World Gone Water (5 page)

“You really are stupid,” Jane says, still laughing. “You know that, right?”

“Yeah, I know. So are you.” I kiss Jane on the forehead. We lie there silent for a minute, and then I tell her, “I hope you stay.” It comes out sounding like an apology, and in a lot of ways, it is.

When I was first shipped to Phoenix, we took a car trip to a cabin my first cousin twice removed owned up on the northern rim of the Grand Canyon. As we ascended out of the valley, I remember worshipping the beautiful red rock formations and the cacti and the vast sky that opened up in front of me. But I also remember feeling afraid. I stared at a cactus in the distance and thought,
I could get hurt out there
. I stared at an endless brown field, every acre a carbon copy of the rest, and thought,
Everything here is dead
.

We stopped in Sedona for lunch. I went into the gift store of the restaurant to look around while my first cousin twice removed finished eating.

“Don't dawdle,” my guardian warned. I was careful not to linger looking at any one thing for too long. I wanted a magazine for the ride back. The gift shop didn't seem to have any. I really wasn't surprised when I returned to our table and my guardian was gone.

Without panicking, I walked out to the parking lot to confirm that I'd been left behind. I headed back toward Phoenix on foot, looking over my shoulder now and then to see if any of the approaching cars were being driven by my first cousin twice removed. None were.

Less than a mile out of Sedona a white pickup truck pulled over.

“Where you going?” the guy—a rancher—asked, vaguely concerned.

“Phoenix.”

“This is your lucky day,” he told me.

I hopped in the truck, which smelled of dust and sweat and dogs, and we raced down the highway. The rancher asked me typical hitchhiker questions, and I made up a story about how I was seeing America via my thumb. The rancher liked this story, as much as he didn't believe it, and launched into one of his own about how the youth of America weren't as patriotic as they were in his day and how more people should get a feel for the land, to cultivate an appreciation for what nourishes and sustains them, and I nodded my head all the way back to Phoenix, thinking,
Christ, what a bummer
.

Dr. Hatch wanted me to call all the people I'd hurt and ask them for forgiveness. It was part of the program, Hatch said, like the essays and the journal and the writing exercises. Child molesters called their sons and daughters, adulterous husbands called their wives and said sorry. Didn't I want to call Karine? I couldn't make Hatch understand: I didn't hurt anyone.

Here's what happened: I met Karine one night at La Onda, the bar where I worked in Boca Raton, my attempt to put Jenny behind me for good. Karine hung around the bar most of that night, talking to me while I poured drinks. At first I thought she was merely friendly, or lonely. As the night wore on, I could tell that Karine was hanging around waiting for me.

“My shift's about over,” I said to her. “You want to get out of here?”

“What do you have in mind?” she asked.

I cleaned empty glasses and wiped the bar in front of her.

“Nothing in particular,” I answered. I told Karine she could come upstairs to the apartment that came with the job and wait while I changed. She said sure, she could do that.

After showering, I came out into the front room and Karine was sitting on my couch, looking around.

“I hate to wait,” was all Karine said, but it was the way she said it that let me know she didn't actually want to go anywhere, that what Karine really wanted was for me to give her one good time in the vacuum of the dreariness of her life.

A surge of power came over me and I sat next to Karine on the couch. She seemed even sadder when I got up close to her, but instead of feeling sorry for her, I reached out and stroked her arm. She flinched but didn't make a move to resist, so I leaned over and kissed her hard on the lips. I could taste alcohol on her tongue, but I didn't gag, and she put her hand on the back of my neck and forced her vodka-soaked tongue all the way into my mouth.

We sat like that for a while, until I moved to untuck her shirt. Karine helped me by wriggling a little and I lifted it off over her head. Soon we were both naked and on the floor. I crawled on top and started kissing her madly, really getting into it, until she pushed me away.

“Do you want to stop?” I asked.

She just looked at me.

“We'll stop if you want to,” I told her, but she didn't say a word and I put my hand back down between her legs and she started moaning again.

Just when we started to get back to where we were, I could feel Karine hesitate once more. As much as I wanted to give her what she needed, I couldn't spend a lifetime doing it, so I quickly moved inside her. Her whole body tensed up. I was gentle. She tried to fight it, but I felt she wanted me to take control, to convince her of what she wanted. When we were through, she was in a hurry to leave and I didn't get a chance to hold her. I guessed she didn't need that part of it.

The first thing Dale wants to know is what it's like in rehab.

“Is it like in the movies?”

“Worse.”

Dale and I are waiting for the bartender to notice us at the crowded bar. The restaurant side is pretty empty, and we could easily get a table and have our drinks delivered, but the thought of being chained to a table for an entire meal with Dale is too intimidating, especially without Talie as point man for topics of discussion and interesting interjections.

Dale is satisfied with my answer and doesn't need to hear any details, which surprises me. Talie's letters to me at SRC were full of details about this “great guy” she met through a friend of hers, and since most of the guys I knew at that time weren't “great” in
any
sense of the word, I secretly began to look up to Dale, or at least the ongoing composite of him drawn from Talie's letters.

It surprised me how much something so little could mean. Somehow it pleased me to know Dale drove a blue Volvo, that Dale had his clothes dry-cleaned, that Dale took Talie out faithfully every Saturday night. Dale is in real estate in a way that's too complicated for me or Talie or anyone we know to really understand. I imagine
Dale in dark oak rooms with dim light, convincing people to buy, or sell, or to buy more, to lend him their lives.

I didn't expect Dale to be a pretty boy when I finally did meet him, when the two of them picked me up from SRC. Obviously, Talie had told Dale about me; he seemed “ready” to meet me. I could tell he was putting the nice on a little when he shook my hand. That would have been okay—I almost expected it—but I recognized Dale right away as one of those ironic guys, dangerous because they could draw you out with sympathy and mock interest, and then leave you flapping your arms uselessly in the air.

“What are the tricks to getting attention?” Dale asks.

“Wave money,” I suggest.

Dale pup-tents a twenty and waves it at the bartender, who registers us with a side glance.

“Look at that,” Dale says as we sit. He nods at a guy approaching two women at the bar. We watch like kids in front of a TV, waiting for the shuttle to lift off, anticipating the noise and smoke and breaking apart of intentions, of ideas. “God, I'm glad I don't have to work for it anymore,” Dale says.

“Yeah,” I agree, trying to figure out if that means Dale's glad he found Talie, or if it means something more sinister.

“I could never really get into it,” Dale goes on, still staring. “I mean, I always felt like women knew what I was doing when I was on the make. How could they not?”

This question pretty much says it all.

“Did you say you have to go back?” I ask. It seems like a lame thing to ask, but I'm having real difficulty coming up with things to say.

“Uh, yeah,” Dale says, sips his beer. We're both confused about this, him not remembering if he told me he had to go back to work or not, me not sure either, whatever.

There's a pause, followed by a critical comment of someone's appearance, followed by another drink, followed by a pause, and so on.

“Where did you say you had to go earlier?” I ask, remembering something he said on the phone.

“Oh,” he says tiredly. “I had to meet this old cocksucker friend of mine from school at Propheteers. He's an investment banker from New York and was meeting a client there for dinner.”

I quit lobbing questions altogether as Dale leans back in his chair, liquefying.

“I'm really in love with Talie,” Dale says, nodding grandly, his head tomahawking through the fog of cigarette smoke.

“Yeah?”

Dale, swear to God, puts on his puppy dog face right there at the bar. “I can't believe I found someone like her,” he says.

I'm thinking,
Please, Christ, don't start crying
.

“Well,” I say.

“You've got to convince her to marry me,” Dale says, reaching out and grabbing my arm. His vise grip causes an involuntary recoil and he lets go.

“Yeah, sure,” I say. I look away from Dale and into the gaze of two women at the bar checking us out.

“You see those hooks looking at us?” Dale asks without moving.

“Yeah,” I say. “I see them.”

“I shouldn't call them hookers,” Dale says, apologetic. “They're not as dignified as whores.”

I notice:
Hey! Dale is drunk!

“See, hookers were great.” Dale leans in. “They knew what you wanted and you knew that they knew.”

I wonder if Talie knows about this. “Didn't you worry about diseases?” I ask.

“I did get something, once,” he says. “I gave it to my bitch girlfriend, too.”

I was hoping I wasn't ever going to hear the man who was thinking about marrying Talie use that word.

“I mean, I didn't have
that
many,” he says, guessing what I was thinking. “It just worked out.”

He sits up and smirks, satisfied.

The women are no longer looking at us.

“I know a lot of women who aren't vultures,” I say, making what I think is my point.

“Some women aren't,” he agrees. “And not all men are assholes, either.”

“True,” I say.

“I mean, look at us: We're nice guys. We're the exception.”

Here Dale realizes he's talking like a drunk and shakes himself, draining the alcohol from his mind.

“They're looking again,” Dale says.

I smile, a little amused, both by the women and by Dale's delusion that he is a nice guy. The more I think about it, the funnier it gets.

That's me at the conference table with two FBI agents, the seat still warm from Teddy, who had finished his interview a few moments earlier, his last question to the agents, “Should I get a lawyer?” jangling my nerves.

The summer after my emancipation proved a watershed time. I'd enrolled in summer classes at Glendale Community College to gain a head start on those who had the advantages I never would, a plan that evaporated the moment I encountered Talie having lunch in the atrium of Scottsdale Fashion Square with an older man. My immediate thought was that Talie had found her birth grandfather, but Talie had never mentioned any sort of search for her birth family. Instead, Talie introduced her lunch companion as Jay Stanton Buckley, founder of Buckley Cosmetics.

I'd heard of Jay Stanton Buckley before his name became a regular fixture in the papers, though. Randolph College Prep boasted a Buckley Hall, the honor bestowed after Buckley donated a nice sum toward the construction of Randolph's library. JSB also regularly placed in the top ten of the Phoenix 40, an annual compilation of the forty wealthiest and most influential businessmen (whose sons invariably attended Randolph). Certain titillating rumors about JSB
reached the populace via profiles in newspapers and local magazines: that he hopped between real estate holdings by helicopter; that he kept a private plane in a hangar at Sky Harbor International; that he hired only young, staggeringly beautiful secretaries, who were collectively known as Buckley's Angels.

I had all of this in mind when I arrived at Buckley Cosmetics for the interview Talie had arranged when I mentioned that I would never be truly emancipated without my own money.

Buckley's offices on Camelback Road consisted of two buildings—a two-story building that housed administration (top floor) and legal (bottom floor), and a single-story building that housed accounting. An impressively clean driveway separated the buildings, the asphalt tributary running around back to the employee parking lot, each space carefully stenciled with the initials of the space's owner. At the far end of the parking lot, a basketball hoop mingled with the fronds from a neighboring palm tree, which was undergoing pruning by the team of Tongan landscapers imported from the archipelago of South Pacific islands by JSB himself, all outfitted in turquoise polo shirts bearing the Buckley logo.

The receptionist invited me to wait in a nearby conference room, showing me to a couch in a room towering with boxes. Through the floor-to-ceiling drapes I could see men in suits sauntering through the hallways. The electronic buzz of the switchboard was nearly constant.

The conference room door clicked opened and a man in his early seventies appeared, closing the door behind him. “Hello,” he said, introducing himself as Dr. Theodore F. Weber. “You can call me Teddy.” Teddy asked me a few questions about myself, genuinely interested in the answers. Eager to talk about the job, I mentioned that Mr. Buckley had made a generous donation to my high school. “That's the kind of man he is,” Teddy said enthusiastically. “If you
come to work for us, you'll see that for yourself. The thing is this: We all work for Mr. Buckley. He's the captain of the team, and everything belongs to him: the bats, the balls, the playing field, everything. And we're his team.” That was the closest we'd get to discussing the job. Instead, we diverged into the fact that Teddy had come to work for Mr. Buckley through his son-in-law, who worked at Buckley, after running a successful medical practice in Chicago. He'd moved with his wife to Scottsdale to be closer to his daughter and had magically been tapped by Mr. Buckley to head up the department of runners, the foot soldiers that were the backbone of Buckley Cosmetics.