Pop (11 page)

He began to climb, negotiating the steep incline using a combination of memory and blind faith. As Marcus's ascent progressed, Charlie came into shadowy relief, perched near the sculpture's summit, for all the world like he was relaxing on a lazy afternoon and not the subject of a frenzied late-night manhunt. “What are you doing, Charlie? Why are you sitting here in the pitch black?”

“What took you so long?” the former linebacker demanded. “Where's the ball?”

Marcus was thunderstruck. “It's the middle of the night! People are searching for you!”

Charlie looked nervous. “You talked to my dad?”

His
dad
? Marcus frowned, and then posed the question he had never asked before yet suddenly seemed very relevant. “How old are you, Charlie?”

“Bite me,” Charlie replied in annoyance. “Like you don't know.”

“Seriously—I forget.”

The King of Pop snorted. “Three weeks younger than you. Quit fooling around, Mac.”

Marcus let out a tremulous breath. How many nights had he spent wondering why a retired NFL vet had nothing better to do with his time than play football with a teenager. The answer? For some reason, he thought he was a teenager, too.

How was that possible? Charlie knew he'd had an entire pro sports career, didn't he? Come to think of it, Marcus had been the one who'd mentioned the NFL, not Charlie. And while the guy never denied having a wife and children, he never talked about them.

How can he believe he's my age when he knows he's got
two kids
who are my age?

Or
did
he know?

“Chelsea and Troy are worried about you,” Marcus ventured carefully. When there was no reply, he added, “You know who they are, right?”

“Course I do,” Charlie muttered almost belligerently.

Marcus didn't dare push it. He wasn't sure how much he should try to reason with Charlie, who was obviously confused. Whatever was wrong with the guy, it was a job for a doctor or a shrink, not a second-string quarterback. The important thing was to get the man back to his anxious family.

“Why don't you let me give you a ride home?”

“Yeah, I guess it's time to call it a night.”

Squeezing two football players onto the Vespa's small seat took some engineering.

“When did you get this thing, Mac?” Charlie asked, impressed. “You been holding out on me?”

“Just hang on,” Marcus advised. He picked up his helmet and, after a moment's deliberation, set it into place on his passenger's head. He wasn't even certain he'd be welcomed by the Popovich family when he returned their missing person to them. The last thing he wanted to do was risk the package being damaged in transit.

He started the bike's motor and turned left out of the park onto Poplar Street, the direction Charlie usually headed after their training sessions.

All at once, Charlie emitted a roar of mirth, waving and pointing.

Marcus struggled to keep the scooter in balance despite the shifting weight. “What's so funny?”

“Looks like Old Man Dingley finally got what's coming to him!”

“Who's Dingley?” Then he remembered. It was the name Charlie had once called Kenneth Oliver. He gazed at the exterminator's shop.

The storefront had been completely plastered with toilet paper, and loose streamers of tissue were fluttering in the breeze.

Marcus was wide-eyed. “Did you do that, Charlie?”

“Wish I had,” the former linebacker replied heartily. “We should find whoever did it and shake his hand.”

Marcus noticed the shreds of toilet paper sticking out of Charlie's sleeves. The hand the old guy wanted to shake was his own. Why would he lie about it to Marcus, of all people—his co-conspirator in the sugaring?

He sighed. “Okay, where to?”

“Oh—you know.”

“No, I don't,” Marcus said seriously. “Where do you live?”

“It's just up the road.”

“Up what road?” Marcus persisted. “Poplar Street?”

“You can't miss it.”

Marcus twisted on the bike to regard his passenger. The former linebacker looked uncomfortable and completely lost at sea.

“Hey.” Eyes narrowed, Marcus gestured toward the TP'd K.O Pest Control. “Remember when we sugared that place?”

Charlie's blank face was suddenly alight with diabolical excitement. “That's a great idea! It'll serve him right after all the times he's been on our case.”

It was exactly the response Marcus was expecting, yet it was jarring nonetheless. Charlie didn't remember the elaborate planning and execution of Bug Day. He had already forgotten TP'ing the shop, which must have taken place in the past few hours. He couldn't even seem to explain where he lived.

Marcus rode back up Seneca Hill, figuring that if all else failed, he could return to Luke's party. Surely somebody there knew where Troy's house was. It wasn't his first choice, though. Troy and Chelsea's whispered powwow in Luke's basement and their hostility toward anybody who nosed around their father added up to one inescapable conclusion: Charlie's problem was strictly hush-hush.

Marcus kept his eyes on the mirrors to better decode what Charlie meant by muttered orders like “Turn here!” and “This way!” He was pretty sure they were wandering in circles.

Charlie's mumbled monologue didn't exactly inspire confidence. “Whose stupid idea was it to make every single house look exactly the same? What a way to run a town—
Watch out!”

There was a terrified bark, and Marcus swerved to avoid a collision with a light-haired dog. The animal bounded over to Charlie.

“How's it going, Boomer? You miss me?”

“Daddy!”
Chelsea exploded out the front door. Without acknowledging Marcus on the Vespa, she took her father's hand and led him to the house. “Everyone was so worried!”

Charlie was mystified. “What for? Where do I ever go? Down, boy,” he added to the dog, who was clawing at his pant leg.

“Silky's a girl,” Chelsea reminded him quietly.

Mrs. Popovich met them at the door. She hugged her husband and told her daughter, “Call Troy on his cell and let him know everything's okay.” She noticed Marcus parked at the curb and waved.

“If it happens again, try Three Alarm Park,” Marcus advised.

“Thanks for bringing him home,” she called, her voice catching.

Those were the first civil words Marcus had ever heard from a member of the Popovich family.

Two
A.M.
found Marcus in the kitchen, pounding the keyboard of the computer. Despite the exhaustion of a long and wild night, sleep was eluding him. He couldn't relax—not until he'd solved the puzzle.

He scoured the internet, using keywords like
forgetfulness, confusion
, and
memory loss
, but those always seemed to lead him to sites selling vitamin supplements, “miracle drugs,” and subscriptions to health magazines. On www.wellnessweb.usa, his search parameters led him to the subtopic
Senility
, but that couldn't be right. Old people went senile; Charlie was only fifty-four.

He tried different combinations of his keywords on the WellnessWeb site, generating articles on everything from mental illness to hypertension to drug addiction to amnesia. The problem was that his search parameters were too general. Millions of people were confused or forgetful, probably for millions of different reasons. What he needed was something specific to Charlie.

Beside
memory loss
he typed three letters:
NFL
.

The link that appeared led to an article in the
North American Journal of Medicine:

The piece went on to describe a condition that destroys memory in an oddly selective way. A patient might forget what he had for breakfast ten minutes earlier, but retain clear recollections from decades before. The effect was that many Alzheimer's sufferers appeared to be living in the past.

Like a retired athlete who thinks he's a teenager
.

It explained everything about Charlie's confusion and odd behavior. No wonder Chelsea and Troy were so touchy about their father. They were trying to keep his condition a secret. That's why Mrs. Popovich made regular visits to all her husband's usual haunts around town to pay his tabs. As a local hero, Charlie was cut a lot of slack, so long as the stores got their money eventually. Because he was a larger-than-life character around Kennesaw, people assumed he was just idiosyncratic, colorful, quirky. No one realized how sick he was.

Yet.

Marcus was aware of a lump in his throat the size of a cannonball. According to wellnessweb.usa, Alzheimer's disease never got better. Right now, Charlie had enough memory and mental capacity to function within the small, protected universe he had carved for himself. But that wouldn't last forever. The article said the deterioration might be slow, but it would be relentless. Eventually, poor Charlie's mind would be wiped practically clean.

What then?

On Sunday, Marcus was at the desk in his room, gazing blearily at the Raiders' playbook and struggling to keep his eyes open, when he was startled by a sudden clatter at the window. As he went to investigate, a handful of gravel machine-gunned against the glass.

He looked beyond it at the Volvo wagon parked at the curb. He didn't recognize the car, but the girl loading up another handful of rocks was perfectly familiar. Alyssa.

He opened the window and called down, “We have a doorbell.”

She smiled up at him. “Sorry.”

She wasn't sorry. She didn't have to be. Her get-out-of-jail-free card had no limitations and no blackout dates.
Must be nice
, thought Marcus. He went downstairs and let her in.

“I thought your mom might be home or something,” she explained. “I'm not sure how much she knows about me.”

“She's out in the Gunks, shooting.” He added, “Pictures, not deer.”

Alyssa beamed. “Works for me either way.” She threw her arms around his neck and pressed her lips to his.

He didn't push her away, but he didn't kiss her back, either.

She retreated a step. “You're mad.”

“I'm not,” he replied honestly. “That's the problem. I should be chewing rusty nails after last night. What would have happened if I couldn't throw a good block? Would you still visit me in intensive care?”

She was unrepentant. “Don't I get points for being right? I told you they'd come around.”

“It damn near didn't go that way. What if Ron hadn't been there? Or if Gary hadn't let go? Or if Luke didn't mind bloodstains on his laundry-room floor? What if Chelsea hadn't stormed the basement in time to distract the psycho-in-chief?”

“We didn't do anything wrong,” she insisted. “You had every right to be there—as a Raider and as my date.”

“Being right doesn't unfracture your skull,” Marcus reminded her. “At a certain point you have to forget about what's right and do what makes sense. Face it—you and me makes no sense.”

“It made sense last night,” she protested, “until we got ambushed.”

“I'm not going to pretend I'm not into you,” Marcus said. “But what does
that
mean? How many guys aren't?”

“I don't want those guys; I want you.”

“This whole town sees you as Troy's,” Marcus told her. “And there's a part of you that still sees yourself the same way.”

“That's great news for me. You can find another girlfriend, but I belong to Troy till the end of time. Maybe we should try fixing him up. Would I be off the hook then?”

He grinned appreciatively. “I only know one other girl in town, and she's his sister.”

“This sucks,” she pronounced dejectedly. “Couldn't we just—I don't know—hate each other and still fool around?”

“We don't hate each other. We're friends.”