The Dead Student (5 page)

Love dreams were best forgot, he thought.

He did not know whether Andy Candy would actually show up. She had said she would, and she was probably the most honest person he knew, now that his uncle was dead. But the realist in him—a very small part, he inwardly conceded—had doubts. He knew he had been cryptic and obtuse and probably a little scary on the phone, with his sudden talk of murder.

“I wouldn’t come meet me,” he whispered to himself above the sound of the bus engine’s slowing for his stop. He rose and pushed himself into the bright early afternoon sun.

He stuck to a wide path that paralleled the entrance drive into the park. More than one jogger cruised past him beneath the cypress trees that shaded the route. He ignored the coral rock building, where a young woman sold tickets and maps and which had a large “Florida’s Disappearing Habitat” sign out front, with pictures of how squeezed for territory all the native animals were. He paused near a stand of palm trees that edged up against Biscayne Bay, where a young Latin American couple were going through a wedding rehearsal. The priest was smiling, trying to relax everyone by making jokes, which neither mother seemed to find even remotely funny.

Moth waited at the end of the parking lot on a bench that had a single palm that shaded it. He could hear high-pitched laughter from the tip of the park, where a wide, shallow man-made lagoon created a special place for small children to play. The nearby beach seemed to glow silver in the strong sunlight.

He was going to pull out his cell phone, check the time, but stopped himself. If Andy Candy was late, he didn’t want to know it. He thought,
There’s always a risk in counting on someone else. Maybe they don’t come. Maybe they die.

Closing his eyes for a moment against the glare, he counted heartbeats, as if he could take the pulse of his emotions. When he opened his eyes, he saw a small red sedan come into the lot and pull into a space near the back. Like many cars in Miami, it had tinted glass, but he caught a glimpse of blond hair and knew it was Andy Candy.

Before she was out of the car, he was on his feet. He waved, and she waved back.

Faded jeans on her long legs and a light pastel-blue T-shirt. Her hair was pulled back in an informal ponytail, the way she typically put it when going jogging or swimming. When she spotted Moth, she slipped off her dark sunglasses. Moth’s eyes took her in, trying to see similarities and changes all at once. With each step she took closing the distance between them, he could feel a surge of some runaway feeling gathering within him.

Andy Candy almost stopped in her tracks. Moth seemed thin to her, as if his already-lithe body had somehow been shaved away by the years since high school. His tangled hair was longer than she remembered it and his clothes seemed to hang reluctantly from his body. She had not known what she would say; she was unsure whether she should kiss him, give him a small hug, maybe just shake his hand, or perhaps do nothing. She didn’t want to hesitate, nor did she want to seem eager.

She steadily crossed the parking lot.
Not fast. Not slow,
she told herself.

He stepped forward, out of the palm’s shade.
Wave. Smile. Act normal, whatever that is,
he told himself.

They met halfway.

He started to lift his arms to embrace her.

She leaned forward, but held her hands out in front of her.

The awkwardness resulted in a semi-touch. Their arms went to each other’s elbows. They kept a little distance between them.

“Hello, Moth,” she said.

“Hi, Andrea.”

She smiled. “Long time.”

He nodded. “I should have …” he started, but stopped.

She shook her head. “You know, I didn’t think I’d ever see you again. I thought you’d just go your way and I’d go mine, and that was it.”

“We had some memories together,” he said.

She shrugged a little. “Teenage memories. And that’s all, I figured.”

“More than teenage,” he said. “Some were pretty adult.” He smiled.

“Yes. I remember those, too,” she said. She added a small, disarming grin.

“And now here we are,” he said.

“Yes. Here we are.”

They were silent for a moment.

“I bought a little food and something to drink,” Moth said. “How about we find one of the picnic tables and talk there.”

“Okay,” she said.

The first thing he said when they arrived at a shaded table was, “I’m sorry I was so, I don’t know, on the phone …”

“You were scary. I almost didn’t come.”

“Half a sandwich,” he said. “The fizzy drink is for you.”

She half-laughed. “You remembered that. I don’t think I’ve had one of these since …” She stopped. She didn’t have to say
when we were together
for him to understand it. She pushed the sandwich toward him. “I had lunch already. You eat it. You look like you could use it.” Her tone had a tinge of toughness.

He nodded, acknowledging the accuracy in her statement. “But you’re still beautiful. Even more beautiful than …” He stopped. He did not want to remind her of their breakup, although seeing him would do little else.

She shrugged. “Don’t feel beautiful,” she said. “Just a little older.” Again, she smiled, before adding, “We’re both older now.”

He took a bite from the sandwich and she continued to stare at him. He thought her look was a little like a funeral parlor director eyeing a newly arrived corpse for a suit of
in the coffin
clothes.

“What happened to you, Moth?” Andy Candy asked.

“You mean …”

“Yeah. After we broke up.”

“I went to college. Studied hard. Got really good grades. I graduated with high honors. Wouldn’t go to law school like my dad wanted. I got started on a graduate program in American History because I didn’t know what else to do. Kind of useless, I guess from his point of view—examining past events—even if it’s something I love doing …”

He stopped. He knew his curriculum vitae wasn’t what she was asking about. “I got into trouble with alcohol,” he said quietly. “Lots of trouble. I’m what shrinks like my uncle call a binge drinker. Started as soon as I left home. It was like walking a tightrope. Step one: keep up the grades; Step two: get drunk; Step three: write an A paper. Step four: get very drunk—you get the idea.”

“And now?” she asked.

“That sort of trouble never leaves you,” he said. “But it was my uncle Ed who was seeing me through. Putting me in a better place.”

Sometimes a single piercing look is as good as a question. That was what Andy Candy used to make Moth continue.

“And he died. I found his body.”

“He killed himself. That’s what you said, but—”

He interrupted her. “That’s exactly what I don’t believe. Not for one fucking instant.”

The sudden obscenity was like a window onto some anger that Andy Candy didn’t remember in him. She saw Moth look up into the pale blue sky before continuing.

“It’s what I told you on the phone: He wouldn’t leave me alone. Partners. That’s what we were. We had an agreement. I don’t know, maybe you could call it an arrangement. A promise. It was convenient for both of us. He’d stay sober helping me. I’d stay sober helping him by letting him help me. It’s hard to understand unless you’re a drunk. I’m sorry that doesn’t make sense, but there it is.”

He was a little embarrassed describing himself as
a drunk,
no matter how accurate. He looked over at Andy Candy. She was no longer the girl from high school who had taken his virginity in losing hers. The woman
in front of him seemed like the work of an artist who had taken the few lines that sketched out a teenager and added color and shape to create a full portrait.

Andy Candy nodded. She was struck by the notion that it was altogether possible that there was no one in her life she knew better than Moth, and no one who was more a stranger.

“And now?” she asked. “Now you want to kill some mysterious someone?”

Moth smiled. “It does sound ridiculous, doesn’t it?”

Andy Candy didn’t have to reply to this question, either. She was not smiling.

“But I’m going to.”

“Why?”

“It’s a matter of honor,” Moth said, making a small Elizabethan sweeping gesture. “It’s the least I can do.”

“That’s stupid,” Andy Candy said. “And overly romantic. You’re not a cop. You don’t know anything about killing.”

“I’m a fast learner,” Moth replied.

Again there was a little bit of silence. Moth rotated slightly so he could look out over the water.

“I didn’t expect you to understand,” he said. What he wanted to say was,
This is a debt and I’m going to repay it and I don’t trust anyone else—especially not some cop or the court system.
He did not say this out loud; he thought he should, then told himself he shouldn’t.

Andy Candy looked over to the same distant blue waves. “Yes you did,” she said. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have called me.” She started to stand up.
Get out of here. Leave right now!
The voices shouting within her were like a schizophrenic’s unbidden commands: powerful, undeniable.
Walk away right now. The Moth you loved once is gone.

“Andy,” he said cautiously, “I didn’t know where else to turn.”

Andy Candy lowered herself back onto the bench. She took a long sip of the sweet fizzy lemon-flavored drink.

“Moth, why do you think I can help you?”

“I don’t know. I just remembered …” He stopped there. She watched him turn to the water, then to the sky. She reached out her hand, then abruptly withdrew it. He must have seen the motion, because he pivoted back toward her and put his hand on top of hers. For an instant, she looked down at their hands. She could feel electric memory right through her skin. Then she pulled her hand out of his.

“Don’t touch me,” she said, quietly, almost a whisper.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to …”

“I don’t want anyone to touch me ever again,” she said. These words spilled from her lips, half-despairing, half-angry. She was suddenly afraid that she would start crying and that everything that had happened to her would burst to the surface. She could see Moth trying to comprehend what she was saying.

“I shouldn’t have anything to do with you,” she added. The words were harsh, but they softened as she spoke them. “You broke my heart.”

Moth shook his head. “I broke my own heart, too. I was stupid, Andy. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want an apology,” she said. She inhaled sharply and slid into an organized, officious tone. “This is clearly, unequivocally a mistake. You hearing me, Moth? A mistake. But what is it you want me to do?”

“I lost my license. Can you drive me a couple of places?”

“Yes. I could do that.”

“Come with me while I talk to a couple of people?”

“Yes. If that’s all.”

“No,” he said slowly, “there’s one other thing.”

“Okay. What?”

“The minute you think I’m completely crazy, tell me. Then walk away forever.”

This was the only thing he knew he had to say to her and the only thing he’d practiced on the bus ride over to the park.

She paused. A part of her insisted,
Say that right now—get up and leave and don’t look back.
Andy Candy felt like she was sliding down a steep shale
rock slope, losing control. She looked at Moth and thought she should do this for him because once she had loved him with fervent teenage intensity and helping him now would be the only way to truly end all the leftover feelings that had lodged within her.

“Finish your sandwich,” she said.

4

Eat the gun,
she thought.

Not without permission.

Hell, you don’t need anyone else to make that decision, no matter what the rules might be. Just eat the gun.

Susan Terry looked across the table at the public defender, who was seated next to his client, a lanky, scared-looking, seventeen-year-old inner-city man-kid who had been caught with a pound of marijuana in his knapsack on his way to classes in his senior year of high school. Beneath the pound of grass was a cheap .25-caliber semiautomatic pistol, of the sort that once upon a time had been called a Saturday Night Special, a phrase now in disuse because in Miami, like every other American city, every night could be a Saturday night.

The public defender was a former nice-guy classmate from law school who had simply landed on the opposite side of the criminal justice assembly line. A decade ago, they had shared a successful moot court argument together, as well as some blow, and Susan knew he was now overworked and overwhelmed. If she were going to cut anyone a break, it would be
him. And in Miami, a pound of weed really wasn’t a substantial amount, especially in a city that in its heyday had seen
tons
of cocaine seized.

For a moment, she paused, her eyes scanning the arrest documents and initial court pleadings, while her ears absorbed and ignored the near-constant cacophony of angry voices and slamming metal barriers that filled the county jail. A constant music of despair.

The kid had been riding a bicycle. The arresting cop’s lame explanation for stopping him and searching him was that he was steering the bike “erratically.” That, she thought, could accurately describe
any
teenager riding a bicycle. It might hold up in court. It might not.

And the cop had made another mistake: He had pulled the kid over a block outside the “drug-free” designation of the school district. Twenty-five more yards and the kid would be destined for the state penitentiary no matter how much legal flexibility Susan Terry might have mustered.

More likely,
she thought,
the cop spotted the backpack and had a bad feeling about it and didn’t want to wait. And it turned out he was pretty much right.

She and her former classmate both knew this. In her head she was preparing a legal-search-and-seizure argument, just as she knew he was.