The Illusionist (16 page)

I stood there, the rain falling harder now, slicking down my hair, running down my face, my sneakers soaked through, my feet numb, standing there eyes pinned on the windows where somewhere, he had to be. “Dean! . . . Deeeeean!”

*  *  *

After a while, my voice was gone and my throat was sore. Nothing could come out of it any more, and I turned and began to walk home, slower now because of the driving rain, because I was exhausted. I walked back up Washington through the town, then along Route 7, soaked to the skin.

All day long, I waited by the phone for him to call. At 4
P.M.,
I heard the sound of the key turning in the front door. The door opened, and she entered. Right away I saw her eagle eyes scan the place. Mommy missed nothing, everything in her was attuned to me, to all dangers, real or imagined, and right away she sensed something was wrong. “Where's Dean?” she asked.

“He had to go see his mom. She's having an operation or
something. . . .” She looked at me, doubt in her dark eyes. She knew I was lying, like she knew everything about me. She could see right through me. But she said nothing.

“His truck's still here,” she said.

“His brother came and got him.”

“Is the mom okay?”

“Yeah. It's like appendicitis or something.” She said nothing. But I knew she doubted me.

That evening, after we had dinner, we watched TV. She was lying on the couch when the phone rang. The sound pierced the air like a scream and I ran to get it before she could. On the other end of the line, there was a clanking sound, of coins dropping in the box, then a series of clicks. “Mellie?” It was
his
voice, it sounded hoarse, weary.

“O God!” I whispered into the phone. “You okay?” I glanced over at her. She didn't seem to be listening.

“Listen. You gotta get me out of here,” he said. She was lying there on the couch, eyes fixed on the TV, like she wasn't paying attention. “They put two hundred dollars bail on me,” he said. “They put me in with the women. You got to get me out of here, Mellie!”

“O Jesus . . . I don't know how to get you out . . . What should I do?”

“Get some money,” he said.

“Where can I get two hundred dollars?”

“I'm gonna die here, Mellie. Please. . . .”

“I'll try,” I said. “Oh Dean . . .”

“There's a line here,” he said. “People behind me. I have to go. Please, hurry up. Do it now,” he said.

*  *  *

I waited until morning. At sunrise I got up and dressed. “Why're you up?” she asked, when she saw me in the hall. I always slept late. She always got up early because she was so fastidious about getting ready for work.

“I wanted to get an early start,” I said.

While she was in the shower, I ran outside to the mailbox. I opened it, snatched the
Ledger-Republican
out before she could see it, and stuffed it under my sweatshirt.

Back in the house, she kissed me good-bye. I could smell her sweet perfume, her morning scents of soap and shampoo. She was so pretty going to work, like she was going to meet important people, not just work at the travel agency.

When she had gone, I took the paper out. The front page had a story about a big fire on River Street, two volunteer firemen killed. I didn't stop to read it. I dug through the pages looking for the police blotter. I came to it and there was a headline, three columns wide. “Police Arrest West Taponac Woman Dressed as Man in Check-Cashing Scheme.” I read the story underneath it. “Eleven previous arrests,” it said. They had listed all his charges, “Criminal impersonation . . . bad checks . . . traffic violations.” They said he had been living two months in Sparta, impersonating a man.

It was a mistake. A terrible mistake. They were saying that just because Dean was so beautiful, because they couldn't believe any boy could be that beautiful.

*  *  *

By 8:30
A.M.,
I was standing outside the check-cashing place on Washington Street, waiting. At 9
A.M.,
the man arrived and pulled up the metal gate. I was the first customer. I filled in the lines on the blank check Mommy had given me for the highlights, above her signature with the pretty feminine handwriting, handwriting that looked like it was drawing. In the space for the amount, I wrote $200.

There it was, those big figures above her signature. I slid the check under the plexiglass window, and the man counted the bills out, one by one onto the counter. She wouldn't know about this, I thought, till she got her statement at the end of the month, or if she was overdrawn.

I tucked the money into my jeans pocket, and I ran with it to the police station. The black cop was on duty again, cold, silky-skinned. He must have seen so much that I was nothing to him. Every day there were hysterical women standing in front of him begging to see their men. I handed him the money.

“When will they let him out?” I asked.

“Takes time for the paperwork,” he said.

“That's okay. I'll wait. I don't care.”

And so I waited. In the stale warmth of the police station, I fell asleep. All afternoon, I drifted in and out of consciousness, in the background the radio squawking, and then another radio somewhere, playing tinny music, and voices around me.

*  *  *

I woke up with a start. He was standing above me, his face pale, like a ghost. He was still as a statue, as if he'd been standing there for hours, watching me.

“Mellie.”

“Oh my God . . .” I jumped up and threw my arms around him. But he just stood stiffly, arms at his side. He didn't like it when I touched him, I realized, when I got too close to him and my breasts were touching his chest. But now I had permission to hold him. It was okay now because of what happened I could welcome him. And he stood there, arms down at his side, defeated and exhausted. The cop behind the counter was staring at us. I didn't care.

“Oh Jesus, you okay?” I took his arm, and I lead him like he was sick or something outside and away from the police station.

“I'm hungry,” he said. Uncle Dom's was on Washington, a block away. “We'll go to Uncle Dom's,” I said.

We walked up the silent street, me holding on tight to his arm. “O sweetheart, what did they do to you?” And again, I realized I was calling him sweetheart and that I'd never dared to do that before, that somehow I had been scared of him, scared because though I knew he loved me, he didn't want me to get too close.

“I can't talk about it now,” he said. So noble, I thought. “It was real bad.” He shook his head. Then looked at me. “Thank you, baby. Where did you get the money?”

“From the blank check Mommy gave me for the hairdresser.”

He stopped. “She's gonna go batshit!” he said.

“She won't know about it for weeks. Then, we'll deal with it. I'll get a job. I'll pay her back.”

“Is my truck okay?” he asked. His truck was his only real possession, it was everything to him.

“It's fine. Still parked right in the driveway.”

“Oh Mellie,” he sighed. He looked relieved. “I love you. I love you so much.”

*  *  *

We walked home together through the town, and then along Route 7, holding hands, him carrying his backpack. When we got to the house, she was there, home from work and waiting. As we entered, she was sitting at the dining table, the newspaper spread out in front of her. When she saw us come in, her eyes widened, but for a moment, she said nothing. Then, “Dean,” she said, carefully.

“Mrs. Saluggio, I'm sorry. I really am. I didn't do anything. This woman—she was just jealous, jealous 'cause of Mellie. She wants me to get in trouble.”

She watched him with her eyes like shining coals. Planning her reply, I knew.

“What about what's in the paper?” she asked. “What they said about you. . . . They said—this stuff about you pretending to be a boy.”

He sat down on the couch, buried his head in his hands. We watched him. There was silence in the house.

Finally, he raised his head, digging his fingers into the side of his cheeks. “It's a mistake,” he said. “It's all a crazy mistake.”

“It
was,
Mommy,” I cried. “They hate him!”

“I'm sorry, Dean,” she said. “I can't let you stay here anymore.
I'm sorry,” she said. Their eyes were fixed on each other. “But I've got to think about Mellie.”

“But I love him, Mommy!” I said.

She kept her eyes on him, ignoring me. “I have to think about AIDS,” she said.

He looked up, as if he didn't understand. “AIDS?”

“Yes,” she said.

“But I don't have AIDS! What do you mean, AIDS?”

She stood up, removed the dirty glasses and cups from the dining table where they'd been sitting all day because I hadn't cleaned up that morning. “I'm sorry, Dean, but gay people carry AIDS.” She stood up, began carrying the dirty breakfast dishes into the kitchen.

I saw Dean's shoulders slump, like she had punched him in the gut.

Then, he took a deep breath. He stood up. He moved slowly around the couch, reached down, and hoisted his backpack on his shoulder. For a moment, he stood there without moving, as if hoping she would change her mind.

“He's got nowhere to go!” I cried.

“I'm sorry, Mellie,” she said. “I have to think of you.”

He stood on the threshold of the front door, his shoulder slumped and defeated. Then he opened the door, stood there a moment, the cold air rushing in. He turned, and he looked across the room with hurt eyes. “I don't have AIDS,” he said. “And I'm
not
gay.”

The day after Dean got arrested at Melanie Saluggio's house, anyone who didn't already know the truth about Dean learned it from the newspaper. Even when they strip-searched him in the jail, and the cops discovered the truth, Dean still insisted he was a man.

They locked him in the woman's section, which he protested violently, and they had to place him in restraints.

The news about Dean spread, it was bigger news than the fire on River Street, two firemen killed, or the scandal about Police Chief Trevor and the shakedowns of drug dealers. The news of Dean spread through parents to their children, it was out loud what people had already known since the moment they laid eyes upon him. Or
her.
Or—the truth they had realized seconds thereafter, but didn't want to admit to themselves—for their own reasons. Now they were forced to face it.

The news made people smile. Gays were no big deal in Sparta, but the disguise was unusual, the girl committing the crime. Unusual kind of headline in the paper too. Grown-ups had seen it all, but the kids hadn't, and they had to learn. The news was like the movies, something to do, better than
Montel
or
Ricki Lake.
And it was, for a few days at least, a mark of distinction if you could say you had known Dean, even a little. If you had gone to the Laundercenter while he was still there, if he had made change
for you, sold you detergent, folded your clothes. If you had spoken to him at the Wooden Nickel.

*  *  *

The night after it was published in the paper, I was at the Wooden Nickel at my usual spot under the Genny sign. It was a neon sign, with a mermaid outlined in bright pink and mauve, her hair long and flowing, her tail curled. At the other end of the bar, Carl was making a list of something on a piece of paper, sipping coffee from the cup at his side.

A few feet away from me at the bar were two men, dressed in camouflage jackets like they'd been out hunting. “She pees standing up,” one of them was saying. “I saw it myself in the men's room at City Shop. . . . I walked in and there she was standing at the urinal, I swear to God.”

“A girl can't do that,” the other one said. “It would get all over.”

“I saw it.”

“Well, she must have something I don't.”

“Yeah—a long tongue!” And they chuckled into their glasses.

Then suddenly Carl, at the other end of the bar, fixed them with his icy blue eyes. “Let her be,” said Carl. “Have pity on her. She's just a poor creature.” Carl almost never spoke up, mostly he was just a silent presence watching over us, and now the two men were embarrassed and grew quiet.

Carl walked along the bar to where I was sitting. He leaned over toward me and lowered his voice. “Did you hear? Melanie bailed him out?”

“With what!”

“Brian Perez said her mom gave her a blank check to go to the hairdresser's. She told him that.”

“Is he still at Melanie's now?”

“Brian said Melanie's mother won't let him stay there anymore. She's afraid of AIDS.”

“Where's he going to go then?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Crazy kid,” he said. “I don't know. . . .”
His voice trailed off. And he moved off down the bar, wiping the old wood with his cloth, shaking his head as he went.

*  *  *

It seemed like Dean had disappeared. Then a couple of nights later at the bar, Carl said, “I saw him last night. I came outside around two when I closed up, and his truck was parked right there in the lot. He'd taped clothes up over the windows so you couldn't see in. I banged on the window but he didn't answer. But I knew he was inside. So I figured if he didn't want to talk, I'd leave him alone. And when I came in again this morning to open up, his truck was gone.” Like some crazy homeless person, I thought, sleeping out in the open where anybody could get at him. And yet still trying to make privacy for himself, doesn't want to be disturbed, the way homeless people sometimes act.

*  *  *

Christmas Eve came a week later. I had Christmas Eve dinner over at my dad and Liz's. As Liz served the food, she was all flustered and resentful, though she put on a cheery face, because she'd had to work all day and then rush home to fix dinner so there could be a Christmas celebration for me because next day I was going to be with my mom and Mason.