Walking the Dog (15 page)

“This is a nonconversation,” I stated.

“We've always been this way,” he replied. Which wasn't true. We'd never been any way. I didn't know this person.

“David Sessions is in residence,” Leonard said. “Do you like him?”

“Adore him,” I said.

There was silence.

“He's gay,” I added quietly.

“I know,” Leonard said.

There was another long silence.

“What's really going on with you?” Leonard asked. But there didn't seem to be a real passion behind the question. More like fear.

“Just what I've said. What about you? I have a strong instinct that there's a six-foot, blond Danish woman in your life.” I paused. “And furthermore, I
think this is a very strange meal. I don't think either of us is saying one word of truth.”

Leonard tapped the tabletop with his long fingers and averted his eyes.

“But I would like some apple pie,” I went on. “And you want a divorce or an annulment. The Torn Tuba.”

Leonard smiled. “The ketubah. We never had one.” He leaned his long frame toward me. His eyes looked sad behind his horn-rimmed glasses.

“Essie,” he started.

“Wait I . . . I have to go to the bathroom. Hold that life-changing sentence.”

I practically ran to the ladies' room and fell into a stall. I sobbed and heaved. I pulled myself together, checked to see if anyone was around, took a pipe from my purse, and lit up. Immediately the universe came into perspective. I returned to Leonard.

“You were saying . . . ”

“I don't want to do the legal thing yet,” he said. His voice was a little fuzzy. “I really like you as my wife. I know you're fucking around with Miko. I've talked to him.”

“You what?”

“I called him to find you. I asked him if he'd killed you yet. He said he was working on it.”

“You didn't have any right to do that.” I was furious.

“I'm your husband. I like being your husband. I'm going to move back here so you don't go down the rabbit hole. Look.”

He laid out some brochures. I took a quick glance. Payne Whitney, Hazelden, McLean's—hospitals.

“You need to get clean,” he said. “You're a full-fledged junkie now.”

I stood up from the table.

“I'm divorcing you,” I said.

Tears made marks on Leonard's cheeks. “You don't have time,” he said.

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean you'll lose the energy. You won't bother. You're insane on coke and meth. I'm coming back and setting you straight.”

“What makes you think you can do that?” I was about to walk off.

“I'm your husband, your hero,” Leonard smiled.

He was nuts.

“Do me a favor and finish out your fellowship, and when you've made a jungle gym that even God can't duplicate, come home and we'll discuss this. But in the meantime—fuck you.”

“Remember what the caterpillar said to Alice,” he shouted from the distance. But it was too late.

I walked out of Bully's. I drove to New Hampshire at eighty miles an hour, daring a cop to stop me. I made record time.

“Why didn't you tell me you were talking to Leonard?” I screamed at Miko.

Miko shrugged and smiled.

“He's a jerk. But he's got a good nerdy sense of humor.” Miko lit a reefer and sighed in deeply. “Don't worry, I didn't tell him important stuff. It's just boyfriends jousting and I'm so ahead.”

46. The dinner with Leonard and the follow-up with Miko left me paranoid and restless. I decided to escape into my studies at college. I hadn't been to my dorm room in so long it was like visiting my first room as a child. Only this room contained half-finished paintings, giant imitation Japanese symbols I'd painted in black on the walls, and a thick piece of foam for crashing. The paintings I'd been working on were collages that were triptychs. There were exact replicas of cartoon characters: Dagwood, Dondi, Doonesbury, Brenda Starr, Mary Worth, Archie—odd combinations I'd replicated exactly from newspapers and books. I'd torn up white T-shirts and lithographed prints of Native American kachina dolls, copied paintings of Hindu gods, and pages from the Torah. The sides of the canvases were lined with glossy primary colors on which I'd painted primitive fish, fruits, and dolls much like the outsider art from St. Lucia and Jamaica. Within thick gobs of paint I'd stuck some Cartier gold and diamonds. The paintings were exuberant and full of humor. Twisted metal stuffed with stolen goods from all the heists, over which I'd poured darker shades of red and amber, blues, greens, and gray stripes. Over all this I'd meticulously drawn faces in black. When you looked closely their expressions were terrified and ferocious. I didn't wonder what the artistic community would think of this totally different style in the “sculpture garden.” The only person who saw it was David Sessions. He told me that it was diabolical genius and that if there were real gods I was probably provoking some kind of curse on this poor, mediocre liberal arts college.

After seeing Leonard I stretched a large canvas and began to paint, truly paint, which I hadn't done in a long time. I was elaborating on children's stick figures in odd combinations, from loving to pornographic to American families. The families were the most interesting because the mothers and fathers and children came out in very diverse colors, sizes, and energies. Family dynamics were bizarre. Dominant, abusive fathers and kind, maternal grandmothers. Delinquent children. Brilliant prodigies and psychopathic younger siblings. “Regular” families throwing plants at each other. Widows taken care of by overweight daughters. Fathers playing sports with sons. Mothers cooking with daughters. Catatonic, depraved, obese triplets in front of television sets. Love. Laughter. Violent fights. Some families dressed to the hilt. Some half-naked. Perfection. Tenderness. Incest. I was scribbling and moving at an uncharacteristic speed. The canvas seemed filled, with me as a Peeping Tom looking into the window of a whole apartment building. At the top of the canvas I wrote “American Dream.”

I don't know for how long I painted. But luckily—God blessedly—this spurt of creativity coincided with the New Hampshire State Police arriving at our campus to interrogate the population concerning a series of pranks and robberies taking place in the New England area. These minor crimes had taken place very far apart and were most likely unrelated, but, nonetheless, the timing of it all was highly unusual and the style of the burglaries seemed to share a similar philosophy or game. The police in each state were starting at colleges, mainly at fraternities and
sororities, to see if this might have its roots in hazing or initiations. But since my college had no Greeks, the police were conducting a very cursory sweep through the small student body. When they arrived at my studio I was covered in paint and freshly filled with coke, so I was fun and articulate. I spoke with them about what I felt was the oddness of their list and how hard it would be to put it together. They spoke to me about four of my friends who'd dropped out recently or transferred cross-country, but since the robberies had continued after their leaving, their names were virtually irrelevant. The police acknowledged that they knew I was a child prodigy and had a small fortune, but thought perhaps boredom and entitlement might lead me to become involved in crime. But when they saw me drenched in paint and practically glued to a new canvas they were embarrassed. They confided in me that, if the crimes were initiated from a college, they had their eye closely on Dartmouth because it had a reputation for drugs and wild parties, plus highly intellectual students. On the other hand they could be completely off track with colleges and were looking into communes and ashrams that had low supervision.

I called Miko immediately after they left and told him we had to abandon the Wolfmanns jewelry heist because the cops were investigating our earlier crimes.

“This is the perfect time, idiot,” he laughed. “They're looking all over for pranksters and amateurs and we're the real thing. “We're going to do the job that makes criminals look like heroes.”

He was probably correct, I thought to my stoned self. I was going to be a varmint-rat-Hells-Angel-girl
hero. Leonard's name sang in my head like the theme song of a children's morning TV show. No. Guilt. No. I just didn't feel it. I lost the urge to finish my painting and instead took out the Sunbeam Tiger with the oversized racing engine that I was going to use to knock the Wolfmanns' van off the road. The Tiger looked like a sports car—an old Thunderbird, small and harmless. But Miko and I had built its body with the steel they use for army vehicles and attached tires that they used in crash-car competitions. You could fly over three trucks in a row, land with a boom, and probably not even scuff the rubber. I never built anything like this before with Leonard. I loved this car. And I was so ready to do damage. I'd shared some of Miko's meth and it had given me a hungry curiosity for violence, not necessarily the wish to do it. But I took the Sunbeam out at dusk and drove up the mountains to the most treacherous roads to see how fast I could make the curves. We'd added a couple of special gears to avoid skidding, but I didn't care if the car went out of control. Life was interesting but not the be-all and end-all. I had no fear of death. I had no inner sensitivity toward how desperately trapped and miserable I was.

By the way,
American Dream
is worth a fortune now, and my parents aren't allowed to sell it or exhibit it. If you ever find yourself in a rut . . . What am I saying? You wouldn't go near it would you? You'd rather babysit preschoolers who go to fancy schools that prepare them for Harvard.

47. The day of the heist came. Miko, through his connections,
got the route for the Wolfmanns' jewelry van. I was staked out on my Kawasaki road bike. I'd chosen a driveway on a farm off Route 22, which connected from Route 7 in Vermont and was used by commercial traffic to get to the New York State Thruway. My plan was that, if I saw the van, I'd ride through the fields to a couple farms away where I'd stored the Sunbeam in an abandoned barn. I'd hop in my car as the van passed by, and begin the process of running it off the road. I'd approximated a quarter mile where I'd demobilize the van and then take off. Miko would be waiting in a souped-up VW van with a friend he'd commissioned for the gig named Jess Draper. I didn't know Jess except that he worked at the same car parts shop as Miko. He wore flannel shirts and chewed on toothpicks. I was annoyed. My criminality was ritualistic. It was my secret self. Miko had promised not to tell any other person about our robberies, much less bring some stranger to work with us. Miko reasoned he brought Jess because the van would be loaded with heavy boxes packed with layers of jewelry. He was afraid it would take too long to get the stuff into the new recreational vehicle he'd remade himself. No one was going to go after a camper thinking it was carrying stolen jewels. I mistrusted his whole plan, but he was a professional, rap sheet and all, and I had to respect him.

I sat on my small yellow road bike completely obscured. This was my second high-stakes crime—but my first crime with guns—and I was waiting to see if it would jazz me in a new way. Miko and Jess had the guns. The most violent weapon I'd used was
pepper spray. At first, I was agitated. He said he'd only use them to scare the drivers if they got feisty. Most drivers were so out of it and shocked, they couldn't organize themselves to fight or get angry. I was really pissed off when the guy broke Miko's arm in the Cartier heist. I liked my work to come out the way I'd envisioned it. I needed to feel in control.

I saw the van speeding on toward Route 22. It was a big mother—a custom Cadillac truck—and it had solid wheels and rubber covering the rear bumper. I took off on my Kawasaki and had a blast getting to the designated barn. I jumped ditches and rocks, zoomed through cow turds, and zigzagged through cornfields. I had to clip one barbed-wire fence, which wasn't a problem for me because I used wire scissors constantly in steel sculpture and my hands were strong. I got to the barn with some thorns and nettles sticking into my jeans. The pain only upped the excitement.

When I revved up the Sunbeam it roared like the noble creature it was. It was a convertible and I was dying to put the top down, but couldn't. It would make an easier description for the police. I was about to take off when I glanced over at the passenger seat and saw Miko had put an open box wrapped in foam with a hefty black Magnum inside. The sight of the gun stopped me cold. I wasn't about to use it. I didn't know how. And I was the driver. I was always the driver. I never got near the real confrontations.

I bit back my anger, put the Sunbeam into gear, and tore onto Route 22 as soon as I saw the Wolfmanns' van pass by. I didn't want to play games, yet couldn't help having some fun. I drove up to its
rear bumper and kept at the precise speed so I could follow it as closely as possible. The driver leaned on his horn, and I could see that he was signaling through one of his rearview mirrors that if I wanted to pass, I could pass. Then I began to bump him. Bump, bump. Luckily he was macho enough to speed up and not pull over right away. He thought he could really lose me, but I pulled up alongside him, gave him the finger, and started my maneuver to hit him sideways to squeeze him off his lane.

Then all of a sudden a blue car appeared coming from the other direction, so I just crossed lanes and went into whatever field was on the blue car's side. I downshifted so I wouldn't skid in the mud or dust and let a couple other cars pass until the van and I were alone again. The driver was still pissed off enough to try to match my speed, but there was no doubt he was utterly freaked by what I was doing. I'd crossed over the middle again and was banging the side of his van with the Sunbeam's special steel front, back, and sides. I was ready now to push the van off the road because I could see Miko's weird white camper waiting on a distant side road. I slammed one more time—hard—into the side of the van and the driver did the rest of the job for me. He began to slide around the gravel of the shoulder, and those vans aren't equipped for skidding. He swerved out of control and tipped over, did a full roll, and lurched to a stop in a wheat field. I took off. My job was done. I was exhilarated. But I didn't follow God's rule: “Ever wakefulness in the art of drag racing.” I failed to see the car passing a pickup in the opposite lane. I smashed head-on into the Honda and
literally threw it into the air. In my rearview mirror, I could see the car roll over the pickup it had been passing. It probably landed in a pile of metal and glass. The pickup did a whirly and landed on its side. For a second I didn't know which direction I was heading, but I got myself going south on Route 22, back in the direction I'd planned to go. My little armored vehicle had withstood the calamity. Then I realized my entire front window was shattered and shards of glass were all over my hands, face, and head. The dashboard seemed to be filling with blood and I could feel a tire dragging like a wounded soldier's leg, but I kept going. I knew I had to get rid of the car. When I finally stopped in the cow field of the farm I'd chosen for reconnaissance, I couldn't open my door. I was falling in and out of consciousness. I took the gun and put it in my lap though I didn't know against whom I was protecting myself. I sat there in my demolished treasure, unable to put my thoughts together. I was in a rush, but time was slipping by without anything happening. Miko didn't show up in his vehicle, and I knew it would be just like him to leave me to die. I didn't like the role of another dumb chick going down for her man.