Kids These Days (29 page)

“What?”

“He's the nicest boy in the world, but she can't even drive. How long do you think that'll last?”

“No idea,” I said. Like every other thing in the world.

“She's a smart kid,” he said. “If you talked to her, she'd listen.”

“Why me?”

“She likes you,” he said.

“She likes
you
,” I said. “You let her stay with him.”

“It's not the same.”

“What would I tell her that would make any difference?”

Hank slid the door open a little further, and the metal groaned. There were planes in there with their wings folded up. “You're right,” Mid said. “Never mind. I'll call you later, OK? I'll call Carolyn. Tell her I'll call.” Then he turned around and walked away, toward the barn, or the hangar, or whatever it was. He shook Hank's hand. The two of them walked through the building and out to the grass runway, where I saw there were already two parachutes set up, two buggies. Mid got himself strapped into one of the carts, and Hank climbed onto the other, his usual ride, and soon enough Mid was rolling out across the grass at what seemed like far too slow a speed until he bumped up into the air anyway, a white wing over his head, blue letters and numbers along one edge like a sailboat sail. He went up like he was tied to a string somebody was pulling. Hank followed, the
POW-MIA
chute unfurling behind him, and then he was off the ground, too, and they flew out toward the treeline, engines whining away, and then I couldn't see them anymore, and then I couldn't hear them, either. They had vanished. Where had they gone? the cops would want to know. Away, I'd tell them. Did you see which direction? West, maybe, I'd say. Inland.

It was our flyer, I'd tell Alice.

It was not, she'd say.

It was.

Of course it was, she'd say.

I sat in the car, cool air blowing on my face and out Mid's open door. I checked the gas gauge: Full enough. I could sit there a while longer. I was somewhere in Florida in a vandalized Camaro with a box of hundred-dollar bills in my lap. I didn't have any idea at all about what to do next. I looked through the barn to the field, hoping hard that something would come to me. What were you doing? Alice would want to know. Waiting, I'd say.

At the end of the gravel road I turned toward the interstate instead of the beach. It was like somebody'd spun me around a couple of times, hollered out go. I took inventory: Mid was gone. I needed to call Alice. She had the cell. She had the car. I had the Camaro and the cash and who the hell knew what in the trunk. Illegal furs. Automatic rifles. Bodies. I stopped at a fruit stand, got out to look. Jumper cables. The little doughnut spare. Nothing else. They were selling twenty-five pound bags of oranges at the fruit stand. I bought one, put it in the trunk. A mile down the road I knew it was a mistake, knew that when the cops asked, the dude would remember. The Camaro. The huge sack of oranges. All those oranges, he'd say. Just for himself.

What plan I had was to turn around, though, before anybody was hot on my trail, before anybody was asking around about a person who looked like me. I needed a little pried-open space first, was all. I was headed back as soon as I knew what I might say to somebody—Carolyn, Alice, Friendly and Helpful—when they asked. Some version of: I have done this wrong. All of it. I apologize. My wife is pregnant. Here is the car. He left me there, flew away. He did not say where he was going. No, I'm not helping him. No, I don't think he'd hurt anybody. No, I don't think he'd hurt himself. Because I asked him. Because I thought I should. The cash was just like this, in this box. Give it to orphans. To amputees. To orphaned amputees. I don't know anything. I have never known anything. This is what I'm trying to tell you.

I drove. I watched the sky for Mid.

At the interstate there was an old Howard Johnson, light blue with an orange roof. I pulled in. She'd kill me, I knew. I pulled in anyway. I parked the Camaro behind a Dumpster. I had the urge to cover it with branches, but there weren't any. I found the front desk. I paid cash. That part was simple enough. My room was on the top floor, the third floor. I passed the cleaning people with their cart. It was still morning, or something like it. Inside, my ceiling featured the long fifties slant of the roof, triangled windows above some sliding doors that led out onto four feet of concrete balcony. Brown carpet. Two queen beds. I lay down on one. There was a water stain in the ceiling, which felt unfortunate, like a bad letter. I switched to the other bed. I could hear the trucks out on the highway. Did fathers do this? Was this fatherly behavior? I called the front desk and ordered a patty melt and a 7UP from the restaurant. I turned on the TV, set it to the channel that ran previews of the movies you could order. We owned no furniture. Alice was bleeding, Mid had flown away. Once the channel had cycled the preview through so many times I knew the exact sequence, I called Alice.

“How are you?” she said.

I started peeling an orange. “Terrible,” I said.

“How's Mid?”

“Better than I am,” I said. “For the most part, anyway.”

“Did you meet with the police?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

Half the movie trailers had stars in them I'd never seen, too-skinny twentysomethings with perfect skin and excellent teeth. I was losing track of who was supposed to be famous. I was already out of touch with the BOJ's generation, and her generation wasn't even here. “I'm in a Howard Johnson,” I said.

“You're what?”

“In a HoJo.” I felt myself measuring out the words. I put the orange down on the nightstand. “I'm out by the interstate. I checked in. I got a room.”

“If this is a joke, I don't get it.”

“It's not a joke. I'm in a hotel. I have the car. Mid's gone.” It felt better, saying it out loud like that. It also felt true, which arrived with its own set of problems.

She said, “I don't know what any of that means.”

“I don't know what it means, either,” I said. “He drove me out into the woods and got out of the car, and Hank was waiting for him in some hanger, and they both flew away. I'm pretty sure he had it planned.”

“What woods?”

“When we got to the Twice-the-Ice, the police tried to arrest him. He drove off. I tried to talk him out of it. Then he gave me sixty thousand dollars and flew away.”

She said, “Flew away in what?”

“A parachute. Like the other one, like Hank's. He had one waiting for him. Another one.” I looked around the room, which seemed to be getting dimmer. I wondered if they'd built all the Howard Johnsons the same in any given year—if they'd just traveled the same set of blueprints around the country, and if somewhere in Wichita right now there was someone sitting in room 303, talking to his wife, and trying to keep his head from separating from his body. “I don't think I feel right,” I said.

“What do you mean? How?”

“Like I could be losing my mind, too,” I said.

“Are you? Did those things really happen?”

“Yes,” I said. “Also, I bought some oranges.”

“Stop screwing around. Are you screwing around?”

“I really did buy oranges,” I said. I pulled a section off and put it in my mouth. “They're pretty good.”

“Give me the number where you are. I'm coming to get you.”

“Don't,” I said.

“What do you mean, don't? I'm coming to get you right now.”

“I wanted to be still. Just for a minute.”

“Which one are you in?” she said.

“Which one what?”

“Which Howard Johnson.” I could tell she was trying to keep her voice even, that she was upset. I'd upset her. It made sense.

“I don't know,” I said. I thought it was possible I might be remembering what was happening instead of it actually happening. “This one.”

“Walter, stick with me, OK? Are you still in the state?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I don't think we drove more than a few exits one way or the other.” I checked the desk for a pad of paper or a phone book, but there wasn't anything. “Listen,” I said. “Don't tell Delton.”

“Of course we have to tell her,” she said. “We have to tell everybody.”

I said, “He could still come back. He said he would.”

“Have you called the police?”

“No.”

“You need to call the police.”

“We need to call Carolyn,” I said.

“I'll do that.”

“He said she'd understand. He said this wasn't the way he had it set up originally.”

“He said she'd
understand
?”

“Maybe not exactly that way,” I said. “Let's wait until you get here.”

“For what?”

“For everything. To tell her. To tell anybody. Can we just wait until you're here?”

She said, “Did he say where he was going?”

“No.”

“Did you ask?”

“I tried.”

“What
happened
?”

“That's what I'm trying to figure out.”

“You don't sound like yourself,” she said. “I'm worried about you.”

“He told me he needed a few empty days,” I said. “I think I need that, too.”

“Read me the number off the phone you're holding, OK? Read it to me right now.”

I did that. She wrote it down. She made me read it again to make sure it was right. She told me not to go anywhere, and I asked her where she thought I might go, and she told me again: Stay there. Stay right where you are. She made me promise. I promised. She hung up the phone.

Most of the movies on the preview channel seemed to want to be about two people having a very fine time until some manner of adversity or confusion arrives, and then one of them has to run through the rain or the night or both in order to set things right. There was also porn, but after a few times through, those plots seemed to be about the same as the regular movies. I sat on the floor between the two beds so I could see the light flashing from the TV, but not the picture itself. That helped. Alice telling me not to go anywhere—all along I'd wanted to go somewhere. Everything was upside down now. I pulled a comforter off one of the beds and lay down. Sure I'd wanted there to have been a third buggy for me, a third parachute. Sure I'd wanted to be off the ground, too. But then also this: All I wanted right then, in the entire open landscape of my life, was for there to be a knock on the door of my room and for Alice to be there, pregnant, on the other side.

Things that had come out of Delton's mouth in the week she'd been living with us: Kids were sending naked pictures of each other back and forth on their cell phones, but she wasn't. Not because she thought it was wrong, but because she thought it'd be too easy for somebody to hit the wrong button. Kids were off birth control and using the rhythm method because birth control made them fat. She was sticking with the pill. Anything else was too risky. Some kids had sworn off having actual sex. Not for religious reasons—it was just easier. They were doing everything else, everything but. She was trying to shock us. She wanted us to have to ask what “everything but” was. Maybe she thought we'd never been to high school, had never parked a car at the St. Jude's Catholic Church playground, never frantically, desperately tried to decide whether asking Janet Rosenthal for a little help getting her pants down would break the mood.

“Some kids are getting their genitals pierced,” she'd said. “But I don't think I will.” She pushed her sleeve up past her tattoo like that'd be plenty, thanks. We sat at the dinner table and acted like we pierced our genitals all the time. We told her we liked her tattoo. She said Mid and Carolyn had threatened to make her sand it off.

Alice brought Delton with her to the hotel. They knocked, and I stayed on the floor, trying to remember if I'd thrown the deadbolt. “Walter,” Alice said. “Let us in.”