Just A Small Town Girl: A New Adult Romantic Comedy (15 page)

 I think she guessed I was hanging back, because when we reached the kitchen she said, "I remember when that picture was taken. They put Byron in long sleeves and a button up shirt so all the marks wouldn't show."

 "I'm sorry."

 She sighed. "What are you gonna do?" she said, sounding uncannily like her old man.

 "You could have talked to me, you know," I said, feeling as though I was about to start walking through a landmine. "If you wanted to."

 She leaned back against the kitchen sideboard. "I could," she said. "But it gets tiring after a while. Everyone tells you you're a saint and that you're so brave to keep smiling - for him, you know." Her eyes slid to the side and she blinked rapidly for a moment, like she was trying to hold back tears. "And all the bullshit and fucking nonsense about how positive mental attitude matters. Maybe it's my fault he's dead - God knows there were enough times I wished he'd just die."

 I didn't know what to say, so I said nothing.

 "I'm sorry," she said. "That sounds worse than it is, but cancer has a way of making you want it to be over. For them, for you, for everyone. By the time he died he wasn't my brother anymore. He was more cancer than Byron. The fucking thing eats you down to the soul."

 "God, I'm so sorry," I said, approaching her.

 When I put my hand on her wrist she held up her hands and shook her head. "Please don't," she said. "I don't want either of us to regret anything. Do you want some coffee?"

 "Coffee would be good. Thanks."

 She gestured me to the Shaker style kitchen table. I took a seat, wondering why she was so brittle when this morning she'd been almost sweet to me. "Is everything okay?" I asked.

 "No," she said, with a nervous laugh. "Everything is pretty much fucked, but thanks for asking."

 "Do you want to talk about it?"

 She handed me a mug of coffee. Cream and sugar. At least she knew that much about me. "I'm getting to that," she said.

 "Okay."

 Lacie pulled out a chair and sat down. "Okay," she said. "First off I just want to tell you that I over-reacted to the Heather thing. I don't know what I expected of you. And I'm sorry that I behaved like it was all your fault - takes two to bareback tango, right?"

 "Tango?" I said. "I thought it was a line dance?"

 She smiled at that. Good. "Please," she said. "I may be white, but I'm not
that
white."  

 My phone rang. I tried to ignore it but it was like it was burning a hole in my pocket.

 "You gonna get that?" she said.

 "No."

 "I think you should."

 "Why?"

 "It might be important."

 "It might," I said. "Or it might be Bog telling me that he's figured out whether the thing he was trying to make a bong out of last night was a rutabaga or a turnip."

 "Well, now you've got me curious," she said. "Don't keep a girl in suspense."

 I answered the phone. As it turned out, root vegetables were the last things Bog had on his mind. "I worked it out," he said. "It's been five days. Steve's been gone for five days."

 "Gone from where?" I said.

 "Fucking everywhere, dude. I called his Mom - she doesn't know either. He’s not answering his phone."

 My blood turned to ice. Holy shit. Psycho Bob. Psycho Bob must have found out Steve was cutting the shit with catnip. I hung up and dialed Steve. It rang for an age before going to voicemail. "Okay," I said, hanging up. "Um...kind of a situation here."

 "What's wrong?" asked Lacie.

 "Steve. This friend of mine from high school - turns out he's been missing for five days."

 She frowned. "And you're only just now hearing about this?"

 "Like I say - I'm hearing it from Bog. His time perception is about as good as his short-term memory, and I gotta tell you, his short term memory sucks."

 "Turnip bongs will do that to a person," she said. "Didn't this Steve's family call you to ask if you knew where he was?"

 "I guess not," I said. "Is it really that obvious that I don't especially have my life in any kind of order right now?"

 She squinted.

 "Yeah, don't answer that," I said. I took a deep breath. "Listen, I am so fucking sorry..."

 Lacie arched an eyebrow. "You're leaving, aren't you?"

 "I kind of have to. If he's missing..."

 She sighed. "No, you know what - go. It doesn't matter."

 "I'm really, really sorry."

 "Clay, I told you - it doesn't matter."

 "I know you wanted to talk..."

 She shook her head. "The conversation I was gonna have assumed a whole different complexion when vegetable bongs entered the equation. Don't sweat it. I'll manage."

 God. Great. "Please," I said. "It's bad timing, I know, but this is Steve. He's like my brother. My other brother. The one with criminal tendencies and a brain like a laboratory maze. I think he may be into something really bad this time."

 Lacie folded her arms. "How bad?"

 "It's not imp..."

 "No," she said. "It
is
important. You owe me this much information if you're gonna take off now. How bad?"

 "I'm so sorry..." I edged towards the door. She elbowed past me and opened it.

 "Talk on the way," she said.

 "No way."

 "Tell me now or I'm coming with you."

 "I don't have time to..."

 "...then I'm coming with you." She closed the back door behind us. "Your car or mine?"

 "Mine, I guess." The last time she'd rode in this car with me had been a disaster. That car ride back from the Heather Incident was one of the longest and most painful of my life, Lacie sat there like an ice-sculpture beside me, waves of cold rage just radiating off her like stink-lines off a cartoon character.

 "Bikers," I said, hoping to put her off.

 "Bikers?"

 "Hell's Angels. I think you should seriously reconsider what you're doing."

 She pulled the seatbelt across and snapped it home. "Pfft. Have you
met
bikers? They're not like they used to be. Most of them are weekenders. They're like fortysomething bankers who put on leather jackets with Live Free Or Die painted on the back and then roar around all weekend fantasizing about setting up a capitalist libertarian collective somewhere in New Hampshire. The worst they're going to do to you is try to make you read the collected works of Ayn Rand - which, admittedly is pretty bad but it's not like they're going to beat the shit out of you with motorcycle chains, not like they did to Hunter S. Thompson back in the late sixties."

 I caught her eye in the rear-view mirror. "No. Get out."

 "Why?"

 "Because I don't want you to meet Steve. Ever. I have a terrible feeling you might elope with him."

 "Is his dick bigger than yours?"

 "God no."

 "Then you're quite safe."

 "Huh. And there was me thinking you loved me for my brain."

 "More fool you. I'm very shallow."

 She wasn't getting out of the car. I figured it couldn't hurt just to drop her off at Steve's mom's place. Psycho Bob may have been a psycho but since he wasn't currently serving twenty-five years in some state pen I guessed he wasn't dumb enough to invade suburbia and come after mothers. "You give yourself away," I said, starting the engine. "Only someone who was deep would admit to being shallow. It's like how only really dumb people think they're smart. And did you say you loved me?"

 "No. You were the one who left the implication hanging there."

 "You didn't contradict it."

 "Refute. Better word."

 "Whatever, English Major. You didn't say you didn't."

 "No, but I didn't say I did. Where are we going?"

 "You're going to Steve's mom's place. I fucking told him - time and time again. Do not get involved with Psycho Bob, I said."

 "Do I want to know about Psycho Bob?" she asked.

 "No. No, you don't."

 "Too bad. Tell me anyway."

 "Okay," I said, figuring she wasn't about to quit asking. "You know when we...in Burlington?"

 "Unlikely to ever forget it," she said, with so much emphasis that I was flattered.

 "Really?"

 Her gaze turned chilly. "Really. Believe me, this is no reflection on your sexual prowess."

 "Are you sure? Because you gotta admit I'm..."

 "...
Clayton!
" Wow. Okay. Hadn't heard that tone of voice before. Hoping to never hear it again.

 "Long story short," I said. "Steve talked me and Bog into helping him move some weed for Psycho Bob. We took our percentage and kicked back to Bob, right?"

 "I'm with you," she said.

 "Well, Steve was cutting the shit with catnip."

 She was silent for a while.

 "Say something," I said.

"Like what? What do you want me to say? Never enter into illegal business dealings with someone who has the epithet 'Psycho' hanging off their name?"

 "That's exactly what I said. Although with like, less dictionary words."

 "Your friend Steve is something of a genius, huh?"

 "He kind of is," I said. "He had IQ tests out the wazoo when we were kids. All kinds of assessments and shrink profiles. They did this one called the Machiavelli Test - you heard of that? Based on this Italian guy who wrote a book about how to be devious."

 "
The Prince
. Yes. I've heard of it."

 "Yeah well, the test result came back and said he
was
Machiavelli. Maybe it's genetic. He is Italian, after all." I glanced at my phone, hoping that he'd answer one of my texts, but the screen stayed dark and silent. "I've been thinking," I said. "That this whole mess, this and the Heather thing - this is maybe the universe's way of telling me to grow up and get my shit together."

 "Hmm," said Lacie. For some reason she was radiating ice-waves again and I didn't know what I'd said to piss her off.

 Steve's Mom said the last time she'd seen him, he said he was going to Burlington. That was five days ago. He hadn't answered his phone for three days. To make my life even more difficult, Lacie refused to get out of the car. "I'm not going anywhere," she said. "You can get murdered by bikers
after
we've had a serious talk about our relationship."

 "Relationship?" I said, trying to unclip her seatbelt. She swatted my hands away time and time again and eventually made me give up by lightly toasting my knuckles with a disposal cigarette lighter.

 "So we have a relationship now?" I said, blowing on my singed fingers. "That's sweet. Maybe one of the cornerstones of that relationship could be not trying to set fire to parts of me?"

 She pulled the car door closed and glared at me through the window. "You're not making this easy, you know."

 "Me? I'm not making things easy? What am I not making easy? You want to get murdered by bikers right along with me? Is that it?"

 Lacie shrugged. "Beats sitting around with my thumb up my butt. If there's one thing I've learned lately it's that you can't waste your life on indecision."

 "What?"

 "Hamlet."

 I gave up and got in the car. I was no closer to understanding whatever it was that was eating her and she was no more helpful in throwing me even the tiniest bone that might help me to get it.

 "Where would we find Psycho Bob?" she said, as if Psycho Bob was some kind of reasonable human being that could be talked to.

 "Excuse me? Why would we want to find Psycho Bob?"

 Lacie looked at me as if I were the one who had apparently had the 'do not get killed' part my brain removed with a melon baller or similar scoopy kitchen utensil. "It seems to me," she said, slowly. "That if you think Steve is currently face down in a ditch somewhere, courtesy of Psycho Bob, we should just find Psycho Bob and ask him."

 "You do know why they call him Psycho Bob, don't you?"

 "Of course," she said. "But the alternative is that we infiltrate the biker bar where he hangs out, win over a bunch of Hell's Angels to the joys of amateur dramatics and then stage a play in which someone named Steve is foully murdered by a pot dealer named Mentally Unstable Robert. Then we closely observe Psycho Bob's reactions for signs of guilt."

 See? Weird women. What the fuck?

 All the same, her brainvomit was ringing distant, rusty bells that hadn't clanged since High School English class. "Isn't that part of the plot of Hamlet?" I said.

 "That," she said. "Was my point. Yes."

 "Still with the Hamlet thing, huh?"

 "I find it's thematic. Post-modernist, even."

 "I don't know half the fucking words that fall out of your mouth."

 "I know. Now drive. I'm guessing he hangs out at that metalhead place off of Larch Street, right?"

 "No," I said. "No way. Fuck you. Not gonna happen."

 She batted her eyelashes and smiled an evil, evil smile. "Do you like your job?"

 So it was blackmail now. "Yes," I said. "I also like my liver. And my kneecaps. And my teeth. And I would be very, very unhappy if anything happened to them."

 "Fine," she said, and unclipped her seatbelt. "Then I'll walk."

 And she did. "But it's twelve miles back to Westerwick," I said, crawling alongside her.

 "I know. I could use the cardio."

 "Lacie, it's getting dark." I was conscious of the stream of traffic building up behind me. Barely September and the tourists were descending like Mongol hordes already.

 "I always carry a flashlight."

 "Lacie, get in the fucking car."

 She got in the fucking car. "Fine," I said. "You win. I'll go and get murdered by bikers. Is that what you want?"

 "No," she said. "Nobody's going to get murdered by bikers. Don't be so dramatic, Clayton. We're just going to ask that nice Mr. Bob if he's seen your friend Steve. How is this so difficult to understand?"

 The Fuzzy Duck was a small, fake-English style pub halfway between Westerwick and Tadley. It had opened about fifteen years ago as a potential tourist trap and closed shortly after when it finally occurred to the owners that tourists didn't come to New England to be reminded of Old England. It stood empty for maybe five years, until one night a bunch of bikers broke in, got drunk and allegedly held some kind of Babylonian orgy on the moth-eaten baize of the pool table. There were a whole lot of pearls clutched the next morning, let me tell you.