Betwixt (27 page)

And discovered dust.

He leaned into the mower to make it up the last incline leading to the forest that bounded their property. He almost wished
he
could
spank her. But once your daughter has lain out in a string bikini in the backyard, that option is definitely off the table.

Neve. String bikinis. Contraceptives. Dust. Amanda once reminded him that she’d been wearing less — at least on top — the
first time he saw her. And that she’d been on the Pill, and that the joint she’d handed him at the barn dance had come into
her hands from a complete stranger and for all she knew had been laced. Twenty-four years later she’d traded the braless overalls
for linen shirts, gone off the Pill after Jacob had consented to a vasectomy. And most important, she reminded him, they had
both outgrown drugs. So would Neve.

When it’s two against one, a man gets used to conceding to the women in his life. But as Jacob leaned his aching back into
the mower — damn this thing could take it out of you — he decided he had to do something. This wasn’t pot. Pot grows in your
backyard. This was a chemical made in a lab by some greedy, amoral little shit who got his formula off the goddamned
Internet. Or at least Jacob thought it was. The truth was, he didn’t know what dust was. The few times he’d asked some spaced-out
customers at the pizzeria about it, he got answers along the lines of “Dust is totally mellow, man,” or “Dust is, like,
magic,
” or, his favorite, “Yo, dude! Dust!” Whatever the hell it was, he didn’t want his daughter on it. He didn’t want her hanging
around with that asshole who peddled it either.
Bleek.
What a name. The thought of that boy pawing his daughter was the final straw. He wheeled the mower around to head back down
the slope and decided he had no choice. Neve would be grounded.

He stopped to wipe the sweat from his face. Though it was barely morning and Portland was still cool and dewy from the storm
the previous night, Jacob was steaming. Even his head.
Especially
his head. He felt steam pulsing from his temples, and he knew from recent experience that neither Advil nor Tylenol nor aspirin
would cure it. A drink might, or two or three, but the last time Jacob had gotten drunk in the morning was the day he woke
up to discover Ronald Reagan had been reelected. He would have to tough this one out.

He was at the high point of his yard now, looking over the city. A slight haze was developing over downtown, but everywhere
else the sun shone indiscriminately, brightly, mocking the darkness that had sunk into him last night when he realized that
Neve wouldn’t be coming home, yet again. Amanda, better able
to separate from her daughter — and more capable of expressing anger — drank four glasses of wine in quick succession and
went to sleep. Jacob, so mad he refused to drink, felt his wife was passing the buck, leaving it to him to stay up waiting
for their daughter — as though
that
would make her come home sooner. He put on a Zappa album and turned it up just a little too loud, then watched a bad movie
on television, then whipped up a calamari salad for himself around five
AM
.
Nothing like the smell of squid in the morning.
While he stared out the window munching it, he decided the lawn needed to be mowed. It was too early though. His neighbors
would kill him. (Actually, they’d probably write a letter to the community board.) Then he remembered the push mower. Cursing
Neve — as though she had somehow
forced
him to mow the lawn at this hour — he fished Amanda’s iPod from her purse and went outside in his cargo shorts and rooted
around the garage until he found the mower, buried under three bicycles with four wheels among them, all of them flat.

Joni Mitchell got him through most of the job. Amanda had never lost her taste for her, through all those years, even though
those talky songs sounded like a page — several pages — ripped from her diary. He almost jumped out of his skin when some
strange caterwaul came on after “Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter.” The iPod said the singer’s name was “Björk,” which sounded
to Jacob more like a brand of bike tire, and, wincing at the
screeching, he sifted through Amanda’s albums till
Blue
came up. He had to wipe the sweat from his eyes three times before he admitted that it wasn’t sweat that was blurring his
vision, making it hard for him to read the words on the tiny screen. He closed his eyes and tried to tell himself it was just
anger or fatigue making his fingers tremble like an old man’s, but he wasn’t fooling himself. His head was throbbing and he
hadn’t even turned on the music.

Jacob Clowes did not pray. He did not believe in god. But he was praying now.
Dear god, please bring my daughter back to me. I will come home from the restaurant early. I will tell Neve I love her every
day. I will lose thirty pounds. I will call my mother more often. I will donate twenty pizzas a week to God’s Love We Deliver.
There are things I will do, god. I will change. I will. Just let me have this —

Jacob stopped. He asked himself what “this” was. What he wanted most. Just let me see this through, he prayed. Until Neve
is safe.

He opened his eyes. His vision had cleared but his hands were still shaking. A strange tingling pulsed in his arms and legs.
It didn’t hurt as much as it felt as though someone were touching his skin with a mild electrical current, and when he bent
over to pick up the mower, yellow-ringed black spots danced in front of his eyes. He started back down the hill. He knew he
couldn’t
power his way through this, but that’s how he’d dealt with everything in his life. What the hell was
wrong
with him? He was forty-nine. He was a young man. He chastised himself for even thinking about his own problems at a time
like this, when all his thoughts should be focused on Neve.

Jacob was halfway down the hill when he saw her wobbling through the back gate on the arm of a slight, black-haired boy. He
had to squint to focus.

Nix.

The lawn mower’s handle fell from his fingers and he stepped over it. All thoughts of beer guts and plumber’s crack and the
pounding in his temples vanished. Neve’s head hung like a broken puppet’s, but Nix had looked up and seen him before dropping
his eyes back to the ground.
Trying to sneak her around back.
Was the little shit just going to dump her in the yard, wait for someone to wake up and find her? The ungrateful punk. To
think that Jacob had once cared for the boy. Given him a job. Had tried to
help
him.

Jogging downhill, he pulled out his earphones and fumbled with them, not knowing where to put them. He looped the white cord
around his neck. Neve was hanging off Nix while he tried to close the gate. In this, as in all things, the kid’s priorities
were assbackwards. He was trying to cover his tracks when he should have been concentrating on speed. Get in, get out. That’s
what
the punk should have been doing. Get the hell out before your victim’s father rips your head off and stuffs it down the neck
hole from which it had grown. Jacob was so angry he wanted to beat Nix like he’d beaten the kids in elementary school who’d
called him a dirty Jew. Thank god he wasn’t using the Lawn-Boy — he’d have fed the kid to the blades one limb at a time.

First things first. He grabbed his daughter and pulled her to his side. Neve managed to register that it was her father whose
hands had grabbed her, then her head fell again.

“Hey, Daddy,” she whispered, and giggled, a distracted, tinkling sound, like glass breaking in another room. He tilted his
daughter’s chin up. Her eyes had that same glassy glow she’d had for months. But at least they were open, and focused. If
his daughter had OD’d, Nix really would be dead.

He looked at the boy. The punk refused to meet his eyes.

Jacob cleared his throat.

“Right now you should be thanking my wife.”

Nix didn’t say anything. He still didn’t lift his head. It was almost as if he were scared to look up. First smart thought
the boy had yet.

“A couple of years ago I wanted to buy a rifle, take up hunting. But Amanda wouldn’t allow a gun in the house. You should
thank her for that, because if I did own a rifle it would be up
your ass right now, blowing your brains out the top of your fucking misbegotten skull.”

With a visible effort, Nix roused himself to speech. “Look, Clowes —”

“Don’t you call me that! People who work for me — people I didn’t fire — call me that. But not you.”

Defiance flashed in Nix’s eyes, which almost — but not quite — rose to meet Jacob’s.

“You didn’t fire me. I quit.”

You had to hand it to the skinny punk: he
almost
had a backbone.

“Mr. Clowes,” he was saying now, still looking at the grass, “your daughter and I were at a … party. Out past Bend. Far out.
In the mountains. Neve got fu — I mean, Neve got messed up. I found her with a guy.” He faltered. Jacob continued to stare,
and Nix continued to avoid his eyes. “He’s not a good guy, Mr. Clowes.”

Without warning a siren seemed to go off in Jacob’s ears, a high-pitched sound that burned from one side of his skull to the
other. Nix’s voice was drowned out and his face blurred like a wet painting. Jacob sank into a squat, almost fell. He managed
to catch himself just in time, his hands slipping from Neve and smacking down hard on his knees.

What the
…

The spasm lasted only a moment. When it passed he heard a
sound coming from the boy. Like the kid was moaning. Breathing deeply, Jacob managed to stand again, though he had to grab
Neve to make it up all the way. The two of them leaned into each other like a pair of uprooted trees.

“He — he — he’s not a good guy, Mr. Clowes.” Nix was stuttering. “You need to keep your daughter away from him.”

The siren was receding. Jacob knew who Nix was talking about: goddamned Tim Bleeker. He was the one responsible for the way
Neve was now. Nix’s destructive tendencies had always been directed at himself, which is why Jacob had cut him so much slack
at the shop. But Bleek wasn’t here right now and Jacob needed an object for his anger. He needed to feel as though he were
saving Neve, even if it was with his dying breath.

“I don’t see Tim Bleeker here,” Jacob said when he could finally talk. His voice sounded thin, as though it were coming out
on a long string pulled from his mouth. “I see you. What the hell were you doing with Neve anyway? K.A. is in California.”

Nix’s eyes flitted up, down, sideways — everywhere but at Jacob’s face. “It’s not what you think, Mr. Clowes —”

Anger was the only thing holding Jacob up now. “Listen to me, Nix,” he said, again hearing the stretched-out sound of his
voice, which came in little uneven spurts. “I’ve cut you breaks in the past. But you cross a line when you mess with a man’s
daughter. Neve is my only child. If one skin cell is out of place on her body, then you’d better pray. Pray the cops throw
you in jail
before I get my hands on you. Because I will make you hurt in parts you didn’t even know you had. I —”

A stab of pain cut off his voice and his vision dissolved again. He wiped the sweat from his brow, but his eyes refused to
focus. “You —” Nix’s body wavered in front of him like a candle flame, and Jacob closed his eyes. “You … little …
bastard.
”

When he opened his eyes again, he saw that Nix had taken several steps back, as if starting to run away. And he was looking
at him. Straight at him. Finally. The fear in his eyes scared even Jacob, because it didn’t seem to be
him
the boy was afraid of. Rather, it was almost as if Nix were afraid
for
him. The boy was trembling, and Jacob would have felt pity, if he hadn’t wanted to neuter him.

Jesus Christ, he was thinking. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus Christ. What the hell is
wrong
with me?

Jacob clung to his daughter. He wanted to get Neve inside now, then lie down. If he could just catch his breath, calm himself,
stop the pounding in his head, the ringing in his ears, the fire on his skin.

“Mr. Clowes.” Nix was talking slowly, over-enunciating. “I did not hurt your daughter, Mr. Clowes. I just brought her home.
She’s in trouble, sir.” Nix swallowed and Jacob could see his Adam’s apple bounce. “Do you know Tim Bleeker? Bleek? Bleek’s
got Neve all strung out on dust.”

Jacob felt his stomach drop. It was disgusting to hear it from someone else. He tightened his grip on Neve, who giggled again.
She even pointed at something, though her eyes were closed.

“Flying!” she exclaimed. “She’s flying!”

His daughter’s laughter coiled around Jacob’s heart. A good father would have been strong enough to save his little girl.

“Look.” Nix was still talking. “Bleek’s bad. He’s, like,
dark.
You do not want Neve hanging out with him.”

Jacob could hardly hear Nix, nor could he understand him. He seemed to be saying things, yet he wasn’t saying anything.
He’s, like, dark.
What the hell was that supposed to mean?

A sound came to Jacob’s ears. Over the ringing and the panting of his own breath and Nix’s cryptic words and the occasional
giggle from Neve: Joni Mitchell, jangling softly, tinnily out of the earphones looped around his neck. She sounded far away,
like his daughter and his youth and everything good in the world. The only thing close to him was this little punk, who was
now staring at him as though he were some particularly grisly piece of roadkill.

Jacob’s words came in short, wheezing gusts.

“Listen to me.” He had to concentrate to pronounce each word. “If I ever see you around my daughter again, I will kill you.
You won’t walk. You won’t eat. You will wish you couldn’t breathe. I will make your life …
over.
”

Somewhere in the middle of his words, Nix had begun to back up. He backed through the gate, terror on his face, his head shaking.
The kid’s mouth was moving but no sound was coming out — it took Jacob a long time to be sure of that. He had to focus so
he could read the boy’s lips.