The Trouble in Me Read online

  Then we dashed back for the branches and chucked those on top.

  When that was done I ran for my backyard and hid behind a tree where I could watch the scene.

  A few minutes later, the cop pulled up to Gary, who was casually spooling the rope in his front yard. It was the same cop as before.

  “Hey, did you find Flame-Out?” Gary asked.

  The cop didn’t seem amused. “The department is missing a tow truck,” he said roughly. “Someone said they saw it around here. You got it? Because I know you have a special thing for tow trucks.”

  “Never seen it,” Gary said. He was a good liar. He kept his answers simple and he always denied everything.

  The cop stared blankly at him, and then turned toward his squad car. “I try to be nice to you, but you won’t be straight with me,” he said with contempt. “Every tip you give me is a dead end.”

  “What do you expect from a guy who has been labeled a dead end all his life?” Gary shot back, telling the truth with the same voice he told lies. Maybe they were the same to him.

  Suddenly from the tree where Alice was sitting came the whoosh of a flame and Alice squawked like one of those electrocuted birds and the flaming teddy bear dropped to the ground and in seconds it had melted down to a bubbling puddle of brownish-pink gunk and black smoke.

  The cop had a startled look on his face and then he frowned and abruptly shoved his gearshift in reverse, did a screeching three-point turn, and peeled rubber down to the corner.

  I ran over to Gary.

  “I gotta get this thing out of here,” Gary said, and walked quickly toward the tow truck.

  I followed close behind.

  “Are you going to be okay?” I asked.

  I was hoping he’d want me to come with him.

  “Actually, I’m more worried about you,” he said, and held me at bay by the front of my wet shirt. “The girl who lives on the other side of you returned last week.”

  He pointed to the house next to ours—the one with the empty swimming pool.

  “I haven’t seen a girl there,” I said.

  “Don’t question me,” he snapped. “Just listen to your master’s voice. There is a girl in there. She’s hiding just now because she told everyone a lot of lies about me, and now she’s afraid of me. But as soon as I’m gone she’ll surface. She’ll see you and size you right up. She’s beautiful. You won’t be able to stay away from her. But you have to.”

  “Why?”

  He slapped my face fast and hard.

  “That’s another word I don’t like. Just accept that she’s smarter than you,” he said as a fact. “And that you’ll fall in love with her and believe everything she says.”

  “Not the lies,” I said.

  “Especially the lies,” he replied. “Now, I’m in a hurry, if you haven’t noticed.”

  He squatted down and began to unbolt the back license plate on the tow truck.

  I leaned over him.

  “What’s her name?” I asked.

  “You don’t need to know. You’ll say it just once and like a genie she’ll appear and ruin your life.”

  He began to bolt on a fake license plate from Georgia.

  “I’m good with girls,” I said with confidence. “I can resist her. I’ve resisted girls all my life.”

  “Not by choice,” he said deliberately. “They’ve actually resisted you all your life.”

  He handed me a can of white spray paint.

  “Now, shut up and listen. Spray over all the lettering on the passenger-side door. And not another word out of you.”

  I did my side while he did his. When he finished, I finished. I tossed the spray paint in the passenger side as he hopped up on the driver’s seat and slammed his door.

  I jumped up on the running board and watched as he bent forward around the wheel, crossed two wires under the dashboard, and started the engine.

  “Just remember this,” he said. “Once a girl loves me she’s never allowed to love anyone else—ever. They just become my harem-of-the-unhappy.”

  I didn’t know how to reply to that as I jumped off the running board and he reversed down the side yard onto the driveway. I chased after him as he hit the street, curling the back end of the truck around, and by the time he straightened the wheel and hit the gas he was already in second gear and at the far corner. He didn’t slow down as he took the turn, and once he shifted into third he was out of sight.

  I walked over to my yard wondering if I’d ever see him again because he said he was going to marry his Alabama girlfriend and if he did and stayed up there I’d be stuck with just myself. Or maybe that genie would show up and I could pretend I was the new Gary. Maybe she’d like me then and call me “Master.”

  HEAT-TREATED

  After Gary left I felt like a hermit crab that had lost its protective shell. But as it turned out I didn’t have to wait long to find a girl who liked improving boys.

  Gary was only gone a couple hours when the girl next door spotted me, just as he said she would. But since I was becoming more like him, it seemed right that she would want to meet me.

  I was holding a metal bucket full of ashes from the papers and journals I had burned in the grill. I was thinking of my own burned remains when a high-pitched voice called out, “Hey, you.”

  I turned and looked across our dead yard toward the chain-link fence between us and the other side neighbor.

  A girl stood there.

  I turned away and threw the ashes into the nasty canal. They spread across the surface like a burn scar. Then I turned back in her direction.

  “Hey,” she said, a little more confidently now that she’d caught my eye. “Over here!”

  She waved her hand back and forth like a child waving a little parade flag. She had to be the girl Gary did not want me to talk to, but she seemed so nice and innocent.

  I liked her immediately, even if I didn’t have the words to describe why. I probably should have looked uninterested at that moment and walked away, but Gary had said that once I saw her I wouldn’t be able to stay away from her, so I was just following his prediction.

  “Hey,” she said again, and stood up on her toes. “I’m talking to you, so don’t ignore me.”

  I just stood there feeling my heart beat. She was his ex-girlfriend and must have given him the pink teddy bear with her name, Tomi, written on it. She looked like a genie with a triple bun of brown hair and a round face and eyes as if she were from the Far East—Singapore or Jakarta—someplace exotic where it was possible to be a saffron sunrise of light captured in a bottle and end up released as a sunset in Florida. That seemed impossible, but I guess the impossible was just what I wanted. I waved back to her as I thought to myself, Her hair is stacked up like a pagoda.

  “Come over here and help me, please?” she asked politely. “I just want to ask you something.”

  The way she leaned over the fence reminded me of a petting zoo where the animals know you have food in your hand and so they stretch their long necks and chests forward and push a bulge in the fence until it looks like it might just split apart.

  It wasn’t only the way she pressed against the fence either. She had the kind of magnetic force my dad or uncles or older guys would talk about when they talked about trouble with women.

  “Come on,” she said, and waved her hand at me. “I want to talk to you. Don’t be such a shy guy.” And her eyes and chin and smile sort of bobbed up and down with that joy of being alive, like a newborn pony.

  I don’t know why I kept thinking of her as if she were a beautiful animal because she was so obviously a beautiful girl, but anything in nature that is beautiful is pure, and she seemed pure. Maybe that’s what I was thinking without putting the right words to it.

  I glanced over at the Pagoda house even though I knew Gary was long gone. Then I took one step toward her, and the other steps followed.

  I squinted and tilted my face forward because the sun was reflecting off the aluminum flashing
along the edge of her roof and the ray of light was hitting me in the eyes. With my face bent to the ground she may have thought I was approaching her as if she were a goddess and I was unworthy of looking her in the eyes. She wouldn’t have been all that wrong.

  As I walked across the crunchy brown lawn, darting waves of grasshoppers fled from around my shoes. It was as if I were splashing water—or walking on water. Maybe she was some kind of genie and had already put a grasshopper spell on me.

  When I got closer to her fence the sun was blocked out by the roof overhang and I stepped into a shadow. I raised my eyes. “Yes?” I said.

  “Did you see those grasshoppers?” she asked with some amazement.

  I smiled. “Yes,” I said, nodding.

  “They were beautiful,” she remarked. “When the light hit them they looked like colored glass.”

  “I was squinting,” I said, “and couldn’t see that.” I glanced over at Gary’s house again. His warning was pretty magnetic, too.

  “Do you have a cigarette?” she asked, and held two fingers across her lips as if she were taking a puff of one. She had very nice lips and they looked like colored glass.

  “I don’t smoke,” I said, and shrugged.

  “That’s not what I asked,” she replied. “Can you get a cigarette? I’ll split it with you.”

  “We don’t have any,” I replied, and for some crazy reason I said, “And my friend Gary isn’t around or I’d get some from him.”

  Suddenly the cigarettes were uninteresting to her. “I know you know Gary,” she said in a singsong way, and shifted her weight from one leg to the other. “Well, I know him, too,” she said, but with a little venom.

  “He lives next door,” I said stupidly, and nodded toward his house.

  “Don’t I know it,” she shot back. “I’ve been there one too many times, if you know what I mean.”

  She said that like she knew him in a special way. I could feel myself getting jealous because I wanted her to know me in a special way.

  “Well, can you go get me some cigarettes?” she asked nicely. “I have the money and I figure you have a bike.”

  “Sure,” I agreed. I had nothing else to do. I didn’t have to mow the grass, although Dad did say I should rake it so that it looked like combed hair on a flat head. He was joking at first and then he talked himself into saying, “Sculpt it into a navy insignia—like an anchor.” He showed me the crest on his navy ring for a template.

  Suddenly the girl turned on one foot, like a dancer.

  “I’ll be right back,” she said. “Let me get the money.”

  I stood there watching her quickly run toward her back door and she looked more like a woman than a girl. Maybe that’s when I should have run toward my back door so that Gary wouldn’t know a thing. But I stayed like a little puppy eager to please her as my eyes mindlessly drifted toward the Pagoda house.

  She returned faster than I expected. When she got to the fence she looked at me like she was about to laugh.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” she remarked. “It’s just that you’re staring at that house like it’s after you.”

  “No,” I said, hiding my thoughts behind a lie.

  She held out a man’s wallet. “There are a few leftover bucks in there,” she said. “Get something for yourself.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “I’m fine.”

  “Well, when you come back I’ll tell you a story about that wallet,” she said pointedly, and dipped her head as a silent promise. “And that will be your reward.”

  “I’d like that,” I managed to say, which led me to ask, “What’s your name?”

  I asked even though I knew.

  “Tomi King,” she said. “I’m quarantined to my house because I just flew home on a plane and some baby had whooping cough or the measles or the plague, so I’m not allowed to spread it—if I have it, that is.”

  I covered my mouth as if I were yawning, but it was because of the germs. I was a little like my mother when it came to the fear of germs. I turned my head to one side and took a deep breath.

  “Pick any brand,” she said. “I like surprises.”

  “I’ll be back soon,” I said, and trotted around to the front of my house and hopped on my bicycle.

  I pedaled down to Gus’s Gas Station in a jiffy. He charged kids more for cigarettes than adults, but that was okay. It wasn’t my money. When I opened the wallet to pay I saw there was a corner of paper folded over into the license slot. I pulled it out and examined it. It was a pilot’s license. The name on it was Johnny Foil.

  I didn’t know what to think of that, but Tomi had said she’d tell me the story, so I hopped back on my bike and headed home.

  She was waiting for me right where I had left her and she waved her hand in that flag-waving way like before and it felt so good to have someone happy to see me.

  “Hi,” she called out as I marched toward her in a straight line as if I had no choice.

  I held up the pack of cigarettes.

  “Oh, Kents!” she said, and clapped her hands together. “My favorite.”

  She reached across the fence for them, but I held them just beyond her grasp. “Are you going to tell me the story of this wallet?” I asked. “Like you promised?”

  “You read my mind,” she said, and I put the Kents and a pack of matches in her soft, open hand.

  “Do you know Suzy Pryor?” she asked, and sat down on her side of the fence.

  “She’s my sister’s best friend,” I replied, and slowly sat down on my prickly grass.

  “Good,” she said as she opened the cigarette package and plucked one out with her long nails. She lit it, inhaled, exhaled, and pulled her shoulders way back as if she were a bow ready to launch an arrow. And then she did.

  Very quickly she said, “I didn’t like Suzy very much. But now I do and I’ll tell you why in a minute. So Gary had a ‘thing’ for Suzy, but she didn’t care for him and his ways. She had a boyfriend—a rich kid named Jordan Abernathy. She met him at church. Anyway, he would show up in a shiny black Lincoln driven by a chauffeur and the chauffeur would park in Suzy’s driveway and open the door for Jordan, and then Jordan would stroll up to her front door with flowers and call on Suzy. It was pretty weird for around this crappy neighborhood but really nice, too, because Jordan was a good guy even though he was like Richie Rich in the comics. He was cute, though not that cute, but his money made up the difference. Well, because Jordan was really nice to Suzy and gave her gifts and took her to good restaurants Gary got all worked up. He claimed Suzy was just after the money and all and was using Jordan, and if anyone else came around with some money she’d leave Jordan in a split second. Gary was just plain old jealous because he didn’t have any money, and his smile and those awful shoes and that motorcycle jacket weren’t getting him anywhere.

  “And then the most amazing thing happened. Just over by Gus’s Gas Station, across the street, is an old abandoned golf course.”

  “The fenced-in one,” I quickly remarked, having just passed it on my bike ride.

  “It’s all grown over—like a jungle,” she added. “I used to go there with a lot of friends and hang out. Well, an airplane movie was being filmed above it so that the planes would look like they were flying over Africa or the Amazon or somewhere lush. There were three airplanes. Two were old World War I biplanes and the other was a modern camera plane. Anyway, the old planes were flying this way and that, pretending to have a battle, when something went wrong and one of the biplanes brushed wings with the camera plane. And that biplane came crashing down on the golf course. The other two planes made it back to the airport, but the third plane blew up when it hit the ground.

  “As it turns out, Gary was over there because that’s where he used to hang out instead of going to school. So he sees it hit and runs toward it. The plane was made of canvas and wood, and with the fuel tank smashed open it was all on fire. Gary spotted the pilot in his seat and he was on fire to
o, and trapped in the wreck. So Gary runs into the fire, grabs the burning pilot, and pulls him out. But he was dead. So Gary being Gary he took the guy’s wallet.”

  “Johnny Foil,” I guessed.

  “Yep,” she replied, and then said, “I could use another cigarette.” She seemed to take her time getting the second cigarette out of the pack, but when she did she lit it right up.

  Once she exhaled she slowly shrugged as if the story were pressing down on her shoulders. “Anyway, there was a thousand dollars in the wallet because that’s what the movie people paid the pilot. The police spread the word about the missing wallet because the theft was so foul. But Gary didn’t take a cent of the money and he goes and gives it to Suzy and says to her, ‘Now you don’t need Richie Rich. You got your own money and a real man. So forget him because you are mine now.’

  “She didn’t go for that. She just told him, ‘I’ll stick with Jordan.’ So Gary leaves the wallet on her doorstep and walks away angry. Well, nobody knows what happened next, but Jordan mysteriously stops coming around for Suzy. Someone said Gary threatened him and he went running off to boarding school or something. And Suzy told me this really good part—she took the full wallet and hid it and then told Gary that if he ever bothered her again she’d call the police and show them the wallet and tell them that he stole it and gave it to her. She thought it was pretty sick that he thought he could just buy her love with a dead man’s money. Her hiding the wallet was pretty smart because that threat kept Gary from bothering her and so he started looking around for another girlfriend.”

  Then she paused and took a long drag on her Kent. “Well, without going into details, something happened between me and Gary and I got pregnant.” She looked away from me after she said that.

  “What?” I said quietly, maybe sounding a little confused. Or young. Or stupid.

  “Don’t make me explain the birds and the bees,” she said, as if she were tired.

  “Was it Gary?” I asked, knowing it would be, but I just had to hear her say so.