Crashed

“What did you do to him?” Jennie asked, her chin on her hand while her other hand fished another of her sister’s fries off the plate.

“A bunch of things. I put cayenne pepper in his jar of cinnamon and sand in his salt shaker. Ajax cleanser in his sugar bowl. Some cat poop into the Tupperware containers in his refrigerator.”

Wendy said, “Ick” and slapped her sister’s hand, which was once again straying toward the fries.

“And I used Superglue to seal every one of the little holes in the burners on his stove. And since I had the Superglue in my hand, I glued the TV remote to the coffee table.”

“Facing which way?” Jenny immediately asked.

“Away from the screen, of course.”

“Was the coffee table heavy?” Jenny was displaying some unexpected talent.

“Massive,” I said. “And it was on a hardwood floor, so I glued the legs down, too.”

“What did he do?”

“My guess is that he moved the TV. But if he had, it would have been in front of the fireplace. And then I went back out through the window and spent the next four or five days just keeping an ear cocked. Every time he started to scream, I ran over and knocked on his door and asked him if he was okay, and was there anything I could do? The fourth time, when he opened the door, something came into his eyes, and he looked down at me for about a minute and then closed the door.”

“Did he ever do that again? With the dog, I mean?” Wendy asked.

“No.”

“That is so beamed,” Jennie said. “I’d like to do something like that to a couple of Mom’s guys.”

“Beamed?” I said.

“That’s Thistle’s word,” Jennie said proudly “She makes up her own slang. Did you ever see her on TV?”

“Quite a bit, lately. When did you see her last?”

“Last night,” Jennie said. “We were at her apartment.”

“Really,” I said. “Who else was there?”

“Nobody. Just Thistle, Wendy, and me.”

“Um,” I said. “Who drank all that wine?”

The look Jennie gave me was rich in pity. “Thistle, Wendy, and me.” she said patiently.

“You kids aren’t old enough to-”

“We smoked cigarettes, too,” Jennie said. “We do whatever we want.”

“It’s okay,” Wendy said in all seriousness. “We didn’t drive.”

“Fine,” I said, mentally throwing up my hands. “Good, that’s good. Drinking and driving don’t mix. Especially when you can barely see over the steering wheel.”

“Eat something,” Doc said to me. “These kids are okay. Better than you were at their age.”

“And it’s not like you drive so great,” Jennie said, a burger less than an inch from her mouth. “You drive like an old lady. You signal with the flicker, you use your arm. You do everything except get out of the car and say, ‘I’m going to turn now.’ ”

“I know,” I said. “I’ve always been too careful.”

“Boy,” Jennie said. “It’s like a driver’s ed movie.”

“Did anybody knock on the door when you were there?”

Wendy thought about it for a minute and said, “Uh-uh.”

“What time did you leave?”

“Eleven?” Wendy asked. “Jennie’s the one with a watch,” she explained.

“About eleven,” Jennie confirmed.

“Was she taking pills when you were there?”

“Not in front of us,” Jennie said. “She doesn’t. She always goes in the other room. She does that when she sniffs stuff, too.”

“Did you see a little box, like a present?” I described it, but both girls shook their heads.

“Probably came later,” Doc said.

“Not too much later,” I said. “Jimmy called me a little after midnight, and she’d had time to take some of them by then.”

Jennie said, “Some of what?” and Wendy said, “Who’s Jimmy?”

“Somebody delivered some bad dope to Thistle last night. Knocked on the door and ran, left the package for her to find. Jimmy’s a friend of mine.”

Jenny looked away, slightly uncomfortably, at nothing in particular.

Wendy shook her head. “We don’t know anything about that.”

“So,” I said, looking at Jennie, “any idea where Thistle might be?”

“She fades in Hollywood sometimes,” Jennie said, her eyes coming back to mine. “It’s like, you know, a dope pad.” She picked up a packet of ketchup, tore the end off with her teeth, and squeezed the contents directly onto her tongue, then took another bite out of the burger.

“Gross,” her sister said.

“It’s all going to the same place anyway,” Jennie said with ketchup on her chin. Doc made a little mopping motion on his own chin, and she followed suit. “But she’ll come over sometime soon. After she sees what that big guy did to her place-”

“You saw who did that?” I asked.

“Sure,” Jennie said. “Boy, was he pissed.”

“Because Thistle wasn’t there?”

“Well, yeah.” I got the wide eyes the young reserve for idiots. “Why else?”

“Would you know him if you saw him again?”

“I’d know him anywhere,” she said. “I’d know him in the dark. He was like the Hulk.”

All of a sudden, for the second time in two days, I wanted to be somewhere else. Florida, maybe. “Big, was he?”

“He was just a bunch of muscles,” she said. “And he was wearing black clothes.”

“Tell me about his shirt,” I said.

“His shirt?”

“You know,” I said. I tugged at my sleeve.

“I know what a shirt is,” she said with a massive amount of patience.

“What about …?” I took hold of the near point of Doc’s collar and yanked it, and he pulled away as though he thought I might be wiping my hands on it.

Jenny closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them, she looked puzzled. “How did you know?” she said. “He didn’t have a collar.”

37

My sweet inflatable you

I was the third one they’d trailed, and the only one who turned around and bit them.

“We flipped you off pretty cool,” Jennie said.

There was widespread agreement that it had been pretty cool, and the two of them started laughing about the expression on my face. “Dumb” was the descriptive term of choice. They were still laughing as they made their way up the driveway, toting a take-out sack of quarter-pounders.

“One of the world’s least-celebrated joys,” Doc said, watching them go, “is being a cause of mirth in children.”

“You can have it,” I said.

“Am I going to be allowed to drive home without an escort?”

“Oh, sure. Louie’s probably all tucked in by now.”