Yet a stranger, p.6
Yet a Stranger, page 6
part #2 of The First Quarto Series
“Auggie, it was a tiny amount that I dabbed.” Theo paused, hovered on the precipice, and then it was too late. “Grow up.”
Auggie looked like Theo had slapped him.
“So,” Orlando said, “you guys are shouting really, really loudly, and I think maybe we shouldn’t, you know, shout so much. Not right now.”
Auggie was still staring at Theo.
“I’m going to talk to the neighbors,” Theo said.
He didn’t look back as he left; he didn’t think he could stand it.
The neighbor in 3G didn’t answer, although the lights were on and Sam Smith was playing inside. The neighbor in 3E kept the door on the chain. She was thin, with stringy gray hair, and she could have been any age between forty and seventy. When Theo mentioned Cal’s name, she shut the door, and he heard the bolt go home.
The day was impossibly hot, and sweat made Theo’s shirt stick to his back. He walked to the end of the corridor and leaned on the railing. Below him, heat shimmered up from the asphalt. Sunlight ran across the cars, gleaming back from chrome trim, warping along glass. The hot tar smell still hung in the air. Theo clutched the rail with both hands, his knuckles white, his heartbeat pounding in his ears.
Then he went down to the second floor and tried 2F. The woman who opened it was in scrubs, and she was hopping on one foot as she pulled on a sneaker. She smiled when she asked if she could help him.
“This is kind of strange,” Theo said, “but I’m trying to help Wayne Reese track down his brother. Do you know them? They live above you.”
“I probably know them better than anybody else in the building,” the woman said as she switched feet. “Not that that’s saying much. Their arguments are my personal soundtrack at this point. Well, all the ones I’ve been home for. I work second shift at the hospital.”
“Do they argue a lot?”
Her smile got a little bigger. “You don’t know them very well, do you?”
“I guess not. Any chance you saw Cal last weekend?”
“A week ago? I can barely remember yesterday. And I’m going to be late, so I’ve really got to go. I’m sorry.”
“That’s ok. Thanks anyway.”
“I hope you find him. Is he ok?”
“We hope so.”
Theo moved down the hall, and behind him, he heard the woman’s keys as she locked the door. Then the woman said, “The fights get pretty bad, you know. I’ve had to call the police twice. Just noise complaints, but honestly, it’s because I’ve been scared.”
Turning back, Theo said, “Any idea what they fight about?”
She shook her head. “Money? Everything? I can’t hear clearly enough to make out the words, but it’s been worse lately.”
“Mind if I ask you one more question?” Theo said.
“Besides that one?”
Theo smiled. “Yeah, kind of a bonus. Memory is a funny thing, and sometimes one thing will help you remember another. Do you remember anything about last weekend? Anything at all? Did you have a visitor? Go clubbing? See a movie?”
“Clubbing?” She shook her head and laughed. “No, sorry. I’ve got a boring life. The big thing for me is when I order a pizza.” Then her mouth widened into an O. “Oh my God, you’re going to think I’m insane.”
“Nope,” Theo said. “I love pizza.”
“You’re right: I do remember something. It’s a tiny thing, but I remember it. I ordered a pizza on Friday; I was off work, so I was home that evening. I always get Gianino’s—”
“Because their crust is the best,” Theo said.
“Exactly. Only their delivery guy isn’t, well, the sharpest. More than once he’s taken it to 3F or 1F instead of 2F. So I poked my head out a couple times, hoping I could catch him. And I saw him.”
“The pizza guy?”
“No, Cal. He was hanging around on the stairs, and I waved at him.”
Theo waited.
“That’s it,” she said. “I mean, we didn’t talk or anything. But he looked like he was waiting too.”
“What makes you say that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe just because I was waiting.”
“That’s fantastic,” Theo said. “Do you remember what time that was?”
“No,” she said with another laugh. “But my phone does.” She checked something and said, “I ordered the pizza at 6:07pm, and it usually takes them a solid half hour. So I was looking out my door around 6:30, 6:40.”
“Any chance you saw him after that? Saturday? Sunday?”
She shook her head. “Sorry.”
“Not at all; you’re amazing. Can I get your name and number in case I need to follow up?”
She laughed and blushed, but she gave him her name, Vicki Miller, and a phone number. She threw sidelong glances at him until they parted at the stairs, and she went down, and Theo went up.
He found Auggie and Orlando in Cal’s room, shoving clothes back into the drawers and straightening up as best they could. Auggie refused to look at Theo. Orlando gave him a single glance and then blushed and looked away.
“A neighbor saw Cal waiting outside around 6:30pm last Friday night,” Theo said.
Auggie nodded.
“She saw him on the stairs,” Theo said, “which makes me think he was nervous or anxious or excited. Otherwise, why wouldn’t he wait inside, where it’s cool? Combined with the drugs, it sounds like he was going to score.”
“Drugs on demand,” Auggie said as he stuffed a sweatshirt into the dresser. “Personal delivery. But why does he need to buy drugs when he’s got cocaine in a shoebox?”
“Maybe he didn’t want cocaine. Maybe he wanted something else.”
Auggie made a face; Theo refused to react to it.
“What do we do now?” Orlando said.
“Nothing. You guys are done.”
Auggie shook his head.
“Is there a problem?” Theo said.
Auggie said nothing.
“Then let’s go.”
They walked outside. Orlando locked the apartment and replaced the spare key under the doormat. Not a great hiding spot, Theo thought. Anybody could get inside. Anybody could get in while Cal was asleep. Or somebody might have thought both brothers were out of town. Somebody who knew they kept drugs and cash and valuable memorabilia in the apartment. Somebody who got frightened when he realized Cal was there, and then an accident happened. Lots of ways things could go bad.
As they went downstairs, the sound of chanting voices came from a distance. Theo could see a crowd moving up the street toward them.
“What’s that?” Auggie said.
“Another demonstration,” Orlando said.
“Demonstration for what?”
Theo and Orlando traded looks.
“What?” Auggie said.
“It must have happened before you got here,” Theo said. “A girl was shot.”
“Oh my God. But what are they demonstrating about? Gun control?”
“A black girl,” Theo said. “She was unarmed, walking alone. A police officer shot her. With everything going on in St. Louis, the Michael Brown shooting, it’s—well, it’s stirred up a lot of powerful feelings.”
“Oh my God. It wasn’t Cart, was it?”
Theo stopped.
“I’m just asking if he’s ok,” Auggie said.
“You’re unbelievable.”
“He’s the only cop I know. It just—I just thought of it. I wasn’t trying to say he’d actually do something like that—”
Theo headed for the sidewalk.
“Theo, come on. It’s a million degrees outside, and you’re going to hurt your knee. I’ll drive you home and I won’t say anything and I’ll apologize as many times as you want.”
Orlando said something Theo couldn’t hear.
“Theo,” Auggie called, “don’t be stupid.”
Theo shook his head and kept going, and after a while he couldn’t hear Auggie anymore. He ran into the crowd of demonstrators, standing to one side as they marched. Men and women, mostly black but with a sprinkling of people from other races. Their banner said JUSTICE FOR DEJA. When the crowd had moved on, Theo started limping toward home again.
11
Monday was Labor Day, and a knock at the door woke Auggie. He stumbled out of bed and answered.
“Get your ass up, little bro,” Dylan said, shoving a blender bottle at him. “Lacrosse tryouts.”
“What?” Auggie rubbed his face, considered the blender bottle, and realized he was wearing nothing but a pair of boxers printed with unicorns. A guy whistled from the hallway, and Auggie groaned. “I don’t—”
“I’m not taking no for an answer,” Dylan said. “Shorts, t-shirt, and the best athletic shoes you’ve got. Let’s go!”
“Don’t I need—”
“Yeah, we’ll buy you the rest of the gear later. Move your ass, bro!”
The protein shake was awful. Tryouts were even worse. It wasn’t that Auggie was uncoordinated. And it wasn’t that he was out of shape. He could run, and he could pass—well, he didn’t humiliate himself anyway.
He was just too fucking small.
By the end of tryouts, the other guys had turned it into a joke, keeping score every time a guy body checked Auggie, laughing every time he was sent flying.
Auggie was picking himself up while a gang of guys walked away, slapping each other on the shoulders. One of them said, “Let’s see him make a jerkoff video out of that.”
Auggie started after them. He was surprised when someone caught his arm, spinning him around.
“Get the fuck off me,” Auggie said.
“Cool it,” Dylan said. His blond curls were dark with sweat and clinging to his forehead. His pinnie and shorts and hell, just about every inch of him, was covered in dirt from when he’d taken a bad fall earlier.
“That dickwad thinks—”
“What? He thinks you’re a joke? He thinks you’re an internet kid? A one-trick pony?”
Auggie ripped his arm free.
“What are you going to do?” Dylan said. “Go get your teeth knocked out? That’ll show him.”
“Fuck off.”
“You’re going to prove him right. You’re going to prove you just care about being the center of attention, having a million fans stroke your ego.”
The September sun was hot on Auggie’s neck. He wiped sweat from his eyes. “So what am I supposed to do?”
“Find your fucking center, little bro. And work your ass off in the gym this year, come back next year, and show that dildo what you can do.” Dylan studied his face, laughed, and wrapped a big hand around the back of Auggie’s neck. “Come on. We’ll get you some decent gear, we’ll get you set up at the gym, and we’re sure as hell going to get you meditating. Your chi is wack as hell.”
Three hundred and twenty-seven dollars later, Auggie had plenty of gear. He also was pretty sure he could hear Fer screaming all the way from California.
Tuesday morning, someone knocked on Auggie’s door.
Auggie was in boxer briefs, staring at two outfits on the bed: a tank top that showed a unicorn punching an elephant, paired with running shorts and high-tops; or a pink polo, blue chinos, and penny loafers. It was the first day of school because Monday had been Labor Day, and he was trying to figure out who he wanted to be.
The knock came again. Then Orlando’s voice: “Augs?”
Auggie groaned and opened the door a quarter inch.
“Good,” Orlando said, pushing into the room. “You’re up. We need—oh.”
It shouldn’t have been weird because they’d been roommates and Auggie had changed clothes plenty of times while Orlando was in the room. But when Orlando’s eyes moved up and down, taking in Auggie, Auggie crossed his arms and stared over Orlando’s shoulder at the dresser.
“Sorry, I can come back.”
“What do you want?”
“This is weird. I’ll come back.”
“Jesus, Orlando, you’re making it so much weirder. What?”
“We need Theo.”
“No, we don’t. Theo was a bag of dicks yesterday. I don’t want anything to do with Theo.”
“Well, we need him. If Cal is involved with drugs—”
“If?”
“If he’s in trouble, I mean, I don’t know who else to ask.”
“We go to the police.”
“Augs!”
“You said you trusted my judgment. You said if I wanted to go to the police, we’d go to the police.”
“Ok, right, but just listen—”
“And Theo was fucking awful to me yesterday.”
“Look—”
“And if Cal disappearing is connected to drugs, then you need the police. There was this one detective who seemed all right. Somerset. I think he gave me his card. Hold on.”
As Auggie turned toward his desk, Orlando caught him by the arm. When Auggie glanced back, Orlando’s face was bright red, and he looked like he wanted to retreat. But he didn’t. His touch was light but firm.
“Augs, please don’t make me go to the police yet. My family is—well, you saw. And if I go to the police, they will never forgive me. Please don’t make me do that. Please.”
He’d forgotten that Orlando’s hands were soft and strong. Goosebumps worked their way across Auggie’s chest.
“Well, what are we supposed to do?” Auggie asked. “I mean, I don’t know anything about drugs. I don’t know anything about this town, really, except for the college.”
Orlando’s thick brows came together.
“No,” Auggie said.
“I tried to ask Wayne but he just—I mean, it was Peepee this, Peepee that, like I’m too stupid to hold my own dick.”
“No, Orlando.”
“Please.”
“He was a bag of dicks.” Auggie couldn’t seem to think of another way to phrase it. “You saw how he treated me.”
“Yeah, well, you were—” More red moved into Orlando’s face. “You were provoking him.”
“Excuse me?”
“You know you were. You didn’t like when he said you could borrow his car, and then you were—well, Augs, you were kind of mean to him.”
Auggie ripped his elbow free.
“And you know what?” Orlando said. “You picked him—”
“We’re not doing this, Orlando. We’re not going to talk about why you and I didn’t work out. You won’t like it if we do.”
“That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying you picked him, though.”
“I said something to him, yeah. But I don’t even know if I meant it. I had a lot going on, and I wasn’t thinking clearly.”
“You’d better figure it out; you made some pretty big decisions about your life because of him. If you’re serious about that, if you still feel that way . . .” Orlando hesitated and then, in a rush, said, “Well, maybe you need to do what he said and grow up.”
The worst part was that Orlando wasn’t saying anything Auggie hadn’t thought to himself over the past day and a half. After the lacrosse tryouts, he’d spent most of Labor Day with the Sigma Sigma guys, barbequing on the back patio, playing a pickup game of frisbee, and then following the party to a junior’s apartment where he could score a few beers and two shots of tequila. And the whole day—sprawling in a chaise next to the grill, smelling the burgers sizzling, or getting cornered in the kitchen by a twinkie senior who kept touching Auggie’s arm, or throwing back the next shot of Milagro—the whole day, Auggie had been trying to figure out why he’d been such a shit to Theo.
He covered his eyes and groaned.
For some reason, this seemed to encourage Orlando because he said, “And you should apologize.”
“Ok.”
“And you really need to mean it.”
“I said ok. Good God, what has my life come to when you’re the one giving advice?”
When he peeled his hands away, Orlando had a nervous smile. “So you’ll ask him?”
Auggie groaned again.
Orlando’s smile firmed, and he said, “And you should probably shave your chest because those little hairs are cute, but I don’t think that’s the look you’re going for.”
“Oh my God,” Auggie said, trying to shrink behind his folded arms.
“And you only have three of them, so it’s not like it’ll take very long.”
“Get out.”
“And Theo is obviously into tweeny hunk Auggie, so maybe trim under your arms because you’re getting, you know, a little bushy. And if you aren’t already trimming down—”
Auggie shoved him out of the room.
“Shave your pits and wear the tank,” Orlando suggested from the hallway.
Auggie shut the door and leaned against it in case Orlando tried to come back with more advice. He spent almost fifteen minutes considering his armpits and trying to decide if he had too much hair, and then he spent another ten minutes looking at the chest hairs from various angles with a mirror. And fuck Orlando, because there were four of them, not three, marching down his breastbone. He wondered if maybe he should just skip classes and figure things out tomorrow. Then he pulled on the polo and chinos and loafers, because he remembered how Theo always dressed for school. He adjusted the lights, took a selfie, and posted it with the tag Mortal Kombat: Round 2! And then he took another picture with one arm behind his head, drew a circle where a few dark hairs poked out from under the short sleeve, and posted it with Be honest: too much? Then he considered pulling the picture down, killing Orlando, and killing himself.
He was still trying to figure out what was wrong with him as he walked across campus. Morning classes were a bitch, but Auggie had needed to take a full course load, and he was glad to see that he wasn’t the only one out and about. Students filled the quad: walking, running, biking, two girls at a stand giving away free first-day-of-school hugs, a long-haired boy on an overturned milk crate begging for the sexual liberation of jellyfish. Many of the students, like Auggie, had dressed up for the first day of classes, but others—usually older students—wore shorts and tees, often looking like they’d just rolled out of bed.
