Lisa Gardner - Say Goodbye

She needed him to talk her down. She needed him to put his arms around her and tell her she would be a good mother and she wasn’t as awful and selfish and self-destructive as she suddenly felt.

But Mac didn’t follow her down the hall. After a moment, she heard the front door open, shut, and then she was all alone.

BURGERMAN TOOK AWAY MY BIRTHDAY. SAID I DIDN’T need it anymore. We celebrated a new day, homecoming. The day I belonged to him.

On my fourth homecoming, he brought me a case of beer and a hooker.

“I don’t know,” the prostitute said. “He looks pretty young.”

“What the fuck do you care?” Burgerman asked. “I’m his father, and if I want to show my kid a good time, what’s it to you? You should be grateful to finally have some fresh cock, instead of the usual limp dick. Go on, fine-looking kid like that. Knock yourself out.”

Funny thing was, I was a decent-looking kid. My life had ended, but my body didn’t seem to know it. I grew. My shoulders broadened. My arms gained thin ropes of muscle. I even had the beginnings of facial hair.

I was getting old. Old enough that the Burgerman didn’t touch me so often anymore.

He had other uses for me now.

The girl stepped obediently forward. Burgerman got out the camera.

“Don’t be nervous, now,” the girl said. She touched my cheek. I flinched.

“Tell you what, honey, just block him from your mind. Just pretend he’s not even there. It’s just you and me. A good-looking boy, a pretty young girl.” She giggled, revealing two missing teeth. “Fine couple like us oughtta be able to have some fun.”

She took my hand, tucked it under her shirt, on top of her breasts. “How does that feel, honey? Nice, huh? Gotta say, T-n-A guys love me. I got all the right curves.”

I thought she felt soft, flabby. I didn’t know what to do with my fingers. My face was burning crimson. I looked away, but still couldn’t stop the blush.

She moved closer to me now, her tongue licking her lips, her hands pressing my palm against her squishy breast. “Come on, baby, flick your fingers over my nipple. Knead it, work it, you can’t hurt me. Yeah, baby, that’s what it’s there for. Pretend I’m your mama, and you just wanna take a drink.”

I yanked my hand back, horrified. She was still licking her lips, her hips jutting out in a short black leather skirt, rolls of fat spilling over the waist.

Don’t make me, I wanted to yell. Oh God, get away from me.

“Fuck it,” Burgerman said. “You’re scaring the damn kid. Just get it done.”

Girl shrugged, got on her knees, and went to work on my pants. Before I had time to protest, she had yanked out my penis and plopped it into her mouth.

I recoiled, but she had both hands gripping my hips, holding on tight. Burgerman had moved closer, zooming in.

He reached over casually and smacked me upside of the head.

“Moan, you dipshit. Camera’s rolling. Make it look good.”

And finally, in that instant, his handprint red on my cheek, I could moan. I could make it look good. Those were my instructions and I knew how to function when doing what I was told. My body insisted on growing live flesh and blood, when in reality, I was nothing more than a robot. Obedient. Passive. Programmable.

The Burgerman seemed to realize this, too. He barked out more instructions and that speeded things along.

When it was done, the Burgerman was obviously fired up. I wondered if he would make me perform again, with the girl watching. I had been shamed in so many ways, it should hardly matter, and yet it bothered me. Maybe because she had been my first, and I wanted to seem like a man to her, even if she was nothing but a whore.

Burgerman didn’t touch me, though. He went after the hooker instead.

She protested. He hadn’t paid her enough, this wasn’t the deal. So he beat her on the head with the camera till she shut up. Then he did what he’d wanted to do all along while her eyes swelled up and her lip bled.

Later, he tossed some money at her, and I could tell she realized she was lucky to get that much. She grabbed her clothes and fled.

Even hookers are smarter than me.

Burgerman cracked open the first beer, handed it to me. Took a second for himself, and offered a toast.

“Nice fucking, son. Knew I’d done good choosing you. You’re gonna make me rich.”

He popped the tape out of the camera and, whistling, went into the closet, where he placed it in the safe with all the other dirty movies and home photos he’d started selling for boatloads of cash.

We smoked some joints. Drank more beers. Eventually, I passed out.

When I woke up, Burgerman was asleep on the sofa, snoring loudly.

The door was unlocked. I didn’t even think about it anymore.

I got up and went to bed.

I dreamed of my mother, but when I woke up, I couldn’t recall her face.

Dark hair, light hair, brown eyes like me?

I remember she liked to test spaghetti noodles by tossing them against the refrigerator. It made my brother and me giggle. I remember in the summertime, she would make pitchers of sangria and hang out by the pool.

I remember a long time ago, a lifetime ago, I sat on her lap with her arms around me and felt safe.

I can’t remember my mother’s face.

I haven’t decided yet if I will try again tomorrow.

“TOMMY’S PARENTS ARE CONVINCED HE WAS KILLED by someone he knew,” Sal was saying. “Better yet, they think it might have been a lovers’ quarrel.”

“Tapped two times in the forehead by an ex-girlfriend? Cold.”

“They aren’t sure, but Tommy definitely had someone on the side his senior year. He started going out a lot, claiming to be catching up with the guys, but then the guys would call, looking for him. His mother questioned him once or twice, but he always finessed his way out of it. Oh, Otis called? Well, he wasn’t with Otis, he was with Kevin. Kevin called? Well sure, that’s because he was with Perrish. She didn’t worry about it much at the time. Everything else seemed on track-his grades, football, school. She figured when he was ready, he’d tell them what was going on. Of course, now she wishes she’d pressed him harder on the subject.”

Kimberly merely grunted in reply. She was sitting in Sal’s car, outside the Foxy Lady nightclub. The neon sign buzzed hot pink scrawl over Sal’s face every other second, flashing the emblem of a half-dressed woman doing the cancan on Sal’s nose.

“I don’t get it,” she said finally. “How do they go from Tommy had a mystery girlfriend to Tommy was shot dead by this same femme fatale?”

“Desperation. Lack of other answers. Something happened at the end of Tommy’s senior year. They don’t know what. He grew moody, withdrawn, stopped going out. The father thought his son might be getting nervous about graduation, the transition to Penn State, playing college football. His mom thought there’d been a girlfriend, and she and Tommy had broken up, not by Tommy’s choice. Part of this conjecture was that Tommy was definitely not dating his yearlong steady Darlene, and according to Mrs. Evans, it wasn’t like Tommy to go too long between girlfriends.”