Chapter Eight
They’re still in the middle of the desert when houses start to appear. Before Simon’s ready for it, Charlie’s taking an exit.
Simon’s experience of the world is mostly confined to a couple of affluent zip codes in California and the greater New York
area, cities in Europe that have fashion weeks, and various beachy vacation spots.
He isn’t avoiding the rest of humanity out of snobbery—which he’s sure of because there are plenty of things he does avoid
out of snobbery. It’s just—new things make him uncomfortable, and since his baseline level of comfort these days is a two
out of ten, maybe it isn’t a terrible idea to do what it takes to prevent that number from sinking any lower.
The neighborhood Charlie turns into is rough, not just by Simon’s standards. The lawns are a mix of dry dirt and weeds. A
couple houses have boarded up windows.
“I tried to buy him a nicer house,” Charlie mutters. “That didn’t go over too well.”
“Not judging.”
“Yeah, right.”
For the past half hour, Charlie’s been cracking his knuckles, rolling his shoulders, gripping the steering wheel so hard his fingers go white.
He’s grinding his teeth loudly enough that Simon can hear it.
He’s worried, and if there’s anything in the world that Simon understands, it’s worry.
After six hours in the car together, Simon can’t just sit idly by, so he aims for distraction.
“When my mother tried to buy me a nicer house, I didn’t talk to her for three months.” This is a lie. Simon and his mother
exchanged perfectly cordial texts and had their usual semi-monthly phone call in which they take turns monologuing at one
another, but in his heart, Simon wasn’t talking to her.
“Your house went for over two million dollars. What the fuck.”
“Did you look up my house on Zillow?”
“Obviously.”
Simon snorts. “This was before I bought the house.” He’d been living in a perfectly nice condo in West Hollywood, but Simon’s
mother had been Concerned.
Charlie turns into a driveway that already has an ancient car parked in it, propped up on concrete blocks. Simon isn’t totally
sure about his role in this whole operation, but when Charlie gets out of the car, Simon follows.
It seems like a bad sign that the rusty mailbox next to the front door is overflowing. Charlie rings the bell anyway and radiates
impatience for thirty seconds. Then he goes around the side of the house, uses his bare hand to scrape through the dirt in
a cement planter, and returns with a key. “Fucker’s hidden his key in the same place for twenty years.”
Simon is absolutely abetting a felony right now. The only reason he isn’t actively having a panic attack is the sheer novelty
of crime.
When Charlie opens the front door, they’re blasted with hot, stale air.
“Dave?” Charlie calls. “It’s Charlie!”
Until now, Simon has managed not to think too hard about what exactly Charlie’s expecting to find here, but he’d like to imagine
that if there was any real possibility of—say, just for the sake of argument—a dead body, Charlie would have called emergency
services days ago. Still, Simon stays by the front door while Charlie heads into the house, calling his stepfather’s name.
Then, feeling like an asshole for letting Charlie find whatever there is to find—which is not a body—on his own, Simon begins
to look through the other side of the house. The kitchen and living room are a mess, but there’s nowhere amid the heaps of
clutter a person could possibly be hiding. Through a pair of dusty sliding glass doors is an empty backyard. Well, empty of
people. Three cats are perched on a concrete wall. Gas cans and oddly shaped bits of metal are strewn across the patchy lawn.
Inside, Simon looks at the dishes in the sink, the pile of newspapers on the coffee table, the loose paper clips and unemptied
ashtrays and stray pieces of paper. He tries to push them to one tidy corner of his mind. They’re none of his business. It’s
boiling in here, so he takes off his sweater and folds it neatly before putting it in his bag.
“His truck isn’t in the driveway,” Charlie says, coming into the living room. “And the AC is off, which means he probably
planned to be out for more than a few hours.”
“Has he ever done this before?”
“No.”
“If he was going on a trip, who would he have told?”
“He doesn’t really have friends. I checked the garage’s Facebook page and messaged a few of the people who’ve interacted with
it, but nobody got back to me. I think they’re dead.”
“Oh,” Simon says, taken aback.
“They’re classic car people. Average age is like eighty.”
“How old is Dave?” Charlie’s twenty-seven, so Simon’s been assuming his stepfather must be in his fifties.
“Sixty something.” The words come out strange. Charlie’s fists are clenched and his face is red. This is how he looked all
the time that first season, but back then Simon chalked it up to whatever array of substances Charlie was on, and also to
Charlie being a giant asshole. Now, he’s pretty sure that what he’s seeing is anxiety, maybe the beginnings of a panic attack.
“Okay, you’re going to sit down and have a glass of water and a snack, then we’ll knock on the neighbors’ doors and see if
they know anything.”
“Can’t eat Dave’s food,” Charlie says in that same strained voice. He tugs at the collar of his T-shirt.
And, okay, there’s a lot to unpack there, but for now Simon gets a granola bar out of his bag and Charlie’s own water bottle
from the car. He’s expecting a fight, but Charlie drinks the entire bottle of water and eats the granola bar.
If someone hovered over Simon while he was freaking out, Simon would hate them forever, and since he and Charlie are just
barely being cordial, he decides to play it safe and make himself scarce. Figuring that Charlie’s mental state can’t possibly
be helped by it being at least eighty degrees in this house, Simon finds the thermostat, then fiddles with it until he hears
the air conditioning turn on.
The house has two bedrooms. One contains an unmade bed, a full laundry basket, and an old television. The other has nothing
but weight equipment that, even from the doorway, Simon can tell is covered in dust. There’s no trace of a child ever having
lived here.
There are no photographs anywhere in the house.
Back in the living room, there’s a bookshelf with a dozen or so Clive Cussler and John Grisham paperbacks, none more recent than twenty years old.
There’s a dog collar, just sitting there on the shelf, even though there’s no other sign of a dog.
Everything is covered in a layer of nicotine-tinged dust. It’s like the set designers went overboard staging a lonely old bachelor’s house.
“My hands are tingling,” Charlie says. “That’s new.”
“This sort of thing happen often?”
“Been awhile.”
“Does anything help?”
“Gotta ride it out. Distraction’s good.”
And that isn’t exactly Charlie asking Simon to distract him, but it’s close. “Don’t look now, but three of the fattest cats
I’ve seen in my life are staring at us through the back door,” Simon says. Charlie, of course, looks immediately.
Small talk isn’t a skill Simon has, but it’s the only means of distraction he can think of, so he tries to imagine what Jamie
would say. Jamie has a way of stringing together random observations into a narrative that blends into something like ASMR.
And so Simon reminds himself that he’s an actor and sets about channeling Jamie. He narrates everything he does.
“I’m getting the mail,” he says, as he steps outside and empties the overstuffed mailbox. “It’s just bills and coupons.” Next
to the mailbox, hidden behind an empty planter, are a pile of rolled up newspapers. Simon counts six. He brings it all inside
and stacks it neatly on the counter. The whole time, he keeps up his stream of dumb commentary about feral cats and junk mail
and the sheer variety of allergens he’s noticed in this house.
“Based on the newspapers, he’s been gone six days,” Simon tells Charlie.
Charlie nods, as much as he can with his head in his hands.
“Hey, this is probably a stupid question, but would your mother know where Dave is?”
“I texted her. She asked Dave who. So, no.”
So much to unpack.
“What if he went on vacation and I’m being messed up about it for no reason?” Charlie asks.
“Wouldn’t he answer his phone if he were on vacation?”
Charlie shrugs. “Probably.”
Simon currently has over two hundred unread texts on his phone, mostly from group chats that he’s not invested in and likely
only got added to out of politeness. He hasn’t listened to his voicemail since 2018. He’s not exactly a shining star of keeping
in touch with people. But he’d like to think that if someone called repeatedly, he’d respond. If Charlie’s stepfather went
on vacation and just turned his phone off with no warning, he’s an asshole of a caliber that Simon can’t even aspire to.
“Do you want to sit for another minute or go knock on some doors?” Simon asks when Charlie’s hands finally unclench.
They knock on the doors of the six closest houses. A young woman holding a baby doesn’t know who Dave is but wishes whoever
lives in that house would get rid of the car that’s up on cinder blocks. An older woman squints at Charlie and says she hasn’t
seen Dave’s truck in a week—or, at least, that’s what Charlie tells Simon after translating from Spanish. Nobody else answers
the door.
As they walk back to Dave’s house, Simon clears his throat. “Not to be grim—”
“I’m already there,” Charlie says.
“You mentioned calling the hospitals. Did you call the police?”
“He’d hate having the cops in his business.”
“He should have thought of that before deciding not to answer his phone,” Simon snaps. “I mean,” he says, softening his tone
as much as he can, which isn’t much, “either he’s okay or he isn’t. If he isn’t, then he should be grateful that someone wants
to help. If he’s fine and just decided to fuck off, then he’s a dick and he deserves what he gets.”