Michigan
July 1999
I knew it was too good to be true. I knew the catch was coming. For the moment, I didn’t care. I was outside, not digging but sitting in a chair, next to Amelia. With the official approval of her father.
Somehow it felt different now. You’re another person when it’s late at night. Here it was… just us, our real daytime selves. Two seventeen-and-a-half-year-olds who went to different high schools and otherwise lived in different worlds. Only one of whom could speak.
“You feel weird?” she said.
I nodded.
“Would you rather be digging?”
I didn’t think I had to answer that one.
“So… how are we gonna do this? I mean, how are we going to communicate?”
I was about to make the writing gesture, so maybe she could go find me a pad of paper, when she came right out of her chair and grabbed me. She kissed me for a long time, long enough for me to forget about pads of paper and everything else in the whole world.
“You must know sign language,” she said, sitting back down. “Teach me some stuff. Hello is…”
I waved my hand. It made me think of Griffin, asking me the same thing once upon a time.
“Yeah, okay. Duh. How ’bout, ‘You look good.’”
I pointed to her. You. Then I drew a circle around my face. Look. Then a simple thumbs-up. Good.
“What if I wanted to tell you to kiss me again?”
With each hand, I put my fingers and thumb together, like a gourmet ready to say “Magnifique!” I brought one hand to my lips, then put both hands together.
“That’s ‘kiss’? Are you kidding me? That’s the lamest thing I’ve ever seen!”
I shrugged it off. I wasn’t around when they made that up.
“We need our own secret sign language for ‘Kiss me,’ ” she said. “How about this?”
She grabbed me again and took me inside the house. Up to her bedroom. I looked around for her father on the way, figuring this might be one sure way to die. Maybe not the worst, but still. He had apparently run off somewhere, so for the moment we seemed to have the house to ourselves.
We did some things next that we’d need a whole different set of sign language for. When we were done, we lay in her bed, staring at the ceiling. She kept running her fingers through my hair.
“It’s nice to be around somebody who doesn’t talk all the time.”
If that’s really true, I thought, then you came to the right place.
“Are you going to draw something for me today?”
To be honest, I didn’t feel like drawing just then. Or doing anything at all except exactly what I was doing. But we had to get up and get dressed eventually. She found a couple of big sketchbooks and a few pencils, and for the next hour or so we sat on her bed drawing. We were drawing each other in the act of drawing each other. Her with one strand of hair falling over her face, me with a serious expression on my face, bordering on sadness. On melancholy. I was surprised to see that in her drawing of me. It was my first truly happy day in a thousand days. How must I have looked before then?
A couple more hours went by. It was four o’clock already. Amazing how much faster the time went by when I wasn’t killing myself outside and counting the minutes until I could go home. We heard her father’s car pulling into the driveway, so we went downstairs, back out to the chairs outside.
Cut to a barbecue in the backyard, a few hours later, this day getting more unlikely with every passing minute. I was sitting on top of a picnic table, next to Amelia. I was holding a beer in my hand, three and a half years away from being able to drink it legally, but what the hell on a hot summer night. The beer had been given to me by Mr. Marsh himself, after I’d just spent two solid hours in the close company of his daughter in her bedroom. The only dark cloud being Amelia’s brother, Adam, who was home for the evening from East Lansing. He was wearing a ripped tank top, his arms bulging like they’d been stuffed with coconuts. His hair had been cut high and tight, with a faux Mohawk running down the middle. As soon as he saw me there in his backyard, he looked very much like he wanted to kill me.
“You’re the little bitch who broke into our house?” he said.
That’s when Mr. Marsh came to my rescue. He told him I was a stand-up guy and how he should leave me alone and forgive me and not kill me, et cetera. Ever since then, though, Adam hadn’t stopped glaring at me from the other side of the yard. He had five former Lakeland football players standing around next to him, with more on the way, apparently. Mr. Marsh was grilling hot dogs and hamburgers at a frantic pace to keep up with their appetites.
Amelia took my right hand in her left, lacing our fingers together. Nobody else seemed to even notice this. She seemed barely aware of it herself, as she stared out at the night sky.
“Nights like this,” she finally said, in a voice low enough so only I could hear. “You’d think we’re a nice, normal, happy family.”
She turned to look at me.
“Don’t believe it. Not for a second.”
I wasn’t sure what she was getting at. I’d never thought of them as nice, normal, or happy. I wouldn’t even know what that looks like in the first place.
“If I asked you to, would you take me away from here? As far as we could get?”
I squeezed her hand.
“You’re a criminal, after all. You can kidnap me, right?”
I took another sip of beer, feeling that same little lightheaded feeling I had the night we broke into this very house. It was another night that felt like it was opening up right in front of me. Like anything could happen again, good or bad.
The night got darker. The moon was shining. The smoke from the grill hung in the air. Mr. Marsh played the Beach Boys on his boom box. His favorite group, apparently. At least on a warm summer night. His partner Mr. Slade showed up just in time to get the last hamburger. I realized as soon as I saw him that I had seen him before. Then I remembered. He was the man who had come out to watch me dig for a few minutes, before going inside to meet with Mr. Marsh. Today he was once again dressed in a suit, with the tie knotted tight against his neck. His hair looked slightly wet, like he had just come from the gym.
When Amelia went inside for a moment, Mr. Marsh cornered me and officially introduced the man.
“Michael, meet Jerry Slade. My partner.”
“I believe we’ve met,” he said, shaking my hand. “Good to see you again.”
“I don’t think Jerry believes you can do what you can do,” Mr. Marsh said. “You still think you could show him?”
Amelia came back outside and saved me.
Mr. Marsh grabbed me and whispered in my ear. “We’ll show him later.”
Then he slapped me on the back and went back to his grill.
A couple of hours later, Adam and his friends rolled off to hit another party. It was just the four of us now.
“Gotta get this boy home to bed,” Mr. Marsh said, wrapping an arm around my shoulder. “We might just have him out digging again tomorrow.”
“I thought he was done with that,” Amelia said.
“I’m just kidding, honey. I’ll let you two kids say good night. Actually, can you stop in to my office on your way out, Michael? I wanted to ask you one more thing, you know, about our new work arrangement.”
He turned off the music. Then he and Jerry went inside. It was quiet and dark now in the backyard. The big white tent seemed to glow in the moonlight.
“What is he having you do now?” Amelia said, wrapping her arms around my waist. “And why is Mr. Slade here? That guy gives me the creeps.”
I shook my head. Hell if I know what’s going on.
“Just be careful, okay? Those two guys get together, God knows what they’ll come up with.”
I wasn’t sure how to take that, but I figured I’d find out soon enough.
She kissed me good night. I didn’t want her to leave. I wanted to stay right there in the backyard with her for the rest of the night. But I knew the men were waiting for me.
She went up to her room. I went to the office. They were both standing underneath the giant fish. As soon as I came in, Mr. Marsh took out a leather case and gave it to me.
“Do you remember these?”
I opened it and saw the same lock-picking tools I had used in our little exhibitions with the locksmith.
“Can you show Mr. Slade what you can do with them now?”
I looked back and forth between them. They were dead serious. This wasn’t just a bar bet.
“Now, I know we’ve got those fancy unpickable locks on the doors now, but there’s gotta be something around here…”
As he rummaged around in his desk, I stood there sorting through the picks and tension bars. Such a perfect set of tools. I couldn’t help it. I had to try them again. So I gave them a little wave and had them follow me out the back door. When all three of us were outside, I locked the door and closed it.
“What are you doing?” Mr. Marsh said. “You can’t open this lock, remember?”
I bent down, took out the tension bar and a diamond pick, and got to work. Using the same idea for these serrated pins… oversetting all of them, and then letting them fall back down just enough, one by one… with the good tools, it was a snap.
Two minutes later, I turned the handle and pushed the door open.
“Holy Christ,” Mr. Marsh said. “How the fuck did you do that?”
“I’m impressed,” Mr. Slade said. “I mean, I know what you told me, but seeing it in person? God damn.”
“What else can you open?” Mr. Marsh said. “Can you open any kind of lock?”
He pushed in past me, into the kitchen. He started rummaging through a junk drawer. Then he pulled out an old padlock.
“I don’t even know the combination to this thing anymore. Can you open it?”
I took it from him. A cheap padlock off of one of his kids’ gym lockers, probably. Thrown into the junk drawer forever.
“This I gotta see,” Mr. Slade said.
He didn’t realize that this would be easier. A lot easier. But what the hell. I spun through the sticking points, found the obvious last number. Cleared it and started through the super sets, using the good old number families. I got lucky, because the first number was a three. So it didn’t take me more than a minute to snap it open.
They both stood there with their jaws open, like I had just levitated or something. I mean, it really was no big deal to me.
“Did I tell you or what?” Mr. Marsh said. “Is he or is he not amazing?”
“He is amazing.”
I gestured for something to write on, so I could give them the combination and they’d have this padlock back in service. They obviously had much bigger things in mind.
“What do you think?” Mr. Marsh said. “Can he use him?”
I didn’t know who they were talking about. I wasn’t sure I liked the sound of it, but Jerry Slade was already smiling and nodding his head.
“Damned straight. How could he not use him?”
“This could be it,” Mr. Marsh said. “This could be our ticket out of hell.”
It was just after midnight when I got back to Milford, but the liquor store was still open. Uncle Lito was behind the register, the phone to his ear. He slammed it down when I stuck my head in the door.
“Where in blazes have you been all night?”
I made a digging motion.
“Since noon? You worked for what, twelve hours?”
I gave him the thumbs-up and backed out the doorway. I heard him calling to me, but I kept walking. Back to the house. To my room. I sat down at my desk. I didn’t feel like sleeping. I didn’t feel like drawing. I just sat there and wondered what I’d gotten myself into.
I took out the leather case from my back pocket. I opened it and sorted through the tools. At least I’ve got these now, I thought. I’ll take care of these like fine jewels.
I didn’t know any better. I didn’t know that once you’ve proven yourself useful to the wrong people, you’ll never be free again.
The next day, my uncle was still pissed at me for leaving him hanging all night. Sitting at the kitchen table, eating his cereal. “That guy you work for,” he said, “you know he’s crazy. He could have killed you and buried you in his backyard for all I knew.”
I made a fist and rubbed it in a circle against my heart. He’d never been great with the sign language, but he knew that one. I’m sorry.
“You’re growing up. I know that. You’re at that age, you think you know everything.”
I nodded at him, wondering who he was even talking about. Certainly not me.
“I was seventeen myself once. I know that’s hard to imagine. Of course, I hadn’t dealt with half of what you’ve had to deal with.”
I couldn’t help wondering where he was going with this.
“You know, when I was seventeen, there was only one thing I wanted to do.”
Oh, please. Don’t go there.
“Okay, two things, but there’s one in particular I’m talking about here. Can you guess?”
I shook my head.
“Come on out to the store with me. I was going to give this to you yesterday.”
I followed him out of the house and around to the liquor store. He put a key in the back door and disappeared inside. When he came back out, he was pushing a motorcycle.
“It’s a Yahama 850 Special,” he said. “It’s used, but it’s in great shape.”
I stood there looking at it. The seat was black with a bronze trim. The chrome exhausts shone in the bright sunlight. If he had rolled out a spaceship, I wouldn’t have been any less surprised.
“One of my regulars couldn’t cover his tab. He offered me this bike if I would call it all square.”
That must have been one hell of a tab, I thought.
“Come on, saddle up. Hold on, I got you a helmet here.”
I took the handlebars from him while he went back inside. He came back out with a helmet and a black leather jacket.
“You need this, too,” he said. “I hope it’s the right size.”
I would have been speechless even if I could speak. I put the jacket on. Then he helped me put on the helmet. I sat on the bike and felt the whole thing bounce up and down under my weight.
“New shocks, he told me. New brakes. Tires are okay, not great. We’ll get you some new ones soon.”
I still couldn’t believe it was happening. I was actually supposed to ride this thing?
“Take it nice and easy at first, eh? Go ahead, give it a try.”
After he showed me how to start it, I tried putting it in gear and giving it a little gas. It just about took off from right underneath me. I tried again and made sure I was ready for it. After a couple of circles in the parking lot, I was on my way down the street. I took it slow at first, afraid I’d end up on the hood of somebody’s car. Then I started to get the hang of it. It was much easier to stay balanced than I would have imagined. And I had to say, the whole experience felt pretty damned good.
I took the bike back, but my uncle was already stationed behind his cash register, ringing up his first customer of the day. He gave me a wave, told me to go back out and get to know the bike. He gave me a few bucks to fill up the tank. Then I was off.
I spent the rest of the morning riding. You don’t realize just how much pickup one of those babies has. From an absolute dead stop, if you really crank it, it feels like you’re on a rocket. I headed west on the back roads, out into what was then still farmland. I found a new hatred for dirt roads that have been freshly oiled, nearly killing myself the first time I hit one. After that I stuck to pavement and didn’t have any other close calls. It was just me and the sound of the machine between my legs and the wind whipping against my helmet. I wanted to share this feeling with Amelia. To take her by the hand and sit her down on the back of the bike. I could already feel her hands wrapped around my waist.
I made one more stop to buy a pair of sunglasses. And another helmet for Amelia. Now I had everything I needed in life. I got back on that bike and headed straight for her house.
So I rode out to that big white castle of a house gleaming in the sun, feeling like I owned the whole world. Feeling like this could be the day that I start talking. I mean, why not? Maybe this is what it would take.
Today, though, I was going to get something a little bit different.
I saw Mr. Marsh’s car in the driveway, but when I knocked on the door, nobody answered. I knocked again. Nothing.
I wandered around the house to the backyard and looked under the tent. The plants Mr. Marsh had dragged back there were all starting to wilt, so I went looking for a watering can and spent the next few minutes walking back and forth between the tent and the faucet.
Then I knocked on the back door. When nobody answered, I pushed the door open and went inside. I walked through and peeked into Mr. Marsh’s office. Nobody there. I looked up the stairs and saw that Amelia’s door was closed. I went up and knocked.
“Who is it?” she said from inside.
I knocked again. What else could I do?
“Come on in.”
When I opened the door, I saw her sitting at her desk. Her back was to me. She didn’t say a word. I hesitated, finally came into the room and went over to where she was working. I wanted to touch her shoulders, but I didn’t.
She was drawing something. Buildings, an alleyway. Lots of shadows. There was a long figure in the foreground, but it was hard for me to see exactly what she was doing with it. I stood there for a long time, watching her work.
“If I don’t talk,” she said, “it’s going to be pretty quiet in here, huh?”
She turned around, finally, and looked me in the eyes for the first time that day.
“My mother killed herself. Did you know that?”
I nodded. I remembered Mr. Marsh telling me that, on that very first day, before I had even seen Amelia.
“Today’s the anniversary. Five years ago.”
She still had the pencil in her hand. She twirled it in her fingers like a miniature baton.
“Five years ago exactly, at one o’clock in the afternoon. Give or take a few minutes. I was in school when it happened.”
She got up and went over to her dresser. She went through a stack of papers and drawings and pulled out a portfolio. I wasn’t about to tell her so, but this was the same portfolio I had looked through the night we had all broken into this house. It was the first time I had seen her drawings, the first time I had seen her face. I remembered there were some other drawings in there, too. Of an older woman. These were the same drawings I was about to see again.
“This was her,” Amelia said, putting each drawing, one by one, onto the bed. Her mother sitting in a chair. Then outside, on a bench. “I was twelve years old then. She was in this institution they sent her to for a while. I got to go visit her.”
I could see it now, in the drawings. The manicured lawn, the path running a straight line, in front of the bench. Everything in its place. These were some pretty damned excellent drawings if they were really done by a twelve-year-old.
“I was so happy, because I knew she’d be coming home soon. Three months later…”
She closed her eyes.
“Three months later, she sealed up the garage and started the car. By the time I got home from school, she was dead. I wasn’t the one who found her. I mean, my brother found her. He came home first and she was. I mean, she was there in the car. In the garage. This was at our old house. Before we moved here. Anyway, there was no note. No nothing. Just… checkout time.”
She started putting the drawings back into the folder. She didn’t look at me.
“It wasn’t the first time she tried something like that. Did you know that women are twice as likely as men to try to commit suicide? But most of the time they don’t actually do it. Men are four times more likely to actually kill themselves.”
She was talking a little too fast now. Like she didn’t want there to be any silence again.
“I looked that up last night, because I wanted to try to understand what happened to you. I mean, I know the general story. I know they called you the Miracle Boy.”
I saw one single tear on her face.
“It’s been five years for me,” she said. “For you, it’s like what, nine years? In all that time, you never tried to…”
She wiped the tear from her cheek, finally turned and faced me.
“I mean, is this it? Are you seriously never going to talk to me? Ever?”
I closed my eyes. Right there, at that moment, in Amelia’s bedroom… I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, and I told myself that this was what I had been waiting for. I had never had such a good reason to try before. All I had to do was just open up and let go of the silence. Just like those doctors had said, years ago. It was as true on this day as it had been then. There was no physical reason why I couldn’t speak. So all I had to do was…
The seconds passed. A minute.
“Some men came and took my father away,” she finally said. “About an hour ago. I don’t know where they were going. I don’t even know if they’re going to bring him back. Seriously… I mean, I thought it might be him when I heard you in the driveway.”
I reached out to touch her. She turned away from me.
“I am so freaked out right now, Michael. I don’t know what I’m going to do. Do you have any idea how much trouble my father is in these days? What if they-”
She looked up.
“God, is that him now?”
She went to the window and looked down at the driveway. When I stepped behind her, I saw the long black car, then the three men all getting out at the same time. One from the driver’s door. Two men from the backseat. Then finally, a few seconds later, another man. Mr. Marsh. He blinked in the bright sunlight and straightened his shirt. His face was bright red.
“Oh, fuck.” She turned and ran out of the room.
I followed her. Down the steps. Through the front door. She passed right by her father and went for the driver of the car. She took a wild swing at him.
“I’m calling the police, you fucking goons!”
Mr. Marsh tried to grab her from behind while the driver fended off her blows with a big stupid grin on his face. He was wearing a fishing hat of all things, and Amelia finally managed to knock it off his head. The grin disappeared, and he raised his open right hand as if to give her a good slap. That’s when I caught up and threw myself right into the middle of it.
One of the other men grabbed me by the collar. He was shorter than the other two men. He was ugly and his eyes looked half shut, and as he pulled my shirt tight around my neck, he put his face right up into mine.
“Do you have a death wish, son?” he said. “Or are you just incredibly stupid?”
“Let him go,” Mr. Marsh said.
“I asked you a question,” he said to me.
The third man was still on the other side of the car. He was tall, and he had a mustache that was too big for his face.
“Let go of the kid,” he said, “so we can get the hell out of here.”
The man with the sleepy eyes tightened his grip one more notch, enough to choke me. Then he pushed me away.
The driver picked up his fishing hat, tipped it to us, and got in behind the wheel. The other two men got in back, and as the doors closed we could hear them already arguing. The car shot backward onto the street, then roared off. As it did, I got one more glance at the man in the backseat. Those sleepy eyes on the other side of that window, staring back at me.
Not for the last time.
The three of us kept standing there in the driveway. Amelia was crying now. Not wailing away, just softly crying in almost total silence. She wiped her face off. She went to her father and stood before him. He reached out to her, just as I had tried to do. She knocked his hand away.
“You promised me,” she said. “You promised me you wouldn’t get into this kind of shit again.”
Before he could even try to answer, she turned and went back into the house, slamming the door behind her.
Mr. Marsh let out a long breath. He paced back and forth on the driveway a few times. Slowly, like a much older man.
“Look,” he finally said to me. “I know we started to talk about this the other day, but I need you to help me. Help us. Me and Amelia. Will you help us out? Please?”
I rubbed my neck, where the fabric had left a raw crease in my skin.
“I owe these people a lot of money, okay? I just… If you can just help me out here this one time…”
He reached into his pocket and took out a small slip of paper.
“I need you to go see somebody. Today. Nothing bad will happen, I promise. Just go see this man, okay? He’ll be expecting you. This is his address. It’s in Detroit.”
I took the paper. I looked at the address.
“You’ll know him when you see him,” he said. “They call him the Ghost.”
He wasn’t more than forty miles away, this man who would change my life. I didn’t want to get on the expressway with my motorcycle yet, so I worked my way down the secondary streets to Grand River, then took that straight into the heart of the city. From block to block, I could see every social class. The landscaping thinning out, the buildings going from glass and steel to gray cinder blocks and iron bars.
There were lots of stoplights. Lots of opportunities for me to change my mind. The lights kept turning green and I kept going forward. When I hit Detroit, I started to look at the street numbers. A couple more blocks and I knew I was close. I waited for a break in traffic, then swung the bike around to the other side of the street. The whole block reeked of desperation and wasted second chances. It was the west side of Detroit, just inside the border.
I counted down the addresses. There was a dry cleaners, then a hair salon, then a store that appeared to sell both discount clothing and music and small appliances out of an impossibly small space. Then an empty storefront. It was hard to tell exactly where my target was, because not all the buildings had numbers above the door. I finally narrowed it down to a business called West Side Recovery. It was twice as wide as most of the other businesses, with windows that could have used a good cleaning a decade ago. There was a CLOSED sign hanging inside the glass door.
I rechecked the address. I was sure this was it. I knocked on the door. Nobody answered. I knocked one more time, was about to turn and leave when the door finally opened. The man who stuck his head out was about sixty years old, maybe sixty-five. He was wearing a sweater vest, and he had reading glasses hanging from his neck. He had thin, white hair and a complexion so pale it looked like five minutes of direct sunlight would kill him. He blinked a few times as he gave me the once-over.
“Am I supposed to be expecting you?”
I handed him the piece of paper Mr. Marsh had given me, with his address on it. He slipped his reading glasses on and gave it a look.
“Is that your bike I heard?”
I turned back to where it was parked, halfway down the block.
“So apparently you wish to have it stolen today? Is that your plan?”
I shook my head.
“Bring it over here, genius. You can pull it inside here.”
I went back and got the bike and pushed it down the sidewalk to where he stood, holding the door open. It was so dark inside the store, it was like rolling the motorcycle into a cave.
He closed the door behind us and kicked something aside. It took my eyes a few seconds to adjust, but when they did I saw a huge collection of scrap metal, old furniture, cribs and high chairs, a couple of refrigerators standing side by side. Basically it looked like a good portion of the city dump had been transferred here.
“This way,” he said. I kickstanded the bike and followed him back through the store. He traced his way down a mazelike path through the junk to another door, through which I could see the flickering blue light of a television set. There was a faint haze of dust in the air that I could almost taste.
“I’m closed on Mondays,” he said. “Reason the lights are off. I’d offer you a beer, but I’m fresh out.” There was a better selection of junk in this second room. Besides the television, there were probably a few hundred items stacked on floor-to-ceiling shelves. A washboard, an iron, some old green bottles. Stuff like that. A few shelves on one wall were bulging with books. This whole place had so much more junk than the junk store back in Milford. I wondered why all the better items seemed to be hidden away here in the back room. But more than that, I wondered why I was sent here.
“They said you don’t talk much.” He was standing next to a desk that didn’t have one free square inch on it. There were a dozen lamps on it, along with cigar boxes and trophies and a three-foot-high Statue of Liberty. The man slid the statue in just far enough to give himself a surface to lean on.
“They call me the Ghost,” he said.
Yes, I thought. That makes sense. Just look at you.
“That’s the only thing you can ever call me. Are we understood? To you, I’m the Ghost. Or Mr. G. Nothing else.”
The dust and mildew were starting to get to me. That plus the fact I still had no idea what the hell was going on here, or what was expected of me.
“You really don’t talk. They weren’t kidding.”
I was thinking maybe it was time to ask the Ghost for some paper so I could write out a few questions, but he was ready to move on.
“This way. I’ve got something you might like to see.”
He pushed open another door. I followed him down a short hallway, squeezing my way past several bicycles until we came to yet another door.
When he opened it, we were outside. Or rather half outside. There was a makeshift awning above us, long strips of green plastic with gaps here and there that let the sun in. It ran all the way to the back fence, which was overrun with thick sumac and poison ivy.
“Here we go.” He pushed through a collection of old lawn mowers, past a rusted-out barbecue grill. He picked up an iron gate, something that looked like it came from a haunted mansion somewhere, and moved it aside. He was surprisingly strong for a pale old man who looked like a retired English professor.
He stepped aside and ushered me into this small clearing within the greater chaos. There, arranged in a perfect circle, were eight safes of various heights, their combination dials facing the center. It was like a Stonehenge of safes.
“Not bad, eh?” He walked the circle, touching each safe one by one. “Every major brand. American, Diebold, Chicago, Mosler, Schwab, Victor. This one here’s forty years old. That one over there is new, hardly ever been used. What do you think?”
I did a slow 360, looking at all of the safes.
“Take your pick,” he said.
What, he wanted me to pick out a safe? So I could take it home, strapped on my back while I rode my motorcycle?
He put his reading glasses on again. He tilted his head so he could peer over the lenses at me. “Come on, let’s see you do your thing.”
My thing, he says. He wants me to do my thing. This man actually wanted me to open one of these safes.
“Today would be good.” He stood there in the green-tinted shade, finally taking his glasses off and letting them dangle from his neck again. I stood there. I didn’t move.
“Are you going to open one of these safes,” he said, speaking very slowly, as if to a simpleton, “or aren’t you?”
I went to the safe closest to me, one of the tall boys. It was as big as a Coke machine. The combination dial was a finely engineered machine of polished metal, like something you’d see on a bank vault. I grabbed the handle next to the dial and gave it an experimental pull. Yet more finely engineered metal said fuck you and did not move the slightest fraction of an inch.
“All right, now you’re joking around, right? Now you’re being a comedian?”
I looked at him. What on earth could I possibly do here? How could I communicate that this was all a big mistake? How could I make this man believe that I was sent here because of two absolute morons and that I was simply wasting his time?
A few more seconds of us both standing there, and at least the bottom line became clear to him. “You can’t open any of these, can you?”
I shook my head.
“Then what the fuck are you doing here?”
Hands up. I don’t know.
“I cannot even believe this. You have got to be fucking kidding me. They’re gonna send this kid over. He’s a natural, they say. An absolute natural. He’s the Golden Boy.”
He turned away from me, walked away a few paces, and then came back at me.
“You’re the Golden Boy, all right. You fucking-”
He stopped and seemed to be working very hard to contain himself.
“Okay. Count to ten here, huh? The Golden Boy ain’t so golden. It’s not the end of the world.”
He closed his eyes for a moment, put two fingers from each hand on his temples, and started rubbing in little circles. He took a few deep breaths and then opened his eyes.
“You’re still standing here,” he said. “Why is that? Are you seriously trying to make me have an aneurism?”
I took a step toward the door, not sure I could even find my way back through the maze.
“There you go! Now you’ve got it. You can’t open a safe, but you know when to leave. Give you credit for that.”
He pushed by me and led me through the lawn mowers and barbecue grills. When he opened the back door, we were plunged into darkness again, and I almost killed myself on the gauntlet of bicycles in the hallway.
“Graceful, too! What a bonus. I’m so glad you came to visit today.”
He hurried me through the television room and through the main room to the front door.
“Get your bike, Golden Boy.”
He held the door open for me while I fumbled with my motorcycle and then finally wheeled it outside.
“That’s right,” he said when I was finally on the sidewalk. “Get the fuck out of here and don’t come back.”
He closed the door behind him and that was it. A rousing success! It was hard to see with all the confetti and streamers flying around.
What the hell, I thought. If that was a job interview, I was kinda glad I hadn’t passed. I rolled the bike to the street and started it. Then I was flying up Grand River, honestly believing that I’d never return.
I drove right back to the Marshes’ house. I went in through the front door, went up the stairs. I knocked on her door. She was either out somewhere, or else she just didn’t want to deal with anybody right now. Even me.
I turned to go back down the stairs and saw her standing at the bottom.
“What are you doing?” she said. “Why did you come back?”
I went down the stairs.
“Where did you go, anyway?”
A pen, I thought. Paper. Why the hell don’t I carry them around with me?
“Michael, what are you doing for my father?”
I made a writing motion. Let me tell you.
“I probably don’t even want to know, right?”
I tried to grab her by the shoulders. No, not grab her. Just put one hand on each shoulder so she’d stand there and stop talking for one minute while I found something to write on. She pushed my hands away.
“I should have seen right through this,” she said. “I mean, I know he’ll do anything to get what he wants. But look at you. One day he’s trying to kill you. You have to break into the house at night just to see me. The next day, all of a sudden you’re his right-hand man. Invited to the family barbecue… You’re the Golden Boy.”
Again with the Golden Boy. Where did this come from all of a sudden?
“I was the prize, wasn’t I? whatever you’ve done for him, I’m your reward.”
Now’s the time, I thought. Time to speak. Make a sound. Anything. Do it right now. Just do it.
“Don’t you get it? He’s going to drag us down with him. Both of us.”
Open your mouth. Right now. Let it come out.
“I can’t be here anymore. Not one more minute.”
You stupid fucking mutant freak. Say something!
She tried to push past me. I grabbed her arm. For real this time.
“Let go. Please.”
I took her hand, lacing my fingers into hers. I pulled her through the door and out into the driveway.
“What are you doing?”
I took the helmet off the seat of my motorcycle and tried to put it on her head.
“What is this? Where did this motorcycle come from?”
I held the helmet out to her, waiting for her to put it on.
“I’m not wearing that.”
I threw it into the grass and got on the bike. I started it. I moved up to the front of the seat and waited for her. I didn’t even look back. I just waited.
Finally, I felt her climbing onto the back of the bike. I felt her hands slipping around my waist. Yes, I thought. If this is the only good thing I’ll get to feel all day… I’ll take it. This moment right here.
“Take me away,” I heard her say behind me. “I don’t care where we go. Just take me away.”
I knew I couldn’t do it yet. Not for real. Not forever. But for one day… a few stolen hours… yes. We could get as far away from here as this bike would take us.
I put it in gear and we took off down the street.