Woman in Red (30 page)

Jeremy ducked his head, mumbling, “I don’t know. I’ve got some stuff to do.” He felt confused by this sudden onslaught of attention. Lately, Rud had been seeking him out more and more, where before Jeremy would have been invited along only if he happened to be standing there when they were all piling into the car. Either Rud felt guilty for not sticking up for him or Jeremy, in his new notoriety, had suddenly become worthy of his friendship.

“Dude. This is a brand-new Harley we’re talking about. A
Harley
, man.” An unlit cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth, and now, as Rud leaned in, Jeremy caught a whiff of stale smoke and a trace of some flowery scent that had to be his girlfriend’s perfume. “Now let’s you and me take that sucker for a spin and you can forget about all this other crap. Do you good, dude.”

Jeremy kept his eyes averted. He knew that if he were to look into Rud’s face and see the warm affection with which Rud was no doubt regarding him, he’d be sucked in. For what few outside Rud’s inner circle would have guessed was that, for all his bad rep, Rud could be extremely charming
when he chose to be. And if it was just an illusion, it was a seductive one. In that moment Jeremy wanted nothing more than to bask in that warmth, to believe that Rud really gave a shit about him. It seemed like the hardest thing he’d ever had to do to say, “I’m sorry. I wish I could. You . . . you guys have fun without me.”

“Whoa. Dude. You’re the one missing out, not me.”

Rud took a step back, his eyes dismissing Jeremy with a cool glance that let him know he’d committed a major social blunder in even suggesting that his going or not going would in any way affect Rud’s ability to have a good time. Jeremy was at once filled with an almost crushing regret. Only the thought of how much he’d hate himself for doing so kept him from belatedly accepting Rud’s invitation, if it was even still open. As he trudged off to gym, any sense of empowerment he’d felt in helping Carrie Ann dissipated, leaving him feeling lonely and depressed.

He ran into his cousin a few minutes later in the locker room.

“Hey, Germ. What’s up?” said Ryan with a grin, greeting him by his childhood nickname.

His cousin was just out of the shower, naked except for the towel wrapped around his waist, his hair standing up in wet spikes. Under any other circumstances, when faced with his cousin’s blatant physical superiority, Jeremy would have indulged in the usual comparisons. He’d have keyed in on the cut of Ryan’s biceps, his six-pack abs, the mat of hair on his chest (Jeremy’s sported only a few feeble outcroppings), not to mention the sheer confidence with which Ryan strode naked through a locker room filled with other boys making similar comparisons. But right now he was so preoccupied, he scarcely noticed.

“Nothing much,” he lied. “What’s up with you?”

“We just got slaughtered. Four and
O
, and Resnick fumbles a pass in the final quarter. Shit, we’d have had it, if it weren’t for that,” Ryan reported cheerfully enough, even as he shook his head in disgust. If it had been a playoff instead of a practice game, it would have rolled off him just the same. Nothing much got in the way of Ryan’s naturally optimistic approach to life, a trait Jeremy used to envy but which right now irritated him.

Growing up, they had been close, more like brothers than cousins. Then, the summer between the eighth and ninth grades, Ryan had morphed overnight into the man-sized individual standing before him now, while Jeremy, still a skinny, scab-kneed kid, was left to fumble his way through adolescence. He’d still been playing with action figures when Ryan became interested in girls—an interest that was returned in spades. Every other girl in school, it seemed, had a crush on Ryan. Not only that, he succeeded at everything he set out to do, whether it was sports or trying out for the lead in a school play. In short, Ryan was everything Jeremy wasn’t.

“That sucks,” he said now, in a lackluster tone.

His cousin gave him a funny look. “You okay?”

Jeremy shrugged, saying sarcastically, “Sure. Why wouldn’t I be? I just blew off Mr. G’s class, and I’m sure he’ll expect a damn good explanation, which unfortunately I don’t seem to have. Not to mention I may get my ass thrown into jail for something I didn’t do.”

Ryan nodded slowly, as if in appreciation of the gravity of the situation, but his innate good cheer remained intact. “I wouldn’t sweat it too much, if I were you. My dad says the
worst that could happen is you’ll get probation, maybe community service.”

Jeremy felt a flash of anger toward his cousin. What did Ryan know? His whole life, he’d had everything handed to him on a silver platter. “On the other hand, I could end up doing time,” he said. “Like mother like son, right?”

“Cool it, Germ. You’re starting to creep me out.” Ryan was still smiling, but a small crease had appeared between his brows. “Anyway, what happened with your mom . . . that was different.”

“Yeah, I suppose rape must seem pretty tame next to attempted manslaughter. Especially since I’m not into knives or duct tape.”

Without warning, his cousin grabbed him by the arm and steered him over to a deserted row of lockers, where he shoved Jeremy onto the bench. “You shouldn’t talk that way, not in public,” he warned in a low voice. “
I
know you’re only joking, but some of these other guys . . .” He cast a glance over his shoulder. “You don’t want to get in even worse trouble.”

Suddenly the events of the past few weeks descended on Jeremy in an avalanche. “Since when do you give a shit?” he shot back. He knew it was unfair to take it out on Ryan, but at the moment he was too pissed off to care.

“I’m your cousin, dumb ass. Of course I give a shit.” Ryan seemed more surprised than offended that his loyalty was in question.

“Really? I hadn’t noticed.”

Even as he heaped scorn on his cousin, part of Jeremy wanted nothing more than for it to be like it was when he and Ryan used to ride around on their skateboards and hang
out after school in Mr. Kim’s store, leafing through comic books and sneaking peeks at
Playboy
when Mr. Kim wasn’t looking. But he knew that wasn’t possible. They’d both gone their separate ways. If this were a race, Ryan would be up near the finish line and Jeremy would be lagging far behind.

Now Ryan was giving him a pitying look. Somehow that was what hurt Jeremy most of all. He was so insignificant, he couldn’t even get a rise out of his cousin. “Maybe you would, if you didn’t spend all your time hanging out with that loser Rudnicki,” Ryan said, not unkindly.

Jeremy felt the sting of truth in his words, which only made him feel compelled to defend Rud. “You don’t know him the way I do.”

“I don’t have to,” Ryan replied, in a tone that meant Rud’s reputation spoke for itself.

“Yeah, well, what’s it to you? I don’t see
you
breaking a leg to hang out with me.”

“If you didn’t have your head so far up your ass you can’t see straight, you’d know why that is.” Jeremy caught a flash of anger in his cousin’s eyes. “
You’re
the one who’s always making excuses whenever I invite you anywhere.”

With the last shreds of his dignity pulled around him like a tattered cloak, Jeremy informed his cousin, “Thanks, but I don’t need your sympathy.” The only reason Ryan had asked him along all those times, he was convinced, was out of a sense of familial duty.

Ryan smacked the flat of his hand against an open locker door, slamming it shut with a loud clang that echoed off the concrete floors and walls, causing Jeremy to start. “Jesus, you’re a piece of work, you know that? Did it ever occur to you I might
like
hanging out with you? Or are you so busy
feeling sorry for yourself you haven’t noticed what a selfish prick you’ve become?” Jeremy opened his mouth to object, but his cousin was just getting warmed up. “Do you even care what’s going on with me? That my mom’s turned into a raving lunatic? Christ, she’s talking about chaining herself to a tree! You’d think it was our own house that was going to be bulldozed, the way she’s acting. Would it have killed you to stop by and talk to her? To see if maybe there was something you could do to help? She’s been good to you, man. We
all
have.”

Jeremy rose to his feet. “Thanks for the lecture. I don’t feel so bad now about missing Mister G’s class.” He spoke with cool disdain.

“Are you even listening? Have you heard one thing I’ve said?” Ryan was visibly upset, his eyes flashing and his normally smiling mouth set in an angry line. Jeremy felt a small surge of triumph. He’d managed to get a rise out of his cousin. That was something.

He was about to walk away when his gaze dropped to Ryan’s bare torso. With all the superiority he could muster, he said, in a voice very much like Rud’s, “Dude. You should put some clothes on before you catch cold.”

It wasn’t until his anger ebbed that Jeremy was able to admit to himself that there was a grain of truth to what Ryan had said. More than a grain, in fact. How long had it been since he’d had dinner at their house or even stopped by to say hello? Aunt Denise was always inviting him over, but he’d given her nothing but excuses. Lately, he’d felt as if she and his mom were in cahoots somehow, both trying to get him to do stuff he didn’t want to do, feel things he’d rather keep buried. Though hadn’t he brought a lot of that on himself by volunteering to work for his mother?

He hadn’t planned on it. It had just sort of . . . come up. And now, as he stood bent over in front of his locker, tying the laces on his gym shoes, a voice whispered in his head,
No one was twisting your arm.
Whatever his initial motives, though, he’d found that he
liked
working at the restaurant, even if it was just bussing tables. It was a point of pride, too, his wanting to prove to her that he was as worthy of her love as David, that the wrong son wasn’t buried in the Episcopal churchyard where David had been laid to rest. Maybe then she wouldn’t be so quick to leave, if it should come to that; maybe she’d even ask him to go with her. He wouldn’t, of course. But it would be nice to be asked.

Something else occurred to him then, something that sent a chill shimmying down his spine: If anyone was going to be leaving, it would most likely be him, when they carted him off to jail.

Jeremy forgot his bad mood when he arrived at the restaurant later that afternoon to find most of the tables filled. The funereal atmosphere of the past few weeks had given way to a bustle of activity. Katie, sweeping past him in her waitress uniform, a forties-style gingham pinafore that his grandmother had sewn out of the leftover fabric from the curtains, seemed frazzled, her cheeks flushed and runaway strands trailing from her ponytail. Jeremy found his mother in the kitchen moving at the same warp speed.

“Amazing, isn’t it?” she said over the machine-gun sound of her chopping. “It’s been this way all day.”

“Did something happen that I don’t know about?” he asked, bending to pick up a piece of celery that had flown from the flashing tip of her knife onto the floor. He’d missed
two days of work, due to a dentist’s appointment and an overdue paper for English that he’d had to scramble to finish.

“We can thank Calpernia,” Alice said. “Remember her uncle, from Memphis?”

Jeremy nodded. “The pit master.” It was all his mother and Calpernia had been talking about for the past week or so.

“Well, he’s here. And he’s got the barbecue up and running.”

“I thought I smelled smoke.” Jeremy helped himself to a cube of bread she’d cut up for croutons.

“Well, apparently you’re not the only one. It’s been drawing in customers all day. It’s like a miracle. Only who knew the burning bush would turn out to be Uncle Monroe’s hickory chips?” She gave a breathless laugh, reporting, “We can hardly keep up with the orders. So much for
haute cuisine
. I guess
boeuf bourginon
can’t compete with down home ribs.”

“Be careful what you wish for, right?” said Jeremy, with a grin.

“No kidding. I never thought I’d be running a rib joint, but, hey, whatever works
.”
Alice paused in the midst of her chopping to shake her head in wonderment, wearing a small, ironic smile. After a moment, she brought her gaze back to Jeremy. “If you’re looking for something to do, you can start on those dishes,” she said, pointing with her knife at the mountain of dirty plates in the sink. “Of all the days for Eduardo to call in sick!”

Jeremy reached for the apron on a peg inside the storage closet. He didn’t mind being put to work, even a job as menial as loading the dishwasher. It warded off the black thoughts that flocked in his head like crows whenever he had too much idle time on his hands. Besides, his mom
depended on him. It wasn’t like with his old boss, Mr. Barbour, who could fire you one day and replace you the next as easily as changing a gasket on his car engine. His mother was just squeaking by, and even with the increased business it would be a while before she could afford to hire extra help.