he hasn’t died yet, he probably won’t die tonight.”
“Paul!” Nancy cried, sounding almost hysterical. “Please!”
My insides were knotted up, and I felt as jittery as if I had chugged a pot of coffee. I wanted to leave more than anything and can’t explain why I reached for the operator’s wrist instead, to search for his pulse.
“He’s not dead, asshole,” Jake said, but he waited nonetheless.
The operator’s pulse was there—raggedy and irregular but measurable. Close up he smelled bad, and not just of urine and booze. There was a cloying odor of caked, rotten blood.
“Paul,” Nancy said. “Put him on his bed. On his side.”
“Don’t do it,” Jake said.
I didn’t want to, but I didn’t think I could live with myself if I found myself reading his obituary in the weekend paper, not after we jacked him for forty bucks. I put my arms under his legs and behind his back and lifted him out of his chair.
I lumbered unsteadily to the camp cot and set him on it. A dark stain soaked the crotch of his green velvet pants, and the smell aggravated my already twitchy stomach. I rolled him onto his side and put a pillow under his head, the way you’re supposed to, so if he threw up, it wouldn’t go back down his windpipe. He snorted but didn’t look around. I circled the room, pulled the cord hanging from the ceiling to switch off the light. On the radio, the Gypsy was telling Pat Boone’s fortune. It wasn’t good.
I thought we were done, but when I came out, I found Geri getting her own revenge. She’d helped herself to the operator’s pocketknife, and she was carving a message into Judy Garland’s horse: FUCK YOU. It wasn’t poetry, but it made a point.
On the walk back to the boardwalk, Jake tried to hand the forty dollars to Nancy, but she wouldn’t accept it. She was too angry with him. He stuck the bills in her pocket, and she took the twenties out and threw them on the pier. Jake had to chase them down before the wind could snatch them away and cast them to the darkness.
When we reached the road, the traffic was already tapering off, although the bars were still doing brisk business. Jake told Nancy he was going to get the car and asked if she would please buy the beer, because obviously they weren’t going to have sex now and he was going to need more alcohol to drink away his blues.
This time she took the money. She tried not to smile but couldn’t quite help herself. Even I could see that Jake was adorable when he made himself pathetic.
WHEN WE TOOK OFF for my parents’ summer cottage, I was in the passenger seat of the Corvette, with Geri on my lap and Nancy squeezed between my hip and the door. They all had bottles of Sam Adams, even Jake, who drove with one nestled between his thighs. I was the only one who wasn’t drinking. I could still smell the operator on my hands, an odor that made me think of decay, of cancer. I didn’t have the stomach for any more, and when Geri rolled down the window to chuck her bottle out into the night, I was glad for the fresh air. I heard her empty Sam Adams hit with a musical crunch.
We were careless, irresponsible people, but, in our defense, we didn’t know it. I’m not at all sure I’ve made you see the times clearly. In 1994 those Mothers Against Drunk Driving ads were just background noise, and I had never heard of anyone getting a ticket for littering. None of us wore seat belts. It never even crossed my mind.
I’m not sure I have properly shown you Geri or Jake Renshaw either. I’ve tried to show you they were dangerous—but they weren’t immoral. Maybe they even had a stronger sense of morality than most, were more willing to act if they saw someone wronged. When the universe was out of whack, they felt obliged to put it back to rights, even if that meant defacing an antique horse or robbing a drunk. They were entirely indifferent to the consequences to themselves.
Nor were they thoughtless, unimaginative thugs. Nancy and I wouldn’t have been with them if they were. Jake could throw knives and walk a tightrope. No one had taught him how to do those things. He just knew. In his last year of high school, after showing no