The Little Brother (8 page)

She laughed. “Your first meeting?”

“Uh-huh,” I said.

“What about you?” she asked Gabe.

He said nothing, didn't even look at her.

But she didn't let his rudeness faze her.

“C'mon,” she said distractedly, hooking me by the arm, guiding me to the other room, where a group of men were talking by the pool table. She smelled like vanilla. Tapping one of them on the shoulder, she said, “Hey.”

He turned, smiled, and said, “Hey, baby.” Somewhere in his thirties, he wore khakis and a faded peach-colored polo shirt.

She nodded at me, saying, “Forgot to get his card signed.”

“Not a problem,” he said, taking the slip from me. He leaned over the pool table, pulling a pen from his pocket, and while signing the paper he said, “What'd you do last night?”

“Not much,” she said.

“You don't look so good,” he said, looking up at her.

“Long Island iced teas,” she said.

“Don't you know,” he said, handing me the slip, “that something bad always happens with Long Island iced teas?” His eyes grazed past me—“What are you, like, in fifth grade?”—and landed back on her.

“Long Island iced teas,” one of the other men chimed in, “make me want to fight.”

“Me, too,” she said.

“Girl fight,” another man said encouragingly.

“Or wreck my car,” said the former.

“What happened last night?” the paper-signer asked.

She shrugged. “It's none of your fucking business.”

The paper-signer said, “What happened to your arm?”

She outstretched her arm and looked at the three intertwined scratches.

“Cat?” he asked.

“I don't have a cat.”

“Self-mutilation?” said another, in a tone suggesting he was trying to be helpful.

“I have to go,” she said listlessly, pulling me away.

“Okay, Sara,” said the paper-signer. “Will you be at the meeting tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” she said, not turning around.

I tried to thank her as we walked back to Gabe but she said, “Not a big deal,” and then she smiled. “See you around,” she said, and she turned and left before Gabe had the chance to be an asshole again.

L
ATER THAT AFTERNOON
, Dad rattled the ice in his cocktail while we told him about the meeting, and Gabe showed him the signature on his slip.

“Good,” Dad said, reclining on a chaise near the pool. He took a sip from his glass, his hair toweled into a spindly Mohawk from
his swim. He wore his terry-cloth bathrobe; in his hip pocket were the TV remote and his cell phone.

Gabe and I sat in deck chairs.

“I don't want to go back,” Gabe said, leaning forward in his chair.

“It's not that bad,” I said, musing out loud. “It's interesting, especially in a sociological way.” I remembered Sara hooking my arm and her vanilla smell. “Except for all that God stuff and praying.”

Gabe gave me a contemptuous look. “And the holding hands,” he reminded me.

“Yeah,” I said. “Awful.”

“Why can't I just make up signatures for the secretaries?” Gabe asked. “I've got the directory. I can add all the details and then have my friends sign. They probably don't check.”

“Not smart,” Dad said.

“Yeah, I know,” Gabe said.

Dad rattled his drink some more, staring at us. A patio umbrella cut the sun in half and shadowed his upper torso, leaving his hips and legs in the light.

“Listen,” he said, looking at us fiercely, “I'm not going to spell it out. You need to go to the meetings.” He waved his hand, shooing us away.

We went into the kitchen and Gabe paced a bit. Then he stopped and looked at me, his face lighting up with a revelation.

“I've got it,” he said. He put his hands on my shoulders and went on to elaborate a plan whereby he'd pay me to go to the meetings and pretend to be him, until I got ten signatures.

I agreed, not because I necessarily cared about the meetings or the money, but because I wanted to see Sara again, and I believed that I'd find her, since she'd told the paper-signer that she'd be back.

We negotiated. Twenty-five dollars a meeting times nine. Not a bad deal. Dad must've known, though he didn't say anything.

I ended up going to more than nine meetings, filling in the back of the slip with the extras. (I started going with Sara.) But Gabe refused to pay me for those, since it hadn't been part of our agreement, even though I insisted it would impress the judge.

Ironically, by the time of his court date, Gabe didn't need proof of the AA meetings. Dad's lawyer used Gabe's head injury as evidence, claiming Gabe hadn't been properly treated at the police station—besides a towel from a cop to halt the bleeding—and that he should have been taken to the hospital, since his cut had ended up requiring three stitches. Dad's lawyer submitted paperwork from two doctors attesting to the severity of the injury and the risk of concussion. All bluster: Gabe hadn't suffered a bit, but the lawyer claimed he'd convalesced for days after, and had experienced dizziness. Rather than risk the threat of a lawsuit, the judge decided that it would be in everyone's best interest to dismiss the charges.

Gabe, in celebration, struck a match to light the edge of the paper listing all my meetings. We watched the spark curl the slip into a blue and yellow flame, until it blackened into ash in Dad's abalone ashtray.

9.

S
ARA SAT IN
front of me, wearing that same choker with the shells and a different tank top.

I stared at the back of her neck—her hair was in a sloppy bun like she'd tied it in a knot—until I got the courage to tap her arm and say hello.

She turned halfway. “Oh,” she said, “it's you.” Drunk—I could tell by the way she spoke, her words heavy in her mouth. She patted the space on the church pew next to her. “C'mon,” she said. “Sit with me.”

She slumped in the pew during the meeting and rested her head on my shoulder.

The speaker, Tom L., a retired policeman, spoke in a deliberate voice. Large but not fat, with a weary demeanor, he wore a rumpled, dark blue suit with a striped tie.

I wish I could remember exactly what he said that night, and why it impressed me so much.

But what I remember is that at one point he said, “Now that I'm retired, I can help people who come to me with troubles, whether it be with the law or something else. So if someone needs
my help, you can reach me easy. I get letters and things forwarded to me from the police department, care of Tom L. I'm retired, sure, but they let me keep a postbox. Or just come find me and talk to me. Like this guy”—he gestured to a man in the front pew—“was going through it, and he came to me and he said, ‘Jesus, Tom, I don't know what to do,' and I said to him, ‘Well, first off, tell me what you did.' So he did, and we figured it out together. He served, what was it?”

The man called out, “Three days.”

“That's right. Three days of incarceration for a clear conscience and peace of mind. Was it worth it?”

The man nodded vigorously.

After the meeting, I waited while Sara smoked a cigarette underneath a streetlight that gave off a dirty orange glow. The other smokers congregated near the parking lot, using a couple of dirt-filled coffee cans as ashtrays.

“Aren't you cold?” I asked, since she was wearing cutoffs and a tank top, and the temperature was dropping.

She gave a little shiver in answer.

After she smoked the cigarette about halfway down, she said something I couldn't hear.

“What?” I asked, moving closer.

“I said,” she said, “can I borrow some money?”

“How much?”

She looked to the sky as if calculating. “Five hundred,” she concluded. I must've looked shocked, because she said, “Kidding. How about a twenty?”

“I only have a ten,” I said.

She sighed. “Fine,” she said. “I'll take it.”

I pulled my wallet from my back pocket and gave it to her. She took the ten out, handed the wallet back to me, and to my surprise, she politely thanked me and said that she would pay me back.

“Don't worry about it.”

“No,” she said. “I will.”

She dropped her cigarette and ground it out with her flip-flop, and then she began to fumble inside her purse, looking for something. She started walking away from me, still rooting in her purse, and then she found it: her keys. They jangled in her hand.

“Wait,” I said.

She stopped but didn't turn.

“I'll drive,” I suggested, even though I didn't have my driver's permit on me. I didn't want her to drive drunk, but I knew it wouldn't work to call her on it.

With her back to me, she extended her arm; the keys dangled from her hand. I came forward and took them from her—a brass heart keychain. We started walking toward the parking lot.

“What's your name?” she asked.

I told her.

“You're shitting me,” she said. “What kind of name's that?” And then she added, “That's not the name on that paper you get signed.”

“It's my brother's,” I said. It came out before I thought to lie.

We came to an old, faded blue Toyota Tercel with a dented back bumper, and she said, “It's not locked.” The driver door creaked open and I sat. She got in on the passenger side. It smelled like cigarettes and vanilla.

After adjusting the seat and mirrors, I tried to act like I knew what I was doing, turning the key in the ignition and revving the engine, relieved it wasn't a stick shift. Gabe and Dad had taken me driving in parking lots and the streets around Dad's house, but I was still nervous.

She stared at me. The car jerked into reverse, and she said, “Whoa!”

“Sorry,” I said, smoothing into drive.

I drove slowly, hunched forward in my seat, peering at the road.

“You look like a grandpa!” she said, and then she patted me on the shoulder and said, “Hi, Grandpa!”

We stopped at a Del Taco drive-thru, and she ordered a couple of tacos, fries, and a burrito.

“We'll share,” she said, removing my ten from her wallet and handing it to me to pay the cashier. “My treat, Even.”

We pulled out of the parking lot. “Turn right at the signal,” she said, sorting through the bag of food, not looking at the road, “then left at the next signal.”

I followed her directions to her apartment complex in Costa Mesa—
THE KON-TIKI
, the sign said. While I drove, she ate. “Sorry,” she said, between chews, “I can't wait. I'm so hungry.”

“I don't mind.”

“Park here,” she said, the parking lot one straight strip with no place to turn around, and I pulled into her carport.

We stared at each other in the dark, and she said, “How're you going to get home?”

“I don't know,” I said. “I hadn't thought about it.”

“You might as well come inside and eat,” she said, and then she told me that I could sleep on her couch if I wanted. Immediately, I took this as a proposition and felt a stiffening inside my jeans.

We walked through the complex: At its center was a gated pool with a strong chlorine smell, lit up and aqua-colored, wavering with shadows.

Once we were inside her apartment, she switched on a standing lamp and offered me a 7-Up. She set our bag of food on the coffee table and then went to the kitchen for our sodas. I sat on the couch and waited for her.

The apartment was made up of a kitchen and living room combination and a bedroom and bathroom, with pale, blank walls, minimal furniture, and an old TV. Lonely and bare.

“I just moved,” she said. “Haven't decorated much.”

She sat next to me on her couch and we ate and drank our sodas, the lamplight yellowish and warm. After we finished eating, she didn't speak and took sips from her can. She crossed one leg over the other, and I started imagining scenarios: her brushing against me, then leaning farther into me, and my seizing the opportunity, our age difference obliterated by my skills as a lover. Handling her with expertise and executing our pathway to her bedroom.

I stifled a burp from the carbonation and set my soda on the table.

With all my nerve, I hazarded a full look at her. I'd thought she had brown eyes, but now I saw the green in them, and the little V of a divot on her upper lip just about killed me.

Oblivious, she lit a cigarette, not more than a foot away. I could barely hear the thumping bass from a neighbor's stereo filtering through the walls: Missy Elliott's “Get Ur Freak On.”