interest in drama for his entire life up until then, he tried out for the Senior Shakespeare. Mr. Cuse cast him as Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and damn it, he was good. He said his lines as if he’d been speaking in iambic pentameter all his life.
And Geri did voices. She could do Princess Di, and she could do Velma Dinkley. She could do an amazing Steven Tyler from Aerosmith; she could talk like him, sing like him, do his acka-acka-acka-yow!, and dance like him, whipping her hair from side to side, hands on her narrow waist.
I thought she was beautiful and gifted enough to be an actress. I said we should go to New York together after I finished college. I’d write plays, and she’d star in them. When I told her this, she laughed it off—and then gave me a look I didn’t understand, not then. It was an emotion with which I was not familiar, a feeling no one had ever turned on me before then. I know now it was pity.
There was no moon, and the road grew darker the farther north we traveled. We followed a winding two-lane state highway through marsh and pines. For a while there were streetlights, spaced at quarter-mile intervals. Then there weren’t. The wind had been strengthening all evening, and when the gusts blew, they shook the car and sent the cattails in the swamps into furious motion.
We were almost to the mile-and-a-half-long dirt track that led to my parents’ cottage and the end of the evening when the Corvette swung around a horseshoe curve and Jake hit the brakes. Hard. The tires shrieked. The back end fishtailed.
“What the fuck is . . . ?” he shouted.
Nancy’s face struck the dash and rebounded. Her hardcover, All the Pretty Horses, flew out of her hand. Geri went into the dash, but she rolled as she slid forward and caught it with her shoulder.
A dog looked at us—its green eyes flashed in the headlights—and then it slunk out of the road and lumbered into the trees. If it was a dog . . . and not a bear. It certainly looked big enough to be ursine rather than canine. We could hear it crashing through the brush for several seconds after it disappeared.
“Christ,” Jake said. “Now I’m the one who looks like he pissed himself. I dumped my beer all over my—”
“Shut up,” Geri said. “Nan, honey, are you okay?”
Nancy leaned back, her chin lifted, her eyes pointed at the ceiling of the car. She cupped her nose with one hand.
“I smached my node,” she said.
Geri twisted around to stretch an arm into the rear of the car. “There’s some rags in the back.”
I contorted myself to reach past Geri’s feet to collect Nancy’s book. I grabbed All the Pretty Horses—then hesitated, my gaze caught by something else on the carpet. I plucked it off the floor.
Geri settled back into my lap, clutching a ratty Pink Floyd tee.
“Here, use this,” she said.
“That’s a good shirt,” Jake said.
“That’s your girlfriend’s face, you prick.”
“Fair point. Nan, you okay?”
She balled up the T-shirt and held it to her thin, delicate nose, dabbing at blood. With her other hand, she gave a thumbs-up.
I said, “I got your book. Hey . . . um. This was on the floor with it.”
I handed her the novel—and a crisp fifty-dollar bill, so clean and new-looking it might’ve been minted that morning.
Her eyes widened in horror around the bloodstained wad of shirt.
“Un-uh! No! No! I looked for it, and it wadn’t there!”
“I know,” I said. “I saw you look. You must’ve missed it.”
Water quivered in Nancy’s eyes, threatening to spill over.
“Hon,” Geri said. “Nan. Come on. We all thought he stole your fifty. Honest mistake.”
“We can tell that to the cops,” I said. “If they show up asking whether we rolled a drunk on the pier. I bet they’ll be very understanding.”
Geri flashed a look like murder at me, and Nan began to cry, and I immediately regretted saying anything, regretted finding the money at all. I glanced anxiously at Jake—I was ready for an icy glare and some brotherly malice—but he was ignoring the three of us. He stared out the window, peering into the night.
“Anyone want to tell me what the fuck just walked across the road?” he asked.
“Dog, right?” I said, eager to change the subject.
“I didn’t see,” Geri said, “’cause I was trying not to eat a faceful of dash at the time.”