The Riverman (The Riverman Trilogy) (2 page)

“Choice is yours, obviously,” Fiona said. “Maybe you want me to sell it to you. To sell a book, you need a description on the back. So here’s mine: My name is Fiona Loomis. I was born on August 11, 1977. I am recording this message on the morning of October 13, 1989. Today I am thirteen years old. Not a day older. Not a day younger.”

A faint hiss came next, followed by a rampage of guitars clawing their way out from the grave of whatever song she had taped over.

S
ATURDAY
, O
CTOBER
14

Ten missing months. I was no math wizard, but I knew that a girl born on August 11, 1977, didn’t turn thirteen until August 11, 1990. October 13, 1989, was ten months before that date. Fiona had my attention.

I’m not sure how many times I listened to the tape. A dozen? Maybe more. I was listening to it in bed the next morning when the phone rang. My sister, Keri, knocked on my door, and I stuffed the tape recorder under my pillow.

“It’s open.”

Keri ducked in and tossed the cordless phone my way, flicking her wrist to give it a spin. When I caught it, she looked disappointed, but she recovered quickly, closing her eyes and shaking her hands in the air like some gospel singer.

“It’s Cha
rrrrr
lie Dwyer!”

I glared at her, and she shot me with finger guns and slipped away.

“Hey, Charlie,” I said into the phone, feigning excitement.

Charlie was Charlie, blurting out the worst possible question. “If someone asked you who your best friend is, would you say that I’m your best friend?”

I paused for far too long, then replied, “Yeah, Charlie. Most definitely.”

“Got it,” he said, and hung up.

The first thing you need to know about Charlie is that in his backyard there was a clubhouse, built by his older brother, Kyle, five or six years before. In that former life, it was a fortress for neighborhood kids to collect and scheme and just be kids. When Kyle outgrew it, Charlie let it fall into disrepair. Feral cats took over, but rather than scare them away, Charlie left cans of tuna for them and gave them names. It stunk of feces and urine, and no one wanted to go in it anymore. The teenagers in the neighborhood would watch in disgust as the cats squeezed through the rotten holes in the clubhouse’s shingles. They’d say things like, “It used to be so amazing.”

As for Charlie, he was mostly an indoor cat, declawed so he could paw remotes and Nintendo controllers. We had been neighbors and friends since toddling, but it was a friendship of convenience more than anything. So when he asked me if he was my best friend, I should have been honest and said
No, I don’t have one
. With those simple words, things could have turned out differently. Or not. Speculating is pointless.

S
UNDAY
, O
CTOBER
15

The neighborhood was thick with spies. The most notorious was Mrs. Carmine. She lived up the block and nursed a smoking and a gardening habit, which kept her in the front yard, eyes hunting. Whenever she saw my parents, she updated them on my perceived mischief. Like the time when Charlie and I were nine and he showed me how to play a game he called Postal Percussion.

“Saw your boy and the little Dwyer boy bicycling with drumsticks in their hands,” Mrs. Carmine told my mom. “Know what they used those sticks for? Whacking mailboxes. Good thing they got skinny arms and didn’t break nothing, or else they’d be up on charges. Messing with the mail is a federal offense, you know?”

Of course my parents did know, and they educated me on the fact by grounding me for a week. All I did was ride along. I didn’t
whack
anything. I actually told Charlie to quit it, but Mrs. Carmine always had her own version of events.

The Carmines lived across the street from the Loomises. I was desperate to talk to Fiona, but there was no way I was going to let Mrs. Carmine see me knocking on her door. She would build some sordid tale out of it and present her diorama of lies to my parents the next time they were out for an evening walk.

I couldn’t deal with that, and I couldn’t deal with calling Fiona either. Sure, I could have looked her number up in the book, but I had never called a girl before. There were far too many factors to consider. What if her father answered? What would I say to an answering machine? What if
she
answered?

No, my plan was to wait. I hadn’t seen or heard from her on Saturday, so I spent Sunday hanging out in my front yard. She was bound to ride by, giving me the chance to flag her down and casually tell her that I thought her tape was “weird but cool” and that I would “entertain the notion of writing her biography.” Entertaining a notion seemed like something a writer would do, and I didn’t want to come off as a desperate amateur.

At the very least, I knew that she appreciated creative thinkers. Or a younger version of Fiona did. When we were in kindergarten and first grade, our parents used to spend some time together. The Loomis family would wheel a cooler over and join us for barbecues on the deck. Fiona had a brother named Derek and a sister named Maria, and they were already teenagers back then, which might as well have made them movie stars. They intimidated me, but my sister, Keri, was always angling for their approval, inviting them to her room with enticements like, “I took the arms off a Ken and put them on a Barbie. Wanna see her flex?”

And while those three were in the house, our parents would turn their attention to Fiona and me. Sitting in a line of lawn chairs, sipping from their glasses and bottles, they’d watch us play and they’d whisper to one another. Sometimes our moms would giggle.

We whispered too. “Let’s trick them,” Fiona said one afternoon. “Pretend a nuclear bomb fell. And we’re melting ’cause of the radiation.”

“What’s a new clear bomb?” I asked.

“Just pretend you’re melting,” she said.

We flopped onto our backs and writhed in the grass, and I remember my dad started cracking up, but Fiona’s dad said, “Don’t encourage her. She takes things too far. She thinks the world is a joke.”

That was one of the last occasions when our parents hung out together. For reasons I didn’t know at the time, they drifted apart, but those words stuck with me for years. Even on that Sunday, as I waited for her to show up, I wondered if the world was still a joke to Fiona. Was that what her so-called birthday present was? A joke?

Luckily the afternoon was mild and calm and there were things to distract me from such thoughts. I raked the leaves. I kicked a soccer ball against the house’s one patch of exposed foundation. I sat cross-legged on the roof of our minivan and counted the cars as they passed.

Five more cars and she’ll be here.

Make that seven more.

Fifteen cars more and I go inside.

No Fiona.

M
ONDAY
, O
CTOBER
16

It was back to school the next day, and Charlie sat by me at lunch, which limited the social options. Charlie was tolerated more than liked. Kids had given up on teasing him back in fifth grade when it became obvious that you can call a guy
Captain Catpoop
all you want, but if he embraces the name by having it ironed onto his own T-shirt, he basically has you beat.

As Kelly Dubois walked past, her tray supporting a mountain of chicken nuggets, Charlie asked me, “You think she does it?”

“Does what?”

“It.” He pounded his fists on the table like he was demanding dinner.
“Ba-dush, ba-dush, ba-dush. Wokka wokka wokka.”

I hate to admit it, but I smiled. One thing that Charlie possessed was a talent for making funny sounds, which didn’t exactly redeem his obnoxiousness, but tempered it a bit. He was eager to shock
and
eager to please, a combination that tugged sympathies in every direction. My sympathies, at least. Girls weren’t as conflicted.

So when a girl-shaped shadow swooped onto the Formica, I assumed Charlie was in for rolled eyes and a diagnosis of
disgusting pig
. I turned to see Fiona, brown bag in hand.

“Am I interrupting?” she asked, pulling out a chair.

“Not at all. We were talking about Kelly Dubois and her nocturnal proclivities,” Charlie said through a nasty grin.

It would take a lot more than that to scare Fiona away. She sat down and said, “Okay. Not sure what that means.”

“Whatever you want it to mean,” Charlie told her as he stripped aluminum foil off of his can of soda.

“I don’t want it to mean anything,” Fiona replied. “Why don’t you go over and ask Kelly what it means to her? I’m sure she’d be thrilled with your company. While you’re at it, you can tell her why you wrap your soda in foil.”

Charlie shook his head. “Keeps it cold, darlin’.”

“Something new every day.” Fiona smiled and dug deep in her sack to find a Ziploc of Oreos. She began twisting off the tops.

“Why are you here?” Charlie asked. “Don’t you usually sit with the Wart Woman and Fishy Fay-Renee?”

The unfortunate soul known as the Wart Woman was Kendra Tolliver, a tomboy who fielded a bumper crop of warts on the fingers of her left hand. Some kids claimed that if she touched you, warts would sprout at the point of contact. Some kids even believed it.

As for Fishy Fay-Renee, that was Fay-Renee Donleavy. She had braces and wore turtleneck sweaters. I have no idea why she had two first names. I have no idea why she was considered
fishy
. She probably ordered a fish sandwich once in the lunch line or something stupid like that.

Fiona sighed as she peeled the cream from one Oreo and placed it on the cream of another. “I will rejoin more refined company momentarily,” she said. “For now, I have business. With Alistair.”

I shrugged and hinted at a nod.

“Ooo,” Charlie crooned. “Risky business?”

“Hardly,” Fiona assured him. She stacked on another two layers of cream and put a lid on the super-cookie. She turned to me. “So. Are you in?”

Rehearsing my response hadn’t helped, because all I could say was, “I … Yeah … I think I am.”

“Good. I’ll come by after school.”

Charlie started to raise his hand, and I slapped it back for fear he’d make an obscene gesture. It didn’t seem to bother him, though. He was too busy watching Fiona lick her finger and then run it along the cookie cream until it was smoothed out and singular.

When she finished, she held the cookie up like a trophy. “Quadruple Stuf,” she said. “Can’t buy that in a store.”

Then she took it down in one bite and chewed it as she stood and set off into the rumble of the cafeteria.

*   *   *

Every girl who invites herself to your place has the same intention—that’s what Charlie’s older brother, Kyle, told me once. Kyle knew his share of girls, but obviously he didn’t know any like Fiona.

That afternoon she rang our bell, and I was quick to answer. “Hey,” I said, opening the door and motioning with my head down the hall. “This way.”

“I remember where your room is,” Fiona said. “We played Legos there once.”

“Oh. Hello, Fiona.” My mom, fresh from her after-work shower, stood at the top of the stairs, her postal uniform expertly folded and tucked under one arm. She looked down at us as she brushed her wet hair. Water dripped over her turquoise sweat suit.

“Hi, Mrs. Cleary,” Fiona chirped. “Alistair said he’d help me with some homework.”

“He did, did he?” My mom moved the brush over her mouth to conceal a smile. “Well, it’s … it’s been a long time.”

“It has,” Fiona said.

“And if we keep this up, we’ll have no time for the homework,” I interjected. “We’ll be done by dinner.” I tugged at Fiona’s sleeve and took off down the hall without saying another word to my mom.

Minutes later, Fiona was sitting on my bed, her back resting on pillows against the wall and her lap holding the tape recorder. “I’d prefer you in the tweed,” she told me.

“Excuse me?”

“The jacket I gave you. It was my grandpa’s. He’s dead. But he was a writer, too. It still has his library card in the pocket. As my grandma told me, it probably has some inspiration left in it too.”

I pulled the box out from under my bed and retrieved the natty old thing. The sleeves were about five inches too long, and my hands were buried up to the fingertips.

“Well, isn’t that civilized?” Fiona said.

Not true, but I played along. “So how do you want to do this?” I slumped into a beanbag chair that I kept in the corner.

“I talk and you interpret. Simple.” She pressed
Record
. “Kilgore here will keep the record straight.”

“Kilgore?”

“The tape recorder. I name things. If you name things, then you treat them better.” Fiona motioned with her chin to a poster tacked to the opposite wall. “Does she have a name?”

“She” was a bikini-clad model spraying a Lamborghini with a garden hose and, no, she didn’t—at least, not one I knew. I lowered my eyes.

“We’ll call her Prudence, then,” Fiona said. “Now whenever you wake up, you can say, ‘Good morning, Prudence, how’s tricks? Still in the car washing game, I see.’”

“‘How’s tricks’?”

“‘How’s things,’” Fiona explained. “Slang from the good ol’ days. Learned it from a kid in a newsie cap.”

“A newsie cap?”

“We’re getting ahead of ourselves.”

Yes we were, but I didn’t even know where we were supposed to be starting. Perhaps the obvious place. “You were born…?”

“Ah yes, chapter one,” Fiona said. “I was born on August 11, 1977. I was born
in the sack
, which means I came out with the amniotic veil still around me. Some people say that makes me a clairvoyant, but I’m no clairvoyant.”

She punctuated the point with a finger in the air, and then she moved the tape recorder and wedged it in between her feet, giving it the optimum angle to catch her voice.

“I was born here in Thessaly,” she went on. “Or if you want to be technical about it, at Rose Memorial in Sutton. My dad worked as an insurance adjuster then. Mom didn’t work because she thought raising kids was work enough. There aren’t a lot of pictures of me from those days because I’m the third-born, and apparently cameras don’t work on the third. Maybe we’re vampires.”