The People Next Door Page 7

  WorkEcon was supposed to be a snooze, for her and the kids. And for the first week, it was. But that was before Ronny Haskovitz got expelled for smoking pot in the back row, before Lisa Klein punched Angela Valdez in the possibly pregnant belly, and before Amy herself became

  WARTHOG TITS

  She was a coward, she knew. She would pass Eric and Jason right on out of WorkEcon with a C-, just so she didn’t have to face the bureaucratic wrath of Jeff Wheatley, the program’s supervisor and most ardent champion, whose criteria for WE success was summed up in the motto, ‘Twelve summer days earns a triple A.’ So long as the students attended and didn’t kill anybody, she was expected to pass them. After all, some of these kids were supporting their families.

  But breadwinners or not, Eric Pritchard and Jason Wells frightened her. They were tall. They stank. They looked at her with rapist’s eyes. She feared that if she turned them in for this bit of graffiti, next week it would be her tires slashed, a broken windshield, a blouse-ripping assault, her face pressed to the chalkboard.

  She hated herself for allowing their juvenile insult to gain traction in the ruts of her self-esteem. But she couldn’t ignore the fact that this was, in essence, what she was to them. The randy, jack-booted, ADD-afflicted teen boys – men, when you accepted the reality of their facial hair – in her class did not see her as a milf or slut or hotbox or some other insulting but at least suggestively attractive being. To them she was porcine. A tusked pig. A beast with eight hairy gray teats.

  Whatever happened to the harmless nicknames of yore? It seemed like only yesterday her wily fifth-grader Tyler Sampson had admiringly referred to her as Muggle Nips. She’d sent him to the principal’s office, of course (and vowed to start wearing thicker bras), but she’d at least been able to laugh at that one over a glass of wine. No matter how you looked at it, there was no silver lining in warthog tits.

  Of course it wasn’t just the awful insult. Or the vandalism of her car. It was the decision to take on a class she was not prepared for. It was her vivid nightmares of becoming an Obese American. It was the pressure of this job, how frighteningly important the extra income had become. In short, Eric and Jason’s real crime was not defacing her window with the red tip of their inhalants. It was that they had successfully boiled down everything that was wrong in her life to two words.

  ‘Warthog tits! Warthog tits!’ a voice squealed behind her, giggling with delight.

  Amy looked up to find Briela standing behind the car with Ingrid, their family assistant, pointing at the obscenity.

  ‘Briela, noooo,’ Ingrid said, pushing B toward the house. They must have just gotten off the 205, at the bus stop across Jay Road. ‘Don’t say that. Go inside while I talk to your mom, please.’

  Briela ran by as Amy powered down the window, dabbing her eyes.

  ‘Amy? You okay?’ Ingrid said.

  ‘Fine, I’m fine.’

  ‘What happened to your car?’

  The rags and turpentine would have to wait. ‘Just another fun day at Vo-Tech. How are you? You two have a good afternoon?’

  ‘We’re all right. Now. Do you have a minute?’

  Amy cringed, preparing for more bad news.

  17

  Trouble follows this family around like Pigpen’s dirt cloud, Ingrid Gustafson thought. Thank effing God I’m outta here in August.

  Ingrid had graduated from Colorado State University two years ago, her red-and-black cowboy boots a proud remnant of her aggie heritage. Her parents were good old-fashioned non-organic farmers, but the rest of their daughter, above the boots, was all Boulder. She favored hippie skirts and her straight black hair fell to her waist, swishing around the armory of bracelets and rings adorning her thin limbs.

  She had been the Nash family assistant – which let’s face it really meant glorified maid and abused babysitter – for two years and had somehow given them the impression she would do just about anything for eleven bucks an hour: make lunch, fold laundry, schlepp B to the zoo, and make that ridiculous salad every day to save Amy the headache that was chopping vegetables. Funny how most of that salad was still sitting in the fridge the next morning. The Nash compost heap was a regular arugula and balsamic Bugs Bunny all-you-can-eat buffet.

  If she had one trump card up her sleeve at all times, it was that she was great with Briela. Amy would be lost without her and both of them knew it. Briela’s teachers had been hinting at something serious near the end of the last term – space cadet answers on her assignments, eye-bulging David Banner tantrums, shoelaces tied in compulsive knots – and summer break had not diffused the situation. She’d had another blowout two weeks ago, when Amy refused to let her stay up till midnight to watch the rest of the Witches Lane marathon on AMC. And then the movie theater incident last week, when B got ejected from the multiplex for licorice-whipping tykes in the next row, the new Miley feature making their prodigal go Keds-stomping cuh-ray-zay. Ingrid had almost thrown in the towel then, but here she was.

  Amy was rinsing her commuter mug in the kitchen sink. She stared out the window and a look of bemused charm erased the folds of her forehead.

  ‘Oh, look, Ing! Did you see this? The new people are settling in.’

  Ingrid looked over Amy’s shoulder and saw the two Range Rovers, one black, the other olive green, parked in the Eyesore’s roundabout. ‘Those were delivered this morning. Like, seriously? People are still buying Range Rovers? It’s like take-out destruction.’

  Amy whirled on her. ‘Have you seen them? The people?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘We’re all dying of curiosity. That house must have cost three, four million dollars. And Melanie, you remember my friend, the runner?’ Ingrid nodded. ‘She knows Brian over at Kingdom Realty and he said no one can dig up a thing on them. No brokers, no titles, no deeds, no paperwork whatsoever. And the permits, in this town? They cut into open space, which requires some kind of serious leverage with the city council, but no one’s talking. It’s like something out of East Hampton.’

  ‘Right.’ Ingrid blew air up at her bangs. ‘Briela had a little problem at the ice-cream shop today.’

  Amy turned from the window and mustered concern. ‘Right, yes, go ahead.’

  ‘And before I forget, do you think it would be okay if I got a paycheck?’

  Amy mustered more concern, with a side order of alarm. ‘How long has it been?’

  ‘Five weeks.’

  ‘Five? I thought Mick was paying you.’

  Ingrid shrugged. ‘He told me to ask you.’

  Amy blushed. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘It’s no big deal.’

  ‘It is, though. And where is Mick, anyway? I didn’t see his truck.’

  Ingrid braced herself. ‘I’m not supposed to say.’

  Amy’s eyes widened. ‘He did not go to work.’

  ‘He sort of snuck out the back.’

  Briela came running in as if a stagehand had shoved her through a door. ‘I didn’t do anything! It’s not my fault!’

  ‘You be quiet,’ Amy said, and Briela shut her mouth, then ducked out of the kitchen. Amy looked back to Ingrid. ‘All right, so?’

  ‘We were getting ice cream at Glacier. She said there was a boy making faces at her through the window, and then she sort of lost it. I don’t think anyone was hurt, but. To tell you the truth, the whole thing scared me. I think she’s very angry about something. All that stuff last spring, it kind of feels like it’s starting up again.’

  ‘I was sleeping!’ Briela reappeared. ‘I fell asleep and he scared me!’

  ‘Enough! You take a time-out, now.’ Amy pointed. Briela ran down the hall.

  ‘That’s the other thing,’ Ingrid said. ‘She said the same thing that time in the movie theater, but it’s not sleep. It’s more like she just spaces out, you know?’

  ‘It used to be called daydreaming. Now it’s ADDHD-LMNOP – who can even keep track of these acronyms? Are you okay? This must be wearing you out.’

&nb
sp; Gee, ya think? ‘I’m fine but, Amy, the thing is, there wasn’t any boy. I looked, and there weren’t any boys within a hundred feet of that shop. I asked her to describe him. She didn’t sound like she was making it up, but the details didn’t really make sense. She said he was pale, with fuzzy hair, and he had a long face, like a wolf-boy. With huge teeth.’

  After a disquieting gap, Amy said, ‘A wolf-boy. That’s, uhm, disturbing. I guess I better make an appointment with her pediatrician.’

  Ingrid accepted her check. ‘That might be a good idea.’

  She’d suggested this very thing three or four times, but they never listened to her. It wasn’t her place to push, but at a certain point neglect becomes a form of child abuse. They must be in worse financial trouble than she ever suspected.

  18

  The late afternoon sun beamed in low on the boy’s face, leaving him pliable and slightly high on the park bench. He was pretending he was blind, cataloguing sounds: high heels clopping along worn bricks like an anxious pony; the shaggy messiah dude with the bone necklace hunched over his hammered dulcimer, lost in a sonic desert without structure or destination; a group of chattering ladies, their shopping bags paper-rattling against each other. Nearer, in an almost symphonic spurt, an avalanche of flavored popcorn tinkled into a tin barrel, a Labrador panted, and the waxy rubber buzz of skateboard wheels swerved and faded away. The air smelled of waffle cones and incense and Kyle Nash’s childhood.

  It was here on the Pearl Street Mall, at age nine, he saw his first live topless woman, a pagan sprite in a circle of other brown, barefooted creatures in tie-dye skirts and rope bracelets, dancing an ancient footbag to one another. Beaded blonde braids clicked off her darkened shoulders and wet thickets of black hair gleamed under her arms. The breasts were round and smallish, the nipples changing shape while she laughed. She was something from the myths, and no one seemed to care.

  Maybe that’s why they kept coming back, he and his friends. You never knew what you would see, what fun you might chance into.

  ‘Is he sleeping?’ a bored voice called. ‘Hey, nutchugger, wake up.’

  Kyle raised his head and blinked, realizing Lucas and Will were talking to him. They were slouched on the animal sculptures like overgrown toddlers; Lucas on the white rabbit, Will leaning against the brassy frog. They were staring at Kyle as if he had done something wrong again.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do you need a nap?’ Lucas was lean, his muscles tight under his pale skin, and his red hair was cut low for the summer. He had three earrings and was always fondling himself, rubbing his pecs or diving a hand under his shorts.

  Kyle shrugged. ‘Where’d Ben go?’

  ‘He’s in ’Bo’s,’ the taller boy said. Will was six-three but stooped, a sapling in need of cables to keep him upright. His eyes were dark and his pajama bottoms hung loose around his hips as if he’d just gotten out of the hospital.

  ‘We just ate,’ Kyle said, still full of the tacos they had scarfed at Juanita’s.

  ‘Yeah, well, maybe he’s still hungry,’ Lucas sneered.

  ‘Hungry for cock,’ Will said. They each shot Kyle a look and laughed.

  Kyle pretended to laugh, but this was becoming more difficult as summer wore on. Everything that came out of Ben, Will and Lucas’s mouths these days was about one of four things: cock, vadge, weed, and dooty. Who had the biggest, who was gonna put his finger in some tonight, where they could score more, and who had taken the grossest one that day (or, even better, where the all-time greatest place to take one would be; Taylor Rutledge’s pool was this week’s consensus). Kyle tried to contribute, but it always sounded false and their suspicion of him seemed to be growing. Like they were trying to decide how much longer they could hang with a kid who wasn’t convinced the world revolved around these four elements.

  ‘I’m hungry for some of that,’ Lucas said.

  Kyle and Will turned to see a girl of perhaps thirteen walking with her mother. They were high-end prep, Boulder Country Club tennis kittens in plimsolls and pink skirts, the girl a near clone of her mother.

  ‘Dude, you are fucking warped,’ Will said.

  ‘She’s gonna be a stone-cold fox.’ The conviction in Lucas’s voice made Kyle feel sick. ‘In, like, a year.’

  And Kyle thought, Now Will will say something evil about the mom.

  ‘Hell with the girl,’ Will said. ‘I’d hit the mamma-san.’

  ‘Both. At the same time,’ Lucas said. ‘That would be the trifecta.’

  ‘Trifecta means three of something,’ Kyle said, but Lucas ignored it.

  ‘I like mine mature,’ Will said. ‘Are you kiddin’ me? Moms know how to tug it.’

  ‘You guys are fuckin’ idiots,’ Kyle said. Any mention of moms made him think of his mom, and he didn’t understand how anyone could think about sex in such terms.

  The fourth member of their entourage strutted out of Abo’s like he had just gotten laid and purchased a really kind bag of grass, though he had done neither. He was dressed like a middle-class panhandler from the Bay Area: perforated surf shirt, skate shorts, neck bandana and old school Dunk lows, the ensemble as carefully coordinated as a prom dress. He was holding a slice of cheese pizza above his head, letting the point drip hot oil onto his tongue. He craned his neck and leapt, teasing himself with his own treat, and bumped into a woman walking with her boyfriend or husband.

  The couple gave him a look, but Ben didn’t even acknowledge them. The slice scalded him and he made a yowling noise as he spit the gob of mozzarella onto the mall. It was classic Ben and of course Will and Lucas found it hilarious.

  ‘That’s disgusting,’ the woman said. She was pretty in a plain way, Kyle thought, with a kind of long face and frail, pointy frame.

  ‘Watch your step, dickhead,’ the guy added. He was sorta buff, but it was going soft, like he had stopped working out once he hit his twenties.

  Ben halted, snapping to attention. ‘Sorry! Did you want a bite of my pizza pie, baby girl?’

  The woman scoffed and kept walking up the mall.

  ‘Hey!’ The man stopped and turned. There was something sad and defeated in his eyes, in the puffy face, as if he expected to step in dogshit every time he went out the front door. ‘Knock it off, all right?’

  ‘Sorry, man,’ Ben said. ‘Accident. It’s cool. We’re cool.’

  The guy shot the others a look, then turned and rejoined his girlfriend.

  Kyle thought, Jesus, that was close. Fucking Ben.

  Ben waited until their backs were turned before he threw the slice. It folded through the air like a sheet of paper and slapped against the bare skin between her shoulder blades. Held for a moment. Then unglued and left a trail of sauce as it slid to the promenade. The woman tensed and began to hiss.

  Will and Lucas burst into raucous laughter. Kyle bolted up from the park bench and the boyfriend whirled and charged at Ben in five big strides, face purpling.

  ‘Gonna knock your fucking head off!’

  They scattered, the guy’s hand missing the collar of Ben’s shirt by about two inches. The mall became a tunneled blur as Kyle passed the Russian Tea Room, the Art Mart, Mountain Sun Brewery, and weaved through the bus-stop shelter at the mall’s east end, watching the backs of his friends as they zigzagged madly, hurdling planters and fleeing around the corner.

  Behind them the woman was yelling. ‘Doug, no, stop! Doug! You’re on parole! Pleeeeease!’

  The word ‘parole’ made Kyle’s hair stand up. He could hear ‘Doug’ closing behind him, a man’s breathing, labored and heavy as a bull’s, and Kyle thought, Oh, holy fuck, if he catches one of us, he isn’t gonna chew us out or call our parents. He’s really going to beat the ever-loving shit out of all of us. He’s praying for the chance, can fucking taste the beating he’s going to throw down and –

  ‘Dead, ya fucking dead,’ the guy chanted. ‘DEAD!’

  Flying past the First Presbyterian Church, doubling back toward the post office, it f
inally dawned on Kyle: they weren’t kids any more. The world was no longer their playground. It had become an angry place, full of pleasant-faced people waiting to explode. He’d seen them on the news, in school, in his dad’s bar. But he’d never been the target, until now. Sneakers slapping the sidewalk, Kyle understood at a fundamental level that the next Mercedes they pelted with a few green apples would not dislodge a finger-wagging old coot who’d say, ‘Why, you little rapscallions, shame on you!’ They had crossed a barrier. From now on, all the drivers and lifeguards and mailbox owners would just as likely brandish a tire iron, a baseball bat, a gun.

  Kyle cut across Canyon Boulevard’s four lanes of traffic. Up ahead, the guys were jogging into Central Park, already slowing to a confident trot. He chanced a look back. Doug had been no match for kids who had spent most of the school year and every day this summer pushing skateboards five or six miles across town, walking another three or four miles to some party or another at night. They were greyhounds, high on energy drinks and candy and the fumes of their own adolescence. They dispersed into downtown Boulder’s alleyways and tree-lined bike paths like terrorists retreating into the mountains of Afghanistan.

  Kyle was shocked to realize it had all lasted less than a minute, and now they were free again. Lucas cut through the grass at Canyon Park, the others coming upon the bandshell, hooting and slapping each other on the backs. From a distance they looked older, bigger. Unlike Ben’s sad little goatee, Will had a real beard going, and with his height you could see how he might be mistaken for eighteen or twenty instead of fifteen. Kyle didn’t feel the way his friends looked, and he had the feeling maybe the others wouldn’t have minded if he got caught while they escaped.

  ‘Close one, huh, Nash?’ Lucas said, wiggling his eyebrows.

  Kyle only shook his head in disgust.

  ‘I could have taken him,’ Ben said, but Kyle could see he was rattled. His eyes were still jittery, a fresh layer of sweat over his pimples.

  ‘Yeah, right,’ Kyle said. ‘That guy would have caved your head in, Ben. He was out of his mind. Why you gotta do shit like that, man?’