How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship & Musical Theater (34 page)

Evil. Evil. Evil.

“I don't care how much time it takes,” Dagmar says, shaking a bent twig of a finger at me, “I vill not give up until I see you in jail, you azz
huuuull.”

And your little dog, too.

“Well, thanks for stopping by,” Kathleen says, starting to close the door. “It was horrible meeting you.”

Dagmar turns on her spiky heels, clicking and muttering to herself as she goes.

Kathleen shuts the door and leans against it. “She must be great in bed,” she says. “There's no other explanation.”

I consider calling Natie
for advice but, frankly, I've kind of had it with his suggestions. Nor do I want to talk to Kathleen, even though she's very sympathetic. I just want to go to bed for a really, really long time and forget I was ever born. I pass out into a dreamless sleep until about three o'clock in the morning when I sit bolt upright in bed to discover that, while I was sleeping, I've taken every bit of bedding—the blanket, the sheets, even the mattress pad—and tossed them across the room. I lie awake, the sound of my heartbeat pounding in my ears as I envision the step-by-step process of being tried, convicted, and sent to prison where I'll have the words “Raoul's Bitch” tattooed on my ass. Eventually I'll be killed in prison and God will consign my eternal soul to the fiery pits of Hell where I'll burn forever because I'm a very, very bad person. Like Hamlet says, “My offense is rank. It smells to heaven.” Suffocating under the tyranny of my mind, I finally get up around five o'clock and do the only thing I can to escape, which is take an absurdly long jog.

All day long at school
I watch the clock, praying that Laurel Watkins has either gotten another job or has suffered a blow to the head rendering her incapable of remembering Edward Zanni, Gloria D'Angelo, or the Catholic Vigilance Society, but then I remember that Laurel Watkins is pregnant, so instead I try to telepathically induce her labor so she's not in the office when Dagmar calls.

The announcement comes over the loudspeaker while Mr. Lucas is discussing the hollow, decadent lives of the idle rich in
The Great Gatsby.
“Would Edward Zanni please report to the main office right away? Edward Zanni, to the main office right away.”

The class makes that “oooh” sound students make when someone is called to the office, completely unaware that the next time they see me it will be on the evening news in an orange prison jumpsuit. I feel strangely calm actually, almost relieved that all the lies and deceit are finally over. Loyal to the end, Natie comes with me, not to admit anything, mind you, but for moral support. (“Why should both of us take the rap?” he says. “I can be much more helpful to you on the outside.”) We go into the office together.

There is not, as I expected, a pair of armed police officers waiting for me, but just the usual clacking of typewriters and people going about their business. One of the secretaries motions for me to come behind the counter. “Edward, there's a lady on the phone who says it's urgent that she speak to you.”

A lady? I grab the receiver.

“Hello?”

“Oh, thank
God,”
the voice on the other end of the line says.

“Paula?”

“Listen,” she says, “you've got to get down to the Camptown police station
right away.”

“Why? What's wrong?”

“Aunt Glo's been arrested.”

K
elly's not in her eighth-period class
and I curse myself for being the person who taught her how to cut school undetected. We need a car, and fast. Natie and I intrude on four different science classrooms before we finally find Doug, who looks relieved to have any excuse to get out of Mr. Nelson's treacherously dull chemistry class. The three of us run all the way to Doug's house to get his old Chevy. Or perhaps I should say Doug and I run all the way to his house to get his old Chevy, then double back to pick up Natie, who's lagging behind like the Poky Little Puppy. I'm not convinced, however, that Doug's tin can of a car is actually capable of getting us there, but it's the best we have, so I caress what's left of the dashboard as we drive, trying to coerce the old girl to make it just a little bit farther, baby, just a little bit farther.

Since I flat-out told Laurel Watkins on the phone that I was eligible for the scholarship, you'd think she and Dagmar would have put two and two together and come after me instead of Aunt Glo. What's more, I'm amazed at the swift arm of justice. I don't remember Aunt Glo actually mentioning to Laurel Watkins where she lived, so I'm not sure how they found her so fast. But then again, never having committed fraud before, I'm not real familiar with the protocol.

After getting lost a couple of times (just because I'm a criminal doesn't mean I know where the Cramptown police station is), we finally locate the building, a nondescript brick box. We dash through the doors and explain to a skeptical-looking receptionist why we're here. She points to a couple of those cup-shaped plastic chairs that are supposed to be comfortable but aren't and tells us to take a seat. Natie and Doug flip through old
Reader's Digest
s while I pace the well-scuffed floor, wishing that I smoked instead of masturbated as a nervous habit, so I'd have something to do. Believe it or not, I'm more worried for Aunt Glo than for myself. She must be terrified.

The receptionist buzzes us in and an officer leads us down a long hallway to an open area containing a lot of cluttered desks, bad overhead lighting, and, in the center of it all, Aunt Glo. There she sits on a high stool, chatting and laughing with Cramptown's finest and otherwise looking like she's having a marvelous time. It's like that scene you see in old movies when little Timmy or Bobby disappears and everyone is frantic with worry until they go down to the police station and find him sitting on the chief's desk, happily licking an ice-cream cone, an oversized policeman's hat on his head. Aunt Glo sees us and flaps a pudgy hand from across the room.

“The LBs!” she screeches like she's throwing a party and she's so glad we could make it. “And Maya Angelou!”

I turn around to see if indeed the esteemed poet is standing behind me (at this point I'd believe anything), but instead I find myself face-to-face with a dark, bearded priest who looks alarmingly like Father Groovy. For a split second I fear that this poor guy has been picked out of some kind of clerical line-up, when I realize that Aunt Glo must have said, “My Angelo.”

If I ever wonder what I'll look like in fifteen or twenty years I need only stop in at the Church of the Holy Redeemer in Hoboken, New Jersey, and see how Father Angelo D'Angelo is doing. We've been introduced a couple of times over the years, but it's only after having seen myself dressed as Father Groovy that I realize how close the resemblance is. Sure, there's some gray in his curly hair, and he is, believe it or not, more athletic-looking (who knew priests worked out?), but otherwise we could be, pardon the pun, cut from the same cloth. I find him, in an unsettling way, attractive.

He doesn't seem particularly happy to see me, however, and he rushes over to his mother.

“Ma, you all right?” he says.

Aunt Glo calls him Maya Angelou again and gives him a hug that could easily be mistaken for a chiropractic adjustment. This is when I notice Paula who, rather than taking center stage the way she normally does, hovers off to the side. Perhaps it's because she's wearing nothing but a leotard, a corset, and a long muslin rehearsal skirt. She looks like a Victorian whore brought in on charges of soliciting in the wrong century. I walk over to her and she frowns. “Right now two sisters are sitting in a rehearsal hall wondering why the third took off for Moscow without them,” she mutters.

Aunt Glo tries to give up her seat to Angelo (“You look tired, baby doll”) then makes introductions all around. I'm impressed she can remember the cops' names (Officer Atkinson, Officer Barker, Officer Salazar) until I realize she's reading their badges. “You kids hungry?” she says to us. “You wanna doughnut? I'm sure these nice policemen wouldn't mind.”

Aunt Glo.

Paula kneels next to her, giving seven men an unimpeded view of her nineteenth-century cleavage, not like it was hard to miss before. “What's going on?” she asks.

“You!” Aunt Glo sniffs. “If you weren't off having premarital sex with your long-haired boyfriend, you'd know!”

“You're having premarital sex?” Angelo asks.

“We broke up,” Paula says, as if that answers the question.

I wiggle my pinky at Doug to explain.

Paula turns to Aunt Glo again. “What's that got to do with you being arrested?”

“Well,” Aunt Glo says, “since you left, it hasn't been easy, y'know, trying to find people to drive me . . .”

Paula's eyes immediately fill with tears. “I told you I'd help you whenever you needed,” she says, taking her aunt's tiny hand in hers.

“I don't like to be a bother,” Aunt Glo says as she pulls a tissue out of her purse. “Today I woke up feeling pretty good, so I said to myself, I said, ‘Gloria, it wouldn't hurt anybody if you drove the Lincoln over to the A&P to pick up a little veal chop . . .'”

Angelo looks dismayed. “Ma, you didn't . . .”

“. . . and before ya' knew it I got cops swoopin' down on me, sayin' I gotta come into the police station.”

“Her taillight was out,” says Officer Atkinson. “And when I asked her for her registration all we could find in the glove compartment was the
1983 World Almanac.”

Oops.

“You brought her in for driving without her registration?” Angelo asks.

“No,” says a voice behind us. We turn around and the cops make room for a tall man wearing a shirt and tie and the air of someone in charge. “I'm Detective Bose,” he says, shaking Father Angelo's hand. He's got a 1950s buzz cut, a caterpillar mustache, and a very
Dragnet-
y manner about him. “Your mother was detained because her vehicle was identified as the same one used to perform a number of acts of vandalism last summer.”

“Vandalism?”

The detective looks at his clipboard. “Vandalism involving a certain ceramic Buddha.”

You can almost hear the
Dragnet
music:
Dum-de-dum-dum-duuuum!

I can't fucking believe it. In the last eight months we've engaged in underage drinking, reckless driving, illegal drug use (on federal property), unlocking and entering, blackmail, fraud, forgery, and embezzlement, and we're getting nailed for grand theft Buddha.

Detective Bose places a large box on a desk. “We collected evidence all last summer,” he says, then proceeds, without the slightest trace of irony, to pull out Paula's communion veil, Doug's jockstrap, Aunt Glo's flowered bathing cap, an empty bottle of Southern Comfort, a breakfast tray, and a Hawaiian lei, each one catalogued and sealed in a clear plastic bag.

“I was wondering what happened to that bathing cap,” Aunt Glo says.

Detective Bose continues: “We almost had an ID on the car last summer, but then the crimes tapered off and became more random throughout the fall until, of course, said Buddha disappeared entirely.” He makes it sound like the Buddha had been murdered. “So when some of our officers saw a vehicle fitting the description today, naturally we had to bring Mrs. D'Angelo in for questioning.”

I clear my throat. “It's my fault, sir,” I say.

Detective Bose turns and looks at me. “Did you take it, son?”

“Well, not exactly, but I'm the one who had it and I should have brought it back and I'm really, really, really sorry.”

“You're only sorry because you got caught,” Detective Bose says.

“Oh, detective, have a heart,” Aunt Glo says. “It was just a stupid prank. Even Maya Angelou had a little incident with a statue of St. Francis when he was a kid . . .”

“Ma . . .”

Detective Bose taps his clipboard. “It's all right,” he says. “The owner of the Buddha has already told me that she won't press charges, so long as her property is returned to her.”

All eyes turn to me.

“You're not going to believe this . . .” I say.

I'm right. He doesn't.
I call Kathleen so she can confirm that the Buddha was indeed stolen, but her machine picks up, which must mean she's seeing cryents. Aunt Glo asks Detective Bose to give us a chance to prove our story and, with a little coercion from Father Angelo, he agrees, telling us we have four hours to come up with the Buddha.

Angelo takes Aunt Glo home while Natie, Doug, and I pile into the Lincoln Continental Divide with Paula, who lectures us all the way to Kathleen's about our foolishness and how we violated the basic tenets of Creative Vandalism. Good thing she doesn't know about the blackmail, fraud, forgery, and embezzlement.