James Siegel - Deceit

“No. Why was that was important?”

“They were hoping I’d take a stroll there. That I’d pursue you.” I felt myself blushing-the awkward 13-year-old picking someone for Seven Minutes in Heaven who didn’t want to be picked. Not by me. “I did pursue you-stupid me. Have you been to the theater lately? Maybe you saw that hysterical sex comedy that takes place on the Santa Monica Pier?”

“No. Why?”

“Forget it. It doesn’t matter.”

The foot traffic had thinned a bit. A slight breeze was swirling, lifting the mimosa petals on the sidewalk flowerpots, fluttering the edges of her thick, lovely hair.

It would’ve been nice, I thought. If she had really liked me. If she hadn’t been told to smile at me across the rec room of the nursing home. If she’d listened to my pathetic story and said I understand; I forgive you. I will love you anyway.

Now she looked up, those big brown eyes.

“I still don’t get it,” she said. “Why would they want me to tell you anything?”

I still had a key to the Littleton Journal office.

I drove back into Littleton in the dead of night.

I parked in the strip mall and sat in my car until I was sure no one was around. No kids chugging beer out of paper bags, no Mr. Yang cooking up some Peking duck for tomorrow’s lunch crowd.

I let myself in and headed to the back.

That’s where the paper was paginated. It was all done by computer now, of course. Each page spit out as a separate unit, then brought over to the printing press on Yarrow Street where it was made whole.

The older issues were stored on microfilm, but everything from ten years ago and forward was hard-drived.

Once an issue was deemed finished-by Hinch, of course-you had to save it in a separate file, where it was organized by date. I’d done it myself; at the Littleton Journal we multitasked.

I logged in and scrolled back to three years ago. To the issue with the story about Eddie Bronson. The last issue Wren worked on before he disappeared.

Not to read it again; I pretty much knew it by heart.

I was looking for something.

When I found it, I’d know what it was.

I went back and forth and back-scroll, click , scroll, click . That issue, then on to the next, then back.

I skimmed the stories. “Who’s Eddie Bronson?” A review of a newly released DVD, four stars. The weather forecast- hot and dry , followed by hot and dry , then more hot and dry . A two-for-one deal at the DQ.

Call it peripheral vision. The thing you don’t really see, but it’s okay, your brain does. It’s paginated there for future reference.

The little number on the right-hand corner of page 1.

Every issue of the Littleton Journal has one-the computer automatically places it there. Every issue since its inception-an issue number. It marks time; it says we might not be a venerable paper, but we have a venerable history.

We have roots. We go back.

The issue with “Who’s Eddie Bronson?” was number 7,512.

I went forward to the next one.

Then back one more time to be sure.

“Okay,” I said out loud.

Got it.

I was back in my Littleton house.

I’d let myself in through the back door, just in case.

Someone had been there first.

I could’ve been in the cabin by the lake. The clutter was indistinguishable. One mess looks pretty much like another.

I went upstairs and stood under the shower spray for twenty solid minutes, trying to wash off the stultifying stink of incarceration. Trying to get my head straight. I wondered if craziness was catching. I’d noticed sudden tremors in my hands, fingers clenching and unclenching, as if they had something they urgently needed to pick up.

When I walked naked into my bedroom and opened up my underwear drawer, I said: “There’s the gun.”

Speaking it out loud, as if I were casually pointing this out to another person in the room.

He’d put it back nicely and neatly.

The gun that shot Nate the Skate. That put a bullet through Mr. Patjy’s head.

Guns don’t kill people. People do.

I pulled on some sweats and stuck the gun in the waistband, like a gangbanger might.

I was in a hurry.

If they’d planted the gun, it was so someone could find it. Preferably with me holding it.

That’s what I was doing as I held my breath and flicked on the downstairs light-holding the gun with my arm straight out like I’d seen in TV police procedurals, not putting it back into the waistband of my pants until I’d visually reconnoitered the room.

Empty.

I sat on the bottom step and stared, the class dullard desperately trying not to fail again. I rode herd on what little intelligence I had left. I was back in the Acropolis Diner; I was almost done. The check was due. We needed to leave.

You’re it , he’d said to me. You’re it… you’re it… you’re it. …

Yes, I know.

And now, finally, I understood why.

“Hey, man, where the fuck you been?”

The first words out of Seth’s mouth when I rung him up, still sitting on that basement step.

He seemed personally aggrieved that I’d taken off without telling him. People had been asking his take on things. The shooting. The missing gun. The sudden notoriety these things had pulled kicking and screaming into the light of day. In Littleton, the day could be long, hot, and brutal.

He’d had to lie a little. Act like he knew more than he actually did. As if he’d been in my confidence all along. I’d robbed him of the full pleasure of basking in infamy by association.

“Working on a obituary. Like I told you.”

“Yeah? You might want to start on yours while you’re at it.”

“Why’s that, Seth?”

“The sheriff came by and interviewed me.”

“Oh?”

“ Oh ? That’s all you’re gonna say? Oh ? Shit, if I knew you were a desperado, I would’ve hung out with you more often.”

“What did you tell him?”

“That you can’t bowl for shit. And the next pussy you get will be your first. How’s that?”

“Pretty accurate. Did the sheriff seem pleased with that?”

“I don’t think he has a sense of humor.”

“No.”

“So, you going to tell me what’s going on? Or do I have to wait to read it in the fucking Littleton Journal ?”

“That all depends.”

“Oh yeah? On what?”

“If you can help me or not.”

“If I can help you do what ?”

“Know what’s going on.”

“Huh? I’m a little buzzed right now, okay? You’re not making it any fucking easier.”

“You did some Sheetrock work for Wren a few years ago.”

“Sheetrock? Nope.”

“I saw the bill.”

“You saw the bill. Okay. Doesn’t mean I did the work.”

“Where did he want the work done?”

“Where? His basement.”

“Why? What was in the basement? Did he have damage down there?”

“As a matter of fact, yeah. There was a fucking hole in the wall. He wanted me to fix it.”

“For five hundred dollars?”

“Hey, that was my starting price-I would’ve negotiated down , man. Besides, he wanted the whole fucker fortified.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did he want the basement wall fortified?”

“I don’t know. He said the insulation was shitty. He said he needed protection against flooding.”

“Against flooding ? In Littleton?”

“Hey, what’s with that tone? It’s my job to tell him he’s nuts? Didn’t he lock himself in your office one night or something?”

“Or something. That’s what he said to you. His words? ‘I need protection against flooding’?”