Bad People (22 page)

The animal, sensing an opening, a weakness, lashed out with one paw, scratching at the soft flesh of Luke’s palm. The attack startled him into dropping the paper boat.

Only Connie’s yelp of surprise stopped Luke from flinging the animal, or better yet, from squishing it in his hand.

“Did she scratch you?” said Connie, redundantly.

The half-and-half had spilled down his bare leg and splattered his foot, ridiculously. Luke shook his foot. He still held the cat. It had not struggled more, merely had retracted its claw and lay complacently again, acting innocent.

Luke used all his strength to keep from crushing the animal, and to keep his face serene. He put the creature down on the desk, and wiped liquid off his leg.

“Let me see,” said Connie. She took his hand and examined it.

“It’s nothing,” he said. The animal’s claw hadn’t broken the skin, leaving only a slightly red mark, but she lifted his hand toward herself and kissed it. Maybe this would still work to his advantage.

“The poor little thing is just scared,” said Luke. “But there’s no harm done.” Most people would have been less understanding than that. He would show her. He picked up the boat he had made, but all the half-and-half had spilled out of it, disappearing into the dark carpet. “Hm, well I guess it wasn’t hungry anyway, but we could order some more half and half from room service.”

“They are probably closed at this hour,” said Connie. She was looking at the animal. It seemed to like the tabletop better than being man-handled, and it had lain down and rested its head on its folded legs, as if it had done nothing to Luke a moment earlier.

“It seems happy enough there now,” said Luke.

“She,” corrected Connie, and then: “Where do you suppose she came from?”

Luke went to the window. “Maybe the last room occupant put him out there.”

“Who would do that? That would be awful. No one would do that.”

“No. Only someone really terrible. A bad person of some kind. But this is a nice hotel. “You’re right.” He scratched his chin, then shrugged. “Guess we’ll never find out.”

“I’m more curious than that! Aren’t you?”

“Of course. Of course I want to know. I’m very curious. I wonder how we could ever tell, is all.”

“She looks a few weeks old. Cared for, I think.” She petted it on the desk. “Where’d you come from huh? Where do you belong?”

“Someone is probably looking for her right now.”

“There are no lights on out there. No one is looking for her.”

“Well in the morning then. In a few hours. We should give her to the hotel staff.”

“I suppose.”

“Or did you want to keep him.”

“I can’t. My son has allergies.”

“Hm.” Luke did not approve of allergies. He had once had allergies—hay fever, but they went away around puberty. He hated it so it went away. “I can give her to my ex-roommate.”

“Your friend is looking for a kitten?”

“Well my ex-roommate likes cats.”

“Liking is one thing, but having…”

“It’s fine. I’ll take her.

“Hadn’t you better check with your
friend
?” Luke guessed the curiosity was rising in Connie, she said
friend
pointedly, wanting to know if the friend was a woman, and more than a friend. Even though it was only Ardiss he was talking about, and she no longer interested Luke, he let the implication linger. Good for his position at the moment.

She seemed edgy now. And more than about the “friend” thing. What was it? Oh, he got it now, it was the son, she mentioned the son couldn’t handle cats. The son was a weight on her, trouble. A nuisance with another year of high school to go, if he couldn’t be induced to leave home sooner. Luke had left home at thirteen, staying with various aunts or people known to his grandmother. Already at thirteen he was more of a man than Stephen-David was at seventeen. Or would ever likely be. But leave him for another time.

Luke regarded Connie’s nude outline in the dark.

“Leave the kitten for awhile,” he said. “She seems comfortable enough there.” In fact it had fallen asleep on the desktop. “Come back to bed for a bit.”

He embraced her from behind and kissed her shoulders. Her skin tasted like the afternoon and entire night mixed together, from the moment he had followed her to that play and dinner with Barry and those people, and the oils of the rich food they had there. Make-up applied ages ago. And wine, and something else, tequila maybe. And her desperate phone calls, and going home, and tossing restlessly all night and finally calling him again, coming out without another shower, clearly, and then the smell of their fucking, and the wet animal from the window sill, all those smells upon her, fetid, and his to have now. As much as he wanted. That made him hard, harder than earlier even, and he pressed into the small of her back.

“Ohmigod!” she said. “Somebody’s ready again!”

His arms snaked around to enveloped her.

He had never been more ready.

Chapter 24: S/D

Stephen-David,
S/D
to those who knew him best, spent the early part of the evening looking for friends. He had left home because Mom was gearing up for some function, and running back and forth in the condo getting ready. He went to a Starbucks and started calling people. School would restart next week and he didn’t want to go in cold. The few times he’d run into a friend over the summer, stares and befuddlement greeted him. Everyone knew about his father’s murder but no one knew how to act around S/D. To further complicate things his mom had moved them from the old neighborhood to the condo just north of Fire Hill, which was a cool neighborhood, one he liked to spend time in, but it also moved him farther away from his group, geographically.

He sipped his infusion and scrolled through the numbers on his iPhone. Another reason to be at the Starbucks is the phone got shitty reception in the condo. He really needed his old phone back, but his Mom had got this out of some kind of misplaced guilt, and he didn’t want to have to deal with her disappointment if he told her he didn’t like it. That was unneeded angst.

Swiping through screen after screen he found that there were very few of his friends he actually did feel like seeing. Or
up
to seeing. Lately he didn’t care about anything—especially not about not caring. He knew he was sick; he knew he should be in therapy, and his mom too, but he didn’t care. He didn’t particularly want to get better.

Get better for what? Get better to die some day anyway. He was already alone, he had no brothers or sisters, he had already buried his Dad. What was left? To bury his Mom someday. Not for a long time certainly—probably—but someday. Or he might get married and have kids, he didn’t want to, but most people did. And one day they would bury him, or worse, he would bury them too.

He almost bagged the night and went home, to get to bed before his Mom came in. He had done that a couple times already, parking outside the condo's parking garage, on the street around the corner, coming in and laying down on the floor of his closet, in case his mother looked in on him.

The floor of the closet was great for its anonymity, like he had nothing that required a response from him, like he was his own entity, autonomous in the world.

There had been some talk about study abroad that last summer, or perhaps the year following graduation, but all that had been derailed by the murder. He hadn’t even thought about it until recently, in fact, but he would have enjoyed something like that. There would have been classes, and annoying functions, or other kids, but he held to the thought—the fantasy at least—that he would have found moments to wander alone, down foreign streets surrounded by people who didn’t speak his language. Alone, and in the midst of life—to his mind an ideal way to live—

A call came in, breaking his daydreaming. The name of his friend Morse—Morrison Stache—appeared. Morse was not the most sensitive or enlightened of his friends, and, in a certain way, that made him one of the easiest to talk to. Certainly Morse would not want to act all glum and pious around Stephen-David. He might be genetically encoded against solemnity. S/D already knew Morse wanted to hang because he had received several texts from him. But Morse wasn’t especially good with his phone, so now he was calling, in frustration no doubt. Might be just the person for tonight. S/D took the call.

“You know Kim?” were the first words Morse said.

“Uh?”

“You know her. Kim.
Kim
Kim?” There was background noise, Morse must be at a party or someplace, which made S/D already regret the call.

“I don’t…”

Morse yelled off, away from the phone. “Hey, hey, what’s Kim last name?” A muffled sound, and then Morse came back. “Kim Abbott.” Then he whispered. “Kinda short? But cute, you know cute Kim.”

“Okay…”

“She likes you.”

“I don’t know her.”

“You know her. She wants to meet you. Seriously. She has a mad crush on you. I don’t know why.”

“Nah.”

“We’re at my fiend Jane’s place. Get over here. Don’t wuss. Get over here.”

S/D didn’t say anything so Morse started chanting. “Get over here. Get over here. Get over here. Get over here.” Other voices in the background pickup up on that.

“Okay, okay!” said Stephen-David, suppressing a laugh. “Stupid.”

“You’re coming?”

“All right.”

“Hurry.”

S/D ended the call. He slurped the dregs of his tea and got up.

He drove to Jane’s house, which was in Meridian Valley of course, his old neighborhood.

He took his time, thinking maybe he would decide not to show at all. Maybe his night would end some other way. He had been at some other house party the night his father had been murdered.

While driving, S/D got a few more texts from Morse, which he read, but didn’t reply to. He vaguely remembered this girl Kim that Morse was going on about. She was short-ish, and quiet, and had brown hair, he thought. He didn’t know her and he didn’t know why her allegedly-liking him was so important an issue to Morse. Unless it was some kind of set up. A set-up in the practical joke sense, that is. It sounded like a set-up in the other sense, but he didn’t know why Morse would be involved in that, or care. No, Morse was getting something out of it himself, that much was certain. Whether it was something tangible or just a jolt for his own dumb amusement would be revealed in time.

S/D turned onto Jane’s block. He grinned with a kind of sick satisfaction. Whatever stupid thing Morse was up to, he decided to go with it. In a way it cleared him. He could go along with anything right now, and not have to think about it.

S/D found plenty of open parking on Jane’s street, which probably meant Jane wasn’t having a huge party or anything. Or maybe she was and it hadn’t got started yet. Only twenty to eleven. He parked on the corner.

As he walked up the drive, S/D could see clearly into Jane’s well-lit living room through a panoramic window. There were two girls besides Jane sitting on the sofas, and one other guy besides Morse. S/D didn’t know his name, he’d seen the guy around though, but everything made sense now. Morse and the other guy were wanting to hook up with these girls, but the girls wouldn’t abandon their friend. They were all talking and, S/D could already hear through the door, listening to Vampire Weekend.

He opened the door and walked in without knocking. The group looked up, Morse nodded and went back to talking to Jane. The other guy glanced at him briefly, and the other girls pointedly pretended not to look at him, all of which made for a different reception than he’d expected he would have to endure. They all had beers so he went to the kitchen to find one for himself.

He got one from a ice tub in the broad sink, and twisted the top off. By that time Morse was in the kitchen too.

“Took you long enough,” said Morse.

S/D shrugged.

“Anyway here you are.” Morse slapped S/D’s pectoral with the back of his hand. “Good to see you man, what’s up, brother? You like this girl, what you think?”

“Which one?”

“Either one. Not Jane. That other guy don’t say much, you could probably have either of them.”

“Is that how it works?”

“Sure. I don’t know. Sure.”

“Which is Kim? Isn’t that why you begged me to come.”

“I didn’t beg you. Fuck. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t want to be here.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“Then leave. Fuck you. This girl likes you, that’s all. I’m duty-bound to impart this information.”

“Which girl?”

“Kim. Fuck. Do you listen?”

“Yeah, but which one is she?”

Morse palmed his face. “Shit. I see what you mean. She’s the one on the end of the couch. Brown hair….”

Then Jane clomped into the kitchen on her bulky shoes. “Are you two still in here making out like a couple of bitches?” she said, slurring words. She must have had a start on Morse. Either that or she was a lightweight. She grabbed S/D by his wrist and led him back into the living room. Morse followed. Jane dragged S/D to a couch, and pushed at him until she made him sit: next to the girl, he now knew was Kim. The other girl was flushed from laughing. Kim was simply beet red. Jane danced her hand back and forth in the air while she made something like introductions: “Kim, S/D. S/D, Kim. Now fucking fuck already.”