Looper

by Michael Conlon

  Stupid Bogart! I open the note, expecting an invite to a secret rendezvous and can’t believe my bloodshot eyes:

  Don't rely on other people for your self-esteem. Get inspired and make today your best day ever! O. P. Peabody.’ P.S. I’ll see you at the dance on Saturday night, Giff. Ü.

  I crumple up the note and throw it off the bridge and under the exhaust systems of Kensington Road traffic. As the cars blur under me, I think of how Gigi has become a super thorn in my ass, and Cleo’s become Virginia’s little clone. I gaze up to the sky gods. Why me?

  That night, I interrupt Pop during his evening den time of coffee-mug beer sipping and newspaper reading. “Did you ask Bobby Walton to make sure I got a bag in the PGA as a favor since you know his dad?”

  He snaps his newspaper down into his lap. “Are you nuts?”

  That’s the end of that.

  Who gives a damn how I got the PGA loop? I’ll take solace in Father Steve’s conviction that I deserved it. After all, the PGA loop might be the added bonus on my caddy resume and send me over the top to win the Evans scholarship.

  iron my white Izod shirt stone smooth for the dance and pop my collar up and down in front of the bathroom mirror a billion times. Better leave it down. Fads in the Hills change faster than the battleship in Battlestar Galactica. I don’t need to draw unwanted attention to myself on the biggest night of my life. I steal a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses from Billy’s room and head down the stairs.

  Pop spots me from the dining room while eating a heaping of pot roast. “Where do you think you’re going tonight, hot shot?”

  “He’s going to a dance at the country club tonight,” Mom says, entering from the kitchen.

  “Is this a caddy thing?”

  Virginia sets her plate down to eat. “No, he’s going with Jason Sanders. His dad’s a member.”

  “You see, Ford,” Pop says between mouthfuls. “You hang around the right people, and you can go places. It’s all about meeting the right people.” He lifts a forkful of pot roast to toast my good fortune. “Good for you.”

  “Maybe you should go with him, Dad,” Billy shouts from the kitchen. I swipe his Ray-Bans off my head and slide them into my pocket.

  “Knock it off, Mr. Wiseguy.”

  Billy has snagged a job uptown at Olga’s Kitchen. It’s been one whole month, and he hasn’t been fired yet, a new record for my brother. Billy can’t be working this long at a job unless he’s hoarding money for something. He even got his hair cut at earlobe level. What in the hell is Billy saving money up for?

  Before I leave, I can tell Pop is proud of me. He has that certain twinkle in his eye. You’re on your way up, kid.

  Jason and I ride our bikes to the dance in our sport coats over our Izod shirts. I’ve outgrown my blue blazer, the sleeves showing my bare wrists. The dance is held down in the basement, where strobe lights hang from the ceiling, and a laser show floods the dance floor. A few couples dance to a syrupy-slow Bee Gees song. A bowl full of punch and pigs in a blanket are in the middle of each table. Pippa and Cleo sit at a table, munching peanuts. An up-tempo song comes on, and we all fly to the dance floor.

  We fast dance to “Bloody Well Right,” bounce up and down to “My Sharona” (my head nearly pops off), dizzy shake to “Ballroom Blitz,” and bump and grind to an extended mix of “I’m Your Boogie Man,” “Let’s Get Down Tonight,” and “(Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Booty.” The dance floor swells. Cleo presses up next to me, swinging her hips in time to the pulsating rhythm of the beat. Jason buzz-grins at me as he pulls Pippa’s waist close to his KISS belt buckle and his hands Saran Wrap her butt. The speakers thump a new record: “Cool for Cats” by Squeeze. One big wave of bodies sways back and forth before the crowd parts after some spaz starts to break-dance.

  The DJ must want to take a piss break because “Heartache Tonight” empties the dance floor.

  Polly Ledbetter staggers up to us and slurs, “What’re youz loozshers doin’ in here … the reel party’s ow’side.” We boogie up the stairs, push past green and white streamers hanging from the door frame, and fall into the night. A throng of kids surround a guy who is trying to force foamy beer out of a keg on the eighteenth green. Nick Lund and Jack Lott have stretched themselves out in a sand trap on lounge chairs nicked from the pool area. They guzzle beers like they’re on spring break in Ft. Lauderdale.

  Sanders pours bubbling foam into the hole on the green. “The keg is dead.”

  “Long live the keg!” says another kid in a nifty light-blue blazer and pressed turquoise Izod (collar popped), who jumps from the edge of the green into the beach party, knocking tipsy Jack Lott off his lounge chair.

  Pool water glows aqua-green from underwater lights across the dewy grass. Cleo’s face lights up, and she tugs on my lapels. “Let’s go swimming in the pool, Giff.”

  I haven’t brought a bathing suit. We’ll have to swim in our underwear. Duh. I imagine Cleo duck-paddling through the water, her hair floating to the surface.

  “Anyone got some beer?” Jason shouts, trying to pump the last beer molecules out of the keg.

  Jack and Nick drunk-climb from the beach up to the patio green. “We need a beer medic,” Jack Lott says, holding the pin on the green for Lund, who is wearing a red cardigan covering a naked chest. Lund rolls a golf ball with his hand toward the hole. Jack turns and spots me. “Let Ford hold the pin. He’s the professional caddy!”

  Everyone roars, and I pretend to laugh along, too, although I want to reach escape velocity and exit the country-club atmosphere. There is no way I’ll be playing caddy tonight. I hate Jack’s guts just then. The last thing I want is the rest of these country-club kids to know I’m a looper.

  “I need a beer, too,” Pippa pipes in. “Jason, you can always get beer.”

  “What do you want me to do, Pip?” He draws circles in the air with a fake wand. “Presto! Beers appear!”

  “Come on, Quinn, show us how to hold this pin.” Shut the hell up, Jack!

  Lund gets into the act, too. “Clean my balls, Boy Wonder.”

  Nick’s quip sends the revelers on the green into hysterical fits of giggles. Lund drops his pants to his ankles, running stumbling circles around me in his boxer shorts before falling back into the beach. The whole crowd starts chanting “clean his balls, clean his balls, clean his balls.” The crowd swirls around me, and I want to run from this godforsaken country club full of ass wipes. Perhaps Gigi is right about Hills kids. Of course, I already know that. The crowd turns to a drunken Lund, who rolls around in the sand trap to roars of laughter.

  Rocket’s beer heist earlier in the summer hatches a daring idea in my brain. If Rocket can pull it off, how hard can it be? They’ll forget I’m a caddy if I score some booze. Hell, maybe this will be the clincher to get me into the Lund Gang. Nick Lund throws a rake toward my feet, spraying sand on my worn penny loafers. “Rake my assprints in this trap, Quinn,” Lund says.

  “I’m getting some beer for everybody,” I announce to deflect my looper status.

  The throng goes orchestra-crowd silent. Nosy crickets chirp and snicker off the green.

  Lund peeks over the lip of the trap. “Quinn’s getting us beer? Go, Quinn, go.”

  The chorus starts up again. “Go, Quinn, go. Go, Quinn, go. Go, Quinn, go.”

  Nighttime sprinklers detonate and quench parched fairway turf.

  “What are you waiting for?” Pippa says in her most bitchy tone. “We don’t have all night, ya know.”

  I can’t welch on my promise and betray the faces on the green: Jack, Jason, Nick, Pippa. “Jason, you have to come with me,” I insist. Cleo starts down a paved path toward the pool, turns, waves me along, and mouths the word c’mon. I drift toward Cleo, but Jason grabs my arm.

  “Let’s go. These thirsty wenches are close to revolting.”

  Pippa slaps Jason on his chest w
ith the back of her hand. “Nice, Shakespeare.”

  Cleo stops between the pool and the green, tapping her foot. “I’ll be waiting, Giff.”

  “Go get the booze, Ford,” says the Great Gazoo perched on my shoulder. “Don’t blow the chance of a lifetime—in with the country-club kids and dream-dating Cleo.” I flick the green alien off my shoulder. My confidence soars as we fly down the road on our bikes, shouting the lyrics to the Stones’ song “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”

  “Where are we going, Quinn?” Jason asks, trying to keep pace with me.

  “Just follow me, Sanders,” I say with cocky confidence. Jason follows me as we coast into the Farmer Jack’s parking lot. We ditch our bikes and hide behind a blue van. I stake out the grocery store, watching for any employees or bag boys lingering near the entrance. Enough people roam the store to keep everyone distracted, which opens the door for what I am about to do.

  “What the hell are you up to, Quinn?”

  A kid strains to push a train of carts toward the entrance.

  “Gettin’ us some beer.”

  “You gonna pay some guy to buy beer?” That’s the time-tested method, but I don’t have a dime on me.

  “Do you have any money?” I ask Jason, thinking that’s the safest route to take and losing my nerve a bit.

  He digs his hands into his pockets. “Not a nickel.”

  “Okay. Just wait here until I come back.” I kneel behind the bumper of the van with stickers that read “SCREW Iran” and “Ellen Ripley for President,” wondering if I should risk pilfering some beer just to get in good with the country-club kids. I wish I had an ounce of Rocket’s guts. If I return to the party without any beer, I’ll get no mercy from Nick the Prick Lund and be the butt of some Pippa joke.

  “C’mon, Quinn,” Sanders says. “What are ya putzin’ around for?”

  Now or never. “You’ll see.”

  I grip a lonely grocery cart in a parking space next to the van and saunter scared into the store. The lights shine bright. Three long laps up and down the aisles. A bottle of Mr. Clean—to give me strength—goes in first, followed by Cap’n Crunch from the shelf in the breakfast aisle. A slow lap past a woman headed in the other direction with a toddler fidgeting in the front basket and on past the freezer department toward the beer. Since no one seems to pay attention to me, I load a case of Stroh’s and bury it in the bottom of the cart next to a skeptical Mr. Clean. I dash to the next aisle and fill the cart with bags of potato chips, pretzels, peanuts, and then, in a slight panic, cross to another aisle in front of the fruit section, grabbing a head of lettuce and broccoli. A mountain of food blankets the beer.

  The cashiers are busy ringing people up, and I don’t worry about the baggers—they’re teenagers who probably lift beer and cigs every night of the week. After one more scared-to-God-freaked-out spin up and down the grocery aisles, the cart clatters straight out the front door, pulled by some uncontrollable invisible force. The doors automatically open, and tension leaks from my body because I’m in the clear as I search for my getaway man in the dark parking lot, but Sanders is nowhere in sight. I look left, then right. I haven’t thought the caper past this point in time. Straight ahead it is, and back behind that van, but I don’t see it.

  A deep voice shakes me to my core. “STOP!” Another man comes up behind me, wearing a butcher’s apron and a nametag that reads “Bob.”

  I try to think of an excuse. “I’m looking for my mom.”

  “Right, kid, and I’m Zeus,” Bob says.

  “Get back inside,” the other man orders. He’s wearing a short-sleeve button-down shirt with a tie and a nametag that reads “Peter Barger, Fresh Foods Manager.” The broccoli stop has done me in. They parade me back through the bright lights of the store, and after a quick glimpse behind me to locate Jason, I pray he’ll see I’ve been busted and call his famous dad from the phone booth in the corner of the lot to save my sorry ass.

  They escort me past the frozen-food section and to the back of the store to Mr. Barger’s cramped office. A red plastic electric chair for my execution. Mr. Barger squats behind his desk, and Bob from the meat department stands guard behind him. Before they can interrogate me, I start bawling on the spot, thinking my world has frozen in hell.

  “Please don’t tell my dad,” I plead. “He’ll kill me.”

  The meat guy comes to my defense. “He’s just a little-shit kid, Pete. Maybe we should just let ’im go.”

  “No goddamn way, Bob. Punks like him need to be taught a lesson.” He rolls up his sleeves and takes out a notepad. “Now what’s your name?”

  “Quinn, Ford Quinn.”

  “You got any ID, Quinn?”

  I fish out my Kensington Hills municipal pass for the public pool and golf courses and hand it over to Mr. Barger. He scans it and stalks out of the room, leaving me with the meat cutter.

  “Pretty dumb stunt you pulled tonight,” he says. “If you was my kid, you’d be dead meat.”

  I eye his apron splattered with cow blood and believe him. My crying slows to a drip, the fear subsiding briefly before I’m overcome with the Regrets. For me, there’s no cure. I blame Rocket for showing me the beer stunt, like it’s somehow his fault. There’s no way in hell he’d ever have been caught, and right now he’d be guzzling a beer in the shallow end of the country club pool with Cleopatra.

  Five minutes later, Mr. Barger returns with a policeman in full uniform and a gold badge on his chest engraved with the letters “KHPD.” He rests his hand on the brown handle of the gun protruding from his hip holster. The officer must consider me dangerous, or at least desperate enough to try something. If I make a run for it now, I’ll be shot dead, which sounds like my best option at this point. I’m half hoping I’ll spend the night in jail, not afraid of the cops as much as I’m deathly afraid of facing Pop.

  The officer directs me through the store and past the cooler section. I eye the missing space in the row of Stroh’s cases, where I’d lifted the beer. People stop their carts to turn around and gawk at the perp walk. I stare straight at the back of the policeman’s black hat, praying no one I know saw me. They shove me into the back of a police cruiser, and I see Pop’s red Impala drive up. The Regrets turn into the Sweats. Jason Sanders weaves his bike in front of the police cruiser, peering into the windshield, and then peddles through the squad car’s light beams, out of sight. My fear shifts from Pop to the country club party. Jason is headed to blab about what I’ve done, for sure. I’ll be the laughingstock of the junior country club set. It occurs to me that Cleo and the chance at that life has just slipped through my sticky fingers.

  They release me into Pop’s custody, who doesn’t utter one single flipping syllable, probably saving up his words for the most world-ending epic tongue-lashing in the history of teen-rearing. The Impala pulls into the garage, knocks over a garbage can, and rear ends the lawnmower. I pull on the inside door handle of the car.

  “Don’t you move a muscle, buster.”

  Nothing but deadly silence for an eternity. Through the windshield and the garage window, I see a porch light go on at the Carters and a shadowy silhouette on the porch. Laney?

  Pop sits staring into the darkness as if figuring out what to say before uttering in his most somber there’s-been-a-death-in-the-family tone, “You’ve let the family down, son. You’re grounded until I say so.” There’s no trace of anger in his voice, just pathetic, sad disappointment. The tone of his voice is the biggest blow I’ve taken tonight. Not the what-ifs with Cleo and Jason and the boys. But how I’ve let down Pop.

  So much for Golden Boy.

  As I traipse through the mudroom, stumbling over unsold Mix-Fare product and Rainbow vacuum accessories, Mom stews at the breakfast table, sucking on a cigarette. She starts blowing rings with her smoke. When I was a little kid, during her peak years of smoking three packs a day, she used to entertain
us by blowing rings toward the ceiling, and I’d jump up and try to catch them. I’m pretty sure that’s how I’d learned how to count.

  “Why did you do that, Ford?” Virginia says with a biting, bitter tone.

  “I don’t know.” A hundred wavy lines next to the wall entering the kitchen from the mudroom get my attention. Faded memories of Pop with his No. 2 pencil in his hand, slashing across our heads to show our growth. Billy’s the tallest, Kate the smallest. I’m the middle child, but I’m the only one left still growing. I’ve been taken down a notch or two tonight.

  “Who put you up to it?”

  The Great Gazoo. She can’t imagine her own son being a thief. It must have been some other kid who’d lured me to sin. That’d be Rocket, Virginia. G’day, mate, I can hear him say. G’damn, Rocket.

  “No one.”

  Her lips are pursed together before opening to the greatest insult of all. “I’d expect this from Billy but not from you.”

  “Sorry, Mom.” Water splashes from my cheeks and onto the kitchen table, extinguishing a glowing ember in Virginia’s ashtray.

  “Get up to bed. Your father and I need to talk.”

  I crawl under the covers that night, hoping to wake up on the moon. I conjure up a crazy idea in my head to take a Greyhound bus to Cocoa Beach, where my cousin Mitty lives. I’ll pick up some records by the Ventures or some other surf band at Sam’s Jams on the way down south. There has to be lots of ex-cons in Florida; I can blend right in on the beach.

  Summer might as well have ended tonight.

  fter the failed beer heist, Pop threatens to send me to the public high school, where Billy attended after he flunked out of Catholic High his freshman year. What my parents don’t know is it sounds more like a gift to me. No one at the public school would know about my crime, or probably care. Plus, in public school they have live girls in the classroom, unlike Catholic High, where the girls go to a school next door.