Vengeance (11 page)

“When you do, hand it over to me. Then I'll give it right back to you for the TASER I'm taking. See how it works?”

We left in a more direct manner than we had come in. Gina was sitting up now, slumped over with her elbows on her knees. She was watching a TV on the opposite wall. I paused and tried to catch her eye, but she was focused only on the TV. “Good seeing you, Gina,” I said, and followed Casey out the wide-open door.

Chapter 12

Casey strode ahead of me briskly. I didn't know if it was the cold that made him so determined to get to the car or if something had upset him. He unlocked the doors as he cut diagonally across the street, plopped soundly into the driver's seat in time for his door to rush closed behind him.

I got in the already idling car and waited for him to shift out of park. But he just sat with his hands on the wheel a little higher than ten and two, with his shoulders raised slightly and his head ducked down. He looked ready to erupt.

“Gina?” he finally said.

“What?”

“You popped your cherry on Gina Polumbo?”

Right. I should have remembered a last name like that.

“I'm not proud of it,” I said.

Then he did erupt, but in laughter, not anger.

“Gina fucking Polumbo! Holy shit!”

He turned to check traffic and pulled away from the curb.

“She wasn't such a sad mess back then.” I flipped through the few mental pictures I retained of her to decide if I was exaggerating. The point wasn’t worth pressing.

“How the hell did you two ever hook up? I didn't know you even knew her.”

“Yeah. Well... it was weird. You remember Holly?”

“Holly? Yeah. With the blonde hair and the boobs out to here? Oh, shit yeah.”

“You and Aiden were pretty thick right then. I remember. There was that night you were all out on the back patio--”

“With the combat knife!”

“-- with.... Right. The combat knife.”

“And we were seeing how hard we'd let the other one press the blade against our skin before saying mercy. Oh, shit. You can still see the scar. Look!”

He extended his left forearm toward the windshield palm up and took his other hand off the wheel long enough to tug back the sleeve. He turned his exposed forearm one way then the other to get better light on it. I couldn't even see a shadow of a scar, but I said, “Uh-huh.”

“Oh, man she was hot.”

“Yeah. And she and Aiden were on again and off again for months. In fact, she broke up with him that night because of the stupid shit you two were doing.”

“The blood freaked her out, didn't it?”

It had. Even though there was no scar now, I had seen Casey's blood with my own eyes. It was a hairline cut, but blood seeped from it at a remarkable pace. The cut was eight or so inches long, all down his inner forearm. Aiden had pulled off his t-shirt, wadded it up, and used it to apply pressure to the cut.

“Well, while they were off that time, Gina asked Aiden out. She was one of Holly's hangers on, remember? She always had a thing for Aiden.”

“Who didn't? Jesus. Aiden and the women!”

“So they made a date for the drive-in. Only Holly found out and called him to make him cancel the date. They got back together over the phone and made a date for the same movie. But Aiden didn't want to crush Gina. Maybe he wanted to keep her as a back-up. But what he did was ask me to go on a double date with him and Holly.”

“So all four of you in the same car, going to the drive-in?”

“That was the plan.”

“But...?”

I couldn't help but laugh before the next words came out. “But I had already met Gina!”

“And she actually was a pretty sad mess back then, right? You fucking liar!”

“Oh, man! She was! I remember now because I wasn't thinking about making out or having sex with her. I was just thinking about having to sit through a movie next to her.”

“That's so wrong!”

We both lost control. From then on, we had to suppress our laughter to speak.

“I know. I know! So I started negotiating, telling Aiden how big a favor I was doing him. He agreed to pay for everything and put ten bucks in my pocket, too.”

“You dirty little whore! You got paid to bang Gina!”

I was laughing so hard I had tears in my eyes. I was afraid Casey would run into a parked car. But now that I had gone that far, I needed to finish the story.

“No, I really had no intention of even touching her.”

“But--”

“But she was all over me from the minute the movie started! I mean, she had a hand on my crotch and she was nibbling my ear and everything.”

“And she got you all worked up?”

“Oh, shit, no. There was nothing that mess was going to do that would get me in gear, you know? But Aiden and Holly are hard making out and they get to the point where Holly leans over the back of the front seat and points her finger right up to my nose and tells me not to dare look over the front seat.”

“No way!”

“Oh, yeah! Next thing I know, those two are out of view and Holly reaches up and hangs her shirt over the back of the seat.”

“Tell me you looked. I so would have fucking looked!”

“I didn't have to, man. The rear view mirror was turned down and I could see enough.”

“Aiden turned it down?”

“I don't know. Maybe. Or maybe it got knocked out of whack while they were going at it.”

“But now you're looking at Holly’s tits in the front seat and listening to them up there, and you've got Gina right next to you...”

“And she's got her shirt and bra off now, too, and I think, 'Fuck it!' and it turns out now I am in gear, so we go all out. The time we're done, Aiden and Holly are sitting up in front acting all innocent, looking back at us through the corners of their eyes, all smirks and giggles.”

“Popped your cherry but good!”

One last tide of laughter receded over the next minute. I read the street signs as we drove through once-familiar intersections. My gaze skimmed the façade of every house we passed, of an entire neighborhood, which was more than a place. As I remembered myself, I imagined it was like that moment when my dad and his drinking buddies would take one sip too many and frivolity collapsed into dispiritedness.

I had come home for my brother’s funeral and had gotten caught up in a plot to uncover the truth behind Aiden’s alleged murder. I was going to drug houses to buy weapons, where I saw someone I used to know, however superficially, brought low by her lifestyle and instead of considering how she could be helped, I was bragging about screwing her, laughing it up about my first time. And with who, of all people? Casey Porter. It’s true he was close with Aiden, on and off. But had he and I ever been close? We hadn’t been as antagonistic towards each other as I was with some of Aiden’s other buddies, but I always felt that whatever peace there was between Casey and myself was an illusion. He always flashed his smile a bit too readily, as if it were a rehearsed maneuver. He pursued arguments far enough to show he had something to say, but more often than not bowed out when the discussion intensified. “That’s a perspective I need to consider,” he might say. Or, “I’m going to give that some more thought.” If I had only seen Casey pull that trick once or twice I might have admired his maturity and aplomb. Over time I noticed the pattern of Casey’s diplomacy always served his own interests. He was always working an angle.

Moments before, his business associate had reveled at the chance to put Casey in his place and even got a kick out of a little thing like calling him “weasel.” That said a lot about Casey’s character. I decided it wouldn’t be overly cautious of me to second-guess everything he said.

The ride was tranquil with the radio off and us staring in our respective directions. Once-majestic Victorian homes herded around most intersections. Now their gutters sagged, their fascia seams had separated, or their paint had paled or even begun to blister. The block lengths were lined with iterations of Queen Anne farm houses and occasional craftsman houses and bungalows. Watching the houses flicker by was oddly like watching an old 35mm movie with tree trunks along the street separating the cells. A similar neighborhood from a more vibrant era. My mental film reel featured a younger me and my gleaming older brother running down those sidewalks all the way to the QuikTrip, tightly fisting a few sweaty coins, eager for a candy bar or fountain drink. But the film ran out, its tail flapping as I closed my eyes against the stark light.

“I’m surprised you didn’t recognize Louis,” Casey said. The silence was making him more uncomfortable than it was making me.

“Lew-ey?”

“You didn’t recognize him, did you?”

“First person in my life I ever met named Louis,” I said.

“You probably knew him by his real name. Rod White.”

“Rod White. Yeah… that rings a bell.”

“Always wanted to fight Aiden, but nobody knew why. Remember?”

“He was big into the martial arts, wasn’t he?”

“That’s him.”

“I remember the name. Never met him though,” I said, now alert again and watching Casey’s profile as he drove.

“No? Well, why would you have met him” he said. “I ever tell you about when he caught up to me and Aiden in Jones Park?”

“Never heard that one.”

But as soon as I said so, a memory burst forth. Before I could correct myself, Casey had started telling his story.

“Aiden and I are out screwing around one time. Just doing little shit. Boosting stereos or something. Anyway, there’s a baseball and glove in the back seat and we get this goofy idea to pull into the park and throw the ball around. I think we needed to blow off some steam from being amped while we were out wreaking havoc. Whatever. So we start playing catch and we notice this black Bruce Lee fucker all dancing around with a couple of butterfly swords. He has a mat spread out on the grass and he’s going through his kata. But he’s far enough away we can’t make out his face. And we probably thought we were far enough away for him to not hear us or maybe even see us, because we start mimicking him.

“It didn’t take long until one of us stops and takes a good long stare in his direction. And son of a bitch if it isn’t Rod White. And maybe because he saw us staring at him, he interrupts his kata and takes a good long look in our direction. He must have recognized Aiden because he stops his workout and marches right toward us. Thinks it’s his lucky day. Man, that fucker had muscles coming out his ears, and his blood and sweat were pumping from his workout, and now he’s marching at us with those swords and I’m thinking we need to get the hell out of there.

“But Aiden’s just watching him. He’s tossing the ball in his glove and picking it back out and doing that over and over, watching Rod White march at him full of rage and a sword in each hand. Aiden’s wearing his ‘Go ahead and try me’ grin and staring at Ninja Godzilla and I’m thinking we’re totally screwed and someone’s losing an arm, or worse.”

Casey took a dramatic pause as he came off a stop sign and turned onto the avenue. It was like the drive and story had been choreographed for maximum effect.

“Rod stops twenty feet in front of Aiden, like it’s a gunfight. And Rod says, ‘I’ve been looking for you, Fucker.’ He drops into a fighting stance and lifts his swords for the attack, and it’s on. I know that as soon as Aiden flinches that this crazy fuck is going to charge and do some serious harm. So you know what I did?”

He pauses long enough to glance over and confirm I’m hanging on his every word.

“I take that baseball and throw a fastball right at Rod’s head. That crazy shit’s so focused on Aiden he doesn’t see it coming until it’s too late. He turns his face right into the pitch. It makes a sound like cracking a knuckle and he just falls to the ground. Aiden chuckles. I walk over, look down at Rod and say, ‘Hey, Batta, Batta, swing!’”

Casey’s grin burst as wide as the windshield.

“That’s a crazy story, man.”

“Back in the day, brother! Anything! Your brother, man. He always had that goddam smile. You know, I think that’s why so many fuckers like Rod wanted to take him on. Walking through the shit he went through, and still flashing that cocky fucking smile. Goddam!”

I let Casey bask in the glory of his own tale as he chauffeured me across town. What had come to mind before he told me his story, and what I didn’t tell him afterward, was that I remembered that morning. I remembered the whole thing because I was there. That key detail must have escaped him because he had been wasted that morning. He and Aiden had staggered in around five on a Sunday morning in late June. I had driven them to the park before they woke my dad.

I thought they might wind down on the drive or wear themselves out on the playground. But they started playing catch. I kept the keys and got back in the car to doze off. But I kept waking up and I saw the whole episode he had described.

He got every detail right, too. Except that Rod wasn’t carrying butterfly swords. In a public park, that would have been all kinds of illegal. He was practicing with a pair of black tonfa. Casey also forgot to mention how the baseball magically moved from Aiden’s mitt to his own hand. That’s probably because it never happened. When Rod approached them, Casey had stepped out of the immediate danger zone. So when Rod and Aiden faced off like gunfighters, that baseball was still in Aiden’s hand, and it was Aiden who threw the knock out pitch that morning. I watched Rod try to dodge it only to get hit on his temple instead of his nose. And that quip Casey delivered at the end of the story? He fucking stole my brother’s line.