“Nice wheels, Ashcroft.”
“It’s a station wagon.”
“Volvo, though.”
“It’s my mom’s.”
“You don’t have a car?”
“I go to school in New York. You don’t need one.”
She raised her eyebrows and he turned the ignition. Right on 2nd St., away from the revelers who still had an hour in them until last call.
“So where am I going?” he asked, taking his eyes off the road slightly, enough to catch this strange girl’s brown curls swerving to look out the back window, as if to make sure no one was tailing, and on the way back to the road, his eyes caught her little knees and thighs leaning on the center console and maybe he didn’t care where they were going after all.
“Maybe I could crash with you tonight. I need to catch a train in the morning.”
“You need a ride to the train station? That’s the ‘danger’ you’re in?”
“Don’t mock me, Jerry. This is much more real than you think.” She turned and looked back again.
“What does that even mean? Is someone following us?”
She smoothed her skirt. “Doesn’t look like it. You mind pulling into that Wendy’s. I’ll get you something.”
“Are they open this late?”
“‘Eat Great, Even Late’ – of course they are.”
“What?”
“That’s been their slogan forever. Do you only eat sushi or something? I had this friend who was wasted out of her mind one time and we drove by here and she was like, ‘Eat Late, Even Great!’ over and over again and we were all dying.”
Jerry gave her a nervous chuckle.
“No need to humor me, Jerry.” They pulled up next to the florescent menu and talking box. Jen took off her seatbelt and leaned onto Jerry’s lap, rattling off items, bracing herself with a hand on the seat near his crouch, a shoulder on his arm, midriff on his leg.
“Anything else?” said the box.
“Do you want anything?” she said to Jerry. “I’m paying.” She was two inches from his face. He tried to hide his whiskey breath.
“Um, a Frosty?”
She finished the order, and leaned back into her seat as the car inched forward. She removed a white envelope from her wallet, packed with crisp fifties. She handed one to him.
“What the hell? Where did that money come from?”
“Work. Don’t worry about it.”
“Did you steal that?”
“Shut up, Jerry. Don’t accuse me.”
“Oh, come on. What am I supposed to think? You dragged me to my car after you knocked me over. You keep checking for somebody tailing us. I say you tell me what’s going on or else I’m not driving you anywhere.”
“Do you really want to know, Mr. Jerry Ashcroft, Honor Roll, New York preppie? Really? Just let me buy you a Frostie, crash on your floor, and you’ll be done with it. Believe me, it’ll work out a lot better that way.”
They got the food, a white bag of it with big straws and yellow napkins and ketchup packets, and turned back onto the road. Jerry defogged the windows as his Frosty slowly melted in the cup holder and Jen gulped hers down as outside the houses moved further and further away from each other, making ample space for grass and parking lots, plazas with CVS pharmacies, Chinese food, pizza joints, spirits stores, banks, Edible Arrangements. He agreed to let her stay the night. He would tell his mother that Jen lived far out and didn’t have a ride or something.
He adjusted himself in his seat, embarrassed to be such a skinny little pushover. It didn’t matter if he knew this girl years ago. You don’t let this kind of shit go this far. He was half horny for her, half afraid she or somebody after her would come slice his nuts off as he slept. But there was no way she was budging from that car. She’d made it abundantly clear. He had encountered assertive girls, but all the NYU girls were too prissy and JAPy to act like this. Their insistence was more of a Daddy’s girl whine, not Jen’s ‘Take-no-shit’ bravado. And if he couldn’t stand up to pushy princesses, he had no chance now.
The Volvo’s headlights revealed parallel lines of two-story homes and mailboxes and driveways and Christmas lights. Inside, they were silent.
Maybe some cheesy suburban decorations could break their awkward stalemate. Jerry pointed. “Check out this house up on the right.”
“Which one?”
“You’ll see.”
“Oh my God! That is the biggest blowup doll I’ve ever seen.” The googly-eyed white doll stood at least seven feet, and was tied to stakes in the yard.
“It’s the Abominal Snowman. The one from that Rudolph special.”
“No way! That’s right! With the Island of Misfit Toys?”
“Yeah!” He slowed the car down as he laughed. “I’d totally forgotten about that part. You remember the dopey train with square wheels? I haven’t thought about that in forever.”
“My favorite was the gun that squirts jelly. Why don’t they just refill it with water instead, you know?”
Jerry was doubling over. Maybe it was his nervousness trying to escape somehow. “And is the talking jelly gun able to pull his own trigger or does one of the other toys have to do it for him?”
She giggled and the curls flew around. “You are silly, Jerry! I had no idea.”
“‘Holly Jolly Christmas’ from that is one of my favorite Christmas songs.”
She launched into the refrain.
“Oh, so we’re skipping right to the chorus?”
“Well, if you know the verses, Mr. Rudolph, then by all means, take it away.”
Some flurries fell and stuck to hood as the Volvo approached the Ashcroft driveway, Jerry candidly impersonating Burl Ives.
The address on Louis' license was located in a place called Forest Hills in the outer limits of Harrisburg. According to Mr. Blik, some of the city's wealthiest lawyers, doctors, and businessmen called the place home. Felisha printed directions off of Google Maps. Estimated travel time: nineteen minutes.
They moved northward along Front Street. Manny leaned against the window on the passenger side, hardly noticing the thunderous bass of the blaring rap music. He could feel the anger coming off of the young woman to his left. Fel and Jen were closer than he had thought them to be...not that he had ever really put too much thought into it at all.
The radio turned off, snapped Manny into the moment and allowing for the tension to fully set in.
“What the fuck were you thinkin'?” Fel shoved Manny in the shoulder. The other did not answer so she did it again, harder this time. “I asked you a question, Manny.” More silence. He liked Fel, Manny did. His quiet was more a force of habit than a malicious act.
“Dammit, Manny.” Her last remark was subdued. That anger she'd given off had been replaced with something new. Sadness, maybe. Disappointment.
“I'm sorry.” These words were the first that came into his head, but not necessarily the most true. “It was my dad.”
“You're...” She looked away from the road, her purple contact lenses glimmering in the winter sun. She really was a beautiful girl. “You mean that bastard who left you when you was a boy?”
“Yeah. That...bastard.” Manny grew quiet again. “He showed up at my corner. Then there was a...” He was hit with an image from that night. His father gasping for air. He was wearing so many layers that Manny saw not one drop of blood. But the gasping, that unnatural clacking sound erupting from his throat. “His wallet had a number in it. Some guy wanted to meet him- The guy wanted my dad to bring three people, people like us I thought. I had to find out.”
Fel was a smart girl. She took the fragments of Manny's tale and wove them into the parts she had taken part in to create a story not far from the actual truth. “The guys in the boat...”
“My dad worked for them, I think.” He buried his head in his hands. “I don't know what I was thinking.”
“You fucked up.”
Manny sat up, suddenly on the defensive toward someone who merely stated what he had been thinking since the incident. “My dad said he needed me! I had to find out!”
“How?!” Fel punched him. “By using us?! Selling us?!”
“No!” Manny looked at her, eye-to eye, for the first time during the drive, his expression almost as fierce as hers. “I wouldn't have let anything bad happen to you-”
“Bull shit.”
“I just...”
“Had to find out. I heard you. But what you ended up doing was fucking up everything good you got now and getting Jenny kidnapped!”
“Kidnapped?!” Manny found the idea absolutely ridiculous. “Why the hell would you think she got kidnapped?!”
“Because why else wouldn't she have come back to us?”
“Because she hated it.” Manny returned his gaze to the trees and townhouses whizzing by along the river. “She was never like us. She never wanted to be there. You know that.”
“She was kidnapped. By your friends on the boat.” Felisha's eyes were open wide. The water swelling up within them terrified Manny and he saw her for the first time for what she really was: a girl in denial, a state he had been able to pinpoint since listening to his mother say, “Everything will be alright,” each night before she put him to bed.
“The guys were gone before even I reached them,” Manny said with a careful cool. “Jen never came down with us, to the river. You and I both know that she's a stronger girl than she seems. If your friend went somewhere, she did because she wanted to.”
Fel shrugged, the single motion that always coincided with her acceptance of being wrong. “Well...we have to find her. Blik won't be happy if we don't...especially with you. He'll kill you.”
Death. A fate that's never too far from those who exist in the underworld. “Yeah,” was Manny's response. “And after I'm dead. After you...get whatever he gives...he'll find her and kill her, too.”
Manny and Felisha said not a word for the remainder of the journey. They turned off from the river and drove up a long road lined in nice homes, offices and high-end shopping centers. Twelve minutes later they reached a gray sign with green letters which read “Forest Hills.”
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