by Paul Griner
Nash seemed to realize my attention needed to be redirected. He pointed out my sketch pad. Ever give lessons? he asked. Always wanted to learn to draw.
Sometimes, I said. Usually kids. Maybe later, I said, and waved the broken pencil at the TV with its healthy eating infomercials.
I’d changed the channel before I started working. A segment on American soldiers killed in Niger. I hadn’t wanted to watch it, because we were all in the waiting room for bad reasons, and I didn’t want anyone to be sadder, including me.
I said, Do you know where Niger is?
Nash blinked in surprise. Nee-zher? he said. Why?
He was coiled now, paying attention. Did he think I was losing it?
I mentioned the soldiers who’d died, why I’d changed the channel.
Oh, he said, shoulders relaxing. Yes, I do know where it is. South of Libya and Algeria, north of Nigeria. Mostly desert.
No wonder he’s a detective, I thought. He knew things I hadn’t a clue to.
So, he said, shifting the conversation again. Drawing lessons?
I looked around at the other patients’ waiting relatives and friends, nearly all with coffee and magazines or playing games on their phones. Except one, who I latched onto. Good Samaritans, May’s sisters and a few friends rotated in and out as life demanded, one of May’s quiet nerdy colleagues from work, Zhao, who’d brought food and sodas, but this guy had brought nothing, though twice I caught him staring at me. He didn’t seem to be waiting for a patient; he never looked up when nurses entered the room, hopeful and afraid, and he was watching us now, with his linen sport coat over the back of the seat beside him, taking up an extra chair.
Tall and thin with the thinnest blond hair, like it had been transplanted from a doll. He spooked me and I was about to say something to Nash but thought better of it. He’d already seemed troubled by my random mention of Niger. Besides, hoaxers were already a thing, only a few days after the shooting. It had never happened, we were all crisis actors, part of a vast government conspiracy; he was probably one of them. I only learned his name later. Dexter Fenchwood.
So I said, Lessons? Sure, maybe. Why not? Maybe after all of this is behind us.
Note to Self, after My Most Recent Move:
OCTOBER 22, 2018
Check out possible apartments during school hours, and around Halloween.
Too many laughing children near this one, spilling from the rear doors over the field at recess, bumping and racing, glowing like balloons in a summer sky, too many ghosts and superheroes ringing the doorbell for Trick or Treat.
Retain the Covenant of Light
OCTOBER 2015
The service? Closed, though with an open casket, Beanie Babies tucked in beside him. It sickened me, but I understood. He was buried in an unmarked grave.
The minister quoted Bible verses, then people talked: the shooter’s mother, his brothers, some cousins. A neighbor, who’d been cooking for her and shooing away reporters. Telling stories about him, things that made them laugh or smile, restoring him to childhood, before the violence. I hated them, but I understood.
Parents were appalled. The minister urged people to grasp the glowing metal ingot of forgiveness, both brutal and necessary, a requirement. Judge not, lest ye be judged; forgive, and ye shall be forgiven. Lamont told me he was going to seek him out, but I urged him not to and hoped he would. If I’d known about the service, I could have done anything, gone inside and glared at them, tipped over his coffin, barred the doors and burned the church. In some versions of that fantasy, I’m on the outside, watching, but in others I start the fire with me inside and inhale the superheated smoke.
Some parishioners left after hearing what he’d done; others stayed, and still others began attending. I understood those who fled and those who flocked.
Funeral of a killer. I drew one version with a knife plunged through his eye. Too much, even for me. My work was what I imagined his drawings were like.
Wanting to be a god, so far above him I didn’t deign to notice him, I erased it.
His sins were manifest, mine hidden, yet for all that, no less original.
Boo Humbug
OCTOBER 31, 2015
The town council debated canceling Halloween in the days after the shooting. The first hoaxer showed up, asking about the school surveillance cameras, whether he could see footage from the day in question. At the time, people thought he was an odd townsman, someone who lived in a Unabomber shack with a bedraggled dog.
In the end, the town decided not to cancel Halloween. May and I were glad, some of the other parents angry, Lamont furious.
He said, You think I want little ghosts coming to my door? I won’t be answering it, that’s for damn sure. And if they try any mischief, they’ll be sorry.
I wasn’t sure how that would come to pass, and I didn’t want to ask. May and I were up at the hospital so it didn’t really affect us, and there, the Halloween decorations lifted people’s spirits. Chains of miniature lighted pumpkins strung across hallways, witches flying into walls. No ghosts, though.
May took apart a malfunctioning table lamp in the waiting room while I went out and bought two dozen Halloween cookies. When I came back, the lamp was fixed, May sitting beneath it reading journal articles, and I handed out a cookie to everyone and put the leftovers on the communal table. Because I wanted to brighten the wait for my fellow travelers, and because I thought that even the smallest acts of kindness might be entered into a cosmic ledger, and because I wanted to be a good man. Though if I wasn’t, if I couldn’t be, I hoped the appearance might be enough to fool whoever was watching. A single cookie might tip the scale.
Kate
I kept asking myself: Why did she do it? Was it just for money, or did she believe these things? A cult, I decided, a cult of disbelievers in the truth, and she their figurehead.
In one video she sits in a high-backed wicker chair on a sunny porch wearing a pink-and-white flower-print dress, discussing the impossibility of the so-called police response to the school shooting (only four police cars for the first half hour, she claimed). I originally found it on Metabunk. Soon after, it went viral, which meant tracking it grew harder. Still, I traced it as far as I could, over the course of several days; the coding skills I’d learned from May came in handy.
Coverups and Illuminati, false flag and 9/11, political manipulation, Infowars and David Icke, a string of others. But the trail ended with an anonymous poster, who wouldn’t respond to my comments or answer my email and had no other contact info. A dead end, like so many of my searches for Kate over the years.
But I persisted.
I had pictures of her, a name—even if it was fake—and eventually, through the Wayback Machine, I learned that some of her videos were produced in Phoenix. Bit by bit, by asking questions, I built up a file on her. The public places she was shown in, the people she referred to, her clothes. Facebook was a goldmine, their Graph Search. The hoaxers kept finding out where I was, but eventually, I knew I’d discover where she was, the face of the entire movement. And wouldn’t she be sorry then.
Wine on the Lees
OCTOBER 19, 2015
Karlene divorced Lamont after Latrell’s funeral, a homegoing that featured a choir, witnessing and weeping, and that startled and reassured me and left me drained. She showed up at his Thursday night bowling league with the papers.
He’d been looking forward to a couple of hours with the Elbow Benders, leaving his awful personal life behind, and yet there she was. He ignored her. If he got up somehow it would all be true but if he sat there and drank beer it would all go away. Someone else had to take his turn and the guys on the other team—the asshole sticklers from E-Bowl-A, who never let anything slide—didn’t say a thing.
With his beer done and no one getting him another, Lamont said, After my second ball. He went through his preshot routine. Right shoe four inches back from the left one and in line with the second arrow, ball tucked to his left side, one st
ep, the ball going back, two steps holding it, three steps with his arm arcing forward.
For the first time in his life, he stepped beyond the line as he released his ball and went airborne. Splatted flat on his back and Karlene came and stood over him waving the papers. It was a long time coming, she said.
It didn’t have to be, he said.
When she didn’t answer, he grabbed the papers from her and signed them like that though it took a while; the pens she gave him didn’t write upside down.
Yet it worked out in the end. Two teammates were engineers and they had specialized pens. She didn’t seem any happier as she strode off, but it was done.
First Date
NOVEMBER 2018
Sautéing garlic and the spicy vanilla scent of Palmer Skutch’s perfume competed on the cool breeze. We stood on the crumbling sidewalk in front of my latest apartment, near the exhaust fan of a red-sauce Italian restaurant. Inside the new apartment the same clothes, the same drawing materials, the same eternal hope that a new place would be better, that the hoaxers wouldn’t find me.
I like your pin, I said to her. Lamont had set us up. She’s alladat!
I’d told her we’d meet outside because I’d just moved in and the place was a mess, which was true, though it would always be a mess. The things I kept, the things I didn’t, the last thing brought from each previous apartment and the first into each new one: a plastic bag of Liam’s clothes, taken from the hospital.
This pin? she said. A peacock with a ruby eye and glittering jewels arcing down its long blue tail. This is from my ex, Palmer said, levering the peacock with her thumb, so it flashed in the light. He was an asshole but he had nice taste.
Yes, I said. But what kind of asshole?
A smile, followed by a frown. My friend said it best. He was deficient. God gave him a penis and a brain, but not enough blood to run both at the same time.
I laughed, which she seemed to like, but her eyes narrowed. He was the cheating kind. Lamont told me you were married before. Were you that kind?
No.
She waited, but when I did not go on she said, Was she?
No. She’s an engineer. She lusts after electronics. I realized that might have sounded odd, but I didn’t want to explain I hadn’t meant sex toys, so I didn’t.
Okay, she said, and we headed toward her car. Such an interesting face. The long arc of her cheekbone, the elliptical starburst of her iris, the gorgeous full lips. She indicated the passenger side for me with her mauve clutch. A nice walk, one foot swinging in front of the other as if traveling along a tightrope, and she looked good in her skinny jeans. I said, Lamont told me you were shy as a Lenten rose.
A loud guffaw. He told you no such thing. But you get points for trying.
Her Lincoln smelled seductively new. I was glad we’d taken her car and not the mess of mine. So, I said, and slapped my thighs after I buckled in, stiff in my linen pants and sport coat. Where to? She’d told me she’d pick me up when we set up the date, and that where we were going would be a surprise; my guess was lunch or a gallery. That it started at eleven a.m. felt odd, that it was my first date since my divorce felt even odder, but I said nothing. Why scare her off prematurely?
Stones, she said. I have a garden. I’m busy with sales and don’t pay enough attention to it, so today we’re looking at edging stones. After, maybe we can lunch.
Oh, I said, a twofer. The date and the stones.
I liked her laugh, which mattered. May and I used to play a game, Dealbreaker. Back hair topped her list, a donkey laugh mine.
Familiar streets. We passed by Sweet Surrender Bakery and I studied its windows. Want something sweet? Palmer asked. Maybe a good place for lunch?
No, but thanks. I did some work for them recently. Just checking for signs of it.
And they were there in the window above the clustered croissants and stacked baguettes, the brightly colored posters I’d designed. It felt like a good omen.
She slowed and looked. You did those posters? How beautiful. The way the cupcakes bloom from the ground, become flowers. And the colors. They’re so vibrant I want to eat them. Maybe someday you’ll draw something beautiful for me.
I’d love that, I said, and it was the first really nice thing I’d wanted in a while.
We made our way through the standard questions while in an unfamiliar part of the city, light industry, low sprawling apartment complexes, the gold dome of an Orthodox church. She asked first and I liked her voice; it wasn’t guarded. Childhood, jobs, how long I’d been divorced and etc.; her turn revealed Pennsylvania, Amish country, and that she’d worked on farms as a girl and decided she wanted nothing to do with them. She asked if I had kids.
No, I said, looking out the window at billboard after billboard for personal injury lawyers. Did people in this part of town get hurt more? No, I lied. No kids.
Me either, she said, and cut in front of a car without using her blinker. And I don’t plan to, she said, over the noise of the car horn.
So if you ask me to marry you at the end of the date, I’ll keep that in mind.
She laughed again, a little less convincingly; she’d gone cold. I’d done something wrong and didn’t know what. Don’t ever play poker, I thought.
The entire place smelled of stone dust, and I hadn’t known there were so many kinds of gravel, small patches set out one next to the other and separated by bricks: moonstone crushed stone #411 crushed stone #57 quarry process pea gravel yellow gravel. We were standing by them, Palmer’s feet by the pea gravel and mine by the moonstone. She squatted and got her hands right into it. I admired that about her, and her thighs, and wondered again what I’d done to tank the outing. Perhaps I’d find out from Lamont, in the gossipy after-report.
I thought it would be this, she said, letting a scoop of pea gravel sift through her fingers to clack against the rest of it. But it’s the moonstone, she said. The larger size and the blacks and browns and whites. I like that mix.
I do too, I said. The colors work together to keep the eye moving.
But? she asked.
I liked that she picked up on my hesitation. Maybe her mood had nothing to do with me, maybe the outing could be saved. Well, I said. I’d have to see where it was going to be sure.
A little early to invite yourself to my place, she said, and clapped her hands clean on those beautiful thighs and stood.
Oh, I said, surprised by the wave of sadness that washed over me. Had I thought she liked me? That she might come to? I hadn’t realized I was so lonely.
I didn’t mean that, I said. Just that I need context. I’m a visual person.
I see, she said. Okay. Right. Red blotches bloomed on her throat.
I had the odd thought that maybe everything would be all right if I started to dance among the stones, just a few steps and a pirouette. If I took her hand and invited her to join me. Where it came from I had no idea, and I held on until it passed.
The wind turned, colder now, and Palmer shivered. I’ll be back shortly, she said, and wandered toward the office door, while I headed over to the bays.
———
Beyond the last one was a nursery. A boy of about ten or eleven sat on a stack of pea-green plastic chairs, swinging his blue sneakers. They didn’t have much stock this late in the season, mostly mums whose autumnal smell I’d never liked, though some very pretty small sprays with blue iris in them. I asked the salesgirl what they were. With a slight lisp around her pink braces she said, For the cemetery. St. Olaf’s.
All the other customers were coupled off, hopeful people, planning to plant things to make their houses or apartments and maybe their lives better. Things that would live a short while and die. I wandered back to the gravel office. Palmer was just coming out, a big yellow receipt in her hand.
All set, she said, waving at me. Her smile didn’t last long enough for her to fold the receipt and put it in her clutch. Shall we go? she said.
Ha! I said, pointing out the car window at two
teddy bears hanging from a light pole outside a strip mall. Look at that, I said. Lynching stuffed animals now.
She turned her blinker on and said, Someone died. It’s a memorial.
A mass of flowers bunched at the base of it; I saw them as soon as she spoke.
Must have been a kid, she said. Accident.
We came to a light and stopped, to take a left. The cars zooming past us rocked her car, as big as it was.
Above us were two billboards, one for a nearby rosary factory, the other advertising direct flights to Phoenix. So many people looking for relief, I said.
Palmer said, I’d take some desert heat, any time. Love Arizona. And I didn’t mean to imply you were an asshole, earlier, at the start of our date, when I was talking about my ex. I do that sometimes. It’s just I never thought he would be like that.
It’s okay, I said. I understand.
The light changed. We crossed through the intersection and she said, Can I ask you something? Why didn’t you tell me about Liam being shot?
A weighted silence between us. In no time she was up to fifty, the telephone poles flicking by close to my window. The speed limit was thirty-five; she wanted this morning over, fast.
You knew? I said at last. Lamont told you? Did he tell you his kid died?
That felt mean, and I was sorry, but didn’t say so.
I Googled you. Lamont told me you were friendly and funny and a great artist. I wanted to see your work. I hated all the secrets my ex kept.
So that’s what I’d done, I realized. I should have listened to her, to hear not the words themselves but what they were really saying. A lesson I needed to learn again and again.
Where is he now? she asked.
With May.
Was it that you didn’t like me? she said. Is that why you didn’t tell me?
I was still looking out the window at the telephone poles passing through my reflected face. No, I said. No, I liked you immediately. That’s why I didn’t tell you.