Bad People (30 page)

He glanced at Heather, making the gesture almost imperceptible. Ardiss shot her own glance at Heather. “Do you fucking mind!” she yelled. Heather, downcast, left the counter and found something to do in the back room.

When she had gone, Ardiss returned her attention to him, stretched out her arm and touched his cheek. “What baby? What is it? Please tell me.”

“If we’re ever going to be together again…” he faltered there, intentionally, waiting for the words to sink in. He had never hinted at anything like that so overtly, not in words, before, and saying them now had the intended effect. She was nervous, and he imagined he could almost hear her heart beating in his own ears.

“If we’re ever going to be together again, I need some security, and some movement. You know what I mean.”

She shook her head.

“We can’t go on like before, without money, without a plan. Things will come together for me soon—” Just not as soon as he had hoped, but that things would come together in the end was already foreseen; he knew that. “Right now it needs a push. Ardiss you can be that push from me. Do that for me.”

“Yes, yes, yes,” she said confused and more than a little impatient now.

She knew he was seeing Connie and there was no need to go into that with her again. He couldn’t recall whether or not he had told her that Connie had a son, though.

Ardiss had all but agreed without even knowing yet what he expected of her, as she should. Connie would be like that eventually, and this day was leading directly to that one. Luke began to feel a warm sensation in his gut. On cue, the sun broke through the autumn Seattle clouds, and bathed half the coffee shop in glare. More significantly, the true sun, the one within himself, was beginning to flood his guts with heat and light, as it should. “There’s someone I want you to meet,” he said.

Chapter 33: S/D

S/D was disgusted to see his Mom’s boyfriend, slick Luke, in his living room, on their couch, when he got home. Mom was not even there in the house with Luke.

Just after eleven in the morning. School had scheduled a half-day. He hadn’t seen his Mom’s car in its spot, yet here was Luke anyway, the extra appendage. Luke on his own was just as disgusting a thing as Luke and Connie together. His existence was disgusting, and it was disgusting that she couldn’t see that.

“Hi,” said Luke upon seeing S/D enter. Luke rarely interacted directly with him, as if he didn’t know how to talk to anyone except Connie.

But now, one of those very rare occasions that they two were stuck alone in one room together, they could hardly avoid it.

To S/D, Luke looked about twenty-seven or so. Maybe more. He’d never asked his mother to tell him. He never asked her anything about the boyfriend, in fact, choosing instead to wait the mess out. Waiting it out might be impossible though; the dude seemed to have little else in his life to do except mack on Connie. He wasn’t quite living with them (unless his solo presence there today meant he had moved in) but he was all
but
living with them.

His mother had made S/D feel guilty the other morning about his disapproval of Luke, and in truth S/D did not want be the sort of person who cared about it anyway. But it
did
bother him, despite himself. He did not approve.

Still, he instinctively answered Luke’s greeting with his own echoing “Hi” wishing he could swallow it back, especially when his response instantly served to conjure up a beaming smile on Luke’s face. Christ, did the guy want to be friends now? Well, S/D himself was a little closer to Luke’s age than Luke was to Connie, probably, which underscored how revolting the situation should be, not only for him, but should have been for each of them too. What was the appeal?

“How was school,” said Luke.

“Uh huh,” said S/D, affecting that he wasn’t listening and passed through toward his bedroom.

“What’s your favorite subject,” said Luke.

This second “question” (because it was not a question at all) made S/D finally became cognizant of something about the way Luke talked that he hadn’t really fully locked-into before, but he was now, nevertheless, entirely certain it was true: Luke never asked questions, really. He might say some words in the form of a question, but his voice never went up at the end, not even slightly, every word of a question came out evenly.

Not that he sounded like a monotone, not quite, but his voice was, at such times, like a guitar with strings all tuned to the same note, difference thicknesses of sound, but nothing like a scale, and nothing like music. S/D didn’t know whether this quirk was insignificant or if it reflected some trait of Luke’s, like arrogance, but he suspected it
was
arrogance. He didn’t wonder how his mother put up with it because, well, his mother seemed to be able to put up with a lot.

That didn’t mean he had to himself. One more school year and he was gone.

None of this would’ve been nearly as bad if Connie hadn’t sold the house. They were all practically living on top of each other. The condo was meant to be temporary, Connie had wanted to get another house, after “things settled down.” S/D never did find out what happened to that plan. In the old house, or in just about any reasonable house he could have avoided the Connie and Luke show. The condo had one entrance however and one entrance only, unless you counted the garbage chute.

“Looking for your computer,” said Luke.

Again, was that a question or a statement?

“You mean I am looking for my iBook?”

Unfazed, Luke said that was what he did mean, yes.

“Not particularly.”

“I notice you don’t often take it to school with you.”

To lug around on his shoulder all day or lay on the floor in his car waiting to be stolen?

“I put it against your door,” said Luke.

“What?”

“I found it out here on the coffee table. I don’t know why. I thought it was Connie’s. I put it against your door.”

S/D wordlessly went down the hallway. There, his laptop was propped against his door.
Oookkkayyy
.

He picked it up, went in and shut the door behind himself. He sat on his bed, opened the laptop, and started it. He inspected his desktop and files, nothing had been moved or fucked with as far as he could see, but why was Luke even preoccupied with S/D’s shit? From the Apple Menu he slid over the submenu of recent items—a list of the most recent documents and apps opened. Nothing stood out initially, until he noticed Word. That was strange, because he had recently started using GoogleDocs for his school papers, and couldn’t remember using Word in he-didn’t-know-how-long. He opened it now, and went to the File menu. The most recent document was something called
forget me I return to the.rtf
which looked like a file that had been save using the first few words of its text as a default document name. S/D never saved files like that, but his mom did. He tried to open that file but it only brought up a window saying the file could not be found. There had been a file, but it had been trashed and the trash emptied. S/D opened Firefox and searched for freeware trash recovery apps.

He waited impatiently for it to download and install. He recovered the file easily enough, opened it, and read the lines of a poem that meant nothing to him.

It had to be something Luke was doing, it couldn’t be his Mom’s, and she wouldn’t use his iBook. Luke all but confessed that he had used it by bringing it up for entirely no reason.

S/D shook his head in disgust, what was it? Song lyrics? Was Connie’s boy toy a deadbeat musician as well? He trashed the file again, and emptied the trash with a secure erase program that he used to get rid of porn and such. He didn’t want anything of Luke’s on his hard drive. Then he password protected his entire system. Connie didn’t like him doing that, or she hadn’t when she and Robb used to monitor his computer use more regularly, though under the new regime she seemed to have given up on that.

He would love for her to come at him and ask why he password-protected his laptop now; he’d love to tell her about her boyfriend’s lame heavy-metal lyrics. Too bad, he realized, that he had already erased them. They would have been nice to have around later to embarrass Luke with, if need be.

He closed the iBook and tossed it aside. He had a paper due, but he wasn’t going to do it tonight. He briefly contemplated whether to stay in his room with the door shut, or leave again, for a while. That is what he wanted to do and would have done if doing it didn’t require passing Luke again. But it was his house, not Luke’s, and where was Connie anyway? Should Luke be allowed to hang around all day? S/D tossed the laptop behind him, flat onto his pillows and stood up. He went into the kitchen to get juice.

Luke was there, standing, leaning back against the counter, near the sink. He was doing nothing. Really nothing at all.

“Where’s Connie?” S/D asked.

“You call your Mom by her first name.”

“Where appropriate,” said S/D. He searched the fridge moving things around, searching for some kind of juice that he liked.

“I used to call mine by her first name too.”

All she had was apple and grapefruit. S/D slammed the refrigerator shut. “Oh good,” he said to Luke. “Rapport.”

“Tell me what you mean by that.” Luke words came out hard, surprising S/D a little. More than a little. “I-it means,” he caught himself stammering and decided to shut up. He cheeks felt flush. Luke was looking at him intently. Really looking at him actually, as if really noticing S/D for the first time. Sizing him up. S/D, out of nowhere, had the feeling that somehow Luke, just by staring at him, had discovered that he had found the lyrics, recovered them from the laptop. And also that Luke was not happy about that.

S/D did not like the way that made him feel. “Fuck you,” he said to Luke.

Luke smiled with embarrassment and threw his head back in surprise.

That is what he did, that is what he really did, as if acting hurt and chagrined at S/D’s words.

At least, that is what it
looked
like Luke did. But there was a nanosecond before that: the nanosecond that came directly upon S/D’s
fuck you
to Luke. Luke’s eyebrows arched. His nostrils had started to flare, like a…like a what? Like a animal’s nostrils. A wild animal. He thought of the cougars and bobcats that were supposed to be wandering his old neighborhood, now that it had been mostly abandoned, padding across the dark streets, looking to enter any abandoned door…

Though Luke wasn’t a cat of any kind. Maybe a wolf, or jackal.

But almost instantly the animal look vanished from Luke’s face—and perhaps S/D had only imagined it, it was gone so fast.

“We can be friend’s,” said Luke. “You’ve only got a year of school left anyway.”

Odd that S/D had been thinking the same thing himself. But he didn’t like that Luke was saying it. He didn’t like that Luke knew anything about him. Not his age, not his school, not anything.

“And then you’ll be in college. That’s an opportunity you know. Not everyone has that type of opportunity. The type your Mom can provide. Contacts, resources. You should count your blessings.”

“Oh, I do, I do. Every day.”
Can I call you Dad?
he almost added, but he was afraid to be sarcastic at the moment. He didn’t like that feeling either. He went to the counter and picked up his car keys. He had tossed them there when he came in earlier, but they had been moved to the other side of the counter. Had Luke touched them at some point? Why would he do that? S/D gave him another look, but Luke’s face revealed nothing about this either. The man was an enigma, say what else you would about him. S/D was disappointed that his mother would fall for his shit, but so what? Her problem.
She has to fuck him, not me.

“You’re going back out,” said Luke.

“Observation correct.”

“I’ll tell your Mom I saw you. Okay, catch you later.”

S/D made no response to that, nor did he go back to his room to grab his bag or his coat. He wanted out of there as quickly as possible. He was only going to drive around for a couple hours until he was sure his Mom was home, and hopefully then she and Luke would go out to dinner or something. Where was she now anyway? He remembered her saying something about a business meeting, but he might have gotten that wrong, she hadn’t been doing much work lately. Or any, as far as he could tell. After Robb had died, she cancelled all her upcoming speaking engagements and workshops. For a while she complained about getting invites again that it was too soon, but eventually she didn’t have any more invites, or any other kind of demands to complain about. All that shit she had done for women really made her proud at one time, now it was like she had given up on that.

“Where ya headed? I’ll tell your Mom so she doesn’t worry.”

“She has my phone for that.”

“True. What places do you like to go to.”

“Huh?”

“The places you hang out, what are they like.”

“Dude. I don’t hang out.”

Luke made a patronizing hand gesture. “Making conversation.”

“You don’t need to.” Shut up, shut up, please. Did Luke
ever
stop talking? “We are fine. You don’t need to befriend me or impress me, or even like me. I don’t care, dude.”