Lost in arcadia a novel, p.25
Lost in Arcadia: A Novel, page 25
The next day you will wake up almost as disoriented. Be ready to wonder about your phone call. Navedo will still be lying on his bunk and unwilling to leave the room when the hallway’s fluorescent light signals you to get up.
Ask him, do we get a phone call?
He will groan in response.
Ask him again in twenty minutes, so what’s the deal with phone calls?
He will say, how should I know? He will seem even unhappier than you are, so leave him be while you head to the cafeteria. This morning, you will eat everything on your plate, everything you can touch. You will feel even sicker for this later, will spend an uncomfortably large part of the day sitting on your metal, lidless toilet while your roommate exits the room to visit the chapel and wherever else.
When you have time later, and even though it’s just a day it feels like you have endless amounts of time, infinite periods of time because you’re still disconnected from Arcadia, you should speak with a guard about the phone call. He will laugh, then ask how much it means to you.
I thought it was a right, you’ll say.
He will laugh again. Pro-tip: movies are liars. You will decide that talking to him is pointless and wander on your own. Eventually you will come across a payphone asking for $1.50 a minute, which will seem incredible given that all of your money was taken away before getting in here. There will also be a bulletin board with bail bondsmen listed, though you will be unsure what exactly it is they do. There will be a line at the phone, twelve people waiting at this hard plastic relic, this payphone that might be the only one left in the city. Decide that maybe this is all too much, and more importantly, that you don’t even know who to call anyhow. Reject calling your mom right now, and internally laugh about the idea of getting in touch with your father. Gideon or Holly? That motherfucker Steve? The truth, you will realize, is that you are alone in here and finding the phone was completely pointless.
Head back to your room and consider what else to do. You will be unclear on how much longer you will be stuck here, and so desperate that you even consider joining your roommate at the chapel. It seems quaint to you, oddly old-fashioned that this jail should have a church, and even odder that prisoners go there to pray or whatever. AVOID: mentioning this to Navedo when he returns to your cell. It will create an uncomfortable situation between the two of you for the rest of your stay.
Wallow in your own unhappiness for the rest of the day. Nothing else should feel appropriate to the situation, certainly not going to worship a God you believe in minimally, if at all.
By the time guards pull you out of your cell a day later, it will seem like you have always been here. The guards will take you and twenty or so other prisoners to what appears, at first glance, to be a typical corporate conference room. You will sit around a large table with a lacquered faux-wood finish while a man who introduces himself as your probation officer greets everyone around the room. He will begin talking to people, not you, in a succession around the room until a projected image appears on the far wall. You will recognize this projection as an Arcadia chat program, and won’t be able to hide your surprise when a fully robed judge appears on the other end of the screen.
Your turn with the judge will come somewhere in the middle. The probation officer will be told your crimes, which will be unlawful possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute, underage drinking, and soliciting prostitution. Your probation officer will discuss these charges for between two and five minutes with the judge, at the end of which you will learn that there is a recommended bond on you for five thousand dollars.
Panic over the five thousand dollars. Be fully aware that you do not, and have never, owned five thousand dollars, despite the ridiculous wealth of your family.
Following your conference call with the judge, you will be taken to a room with multiple phones. Again, a bulletin board will list bail bondsman and, after observing several other prisoners calling these numbers, do so as well.
Be completely unclear on which bondsman you should call. When the bondsman answers, she (it will be a she, and this will surprise you though it should not) will tell you that you need to give her five hundred dollars. This you can do. But you will wonder how to get her the money. The bondswoman will tell you it can be wired directly from your account, if you know the number, but you will not because that is a crazy thing to know. Instead, she will ask if someone else can bring it to her, and you tell her that your friend Steve can, in a check, but you don’t know how to get ahold of him. Eventually she will agree to post your bail so long as you give her the five hundred within twenty-four hours of your release. This will be acceptable, doable, but you will wonder what would happen if you could not round up the money.
Less than an hour later, you will be transported back in the white van headed downtown. Your roommate Navedo will not be in the van with you, and you will wonder why that is, but never think of him again afterward.
You will be given back your clothes, which smell even worse than before, and most importantly your phone. Swipe it and enter your password. At the site of its home screen, feel like a full person again, like you have suddenly been cured of blindness. Text your friends for a ride home. You will see Disney’s old primer-colored automobile, dubbed “The Boat” by Steve because it looks more seaworthy than roadworthy, turn the corner almost half an hour later. He will make a face at the way you smell but otherwise stick to small talk as he drives you home. Your mom will not be there to ask questions, thank God, so after putting your clothes in the washing machine and taking a shower you will feel ready to pretend none of that ever happened. Send five hundred dollars through PayPal to the bondswoman without ever meeting her and sleep soundly for the next fourteen hours.
A week later you will receive a letter in the mail from the State of New Mexico. Your mother will want to see what it says, but you will snatch it away and glare at her for asking. When she brings it up later, say it was just junk. It will be obvious that your mom doesn’t believe you. Open the letter in your bedroom once she’s asleep and read what it says. Realize that until opening this letter, you felt that that weekend was just a bad dream. You will want to burn the letter, but instead read it over and over again, even though it tells you no new information.
The next day, go downtown to the state public defender’s office. Pro-tip: it will be impossible to find parking, so don’t despair at paying $5 an hour. Once in the office, you will fill out a financial affidavit determining whether or not you qualify for a lawyer. You do, because everyone does, and will be assigned one at random. You will not meet with this lawyer in person. You will be told a name and then, several weeks later, receive a nonpersonalized email from the State Public Defender’s Office repeating this information. You will wonder whether there is something you should discuss with this lawyer, but choose to do nothing. Spend the rest of the summer in Arcadia. Go to college. Continue acting in public as if none of this ever happened.
In late October, approximately five months after you were arrested, you will receive another letter from the state. Fortunately, by this time you will have moved out from your mom’s house and it will arrive at your new one, a block from Bataan Park, shared with two of your friends. You will be the only one who takes in the mail anyhow, so it will be easy to make sure no one else sees this letter. You will read words like “indicted by a grand jury” and “required for a formal arraignment” and not be able to tell what any of this means. You will read a date to appear for the arraignment.
You will be prepared for the arraignment, you really will, but when the time comes, you will not be able to force yourself to go. Instead, you will be playing a competitive match of Duty Calls online with your friends. When the bail bondswoman calls the next day and chews you out for not appearing in court, thereby threatening her livelihood, you will not know what to say.
I don’t think you’ve been treating this seriously, the bondswoman will say.
You will say that you have.
Have you even been in contact with your lawyer? she will ask.
Not exactly, you will stammer.
BOSS STRATEGY: don’t tell the bondswoman you are sorry. This will only cause her to yell at you even more.
The bondswoman will require another one hundred dollars from you to guarantee that you will show up at the next arraignment. Even so, when you do show up, she will be angry with you. You will tell her it was an honest mistake, but she will just grunt and ignore you.
The judge will be even less happy than the bondswoman. He will be an older man, white and balding but trying to hide it and sweating profusely all over his head. He will threaten to increase your bond, which will seriously worry you because of how expensive all of this is turning out to be. Eventually the judge will calm down, slightly, and read your charges and the possible penalties. The penalties will include five years in prison. You will begin sweating even more than the judge, shivering. The room will feel far too cold, even in your unpressed suit. The judge will set a deadline for “motions,” and you will have no idea what this means.
After the arraignment, you will finally hear from your lawyer. He will leave a voice mail on your phone requesting your presence immediately. Visit his office the next day. Your lawyer, a surprisingly large man, a man you would not want to face in a dark alley given his size and the amount of hair on his white knuckles, will tell you to plead guilty. He will lay out the facts of the case: you were caught red-handed, the prostitute has accused you of giving her ketamine, your blood-alcohol level when the police picked you up. He will say that the state may go easy on you for a first offense. If you plead guilty.
You will leave the office not knowing what to do. You will be afraid of living the rest of your life as a felon, of having to tell your mother and face your family. You will be well aware by now that felons receive no financial aid for college. Your lawyer will have told you to get back in touch with him as soon as you’ve made a decision, that he needs an answer soon. Very soon. You will go home and get on Arcadia with your friends, destroy zombie invaders in a MOBA until you fall asleep on your keyboard, and pretend none of this ever happened for as long as you can.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Gideon’s phone vibrated on the side table, and after seeing his sister’s name lit up on it, he switched it to speaker mode so he could stay slouched in a beanbag chair. “Hey sis. To what do I owe this pleasure? More camera problems? Scanner problems? Perhaps some other technological problem that only a man with a liberal arts degree and a passing knowledge of computers can help you with?”
The room he stayed in was small and plain, with just a mattress, two beanbag chairs, a small table with a lamp on it, and a television set hanging against a wall—also a few diapers under the table, which he decided not to ask Ralphie about. A glorified closet, really. He’d been using Ralphie’s bathroom on the other side of the house, which was large, luxurious, and far less in use than he’d initially feared. He’d initially assumed the accommodations would be a bit nicer, considering Ralphie’s claims about the quality of his clientele, but apparently they didn’t care. Business seemed to be bumping, with new houseguests arriving constantly, but no one ever bothered him. They flitted into their rooms and then left however many hours or days later, never making a ruckus. Usually he heard a television or music playing through the walls for the first fifteen or twenty minutes after someone arrived, but then things would go quiet, and the next thing he’d hear from them would be the door opening as they left.
“No, it’s nothing like that. It’s … something serious.” Her voice cracked as she said this.
“I’m sorry. What’s up? Is it about Robert? Do you need some kind of help?”
“No, I just wanted to tell you that I heard from, saw, actually, I mean he was visiting so I guess I—”
“Dad?”
“Yeah.”
He didn’t know how she expected him to react, so he stayed silent.
“I know,” said Holly.
“Seriously? I mean, I kind of thought … How did he look?”
When Gideon returned after visiting a local parish, he’d discovered a selection of Ralphie’s samples on his table. The THC, he’d learned, calmed him down, and had been vital in helping him back into the world so he could speak with the myriad of parishioners, pastors, and other Jesus freaks. He’d thought that by now he would be back to normal, that he’d had enough weeks since leaving Connecticut that talking to so many people wouldn’t be a problem, but it was. Especially when talking to religious people, Gideon always felt like he was being judged.
“I don’t know. He looked okay, I guess. Older, of course, but mostly the same. I guess it’s been a while so I don’t remember exactly how he looked before, but I’d never really thought of him as old before. He was an adult, older than us, sure, but now he’s, he’s definitely old.”
“Like he was hobbled, using a cane or—”
“No, just normal old. Like if you saw him at a grocery store, you’d know that next to his driver’s license he kept an AARP membership card. I didn’t see him drive, but I’m sure he doesn’t do it fast anymore, or if he does he’s probably been in like a dozen crashes by now. He seemed … slower. Worn down. Do you remember how it used to seem like he was either asleep or half jumping with intensity, even while sitting at the computer? It wasn’t like that anymore, it was like he was really tired. We sat around and drank tea.”
Gideon remembered his sister at five years old, having a tea party with her father and her teddy bears. He shook this image out of his head, unsure if it had even happened or if it was one of those things you just make up about your childhood. Juan Diego had never really liked playing make-believe with his kids, had always preferred games. He’d never liked anything that didn’t have rules you could master. Gideon remembered when he used to play basketball with his dad on a hoop they’d nailed up above the garage. His dad used to let him get nine points or spell out H-O-R-S, perhaps to appease Autumn, but he’d never let Gideon win a game.
“Okay. But … so like, why did he visit you?” Gideon had to admit to himself, he felt a little hurt. Holly hadn’t been his dad’s favorite, right? It felt like he was being rejected these days, passed up, even by his dad. “Hell, if he’s going to visit someone, shouldn’t it be me? I’m the oldest son. If this were the bad old days, when he died, I’d get all his money and title and you two would just be fucked.”
“Ha. I don’t know if it was necessarily favoritism, though maybe. After all, I’m pretty awesome, especially compared with you two dweebs. But no, he said something about trying to see you, too, but maybe you weren’t home or available or something? I didn’t know what to make of that, since you’ve always been as weird a hermit as the rest of us. Anyhow, I’m sure you’ll see him soon, and I don’t know, maybe you can tell me what you think of the whole thing. I was, I’m going to be honest with you, mostly just pissed off.”
“I’m sure. I mean, of course you’d be angry, no one’s happy. The dude’s a shithead as a father.”
“He was okay as a father.”
“Really? Was he? Because I don’t know if you’re remembering things correctly.”
“Yeah, leaving was a dick move, but—”
“He wasn’t the most attentive parent before that, either.”
“I know, I’m not trying to defend him, God knows I would never fucking do that. So the guy has some big fucking midlife crisis, boo fucking hoo. We all have problems, that doesn’t excuse shit. God, Devon wasn’t even a teenager then, was he?”
“I don’t think so, and he still has the maturity level of a five-year-old. So like, did you talk about anything else?”
On his laptop Gideon scanned his spreadsheet of possible candidates. Each one seemed less interesting, less promising than the last. He just really couldn’t make himself give a fuck about any of this. All he wanted to do was follow Teresa around, or watch her online. He closed his eyes and tried to make himself comfortable in the beanbag, but however he moved, it felt like his back was about three degrees away from snapping. His body just didn’t like sitting anymore, and even driving, Gideon found himself squirming in his seat, unable to make his lower back feel comfortable again. He reluctantly moved to the cot, resting his phone against the side of his head.
“Kind of? You’ll have to talk to dad yourself, but that’s what I was getting from the conversation. He had this crisis that sounded like just a normal fear of death sort of thing. Did his equivalent of hitting forty or fifty or whatever arbitrary number freaks people out these days and just flipped. Mortality, impending death, wasting his life. The whole she-bang, like he’d read a book on the subject and decided to go with the most obvious symptoms. I guess he made some bucket list shit and spent a fortune traveling around the world in disguise.”
“God, if mom hears about that, she’ll kill him. She was always saying they never went anywhere, did anything. Sometimes she’d say that he tricked her while they were dating into thinking he was the type of guy who went out and did stuff, then the moment they got married, he never left the house again for anything but work and groceries.”
“Well, unless you decide to tell her, I don’t see why she would ever hear about it. It sounds like he might want to be involved in our lives again, but I got the definite feeling that he’s planning to stay the hell away from mom. I have no idea what’s going on there, exactly.”
“I don’t like to tell her much about my life or anything, but still, I feel like she deserves to hear about what happened to him. I don’t know … Did he say anything else?”
Not that Gideon wanted to be the one who told Autumn about Juan Diego’s return. Holly could deal with that. Autumn and Holly were always fighting anyhow, but Gideon had always been the one who apologized, even when he felt he was in the right. When it came down to a real confrontation, he preferred to run.
“So he spent some time dicking around, doing all the stupid activities he wanted to do before he died. But of course unlike most people he’s really fucking rich, so he could go off and do everything. Like, the moment he wanted to swim with dolphins, he just had his travel agent book the arrangements and hopped on a plane to the Atlantic. Thought that getting all of that done would make him ‘happy’ in some way.”
