The November Criminals (12 page)

“Mike, it’s
okay,”
Digger chanted in consolation, the gun steady. And—limber and warm with sudden rage—I started shouting at Lorriner. Just because he had the audacity to shit himself and cry, after dragging us all the way out here. He had no right! This white-trash asshole! That’s how my inner monologue ran. I roared something unclear and rushed, with wild variations in pitch, about his being a racist and a murderer, about us
not letting his actions stand
, about justice. Justice! Oh, God, even as I was talking I knew he was innocent. No murderer
shits
himself. “And you think you can just do whatever you want, because you’re fucking ignorant! You think you can just like go as you please and do like whatever!” I was shaking my index finger at Lorriner, who hadn’t stopped weeping the whole time. If Digger were less moderate and sensible, she might have pointed the gun at me to shut me up, or maybe just coldcocked me with the butt. That would have done the job. But she continued to aim, enrobed in calm, and we all three sat there in the stink of shit, as Lorriner clucked and sobbed to himself. “Just don’t like
fuck
with us anymore, okay?” I sputtered. As though this admonition were necessary. I said it because I had to go on, because momentum was pushing me on, I went on making the noises that the human animal makes, the noises of injured dignity and pious anger, the noises of falsehood.

Seriously, where the fuck do you go from here? Yes, Lorriner was innocent. But, I mean, in a technical sense, the evening counted as a success. Right? We may have had the wrong man. But our plan had gone off error-free. From conception to execution. A to B to C. Rushed and floaty as a dream. Shooting a dog doesn’t count as a fuckup. I hate dogs. Digger does not like dogs. I’d say that anyone who does not hate them you should be suspicious of. (Do you know who has a picture of his dog Aurelius on his desk? Mr. Vanderleun!) Is killing a dog even murder? Who the fuck knows? Nothing
bad
had happened to us. And Lorriner
deserved
it. Right? Deserved fifteen minutes of abject terror and having his dog killed. Even though he wasn’t guilty. Somehow, though, despite our success all our energy had vanished. Which is not supposed to happen. Success is supposed to lead you on to more success. Our whole society is constructed around this principle.

Lorriner was also robbed of whatever force had prompted his clumsy proud strut as he threatened us with flashlight and badminton racket. He looked even more childish than before. His whole slump had this weakness to it, this weird curvature. You know the way adversity affects little kids. It outrages their innate sense of fairness, it
hurts
them, even if it’s nonphysical. It still
hurts
them. “Where are your like parents, man?” I found myself asking.

“Addison,” Digger whooshed out. She sounded aghast.

“Whut,” asked Lorriner, “whut the fuck is
rawng
with yew people?” And you could hear the tears breaking in again. “My parents?” he blubbered. “My parents? Yew goddamn kike pieces of shit.” His voice was in
tatters
. Digger flicked a glance of severe disappointment at me.

“I’m sorry about Murphy,” she said. All that was missing was her offering Lorriner a handshake. Digger and I were both standing. It was time to leave. Lorriner hid his face.

“No, mayn, like it’s like
fahn,”
he said through his cradling hands. And from his tone it was unmistakable: he was
forgiving
us.

The night air smelled of cold. You know? That high, clean, bitter smell? Digger walked ahead of me, the gun dangling in her hand for a few paces, before she slid it back into her coat pocket. The clouds obscuring the moon had gone, and its dark light silvered everything as we kicked our way through the rattling leaves, back down to the turnoff. “Hey, man,” I called to Digger. Who didn’t answer. She just kept striding ahead through the leaves. The lights in the house by the road were still on, and she passed through them and into the further darkness, looking rigidly ahead. She didn’t answer me, though I kept speaking. I thought she was furious. But she smiled—you could tell, even in the dark—when I got to my car, and gave a small sigh as we got under way and crooked a cigarette between her lips. She didn’t even seem
perturbed
at all. We passed the truck that had honked at us before in appreciation of our singing, now stalled on the shoulder, its cabin lit and holding two leaden faces. I noticed the logo on its side for the first time, which made me slow a bit with surprise: our headlights revealed that it belonged to Rex Rentals. The maroon dog, the Rex emblem, stared out, mournful and docile, from its white panel into the third dimension. And then we were among the grass fields again, Maryland exhaling its dumb watchfulness.

If I were writing a novel, all this would precede a scene of obvious reconciliation. Quiet and subtle:
The road spread out ahead of them. Digger, without looking, let her hand brush Addison’s knee
. Or with pyrotechnics, disgusting and overstated. Maybe we end up fucking in my frigid car, or in a shady roadside motel, or whatever. After all, we’re just children, and that’s how things work in books, right? Nothing
genuine
is ever at stake. And youth is resilient if nothing else. But what happened is this. We drove. Digger half slept. There was no need for navigation. There’s one road, as I said, in places like that. It’s a question of mere direction. Before two, we’d gotten back to Digger’s house. I hadn’t felt the cold of the night until then, as my blood crept back into my hands. We parked, and Digger clambered out of her doze. We’d been silent for the final hour of the drive. I found this long quiet provoking. So I started, as we sat in my car,
explaining
everything again. The whole stupid story. What you’ve been reading here, but the one-minute version. To myself as much as her. This time, without Short Mike. Inventing some other anonymous and powerful killer. (I almost preferred it that way.) She nodded in slow time when I finished, and bit her lower lip in concentration. I read this as a sign of encouragement. (Wrong!)

“Man,” I went on, assuming a jocular air, “we just need to
find
the real guy and get him like
preemptively.”
Digger did not respond. I was worried, now. Her silence suggested doubts. “Hey, Digger? Right? What should we do? Do you think.” Still nothing. I rambled, trying to get her back in sympathy with the cause. I even brought up the racial angle again, which had worked before. She just asked me to be quiet. That didn’t stop me. “Hey, look, man. We
both
thought this guy was the guy. We both did. Right? And now you can’t just like
disavow
the whole idea? Right?” This prodded her into speech. Her voice, though modulated, got all thready—frayed, sort of.

“Don’t use that word.
Disavow
. You go on and on about this guy and then we like go and kill his
dog?
Some poor fat guy. And it was
not
him, okay, Noel’s a liar, and
you
are by extension, and it was all just some
atrocious
coincidence. Okay? Coincidence. Like everything else. It’s all just appearances and coincidence. Maybe you’re going through some weird
thing
about Kevin. And maybe I sort of like humored you. But it’s like
bad
luck. Just bad luck. For everyone. I’m really tired, Addison. It’s just like what you’re always yammering about. From Latin. ‘
O Fortuna
’ whatever. That stupid
song
. Like that.” You could tell that she was, despite her controlled voice, angry. With me, with the
situation
. But there’s no bigger reason than being wrong to turn on the old self-righteousness faucet, and I let out some gorilla breaths, nostrils flared, as I planned my response. I had a whole little speech ginned up.

She started talking before I could. About the last possible subject I expected her to bring up. Our agreement. I didn’t realize it at first, because she failed to make herself clear. Or, I should say, I was too stupid to grasp what she meant by saying, “You’re being really unfair to me. And you’re pretending not to know it.”

“Man, how am I being unfair? You’re just like sitting there. I mean, yeah, we were wrong but you can’t just sit there and not say anything.”

“I don’t mean that.” She wouldn’t look at me.

“So what then? What do you mean? Not telling me will not like resolve the issue.”

“If you can’t figure it out, why should I tell you? Don’t talk to me like we’re having some debate, okay? Just don’t.”

I took two minutes to respond, judging by the dash clock, pallid and blue. I had no idea what she was so pissed about, when I opened my mouth. So I decided to guess, like they tell you to do on standardized tests.

“Do you mean unfair about like the
sex?”
I mumbled.

“No. I don’t know. No. But you’re not some fucking person I don’t know. So why are you talking to me like you are? Why do you say
disavow?
We’re not on the debate team together. And yeah, okay, maybe the sex is part of it. Yeah, so we don’t say that. But come on, man. Don’t be fucking
obtuse
. So the sex is part of it. Okay? Okay? Is that what you wanted to hear, you fucking asshole?”

She still would not look at me.

“I thought you
wanted
that, man,” I said. This turned out to be a terrible idea.

“So
you
didn’t,” she coughed back instantly, as though she had been waiting all night for me to say just that, and crammed a thumb into her mouth.

“No, Digger like you’re my best
friend
, man,” I mumbled, to my own mild horror. This is maybe the worst thing to say to anyone at
any
time. I waited, jaw clenched in self-protection, for her to scream at me, to make some wounding remark. That’s what violations of our agreement deserve. What I’d said was, in addition to being intrinsically moronic, a
major
violation of the agreement. But she did neither of these things: no yelling, no sarcasm. She leaned over and
kissed
me, which she had never done before. I mean in public. I mean not while we weren’t fucking. You know what I mean. We both failed at the kiss, too eager and inert. Also, considering that she had just called me a fucking asshole, I had not seen it coming. So maybe I am a fucking asshole.

“You’re such a jackass, Addison,” she said in an overprecise voice, after we’d detached. “And everyone else is such a fucking liar.” She handed me back the gun. Grip-first. A professional. We gave each other a weaving, troubled mutual stare, an acknowledgment of serious intent. Or just the look brought-together strangers exchange after a bus accident or whatever. Then she got out of my car, went into her house, and her door shut behind her with a leaden clap, and I sat in my freezing seat, smoking cigarettes. I opened my glove box, to hide the gun, then changed my mind and flipped the safety and put it in my coat pocket. I figured I could hide it in my safe. I did see Kevin’s file, sitting in the glove box: a bit grimy now. I wanted to pore over it for an hour. I didn’t—not then—though the desire stayed with me as I drove home.

My father was out on the porch when I pulled up. He’d been waiting for me, but he said nothing. Just wanting the fact of his being awake to make me admit I’m indebted to him. Which I never do! He was wearing this beaten, creased look, his face drawn and furtive.
That
expression is how you know he’s happy. The single sign. Can you believe I’ve forgotten to tell you his full name, this whole time? It’s Theodore Franklin. He’s named not after one but
two
grinning murdering Roosevelts. People call him Ted. “Somebody broke the window, Addison,” he told me. His constant and unconscious prayer to suffer some persecution had been granted, after unjust delay. I didn’t answer. I was so
tired
. “It
happened
earlier this afternoon. Where have you
been
all day, Addison?” He never asks this. I can’t even think of the last time he asked where I’d been. Or asked me any question about myself at all. Not that I resent him for it. I’m a private person.

Our living room lamps were all on. We have six, all antiques. Pewter bodies, multicolored glass shades—all the overornamentation my father loves. They give no real light, so you have to have all six lit to get even reasonable illumination in our living room. To my utter lack of surprise, Fatima was sprawled on the couch, smoking, dressed in a long blue man’s oxford. The rolled-back cuffs displayed her furry forearms. I could have figured out it was her when I’d heard the sounds of their fucking, earlier. By a basic process of deduction or whatever. She pretended not to notice me. My father stood on the porch and gave the night air a coach’s rundown of his afternoon and evening, as I walked away. His voice getting shallower with each step I took. “We cleaned up the
glass
, Addison,” I heard my father yell. Still from the porch. Why was he not coming inside? Who
does
that? “The police came. They were very
respectful
. That tall one. You remember. Officer
Huang.”
I was already scurrying down to my room, and I fell down the stairs when he shouted this. Just
lost
control of my limbs and slipped the rest of the way in a flailing tumble. The gun hurtled out of my pocket and skittered across our basement tiles, spinning. “They came and they were completely
respectful
, Addison. Where have you been? Are you going to sleep?” His words wafted down as the gun rotated and slowed, coming to rest with its small black gaping barrel aimed directly at me. I didn’t even scream this time, just stood up and began to check myself for wounds. But you know what?
No injury
. Not a bruise, not a scratch. Just a mild haze of up-too-late nausea. And a dull ache I could not place.