Cycler (19 page)

I’m speeding past the Brownsteins’ big yellow house when all of a sudden, my legs give out on me. Pulling over into the sandy shoulder, I drop the bike onto its side.

Holy crap! I had sex with Ramie last night!

I have to squat over my bike as the magnitude of this washes through me.

Ramie.

Me.

Naked.

A white SUV cruises down Cherry Street and slows as it nears me. A middle-aged guy in a nylon tracksuit brings it to a stop, lowers the window and leans across the passenger seat. “You all right there?” he says.

Classic rock plays quietly on his radio.

“Huh?” I say.

“Are you hurt?” he says. “You fall off your bike?”

“Oh.” I pick the bike up, but my knees are still wobbly. “No, I’m fine.”
I’ve just deflowered your neighbor
is what I think but don’t say out loud.

“You sure?”

“Yup.” I straddle the bike. “Thanks for asking, though.”

He waits as I mount the bike and wobble forward. Then he passes me slowly with a little wave. We both arrive at the intersection to Main Street at the same time and stare awkwardly as we wait for traffic to let us cross.

Did I mention that I had sex with Ramie Boulieaux last night? Have you told all of your friends? Go ahead. I can wait.

Traffic clears and we both cross Main Street and head toward Winterhead’s town center. Why? I don’t know. I have no idea where I’m going. I can barely see straight. There’s a sidewalk to my right and cars are passing me on the left. I’m struggling to keep my bike within the eight-inch space between the white line and the sidewalk’s curb while sweet and dirty memories course through my body like schools of frantic fish.

Behind me, a car beeps angrily. Looking down, I realize I’ve veered way out into traffic. Pulling back to the right side of the white line, I stop the bike and pull it up onto the sidewalk. Nobody walks on these sidewalks, anyway. The car, a spotless silver BMW, speeds off with an impressive squeal.

I keep riding toward downtown Winterhead, dodging overhanging bushes while images of Ramie’s naked body swim through the dirty waters of my mind.

I am the guy your mother warned you about. A barefoot stalker who sneaks into girls’ bedroom windows.

And has
sex
with them!

I’m that guy.

But who in goddamn hell was that white tuxedo for? Is Ramie seeing someone on the side? Someone even Jill doesn’t know about?

Before I know it, I’ve wobbled all the way to downtown Winterhead, a cosmopolitan crossroads marked by a gas station, a craft “shoppe,” a few restaurants and a Star Market. At this point, I have no idea what to do other than run like hell from my mother, so I stop and pull into the gas station. I ride over to the side of the building by a sour-smelling Dumpster, where no passing cars can see me. Dismounting, I take a few deep breaths. Ramie’s full-blown nudity will not fade from the movie screen of my mind. At the corner of the building is a pay phone. Finding no change in Jill’s pockets, I decide to commit the unchivalrous act of placing a collect call to her cell phone.

My heart stops beating when she accepts the charges and says, “Where are you?”

“Ramie?”

“Where are you?”

“What did she tell you?” I say.

In the background, I hear Mrs. Boulieaux call out, “Who is it?”

Ramie shouts, “It’s Daria.”

“Is my—is Jill’s mom still there?”

“Jack,” she says. “I have to ask you something and you have to promise—”

Footsteps thud toward her; then my mother says, “Is that Daria?”

Into the phone, Ramie says, “Call me if you hear anything, okay? I’ll see you tonight, right?”

“Tonight?” I say. “Where?”

In the background, my mother says, “Can I talk to her?”

“Daria?” Ramie says. “Daria?” Then, without hanging up, she says to my mother, “She hung up. She was in the car. But she hasn’t seen Jill either.”

“Ramie,” my mother says. “I can’t express to you how important it is that we find Jack.”

“Uh-huh,” Ramie says.

“If you hear from him,” she says, “I need to know right away.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Why don’t you let me hold on to your cell phone. That way, if Jack calls, I can talk to him.”

There is a pause. Then Ramie’s mother says, “
I’ll
hold on to Ramie’s cell phone.”

I hear Ramie’s fingers on the phone; then it disconnects.

I hold the receiver in my hand, hoping she’ll return but knowing she won’t. A few feet away, a woman drags a bawling three-year-old from the gas station’s little store.

Tonight. Ramie wants me to meet her tonight. I don’t even know what day it is. I don’t know if I’ll still be around tonight.

Leaning my bike against the Dumpster, I head into the store, entry bells a-jingling.

“Hey,” I say.

The guy manning the cash register looks up at me, then cringes as his eyes wander to my very thin and very tight orange sweatpants.

“Sorry,” I say. “Laundry day.”

His eyes continue to descend to my bare feet.

“Yeah,” I say. “I know, ‘no shirt, no shoes, no service,’ but—”

He regards me with unvarnished contempt. I think his name is Brent and I think he dropped out of Winterhead High two years ago.

“Do you know what day it is?” I say.

He smirks at me for a second, takes a swig of Sprite and says, “Saturday,” as if I’d have to be mentally compromised not to know that.

“Saturday,” I say. But Saturday doesn’t mean anything, because I don’t know what day it was when I woke up.

“You buying something?” he says.

“Do you know the date?” I say.

With an enormous sigh, he summons every single muscle in his neck to undertake the apparently gargantuan effort of facing the cash register, then says, “Twenty-third.”

“June twenty-third?”

“No,” he says. “December. You’re not gonna try to buy beer from me, right? ’Cause I am definitely carding today.”

“Right,” I say. “June twenty-third, right?”

He doesn’t answer.

“Okay, then,” I say. “Thanks.”

I take my leave of Brent and return to the smelly Dumpster to parse the data. June 23. That’s a solid piece of information. But do I remember the date of Jill’s last day? No. I’ve never paid attention to things like dates, because I am not a calendar nerd like Jill. Not only that, prior to last night’s wholly unexpected turn of events, I spent the duration of this phase in an undifferentiated swamp of self-pity with no awareness of how much time was passing.

Wait a minute. June 23? I may not be a calendar nerd, but I remember
that
date. Of course Brent is carding today. Today will be marked by a sudden but not unanticipated increase in the number of minors attempting the illegal purchase of alcohol.

It’s Saturday, June 23, people.

Tonight is prom night!

I, Jack McTeague, a.k.a. Ramie Boulieaux’s lover, ride at top speed down Grapevine Road en route to the Wilburs’ home, where I intend to commit the crime of burglary. Now, I’d like to claim that I have targeted the Wilburs because they’re a couple of grasping yuppies who treat their babysitters like servants. That would be a lie. Mr. and Mrs. Wilbur, though rich beyond measure, are the nicest couple around, and their twins were Jill’s easiest babysitting gig. No, I am targeting the Wilburs’ home for the suits. Mr. Wilbur, if memory serves, was one sharp-dressed M-F. He and his wife would venture out on a Saturday night, dressed to the nines, for dinner “in town.” “In town” meant Boston, and Boston meant they’d be gone for at least three hours, giving Jill plenty of time after the twins were asleep to sneak into their walk-in closet to try on Mrs. Wilbur’s clothes.

I’m going to the prom, in case you haven’t worked it out on your own. Keep up, people. Clock’s a-ticking. I don’t have time to spoon-feed you. Ramie wants me to meet her “tonight,” remember? Tonight is prom night. Need a suit. Get it?

So anyway, I get to the Wilburs’ house and stuff my bicycle into a tangle of azalea bushes in the artfully landscaped dividing jungle between their lawn and the Pirellis’.

Did I mention that I made love to Ramie Boulieaux last night? In her bed? And that we were both completely naked the whole time?

Yes?

Good. I want you to be up-to-date.

So anyway. Wilburs’ house. Bushes. I’m hunkered down in this miniature amazon with Jill’s orange sweatpants sliding so far down my ass that my nuts are getting cold. That, plus the fact that they don’t even begin to disguise the outline of my cock, renders them largely irrelevant as clothing, so I decide to peel them off. Someday, one of the twins will venture into these parts in search of a soccer ball, come out with these sweatpants instead and a family mystery will be born.

I am surveying the Wilburs’ second-floor master bedroom window, where Mrs. Wilbur appears and disappears in varying stages of dress. Around the front, in their giant curving driveway, sit a Porsche, a Volvo and a Land Rover. The back of the Land Rover is open, and I can hear the twins shouting gaily from somewhere inside.

I squeeze through the bushes, snagging my underwear on a sharp branch, then stay low and move quickly across the lawn to the fringe of bushes rimming the house. Studiously avoiding the noisy gravel bed, I skim the edge of the finely shaped hedge around the corner to the front of the house. Above me, I can hear the twins’ frenzied footsteps while Mr. and Mrs. Wilbur call to each other about “the good cooler, not the blue one.”

Inching around the oversized hydrangea with its giant bobbing blue heads, I pad over to the ground-level door built into the addition connecting the main house to the garage. Through the screen door, the muted TV plays
The Lion King
for an audience of none. Nudging the screen door open, I step inside.

Upstairs, the twins are momentarily still. “You can take the Ariel or the Belle costume,” Mrs. Wilbur says. “Not both.”

I peer through the kitchen to the open basement door, which spills yellow light. There’s a guest bedroom on the other side of it. Stepping onto the cool black tiles, I tiptoe across the kitchen, catching a glimpse of my half-naked reflection in the large black face of their oven.

Mr. Wilbur’s voice drifts up from below. “It’s dirty!” he says. “We’re taking the blue—”

He cuts himself off and mumbles, “We’re taking the blue one. I don’t have time for . . .”

I pad quietly past the open basement door as Mr. Wilbur grabs a small blue cooler and turns to head upstairs. Rushing to the guest room, I fumble with the doorknob.

It’s locked!

Mr. Wilbur’s footsteps thud up the stairs. I’m trapped in the narrow hallway between the basement door and the locked guest room.

I open a door to my right. It’s a linen closet, jam-packed. Across the narrow hallway is another door. I open it and slip inside, but there is no time to shut the door before Mr. Wilbur makes it to the top of the stairs. Only an open doorway separates us. All he has to do is turn around to spot me standing in full view in my underwear in the small and, if memory serves, oft-used downstairs bathroom!

He stands inches from me, trying to decipher the whining demands of one of the twins upstairs, then sighs and walks away to put the cooler on the kitchen table.

Trapped now, I slip into the bathtub, where a practically transparent shower curtain would merely blur but not conceal me.

From the sound of things, Mr. Wilbur is loading up the cooler with lunch from the fridge. A few seconds later, Mrs. Wilbur and the twins clomp down the stairs.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” she says. “They’re driving me nuts.”

“Daddy, Daddy,” one of them says. Then I hear Mr. Wilbur grunt as one of them jumps on him.

None of the Wilburs opts for a last-minute potty visit, and after a few noisy minutes of whining and threats, the whole family is out the door. There is a brief commotion surrounding getting the twins into the Land Rover, followed by the sweet sound of the engine retreating down Grapevine Road.

I step out of the bathtub and sprint upstairs to the master bedroom. The thick carpet absorbs my footsteps as I cross in front of their enormous bed to the walk-in closet, where a bounty of expensive suits awaits me, as does an explosion of dresses, skirts, blouses and shoes that would make Jill and Ramie weep.

By the way, did I mention the oral sex? Yeah, there was oral sex last night too.

So I try on white shirts, blue shirts and shiny silver T-shirts. I try on black shoes and brown shoes, blue ties and yellow ties. Brooks Brothers, Armani, Fendi, D&G. You get the picture. Don’t worry. I am not a “vapid label whore” or anything. In fact, I couldn’t care less whose name is on the clothes I wear. I just want to look good for my girl.

In all honesty, I can’t rule out the possibility that my girl is laying a trap for me. When I arrive at the Karn Beach Yacht Club tonight, my mother could be waiting with a giant tranquilizer gun.

But I don’t think she will be. Maybe it’s the delusion of love. Maybe it’s the oral sex. I did mention the oral sex, right? Whatever it is, I think Ramie’s on my side. There was something in her voice. Something about the way she lied to my mother. At any rate, whether I’m going to the prom or marching straight back to prison, I may as well go in style.

The Wilburs don’t return from their day trip. Perhaps the twins have hijacked the Land Rover and are forcing their parents to drive to Disney World at gunpoint.

At eight o’clock, after raiding the fridge and eating the last of their hummus, I suit up in Mr. Wilbur’s black D&G suit, shiny black shoes and a white collarless shirt with no tie and mount my ten-speed.

It’s only a short trip to Argilla Road, which is little more than a dark three-mile strip with Main Street at one end and Karn Beach Yacht Club at the other. Every few minutes, a car filled with prom goers passes me, two of them marking the occasion by hurling beer cans. Whether I am riding toward my demise or my salvation is unknown. All I know is that Ramie will be there, and this time, I am going to tell her everything.

When I get to the huge gravel parking lot marked by the wooden Karn Beach Yacht Club sign, I do a slow circle of the parking lot. No cop cars. At least, no marked cop cars. And more importantly, Mom’s beige Saab is nowhere in sight. Near the entrance is a small herd of rented limos parked at odd angles and listlessly guarded by black-suited men smoking cigarettes.