Chapter 28
In the cubicle next to Jem, Brian was eating peanuts.
Loudly. Big, messy chomps. And he must have had a seriously dry mouth—or maybe a seriously wet mouth—because after each bite, there was this sucking noise as he opened his mouth.
Brian cracked the shell. Brian dropped the pieces in a bowl.
Brian hacked and spat something. And then he chomped again.
Jem stared at his most recent apology text to Tean, which said, I frcked up. I’m sorry. That stupid typo. And he couldn’t fix it because it was too late.
Why hadn’t he kept his stupid mouth shut?
Why hadn’t he let Tean go on his walk and not made such a big deal out of it?
Why couldn’t he have pretended to sleep and let it happen and—and someday, eventually, things would get better?
They could have talked about it after they were out of this mess. They could have dealt with it later.
But the dream had been so disorienting. That fucking farmhouse that had also, in the weird way dreams had, been LouElla’s house, been an apartment that was barely a memory. Opening every door, trying to get out, and finding more empty rooms. Because everybody else was gone.
He dropped his head to his arms. And then, because it felt strangely good, he banged his head against the desk a few times.
“Rough night?” Little Dick said.
Jem sat up.
Little Dick was in his Daddy’s Good Boy outfit today: crisp white shirt, blue blazer, chinos, penny loafers.
He looked like a guy Jem had fucked once in a Ralph Lauren dressing room.
After the store closed. Because Jem wasn’t an animal.
Right then, Little Dick was carrying two Bang energy drinks, both flavored Cotton Candy, and he was holding one out to Jem with what Jem realized, after a moment, was a commiserating expression.
“Uh, yeah,” Jem said. And when Little Dick pressed the energy drink on him, Jem took it and said, “Thanks.”
“These things taste like ass, but at least they keep me awake. Hey, I bet that means you’ll like it.”
Jem managed a weak smile.
“Come on,” Little Dick said. “I’m joking. We can joke like that.”
“Yeah, totally. It’s fine.”
Little Dick seemed to be waiting for something; when it didn’t come, he perched on the edge of Jem’s desk and said, “Man, I got hammered last night.”
Jem caught a whiff of the energy drink—it smelled like an artificial flavor some genius had decided to call cotton candy, and while normally, yes, that would be awesome, right then, it made his head throb. He set the can aside.
“So drunk,” Little Dick said. He groaned. He took a slug of his energy drink.
Jem leaned back in his chair, and it squeaked.
“Wasted,” Little Dick said. He laughed. And then he looked at Jem. That look said, You owe me. Or maybe, I own you. They were pretty much the same for some guys.
So. That was the game.
“You look like you can handle a few drinks.”
“Bro, I can. But last night, it was so wild. We were shit-faced.”
You can do this. This isn’t really you. You’re Jem Berger, and you have kept your shit together your whole life, and you’re smarter and faster and better than this asshole in every way possible.
Jem Berger doesn’t suck ass. But for the next ten minutes, you’ve got to be Brian, because you need this job, because you bought a fucking house, because this is what adults do: they have jobs, they go to work, they take care of their families.
And then, the words so bright they floated like sunspots in front of him: Because if they don’t, their families leave.
So, Jem laughed. “What’d you guys do?”
In the cubicle next to them, the chomping sounds cut off. And the silence that followed felt like it was focused in their direction.
“Do you know The Rope?” When Jem shook his head, Little Dick said, “It’s this bar.
The service is shit—the waitresses are cunts, man—but the meat stays fresh, if you know what I mean.
” Little Dick paused for a little laugh.
Jem laughed with him. “They were doing dollar shots, and there was this Mexican girl, Jesus Christ, her tits. Fucking melons.” He made the words sound quasi Spanish, with a long o.
“I totally dicked her down, too. B-plus. She was so fucking loose, man.”
Wow, said a voice inside Jem’s head. Just that: wow. And then, a heartbeat later, What the fuck am I doing?
But he grinned. “You win some, you lose some.”
“Right? That’s the fucking game.”
At that point, casters rattled, and Brian’s head popped up over the divider. He was grinning, but the eyes that fixed Jem were hard. “You talking about last night, Rick?”
“Yeah,” Little Dick said, voice flat.
“Nice. You’ve got to tell me about it. It sounds crazy.”
“If it sounds crazy,” Little Dick said, “then you already heard. And we’re having a private conversation.”
Color seeped into Brian’s face. He had a smile like one of those wooden puppets, and it stayed right where it was. But his eyes rolled toward Jem. “Right,” Brian said with a laugh. “Sorry, Rick. Didn’t mean to bother you.”
Little Dick stared at him, and then he made an impatient gesture, like he couldn’t understand what the fuck Brian was still doing bothering him. The color in Brian’s face deepened, and with another laugh, he dropped out of sight—a puppet whose strings had been cut.
“He is so fucking annoying,” Little Dick said, lowering his voice, but still loud enough that Brian must have heard him.
Jem picked up his energy drink and took a sip. He didn’t taste it.
“Not that bad, right?” Little Dick said. “I buy these things by the pallet.”
“It’s better than a Monster.”
“I know. Don’t buy any; I’ve got a shitload, and I’ll just bring one in for you.”
“That’d be fire,” Jem said. And then he did a classic move: he tipped his can toward Little Dick. Little Dick laughed, as though caught off guard, but he was grinning as he brought his can toward Jem’s and tapped them together.
“What are you doing this weekend?” Little Dick said.
“Working. For you.”
“Fuck that,” Little Dick said with a grin. “You should go out with me. There are bitches who would squirt if I had a gay dude hanging out with me. Is that offensive if I call you gay?”
“Nope.”
“You should totally come. We’ll hit The Rope. You’re going to love it.”
“Yeah,” Jem said. And he was good enough at the game to smile and say, “We’ll see.”
The hope in Little Dick’s face was almost painful, and for a moment, the expensive clothes and the bad taste and the overgrown dumbshit behavior dropped away, and Jem saw a little kid who’d never had a real friend.
Maybe because of the dumbshit stuff. Maybe entirely his own fault. But the hurt wasn’t any less.
A soft chime announced someone entering the showroom through the main doors. Jem glanced over to see a woman with five kids, and the oldest couldn’t have been more than twelve.
“On it,” Brian said, popping up over the divider again. “Rick, I totally got this. I’m going to lock this one down, watch.”
“Fuck that,” Little Dick said. “I think my boy Jem gets this one.” He did this weird shoulder groping thing, like he was warming Jem up for a fight, and said, “Lock it down.”
Jem left the Bang on his desk as he crossed the showroom.
The woman was White, and she had dark hair that, Jem guessed, had air-dried on the way over.
He pegged her at somewhere in her forties.
Her jacket was a branded one, some business name he didn’t recognize, and the clothes were clean but cheap; he’d bought enough shit at Walmart to know what it looked like.
The shoes were worse, out at the heel, which must have killed her feet after a couple of hours.
She was carrying the smallest child—a girl, to judge by the red bow in her hair.
Another of the kids, a little one, was crawling under the velvet rope toward one of the display vehicles.
The oldest had grabbed that one by the ankles and was trying to drag him backward.
And two more were hammering on the glass of the popcorn machine, screaming, even though the popcorn machine was clearly empty.
“Hey,” Jem said. “Let me guess: minivan.”
The woman laughed. Then she called over her shoulder, “Trayvon! Janelle! Knock it off!”
The kids hammering on the popcorn machines screamed with what might have been excitement. They kept hammering.
“No popcorn today,” Jem said. “Sorry. But we’ve got soda, if your big brother will help you.”
Big brother was currently trying to pry the smaller child’s fingers off one of the brass stanchions, but the woman said, “D’wayne, get them their soda.”
Those seemed to be the magic words. The one clutching the stanchion let go, and the four kids followed Jem’s directions to the fountain drink machine at the back of the showroom.
“If this is a negotiation tactic,” Jem said, “it’s literally the most effective one I’ve ever seen. You win. You got me. Pick a car and it’s yours.”
With another laugh, the woman hoisted the child in her arms. “God, wouldn’t that be nice?” The child began to fuss, and she bounced her. “There was a Traverse online. It was a 2018, I think.”
No, Jem almost said. It was bait.
But instead, he said, “Shoot. That one got some paint damage, so it’s at our body shop. It’s going to be a couple of weeks. But I can show you what we’ve got.”
Disappointment lined the woman’s features, but she said, “Do you have anything at that same price? It was such a good deal.”
“Let’s see what we can do. I’m Jem.”
“Martha.”
“And this little lady?”
A faint smile curved Martha’s cheek. “Shandra.”
“Nice to meet you. So, minivans. You said a 2018—you want something newish, then?”
“I want something I can afford,” the woman said. “Their dad—” She stopped. Her eyes welled with tears, and she shook her head. “I’m sorry. I’m trying to do this on my own, and I have no idea what to do.”
Jem opened his mouth. And then he shut it again. He felt like he was buzzing. He wiped his hands on his pants, but that didn’t help. That goddamn Bang. But it wasn’t that. This was something else.
All he had to do was nod. Smile understandingly. Maybe play with Shandra a little, and say, We’ll take care of you, and it would all be so…easy.
Don’t be stupid. You’ve spent your whole life taking from other people. What’s the difference?
But it was different. In so many ways. He just hadn’t wanted to face facts before.
“You need to go somewhere else,” Jem said. He kept his voice friendly but dropped the volume.
The woman blinked at him. “What?”
“You need to buy a car somewhere else. A minivan. Whatever. You need to— You know Christensen Ford? They’re about two miles north of here, the other side of I-15. Go there. They’re about as honest as a dealership gets. They’ll fix you up.”
“I don’t— I’m sorry, you want me to leave?”
“Christensen Ford. It’s just north of here.” Raising his voice, Jem called, “Kids! D’wayne! Your mom’s leaving.”
Confusion lingered on Martha’s face as she herded the children toward the exit. A moment later, they were gone.
When Jem turned around, Brian was right there. He was trying to look stern—no, he was trying to look threatening—but underneath it, he was so happy he was about to shit himself. “Did you tell her to leave?”
“Get out of my way,” Jem said.
He circled around Brian and made his way back to the cubicle.
He grabbed his jacket. He picked up the framed photo of him and Tean, the one where Tean wasn’t really smiling, but it didn’t matter because he looked alive, because he was glowing, because it had been one of those moments when they had been out in the world, and touched something that Jem didn’t know what to call, and for a few fragile seconds, they had been…
connected. Or whatever the word was. And that one time, he’d been lucky enough to snap a picture.
Anything else? Pens, takeout napkins, a shitload of business cards he’d never use now.
“What happened?” Little Dick said as he came across the showroom. “Why’s she leaving? I thought you were going to lock her down.”
“Jem told her to leave,” Brian said. He was going up and down on his toes. He looked like he was about five seconds away from pointing. “Jem said she should leave and go to Christensen’s.”
“What the fuck?” Little Dick said. “Is that true?”
“Yeah,” Jem said. “Excuse me.”
He tried to move around Little Dick, but the ex-wrestler stepped into his path. “What the fuck is wrong with you? You’re sending people to other dealerships? Are you out of your fucking mind?”
“Yeah,” Jem said. “Yeah. I have been. But I’m not anymore. I’m done. I quit.”
Little Dick’s mouth hung open. After a beat, he said, “You can’t quit!”
“Yeah, well, I just did.”
This time when Jem circled around Little Dick, the other man didn’t try to stop him.
“You are fucking up your life!” Little Dick screamed after him. “I’m going to ruin you. You’re never going to get a job in this town again!”
It sounded like something out of a bad movie, so it made Jem smile.
“And that’s my car!”
“I’ll bring it back,” Jem said as he stepped outside.
October cold met him, the late afternoon light slanting and weak, so that the shadows stretched out across the parking lot. Pennants snapped overhead.
Oh my God, I’m going to have to tell Tean.
That was his first thought in the fresh air. And the second was, He’s going to be disappointed.
Jem’s phone buzzed as he walked toward the street. It was a number he didn’t recognize. He almost ignored it, but there was a chance it was Tean calling from one of the DWR landlines, which was something he still did, even though he had a perfectly good phone of his own.
“Hello,” Jem said.
Wind whistled at his ear, and for a moment, Jem thought he might not be able to hear the other speaker.
But then Tean’s voice came across the line: small, almost confused. “Jem.”
“Hey. Hey! What’s up—”
“Jem, I did something stupid.” There was a clicking noise Jem didn’t recognize, and then he realized it had come from Tean—like he’d tried to swallow and couldn’t. “I’ve been arrested.”