his Coke while gazing out the window, fat snowflakes melting down the glass. I owe Ed a favor for saving my ass from the Andersons, which translates into doing a snitch job tonight. Should be a quick stop at a college party in a rental house that Ed’s department is convinced has cocaine flowing out of it. Then we can head to the bar, and I can call Autumn.
I take her poem out of my coat pocket and drop it in his lap.
“This damn thing again?” He unfolds it and reads the first three lines aloud.
the dark starless melancholy of a man
the secret in the house
an end to the wretched
“Who talks like that?” he asks.
“Women do.”
“Nah.” He sips his Coke. “Y’know, if you haven’t figured it out yet, you never will. Just give up and move on.” He crumbles the paper into a ball and tosses it onto the dash. “You’ve been a grump about it all week.”
“No I haven’t.”
“Yesss,” he hisses. “Find a new girl and get laid.”
“7-5-5,” I say, glancing at him. “The lines you just read are the numbers 7-5-5.”
He takes the paper off the dash and rereads it. “Where do you see that?” He holds it a few inches from his face.
“Does looking at it up close magically reveal a secret? If so, you should’ve told me that last weekend. It would’ve helped.”
He looks at me funny. “You’re lying.” He lobs the paper into the back. “Last night at the bar, I saw you staring at it. I know you haven’t figured it out.”
“7-5-5.”
“Wrong. Admit it. You’re obsessed with that chick and her poem.”
“Nope.” My fast-food bag crinkles as I take out a second burrito, the first one devoured in under a minute.
“You like her.”
“Nope,” I lie, my mouth full of food. “I have a zillion questions for her. That’s all.”
He swats my leg. “You wanna screw her. Say it.”
“Nope.”
He slides his Coke straw through the hole of the plastic lid, causing a grating noise. Fwwwp. He knows my hatred of repetitive sounds. Fwwwp. Clicking of pens, tapping on hard surfaces, hearing people chew. Fwwwp-fwwwp. It makes my blood boil.
Fwwwp.
“Sean, sit still for once.”
He ignores me and slides it faster like he’s cooking up a tune.
I clench the wheel. “Stop!” With my fist in front of his face, I repeat the first line of the poem, raising one finger for every word. “The … dark … starless … melancholy…” I continue to count through the words. “Seven. Seven in the first line, then five in the second line, and so on.”
He puts his Coke in the cup holder, and I finally get some peace.
“How’d you figure that out?” He counts on his fingers, whispering to himself.
“I didn’t. My dad did.”
He laughs. “Of course. Leave it to Pete Marzley to save the day. Your parents are the best.”
That’s true, my parents are amazing. My mom brings pounds of her homemade Polish sausage to the bar each week to stock our fridge, and my dad is a saint to put up with my moodiness. Sean’s mom, on the other hand, doesn’t cook, or show affection, or have any motherly traits. She only cares about one thing—money. An uptight bank manager by day, political blogger by night, she never has time for him.
“Autumn said men aren’t intelligent. Remember? We have peanut-sized brains. You proved her right by letting your dad figure it out.”
“Pea-sized,” I correct. “And Autumn won’t find out.”
“Well, how’d Pete solve it?”
“Subtraction.”
“What?”
“When he taught me subtraction in first grade, he’d lay out four playing cards, take two away, and ask how many were left. I’d count the numbers on the cards, instead of the number of cards in front of me. Like five diamonds, and two spades. I’d say seven. The answer was two.”
“See, a peanut.”
“Would you let me finish?”
He stuffs his mouth with a burrito and waves his hand to go on.
“He said things aren’t as complicated as I make them out to be. Once he flipped the cards over, I saw each one as a single object, no numbers showing. The poem is the same. Autumn distracted me with her words. It was a trick. My dad scanned her poem and turned it upside down, around, and flipped it over and back. He said to stop focusing on the meaning of the words and try to see each one as a single shape. Puzzle solved.”
“See, I love your dad. My mom would’ve told me to get a life.”
“Or a better job.” I laugh.
His mom is always on his case about being a finance manager for auto loans, saying it doesn’t count as real employment, that working at a car dealership is sleazy, and he’d be better off working at a bank, like her.
“You ever find anything out about the guy from the alley?” he asks.
“I wish. Ed took his wallet that night, and I haven’t seen anything on the news. It’s another reason I want to talk to Autumn.”
“And to find out why she was in Ed’s SUV.”
“Right. Ed won’t tell me jack about her. The only thing I figured out was the other guy he called that night is a chief in another district. I saw his photo online.”
“Dylan?” He licks his fingers clean.
“Huh?”
“You’ve got a lot of problems.” He smiles wide, finishing his food and sweeping the crumbs off his wool sweatpants. “So where’s this party?”
“West Linwood area, near Campus Avenue.”
“Pretty close to the bar.”
“About five minutes west.”
I check the time on my cell. Nine o’clock. I expect a packed house by now.
Two years back, we showed up at a house with only ten people inside: guys in muscle shirts, arms and necks covered with tats. We stood out like two wussies wearing white figure skates at an ice rink. It wasn’t a college party like Ed had said, they weren’t kids from the streets; these guys were in their forties and wondering what the hell we were doing at their house. After two steps inside, we apologized and said we were at the wrong address, asked them if they knew so-and-so, a random made-up name, and left.
That night was a total bust, a job for a plain-clothes cop, not us. We’re better at blending in with high school and college kids. Older cops—notably Ed—don’t stand a chance getting close to an eighteen-year-old dealing for a heavyweight supplier. When we hang with them, we know the language, the trends, the music, and we gain enough trust to scrounge up the information to pinpoint the house the drugs are coming from, handing Ed and his friends the recognition for the bust. Now, Ed uses us specifically to rid the area of the suppliers to the college crowd, which takes us closer to the drugs and the key distributors, meaning, we have to be quick about it. The threat of being found out and killed goes up a notch inside a supplier’s house compared to ta
lking to lowlifes dealing junk out on the streets. There’s no escape inside, like getting your head caught in a beaver trap. Game over.
“We’re too old to be doing this,” Sean says.
“I don’t disagree.”
“Soon we’ll be known as old townies hanging around these parties to score a handjob from the incoming freshmen chicks.” He points at a parking spot that’s just a block from the house.
“We dress too well to be seen as townies. I’d say we’re starting to look like undercover cops because of the short haircuts.”
“Cops? That’s even worse.” He buttons his wool coat and lowers his black Nike cap to hide his eyes. “I thought I was doing you a favor last weekend by calling Ed when you didn’t answer my text. Now I wish I hadn’t.”
“I know. Me too. We’re stuck again.”
Ed has no plans to let us walk away. He can easily get word out on the streets that Sean and I are narcs. We’d be taken out. Or worse. Since we’ve dumped bodies for him, he could pin those on us and arrest us for murder. We’d end up in prison.
“Ready?” he asks.
“Ready.” We knock fists. I lock the truck, and we trudge through the deep tire tracks along the street. “This won’t take long. I’ll get you a beer when it’s over.”
“Two beers … no, I want a pitcher.”
“Deal.”
We climb the front steps of the classic two-story Northland home, the porch heaving with people smoking clove cigarettes.
“It’s packed,” Sean shouts, walking through a cracked wooden door propped open with a brick.
I nod and take a quick look around. We know this floor plan by heart. A living room in the front opens to a dining room, and behind that is the kitchen. A flight of stairs by the front door leads to bedrooms and a bath. There should be an attic and a dank basement, and house parties like this always have a band cranking out cover songs in one of the two. With the floor vibrating under my feet and a bass guitar overpowering the voices in the room, I know the band is directly below us, likely surrounded by groupies smoking pot, crouched low due to the ceiling height. Basements in the city are spider infested and stink of mold. I can only handle going down there when I’m drunk.
We elbow our way into the dining room on a quest for beer, moving inches at a time. Grabbed and shoved, stroked and snubbed.
I used to bring Jake to some of these parties, the ones not connected to Ed, nights when our group went out just to have a good time. Jake was an expert at weeding through the rooms. He’d find the guy handing out the beer cups, locate the kegs that weren’t kicked, and spent the night trying to pick up college women. They thought he was cute and innocent. Sly is more like it. With ruddy cheeks and his crooked bottom tooth showing, he’d lean in and whisper God-knows-what to them. He got it from watching Heather and me—the skim of a finger over a shoulder, the brush of a lip over an ear—we touched like we couldn’t get enough of one another. And Jake figured out it drives women wild. Plus his threatening black hair and squinty gray eyes, like mine, gave him a bad boy look, an irresistible combination that women couldn’t resist.
Sean pokes my arm, distracting me before I begin to lament over his death. “Back that way.” He points at a guy taking cash and handing out cups.
There’re no written rules that we have to pay, but most people do, knowing the money will be used to fund the next party. When the cash flow stops, so does the beer.
We get in line, held up by a group of sorority girls yakking about a new App. Sean fidgets. He looks at the clock in the kitchen and folds his arms. A second later, he takes off his cap and uses it to fan his face.
“Come on. What’s taking so long?” He stands on his tiptoes and looks over their heads. “Hurry up. I’m drying out back here.”
Weed drifts up from the basement, skunk smell of a boring drug. Cops won’t bother with it unless there’s a truckload. It’s too insignificant to do any harm. They’re after the harder drugs that lead to violence in the neighborhood, causing the crime rate to climb.
“Ten each,” the beer guy says to us, putting his hand on a stack of red cups, holding a wad of cash in the other.
“Hey, you didn’t charge the women,” Sean says.
“Ten,” he repeats.
“This is gender discrimination. It’s the same at bars. Women don’t have to pay to get in. They get free drinks. What do men get?”
Here we go again. “Sean, mellow out. We always donate some cash.”
“Yeah, we donate. This guy’s saying we have to pay.”
“Don’t start. It’s no biggie.”
“Since when is there a charge?” he asks the guy.
One of the sorority girls turns and listens.
“You’ll make more money than a woman in the long run, so I’m charging you. Fifteen each.” The guy ups the price, trying to impress the women in the room.
Sean looks at me. “Don’t pay him.”
“Why?” I say through clenched teeth. “You’ll get us kicked out.”
The sorority girl marches over and whacks his chest. “Hurry up and pay the guy, my friends are waiting behind you. What’s your problem?”
“My problem?” He lowers his head and blows the spot where she hit him. “If I slapped your chest, you’d call the cops and have me arrested for assault. You have no idea where I’m coming from, or how—”
I cover his mouth and gag him. “We haven’t been here five minutes and you’re already locking horns with everyone. Can you at least last an hour and down a few beers before this starts?” I release him and hand the guy a twenty. “Here, ten each, okay?”
He takes the cash and shoves the cups at our chests. “One drink, then get out. Old men don’t belong at college parties.”
I fib so we can stay longer. “I’m twenty. We’re students.” I hold the cup between my front teeth and unzip my coat. Sean heads for the keg, grazing against the sorority girl on his way out. I’ll try to use his outburst in our favor. “Got anything here that will help my friend relax? Maybe something a bit stronger than weed?”
He gives me a chin flick and says, “Get the hell outta my face.”
The guy’s too sober to take the bait. But it would’ve been great if he’d said, “Upstairs. Ask for Joe. He’s got stuff.”
I weave through the crowd to a keg for a fill-up, then meet Sean alongside a wall by the stairs. He refuses to look me in the eye.
“Hey. What the hell happened back there?”
“Tell ya later.”
“Tell me now.” I lean beside him, placing my foot against the wall.
“Don’t get on my case. We’ll talk about it later tonight.” He chugs his beer.
I elbow him and lean closer. “Ed’s job isn’t as important as whatever went down today. Spill it. Why are you so upset?”
He swirls his cup, generating a whirlpool with the beer. This room, this house, my life—it’s the same feeling as being trapped in the circular current. People shimmy past, their arms raised to squeeze on by. Inward bound, pay the man, pour a beer, move on out. Circle past, hike upstairs, march back down. Faces repeat every minute.
“Sean. Talk to me.”
“I quit my job … then I went groveling back.”
“Over what?” I lower my cup.
“What do you think?” He holds out his arms and looks down at himself. Yep. Someone ticked him off, big time. “Get this,” he shouts over the band. “I was doing paperwork for some moneyed hag so she could buy a new car, and she asked if someone else could help because she didn’t trust me to do it right. I should’ve told her off, but I left instead.” He downs the rest of his beer and shakes his head.
“People are assholes,” I tell him. “If it happens again, say something. Who cares if you get fired? Look, you can always work at the bar until you find another job.”
He’s sensitive, and I don’t blame him. But he has to be on his game when we search the house for the coke. If
someone’s dealing in here, no doubt they’ll have a gun. He can’t be in this headspace.
“No distractions, Sean, I need you to be a hundred percent with me.” I kick his boot. “Listening?”
He nods.
“Look, Heather was a rich white girl who thought you were kickass. She loved you. Don’t let one racist person set you off. All right?”
He shrugs. “You don’t understand.”
“The hell I don’t. People call me a dumb Polack every week. You know that. You hear the guys at the bar with the stupid jokes they toss out at me. ‘Hey, did you hear about the Polish family that froze to death? They were waiting to see the movie Closed for the Winter.’ ”
He laughs. Hard.
“Good, glad my dumb Polack jokes can make you feel better.”
He laughs even louder. “You’re right, Dylan. Your life sucks.” He taps his empty cup on my forehead and wanders away for a refill, leaving me to scope out the room.
Guys sweat in their wool coats, having no place to ditch them, while women endure the stuffy house in their fleece hats, not wanting to parade around with hat head. I study the small clusters to locate who might live here. Two people are arguing on my right, and two kids who are far too young to be students are on my left. I’d say they’re in middle school, at best. They look up at everyone who walks by, geekishly holding their beer cups with two hands. Yeah, middle schoolers, for sure. And all the college clichés are out in droves. Beauty queens taking selfies, stoners with half-moon eyes, jocks in college sweatshirts, and a circle of nerdy women with thick glasses and nappy ponytails trying desperately to fit in. It’s a typical mix. There’s even the usual loner in the corner.
“Sorry to act like a pisser,” Sean cuts in. “It’s been a long day.”
The loner in the corner…
“Who you staring at?”
I lift my beer in her direction. “Autumn.”
He looks across the room. “What’s she doing here?”
“She must be a student.”
I stare at her, taking swigs of beer, acting like a robot with my precise movements. At just fifteen feet away, she turns my palms sweaty and sends my heartbeats stampeding. I’m nervous about losing track of her in this crowd. And worried that she’ll run off if I approach.
The Lost Night Page 7