That’s Alex’s new M.O. He deflects everything back to Kendra. Last week I remembered I left my old jockstrap from football in the Jaguars locker room. When I recruited Alex to check the lost-and-found box at the next practice, he sneered, “Why don’t you ask Kendra to get it for you?”
Very subtle, my friend Alex.
I play dumb. “Kendra doesn’t even own a cat.” But I can’t hide anything from Alex; he’s been my confidant since grade school. “Besides, she’s kind of miffed at me. She invited me to have dinner with her folks, and obviously that can’t happen, so she says I’m avoiding her family.”
“You are avoiding her family,” he points out.
“You got that right.”
Just the notion that there might be some trouble in paradise animates Alex. “You know, Vince, even if you can keep on dodging her parents, you’re not out of the woods. I mean, how long before she happens to mention that she’s dating a guy named Luca?”
I say nothing. It’s not that I don’t see his point. Sure, it would make the most sense to break up right now, before Kendra ever has a clue who my father is. But I can’t do it. My family has cost me so much already—to the point where I can’t even go on a date, or play on a stupid high-school football team. They won’t cost me this.
Besides, I’m an addict. I’m hooked.
As the week goes on, the cat owners of America continue to visit www.iluvmycat.usa, not to do anything else on the site, but just to place ads on Meow Marketplace. Not one of these listings gets a single response, but the ads keep coming:
Want me to show you a real gem of a cat with four on the floor? Robert E. Lee’s the name, and he can be yours for 250 bucks—SK.
Again, nitpicky, but don’t all cats technically have four on the floor?
If you’re going to a toga party, Equilibrium is the perfect cat to take there. He’s a real eight ball with a winning smile. Only $350—TC.
By Wednesday, I’m in third place in the class, trailing only cyberpharaoh and misterferraridriver. And the strange postings on my site have come to the attention of my fellow students.
“Hey, Vince,” calls Martin Antia. “I’ve got a cat to sell, too. He’s no prime minister, but maybe he can lick himself at the toga party just for laughs.”
“Shut up,” I groan.
“Yeah, what’s going on?” puts in Yuri, this Russian kid with a last name I won’t attempt to reproduce. “You’ve got dozens of ads, but the rest of your site is empty.”
“If you’ve got some cousin dreaming it all up,” adds Fiona, “tell him he’s got a real future in Hollywood.”
It doesn’t take much to get Alex mobilized on my behalf when Fiona’s the enemy. “Iluvmycat is a hundred-percent legit!” he snaps. “It’s going to smoke your crummy site, that’s for sure.”
“Take it easy,” I say soothingly. “If I had someone inventing that stuff, don’t you think I’d get him to make it a little more believable? And to spread it around the site? The fact is I’m as mystified as you guys.”
I even raise the subject with Mr. Mullinicks. Not that I’m a crybaby, but the Internet can be a wild and woolly place, so it’s probably a good idea for an expert to take a look at iluvmycat.usa.
He calls up my site on his desktop and browses through the ads, now more than a hundred. Finally, he says, “I don’t know much about cat ownership.”
“Me neither,” I confess. “But I’m pretty sure this isn’t it. Could it be some kind of Internet pattern, you know, something you’ve seen before?”
“Oh, I’ve seen it before,” he assures me.
“Really?”
He nods. “It’s called ‘your problem.’”
“But—”
“It’s definitely your problem, because if it was somebody else’s, it wouldn’t be on your Web site.”
“But I was kind of hoping—”
He cuts me off. “Vince, let me give you a little friendly advice. You’re getting hits—that’s all that matters. What do you care if they don’t make any sense? The e-business economy isn’t about sense; it’s about traffic. Don’t argue with success. A week ago your site was a wasteland.”
I make it sound as if the whole school is obsessed with iluvmycat.usa. The truth is, outside of New Media, no one else has a clue. It’s a typical October. The weather cools down. Clothing gets less revealing, much to Alex’s dismay. I initiate the annual discarding of notices home advising my parents about Open House. Freshman year, Mom volunteered for the refreshments committee and baked so many cookies that Dad had to arrange for a union truck to come from New Jersey to deliver them. But some wires got crossed on a job Uncle Puke and his crew had going in Staten Island. So when the tractor-trailer pulled up to the gym, it was full of hot digital watches from Taiwan. Actually, it worked out okay because the watches were a hit at school, and when the cops arrested Uncle Puke and searched his truck, they found nothing but oatmeal-raisin cookies.
Mom tried to get her refreshments back, but the truck was impounded in an FBI warehouse. “In this heat,” she lamented, “those cookies are totally out of commission by now. Such a shame to waste good food.”
She wasn’t going to get away with it this time! I was positive she knew more than she let on.
“But, Mom,” I persisted. “What about the watches? Where did they come from?”
“Switzerland,” she replied without missing a beat. Very cool under fire. I think it rubs off on her from Dad.
Classes seem longer. Homework gets harder, or at least there’s more of it. The Jaguars hold pep rallies nobody goes to. Colorful signs begin to decorate the blah cinder-block walls, promoting the popular kids for Homecoming King and Queen.
I almost drop dead. Outside the cafeteria, in the midst of a forest of posters about quarterbacks and cheerleaders, is a computer-generated message printed in huge letters on continuous paper:
VOTE VINCE L. & KENDRA B. FOR K & Q
I just stand there like an idiot, reading it over and over, my head bobbing back and forth, like a spectator at a tennis match. I swear that, as I try to make sense of this new development, the thought actually crosses my mind that they might be talking about two other kids with our names.
Then, from behind: “Who are Vince L. and Kendra B.?”
I wheel to face the sophomore girl. “Nobody!” I exclaim, pulling the poster off the wall.
Talk about a worst-case scenario. Homecoming is a big deal at our school. The king and queen are practically local celebrities. They get interviewed in the paper, and their smiling mugs are displayed in every bagel shop and dry cleaner in town. Keeping Kendra and me secret—forget about it. And not just from Agent Bite-Me. From Tommy and Dad, too.
I mean, Kendra and I have no chance of winning, but still! This is like juggling nitro. Who would do such a thing?
I corner Kendra in front of her locker at the next class change. “Look at this!” I spit, dropping our sign at her feet.
She bends down and unfurls the crumpled computer paper. Her face lights up.
I stare at her in horror. “You did this!”
“No, I didn’t!”
But there’s no stopping Sherlock Holmes when he’s cracking a case. “You’re mad because I won’t have dinner with your parents, so you want to get us voted Homecoming King and Queen because then we’ll have to go public.”
“You’re on drugs,” she accuses me. “I’ve never seen this poster before now, but that’s not even the weird part. The real killer is that ‘going public’ is something we have to decide to do, like we’re secret agents blowing our cover. We’re just dating, Vince. Millions of kids do it. What’s the big whoop?”
“It’s too soon,” I say stubbornly.
“You’re ashamed of me!”
“No—” I start to protest.
“Of our relationship, then.”
“That’s not it.”
She’s steamed. “Well, then you’re just plain lazy. You don’t want to admit you’ve got a girlfrie
nd because I’m not worth a little explaining.”
That stings, and it isn’t just because Kendra’s so mad at me. Lazy—it’s dangerously close to Dad’s motivation speech. Pick a college—ahem, university—pick a career, get off your butt and do something. I remember Ray’s words: “Enjoy it. It’s never going to be this new again.” Oh, sure. First girlfriend. First relationship. First knock-down drag-out fight.
Yeah, I know couples argue all the time. But that’s never happened with Kendra and me. I want to stop it—just say we’re more important and find some secluded corner and—
No. Part of me is too upset, and the upset part is on autopilot. I crumple up the sign and slam-dunk it in a trash can. “I better not find out this was you.”
“Yeah, I trust you too,” she snaps back at me, and we storm off in different directions.
Later, in her basement, we make up, and everything feels so perfect. But even an addict has lucid moments, and here’s mine: There are two different relationships: the short-term us and the long-term us. When the time horizon is, let’s say, three hours or less, we’re unstoppable. But expand that from hours to months and it all starts to fray. Kendra doesn’t know where we’re going, and, worse, I know exactly where we’re going.
The long-term us has always been doomed.
Maybe I’m being overly fatalistic because, while all this is happening, the clock is ticking on Jimmy Rat. I place dozens of calls each day to Return to Sender, but nobody answers except late at night. And then I only reach a lady bartender with a gravelly voice who refuses to take a message. I see that Jimmy brings out in his employees the same kind of loyalty and respect that he gets from Tommy and Dad.
“Listen, I only work here,” she assures me again and again. “You got something to say to Jimmy, you tell him yourself.”
It’s so hard to find good help these days.
I finally get through on Friday afternoon.
“Hey, Vince. What’s up?”
“What’s up?” I echo. “The time’s up, that’s what’s up! Today’s the day you have to pay that money to my dad!”
“Don’t get excited,” he says. “Everything’s under control. You’ll have your money on Monday.”
“Monday?!” I blow my stack. “The deal was today!”
“Vince,” he clucks, “I used to get angry like that till I went into therapy. You wanna cry and moan about what’s not going to happen, or you wanna focus on what we really can do?”
“I did you a favor”—I’m seething—“and you hung me out to dry!”
“It’s only a weekend,” he says airily. “Who works weekends anymore? Can you honestly tell me your old man works weekends?”
“That’s not the point—” I begin, but we get disconnected again. And when I call back, I get a busy signal.
That idiot. He knows better than anyone what Uncle Shank might do to him. How can he play games with something like this?
I keep telling myself it’s not my fault. I’ve been trying to help the guy. If it wasn’t for me, he would have been screwed a week ago. Dad’s right. He’s a total flake. I wash my hands of the whole rotten business.
But the image of Uncle Shank’s pruning shears keeps haunting me. I see that shiny wet metal under our outdoor tap, and I don’t care whose fault it is.
I drive to Long Beach—to the Silver Slipper, Ray’s hangout.
He’s unsympathetic. “You want to stay away from the business. Everybody respects that. But you can’t be in for some things and out for others. Take my advice—let Jimmy worry about Jimmy. These things have a habit of working themselves out.”
“And he’ll be all right?”
He shrugs. “That’s up to Jimmy. He knew what he was getting into when he took that money.”
I figure I’d better just spell it out. “Can you guarantee that nothing’s going to happen to his fingers?”
And he can’t. I see it in his face. At that moment, I realize that I have to save Jimmy even if he can’t save himself. But how?
The answer is simple. Six hundred bucks is how. Yeah, we’ve got money—Dad’s. I get an allowance, but I’ve been blowing most of that on going out with Kendra. Practically zero in the bank and whatever’s in my pocket—about twenty bucks and—what’s this?
It’s my emergency credit card, the one from Banco Commerciale de Tijuana. I could use it to get a six-hundred-dollar cash advance and pay what Jimmy owes Dad. Then, when Jimmy gives me the money on Monday, I’ll head straight to the bank and make a payment on the account. It’ll be back in there long before whoever’s credit card it really is gets his next bill. By then it will look like a bank error: six hundred came out on Friday, and on Monday when the mistake was noticed, the six hundred was redeposited.
The teller gives me a funny look when he sees my Mexican credit card, but that isn’t half of what I get from Dad when I hand over the six hundred that night. He’s planing a chair leg, and he leans into it so hard that the thing snaps right in the clamp.
“From Jimmy Rat?”
“I told you he’d come through,” I reply stubbornly.
I escape upstairs to the cover of the FBI listening devices before he can ask me any more questions.
CHAPTER TWELVE
I’M AMAZED AT HOW well Kendra and I still get along when there’s no talking. Movies quickly become our number-two leisure-time activity. The only drawback is that, after a couple of hours, the theater lights will come up and I’ll see the hurt and disappointment that’s in her eyes almost all the time now, or at least, all the time she’s hanging around me. Probably nobody else would even notice it. But like a single minor chord in a symphony, it can change everything.
I don’t mind it so much when she’s mad at me. But the idea that I’m letting her down is more than I can bear.
Yet, on the surface, it’s a pretty good weekend. I see Kendra both days, and the subject of dinner with her parents never comes up.
That’s why I’m totally caught off guard when I walk into school on Monday and find myself facing a giant poster that reads:
VOTE VINCE AND KENDRA FOR ROYAL COUPLE
Just as before, the letters are computer-generated. But this time the message has been broken into three lines, so it takes up the whole wall, from the top of the lockers clear up to the ceiling.
Again, the shock wears off and leaves only the mad. We’ve been through this already. How could she do it again?
I tear it down, but I can’t reach the highest strip. So it still says VOTE VINCE. Eighteen hundred kids are entering the school while I stretch, jump, and try to scramble up the wall. Even I know that the sign couldn’t possibly have garnered as much unwanted attention as I’m now giving it. A bunch of basketball players are watching me leap, and laughing their heads off. Any one of them could rip it down without so much as standing on tiptoe. Thanks a lot.
Mercifully, a somewhat friendly face, Alex, shows up. Actually, he’s in a great mood. Alex’s agreeability rises and falls in direct proportion to the degree of strife between Kendra and me. He gets on all fours, and I stand on his back and tear down the top piece. This earns us applause from the basketball players and a few other “fans.”
“Thanks,” I tell Alex. I really do appreciate his help. The guy is so image conscious. I mean, he lives in constant fear that he might do something to appear uncool in front of girls. He’ll probably have nightmares for weeks about going down on his hands and knees in front of half the school.
“Vince, what are you going to do about this?” He indicates the crumpled sign in my hands.
I shake my head. “She swears it isn’t her. I want to believe her except—who else could it be? Not that many people even know we’re going out.”
“Well, you’d better brace yourself,” he warns me. “This isn’t the only one. They’re all over the school. I tore down a couple of smaller ones near my locker.”
I sigh. “If I throw this in Kendra’s face, guilty or innocent, that’s going to be the end.”
/>
“If you guys get elected Homecoming King and Queen, that’s going to be the end too,” Alex points out.
I’m in despair. “It makes no sense, but I can’t give her up, Alex. I don’t know if it’s having a girlfriend or her in particular. I realize it has to end sooner or later, but I have to hang on to it as long as I can.”
I look at him as we walk to class. Because I know the guy so well, I can see that his teeth are clenched, which is something he only does when he’s really upset. I understand instantly and feel bad. It was my little speech back there. I should have seen that all Alex would take out of it is that I’m happy, and he’s missing out.
I make it through to lunch, only having to tear down one more poster. Now comes the hard part: keeping my big mouth shut when I see Kendra in the cafeteria.
I’m almost at my locker when I’m aware of someone’s presence right behind me, and I suddenly feel the cold steel of a barrel thrust against the small of my back. I can’t even begin to explain the thoughts that race through my head.
Ever since I was old enough to understand what my father does for a living, it has always been in the back of my mind that I could be a target one day. Somebody could want to get to Anthony Luca enough to attack his kid. I mean, the vending-machine business isn’t The Godfather. There aren’t wars; nobody goes to the mattresses; the uncles don’t take turns crouched on our roof with rifles. But still, it’s a tough line of work, and Dad makes enemies. In the wake of the Calabrese murder, Mom, Mira, and I went on a sudden, unplanned three-week tour of Norway. Tommy stayed, but Dad didn’t let him buy a candy bar without a couple of the uncles driving him to the store.
My brother never got tired of messing with my head after that. He was always pointing out the assassin hiding in the bushes, the sniper in the window across the street, the kidnappers in that parked car over there. It just ratcheted up my paranoia level. Oh, I outgrew it. Or, at least, I repressed it. But now, standing in the hall with a gun against my spine, I realize that I’ve been waiting for this moment for half my life.
And then a menacing voice at my ear hisses, “Keep walking or your guts are gonna decorate that bulletin board!”