Sex & Violence (24 page)

“read little kid picture books” to the list of things that helped me fall asleep and the next thing I knew, Layne was poking my shoulder and saying, “Wake up.”

I went into the kitchen where Jacinta was making sloppy joes in a crock pot for the party tomorrow.

“You think you could come over and do that every night, Evan?” Jacinta asked. “Me and Layne suck at getting him to bed lately.”

Jacinta looked tired as hell and extra skinny in her jeans and bare feet. I wished suddenly I could give her something.

Like a day at a spa where they give you champagne and a massage in your bathrobe and whatever the hell else women like.

Layne sat at the table, rubbing his face and looking at his cell phone with a frown.

“You want a beer, Evan?” Jacinta asked.

“No, I’ve got to head home. Got to finish the cupcakes.”

“It’s so awesome you’re doing that,” Jacinta said. “Even if Mr. Macho says you’re a homo.”

“I never said that!” Layne protested.

“Cleaning makes Layne pissy,” Jacinta told me.

Layne slammed down his phone and swore.

“What? You
hate
cleaning,” Jacinta said.

“No, it’s fucking Lana,” Layne said, getting up and looking for his keys. “I knew this would happen.”

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Lana’s out at Riverbend, totally wasted, and Randy Garrington just showed up,” he said. “He’s drunk too, screaming his head off. Lana’s stuck in some guy’s trailer.”

My mouth dried up instantly. But my right hand curled into a fist. Thumb out.

“It’s eleven thirty at night, Layne!” Jacinta said.

“This wasn’t exactly
my
idea, Jacinta,” he said.

“You want me to come with you?” I asked, hoping he would say no. But I knew I probably should take responsibility for Lana and the whole Dumpster dive thing. Though Layne would probably kill me himself if he found out about that.

“Hell, no,” Layne said. “You might know how to punch, but I’m not delivering you to Randy Garrington on purpose.

Just do me a favor—quit seeing Lana. I’m going to have a heart attack before I’m thirty because of shit like this.”

“Don’t forget the cupcakes tomorrow!” Jacinta yelled, as I followed Layne out the door.

***

The next day, I felt like I should at least say something to Baker.

Since we’d almost done it, for Christ’s sake. I wished there was some way to explain myself without having to go back to pre-history, to Remington Chase and Collette and my dead mother and The Cupcake Lady of Tacoma and the glaciers killing the dinosaurs. Speaking of wishing. My lazy morning-wood self spent a good amount of time wishing that Baker Margarete Trieste might magically appear naked right next to me, Evan McElhatton Carter, neither of us bothered by the demands of time and space and the male refractory period and non-monogramous agreements with guys named Jim Sweet.

Eventually I came back to reality where I needed to finish frosting the goddamn Elmo cupcakes. I was packing them up in cake tins when my father waltzed in the kitchen and told me that we needed to go fishing. After the entire summer of living here,
now
he wanted to have a father-son moment out on the boat.

I was expecting a big talk. Not that we’d talked much since the day he told me about Grandpa Carter. He was nothing if not economical; he was where I learned it from. But I figured he’d at least tell me about Boston, all the logistical shit that he tended to focus on when we moved. Not the fact that he was forcing me to enter yet another hostile situation, with kids who wouldn’t be my friends, with teachers who couldn’t figure out my transcript, and coaches who didn’t have space for me on their teams.

But instead, he talked about the weather clearing up. About Keir’s sheep farm. About the Tonneson’s septic system backing up the week earlier. Dumb shit I didn’t care about. Especially if we were leaving.

“When were you going to tell me about Boston?” I finally interrupted.

He looked surprised. And a little guilty.

“Nothing’s final about Boston, yet, Evan.”

“Okay, well, school starts pretty soon, Dad. It might be nice to know whether I should enroll somewhere or get my damn GED.”

“You’re not getting a GED,” he said, sounding annoyed.

“Colleges want to see a diploma.”

I didn’t tell him that college was completely foreign to me, that I couldn’t imagine actually finishing high school. It seemed like I’d just continue on, one new shitty place after another.

“So, you just sleeping with Brenda until her boyfriend gets back from California?”

“Evan, Jesus,” he said. “What are you talking about? Why are you so damn angry?”

“I’m not angry. I’m perfectly fine,” I said. “About Boston, which you haven’t said one thing about to me. And Brenda too.

Go ahead and not answer. I’m asking a simple question. Because I don’t know how this works with you now. Because we never make chicken stir-fry. And we never go to parties. And you never hang out with chicks. It’s hard to keep up with you these days, Dad.”

My dad pulled his fishing pole out of the water and set it down with a bang. “I don’t really think this is any of your business. And I don’t appreciate your tone.”

“Right,” I said. “None of my business. Who you sleep with.

What was I thinking? Since I don’t even get to know where we’re going to live half the time.”

I set down my fishing pole with a bang too and started pulling up the anchor. Because I’d picked a brilliant time for an argument. While we were trapped together in the middle of a lake.

“Do you have a problem with Brenda or something?” he asked.

“No, do you?”

“You’re being childish.”

He started the motor so it was too loud to talk. Instead of looking at him, I just examined my hands. The sprained left one had healed, but I didn’t like to make a tight fist with it. The right had fading scars. I imagined using it on my father’s blank face.

We docked in silence. My father cut the engine and gathered up the tackle and fishing rods.

“Okay,” he said, standing between me and the shore. “I like Brenda. But … obviously, there are issues there. I’m … uncomfortable discussing it.”

“Yeah, whatever, you’re
uncomfortable
. Seems like you’re
comfortable
enough hooking up with women who belong to other guys.”

“What did you just say?” he asked, grabbing my arm tighter than I could remember him ever doing.

I didn’t repeat it. I knew he’d heard me. I stared right into his blue eyes, pinched at the corners with wrinkles.

“You think you know the whole story, Evan,” he said. “But you don’t.”

“Good thing you like to keep me so informed,” I said, ripping my arm away from him and heading up the dock.

“Evan, wait …”

“I’ve got somewhere to be, Dad,” I called over my shoulder.

“But you can set me straight later. On the way to Boston.”

Then I ran to Baker’s cabin, because I knew he wouldn’t follow me. Wouldn’t ruin his image of jazz and stir-fry and whiskey sours and painted toenails in front of anyone …

Baker was at the screen porch table reading a book.

“Hey,” I said to her, a little out of breath. “I need to leave.

Go into town. Right now. You want to come with?”

***

Five minutes later, we were sailing toward Marchant Falls with sixty Elmo cupcakes in the backseat. Baker stared straight forward, her sunglasses on, her little white dress wrinkling over her tan thighs. I had all the windows open, and Baker turned up the radio, like she understood that I didn’t want to talk.

I pulled up to Layne and Jacinta’s house, turned off the engine.

“We don’t have to stay. I’m just going to deliver the cupcakes, and we can go do something else.”

“Okay.” Baker looked nervous. But nervous-excited. I felt the same way.

“You decide what we should do, then.”

“Taber just texted me about this party in town,” she said.

“Someone Jim knows.”

“Well, then, let’s go.” Though I didn’t want to do that at all. I just wanted her. Wanted to scoop her up and eat her.

Wanted Jim to go away again. I couldn’t really hate his guts, which would have been easier. I just wanted him erased, at least long enough for Dirtbag Evan—for me—to get what I wanted from her. Then I could be erased, and so could she.

“You’re so nice, Evan.”

God.
If she only knew.

“Wait till you find me making out with some loadie chick tonight,” I said. “Then we’ll see how nice you think I am.”

“Well, you’re nice to me.”

“I was a dick that one time,” I reminded her.

And then I wanted to kiss her, but that seemed stupid, as I’d just mentioned making out with someone else and also that I was a dick. I
was
a dick. But damn, it didn’t matter, because then her hand was on my thigh and she was kissing me and a second later I felt like persuading her to get over her car-sex aversion. Might have too, if not for bucket seats and Tim Beauchant banging his giant fist on the window and laughing his ass off.

“Jacinta needs the cupcakes, man!” he yelled. “Quit humping that chick already! This is a family-friendly event!”

I felt a little stupid, though there was no shame in being accused of humping a girl as cute as Baker, who Tim helped out the passenger door like he was some kind of gentleman wearing a cape and not a tattooed greasy-fingernail guy with biceps bigger than my head.

I introduced them as we hauled the cupcakes inside. And then we kind of just got rooked into staying. Not that Baker minded, being a social person, unlike me, the troll slinking under his bridge.

Harry’s party was huge. Inside Jacinta scrambled around while old grandparents parked it on the couch and harassed-looking mothers stood around the food. Out back, Layne grilled hot dogs and guys who resembled some version of Jacinta or Layne hovered around a keg. Everyone smoking. I introduced Baker to Jacinta, and then Harry barreled in, shirtless with red Magic Marker scribbling all over his chest. He jumped up toward me and yelled “Cupcay!” I lifted him up and tickled his belly for a minute. Baker thought Harry was charming as hell and tried to talk to him, but he got all shy, and I put him down so he could rejoin the pack of kids. Then while Baker helped Jacinta, I went out back to get a beer and caught a bunch of shit for being the fag who made the Elmo cupcakes and met a bunch of Layne and Jacinta’s relatives whose names I didn’t remember. Then Jacinta came out the back screen door with a giant tower of cupcakes and we all sang Happy Birthday to Harry while I took pictures with people’s cameras. The little kids took off like maniacs with the cupcakes, Harry screaming while wearing a firefighter helmet with frosting all over his face.

Layne put his arm around Jacinta, who was smiling.

“Told you the kids would love them,” she said. “And no goddamn plates.”

“Don’t swear in front of your son,” Layne teased her.

Everyone piled up paper plates with hot dogs and chips and sloppy joes and the backyard filled up with people eating and the little screen door between the kitchen and the patio slammed every twenty seconds from either moms getting more food or kids chasing each other. Tim started telling Baker about my boxing abilities and how it didn’t matter that I was skinny, because of the size of the fight in the dog, which embarrassed the shit out of me, so I went to refill my beer and got caught talking with one of Jacinta’s uncles about fishing and ice fishing, both forms of the sport that I knew jackshit about, but Jacinta’s uncle was half in the bag and happy to explain it to me.

I was half in the bag myself by the time I came back to Tim and Baker. Baker was telling him about the history of the Beauchants in Marchant Falls, Marcus Beauchant being an esteemed fur trader and Indian ally, and the namesake of the Beauchant River, which she pronounced in the Frenchy way and which pleased Tim to no end. And I could tell that Tim was charming the shit out of Baker, because she kept laughing, and I didn’t care, as long as he kept her laughing. Then Layne motioned to me, like,
I need to talk to you,
and we walked over to the keg.

“So, I don’t think she’s gonna show tonight,” Layne said.

“Who?”

“Lana, you dumbass,” he said. “Randy got to her before I could get out to Riverbend last night.”

“Jesus.”

“She went home with him,” Layne said. “Nothing I could do without picking a fight with Randy.” He pointed at Baker with his beer. “So.
She
your girlfriend now?”

“She’s got a boyfriend.”

“Too bad,” Layne said. “Because you no longer have my permission to bang Lana. Because as long as Randy’s around and Lana’s an idiot, who knows what’ll happen if he finds out about you guys. This is a small fuckin’ town, Evan. He’ll find out.”

I flashed to behind The Donut Co-op. Was Lana really as dumb as Layne was saying? Dumb enough to fuck us both and tell Randy all about it? I knocked back the rest of my beer and poured another from the keg immediately. Then I couldn’t sit still. I spent the rest of the party sucking down beer and chasing little kids and helping Jacinta with the food and talking to Layne’s grandmother about the price of vegetables at Cub Foods versus at the Discount Food Mart in the strip mall on Shawton Street. It was a confusing conversation until Tim and Baker came over and Tim yelled, “Grandma, don’t even lie, we all know you just like Discount Foods because it’s right next to the porn store!” To which his grandmother laughed and lit one of those super-thin lady cigarettes.

***

The sun was down, and I was pretty damn drunk when the party ended. Jacinta held Harry on her lap in a lawn chair.

She looked completely beat while he slurped on a Freeze Pop, which was spilling down his arm onto Jacinta’s dress. Baker was playing hearts with Tim and some of the cousins. Layne lit a cigarette and sat down in a lawn chair beside me, slapping at mosquitoes.

“So, your hours gonna change when school starts, Evan?”

Layne asked. “Or will you just quit on me, and I’ll have to find two new dumbasses to replace you and Terry?”

“You fired Terry?”