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"So, what happened to him?" |
"Oh, you know. He and mom split when I was a kid. He moved back in with his folks in a little town in the Thousand Islands, near Ottawa. Four or five years later, he got a job planting trees for a summer up north, and he drowned swimming in a lake during a party. By the time I found out about him, his folks were dead, ... |
"Did you tell your friends about him, once you found out?" |
"Oh, by then I'd lost touch with most of them. After elementary school, we moved across town, to a condo my grandmother retired into on the lakeshore, out in the suburbs. In high school, I didn't really chum around much, so there wasn't anyone to talk to. I did tell my Gran though, asked her why it was such a big secre... |
"That's a weird story, dude. So, do you think of yourself as an orphan?" |
Art rolls over on his side, face inches from hers, and snorts a laugh. "God, that's so -- *Dickensian*. No one ever asked me that before. I don't think so. You can't really be an adult and be an orphan -- you're just someone with dead parents. And I didn't find out about my dad until I was older, so I always figured th... |
Linda rolls over on her side, too, her robe slipping off her lower breast. Art is aroused by it, but not crazily so -- somewhere in telling his story, he's figured out that sex is a foregone conclusion, and now they're just getting through some nice foreplay. He smiles down at her nipple, which is brown as a bar of Bel... |
"I told you about my mom, right? Wanted to act -- who doesn't? But she was too conscious of the cliche to mope about it. She got some little parts -- nothing fab, then went on to work at a Sony dealership. Ten years later, she bought a franchise. Dad and second-wife run a retreat in West Hollywood for sexually dysfunct... |
"Wow, you sound like you've practiced that." |
She tweaks his nose, then drapes her arm across his chest. "Got me. Always writing my autobiography in my head -- gotta have a snappy opener when I'm cornered by the stalkerazzi." |
He laces his fingers in hers, moves close enough to smell her toothpaste-sweet breath. "Tell me something unrehearsed about growing up." |
"That's a stupid request." Her tone is snappish, and her fingers stiffen in his. |
"Why?" |
"It just is! Don't try to get under my skin, OK? My childhood was fine." |
"Look, I don't want to piss you off. I'm just trying to get to know you. Because... you know... I like you. A lot. And I try to get to know the people I like." |
She smiles her lopsided dimple. "Sorry, I just don't like people who try to mess with my head. My problem, not yours. OK, something unrehearsed." She closes her eyes and treats him to the smooth pinkness of her eyelids, and keeps them closed as she speaks. "I once stole a Veddic Series 7 off my mom's lot, when I was fi... |
"Wow, what did you do?" |
"Well, I put my shirt back on. Then I popped the hood and poked randomly at the engine, pulling out the user-servicables and reseating them. The thing was newer than new, right? How could it be broken already? The fratboys all gathered around and gave me advice, and I played up all bitchy, you know, 'I've been fixing t... |
"So I'm trying not to let it get to me, trying to keep it all cool, but I'm not doing a great job. The frat guys are all standing too close and they smell like beer, and I'm not trying to be perky anymore, just want them to stay! away! but they won't back off. I'm trying not to cry. |
"And then the cops showed up. Not real cops, but Sony's Vehicle Recovery Squad. All dressed up in Vaio gear, stylish as a Pepsi ad, packing lots of semilethals and silvery aeorosol shut-up-and-be-still juice, ready to nab the bad, bad perp who boosted this lovely Veddic Series 7 from Mom's lot. Part of the franchise pa... |
"So then *I* was rolling around on the ground, feeling like my sinuses were trying to explode out of my face. Feeling like my eyeballs were melting. Feeling like my lungs were all shriveled up into raisins. I couldn't scream, I couldn't even breathe. By the time I could even roll over and open my eyes, they had me cuff... |
"I puked on the tarp twice before they got me there, and almost did it a third time on the way to booking. It got up my sinuses and down my throat, too. I couldn't stop gagging, couldn't stop crying, but by now I was getting pissed. I'd been raised on the whole Sony message: 'A Car for the Rest of Us,' gone with Mom to... |
"I was tied up on the floor beside the desk sergeant's counter, and a Sony cop was filling in my paperwork, and so I spat out the crud from my mouth, stopped sniveling, hawked back my spit and put on my best voice. 'This isn't necessary, sir,' I said. 'I'm not a thief. My mother owns the dealership. It was wrong to tak... |
"'Look,' I said. 'Look! I'm not a criminal. This is a misunderstanding. If you check my ID and call my mother, we can work this all out. Look!' I read his name off his epaulettes. 'Look! Officer Langtree! Just let me up and we'll sort this out like adults. Come on, I don't blame you -- I'm glad! -- you were right to ta... |
"But he just went on filling in the paperwork. 'Why? Why won't you just take a second to check? Why not?' |
"He turned around again, looked at me for a long time, and I was sure he was going to check, that it was all going to be fine, but then he said, 'Look, I've had about as much of your bullshit as I'm going to take, little girl. Shut your hole or I'll gag you. I just want to get out of here and back to my job, all right?... |
"'What?' I said, and it sounded like a shriek to me. 'What did you say to me? What the hell did you say to me? Didn't you hear what I said? That's my *mother's car* -- she owns the lot I took it off of. Do you honestly think she wants you to do this? This is the stupidest goddamned thing --' |
"'That's it,' he said, and took a little silver micropore hood off his belt, the kind that you cinch up under the chin so the person inside can't talk? I started squirming away then, pleading with him, and I finally caught the desk sergeant's eye. 'He can't do this! Please! Don't let him do this! I'm in a *police stati... |
"And the cop smiled and said, 'You're absolutely right, little girl. That's enough of that.' The Sony cop didn't pay any attention. He grabbed my head and stuffed it into the hood and tried to get the chin strap in place. I shook my head as best as I could, and then the hood was being taken off my head again, and the S... |
"'You're not going to give me any trouble, are you?' he said, as he led me around to a nice, ergo office chair. |
"'No sir!' |
"'You just sit there, then, and I'll be with you in a moment.' |
"I sat down and rubbed my wrists and ankles. My left ankle was oozing blood from where it had been rubbed raw. I couldn't believe that the Sony Family could inflict such indignities on my cute little person. I was so goddamn self-righteous, and I know I was smirking as the desk sergeant chewed out the Sony cop, taking ... |
"I thanked the cop profusely, and I kept on thanking him as he booked me and printed me and took my mug shots. I was joking and maybe even flirting a little. I was a cute fifteen-year-old and I knew it. After the nastiness with the Sony cops, being processed into the criminal justice system seemed mild and inoffensive.... |
"'Wait!' I said. 'Sergeant Lorenzi, wait! You don't have to put me in a *cell*, do you, Sergeant Lorenzi? Sergeant Lorenzi! I don't need to go into a cell! Let me call my mom, she'll come down and drop the charges, and I can wait here. I'll help out. I can get coffee. Sergeant Lorenzi!' |
"For a second, it looked like he was going to go through with it. Then he relented and I spent the next couple hours fetching and filing and even running out for coffee -- that's how much he trusted me -- while we waited for Mom to show up. I was actually feeling pretty good about it by the time she arrived. Of course,... |
"She came through the door like Yosemite Sam, frothing at the chops and howling for my blood. She wanted to press charges, see me locked up to teach me a lesson. She didn't care how the Sony cops had gassed and trussed me -- as far as she was concerned, I'd betrayed her and nothing was going to make it right. She kept ... |
"'All right then, Mrs. Walchuk, all right. You swear out the complaint, and we'll hold her overnight until her bail hearing. We only got the one holding cell, though, you understand. No juvenile facility. Rough crowd. A couple of biowar enthusiasts in there right now, caught 'em trying to thrax a bus terminal; a girl w... |
"'Is that what you want, then, ma'am?' |
"Mom looked like she wanted to tell him yes, go ahead, call his bluff, but he was too good at it. She broke. 'No, it's not,' she said. 'I'll take her home and deal with her there.' |
"'That's fundamentally sound,' he said. 'And Linda, you give me a call if you want to file a complaint against Sony. We have secam footage of the Boardwalk and the Station House if you need it, and I have that guy's badge ID, too.' |
"Mom looked alarmed, and I held out my raw, bruisey wrists to her. 'They gassed me before they took me in.' |
"'Did you run? You *never* run from the cops, Linda, you should have known better --' |
"I didn't run. I put my arms in the air and they gassed me and tied me up and took me in.' |
"'That can't be, Linda. You must have done *something* --' Mom always was ready to believe that I deserved whatever trouble I got into. She was the only one who didn't care how cute I was. |
"'No mom. I put my hands in the air. I surrendered. They got me anyway. They didn't care. It'll be on the tape. I'll get it from sergeant Lorenzi when I file my complaint.' |
"'You'll do no such thing. You stole a car, you endangered lives, and now you want to go sniveling to the authorities because Sony played a little rough when they brought you in? You committed a *criminal act*, Linda. You got treated like a criminal.' |
"I wanted to smack her. I knew that this was really about not embarrassing her in front of the Sony Family, the nosy chattery ladies with the other franchises that Mom competed against for whuffie and bragging rights. But I'd learned something about drawing flies with honey that afternoon. The Sergeant could have made ... |
"Mom took me home and screamed herself raw, and I played it all very contrite, then walked over to the minimall so that I could buy some saline solution for my eyes, which were still as red as stoplights. We never spoke of it again, and on my sixteenth birthday, Mom gave me the keys to a Veddic Series 8, and the first ... |
Linda smiles and then purses her lips. "Unrehearsed enough?" |
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