Chapter 39
BENJAMIN
“I don’t know what to say to her.”
“Go ask her about her dog. Say you’re thinking of getting a new one. But not until the current one passes away. Say you have an old black Lab, on its last legs—”
“I’m supposed to pretend I have an old dog?”
“Yes, and you’ll get a new puppy, but only after the old one dies. You just haven’t decided on the breed.”
I must look surprised.
“Pretend dogs are the best kind, Benjamin,” he says, smiling. “A good excuse for why you have to be home, or why you can’t do a favor when asked. Pretend people, too.”
I don’t ask what that means. I’m too nervous about the girl. One thing at a time.
I wander over, we chat, the dog opener works just like he said it would.
At one point I look toward the car and I don’t see Matt at all, but I know he’s watching from somewhere.
I point to the Jag. She’s impressed, enough to take out her phone.
I ask her what’s in Stevens Point. Her sister, at college.
We joke around. I’m in no hurry and neither is she.
Everything’s going great when suddenly Matt’s at my side, harsh-whispering into my ear. “Get the fuck back to the car.”
Jade—that’s her name—makes a face and I make a face back. Sorry?
He’s got my arm, literally dragging me.
“Get in.”
He speeds out of the rest stop, blasting some piece of classical music, only one shade better than the jazz. I know a lecture’s coming but I don’t have a clue. He told me to talk to her. He even told me what to say. I don’t get it.
He kills the music.
“You never, ever let them take a photo.”
“Sorry. What?”
“She was taking a photo of my car, over your shoulder.”
“I don’t think you were in it.”
“Doesn’t matter. You tried to show off, pointing to the Jag. She pulled out her phone. One snap and she’s sending it to her family or her social media, and that ends the whole game.”
What game. I don’t say it.
He bangs the side of his hand against the steering wheel. “Every person in the world would know she got in my car.”
I don’t think it’s illegal to give someone a ride, but maybe it is? In some cases?
“Okay. I get it.”
“Do you really, Benjamin? Do you get it?”
“They’d know you gave her a ride. You don’t want people to know you gave a teenage girl a ride. Because she’s too young. Maybe a runaway.”
He pinches the very middle of his forehead with two fingers, like he’s trying to find patience.
“She took a photo. Did you, also, take a photo?”
“No.”
“You left your phone at home, is that correct?”
I nod. It was the agreement. A stupid fucking agreement, but I understand. I don’t like social media, either.
“It’s my fault,” he says after he’s calmed down and he’s no longer got a death grip on the steering wheel. “I didn’t give you adequate instructions. I thought you might have . . . intuition.”
At least he’s apologizing.
“Christopher Weber had intuition,” he says.
“Good looks. Charisma. Without that he wouldn’t have appealed to two pretty girls like Sidney and Izzy.
But he was undisciplined. He didn’t understand his extra.
He went after two girls in the same social circle.
Girls who lived close to where he worked.
He left digital trails and visited one in a public motel where people could see them, for Christ’s sake, when he could have just as easily been in a car or in a park, at least until he knew what he wanted, at least until he knew what he was doing, what he needed from those girls, whether it was for them to lie still or not breathe or to be on the edge, almost not breathing, warm or cold.
I don’t judge. What I can’t condone is a lack of self-knowledge, patience, caution.
He was shitting where he planned to eat, Benjamin, do you understand what that means? ”
It’s the longest thing he’s said all day.
“Shitting where he . . . planned to eat?”
“His work. His play. The two sides of his life. Too close. That foul motel was a mistake but it wasn’t the worst part.
The worst part is where you first meet, that’s where people will first look.
I shouldn’t have let him stay in the carriage house, even for a few nights.
And the clothes and the weights he left behind—I never told him he could do that.
I spent hours wiping down prints. I should have put a knife between his ribs the moment he showed up at the pool, looking for work.
You’re not the only one who makes mistakes, Benjamin.
I made the biggest mistake: investing in a loser. ”
A state trooper passes on our left, slowly. No wonder all the cars in our lane have been going the speed limit.
“Wait. So were you trying to help Christopher Weber get better?”
That’s why he’s so mad. His old patient did bad things. Stuff he wasn’t supposed to do.
Dr. C—I can’t keep calling him Matt—rolls his eyes. “Yes, I was trying to help him, Benjamin. Do better. Be better.”
“As in—not going after girls?”
He pinches his forehead again and does a strange sort of nasal groan.
“I’m sorry!”
He glares at me. “Don’t. Just, don’t. I know you’re smarter than you’re pretending to be.”
“Maybe I’m . . . not?”
He exhales through his nose. “Okay. Everything’s okay. We’ll take this more slowly.”