Hot Pink (9 page)

“Baby,” Franco's ma said to someone behind me. I figured it was Franco, but nope—it was the sleaze. He limped through the doorway, into the yard, bleeding on the cheek, holding his gut area.

He said, “Here I am, your killed messenger, returned.” He laughed a thin laugh.

“Killed?” Franco's ma said. “That's how you talk at a time like this?”

“You know what? Don't guilt me. I was trying to do right by your piece-of-work son—and
for you
—and what happens? He pummels me's what happens. I don't need to feel worse now.”

“You what?” Franco's ma said. “A who?” she said. “Pummeled?”

“Look at my face, honey. Look at my clothes.”

“That was
Franco
did that?”

“Who else?” said the sleaze.

“Did you do like I asked?”

“I did
just
like you asked.”

“Did you tell him you were there for him? Did you tell him you'd be there if he needed to talk, or someone to lean on?”

“Yeah, that's what I told him! I told him all of that shit. I told him we could bond about it. I told him we should. And that's when he came at me! Ask
him
, you don't believe me.”

“Him” meant me. I didn't know what to say. I squinted at a patch of yellow grass behind the sleaze.

“Never mind,” he said. “Listen. It's feeding time. I'm going.”

“Forget about those parakeets, Alan,” Franco's ma said.

“They're hatchlings,” he said. “It's important to keep them on a very strict regimen.”

“We need you here,” she snapped.

The sleaze stood up straight and stomped on the ground. “He
jumped
on me, Angela. He knocked me down with a television, and jumped on me and struck me!”

“Yeah, struck you, I struck you,” Franco muttered—he was being led from the garage, in cuffs, by the fat cop. “He got struck cause I struck him and next thing's I'll kill him. Go fuck yourself,” he said to his ma or the sleaze or all the world.

“Please don't arrest him,” Franco's ma said to the fat cop. “He didn't mean any harm. You'd be upset too, you just found out your father died.”

“Wait,” I said. “Hey,” I said.

Nobody waited.

“I won't be pressing charges,” the fat cop said, “but we're gonna hold on to him until he cools down. He attacked Mr. Smucci, I think he's on drugs, you just heard him making threats, and we're standing right here. We don't really have any other choice, Ms. Iafarte.”

“Hey, wait,” I said.

“Are you taking drugs, Franco?” Franco's ma asked.

“Aw, shut up,” he told her. “Take care of my dog, please, Cliff, please, okay? She's over by the motorcycle, whining and shaking. I promise she won't hurt you as long as you're nice to her. ”

Before I could answer, the fat cop told Franco, “Your friend's gonna be in the car right next to you.”

The other cop, Rizzo, said to the fat cop, “You know, this is the pilot's son. Maybe we shouldn't—”

“I know who he is,” the fat cop said. He waved around the can of Dirt Gun XL. “Believe me, his dad'll want to know about this. Your dad's gonna hear about this, Clifford,” he told me.

I said, “That ain't mine.”

“Your dad,” I said to Franco. “I don't understand.” We were locked in back of the cops' car, waiting. I didn't know for what. The cops were outside.

“It was money,” Franco said. “It had to be money. He owed people money.”

“That's not what I mean—I mean, we saw his ghost fifty-three days ago, Franco.”

“I know,” Franco said.

“But he wasn't dead then?”

“No,” Franco said.

I said, “But why'd we see his ghost if he wasn't dead, though, you think?”

“Because he was fucking with me,” Franco said. “He was always fucking with me.” Then he started crying, so I squeezed him on the shoulder and didn't bother arguing. He rubbed his ear around, against my knuckles, which I guess is how you signal “I need a hug” if there's a hand on your shoulder and your hands are cuffed.

I squeezed the shoulder a couple more times.

An Animal Control wagon entered Franco's alley and the fat cop and the other one got into the car.

The cops split us up when we got to the station. I never got put in a cell or anything. They made me stand in a squeaky hallway off the lobby with a woman cop who was pretty for a woman cop. She gave me a couple LifeSavers, butter-rum-flavored, which are actually really good, and we talked about the Bulls. She didn't know a lot about the Bulls and neither did I, so mostly what we said was stuff about Michael Jordan, and how he was the greatest because of how he dunked or whatever and had expensive shoes, and the cop thought he was handsome.

I don't know what they did with Franco. He told me later that they tied him to a chair and slapped him around to try to get him to confess to having a dog that would kill on command, but they couldn't break him. After that, he told me, his ma picked him up, and on their way out of the station a “special forces homicide cop” took them aside and told them it was Finch who murdered his father. Franco's a liar, though, and he's crazy. I mean, a lot of bad stuff kept happening to him, and it happened in stupider ways than it should have—like I still don't get how his ma thought he'd bond with the sleaze if the sleaze delivered him the news about his dad. About his dad being
dead.
I don't get how anyone's ma could think something like that, but especially not Franco's. Maybe she was crazy, too. Or just temporarily. Maybe she went nuts cause she still loved Franco's dad. Or maybe it was one of those things where you want something to be one way so bad that even though it's the exact opposite way you're still hopeful. And maybe I'd be the same way as Franco if all the same stuff that kept happening to him kept happening to me. But tied him to a chair and slapped him around, though? Come on. And his dad wasn't murdered. He drove into a tree and it might have been on purpose. It was right in the newspaper that afternoon.

I didn't hang out with the woman cop for long. Half an hour tops. My parents got there fast. They entered the station with the ward alderman, Mikey Podesta—I only knew who he was cause the lady cop told me when the three of them walked past our squeaky hallway—but they left with just me a few minutes after that.

At first they hugged me and checked me over to make sure I wasn't messed up or anything, but by the time we got in the car, they were getting pissed. At least he was. My dad, I mean.

“Why did you set that dog on the detective?” he said.

“I didn't know he was a cop,” I said. “I was trying to help my friend. Some guy was attacking my friend, I thought.”

“Your friend who threw a TV at his stepdad,” my dad said.

“He's just the ma's boyfriend, I think—”

“Clifford!” my ma said.

“What?” I said.

“You were high on that Dirt Shooter is why you did what you did.”

“I was what on a shooter? I was what?” I said.

“You were high. They saw it right next to you.”

“I don't know what you're saying to me,” I said. “I don't do drugs. I fell asleep on the couch and when I woke up, there was all this ruckus, and my friend needed help—that's what it looked like—so I went and got the dog to help out my friend.”

“You were asleep?” my dad said. “On the couch next to Franco at eleven in the morning?”

“Yeah,” I said. “We were watching
Three Stooges
. I hate those guys. You do too. They're annoying.”

“That's true,” my dad said.

“I don't know why Franco likes that show. It put me to sleep.”

“You weren't on Dirt Shooter?”

“What is Dirt Shooter, Ma?” I said. “I don't know what that is.”

“I told you he'd never do that Dirt Shooter, Gloria. That was all Franco—I knew it… But you don't hang out in that fucken garage anymore, Cliff, with that wop.”

“Why not?” I said.

“You know why not,” he said.

I didn't even really want to was the thing—all of a sudden, I was pretty sick of Franco—but I didn't like getting told not to, either. Plus I thought I'd seem guilty if I just said okay.

“Well who's that guy you came into the station with?” I said.

“That's an old friend.”

“An old friend who?”

“What's the tone?” said my dad. “His name's Mikey Podesta. He's our alderman. I'd have liked to introduce you if the circumstances were different.”

“Why'd Mikey Podesta the alderman go to the station with you?”

“He didn't,” my dad said. “He
met
us at the station. He's the one who told us you were there to begin with, and he met us out front.”

“How'd he know where I was?”

“The cops called him up.”

“The cops called
him
?”

“Yeah,” said my dad. “What's so hard to understand?”

“Why'd they call
him
?”

“He's an old friend of mine.”

“How do they know who your friends are?”

“They know who
his
friends are.”

“Why do they care who he's friends with?” I said.

“Cause he's the alderman,” my dad said.

“Why's he a friend of yours?”

“What kind of question is that? What's with all the questions, Cliff?”

“Why do the cops know who you are?”

“I don't even know what you're talking about.”

“Before, when they heard my name, one of them said, ‘This is the pilot's son.' How do they know who you are? That's weird.”

“Weird? Nothing's weird, Cliff,” my ma said. “Your father's a pillar.”

“A pillar?” I said.

“A pillar of the community,” she said.

“A pillar of the community.”

“I'm a pilot!” my dad said.

We got to our house. The pillar parked the car and turned around to face me.

“You're not on drugs, right?”

“I'm not,” I said.

“You just thought your friend was in trouble, so you helped him.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Just like I told you.”

He studied my eyes, then he said, “I believe you. It's been a rough morning, huh?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Why don't I take you out for lunch and an ice cream or something.”

“Yeah,” my ma said. “You two should spend some time. Your dad's flying again on Monday.”

“How about maybe later,” I said. “I want to be alone right now. Think about stuff. I want to take a walk or something.”

“Alright,” my dad said. “We'll get ribs later, maybe. Or pizza. Whatever.”

“Get some lunch, though, Cliff,” my ma said. She opened her purse and handed me a twenty. “You can keep the change for that. Eat something good.”

I thanked her, and started heading to Theo's, but then I changed my mind and got Burger King instead.

MIXED MESSAGES // TWO CONVERSATIONS // BILLY // A PROFESSOR AND A LOVER // THE END OF FRIENDSHIPS // CRED // IMPORTANT MEN

The message the natives, with hand signs, conveyed was: L
EAVE OUR CROPS BE, AND WE WILL GIVE YOU OUR DAUGHTERS
.

We hadn't any interest in their crops or their daughters: not their daughters till we realized they were so undervalued, not their crops till we saw that by torching their crops we might teach them to value their daughters more highly.

That our actions could be taken by the natives to mean E
VEN TO THE LIKES OF US SEAFARING MEN, THOSE DAUGHTERS OF YOURS ARE OF SO LITTLE VALUE THAT THE PLEASURE WE DERIVE FROM DESTROYING YOUR HARVEST IS PREFERABLE TO THAT WE'D DERIVE FROM THEIR POSSESSION
, or perhaps W
E WILL TORCH YOUR CROPS AND
THEN
HAVE YOUR DAUGHTERS
did not occur to us—these sorts of possibilities simply refuse, in the heat of the moment, to occur with the facility they occur to you later, in your well-appointed quarters, sipping from a magnum of pupu-tree liquor, reviewing the day's events in your log—but such misunderstanding on the part of the natives might in fact provide the correct explanation for why they elected, in the glow of the fires we had put to their crops, to pulp all their daughters' skulls with clubs.

At the time we assumed they were offering us a sacrifice.

A FALSE START
. It meant something to the man it didn't mean to the woman, something it didn't mean to normal people. But that, in itself, was not the problem. It wasn't what drove her mad, so to speak. What drove her mad—
“Drove her mad,” so to speak!
the woman thought;
“‘Drove her mad,' so to speak,” the woman thought!
she thought—came three days later, in their next conversation, when she'd called to clarify the first conversation, a brief conversation, the one in which he had said
A FALSE START
, which brief conversation she had since realized to have been too easy for him (she had, she'd realized, been too easy
on
him),
too easy
in the sense that she had not
shed tears
till she got off the telephone, had
exhausted all her powers
via
holding back tears
and
controlling her voice and the sound of her breathing
, telling herself—while still on the phone—that weeping, hers, was
what he was after
, and therefore weeping would mean
her defeat
, when that hadn't been, she now reflected, the case at all, but
quite the opposite
, for
failing to weep
, the woman saw now, had signaled to the man her
ready acceptance
of all that he'd said about
A FALSE START
, which nullified in him any
sense of obligation
, any sense of
his duty
to offer her
comfort
, to
clean up the mess that he'd made
because
mess
? where
mess
?
mess
what? what
mess
? No one had
wept
. No one had
argued
. No one had done anything except to
accept
and stammer about
A FALSE START
once or twice, and when she called him up,
weeping
, three days later, what
drove her mad
was the way he made it sound as though she was betraying—in calling him,
weeping
, three days later—an agreement they'd made, the way
A FALSE START
had become
THE
FALSE START
, as in “But we already discussed
THE FALSE START
.”