The garden is a pathetic little plot of nothing. Someone once laid stone down to serve as a walkway, but the stone has long ago cracked apart until now it must always fail at its mission, which is to give a person a place to put her feet when she walks there.
The beds, which are raised, or are supposed to be raised, are often broken open on one side or the other, that is, the wood boxes are broken, and the earth has crumbled out and fallen, so the raised beds slump here and there to the ground, crowding or occluding the path.
The choice of plants has no overall rationale. Essentially, the person who plants a plant in this garden does not think about any of the other plants when she does it, she thinks only of the plant she is planting and whether she likes it.
To say that this gives the garden a motley appearance would be a pretty far-fetched compliment. In fact, it makes it not seem very much like a garden.
The garden may be seen from the windows of the converted garage. It may be seen from the bench that abuts the garden just before the converted garage. It may be seen from the space where an automobile once parked next to the converted garage. It may also be seen from any of the twenty windows of the huge house that stands before the garden. Most of those windows are covered with curtains and blinds, however, so in reality, no one ever looks out of them, and that is partly because the landlord lives in only a few rooms of the house and has the rest shut up to preserve it, as if that were a thing.
A person can use the garden by: reading in the garden, playing an instrument in the garden if she has a musical instrument, singing in the garden, sitting in the garden, speaking to a friend in the garden, if she has a friend and that friend is dear enough to be permitted to see the garden, or walking in the garden. Walking in the garden is not much of a walk because the garden is fairly small.
Certainly, you can’t call the garden the gardens as some people do (regarding their own large garden).
The garden is poorly kept. The garden is full of dead things. The garden does not get as much sun as it should. When you are in the garden you can still occasionally hear noise from the street. The garden is inexpert. It appears abandoned.
In sum: the garden has excellent character, and it knows all the right people.
The person is rare who enjoys taking the city bus. Yet, here she is. Here I stand before you, an actual enjoyer of city buses.
The reason is this: for a person who rarely has privacy, the city bus gives you a place that can’t be taken from you—a place where you can sit and read or write, or if you are lucky listen to music on headphones, and not be bothered (too much). For someone who already has the book she wants to read, it is like a library on wheels.
The bus has an awful smell. The seats of the bus are vile and you always feel that you are going to catch ill from touching them. The people who ride the bus collectively smell worse than other people. The bus drivers will not always treat you nicely, though sometimes they appear to be absolute saints.
The back of the bus, contrary to popular opinion, is not the best place to be. It is far better to be near the front. Why? People who vomit and leak tend to go to the back. It is also possible to have people steal your shit while you are on the bus and this happens more often at the back.
When not to ride the bus—
do not ride the bus at rush hour because you will have to stand. Standing on a bus is not an experience I am prepared to defend. Late at night is the best time.
I once took a bus and the driver forgot he was a bus driver. He drove the bus somewhere he wasn’t supposed to and didn’t stop at the bus stops after a while. Finally someone confronted him. He said he had a lot on his mind, and to give him a break. I thought this was a legitimate defense.
One of the other riders called him a fucko, and the others agreed, which has to be the first time anyone has gotten a consensus with the word fucko.
This is a place you have never gone to, and to which you never shall go. It is full of young people who are extremely drunk. I understand that your understanding of what it is to be young is different from what I think it is, probably more accurate, and also full of supporting identifiers that I cannot recognize. Still, picture this abandoned water park as being crammed to the gills with the stuff of life.
That it is abandoned means: it is not being used against you, like the rest of the city.
That it is full of people who are drunk means: you can understand what they are doing and why and you don’t have to fear them as much as when you wonder what they want. You can wander through the water park observing things.
The water park has lots of construction area lightbulbs in plastic cages strung on lines all through it. The man who lives there thought of this as a cheap way to make things nice for people.
Many of the ways to go from one place to another in the water park are broken. Walkways are broken. Ladders are broken. Slides are broken. Bridges are broken. There are fences where you wouldn’t think they would be. It is a bit of a maze.
If you want to be able to get around the abandoned water park without help, you need to get there when you are still sober, and you need to get there when it is still light.
The best situation at the water park is to have some friends with you and to go away from them and then to hunt for them and find them and then to go away from them and then to hunt for them and find them. In the meantime, you meet other people, many of whom are not worth talking to, but some of whom are okay.
Sometimes you are in the going away from them part of the instructions, and then you are surprised because you have fallen out of sync and one of your friends comes and hunts for you and finds you, and as it turns out, that is just as good.
You should have: licorice, a cup, a flashlight, a notebook, and a screwdriver.
You must never under any circumstances fall asleep in some far-off part of the abandoned water park. If you are tired, you should find the opera singer who (apparently) sings all the time during the day at the abandoned water park, and ask her if you can lie down on their couch.
Really, though, if you are tired, you should go home. The abandoned water park is the sort of place that attracts rather decent people, so it is likely someone will take you where you need to go.
That’s enough of my descriptions for now. I’ll put some more in later.
How things stand at this point if you haven’t been paying attention:
I go to Whistler High School; everyone hates me, except Lana and maybe Stephan (and some other people whose response to being school-victims is to try to uselessly band together). I like Lana.
My mom is in a mental hospital. My aunt is in a real hospital.
I spend most of my time thinking about joining the Arson Club, which I will do, and I am writing a pamphlet about setting fires. I have not actually set any fires yet, but I can do a better pamphlet about it anyway than some people who (maybe) have.
So—
Jan canceled the meeting with me and Stephan. He did this by just not going, which is the best way to cancel an appointment, I have found. That means Stephan went there alone and wandered around like a moron for two hours looking for us.
The other day, I went there and wandered around happily knowing I wasn’t looking for anyone. But Stephan, he went and wandered around in the dark like a moron feeling he’d been tricked. That’s a comparison of our two experiences. I am not being superior—if our positions had been switched, I would be the one scrabbling around in the dark like a mole rat. Or, actually, not like a mole rat. Mole rats are really great at being in the dark. They are totally content there. It is hard not to feel some fondness for them.
Stephan was a little mad that I hadn’t gone, and he was being a bitch about it. So, I told him about my aunt’s stroke, and my aunt’s stroke trumped his irritation. He apologized immediately. I guess he has pretty good manners.
He said he called Jan and we would meet in two days. I said okay. He said, did I want to go today to burn something. I said, I was really busy, but I would go to the other meeting, so he should make sure to go to that.
He said, of course he was going to fucking go to that. That was his meeting that he got me invited to. I said, fine, if you think so.
That’s how things are with Stephan. He doesn’t reassess things often enough. I think he is still pretty immature.
In English class, the teacher, VanDuyn, announced that we were going to do a creative writing module. Someone asked what that was. The teacher said he was going to teach us to share our thoughts and ideas in fiction. A bunch of the kids got really stressed out, I guess because they think that their thoughts and ideas are completely worthless. Ordinarily, I would stick to the party line and say that everyone has useful stuff to say, but this group of kids, I don’t know. I think probably they were right to be stressed out.
So, VanDuyn had everybody take out their laptops. If you don’t have a laptop, he gives you a block of paper. One girl, Maya, has no laptop because she has broken three of the school laptops. She takes them to the fourth-floor bathroom and throws them out the window. No one knows why she does it, but when she does she gets a lot of credit from everyone. It is really funny. She pretends it is an accident each time, but she still gets in trouble. So, Maya and I got blocks of paper, is what I’m saying, and everyone else had a computer.
VanDuyn read to us from an essay by some Pulitzer Prize–winning author. He said, to enter the sweet land of fiction, think about something outside of yourself. Then imagine yourself inside the thing. Then that is a story.
I have no intention of entering the sweet land of fiction, wherever that is.
We worked on the stories for three days in English class. On the third day, we had to give ours to the person next to us to read. I gave mine to Grace, and Grace gave me her laptop with the story open on it.
It’s not really done, she said.
Mine is, I think.
Grace’s story is called DOLPHIN FRENZY.
It is about a dolphin named Reno who wants to go to the big city. I’m not kidding. You can’t make this stuff up. The problem with Grace’s story is that after the first page, on which we get a bunch of Reno’s thoughts, most of which are small-town thoughts and thoughts about swimming, Grace runs out of steam. She starts just putting in facts about dolphins. I don’t want to accuse anyone of anything, but the language changes a little, so it seems like maybe she copied the quotes from somewhere. Here’s a sample:
Reno woke up late and his mom was already setting the breakfast table. He took off the sheet and got up and brushed his teeth. Got to run, Mom, he said, and got just to the bus in time. Some common dolphins are: the common dolphin, Fraser dolphin, Clymene dolphin, Pacific white-sided dolphin, and others. New dolphin species are discovered every day. If you can have a curved dorsal fin, you will, or else probably you will have a straight one. Watch out for the rough-toothed dolphin. They can reach 350 pounds.
I told her that it was great. Don’t change a word. They will tell you to change it, but you have to stand firm.
She said my story was pretty good, too. I asked her why. Then she admitted that she didn’t like it very much, she was just trying to be nice. I said that’s okay—she should know I actually did enjoy her dolphin story very much. She asked if I wanted her to try again with mine, and I said, no. She admitted that she didn’t really read it. I was playing with my phone, she said.
Maybe I should put more animals in mine, she suggested. That’s how she got hers started.
At the end, VanDuyn had everyone read the stories out loud, which was really painful. When it got to me I said I hadn’t done it. Grace got a weird look on her face, but she kept quiet. She read hers, and she was honestly really proud in the way that she did it. I thought it was pretty beautiful that she could be so proud of such a terrible story. I am such a coward I could never have read my story to the class like that, no matter how good it was. So, Grace is a little ways ahead of me on the path of life, I honestly think.
After class, VanDuyn motioned me over to his desk. He said he was willing to give me some leeway because of my situation, but he would love to see what I wrote if I was prepared to show him. It’s almost the worst thing when people are actually kind. It would be easier if they could all be creeps all the time.
Anyway, you are probably interested in hearing about my story, even if Grace didn’t like it.
My story was called “MAY I SWEEP YOUR FRONT STEP.” It was about a woman who lives in a house. One day a beggar comes and asks her if he can sweep her front doorstep. So, she lets him. The story doesn’t start there, though. It starts in the future, at this refugee camp. There has been a disaster, and no one has a nice home anymore, but even in the refugee camp there is stratification, so some people have tents and others don’t. Outside one of the tents, there is this guy sleeping, and he occasionally gets up and mimes sweeping the ground in front of the tent. Every now and then he lies down and sleeps some more, then gets up and repeats it. Someone asks the woman in the tent why he is doing this and she says, many years ago, she lived in a wealthy house in a big city and a man came to her house, a beggar, and he wanted to sweep her front step. She could tell that he was a suitor in disguise, and wanted to marry her. But, she let him sweep the front step, and she was kind of tricky, so whatever stratagems he would use to try to get more out of her, she would always reply with something more clever and he would have to keep sweeping.
Eventually, they grew old, and the disaster came, and she ended up in the camp with her tent, and the beggar shows up again, and he doesn’t even have a broom, but still he sweeps the ground in front of the tent, this time with no broom. He doesn’t even have a name anymore, she says, he has utterly become the costume he was wearing.
So, that was the story, but it was much better in reality, because it is all matter-of-fact. The woman doesn’t see anything strange about any of it. Also, there is this thing about what the service actually is—what it is that the beggar is providing, and what it is he is taking. It is pretty hard to say who is winning.
On this visit, I will go from my aunt’s hospital to visit the Home, so the route will be different. There is actually a rail line that I can take, which is pretty exciting, since I have never taken it before. So, I will sneak on if I can without paying, or alternately, I will pay. I can’t make a prediction about that until I know more. When I get to the Winston stop on the rail line, I will walk to the Home, this time from the other direction, and go up the drive, get my pass from the counter, go to my mom’s room. She won’t be there. But, she won’t be at the fish pond either, because I think it will rain. She will probably then be under one of the gazebos. The place has at least ten gazebos. It seems like doctors think that gazebos are good for curing mental illness, because every asylum I have ever seen in reality (one) or in a film (five or six?) has gazebos everywhere. I guess some of the ones in films just look like prisons, so those don’t have any gazebos, but I think it is mostly true.
Why that would be so—is hard to fathom. In my opinion, a gazebo should exacerbate mental illness, as it is a pretty unreasonable structure. It is poorly made, it doesn’t provide any real shelter, and it is impossible to do any meaningful tasks inside of it. If a person is struggling to figure out the most basic rationales about life—is that the kind of place you want to stick them? It is pretty hard to understand.
Anyway, I will sit in the gazebo and witness my mother’s gazebo behavior. I think that behavior will be a lot like the fish pond behavior. At some point the orderly will show up and we will pretend like nothing happened, but maybe he will give some overture to see what else he can get.
Then, I will head out and take the bus to the bus to the bowling alley and I will cry my face off telling Helen about my aunt, and she will give me a drink and I will wake up either at my aunt’s house, or at Helen’s. It doesn’t really matter which.
I saw my aunt, and she said she could go home definitely the next day, or at least within the week. That was a real comfort to me. The doctor was there and he gave me a list of things that she shouldn’t do. I said she doesn’t do anything anyway. He said she should eat these things, and go to this physical therapy, et cetera. I pointed out that it would be expensive to do that. Probably what would happen is she would do what she has always done, which is sit in her chair, tend her garden (which is not really tending anything), and eat oatmeal and eggs and shitty bread, and every now and then something fancy like a bologna sandwich or something equally vile for dinner. He looked at me over his glasses for a while and said it is impossible to say how long she will hold out, and gave me a bunch of numbers about the decrepitude of her organs, which apparently had all already failed. I asked him if he had bothered to have children. He said yes, he had children. I said why if this is the result. He said I beg your pardon. I said if it leads to this, where you’re a skin bag full of putrescent failing organs, and time passes quickly, it passes so quickly, and he knew that, then why have kids. He didn’t like that, and his tone changed. He told me some more bad things about my aunt’s condition, signed something with a real flourish, and went off.
Well, then I went to the train, but my information I guess was bad, because it only runs during rush hour. It was raining and I would have gotten soaked, but I had my raincoat on, so it was okay, but my bag was getting wet and my shoes were soaked and I was pretty discouraged.
Then a taxi stopped and offered to take me for free since the driver was going home and lived in that direction. He was a young guy who had come there from Mozambique. He said he drove two shifts per day and slept in between. He showed me a picture of his wife, who is studying to be a dentist. She had monster buckteeth, which I guess if they are in good condition could be an advantage for a dentist, like an advertisement of some sort. He confessed that she was much smarter than he was, and so he would support her for now, but in the end, it was he who would be supported. I said that didn’t sound dumb. It sounded like a good deal for him. It is hard to stay awake, he said.
When we pulled into the drive and he let me out, he asked why was I going to visit a mental hospital, and then immediately he apologized and took back the question. No, no, it’s okay, I said, I sell medical equipment. I’m a rep for a company. Sure you are, he agreed, and I got out.
There was a new guy at the desk, and so I had to run through the whole rigmarole from the beginning. Eventually, I got the pass, and headed down to my mom’s room. I was wrong about the gazebo. She was in her room.
I was dreading that, because it had happened once before that I tried to visit her in her room and she freaked out because she doesn’t want anyone in there.
I think that’s the reason why she is usually at the fish pond. If she is in her room she won’t tolerate anyone she doesn’t recognize, so the hospital personnel mostly just stick her there to sleep. The rest of the time, I guess, it is fish pond, gazebo, cafeteria, bathroom, whatever. I don’t know all the rooms at the Home or I would list them for you.
I went to go into her bedroom area and she lost it. She was shouting for help, and I started crying. Then the nurse came, and it is lucky that my mom always behaves this way, because the nurse didn’t blame me. Give me a minute she said, we’ll take her to the bingo palace. I sort of curled up in the hall and waited, which was made even worse by the fact that my legs and feet and bag were wet. I was a real mess.
For some reason, my mom let this nurse woman calm her down and get her in the wheelchair, and then the three of us trundled along down to the bingo palace, which is a bizarre place. There are beans all over the tables, which I guess get used on the bingo cards. There are stacks and stacks of bingo cards. There is a stage with a podium. It is a pretty big production. The nurse had to turn on all the lights or none, so the whole huge room was lit, and she asked where we wanted to sit. I said, we might as well sit up there, so we sat on the stage where the bingo-caller sits.
Do you mind staying, I asked.
No, I don’t mind.
I think my mom has been getting fatter since being in the loony bin. She has always been as thin as a stick, but now she is pretty heavy. When I look at her, it makes me wonder if there is anything left there that comprehends me. These are not the hands that touched me, this is not the mouth that kissed me, and so on.
I cried a little more, and the nurse squeezed my hand.
People here, she said, think it is wonderful the way you are with her. Don’t think it doesn’t matter what you do.
I hate being pitied. I just hate it. That’s why I vowed to never mention anything about my parents to anyone, even if my aunt thinks it’s the wrong way to handle it. She isn’t always right.
Anyway, this woman is squeezing my hand and smiling like I’m a little saint, which you know is garbage.
Well, I got out of there pretty quick after that. I was dead right about Helen. She gave me as many drinks as I wanted, so I woke up with a blinding headache on her couch. Her cat was sleeping on me, and the morning sun was streaming through the window.
After school, Lana stopped me. She asked if I wanted to go roller skating, which isn’t something I would have done anyway. I told her I was going to go meet some guys to talk about setting fires. Most people would be astonished by a statement like that, but Lana was just like, oh, cool, well, call me when you’re done, maybe we’ll still be out.
Also, she gave me back the story that I wrote, and she told me I was a good writer, but I could tell she didn’t care about it. Good writer, like, one of those actual writers that nobody reads, one of the ones who leaves the good parts out. That’s okay. I mean, I don’t want to be the kind of person who writes just for fancy people or anything, so maybe it’s a comeuppance. It’s true, too: if she had really liked my high school writing, something would probably have been off. I mean in her head. I am realistic about things, don’t you think?
I went down to Simonen again, and as it turned out, I was late because I took the bus too far. When I got there, Jan was there, but Stephan wasn’t. He was leaning against a wall, smoking, and wearing a pretty roughed-up bomber jacket. He looked a little like an old cigarette ad in black and white.
Where’s Stephan.
I told him to go home, Jan said. He’s just a little boy.
That’s weird, I said. Why would you do that.
Next day, I wasn’t feeling very well, so I got to school a little late, and Beekman caught me sneaking around in the hall. I figured I was going to get hammered with a detention, but no.
He says, you weren’t in class this morning. I said, in a funny voice I sometimes use on my aunt:
Darling, you must forgive me for getting home at dawn. The boys and I were out whoring, and you know how that can be.
He did that adult thing where he pretended to laugh but didn’t really laugh. I hate that thing. It’s as if they want you to know that they tried to laugh, but didn’t laugh, at your joke. But they tried to—they want credit for that. My opinion about this is: if you didn’t laugh at my joke, you don’t get credit. It’s as simple as that. If you didn’t laugh, you didn’t find it funny. Why would I give you credit, which is essentially deciding we have a similar outlook, at least on this matter, if you are demonstrating if anything the opposite? In this case it wasn’t even a joke, not really. I guess I was showing off a bit.
He said, I was going to tell you—I found a program that might be good. Have a look. He pulls this envelope out of his pocket and hands it to me. There is a test to get in, and anyone can take it. One of the places you can test is near here—and it’s next week. I or one of the other teachers would drive you, if you needed it.
Thanks.
He went away and I went into the bathroom to look at it. One of the stalls is broken, so no one ever uses it. I went in there and opened the envelope.
The place, Hausmann, was a one- or two-year school for kids who are fourteen to sixteen and (I guess) who hate school. That’s what I got out of the materials. You go to this place, which is somewhere really nice, like Maine or Vermont, I don’t know, and you stay there for one year or two depending, and at the end of it, if you feel like it, you go on to college, which would be a year or two early, and basically every last one of the shits gets into a great school (97 percent, which I guess means one or two kids probably offed themselves and ruined the numbers—kids like that must off themselves at a furious rate, that would be my expectation).
Well, I don’t care about college, but this is free, they say, if you pass the test, and the courses looked way better than Whistler. Then I thought about my aunt and I felt bad. I think she’s pretty used to having me around.
Beekman had written on the envelope, Lucia, it’s very prestigious, and I think you have a shot.
If by prestigious, he means for delinquents, then yes, I have a shot.
One of the pictures showed some girls rock climbing. Another showed a guy skeet shooting while someone else next to him, I kid you not, writes equations on a pad of paper. You know, the old tandem shotgun shooting + math lesson—that’s how it’s always done …
The kids in the pictures weren’t scrawny with beady eyes like I expected. They looked on the whole pretty normal. I thought of how neat it would be if a place somehow made promotional materials that had a little camera in them, and that they could then take your picture without you knowing. Then when you looked at the pictures, it would be you rock climbing, you skeet shooting, you taking dumb notes on a pad of paper next to yourself holding a shotgun. On second thought that is a terrible idea. Forget I mentioned it.
I found Beekman after lunch and asked him if he knew what the test was like. He said,
Yes, it is in three parts. There’s an IQ test, an essay question, and an oral part—a video you record in response to a question, sort of like an interview.
That sounds horrible.
Well, you don’t have to do it.
Thanks anyway.
He looked a little hurt.
Maybe I will, I said. I’ll think about it.
This is what happened. Jan and I jumped the fence and went in. He did in about three seconds, but I had to scramble over. I mean, he is about a foot taller than me after all. When I got to the other side, he announced:
He was going to set one of the project buildings on fire.
He actually said, it’s my intention to burn one of those project buildings to the ground. I thought that was a little grandiose, so I spat in the gravel. Was that me trying to do some cool guy stuff? Maybe it was. Thinking back it sounds kind of lame. I’m glad Lana and Ree weren’t there to see it.
As we walked, he told me a lot of stuff. Maybe he noticed I was nervous, because he told me that he was not going to do anything to me in the building, that I didn’t have to worry about that. He said I should stay outside and keep watch.
Keep watch? There’s no one here.
What is your name again? Lucia?
(I know he knows my name.)
Lucia, listen up: the first rule of setting fires is that someone should keep watch. Human beings are notorious for being where they aren’t supposed to be. Do you want your whole life to be ruined because some asshole is walking his dog and remembers your face? Such a pretty face, too.
He ran his hand through my hair and it creeped me out, but I didn’t say anything. I let him do it, I guess. We kept walking.
When we got inside, he took his coat off and put on a bright-colored jacket. I asked him why he would wear a bright jacket.
Afterwards, I get rid of it, he said. Obviously.
I still wasn’t sure that was the best idea—but I kept my mouth shut.
The field was uneven, so it wasn’t easy to cross it in the dark, and when I turned on my flashlight, Jan smacked me in the arm.
Off.
I shut it off.
He got a little ahead of me, and I ran to catch up.
Stephan just went home, huh.
He does what he’s told to do. The things Sco and me used to do to him when he was little, ha. Once we made him crawl through a thornbush. We told him it would be cool and he did it.
His brother’s in the army, yeah?
I don’t know. I don’t care about that guy. He can do what the fuck he wants.
When we got to the building, Jan took a bottle of something out of his backpack. Gasoline?
It’s like gasoline, he said. Something like that. Wait here.
There was a stoop next to where the street had been, so, I went up to the fourth step and sat down. I couldn’t hear anything from inside. The building had just swallowed him up. Any number of people could disappear into it.
I smoked. I waited. I smoked another cigarette, another cigarette. I would have smoked another, but it was my last. It must have been half an hour later when I heard someone running and Jan shot out of the building.
Book it, he said, and grabbed my arm. We set out sprinting across the field. I tripped two or three times, but got right up and kept going. Somehow Jan stayed on his feet the whole way. When we got to the other side, there was a huge pile of tires.
This should do, he said, and got behind it.
I don’t know what the fuck is in there, so I don’t want to be near it if a gas line blows.
Nothing
and
nothing
and
nothing.
I was looking into the black and breathing hard. I couldn’t even really see the building, just an outline of all the buildings where the darkness got lighter in the distance. Then, I thought I heard something, and WHOOSH!
That whole half of the world turned red. It was like a huge flame tongue erupted out of all the windows at the same time. It flashed away and I couldn’t see anything at all, and then a half second later, there was more, this time it was smaller flames that came, but they stayed, all along one line—about halfway up the building I’d guess.
Jan put his arm around me, but not in a bad way—it was a celebration, like you’d do with anyone. I didn’t mind.
Do you think there was anybody in there? Some vagrant sleeping?
I checked, said Jan. That’s what took so long. I wouldn’t do it for most places, but I don’t want to kill some homeless guy or leave him covered in burns. Come on, let’s get out of here.
We climbed down to the street, and after we’d gone a block or two Jan tossed his jacket in a sewer drain.
He looked at me and didn’t say anything, and then he did.
Now you’re in the club. You held it together. Most people can’t do that. I figured you’d be gone when I came out.
The school Arson Club?
Ha, no. There isn’t one. That’s just nonsense.
He waited for my bus to come (once per hour) and told me some more stuff, which I was eager to hear. He was suddenly really jovial. He kept touching my arm and relating little bits of nonsense. I think he was proud of himself for setting the fire. Truth is—I felt really good, too. The feeling of setting a fire is enormous, so even helping out like I did—I was in the clouds.
About the club, he said the way it works is—if you want to talk about the club, the actual club for the area gets members from the schools. Only two other people in my school were in so far. The rest were just wannabes like Stephan.
But now you, you can come to the real meetings, he said. And one more thing maybe you’ve guessed already—you can’t tell anyone you’re in. It’s the opposite. Now you tell them you’re done with setting fires, you’re over it. Got it? Give them the high hat. Since I’m a recruiter, I stay in the open. But now you’re behind doors. Don’t breathe a fucking word.
I got home, took my clothes off, got in bed and lay there in the dark. It’s pretty lonely being alone in a house—in one where you usually have company. I suppose that’s a moronic sentence. It’s lonely being alone, but I felt that way. I’m often alone and I don’t feel lonely, but going to sleep in that converted garage without my aunt there, it was terrible. I tried to pretend she was slumped in the chair. I propped up the blue blanket so it looked like it was covering something and it actually made me feel better. Then, I lay down again and thought about the fire.
I thought about that immaculate blankness. It had been too much for my eyes—my eyes had just given up.
I know it was just an abandoned building, but I felt like something had happened, a real thing for once. My aunt’s stroke had felt pretty real too. I guess real things happen all at once, and then you go back to the false parade of garbage that characterizes modern life.
Well, I don’t want to go back there.
Thinking something like that, I fell asleep.
While I was waiting in the hospital for the elevator, I noticed a flyer for a psych experiment. It said it would pay one hundred dollars and it lasts fifteen minutes. Women eighteen to thirty-five with perfect eyesight.
I thought—why not?
So, after I saw my aunt, I headed down there.
My aunt, in case you are wondering, was still alive. I wasn’t going to have to go visit her in the hospital anymore, because they were to return her to the house soon. That meant I had a lot to do—cleaning up the place, getting some groceries (shoplifting some groceries), et cetera, but there was time.
She seemed in good spirits. She should have been, since I gave her the book I made—it’s not like it’s nothing!
She wanted to read it while I was there, but I refused. What an awful idea. There is no way to save face if someone reads your shit while you stand there. Much better to get out immediately. If they like it, actually, that fact can come up later or not. I would have stayed longer but I felt like I did my due diligence with the gift. Also, the hospital room smelled awful.
The study was being conducted in the psych department of the university hospital. That was in a different building, but the buildings are all connected, so I wandered around for forty minutes going this way on one bridge and that way on another until I found it. I pictured it like some old French movie where the shot is from far away and sped up, and you can see me through the glass bridges and windows going back and forth. Maybe I would be riding a bicycle some of the time for no reason, and being chased by a gorilla.
A girl in her mid-thirties wearing a lab coat answered the door when I knocked.
She was heavyset and had a voice like a man, which was sort of endearing. I don’t mean just deep—I mean, she sounded exactly like a man. It was neat.
Come in, she said. You are eighteen, right?
I showed her the license I stole from the girl at my school. She is a senior, and turned eighteen in January, which put me in the clear.
Here’s a fact: no one really looks at IDs. I don’t know why they bother putting pictures on them. What they do is—they look at you and decide if they like you or not.
The researcher, Mary, told me to sit down. The room had a table and two chairs. There were some computers and a couch. There was a big whiteboard with some crap written on it—scientist handwriting, practically unreadable.
I leaned on the edge of the couch and waited.
You can sit down, she said.
No thanks, I said.
Your eyesight is perfect, yes?
Yes.
She gave me some forms to fill out. I did so, but had to look at the ID to remember the girl’s fucking last name. How stupid is that. I have a decent memory, but this was a Polish name with twelve consonants in a row. I bet you couldn’t remember it either.
Luckily the researcher wasn’t watching. When I gave her the forms she showed me into the next room.
Stand there, she said.
There was a circle drawn on the floor. I went and stood in it.
Images will show up on the far side of the room. Images of people in profile. You are being recorded. I want you to state, whenever an image appears, what you think the age and sex of the person being shown is. Tap your leg if you find them threatening.
For fifteen minutes, silhouettes flashed on the screen: thirties male unthreatening. Sixties male threatening. Infant female threatening. Et cetera.
Actually, I did try to do a good job. I like trying at things like that.
A loud beep sounded when the final image was done. The door behind me opened, and Mary came and gave me a hundred bucks cash in five-dollar bills. I love getting a thick pile of bills. Even though I hate money. Of course I do, I hate it. But I also like to have lots of it. Once, I had three hundred dollars at the same time, when I pawned my dad’s watch. They gave me three hundred singles. I said to the pawnshop guy, I’m not on my way to a strip club. He thought that was funny, so we had a good laugh for about three seconds. I mean, I was fourteen so he shouldn’t have laughed at all.
By the way, I wouldn’t have sold it if I thought my dad cared about the watch, but he told me once that he only wore it because his grandfather had given it to him. That might be a reason for him to wear it, but for me—not so much.
Mary opened the door for me to go, and I asked her if she would tell me what the study was about.
I don’t see why not. Don’t go telling people if you think they might come in, though. That would ruin the study.
Obviously it would ruin the study. I wouldn’t do that.
Good. So, identifying the silhouettes is meaningless. The actual experiment is: we change the temperature of the room to see how it affects your threat level. That’s it.
But how do you know which ones are threatening or not to begin with?
We run the study without the temperature shift until we have five hundred samples, average them, and then run it again, this time changing the temperature.
Why just women?
We do it with men and women, both. We did men already, now women.
What do you think you’ll find?
James, the PI, thinks men will be more threatened by heat, and women by cold.
What do you think?
He is usually wrong about things. But, we get interesting results, so that’s enough.
I laughed at that. She didn’t.
One more question. Sorry to take up your time.
Shoot.
Which of the silhouettes is supposed to be the most threatening one?
There’s one, do you remember, an old woman carrying groceries? It’s totally terrifying. Men especially fear it. Women are pretty afraid of the baby. They don’t actually tap their leg, but they start to and then stop.
I was waiting at the bus stop when I realized that my zippo was gone. What a pain—I had to backtrack, first to my aunt’s room, then to the study. When I got to the study, I could see Mary wasn’t happy to see me. I had to bang on the door to get her to answer it.
When the door opened, I could see there were three girls in the room who looked like triplets. I was a bit shocked, and I think Mary was trying to figure out if it would fuck up the study to have triplets in it, what with them being essentially the same person. They were wearing the same tricolor tube top with some sorority name on it.
Which reminds me: I don’t buy this thing about twins both getting to vote. To me, each group of DNA should get one vote. Also, twins shouldn’t both be able to hold political office. Otherwise, things could get weird—not in the short run, but in the long run, watch out! I mean, imagine if someone had identical septuplets and then all seven of them were appointed to the Supreme Court. I guess there are nine justices, so let’s say nonuplets then. You have nine identical twins, raised on some creepy farm and then carted out to be Supreme Court justices. What would that mean? It would mean essentially you have one person being the whole Supreme Court, for life! I ask you, would that be fair?
I’m just joking, I have a whole bunch of friends who are identical twins. They’re really nice if you get to know them.
Mary reached in her pocket, handed me my shitty lighter, and shut the door.
My aunt thought it was a good idea for me to go with Beekman and take the test. She is a straight shooter, you know, so what she said was:
I don’t think I will live out the year and then what will you do.
To which I said, aunt, don’t be a fool. And she said, who is the fool. I will be a bunch of soil and you’ll be living where?
So, I told Beekman I would go. On Saturday morning, he came and picked me up. His wife actually packed me a goddamned lunch with a pluot in it. She is a big fan of yours, he said.
The test center was at the admissions department of a local university, which I guess did this as some sort of helping gesture for Hausmann. Apparently a lot of schools countrywide have agreements like this. Hausmann was started because there are a large number of talented kids who go on to do nothing at all—they turn into misanthropes and huddle in shitty rooms. The idea was—reach these kids earlier, challenge them, some nonsense like that. My feeling about that is—doing nothing doesn’t necessarily prove your incapacity. It could be quite the opposite. For instance—I walk around and I am always identifying places, under overpasses, beneath pine trees in industrial parks, at the verge of people’s yards, or where a park building meets a factory and there is a dry spot, these are examples: I see these places, and I think, I could just stay in a spot like that and be perfectly happy. If I did that, it would look to other people like I had failed, but it sounds wonderful to me.
Beekman brought me into the building and introduced me to the admissions officer. Then he wished me luck and left.
Is he coming back? the woman asked me.
I hope so, I said. It is a long fucking walk.
She gave me a look and showed me into a conference room. You can take the test in here, she said.
A different woman, a psychologist of some sort, came in. She introduced herself. Her name was Tracy. I was a little nervous.
Is that your real name, I asked.
Yes, of course.
I just thought, maybe the test had started already. I figured maybe your name isn’t Tracy and I’m supposed to notice that. You look about thirty-four, thirty-five. That means you were born in a period when, uh, when Tracy was a pretty popular name. So, it is likely to be your real name. Although, it seems like maybe—since the likelihood of you having a likely name is unlikely, since there are all told more unlikely names than likely names, if you have a likely name, it seems like maybe you chose it to seem like it is your real name. Isn’t that so? Is this part of the test?
My name is Tracy, she said. Let’s get started.
Okay. So it’s not part of the test? How do I know when the test starts?
It hasn’t started yet. Calm down. Do you need a drink of water?
No.
The first part we’re going to do is the IQ test. Have you taken some practice IQ tests to get ready?
I told her I had not. I said why would I take a practice IQ test. It wouldn’t increase my IQ.
She said that it doesn’t increase your IQ, no, just your demonstrable IQ as tested.
I said that means the test is bad. There should be no way to increase your result on a good IQ test. It should be tricky enough to avoid that.
She said it is not tricky enough to avoid that.
You will probably be smarter than your result, then, she said. That’s too bad.
Which is a weird way of saying I’m going to mess it up.
When we got done with the IQ test, I got a break. They brought me an orange juice and a buttered roll and let me sit on a bench outside for twenty minutes. The university grounds are really beautiful. Universities always try that bullshit. They want you to think wonderful things are going on inside of them because the grounds are beautiful. In general, it is good to be suspicious of monetary displays. Large swaths of bright green well-watered grass—a thing like that is a huge lie.
They called me back in and gave me an exam booklet. There was a question written on the board. The question was:
Why Hitler?
On the first page of the exam booklet it said I could write as much or as little as I felt like. It said it in this way:
An answer of any length might be sufficient.
I thought about it for a little bit and didn’t write anything. I figured the fewer cross-outs the better. Also—I figure, any part of it might be the test, so I should hoof it and get something down, since they might be watching through a camera and might disallow whatever I write after the first five minutes. That’s how I would do the test, if I were them. My aunt would think of some even sneakier shit, I bet. Like, someone talks to you in the waiting room before the test, and that is the test.
I thought about that, and then thought about thinking about that, about her, and then I thought about her husband and how it was funny that in his letter he hadn’t seemed that smart, but maybe he was smart in some other way. Or maybe he was nervous writing letters from a military barracks, so he did it in a strictly ordinary way. That could be why she kept the letter. It was some sort of bravura performance of writing a lame soldier-letter-home-to-his-sweetheart. I bet there are coded parts I didn’t understand.
So, why Hitler?
There are a few questions I could answer. I figure the test wasn’t so much about what I wrote, but about which question I could intuit.
Why Hitler? could be:
Why was “Hitler” the one who committed a nice fat genocide and captivated the world as a figure of evil, where “Hitler” is the particular archetype of a Hitler sort of person, of which there might be several. If you imagine there are many sorts of evil archetypes, the question could be—why this “Hitler” rather than a different Hitler. In other words, if the world were a bit more faintly greenish colored, and a butterfly flapped its wings into tatters in a zoological garden in Brussels, maybe the Hitler that we would have gotten would have been a different one. Maybe he would have loved peacocks or something, and used gypsy musicians for his military marching bands. He’d still have been bad—just a different sort of bad, right?
According to this logic, I would have to say, my answer is: pick any event, historically, that you want: the dauphin stubbing his toe, for instance, and it’ll lead you right on to this particular “Hitler.” Change any of those things, and you get peacock Hitler. We’ll just class whichever of the other Hitlers gets chosen as peacock Hitler. You understand, we aren’t specifying anything other than that he’s the one who appears when the dauphin doesn’t stub his toe.
But, there are other why Hitlers, and maybe a different one is more interesting. It could be why Hitler?, as in, why did this man, “Hitler,” manage to become Hitler? As in, within the span of his life, how did an ordinary person transform into a monstrous sort of venal godhead and can the reason be found in his actual physical body, or was it just the events that surrounded him and swept him along? So, in my answer, I would be choosing from between those two, sort of a nature versus nurture thing.
A third option is, why Hitler?, as in, why are we asking you about Hitler? That’s a tricky question. There are some obvious answers, like because the idea of Hitler freaks people out and makes them behave badly. It reduces people to intellectual weaklings often. So, the why there would be—because you are trying to reduce me to an intellectual weakling.
Another reason along those lines is: to get rid of a cultural advantage. Pretty much everyone has heard about Hitler and can say some clever Hitler stuff, so it doesn’t test historical knowledge very much. I mean, maybe there’s a Malaysian punk band called Hitler, and if somebody writes about that, they do fine.
But, I think the best question asked by the question, why Hitler? is: why do we as humans refuse to recognize that a life has fixed proportions and can’t go beyond itself? Why do we allow people to be blown up into monstrous caricatures of celebrity that extend to such grotesque lengths that they efface our lives, the only lives that are real? In other words—the existence of Hitlers makes you putting your shoe on a bit trivial. But it isn’t trivial at all, it’s your shoe!
The answer to that question is more complicated. It is possibly a question that is deserving of an answer. But, I am definitely not prepared to answer it.
So, I just wrote down this whole angle of thought with all the various questions they might be asking and then a part at the end where I apologize for giving up, but mention that: I think it is connected with man’s fruitless search for meaning, sorry if that’s a cop-out.
There was a little bell and when I rang it, Tracy came in, gave me a banana, and told me I could take another twenty-minute break. I walked down to a lake that was next to the chemistry building and watched some turtles hang out on a log. Being a turtle is essentially a royal flush in the game of life. Things can’t eat you. You hang out in the sun. I don’t know what they eat, but they don’t look very hungry. If they were they would have evolved the ability to move faster so they could stop being so hungry.
The final part of the test was also in that room. When I got back, Tracy had set up a camera on a tripod. It was facing a box outlined on the wall.
The camera can see the whole box, she said. Once I start it, anything in the box is recorded.
And sound anywhere in the room, I said.
That’s right, sound too.
Is the only microphone in the camera?
That’s the microphone.
Can I see what the image looks like?
She thought about that for a second.
No, you can’t. All right, I’m going to read you a script. Then, I’ll leave. The camera starts recording a few seconds after I leave. I think it is a five-second delay. Also, if you want to use the chalkboard, there is chalk there below.
Great.
Here we go.
She read from the sheet:
Tell us a joke.
She left the room.
I brought a chair over and sat with my back to the camera. I didn’t like having it look at me.
TELL US A JOKE
Beekman said that a high-enough score on any one of the three tests could get you in, but good results on all three would not. I thought that was a mean thing to say, and not very helpful, though I’m sure he meant well. Anyway, I don’t even know why I cared about passing the test. If I’m competitive, it’s usually about things that don’t matter to other people.
TELL US A JOKE
When I get in a tough spot, as you might have noticed, I like to think about what my aunt or my dad would do. I used to think about my mom like that, too. Don’t think she isn’t a fascinating character in her own right—just as great as my dad or aunt. But, thinking about her, well, it just doesn’t get me anywhere anymore. Even now, I wish I hadn’t brought it up.
TELL US A JOKE
I hate telling jokes on command. It has to be one of the worst situations a person can be in. That’s why you have to respect the jesters of medieval times. They were always ready to be funny, but in exchange they forfeited all dignity—and in return, they got a special kind of permanent dignity that wasn’t destroyed by scrounging around with the dogs to get a scrap now and then. Or “that’s how it’s been told to me. Maybe there weren’t even jesters. Have they ever found any jester bones? If they have, I certainly haven’t seen them. That would be something—to see a full set of jester bones in a museum, strung up like an ankylosaurus.
The funniest things are usually the most revealing. I thought about Lana and I thought—she is really good at telling stories. I’ll just tell one of the stories that she told me the first time we hung out.
I turned my chair around.
TELL US A JOKE
Okay, so this is a true story. There is a golden eagle that was being observed by scientists, and it found a spot on top of this cathedral where it could nest. It liked that spot pretty well. I think there ended up being two of them—which means it somehow convinced another one the spot was good, but that isn’t part of the story. The story goes like this: the eagle looks around for food in the town, but it is having trouble finding food, so it starts hunting people’s dogs. First it kills a Chihuahua. Then, it kills a Yorkie. It catches a guy with his Belgian Malinois on his back stairs and whips the Malinois off so it falls to its death, then it drags it god knows where to have a nice meal.
Okay, so this is funny to begin with. I mean, if you like this sort of thing. But, what’s funnier is this: one day it kills this beagle, and the beagle is wearing a kind of stupid knit party hat. While it is eating the beagle, I guess the beagle turned out to be a good meal and the golden eagle lost its cool, the knit party hat, which was bright purple and green, gets transferred onto the eagle’s head. It gets stuck there, somehow it is thoroughly stuck to the eagle’s head. What does this mean? And this is the joke: for the next two months, people were running around in this town pulling on their dogs’ leashes and looking to the sky for an eagle wearing a party hat. And sometimes the eagle comes. There’s even a video of it—the eagle is doing a cool eagle dive, and the party hat is flapping ominously in the wind.
Beekman asked me how it went, and I said: they don’t let you down these Hausmann people. That is a real test. I mean—certainly you can chop up a group of people with that test. You can slice them up real thin.
He asked me if I got sliced up thin.
I said, it was more like in a dream where I was both being sliced and the one slicing.
Beekman told me about a samurai sword exhibit he took his son to once and how the blades are all very beautiful but you know that each and every one got tested on a peasant’s back.
When I got home, my aunt was sitting in the garden. She was drawing a diagram on a piece of paper. I sat next to her.
What is that?
It is for you, she said. I am preparing a plan for you to make a garden like this if you want to, sometime in the future.
Her rules were: plant some things almost randomly. Let weeds grow. If you like the weeds, then weed the plants out.
She had a diagram with all the beds that looked like this:
BED (weeds)
BED (garlic)
BED (weeds)
BED (carrots)
BED (weeds)
BED (weeds)
BED (dirt)
BED (dill/weeds)
BED (
She wasn’t finished yet.
How did the test go?
I kind of kicked at the ground a bit and didn’t say anything. My right sneaker had a huge hole and you could see my big toe sometimes.
We need to get you some new shoes, she observed. I think there is a box with a few pairs in it at the church.
I said, Beekman was pretty nice, telling me about the test.
She said she had talked to Beekman on the phone and he seemed, yes, like a nice man. I asked her why she had talked to him on the phone.
She said he had called. She answered the phone. Then she was talking to him on the phone. That was the order of events.
I said, but why did he call?
She said, he needed permission if he was going to give me a ride somewhere. Otherwise he could be accused of all sorts of bad business.
That’s the world we live in, she said.
We sat there for a while. I noticed that her hands were shaky as hell. They are just trembling and trembling. It made my stomach feel funny.
Lucia, dear, did you ever think that maybe I died already—when the ambulance came for me, and that you have just been imagining all this ever since because your mind can’t cope with the reality of the situation? Right now, you are just sitting here by yourself in the garden, for instance, and …
Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!
My aunt likes to put it on me sometimes. She calls that sort of thing an improvement lesson.
I’m just bringing you up to snuff, she says.
And now I will put in my pamphlet (after this).
It’s my opinion that you will find it to be quite interesting. Of course, you may hate it, and that would be completely understandable. I tried to make the language more formal—since I was imagining as I went that I don’t know who will read it. Sometimes you put a thing out into the wind, and the wind carries it—to where?
There are a few copies of this. My aunt has one. Lana has one. I stuck one in the library at school, somewhere it won’t be discovered for years.
You have seen the cover—I stuck that in earlier. So, I’ll just jump to the first page.
It was early—just before school. The hall had that feeling, like an empty train station. Any second this empty space would be packed with people and whatever was comforting about it would vanish.
I’d just printed the pamphlets out at the multimedia lab (on thick gray-colored paper)—which is the reason I was there early to begin with.
You can imagine how proud I was—I mean, I had never written a pamphlet before, not once in my life! And there I was, standing with them in my hand. Up walks Stephan and he asks me how the fire went. Of all the people. I was hoping not to see him.
I figured he’d ask, but I wasn’t prepared—not while I was holding my pamphlet! Also—what a jackass, to say that shit out loud. But, I guess his pride was hurt and he wasn’t thinking.
When I saw his pasty face, all I could think of was:
Can you imagine—to just go home when someone tells you to? Some people are soft all the way through, like a stick of butter.
That’s what I mean about accomplices. Wise up. No one is ever careful enough.
How did the fire go?
He said it in this nasty way that I’m sure you would have expected (now that you have gotten to know him a little), as if it were my fault that he ran off like a pussy when Jan told him to.
I shoved the pamphlets in my bag.
I didn’t go.
You didn’t go?
Listen, I’m too busy for that shit. It’s pretty immature anyway. Are you going to keep doing it? That guy seems like an asshole.
Yeah, I know he is. I grew up with him.
Lana came up just then and it was perfect.
She looked at Stephan with a bit of a sneer.
Hey, Lana, he said.
She looked at me, looked at him in mock horror, put her hand up to block the sight of him and asked me if he was gone yet.
I whispered, no, he’s still here.
Damn it to hell, Stephan, she said. Know when you’re wanted. Know when you’re not wanted. It’s a crucial skill.
He looked at me like I was going to stick up for him. No way!
He shrugged.
Later, Lucia, he said and walked off.
Lana pretended to throw up on the carpet.
So, he’s into you, huh. That’s too bad.
Why?
Because I would never let you hang out with that guy. Do you hang out with him? You don’t do you?
No.
Is he your boyfriend? Do you lie under him on his family couch? Do you have a visceral sense of how much he weighs when he’s on top of you?
Ugh, Lana, stop.
I would rather we both date my cousin. Matter of fact—reason I’m standing here. We’ve got something on for tonight. You’re coming. No choice.
She stalked off down the hall. I realized she was wearing pajamas and slippers. What a badass.
A question I ask myself: what does it mean to make a pamphlet like that?
I am just starting my career as an arsonist, so you could say that it is my first entry in the field of arson, as a theorist. Right now I am a theoretical arsonist. Soon, I will be a theoretical and practical arsonist. Whatever Jan says about me being in the club now, I think it’s nonsense. Both sides of the coin—I don’t want any favors. If I am in the club it’s because I started a fire. And I haven’t done that.
That means, now the thing to do is for me
to set a really big fire.
The question is, what will I burn down, and how will I get away with it.
I have to make my plans.
First thing to do was: steal some sheets of paper from the art room. I guess steal is a bit of an exaggeration. The art teacher is a sweetheart with me—I don’t have to steal the paper. She just gives it to me.
Paper.
Pencil.
Straightedge.
Drawing board (to be returned).
Compass (to be returned).
For those of you who haven’t got the first idea about how to do a thing right—this is the way. You get some paper and you plan the whole business, right from the get-go. You don’t expect that things will happen perfectly—of course not. But, you end up better situated than some jackass who never thinks ahead. Or, you should. I guess there’s no guarantee even of that.
By the way, they found the guy who started the music room fire. It was the fat guy, Ray, who I heard mention the Sonar Club that first time, the guy from detention. I know because I had to go to the office to get permission to leave school early to visit my mom, and he was there with his family. He was wearing a suit, like graduation or something. That’s when I knew—Ray is gone for good.
If they make you put on a suit, it’s because they are going to do something horrible to you. I guarantee it.
I won’t go through my whole prediction rag this time. This visit was kind of a catastrophe. I went to the Home. I was sitting at the fish pond with my mom and she had an accident. It seemed like she did, because she made a weird expression, so I checked, and yes, an accident. I had to get some help. Which meant going to the nurses’ station. When I got to the nurses’ station he was there and he came over.
I had to tell him that my mom had an accident, and would he come clean it up.
Can you imagine?
Well, he did it. My good old mom got a towel bath from the orderly who, well, you remember.
I don’t think it mattered to her. I think it happens pretty regularly. I tried to help him out, but he said he has his routine for doing it—and it wouldn’t take long. He said I could walk around and he’d be done in about ten minutes. I guess he didn’t want me to watch him do it, which is a little weird, since it is fairly high value—I mean evolutionarily speaking, if you see that a guy can do tasks like that, it probably makes you think he would be a good mate. But, I don’t think he thinks like that. He probably thinks: I don’t want her to watch me clean shit off her mother’s leg. Which makes sense, too.
I came back and things were good as new. My mom was in her chair again. He was sitting there doing nothing. I guess he was waiting for me.
I asked him what his name was, which is something I didn’t know. He told me. I told him my name. He said he knew it already, Lucia, it wasn’t the kind of name you forget.
I told him you can forget anything.
My aunt said she wasn’t sure about the part where people get burned in their homes just for being wealthy. I said, there’s no other way. They could have stopped at any time. She said, I know, but I’m still not sure about that part. In any case, I will be dead soon, and then the world will be yours to do with as you will.
Don’t talk like that.
I like the rest, though, she said. I think maybe it is too formal. It should be simpler—like a person speaking to herself under her breath.
I said, the next one will be better.
Lana said it was Ree’s birthday and we were going to go get her from her brother’s shop where she works. We drove over, and I got to ride in the front of the car for the first time.
It’s not mine, really, she told me. It’s my brother’s but he’s in jail. He would kill me, actually wring my neck if he knew I had it.
What is your brother in jail for?
Mail fraud.
Really.
No, not really. He was in the coast guard and he got in a fight while drinking. Unfortunately the guy he fought had a heart condition.
Are you saying …
Yeah, he tackled the guy and that was that. So, he’s in jail until I’m twenty-five. He’ll be thirty-two. Maybe he’ll get out on good behavior. He’s a nice guy. Everyone was real surprised.
We got to Ree’s brother’s place pretty quick (does he kill people too? No, Lucia. He doesn’t. Only my brother kills people, and he only kills people with heart conditions), which was an auto shop. There was a Ferrari logo on the outside.
He’s never fucking seen a Ferrari, was Lana’s comment on that.
Ree came out, tossed her bag in the back, and got in. She leaned in between us.
Hello, girls.
Hello, Ree.
Here you go. She handed us each two pills.
What is this?
That’s the fun, said Lana. Ree never tells you what it is until after.