Spontaneous (8 page)

T
he ice-cream truck bumbled down quiet roads on the western edge of town, out where things get all “are you sure we're still in New Jersey?” I figured we were just driving around, going nowhere, because that's what was discussed over text.

Him: What ya wanna do?

Me: Doesn't matter. Getting out is enough.

As we rolled along, our conversation started with the ice-cream truck's origins. Turns out Dylan's father drove it on summer evenings in the nineties to keep the farm afloat, a fact I found both noble and depressing. So I changed the subject to Perry Love and Cranberry Bollinger. Neither of us had known them well, but Dylan had noticed the incongruity I mentioned before.

“Cranberry wasn't anywhere near the school,” he said.

“Hallelujah, right?”

“I guess.”

“Young Mr. Hovemeyer, were you hoping our halls would be all Jackson Pollocked up each and every week?” I asked as Dylan guided the ice-cream truck onto a dirt road.

“No, no, no,” he said with a furrowed brow. “But it seems like it should be a communal experience. Something we should all be going through together.”

“You're weird.”

His response was a crooked smile and a “yeah, well . . .”

Without another word, he pulled the truck over and parked in brown grass next to a hulking blue silo with a dent in the top that made it look like it had been struck by a meteorite. He hopped out and circled around to the passenger side—to open my door and help me down, I guess, but I had beaten him to it. I was already waiting in the waist-high grass.

“We feeding some chickens?” I asked.

“You'll see,” he said. Then he opened the back hatch of the truck and yanked out a green duffel bag, which he hefted over a shoulder. “Follow me.”

The silo door wasn't much bigger than a dog door, but the duffel fit through, and Dylan did too, twisting his body and snaking his way inside. “Come on in,” he said. “It's perfectly safe.”

I stuck my head through the door and I couldn't see farther than the reach of the sunlight. A couple of feet at best. “It's dark as hell in there. There could be raccoons with switchblades. There could be Jehovah's Witnesses, waiting to pounce.”

“Completely empty,” he assured me. “Besides, I have a light.”

He reached his hands toward the door and I figured what the hell. I'd never been in a silo before, and while that's not exactly bucket-list worthy, it's something to do when you're with a boy who intrigues you, scares you, and turns you on in equal measure.

By the time I'd slipped through, stood up, and dusted myself off, Dylan had moved toward the center of the silo. I couldn't see him, but I could hear his echoing footsteps and the hiss of the duffel's zipper. Any guess as to what was in that duffel bag?

Samurai swords?

The bones of an ex-girlfriend?

Pie? Lots and lots of delicious pie?

Wrong, wrong, and unfortunately wrong. You weren't paying attention, were you? Because Dylan had already told me what was in the duffel.

“Let there be light,” he said.

White shapes erupted on the curved walls of the silo and the place transformed. From darkness, disco was born. Sitting on the floor was a spinning orb that shot out the light. If I had inspected it closer, I would have discovered that it wasn't some fancy club or theater equipment. It was a regular illuminated globe, a miniature plastic world poked full of holes and mounted on a battery-powered turntable. Honestly, I didn't care what it was, only what it was doing. It was showing me Dylan's smiling face and his reaching hand.

As I grabbed his hand, music kicked in, perfectly on cue.

I knew the song. It was a song Tess and I used to sing when we were riding our bikes down the shore and dreaming of our future. It was a song that everyone in New Jersey knows. I suspect the
rest of the world knows it too, and they probably make fun of it. Out here in the northwestern corner of the Garden State, we don't ever pronounce it “Noo Joisey” and we certainly don't appreciate all the uninspired cracks about “The Dirty Jerz” and “The Armpit of America.” And yet we will freely admit we have an irrational attachment to certain songs. This one was perhaps the most obvious example of that.

Yes, I hate to break it to you. It wasn't some obscure but transcendent indie track, or some dusted-off gem from the good old days that boys are supposed to play you to make you rethink the past while you fall in love with their musical archaeology. It was an enduring emblem of cheese. I'm embarrassed to even say the title, because it's one of those eighties' anthems where even the drummer sings on the chorus. But dammit if it didn't slay me right then and there in that silo, ricocheting off the walls with all the light.

“When my dad died,” Dylan said as he pulled me toward him, “I used to come in here and put on this music and I would dance by myself.”

He was dancing with me now, slowly turning me against the spin of the lights. “That's the saddest fucking thing I've heard in my entire life,” I said.

He shook his head. “I liked it. It helped.”

“This is your silo?”

“No. Bank owns it, I think. Used to be owned by a family called the Rogalskis. But their farm went bankrupt and they took off. Not sure where to.”

“Do you still . . . farm?” I asked, which suddenly seemed like a
weird thing to be asking a boy I was dancing with.

“Dad had life insurance,” he said. “We're doing okay without milking any cows these days.”

As the chorus erupted, he dipped me slightly. He wasn't the best dancer, but his moves were certainly practiced.

“You've done this before, haven't you?” I asked.

“Like I said, I used to dance in here all the time.”

“I mean with another girl.”

“Oh,” he said as he dipped me again, this time a bit lower. “Yes. I have. Does that matter?”

It didn't. His hands on my hips and my hands on his back, the pulse of the music, the ridiculous riot of light—that's what mattered. But still I pressed things further, because that's who I am and what I do.

“Did you lay that girl down and make sweet, sweet love to her?” I asked, channeling the same muse that inspired Elliot Pressman's ode to Cranberry. “Did your bodies entwine right here in grain dust and mouse turds?”

“Not in the silo. We did things in the field behind it.”

Crazy, right? No bullshit, no “oh baby, there's you and there's only ever been you”? Maybe it should have bothered me, but it didn't. He was fully clothed and yet he was naked.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because you asked.”

Is that all it took? Okay then. “Did you really burn down the QuickChek?” I asked.

He laughed. “Short answer: no.”

“Long answer?”

“Hell no. Keith Lutz is a pyro and brought me along when he and Joe Dalton wanted to burn some stuff. Always good to have a scapegoat on hand. A farm boy with a
shitty
father is a perfect one.”

“Is the other rumor a lie as well?”

“What's the other rumor?”

“You know. The doozy. About you having three kids and all that.”

“I don't know.”

“You don't know the rumor?”

“I don't know about having three kids. There were never any blood tests that I'm aware of.”

“Wait a second,” I said, and though I was tempted to stop dancing, I didn't stop dancing because I was enjoying the dancing. “Did you take Jane Rolling here?”

“She was my girlfriend. We did things together. That's what you do. You've had boyfriends, haven't you?”

I have. Never for much longer than a month or two, but at the time I would have called them my boyfriends. Carson Sears. Patrick McCoy. L. T. LaRouche. (That's right. I dated a guy named L. T. LaRouche. Do with that information what you will.)

But me having a boyfriend was besides the point. There was a more pressing matter. “Dylan Hovemeyer,” I said. “Are you using the same moves on me that you used on some girl you knocked up?”

“We also went to the movies,” he said. “We went to dinner. Are those things off-limits too? I wanted to have a nice afternoon with you. Isn't this nice?”

The chorus kicked in again. He couldn't possibly have planned
the timing, but goddamn, goddamn. Those lights did their thing, the music boomed, and it
was
nice. There was no denying it. As there was no denying this:

“You're a father,” I said. “A dad. I'm dancing in a silo with a dad.”

“I'm only a kid trying to figure things out. Hoping that you don't blow to smithereens.”

For that whole time in the silo, I had forgotten all about the spontaneous combustions. I guess that says something. I had spent so much energy in the previous weeks trying to push those images and ideas out of my mind . . . when all I needed was a power ballad and a homemade disco ball.

I was a little mad, a little confused, a little stunned by how things had gotten here, but mostly I was sharing the same thought. I was hoping to God he wouldn't blow to smithereens, right there in my arms.

And he didn't.

D
id we do the deed? If by “do the deed,” you mean did we make out furiously until we were cut off by Dylan's phone ringing—if by “do the deed,” you mean did he then give his phone a glance and say, “I gotta take this”—then yes, the deed was most thoroughly done.

There wasn't much to the phone call. A few “uh-huhs” and “I understands” and then it was back to the ice-cream truck for us.

“Do you mind if I ask who that was?” I said, as I slid into my cracked vinyl seat.

“I don't,” he replied, and he backed the truck onto the dirt road and jammed it into gear. “It was a woman named Carla Rosetti. I've got to go and meet with her right now.”

“You mean Special Agent Carla Rosetti? Of the FBI?” If he couldn't hear the excitement in my voice, then he could certainly feel it in the vibrations I was sending through the thin frame of the truck by stomping after every word.

“The same,” he said, and he reached to turn on the radio, to fill the truck with music so we didn't have to talk, I guess. But there was no radio. So he rapped his knuckles on the dash, then gave the wheel a firm squeeze.

“She's, like, my hero,” I told him.

“Well, your hero wants to talk to me about Cranberry Bollinger.”

“Madness! What do you have to do with Cranberry?”

“Nothing, but I ran into Carla on Friday night. After you left with the Dalton twins. She wants to clear a few things up.”

“Wait, wait, wait. You refer to Special Agent Carla Rosetti as Carla? Like you two are best buds or something?”

“Not best buds. But we go back.”

“You
go back
? With Special Agent Carla Rosetti? You didn't skip the light fandango in a silo with her, did you?”

God, what a moment that would have been. I could picture Rosetti folding her coat and placing it gently on the floor, and then grabbing Dylan and waltzing perfect circles around the silo. She would lead of course; and she wouldn't even take off her holster because she's always on the job.

“No fandangoing,” Dylan assured me. “But she did arrest my brother, Warren.”

“Hold up. How did I not know this?”

“Probably because you don't know everything,” he said. He was teasing, of course, but I was beginning to wonder when I'd gotten so far out of the loop. If I didn't know the sexual preferences and arrest records of my peers, then what sort of nonsense was I filling my brain with?

“I probably just forgot,” I said. “So remind me. What did Warren do?”

“Nothing. They say he posted threats on Facebook. The arrest didn't happen around here though. He was at prep school in Connecticut. After Dad died, Warren wanted to escape for a bit. Mom had the money to fund his escape.”

“What were the threats?”

“To”—Dylan provided the requisite air quotes—“
burn all you fuckers to the ground
.”

Holy shit, right? Where was that radio now?

“
All
us fuckers?” I asked carefully. “Or particular fuckers?”

“That wasn't specified,” he said with a sigh. “But when you attend a fancy boarding school in Connecticut and you're the one kid there who doesn't come from hedge-fund money, then the world notices. And the world calls in the FBI. That's how Carla entered our lives.”

Crossing my wrists, I put my hands out like I was ready to be cuffed and asked, “Did she, like, stun gun him and toss him in the shackles?”

“Wasn't like that. There were lawyers. Deals. He got community service and a one-way ticket home. He was sixteen at the time, so he dropped out.”

“So where's Warren now?”

“Living in a little cottage on the south side of our farm. Working at the Fast Lube.”

“Damn. Has Special Agent Carla Rosetti spoken to him?”

“You bet.”

“So why does she want to speak to you?”

“Because she thinks I'm the one who made that original Facebook post.”

“And why would she think that?”

“Because I did.”

I
'd already done my Googling. I knew more than a bit about Special Agent Carla Rosetti. A few highlights, collected from various websites and newspaper archives.

• At the age of eight, a pigtailed Carla Rosetti placed third in a pumpkin-growing contest in Blacksburg, Virginia. 246 pounds. A massive, massive gourd, my friends.

• Thirteen-year-old Carla Rosetti was a member of her high school's Model UN team. She represented Bhutan. Presumably, she rocked that shit, and for at least an afternoon, Bhutan was the greatest country in the world.

• In an 87–34 drubbing of Christianburg High, Ms. Rosetti, then a senior, but only fifteen years old (!), scored a game-high 27 points. In your face, Christianburg!

• At the University of Maryland, criminal-justice major Carla Rosetti was quoted by
The Diamondback
as saying the refurbished student center was “pretty boss” and that it seems like a “chill place to hang with friends.” Thanks for the heads-up, Car-Car. If I'm ever down that way, I'll check it out. Definitely sounds boss. Totally chill.

• After nabbing the infamous “Pawtucket Pyro,” FBI newbie Carla Rosetti received a commendation from the governor of Rhode Island. It may be the smallest in the Union, but they sleep better in the Ocean State thanks to our favorite up-and-coming field agent.

• Carla Rosetti rocks a purple taffeta bridesmaid dress. Congrats on the nuptials Jamir and Heidi. What a beautiful farm that was! What a beautiful wedding! And that picture of you two hugging the llama? Priceless.

• Carla Rosetti has killed a man.

Okay, this one needs a bit more background. The guy's name was Gordon Laramie and he was one of those mouth breathers with an Armageddon hard-on. A few years ago, he was hiding out in the
remote woods of northern New Hampshire, stockpiling Chunky Soup in an underground bunker he'd built out of shipping containers. He'd laced the perimeter with land mines acquired from some shady French Canadians. When a couple of hikers lost their way one foggy autumn morning, they stumbled upon Mr. Laramie's hideout and over one of the aforementioned land mines.

A land mine is a lot lazier than a spontaneous combustion. By that I mean it doesn't always finish the job. In this case, it blew the right leg off one hiker and the left leg off the other. Luckily, they were both paramedics and had the Rolls-Royce of first aid kits on hand. They managed to shoot themselves full of morphine and apply tourniquets to each other's stumps. Then they strapped their bodies together with belts and duct tape and used their two good legs to walk a mile to a logging road, where they flagged down a guy on a quadrunner who strapped them to the back, alongside the nine-point buck he'd just bagged. He rushed them to a ranger station, where they called in a medevac helicopter and the FBI.

Because of her experience with arsonists and explosion enthusiasts, Carla Rosetti arrived that evening with a bomb squad and SWAT team in tow. She commanded the team from a distance—stationed in an ATV decked out with video surveillance—and they stormed the underground bunker aided by assorted gizmos.

Of course, Gordon Laramie proved to be wilier than assorted gizmos. Expecting their arrival, he had devised a ruse. Earlier that day, he had kidnapped Ruben Howe, owner and proprietor of the Grahamville General Store, and locked him in the bunker. The SWAT team was rocking infrared goggles, so when they detected movement underground, they assumed they had their man.

Their man
, however, was creeping through the woods, donning the skin and antlers of a recently killed moose as a disguise. As the SWAT team was descending into the bunker, Laramie was creeping up on Rosetti and her small team of unarmed technicians, his makeshift crown of antlers rattling against the low-hanging branches.

Now, I'm not sure how many people have had a good old-fashioned shootout with a man wearing a moose skin and antlers, but I'm guessing it's only one.

You know who.

The details of the shootout are sketchy at best. In interviews she did for an extended piece about the case in
Salon
, Rosetti described the situation as the “fog of war,” and repeatedly talked about “simply doing her job.”

Well, she simply did her job pretty damn well, because that evening they carried Gordon Laramie out in a body bag and a hyperventilating, but safe, Ruben Howe out in a stretcher. Apparently they found a manifesto of some sort, but Rosetti never shared that with the press. After all, you don't want anyone else influenced by the rantings of a madman.

Reading the
Salon
piece, I imagined the moose-frocked Laramie running at Rosetti with a shotgun blasting, her diving behind a tree, and chunks of bark exploding in the frosty air. I imagined Rosetti pulling a pistol from her boot, rolling over and unloading—
pop-pop-pop
—as the fog settled in. I imagined the fog clearing, and Rosetti standing over Laramie's dying body and pulling out an e-cigarette, taking a drag and it lighting up all blue at the tip as she said, “Moose season is officially . . . over.”