A tug on my sleeve. Nicole pulled me behind the guardhouse. “Rag mag reporter,” she said. She peeked around the gatehouse.
Across the road, a security company SUV zipped up to the photographer’s car, and the photographer sped out of there. I memorized the plate number, MBE-7921. “Let’s go,” Nicole said.
“Can’t. I’m running seriously late for work.”
“So that much was true.”
The west side bus was coming. “See ya,” I said. I started for the pickup spot.
Nicole hurried alongside to cover me with the umbrella. “Next week, right?”
“Next week?” I said.
The bus rolled in with foot-high waves. We backed up to keep the water from rolling over our ankles. “At Dr. Schmidt’s,” she said.
“Right. Take care, Nicole.”
“I hate it,” she said. “That they call you Spaceman. I’m sorry. That must have been awful for you. The thing at the pep rally.”
I was seeing it all over again, and so was she, apparently. No hoping anymore. Nicole Castro had seen me wet my pants.
“On or off,” the bus driver said.
I stuck my foot in the door to keep it open. “You must be really into art to know my father. It’s not like he works for the
“My mother’s an artist. She calls herself a hobbyist, but she’s good. She’s serious about it anyway, reads all the reviews. She likes your dad. Says he’s one of the nice ones. You freaked me out, following me like that.”
“I was just trying to-”
“I know why you did it. What’s your number?”
I gave it to her. A second later my phone vibrated. “There’s mine,” she said. Nicole Castro had just given me her phone number. How was this possible?
“My friend,” the driver said, “stay and play, or let’s be on our way.”
I hopped onto the bus. Nicole tossed me the umbrella the guard had given her.
“You keep it,” I said.
“I have this one.” She opened the crummy umbrella I’d put together for her. “Hey, Nazzaro? You’re my hero.” She saluted me with the messed-up umbrella.
The bus doors closed and I grabbed a seat with one last wave to Nicole.
“Excuse me, hero?” the bus driver said. “That’s two seventy-five.”
I dunked my card, a slug, but the machine showed
THIRTEEN
From the notes of Dr. Julian Nye, MD, PsyD:
Thurs, Oct 21, third session with Nicole Castro, begun at 8:30pm, at Castro residence. Patient initially appeared withdrawn and expressed that she was exhausted, complaining of a headache with pain 8 out of 10, but very quickly became agitated when I suggested I could write her a prescription for Relpax.
Per NC’s mother, NC was AWOL after session with school psychologist Dr. Schmidt, for approx. one hour. I expressed concern that patient was walking around in the rain, alone. Patient said she wasn’t alone. I asked who was with her. She frowned and said, “People. You know, just people on the street.” Patient then asked what I thought about liars. I asked her to be more specific. She asked if I thought a liar could be a good person. “You know, if he or she is lying to do a good thing.” When I asked for an example of a “good thing,” patient stared out the dining room window and said, “I can’t think clearly. I’m afraid to picture it. His face. If they ever find out who did it, I mean. I don’t know whether I’d have a heart attack or claw his eyes out. We’re doomed, the human race, when you have people like that walking around. Absolutely zero empathy. I want to live on the Moon.”
I am beginning to suspect patient is holding back more than the name of the young man who, per security guard, walked NC home.
FOURTEEN
BJ’s closed to the public at eight p.m., and I got to my restock work. At ten I grabbed my fifteen-minute break. I clicked one of the laptops to the local news links and found a short update on the Nicole Castro story, except it was hardly an update. That afternoon, some idiot had tackled some other idiot in Sports Authority after the dude tried to shoplift a Volta-Shock bottle. Other than that, there were no new leads in the case.
“Can you believe she actually got a boyfriend?” the woman who ran the electronics section said. She tapped the keyboard to a gossip site. The headline ran BURNED BEAUTY QUEEN BAGS NEW BEAU. I panicked, expecting to see a picture of Nicole’s arm hooked through mine at the security gatehouse that blocked off her neighborhood. The follow-up would then be BENDIX VOWS TO BASH BEAU’S BRAINS IN, but the picture wasn’t of Nicole and me. I wasn’t the only one following Nicole in CVS. The picture showed Nicole with the guy who tried to pick her up, until he saw the bandage on her face. The headline and the camera angle were enough to suggest they were together. The photo credit was
“What kind of guy would want to go out with her after that?” my coworker said.
“Dude must be desperate,” I muttered, scanning the article.
“I bet you he’s burned too. You know, like where you can’t see?”
I got home from work at 11:00. We lived in one of those efficiency apartment complexes that are always full of bitterly divorced men and the odd widower with kids. The power lines sprayed from the phone pole and attacked the side of our building like blown snot. Dented, pigeon-crap-covered Dish Network discs tilted like begging hands. Even so, the rent wasn’t cheap in this last outpost of the coveted Brandywine zip code.
My father was at the piano, this little electric job we picked up for his birthday at BJ’s with my discount, low-end keys on ironing board stilts. I recognized the piece, Rachmaninoff, Vespers, some doleful notes to be sure. On the side table: bottle of red wine, the second one. The first, a dead soldier, was on the kitchen counter, next to picked-at Mexican takeout.
I would have asked him if he was okay, but he only would’ve told me to mind my own business. He’d catch an AA meeting the next morning on his way to work, and then he’d be good for a month or so before he fell off again. At least he wasn’t drinking and driving anymore, or that’s what he promised. But $4.99 a bottle? If you’re going to be bad, at least drink something good.
You might think art critics make a lot of money. They’re lucky if they make almost enough. They’re really smart, and they dress like they’re heading to a cocktail party at the Princeton Club, if you don’t notice that their designer label clothes are irregulars pulled from the Marshalls clearance rack. They can carry on one heck of a conversation-charm you silly-but they’re not to be confused with the millionaires they cover in their columns. Stevie Nazzaro from Hoboken did well enough to get into Columbia on a scholarship, art history of all the useless things, but he would have been better off if he stuck with the wrestling. Naz the Knuckler, WWE smackdown champ or some crap like that.
I think I was pretty close to getting him to give up on me, and then I could emancipate and be free of whatever it was I was living, just this day-to-day grayness. I’d move into the city and get by waiting tables or pushing flavored coffees at a godforsaken latte bar maybe. I could take subways instead of having to kick my
