She scratched her insta-tanned cheek and thought for a moment, checking her nails for telltale orange stain. I imagined her flipping through a mental catalogue of paunchy, gray-haired guys in navy sports coats and tan Fortrel slacks.
She chewed at her lower lip, then nodded. “I’m so glad you asked, Anna, because I do actually remember him. It was at a Westin. High-end place just outside of Denver. Artificial lake out front, monogrammed robes in the bathroom, wrapped truffles on the pillows. Definitely a cut above your Super 8 motel.”
She stared out into space then held up her French-manicured index finger with its little arc of white nail. “It was a major national conference – he was the keynote speaker.” Frowning, she searched the staffroom wall for inspiration. “It’s hard to explain. He was weird – different. Kind of like Jimmy Swaggart channels Dr. Phil at a kindergarten concert. I can’t remember a goddamn thing about his speech, but at the end he asked everyone to close their eyes and concentrate on strengthening their personal auras. Then he played Joe Cocker singing ‘You Are So Beautiful’ and stood in front of us all with his hands held up like some modern-day messiah. Let’s say there was a whole lot of whispering and speculation about what he was on and how we could get some of that good stuff too.”
I nodded my thanks and got up to leave the lunch table, but she grabbed my wrist and held on tight.
“Oh my God. That’s the prof’s dad. Is your honey finally taking you home to meet Mommy and Daddy?”
I nodded, wishing I’d kept my mouth shut. “Sunday. For dinner.”
“They’ll probably make you link arms at the table, sing ‘Kumbaya’ and become one with the cosmos before you can take a bite.” She laughed, tipping her head back exposing the sharp line where her fake tan ended.
“And who says I don’t want to?”
“What?”
“Get in touch with the cosmos? Be one with the universe?”
“Sure. Why not? Especially when there’s a big payoff involved. I’d wear a sheet, shave my hair off and dance a jig for a ticket to the good life.”
“Maybe he’s changed since you saw him.”
“I doubt it,” she said, lifting the lid from her cottage cheese salad. She’d put walnuts on it instead of the usual raisins. Her fork stopped in mid-air and she smiled at the now-distant memory. “Oh God, now I remember. He was holding court in the hospitality room. Sipping on mineral water and icy as a frozen log when it came to the old Sabrina charm. Barely lifted an eyebrow. Even when I showed a bit of thigh and squeezed in tight during a toast. That guy was oblivious to everyone except himself and his ego.”
“Well I guess I’ll find out on Sunday,” I said, getting up. I didn’t need any more revelations to prejudice my first impressions of Guy’s parents.
I distracted myself from the upcoming family dinner by reading my students’ daily journals, which were becoming more revealing day by day. I couldn’t just scan them. I had to read them from front to back, cover to cover. Their contents drew me back to a time and place I thought I’d put behind me.
As I read them, I’d start to feel all my old outrage about the powerlessness of marginalized kids. How they’re invisible to the rest of the world, until some creep murders one of them and the papers run a story on society’s seamy underbelly and its disenfranchised victims. Usually, there’s an immediate burst of moral outrage from a few charitable do-gooders and opportunistic politicians who make all the right promises to clean things up. To name the johns, tighten up the foster system, and clean up the policing, but all too often these kids disappear and nobody cares until the next body washes onto the riverbank or turns up wrapped in a garbage bag in some back-alley dumpster.
Dane, the oldest of the new group of students, had raw talent. His writing was punchy and showed a weary kind of wisdom too old for his years. I read it at the end of the day. The words swam in and out of my vision, competing with memories of Birdie and me.
Carla’s got a real job. Tell the world and the universe!! Her aunty hooked her up. She’s a mall cop with connections. It’s at Victoria’s Secret of all places. Now our sweet Carla gets a huge discount on all that sexy, lacy lingerie. Me and the guys are glad she’s off the street for now. She’s too tiny. A baby bird. Some thug is gonna crush her. The rich, powerful ones are the worst. Those people have layers – the outer, respectable layer that everyone sees. Nice clothes, sweet cars, manicured nails, designer cologne, a good job, wallet full of cash and plastic. Peel that back and you find the inner layers. The bad-boy layer that drives them to look for a quick hand job or feel up behind the garbage cans of some stinky restaurant. Beneath that is the rotten, evil layer. Not everyone has this, but you can’t tell from the outside. These sickos pay good, but at night, when the sun goes down, they just shuck the outer layers off and let their real evil selves shine. Make their victims do gross and vicious things you couldn’t imagine, mostly to helpless and scared and poor people. But I can’t write about this any more. I don’t want to think about it.
I’m just glad about Carla. I hope they like her at that snob store.
I closed the book, my hand shaking. Maybe Birdie was wiped out by one of those creeping sickos in a brilliant flash of pure, dazzling evil. I’d never thought about it in that way.
