The Indifference League (19 page)

“Fine,” says The Statistician, to both his wife and Miss Demeanor. “You're on.”

The Drifter leans forward on his elbows, staring with smoldering eyes at The Statistician, then at The Stunner, then at his brother again. “If we're betting on the game, then I've got a wager for you too, big brother. If you go bankrupt before my girlfriend does, I get to ask you one question. And you have to answer it. Truthfully.”

“But sweetie,” The Stunner says, “It's a bad bet. I can't beat him. He knows all the odds. He knows all the variables. He knows all the permutations.”

“And so do you,” The Drifter says. “Roll the dice.”

“Wait,” Hippie Avenger says, understanding what is now at stake. “What does he get if he wins?” She turns to The Statistician. “What do you want if you win?”

The Statistician closes his eyes.

What I
don't
want is for my wife to get some crass tattoo carved onto her tenth-percentile ass, but that's what she's going to do, whether I like it or not.

What I
don't
want is for my brother or my wife to know what happened between my Protégée and me, but that's
what he's going to ask me about.

When The Statistician opens his eyes again, Hippie Avenger is the first person he sees.

And what I
do
want, I know I can't have.

There is a blinding flash of lightning and an immediate, ear-ringing crack of thunder.

The lights in the cottage dim for a moment, but they don't go out.

The Statistician stands up and begins dividing his pastel-coloured play-money between Miss Demeanor and The Stunner.

“What are you doing?” Miss Demeanor demands.

“I can't win,” The Statistician says, dealing the cardboard deeds to his theoretical properties between Miss Demeanor and The Stunner like playing cards.

“Go get your tattoo,” he says to Time Bomb, “if that's what you want to do. It's your body. And you've got all the real money, and you hold all the real deeds. So do whatever you want to. I can't stop you.”

“Well, all right!” Miss Demeanor cheers, raising her hands for another high-five from Time Bomb. “Let's get you branded, baby!”

Time Bomb slaps palms with Miss Demeanor, but with less enthusiasm than before.

“Well, let's go,” Miss Demeanor says, “before you chicken out.”

“Tonight?”

“Hell yeah, tonight! I know this twenty-four hour parlour, best needle artist in the city. She did almost all of mine!” Miss Demeanor turns to The Statistician. “Don't worry, Daddy, I'll have her home by sunrise.”

As they rush out into the rain, Time Bomb turns to The Statistician and says, “See you later,” almost like she's asking a question.

“Yeah. See you later.”

The Statistician sits down again at the table, folds his hands where his stack of phony deeds and cash had been, and faces his younger brother.

Rain blasts against the steel roof over their heads, rumbling like a volcano about to erupt.

“Okay, then,” The Statistician says, locking his eyes onto the Drifter's. He doesn't blink. Nothing moves but his mouth. “Ask.”

The Drifter hesitates. He knows The Statistician better than anyone. He knows that if he doesn't phrase this in exactly the right way, his brother will calculate a way to evade the question.

“You two are still being weird around each other,” The Drifter says, “and, well, I just can't help wondering … did your … relationship … go beyond the limits … the accepted boundaries … of a normal student-teacher relationship?”

“Yes,” The Statistician says. “Yes. It did.”

The Stunner's eyes are wide and dark.

“I was attracted to her. I made a proposition. I offered to give her an A+ grade in exchange for … well, you know.”

The Drifter's fists clench.

“She said no,” The Statistician says, looking his brother in the eyes, not even blinking. “She turned me down. And even though I graded her twice as hard as the other students, she earned the A+ anyway.”

“Well, at least I know you're telling the truth,” The Drifter says, the muscles in his cheeks twitching. “You never look anyone in the eyes when you're lying.”

“She wasn't looking for a man like me,” The Statistician says. “She was looking for a man like you.”

The Drifter has wanted to beat his older brother at something, at anything, since they were little kids. Now he feels like he might cry.

The Stunner is crying. Her tears splash on the plastic tablecloth.

The Drifter puts his arms around The Stunner. “I'm sorry,” he says. “I needed to hear it from him.”

“I hope you can forgive me some day,” The Statistician says.

The Stunner cries even harder.

Rain hisses against the ground outside.

“Tonight is kind of like the night we met,” The Drifter says to The Stunner. “Want to go out and relive the ride?”

“Fraser,” The Stunner says to The Drifter, “Can we just ride all night? And not come back here?”

“Sure, Cassie,” he tells her. “We'll ride all night. Let's go.”

*

Hippie Avenger and Mr. Nice Guy sit at the table with The Statistician, unsure of what to do or say next. Mr. Nice Guy is desperate to break the storm-punctuated tension. He is equally desperate to engineer a moment alone with Hippie Avenger. It's the final night of the long weekend. It's now or never.

He leans over and whispers to her, “Why don't you and I drive into town, grab a drink somewhere. I'm sure he could use some time alone right now.”

“I'm okay,” The Statistician says.

“I think I'll just turn in for the night,” Hippie Avenger says. She leans over and kisses The Statistician on the cheek. “Good night, mister,” she says.

As Hippie Avenger climbs the stairs, Mr. Nice Guy stretches, forces a yawn, and says, “Well, I'm pretty beat, too.”

Maybe I should go get
my
goodnight kiss
, he thinks. By the time Mr. Nice Guy is upstairs, though, the door to Hippie Avenger's room is closed.

*

Alone at the table, The Statistician gathers the money and the deeds, and puts them in their respective slots inside the game box. Then he plucks the pieces from the Monopoly board: the top hat, which he had never worn until tonight. The Stunner's wheelbarrow, which was never really his in the first place. Miss Demeanor's boot, which certainly kicked some ass this evening. He tosses the little metallic tokens into the box with The Perfect Pair's battleship and cannon, The Drifter's race car, Time Bomb's horse and rider, Mr. Nice Guy's thimble, and Hippie Avenger's shaggy dog.

He folds the game board, places the lid of the box overtop, and sits alone at the table. Behind his bruised back, rain pecks gently at the windowpane.

The Statistician had always won at Monopoly. He had never lost.

CODE OF ETHICS

“With great power comes great responsibility.”

— Uncle Ben to Peter Parker (a.k.a. Spider-Man),
from the movie
Spider-Man
, 2002

I
t is not the otherworldly scent of The Stunner's lovingly blended coffee that rouses The Statistician from sleep this morning. The Stunner and The Drifter did not return last night. Today they are on the road somewhere together, moving farther and farther away from The Hall of Indifference.

What jolts The Statistician awake today is the pungent essence of rubbing alcohol and antibiotic lotion. It burns his nostrils and eyes.

Time Bomb is bent over the chair where she's set her overstuffed, name-brand-of-the-month cosmetic bag. She's rummaging frantically though its contents.

“Damn it,” she says. “I was sure I brought a tube of …”

She is naked from the waist down. Upon her right butt cheek is a three-inch tattoo of Wilma Flintstone. The skin around Wilma is swollen and irritated.

When she notices that her husband is awake, Time Bomb says, “Hey, hi.” She arches her back, sticks her ass out, and says in her rare flirtatious voice, “So … what do you think?”

Despite The Statistician's distaste for tattoos, his penis immediately rises to Red Alert status. It's been so long since he's seen his wife in this position. Their honeymoon was the last time.

“Yabba-dabba-doo!” he says, slipping out from under the covers, dropping his pajama pants on the floor. He advances, grips her waist just above the hips, centres himself behind her.

She leaps away from him, spins around, and yelps “Are you crazy? Get that dirty thing away from me! Do you want me to get an infection?”

“I just … I was … I just thought …”

“I need some more antibiotic cream,” Time Bomb says, any trace of flirtation now erased from her voice. “Go into town and get me some, okay? And some rubbing alcohol, too.”

“Are you coming with me?”

She slides onto the bed, lying on her stomach.

“Bouncing over the back roads won't be the most enjoyable experience for me at the moment.”

The Statistician sighs and reaches for his pants.

“Okay. See you later, then.”

Wilma Flintstone smiles smugly at The Statistician as he closes the bedroom door behind him.

*

Behind another closed bedroom door, SuperKen is looking at SuperBarbie's naked body. She is curled up in a tight ball on the floor, hugging her knees to her chest, sobbing so violently that she's almost hyperventilating.

Beside her on the rug is a paper cup half-filled with her own urine, and the wand from yet another pregnancy testing kit. No blue line has appeared on the wand. SuperBarbie is still not pregnant.

SuperKen knows that the right strategic move in this volatile situation would be to kneel down beside her, rub her back, stroke her hair, and comfort her, but his rigid leg braces prevent him from doing this, so he just drags the wheelchair over and sits beside her.

“Hey, come on,” SuperKen says, “why don't we just try again?”

“Pointless!” she gasps. “It's pointless!”

“Aw, come on, sweetie. Come on, now.”

“Just go. Just go away. I want to be alone now.”

He leans forward as far as he can, reaches out to touch her.

She swats his hand away.

“Go. Now.”

SuperKen shrugs, stands up from the wheelchair, and limps out of the bedroom. He takes one last look at his naked wife before pushing the door shut.

A good soldier knows when it's time to retreat.

*

The Statistician rolls down the driver's-side window of Hippie Avenger's VW Microbus and hangs his right arm outside. Cool, damp air from last night's storm rushes around his face and neck. Wet gravel hisses beneath the spinning tires.

He wishes that Hippie Avenger had come along for the ride, but she wanted to take a bath “before the morning bathroom rush hour.”

The Statistician vaguely remembers an old-fashioned drugstore in the one-stoplight town near Mr. Nice Guy's cottage. He hopes it will be open on a holiday Monday; he doesn't relish the idea of having to drive all the way back to the city to get a salve for Time Bomb's I'll-show-you-who's-boss tattoo.

He wheels the Microbus up to the curb beside The Village Apothecary. A hand-lettered sign in the bay window announces,
YEP, WE'RE OPEN, FOLKS!

Inside the cluttered, musty shop, a lanky young man with an unkempt red beard struggles to hoist multi-roll packages of toilet paper onto a shelf above his head. The job is made more difficult by the fact that he is missing his right arm at the elbow.

“Here,” The Statistician offers, “let me help you with that.”

“I don't need any help,” he snaps. “I can do it myself.”

At the back of the narrow shop, perched atop a rickety stool, a heavy-set woman in a pink track suit admonishes, “Don't take it out on the customers, Stevie.” Then she says to The Statistician, “He hasn't been in much of a mood since he got back from overseas.”

“Oh?” The Statistician says, to the boy, not to the woman. “Where did you go?”

“Vacation in Afghanistan,” Stevie says, waving his stump in the air.

“He did us proud,” his mother beams. “He got hit while he was dragging fallen men out of the line of fire.”

“No big deal,” Stevie says. “Any one of the other guys woulda done the same thing for me.”

“It
was
a big deal. He's being awarded the Star of Military Valour.”

“Mommmmmmm!”

“Hey, one of my friends was injured over there, too,” The Statistician says.

“Oh yeah?” the kid says. “What's his name?”

When The Statistician mentions SuperKen, Stevie drops a package of toilet paper on the floorboards.

“You gotta be friggin' kidding me! You know
OC Douchebag
?”

“Stevie!” the woman yelps. “Watch your language!”

“But, Mom! Remember the guy I told you about? That quarter-inch admiral who was always giving the big inspirational speeches about …”

“About the time his basketball team was down by ten?” Stevie's mom says, jumping up from her stool. “And how they all pulled together in the final minutes to win the championship?”

The Statistician has heard that story many times himself. SuperKen had dunked the basket that won the game, of course.

“That's the guy!” Stevie says. “OC Douchebag!”

His mother doesn't correct him this time. Instead, she chortles, “The
Parachutist
!”

“No, it's not the same guy, then,” The Statistician says. “My friend is in the infantry, I think. Definitely not the Air Force.”

“Nah,” Stevie laughs, “We just
call
him The Parachutist. After what happened, you know.”

“No, I
don't
know. What happened?”

Stevie glances at his mother, then at The Statistician, then back at his mother again. “Well, if he's your friend, I probably shouldn't …”

“Please?” The Statistician says.

“Oh, I don't know,” Stevie says. “You're his buddy and all. So, like, what exactly did he tell you?”

“He said that neither Aerial Ordnance, nor Improvised Explosive Devices, nor Area Denial Munitions were factors in his injury. Or something like that.”

“Well, he's right, they weren't.”

“He said he wasn't at liberty to discuss it.”

“Well, I'm not sure that's true,” Stevie says, “but I can understand him not wanting anybody to know about it.”

“So what happened?”

Stevie glances again at his mother again. She shrugs and nods.

“Well,” he says, “we were on the transport plane, right? A C-130 Hercules. One big-assed plane, eh? Anyway, we had just set down on the airstrip, and OC Douche … your buddy, well, he decides to give this rousing speech about how God's on our side, that we're fighting the good fight, going after the infidels, et cetera, et cetera. Well, nobody's really listening, and the commander's looking at some maps up front. Well, normally on a Hercules you just wait for the rear cargo door to open before disembarking, right?”

“Sure, right,” The Statistician says, as if he knows a C-130 Hercules from the
Millennium Falcon
.

“Anyway,” Stevie continues, “the OC gets himself all charged up, throws the side hatch open, and charges right outta the plane, hollering, ‘Follow me, boys! Follow me!'”

It sounds to The Statistician like something that the Male Athlete of the Year would do.

Stevie kneels to pick up the fallen package of toilet paper. It's tricky with just one hand, but he manages it.

“Like I said,” he continues, “the Hercules is a big-assed plane. And you normally exit out the back, so there was no ladder or steps or anything at the side hatch. The OC fell all the way down. Smashed his legs up real good.”

“No medal for him, I guess,” Stevie's mom says.

“Probably not,” Stevie says, as he leaps in the air and tosses the bundle of toilet paper up onto the top shelf, like a basketball star sinking the winning basket.

*

When The Statistician arrives back at the cottage, SuperKen is sitting on the front steps outside.

“Hi there, OC,” The Statistician says.

“Hi … hey, did you just call me OC?”

“That's your rank, isn't it?”

“Well, yeah, but …”

“At the drugstore up the road, I met a kid who served with you in Afghanistan.”

SuperKen's eyes widen.
Play it cool,
he tells himself.
Play it cool.
A good soldier never shows fear in the face of the enemy.

“Oh, yeah? And what was this soldier's name?”

“His mother called him Stevie. He didn't look to be more than twenty.”

“Tall, skinny kid? Red hair?”

“That's him.”

“Private Steven James. Good kid. Good soldier. How's he doing?”

“He's missing an arm from the elbow down.”

SuperKen's face turns white. “Oh,” he says. “I didn't know. Oh.”

“He was restocking the shelves. He didn't want any help.”

“Good for him. Good for him.”

The brown paper bag containing antibiotic cream and rubbing alcohol for Time Bomb swings back and forth in The Statistician's right hand.

The index fingernail of SuperKen's right hand taps arhythmically on one of his titanium leg braces.

Finally, SuperKen says, “I suppose you're going to tell everyone.”

“No. I'm not going to tell everyone.”

SuperKen thinks of SuperBarbie, naked and sobbing on the floor upstairs.

“I suppose you're going to tell my wife, though.”

“No, I'm not going to tell her,” The Statistician says. “But
you
probably should.”

SuperKen sticks out his jaw. “And are
you
going to tell
your
wife that you fooled around with your brother's girlfriend while she was still your student?”

“I … you … how …?”

“I'm not a math prodigy,” SuperKen says, “but I can put two and two together.”

The Statistician straightens.

“Yes. Yes, I'm going to tell her. She's going to find out sooner or later, and I'd rather that it was from me.”

The Statistician steps around SuperKen, up the stairs and into the cottage.

“As a matter of fact, I'm going to go tell her right now.”

SuperKen says under his breath, “You're a real hero.”