Six Bad Things_ A Novel - Charlie Huston [36]
—Francés?
—No. American.
—Los Angeles?
I shake my head.
He narrows his eyes.
—San Diego?
I shake my head again, desperate not to be associated with either of these clearly undesirable locales.
—New York.
I move my hand, toward my pocket, offering to get my ID for him. Hoping he won’t want to see it.
He waves his hand at me, shakes his head.
—New York?
—Yeah.
—September eleven.
—Yeah.
He nods slowly, sadly, then smiles slightly and sticks up his thumb.
—Go Yankees.
I stick up my thumb.
—Yeah. Go Yankees.
He gets off the bus, and I make it to the can before I piss my pants.
THE FACTS of Robert Cramer’s book were drawn from public records and exclusive interviews he conducted during the year of “exhaustive research” he spent writing The Man Who Got Away. He also refers to an episode of America’s Most Wanted that seems to have featured me. The mind boggles.
The list of people he claims to have interviewed includes a couple childhood friends, an old neighbor, my fifth-grade teacher, my high-school counselor, my Little League coach (whose statements about my competitive nature Cramer makes great hay of), one of the surgeons who operated on my leg, two old girlfriends (who don’t seem to have said anything too embarrassing), a few of my college professors, some former “regulars” from Paul’s Bar (whose names I don’t recognize), and the parents of Rich, the boy, my friend, who I killed when I crashed my car into a tree. Cramer quotes them as saying I showed no emotion at their son’s funeral (true), never contacted them after (true), and had dragged him into a ring of juvenile housebreakers before his death (not so much true, as Rich was already a member of said “ring” when I fell in with him and my other delinquent friends, Steve and Wade).
Cramer dwells for some time on the “killer” competitive instinct my parents programmed into me as they sat on the bench at my baseball games with their “impossible to meet expectations arrayed about them.” He consults a psychologist to diagnose the impact of my baseball accident and to attest to how it forced me to channel those instincts into other areas; thus my brief life of petty crime. He exposes my failed attempt to find a healthy outlet as evidenced by my six-year sojourn through college without receiving a degree. He charts my “loner” ways after my college girlfriend “abandoned” me in New York. And finally, he points to the eventual alcoholism that lit the fuse on all my inner rage and stifled need to win, to “beat others.” And I am certain that if I had Robert Cramer in front of me right now, I would teach him all about beating others.
I AM standing at the top of Kukulcan. It is night and I am surrounded by all the people Cramer talked to for his book. They are lined up along the edge, their backs to the drop behind them. I push them one by one into the pitch darkness that surrounds the pyramid until I get to the end of the line, where I find my mom and dad.
I lurch awake with a slight cry. Still on the bus, still night. The book is open in my lap, facedown, the cover exposed. The old woman in the seat next to mine looks from the grainy black-and-white photo of my short-haired, clean-shaven former self and up to my shaggy, sweaty face. She gives me a sweet smile.
—Pesadilla?
Pesadilla. Nightmare. A word I actually know in Spanish. I nod, closing the book, tucking it into the pack beneath my seat.
—Si, pesadilla.
She smiles again, takes hold of my hand