Crazy Love You (23 page)

The first light of dawn was a thin glow on the horizon as we got back into the Scout. I brought her back to her parents' place.

“I'm going to get some sleep here,” she said. “I'll meet you at your place at twelve thirty and we can go over together.”

“I want to apologize to your dad,” I said.

“Later, okay?” she said. “It'll be all right.”

She didn't look very confident, and I couldn't blame her. I reached for her. Instead of an embrace she gave me a light kiss on the cheek, pushing me back gently with her palms. It wasn't that she was cold, but she had the aura of self-protection. I think she wasn't sure if she could trust me. Maybe she was afraid.

“I love you, Ian,” she said. She sounded as desperate as I was. I wondered if maybe what we had wasn't real enough, strong enough to endure this much stress, this early. We hadn't even laid the foundation for our life together and already the ground was shaking. She shut the door and walked away quickly before I could answer her. I left her driveway, feeling a deep hollow of loneliness open wide inside me.

•  •  •

Zack was an early riser. It wasn't even seven when I saw his cell-phone number on my caller ID. I'd scanned my early pages yesterday and sent them to him, to make up for the missed meeting. He must have read them fast. I was still in the Scout, stuck in traffic getting back into the city, snaking up the LIE.

“This is great, Ian,” Zack gushed. “I've been up all night reading, looking at the art. I just had to call, even though I didn't think I'd get you. I know you're not an early bird, exactly.” He laughed manically; too much coffee too early for too-young Zack. He was like a puppy on speed.

I could see him leaning over his desk, pressing the phone to his ear.

“I mean it's perfect. The three of them on the bluff, Molly in white, Priss coming out of the storm. The art is amazing! Your best yet! And the story! I mean, I'm on the edge of my fucking seat. How close are you to being done? I'm not even asking as your editor, but as your fan. I
need
to know what's going to happen.”

“I don't know,” I said. “Not long. I'm working on it, night and day.”

“Okay,” he said. “No pressure. Take your time. You can't rush this stuff, I know that.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Hey,” he said. “Give me a call if you need to talk or work anything through, okay?”

He really wanted that, wanted to be the guy I called to hammer out plot points. And don't get me wrong; I appreciated his eagerness. But I worked alone; I couldn't do it any other way. Fatboy, Molly, and Priss were standing on that bluff, with the storm raging around them. I had no idea what was going to happen next. I wouldn't know until it happened. But how was I going to get back to that place, when my real world was shaking apart? What I needed was some more Adderal.

“Okay,” I said. “I'll do that.”

•  •  •

When I got back to the city, I parked in the lot about a block from my building and walked home. But when I put the key in the lock of the downstairs door, it didn't fit. This happened from time to time: someone lost their door key; the locks had to be changed. I buzzed the super's apartment, once, twice, three times. No answer. Shit.

I sat on the stoop of my building and waited. Finally one of my neighbors, a svelte yoga mom, whose Lululemon garb, blond highlights, and gel manicure just screamed my-husband-is-a-hedge-fund-manager-and-I-gave-up-my-middling-career-in-PR-because-I-want-to-be-there-for-my-kids-you-know, reluctantly let me in.

“I live on three,” I said when we passed into the lobby together. She never once spoke to me, simply hadn't pushed the street door closed behind her. She didn't look at me when we got on the elevator, or when I got off. She just tapped on her BlackBerry, not even lifting her eyes. I didn't even exist in her universe; if I'd been a cockroach, she'd have at least moved away from me or glanced at me in disgust.

“Thanks for letting me in.”

The elevator door closed and I was alone on my floor. I saw a bright orange piece of paper tacked to my apartment door. A flyer for a rave, a take-out menu, gym discount ad? No. Eviction notice. I stood there staring, not comprehending.

“What the fuck?” I said aloud to no one.

I ripped the notice off and held it in my hand. It
did
look official, with a number to call. The marshal would arrive on Friday, it said, to personally remove me from the premises, etc., etc. But there was
no
way. My rent was transferred automatically every month from my checking account. Even if there'd been some screw-up, the management company would have just called. I'd been living in the apartment for two years and had never even once been late with my rent. There must have been some mistake. Still, I was shaking.

My apartment key still worked, so I let myself in and called the management company, but only got voice mail. I heard a rushing in my ears so loud that it drowned out all other sound. I went straight to my laptop to check my checking account.

The Internet access was slow and I waited. Outside, the city was coming to life, horns honking, sirens in the distance, cars thumping over the metal manhole cover in the street. Through the window across the street, I saw a girl making herself a cup of coffee. Life was moving forward, normal and easy. Meanwhile, I felt like the ground beneath my feet was starting to shift, revealing itself as something unstable, not to be trusted.

When I finally logged in, I just sat and stared. The checking account was a grid of red—negative funds, a list of checks and ATM withdrawals that had come in and been covered by overdraft protection, converted to a credit balance that had exceeded my limit. My balance was negative. It wasn't possible.

When was the last time I'd checked my accounts? Hadn't I just received a hefty royalty payment from my publisher like a month ago? There had been e-mail from my agent saying that they'd sent me a wire transfer. Hadn't there?

Then the phone was ringing and I saw that it was the management company. I picked up right away.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Paine?” The voice of a young woman, tentative and soft-spoken. I felt some measure of relief—here was a nice person, a competent person, someone who would take care of this mess. “This is Natalie from building management. I'm returning your call.”

“I came home to find an eviction notice on my door,” I said. “There must be a mistake. Can you help me?”

She cleared her throat. “There's no mistake, Mr. Paine. We've been over this a number of times.”

“Excuse me?”

A crackling silence on the line.

“You and I have been over this several times, sir. I told you during our last conversation that you had ten days to pay the three months' rent due, plus the rent for the upcoming month, or we would have to proceed with eviction.”

“Uh . . .” I said stupidly.

“We have been more than generous. You have been a good tenant and we understand that with your book contract getting canceled you got behind. But unfortunately, this is a business, Mr. Paine, and we have no choice at this point but to ask you to move out of our apartment.”

Our
apartment? There were words I wanted to say, but they were all jammed up in my throat.

“Now,” she said with a note of apology, “I'm going to end this conversation, Mr. Paine, before you see fit to level any more verbal abuse at me.”

“Verbal abuse?” I said. “Do I know you? Have we spoken before?”

She emitted a little laugh. “Are you for real?”

“I'm sorry,” I said. Man, that headache that had started in the diner now felt like it was splitting my skull in two. I put my head down on my desk. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

I heard her blow out a breath. “You should get some help, Mr. Paine. A lawyer, a doctor, whatever.”

Then she hung up the phone. The whole room was spinning as I tried to make sense of the conversation I'd just had. My rent was three months past due? I'd had a previous conversation with Natalie in which I'd verbally abused her? Had she said my book contract was
canceled
? All the money was gone from my checking and savings accounts. I was being evicted from my apartment.

The roar that had been building inside my head was deafening, expanding. I tried to control my breathing the way Dr. Crown had showed me so many years ago. But the room around me was disappearing into a familiar red fog. A crescendo of light and sound built on itself until the world was only that.

•  •  •

The lawyer my father hired showed up shortly after I'd confessed to him about Priss. This guy had his work cut out for him. The police were already at my house. By the time they were done searching, they'd found paint thinner in my backpack as well as a cigarette lighter in my coat. It wasn't much as far as evidence went. But combined with witnesses claiming they'd seen me raging at Miss Rose, all the suspicion surrounding the Beech fire, my family history, and my ever-more-repulsive appearance . . . let's say things didn't look good for me.

The lawyer, a wiry, balding man with a beaklike nose and a collection of ill-fitting suits, suggested a plea: vandalism and reckless endangerment.

“If you plea to this, we're looking at a couple of months of community service, group therapy for anger management,” he said. His voice was nasally, and as high-pitched as a woman's.

He was looking at my father, talking more to him. As a minor, I didn't get much of a say in what was happening to me. Still, I understood that they were trying to get me to admit to something I hadn't done.

“But I didn't
do
it,” I said.

The lawyer looked down at his file, which he'd retrieved from an impossibly thick leather satchel stuffed with other manila files just like mine. All those people in trouble, relying on this uninspiring man to save them.

“No one believes that, kid,” he said. “The evidence and police opinion are against you. Sometimes you just have to take what you can get. And this is what I can get for you. Otherwise, we go to trial and you take your chances. I doubt they'll charge you as an adult, if you're found guilty. But you could wind up going to juvenile detention. That's not going to be good for you.”

“No,” my father said. He'd raised his voice and both the lawyer and I jumped. He pushed a thick finger hard on the table. “No, Ian. You plea, that's it.”

There was a yawning hole of desperation opening inside of me as I looked back and forth between the two men.

“Do you believe me, Dad?”

He looked at me with an expression that someone else might have read as stone-faced, but the corner of his mouth twitched a little and his eyes were moist. In an uncommon gesture of tenderness, he put his hand on mine.

“I believe that
you
believe she did it,” he said.

“This girl,” said the lawyer. “She doesn't exist. There's no record of her living or going to school here in this town. No one has
ever
seen her.”

“I—” I started. But he held up a hand.

“Don't start with the whole Eloise Montgomery thing,” said the lawyer. “That woman is not a reliable witness. And invoking her name is not necessarily going to work in your favor.”

I didn't understand why no one was willing to discuss Eloise Montgomery, why my father had taken the note she'd given me, shoved it in his pocket and never returned it. She was an adult, wasn't she? Didn't that alone make her more reliable than I was? Why wouldn't someone at least question her?

“We don't have a homeless population in The Hollows,” the lawyer went on. “There's no one squatting on the property behind your house.”

“But—”

My father silenced me with a hand on my shoulder.

“So continuing to insist that this girl started these fires makes you seem like a liar. The court doctor does not consider you delusional. You are not schizophrenic. You know right from wrong, real from fantasy. If you're doing this because you think it's going to help you, you're wrong. The best thing you can do for yourself is to own up, pay the price, and try to make good from here on out.”

“People know you've had a rough time of it, Ian,” my father said. “That's why they are offering you this plea. No one thinks you're a bad kid. Just angry and sad—a little messed up.”

A shroud of despair wrapped around me that day; I felt myself shut down. I let it cloak me in darkness, and I disappeared inside it for a good long while. I was powerless in my life, as all kids are. But my life wasn't like the lives of other kids—it was a train wreck. I couldn't help Ella, or my mother. Now I couldn't even help myself.

“Fine,” I said. “Whatever.”

And the plea was signed. I was sentenced to one hundred hours of community service—picking up garbage on the side of the highway (you can imagine what this did for my image) and six months in youth group therapy for anger management.

•  •  •

“Mikey Beech needed a lesson,” Priss said. It was the night after my father and I signed that plea. My despair had turned to anger at Priss. I waited for my father to go to sleep and then I easily snuck out. I knew she'd been waiting for me out at the graveyard. “And Miss Rose betrayed you.”

“You shouldn't have done those things,” I told her. I was weak with Priss, watery and insubstantial. My anger was impotent in her presence, and it turned on me, became a heavy sadness, a crushing fatigue.

“Somebody has to stand up for you,” she said.

She sat beside me and put her arms around me. And I sank into her, not as a friend, or even as a boy awakening to his desires, but as a child rests against his mother. I took her strength, let her bolster me, comfort me. “Nobody ever stood up for
me
,” she said.