Train Wreck Girl (5 page)

ITINERARY FOR FINDING A PAD IN COCOA BEACH

1:30
P
.
M
. Stop daydreaming about Sophie. Either it won't happen or it'll be a bad idea if it does.

1:31
P
.
M
. Walk back to Janie's house. You'll see Taylor on the way home. She'll flip you a bird. Wave back.

1:43
P
.
M
. Get to Janie's. Nod when Janie says, “I'm fucking serious, Knucklehead. You have to be out of here by 5:30.”

1:44
P
.
M
. Nod again when Janie says, “Are those my husband's baggies you're wearing?” Stop nodding when she adds, “You little shit.”

1:45
P
.
M
. Take a shower. Notice the granite walls of the shower. Wonder when your sister got so rich. Tell yourself, “I didn't want to stay in this bourgeois pad, anyway.”

2:01
P
.
M
. Leave Janie's house. You will have a few ideas as to where to go, but none of those ideas are good ones. Just start walking.

2:12
P
.
M
. Get to Woodland Avenue. Pay attention to everything you've come to associate with Woodland: weedy lawns, concrete apartments built in the sixties with names that celebrate the ocean or the Space Center north of town, scattered duplexes in the shadows of these apartment buildings, junk cars in carports or on the weedy lawns, rusty beach cruisers locked to skinny palm trees, a big kite surfing kite stretched across a live oak, yellowed surfboards behind the screens of front porches, stained mattresses by the dumpsters, the detritus of blue collar lives in trash bins as people upgrade or downgrade from one block apartment to the next depending on the winds of the local economy. Everything about this neighborhood screams out Danny McGregor. It's your old neighborhood. A wave of optimism will build on the horizon. You'll paddle for it, but you won't catch it.

2:13
P
.
M
. Begin an hour of up and down Woodland Ave. Notice that there's a new library at one end of Woodland. Remember when there used to be a movie theater there. A draft house. The place that would sell you beer when you were only fifteen years old. The place where you could go see stoner movies after midnight and make out with Rosalie while everyone else slept through the last hour of
Tommy
or
The Wall.

2:59
P
.
M
. Knock on the front door of a duplex. Your friend Rick used to live here. When an elderly woman answers, understand that Rick no longer lives here.

3:13
P
.
M
. Knock on the last front door that used to belong to a friend. Find a third stranger opening the door. Decide to give up.

3:21
P
.
M
. Pull up a stool at Sullivan's Tavern. Order a screwdriver. You may not feel like drinking, but the bartender will actually squeeze fresh orange juice into your drink. That alone will make you feel better.

3:22
P
.
M
. Think about your brother Joe. He was a regular at Sullivan's. Raise your drink to Joe. Ignore the strange look from the bartender.

3:27
P
.
M
. Stop thinking about Brother Joe. Notice that there's an arcade basketball game behind you. Don't turn to look at it. Just listen. Someone will be playing the game. Listen to ball after ball sink into the net. Hear the computerized voice repeating, “Three, three, three,” for ten seconds. Realize that the guy playing just won a free game. Listen to his next game. A minute of balls dropping into a hoop. Remember your old buddy Bart Ceravolo, the hometown basketball star. Remember when Bart had been the next white hope, playing Division I college hoops at the University of Tennessee, only six foot tall and slow, but with a killer outside shot and enough three pointers to make the all-SEC team two years running. Wonder what's become of Bart. Wonder if he's still drunk and broke and homeless like he was when you left Cocoa Beach. Wonder whose couch he's sleeping on tonight.

3:29
P
.
M
. After listening to two more games of arcade basketball, ask yourself how many basketball stars Cocoa Beach has produced. How many of those basketball stars became drunks? How many of them would be in Sully's at 3:29 in the afternoon, playing an arcade basketball game and winning so many free games that he can play all day on three quarters? Decide to turn around.

3:30
P
.
M
. See that it is Bart playing the arcade basketball game.

3:31
P
.
M
. When the next game ends, stand behind Bart and say, “Look at you. A man your age. Drunk every day by noon. Why don't you get a job?” Hope he gets the
Barfly
reference you're making.

Bart will say to you, “I got a job: killing the cockroaches in that place of yours.” Understand that Bart did get the reference, but wonder for just a second if you and Bart are still friends. He'll turn from the basketball game with a serious look on his face. He'll ask you, “What's up, Danny? Are we cool or what?”

Remember that things were left shaky with Bart. There'd been a lot of backstabbing and sleeping with the wrong people. You were implicated. So was Bart. So was Sophie. And, of course, Helen. But that was four years ago. Too much shit has gone down since then. You can't worry about all that. Give Bart a smile. But not a fake smile with all your teeth showing. A genuine one. The kind that starts on the left side of your face and stops halfway to a grin. The kind of smile that says, “Are you fucking kidding me?” Let the smile do your talking.

Recognize the look in Bart's face. He's either gonna be macho and punch you in the arm or he's gonna be open and hug you. You'll root for the punch. Bart will opt for the hug. Don't be surprised. Or be surprised, but don't let it show.

3:32
P
.
M
. Withstand a barrage of questions, like, “What are you doing back?” and “Where have you been?” and “Have you talked to her?” and “Have you heard from him?” and “Did you know this or that?” The questions will come at you fast. Don't worry if you don't answer them. Hold tight until Bart asks you, “Where are you staying?”

Tell him, “Nowhere, yet. I was thinking about getting a hotel room tonight.”

Bart will recognize that you're bluffing. He'll recognize that you're too proud to point out to Bart that he slept on your couch for an entire summer, rent free. He'll appreciate that you don't bring up the jobs you hooked him up with and the several hundred dollars you loaned him five years ago, both of you knowing that neither of you expected it to be paid back. Bart will not need to be reminded of this. You'll know that, if Bart has room, he'll take you in. Bart will say, “Don't be crazy. Stay at my place.”

3:35
P
.
M
. After Bart plays his last two free games, clear out of Sullivan's. On the one-block walk to Bart's, gather three important bits of information: 1.) Bart had been living with a girlfriend. They had a two bedroom apartment. She left him three months ago. Rent was cheap enough that he didn't move out. The second bedroom is yours, if you want it. 2.) Bart works for Space Coast Medical Services, a medical transport company. Part of his job requires him to drive mentally challenged adults to and from a care facility. He's on break right now. He'll leave soon to drive them home. 3.) At nights, Bart picks up dead bodies. This is the other half of his job at Space Coast. He gets a pager and he's on call from 10
P
.
M
. to 6
A
.
M
. If someone finds a dead body outside of the hospital during that time, Bart picks it up and brings it to the Medical Examiner. He gets paid eight bucks an hour the whole time he's on call, whether he picks up a dead body or not.

3:40
P
.
M
. Be sure to get an apartment key from Bart before he changes his mind.

3:41
P
.
M
. Bart will sing a line from a Dead Milkmen song: “Boring day, got nothing to do? Get a load of retards, take ‘em to the zoo.” Then he'll convince you to go with him on his short bus route.

3:42
P
.
M
. Ride to Janie's house with that Dead Milkmen song stuck in your head. Sing with Bart, “Wooo-oooo-ooo, take ‘em to the zoo. Wooo-oooo-ooo, take ‘em to the zoo.”

3:53
P
.
M
. Pile all your earthly possessions into the front seat of the bus. You will have with you your backpack, your old Rainbow surfboard, one box of records, and one box of books. For a fleeting moment, you'll feel like things might work out after all.

3:54
P
.
M
. Slowly realize that you're riding around in a short bus with one of the problems you fled Cocoa Beach to escape.

So there was Bart cruising along in his short bus, singing “Takin' the Retards to the Zoo.” All my worldly possessions rode in the seat directly behind him, and I rode in the other front seat. Bart stopped singing and pointed to a shoebox full of CDs that was under his seat. He said, “Dig through that box there. I'm pretty sure I've got
Big Lizard in My Backyard
in there.”

Big Lizard in My Backyard
is the album with “Takin' the Retards to the Zoo” on it.

“You have that album in the bus?” I asked, though I didn't need to, because there it was, right in Bart's shoebox.

“Of course,” Bart said. “The clients love that song.”

“Who are the clients?”

“My short bus riders.”

“The mentally, uh…” and I couldn't think of what to say, what the proper term was now. If they were mentally retarded or mentally challenged or whatever. Bart solved it for me.

He said, “The retards, yeah.”

“You don't call them retards, do you?”

“No,” Bart said. “I call them short bus riders.” He reached into the pocket of his white and blue striped work shirt. He pulled out a packet of cigarettes. In all the years I'd known Bart, I'd never known him to smoke a cigarette. I was pretty sure he hadn't started. And, sure enough, he opened the pack and pulled out a joint. “Wanna smoke out?”

“No,” I said. “I'm good.”

“Not me,” Bart said. “I got a little buzz on. I shouldn't have had that fourth beer at Sully's.” He lit the joint and inhaled. I handed him the CD. He slid it in the stereo and let it start from the beginning.

I knew this CD well. I knew where we were and what our route was and it didn't take much math to know that the short bus riders would be riding when the “Takin' the Retards to the Zoo” came on. I said, “What do the short bus riders think of that song you were just singing?”

“They love it. They sing along to all the wooooo-ooooohs. It's fun.”

“They don't get offended.”

“Hell, no,” Bart said. “They're fucking retarded.”

I let the subject drop. Bart smoked his joint. A cloud of silence floated around the short bus. It had nothing to do with what to call Bart's clients. It had nothing to do with Bart's drinking or the joint. It had everything to do with the last time Bart and I had hung out: the night when Sophie stabbed me. And really, it had everything to do with the year leading up to the night when Sophie stabbed me. Because there was that shit that would always be between Bart and me. That shit that comes from friends dating the same girl. And here was the crux of the problem:

I was dating Sophie and getting sick of her. Bart was heavily lusting after Helen. Helen didn't dig Bart. She did dig me. Sophie and I broke up. I started dating Helen. Bart started dating Sophie. It all seems logical and clean, but there's nothing logical and clean in the affairs of the human heart. And here was our problem. From Bart's perspective, I should've stayed away from Helen. I knew he was infatuated with her. From my perspective, though, I knew that he didn't have a chance in hell of dating her. Besides, he didn't even ask her out. I mean, Jesus, you have to shoot if you want to hit something, right? Not for Bart. He just sat at her bar and drooled over her and got nowhere. So when I saw my chance, I took it. I don't see that as a betrayal. Bart does. This led to the Sophie situation.

See, maybe I was broken up with Sophie and dating Helen. Still, there was a lot of history between Sophie and me. A lot. Years of a relationship, different towns, breakups and reconciliations, brutal fights, bruised hearts, everything. And the way I see it, Bart shouldn't have jumped on that shit the minute we broke up. He should've given it more time. Or, in fact, he shouldn't have done it at all. Friends don't date their friend's ex-girlfriends. Not if they want to stay friends. So there was that, too.

Anyway, it was all years ago and probably a moot point. I figured it was best to just bring it up and clear the air. I said, “So what's up with Sophie? Is she the chick who just moved out on you?”

“God, no,” Bart said. “Sophie and I broke up right after she stabbed you. When Joe told me what she'd done to you, I made a rule for myself: don't date any chicks who stab their ex-boyfriends.”

“Good rule,” I said.

“Fucking-A.”

“So where is she now?”

“She moved to Atlanta. She lives with her mom up there. I heard she cleaned up her act. She's sober, working a nine-to-five, the works. At least that's what I hear.”

Bart sounded like he didn't believe what he was saying, so I asked, “Do you believe it?”

“Hell, no. That bipolar girl? It doesn't matter what way she swings. It's just a matter of time before she swings back.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “What about Helen? What's up with her?”

“She got married,” Bart said. Just matter of fact like that.
She got married.
I winced. That phrase made me feel like someone was making a lasso out of my small intestine. I don't know why. I don't know what my intentions with Helen were. But, married? That's so fucking permanent. Or long-term, anyway.

“Shit,” I said. “That sucks.”

“She's divorced now,” he added. He kinda smiled. I knew the score, here. He wanted to make me wince. He paused on purpose.

Still, I didn't feel relieved to hear that she was divorced, because the next thought crept into my head. “She didn't marry you, did she? She's not the girl who just moved out on you?”

“Nah,” Bart said. “She married some fag.”

This meant nothing to me, because of course Bart wouldn't like anyone who married Helen. And it's his own damn fault. You can't go around getting mad at other people just because they have the balls to ask out girls you wish you had the balls to ask out.

Anyway, it didn't matter. The air was clear, now. Clear enough.

We pulled up to the care center where Bart's clients spent their days. Bart stopped the bus, opened the door, and said to me, “Come on out. You gotta meet this crew.”

I climbed down from the bus.

About a dozen mentally challenged adults were standing around in the front yard of the care center. Bart called out, “Huddle up, team.” His clients gathered around him. Bart put his hands on the shoulders of the two who were closest to him. “I'm gonna introduce you to someone. His name is Danny. He's my oldest and closest friend. He's riding with us today. I want you to welcome him onto the short bus and show him love. Okay?”

The clients answered with smiles and head nods and descended on me. They circled around and patted me on the back and stroked my face and two or three of them hugged me at once. They looked up at me with big, mad grins and
hi, Dannys
and one poor woman was even drooling a little. I suddenly felt like I'd been picked for the Special Olympics. It was a great feeling. Better than you'd imagine.

Bart said, “All right. That's enough. Line up.”

The short bus riders formed a single file line outside the door. An older white guy took the front of the line. Bart said to him, “I need a hoot, Little Johnny. No one rides until Little Johnny gives me a hoot.”

I guess Little Johnny knew what Bart was talking about, because he waved his hands over his head and yelled, “Woo-hoo!”

It was pretty loud and sounded good to me, but it wasn't enough for Bart. He said, “C'mon, Little Johnny. That's bullshit. I want a hoot.”

Little Johnny took a huge breath and arched his back and stuck his chest out and bellowed, “Wooooooo-hooooooo!” And, just in case that wasn't enough, the rest of the short bus riders bellowed with him.

I started laughing. Bart said, “That's what I'm fucking talking about. Now get on the bus, you crazy sons of bitches. Load up.”

The short bus riders filed in, and we drove off.

About five minutes into the ride, just as I'd predicted, “Takin' the Retards to the Zoo” came on. Just as Bart predicted, the clients sang along to all the “woooo-ooooohs.” You have to give the guy credit. He had fun with this crew. They loved him.

When the song was over, Little Johnny said, “Mr. Bart, isn't that a bad word that they use in the song?”

“What the fuck are you talking about, Little Johnny?” Bart asked.

“That word in the song. Ain't it a bad word?”

“Which one?”

“I can't say. It's a bad word.”

“Don't be a pussy,” Bart said. “Just fucking say it. We're all adults here.”

“Retard,” Little Johnny said. “Mrs. Munroe told us that was a bad thing to call a person a retard.”

“Now, that depends, Little Johnny,” Bart said. “Retard has two meanings. On the one hand, you can make fun of people and call them a retard and that's a bad word. On the other hand, retard can just mean a person you take to the zoo. So in this song, it's not a bad word because it's just talking about people you take to the zoo. Understand?”

Little Johnny nodded.

“Now give me a hoot,” Bart said.

Little Johnny cocked his head back and hooted. Bart smiled. I remembered this about my old, close friend Bart Ceravolo: don't ever trust the guy.

After we dropped off the short bus riders and Bart smoked another joint and I put in an old Clash CD,
Give ‘em Enough Rope,
Bart said to me, “So what are you running from, Danny?”

“Weed making you paranoid?” I asked.

“Just a little inductive reasoning, my friend. Everything you own fits in a seat on a bus—and the surfboard you got from your sister's house this morning. You took a Greyhound from Flagstaff. A fucking Greyhound. No one rides a Greyhound if they don't have to. You're still the same guy I always knew. So add it up. You got into some shit in Flagstaff and you're running away.”

Of course, Bart was right, but I wasn't surprised enough to not be suspicious. I said, “How'd you know I was in Flagstaff? I didn't tell you that.”

“I saw Janie this morning,” Bart said.

“Where?”

“It's Tuesday. Janie and I fuck on Tuesday mornings.”

Bart paused. I knew he was full of shit. I hadn't been away so long that I forgot about his sense of humor. I said, “Where'd you really see her?”

“At the Circle K, but that's not the point. What happened in Flagstaff? What are you running from?”

What I was running from had obviously been on my mind nonstop for days now. Not a minute passed when I didn't think about Libra or see that fucked up leg and that bad tattoo in my mind. Not one minute. I had to tell someone sooner or later, so I just came clean. I said, “I found my ex-girlfriend's dead body a couple of days ago. I freaked out and came here.”

Bart jammed on the brakes and swerved into the nearest parking lot. He turned off the engine, took the keys out of the ignition, and spun in his seat to face me. “Wow,” he said. “I was expecting something fucked up, but, wow.”

“It's not as bad as it sounds,” I said.

“Well, it can't be good.”

“No, it's not good,” I said, “but it's not as bad as it seems.” I laid out the story for Bart, from my New Year's Eve fight to my decision to breakup with Libra to the final fight and the tattoo and the leg on the railroad tracks. Bart just stared at me with big, bloodshot eyes. Occasionally, he'd nod or say, “yeah, yeah.” But mostly he just stared.

When I got done, Bart said, “How rich was this girl?”

“Well, she wasn't rich. Her parents were.”

“Obviously, but how rich were her parents?”

“Rich.”

“How rich?”

“Her dad owned banks.”

“What do you mean, he owned banks?”

“I mean he owned a bunch of banks in Phoenix. I don't remember how many. Ten. Maybe a dozen. A bunch.”

Bart rubbed his short, curly hair. “I don't get it. How do you own a fucking bank?”

“You just own it,” I said. “Someone has to own it.”

“I thought corporations owned banks.”

“I think they do, now. They own Libra's dad's banks, anyway. He sold the whole lot of them to Bank of America a few years back.”

“Goddamn,” Bart said. “How much do you get for a fucking bank? Wow. You're fucked, Danny.”

“How do you figure?”

“This guy's got ten or twelve banks' worth of money and his daughter's dead and you're the last one who saw her? You're going to jail.”

Of course, this exact thought had occurred to me. I didn't want to spend too much time thinking about it. I used my typical excuse. “She got hit by a train. I wasn't driving the train. How are you gonna blame me?”

Bart counted the reasons off on his fingers. “You're poor. You're the ex-boyfriend. You skipped town. It doesn't matter what the police find. You're going to jail.”

I shook my head. “Nah,” I said. Because I'd thought about it. They'd have to do forensic tests. They'd have to realize that she was already lying down when she got hit. You can figure that out from the angles of the wounds and all. Plus, they'd have no real evidence. Not enough to build a case on. There'd be no way they could prove I did it. So I made my case to Bart.

Bart kept staring at me with those bloodshot eyes. “They won't get you for murder. That's true. They don't have much of a case. And, anyway, you did the right thing running away. They won't be able to drag your ass all the way back to Arizona for questioning. But someone will come after you. A bounty hunter. A P.I. Someone. And if they do get you to Arizona, they'll bust you for something.”

I tried to argue this point, but what was the use. Besides, before I could say much, Bart had cranked up the bus and was driving again. He mumbled to the windshield, “I wonder if there's a reward.”

And I knew I shouldn't have said anything.