How to Disappear (18 page)

“The fact you don’t know where I eat lunch doesn’t make it dangerous for me to have a sandwich! It’d probably be
more
dangerous if you knew because then I’d be the wuss who has to ask his mommy whether he can have a beer.”

“You
can’t
have a beer! You’re not traveling with Don’s old ID, are you?”

And the save: “I just visited Don. With my own ID.”

“You did?” Her tone softens as she imagines the loving-brother reconciliation that’s never going to happen.

“He says hello.” He didn’t. The sentence tastes like rotten fish on my tongue, but the words have the desired effect. The thought of Don saying hi makes her sigh as if she just saw a cute bunny.

“Here’s the thing, kiddo,” she says. “Why I’ve been calling you
all day
. There might be something hinky with one of my cases.” Her voice is very strained, like she’s choosing every word and laying it down gently in a careful sentence.

“Hinky how?” She doesn’t say
hinky
. She doesn’t say
kiddo
, and she doesn’t talk about her cases.

“I’d rather discuss this in person.”

I don’t say anything.

She says, “Exactly where are you? Are you still in Nevada?”

Given that I’m not telling her where I’m headed, or why, or anything like why, all that’s left is irrational shouting. “Isn’t the point for me to be wherever I want? Isn’t the point for me to be free for a while?”

“You’re in a state of unreality! Drifting around with plenty of money and no responsibilities to prove you
can
isn’t being free! It’s being a child with a car!”

“The deal was you were going to go along with this. That’s what you said.”

“Jack!” she says, as if repeating my name would bring me to my senses. “It’s probably nothing, but get back here. Park Don’s car and hop on a bus.”

This is when I start to feel sicker. “Did something happen?”

“
Come back here
. How long will it take?”

“Did something happen to you?”

“Don’t raise your voice to me!”

“I’m expressing
concern
, not coming back at you!”

My mother sighs. “It was probably nothing. It’s not as if industrial polluters run around jimmying lawyers’ cars.”

“Did somebody fuck with your car?” I can’t keep the panic out of my voice.

“Language!” Then, deep breath, restrained tone. “Maybe someone made a mistake when I had it serviced. Maybe someone nicked
the brake line accidently.” It’s as if she’s trying to convince herself. “I just think you’d be safer here.”

You can’t miss the irony, how she thinks I’d be safer playing momma’s boy at home, when the only way she’s safe and I’m off Yeager’s shit list is when I seal the deal with Nicolette.

Only I have to do it faster. This thing with the fire was the warning. Turning a car into a deathtrap is pure intimidation.

Oh Jesus, Don, how could you let it get this far? This is Mom, not some live lizard you roast on a spit over a campfire. You made me watch that, too.

I know what I have to do.

I play my part. “You think I’d be safer with the lady some industrial polluter wants to ice than on my own?” I’m the road-tripping kid who has inexplicably lost all respect and reason. That’s what she believes, anyway. I think,
Believe what you want. I’m saving your life
.

“
Ice,
Jack? This isn’t a joke! There was something with the steering column, too. Are you listening to me?”

Who messes with a prosecutor’s car, not even bothering to make it look accidental?

“Do you have security? Good security, not the old guys in the golf carts.”

“The police are treating me like the crown jewels. Sweetheart, there’s nothing to worry about. But you have to get back here.”

There’s plenty to worry about. But she’s got police watching out for her. This buys me some time.

She’s saying, “Jack, be careful!” as I hang up on her.

I don’t drive straight back to El Molino.

There are things I have to take care of, steps to take. This requires planning and precision, a time and a place. I drive along the crest of the mountains and onto a service road that barely exists, carved into the precipice. Courtesy of Google satellite images, I’m here.

The pavement of what used to be a parking lot is rutted, the trash cans upended. The
NO OVERNIGHT PARKING
signs are aerated where they were used for target practice a long time ago. There are no signs of human life, no telltale beer bottles, not a wrapper or a plastic ring that holds six-packs together anywhere.

This is the place.

Ravines and rocks, cliffs, and enough vegetation for cover: it’s
harsh, rugged terrain. If you tried to run here, the likeliest thing is you’d go down without any help from me—it’s that rocky and uneven, unstable underfoot.

I map where I’ve been with merit-badge accuracy until I find my spot. Then I stop charting and start memorizing.

I have equipment to take down anything that comes at me. If it has a blade, I’ve got one: ax; bowie knife; camping gadget with corkscrew, box cutter, nail file, and useless little scissors; and a big, dull thing that looks like a machete that hacks through underbrush.

Also, I’ve got what’s in the holster.

The gadget is from my mom, from when I was a Scout. The bowie knife is from my dad. Compare: a gift that would be good for opening a bottle of white wine at a campsite ringed with Winnebagos versus a gift that could decapitate a bear.

I get them both two weeks after my dad hears I’m not coming to his house on his weekend because my Scout troop is hitting the wilderness. He says, “Shit, Bella. My kid’s going into the desert with grown men in
shorts
?” I can hear him from ten feet away through the receiver my mom holds away from her ear.

My mom says, “It’s Boy Scouts. It’s harmless.”

My dad makes the sound that says he’s glowering.

But my mom knows how to play him when he’s not too far gone. “It’s for survival skills. What’s the harm?”

Two weekends later, when I’m at his house, my dad starts quizzing me on what plant roots to eat if you run out of food, and how to purify water. All I know is what kind of plant not to
eat and a couple of birdcalls. He tosses me a survivalist handbook with sidebars about keeping your gunpowder dry and rebuilding a constitutional democracy from the ruins of the US after Armageddon.

He says, “I bought you this. You get stuck out there with those assholes, I don’t want you to die.”

I read the book.

Don reads the book because I got it first.

At night, Don and I trek onto the ten acres of manicured backyard. We pretend we’re Special Forces soldiers stranded between rows of ornamental shrubs, camped out by an Olympic-size swimming pool outside Kabul.

I follow the diagrammed instructions to make Molotov cocktails, which we hurl across the diving board. A chair catches fire. Three guys who work for my dad come running outside, ready to take down an invading army.

In the morning, my dad is there, eating bacon and eggs.

He says, “What was wrong with that?”

For once, Don doesn’t point at me. He’s figured out that I could blow him up. But my dad isn’t asking Don.

I say, “It was in the book.”

He keeps eating.

I say, “I didn’t know it would start a fire.”

Then I say, “It was stupid?”

“It was
loud
. Do we want the police at this house? Do we want to attract attention to this house?”

I’m not just afraid he’s going to hit me—that’s a given. I’m afraid I’ve caused something terrible to happen.

The guy standing guard by the back door says, “Come on, Art, at least he didn’t put shrapnel in it.”

My dad laughs so hard, the guy comes over and pounds him between the shoulders so he won’t choke on the bacon.

He doesn’t say anything when he slaps down the knife between us on the console in the front seat of his car. The blade says,
Life is gruesome, be prepared, go camping with assholes in shorts if your mother insists. But get ready, be armed to draw and quarter anything that comes at you because the insurance agent troop leader dads sure as hell won’t.

• • •

I wrap myself in the space blanket, but I can’t get warm. I fall asleep thinking about Scouts and toasted marshmallows, playing with Don, hiding in the bushes and throwing incendiary bottles at deck chairs.

I imagine Don in an open coffin, eyelids folded down over dead eyes. Even for my father, in his closed, black coffin, my mother’s face collapsed and never plumped back up, not ever. And this happened after he’d divorced her and she hated him. Don’s a shit, but he’s not dying the kind of prison death it makes my mother sick to think about.

My mother isn’t burying her kid or going up in flames when her dryer accidently on purpose blows up again, this time singeing her hair down to the roots, blackening her bones.

Her car isn’t accidently on purpose losing its brakes on the interstate.

No one is going to touch any of us.

I have to do this.

I have to make Nicolette Holland disappear.

That’s why I’m here.

“Did you miss me?”

He’s standing in my doorway.

He’s tanner than before. It suits him.

He’s back! I hope looking shocked suits me.

My getaway can wait. Underneath my new and different exterior, in this rapidly transforming vessel of moral decay, I’m still
me
. It’s got to be okay to like guys. Why can’t I have whatever extremely low level of fun is possible under the circumstances?

I pull him inside, bolt the door, and kiss him.

Kiss him some more.

He says, “You’re depraved. I should beat on drunks and leave town more often.”

He hesitates for a second, looking at me. Hands me a bottle of rum. Then he kisses me back. And then some.

“You smell like a campfire.”

J crosses his arms behind my back, pulls me in closer. “It was South Dakota. You’re lucky I don’t smell like a cow patty. I was going to shower when I got back to my apartment, but there was this cop car outside when I was unpacking. So I ducked out the kitchen window.”

“A cop car?”
Does he even get how bad this is?

“Calm down. They drive up and down my street every ten minutes looking for jaywalkers. What else is there for them to do around here?”

“Look for us?” Then I might make too big a show of sniffing the air. His face. I say, “No, you’re fine. Really. Was it nice?”

“Was what nice?”

“Uh, the wedding. Groomsman. Bachelor party.”

He sits down on the edge of the bed, looking embarrassed. Does the thing where he grabs on to the back of his neck and massages it. It must have been one amazing bachelor party. “It was home on the range. No strippers—just a lot of cows.”

“Did you meet any cowgirls?”

“You’re depraved and jealous.”

Now he’s massaging
my
neck. Much better.

“I’m
so
not jealous. We’d have to be together for me to be jealous and we’re
so
not together.”

“Not us.” He stretches out on the bed, closes his eyes.

I nudge him slightly. Nothing.

“Did you drive all night?”

He doesn’t answer. He’s asleep.

I roll the desk chair next to the bed and sit there reading, my feet draped over him on the bed. His hand closes on my ankle.

After dark, I wedge myself between him and the wall.

Fully clothed, on top of the blanket.

Not totally depraved yet, but slipping fast.

I wake up in her bed.

The only time I’ve ever woken up with a female in a bed was on the class trip to DC with Scarlett after we figured out our chaperone was useless. I made Calvin go bunk with the guys across the hall.

But that was intentional. This isn’t. Her chin is tucked over my shoulder. I can’t move without damaging her jaw. She’s lying there, the tail of my shirt in her sleeping fist, all but volunteering for anything I want to do to her.

She shakes her head loose and props herself up on her elbow.

She wakes up looking good. She even smells good in her day-old clothes.

She wakes up looking scared.

Then it strikes me that being this close to her messes with my head. The only problem here is that
I
made myself vulnerable to
her
. I passed out in her bed, my wallet in one pocket, my cell phone in the other. Who knows what she found out while I was unconscious, sprawled there with my throat unguarded?

“How long have I been here?”

“Weeks,” she says, smiling a little. “That wedding took a lot out of you.”

“Driving for twenty-four hours took a lot out of me.”

“Didn’t your mother ever tell you about roadside motels?”

I reach back into my pockets to make sure everything’s still there. It is. Then I start wondering what’s in her pockets. A scalpel? Piano wire? Every weapon I think of for her to have stuffed into her bra—which might as well be welded to her skin—I think,
I should have that
. Then I think,
No, I shouldn’t have that
.

I’m running my fingers over her eyelids and those stained-dark brows. “I thought girls got warned against roadside motels.”

“Everyone gets warned against driving for thirty-six hours. You’re just being a macho blowhard, right? You didn’t actually—”

“I pulled over and slept. Not enough, obviously.”

“Do you want coffee?”

She starts to climb over me, but I take hold of her arm. I want out of this errand for Don so bad, every muscle in my body is tensed up and ready to spring. Only I want to take her with me: her, me, my money, Costa Rica or Belize or Trinidad or any number of places I researched as a well-prepared little kid, aware that
at some point my family might have to leave town. I could take her to an obscure island off Indonesia. Someplace nobody I ever met would take a vacation was the old rule. I could buy a coffee plantation or a rubber plantation or whatever kind of plantation they’ve got.