Father Lucifer, Chapter 1 (combines prior sections)

Father Lucifer

by John Barnes

this book is dedicated to the memory of James Crumley.  I think I remember everything he ever said to me, and I hope that wouldn't disappoint him.

"I wouldn't touch him with a barge-pole myself," said Mallow.

"There is a limit to human charity," said Lady Outram, trembling all over.

"There is," said Father Brown dryly; "and that is the real difference between human charity and Christian charity. You must forgive me if I was not altogether crushed by your contempt for my uncharitableness to-day; or by the lectures you read me about pardon for every sinner. For it seems to me that you only pardon the sins that you don't really think sinful. You only forgive criminals when they commit what you don't regard as crimes, but rather as conventions. So you tolerate a conventional duel, just as you tolerate a conventional divorce. You forgive because there isn't anything to be forgiven."

"But, hang it all," cried Mallow, "you don't expect us to be able to pardon a vile thing like this?"

"No," said the priest; "but we have to be able to pardon it."

He stood up abruptly and looked round at them.

"We have to touch such men, not with a bargepole, but with a benediction," he said. "We have to say the word that will save them from hell. We alone are left to deliver them from despair when your human charity deserts them. Go on your own primrose path pardoning all your favourite vices and being generous to your fashionable crimes; and leave us in the darkness, vampires of the night, to console those who really need consolation; who do things really indefensible, things that neither the world nor they themselves can defend; and none but a priest will pardon. Leave us with the men who commit the mean and revolting and real crimes; mean as St. Peter when the cock crew, and yet the dawn came."

-- G.K. Chesterton, “The Chief Mourner of Marne”

   
Chapter 1

I was cutting across the DU campus, on time for work and trying to hurry enough to make it early. It was well over seventy in the first week of November; Denver has lots of days out of season. Against the dead-computer-blue sky, the sparse and clumpy leaves on the trees still flamed orange and red. Dribbling traces of the Halloween snow held on in the concrete drainage gutters and the shadows of the big practical education buildings.

The weather was nice but most of my attention was about twenty feet in front of me. You know that state of mind a guy gets into when sex and love and all that is the furthest thing from your mind? You haven’t had any in age, you think you’re never going to want any ever again, but then you notice  someone’s hair is nice or she’s got a real pretty face or something?

Like you see some woman just going about her business but while she's doing it, she'sbeing so beautiful, or cool,  you think, Wow. Not like you’re  all interested and whatnot, necessarily, but you notice.

Thick copper-colored curly hair poured down her back, stopping just above a nice round butt in tight jeans. I was overtaking her pretty fast, because I was hurrying, and she had to walk slow because she was with a little boy, maybe five years old—I don’t know much about kids—just finishing off an ice cream cone. She squatted down to wipe his mouthwith a paper napkin, and I  glimpsed her face—wide mouth, thick lips, heavy bushy eyebrows, what Mom calls "strong-featured."

Now that her hair had slid off her back, I saw she was wearing one of those t-shirts from some Jesus rally, white on blue with a cross, a place and date, and I thought, What a waste! just before she felt me looking at her and looked up with a great smile. I grinned back and went around her and the kid, on my way with my day enhanced by one good moment.

There’s a rule or something, I don’t get to keep good moments.

“I smell a pussy!” The voice was harsh, loud, male, and young.

I turned around.  A pasty-white kid with dyed black hair zoomed by the young mother, then past me, out of arm’s reach for me to kick his leg or tip his bike.

My breath seemed, all on its own, to form the words, “That’s funny, I hear an asshole.”

He spun the bike, jumped off, and took a step toward me. “What did you call me?”

I walked toward him. “Corey,” I said, “what was that about?”

He stood there looking all defiant and badass and shit, a cigarette dangling in his left hand.  I kept walking like I was going to walk through him.

 “What, you think you can beat me up and get away with it just cause they fucking fixed things for you — “

I stepped into arm’s reach, which was unpleasant because I totally hate cigarette smoke, but it made him take a step back so that his foot was almost on his bike. My hands rose gently, not clenched in fists, not even reaching toward him, just like floating, and the fingers flicked upward to lead his gaze over his head as the back of his ankle settled against the bicycle. I made a slight pushing gesture with my open palms, focusing my ki through my wrists, through the empty space between us, through his sternum, on to infinity, and said, softly, “Boo.”

 He tried to step back, but his back foot was pinned, his front foot had nowhere to go except into the bicycle, and because of where I had pulled his gaze, his center was way too high. His feet couldn’t retreat, so his head went behind his ass, and took his center with it.  It was a messy fall and he didn’t take it well. “Fuck you.”

“I don’t think that’s nice language,” I said, “And just for the record, all I did was stand here and say ‘Boo.’”

“I saw it,” the young mom with the copper-colored hair said, behind me.

“Are you gonna tell on him, Mommy?” the little guy asked.

I couldn’t help it, I laughed, and I could hear she was laughing too, and Corey, who had a whole shitload of dignity to uphold as the editor of the Pitkin Post, got up, grabbed his bike, and rode away pedaling like a nut. Must’ve been a hot news story someplace he had to cover, I guess. He left his cigarette butt smoldering in the grass, so I stepped on it.

“He didn’t touch you or hurt you, did he?” I asked. I saw she was younger than I’d thought,  twenty-five at most.

She shook her head. “Just startled me.”

Her tee shirt said,  

2006 Praise at Pitkin. 

He Lives!!! 

God is Awesome!!! 

I tried not to re-read, considering  she’d already had her quota of sexual harassment for today.

The little guy shouted, “You knocked him fuckin’ down, boom!”

I squatted down to his eye level like I do teaching kid judo and kid karate. It gets their attention. I looked him in the eye. “Hey.”

Suddenly shy, he said, “Hi,” and looked away.

I figured he’d been told about bad words a few times before. “Look, bud,” I said, bringing his gaze back to me, “That’s not a word a little boy should be saying. It’s not really a word anybody should say, even if people do say it a lot.”

He made a face. “You said a bad word. You called him—”

“I know what I called him.” Shit, I thought, I hope I’m never a dad, this shit is hard. “When people get very angry, sometimes they say bad things, but that doesn’t make it right to say them.”

He didn’t look very convinced, but his mother mouthed thank you at me. I stood up, we smiled at each other, and  I thought of an exit line.  I looked at my watch. “Oh, shih-uh, oot, I’m about to be late for work. Gotta run.” And ran.

She called, “thank you,” after me and I sort of half-waved back at her. De nada, I thought. It’s always a pleasure to get to work off some rage on an asshole, and having it be Corey Carone is even better. But if I stick around you might figure out who I am.

It is only maybe a mile and a half from the crappy little frame house in Englewood where I grew up (and now live again), to the DU/Pitkin College/Iliff Seminary neighborhood called Wash Park, but it might as well be another planet. Washington Park itself has stone bridges and ponds and all that park-stuff,  like a college town from an old movie. All these big stone and brick houses, real old like eighty years and more, a lot of them what they call Denver Squares with big porches and columns and high windows and whatnot, and big old trees in the yard.

Of course from any roof in Wash Park you see it’s right in the middle of South Denver, with strip malls, railroads, big blocky apartment buildings, steel warehouses, freeways, and regular old tract houses, miles of ordinary city, just a few blocks in any direction, but at street level, it's real nice.

People that live there are the kind that we're all supposed to think are all hot shit: the dads are professors or run the state government downtown, the moms are on the kind of committees that get asked to say something on the news, and all the kids play soccer and piano, go to high school leadership conferences and colleges out of state, and turn into governors, scientists, and vice presidents of marketing.

I went a block out of my way, like always, to not go past the Shau house. I didn’t even know if Chelsea’s parents still lived there, but they were real good to me as long as I deserved it—longer, actually—and I didn’t want them to see me now. If it wasn’t such a pain in the ass to move a car after you park in that neighborhood, I’d never have gone anywhere near that house on foot.Walking that extra block always made me feel like shit, but then maybe shit deserves to feel like shit.

Even after that happy thought, the out-of-season day, the movie-pretty surroundings, and having put a good scare into Corey all put a glow on things. Besides, I was running where I wanted to, and just because I wanted to. I’d spent nineteen months only being allowed to run on someone else’s schedule, on a track between concrete walls with razor wire on top of them. Anyplace without a wall, where I can pick any direction I want without attracting interest from a guy with a shotgun—by comparison, it’s all good. By the time I trotted onto Nasty John’s street side patio, I was feeling pretty good again.

“Hey, Dim.”

Like I said, there’s a rule: I don’t get to keep those moments. It was Gary. I try not to snap at him.

He said, “Uh, as long as you’re going inside—“

“As long as I’m going inside,” I said, “You can call me Hal.”

Harsh, yeah, but I get so tired of people calling me that. They do it because Breit does it. I knew Gary meant no harm. He's just thoughtless and does  things he sees other people do because he is trying to fit in and be cool, which is weird in a guy who must be forty.

He tugged his strap cap and stood up, looking sort of like Michael Moore's dumpy brother. He spread his arms and for one nauseating moment I thought he was going to hug me to his flaking leather jacket and grimy black tee shirt, but instead he started belting out that “You Can Be My Bodyguard” song that my mother likes, except singing “Call me Hal” instead of “Call Me Al.”

“All right,” I said, “Anything to stop you from singing. Every time you do the Humane Society comes out to investigate. What did you need?”

“Another pot of Thick and Sticky Baby,” he said. “Just whenever. I’m going to be out here till dark. Hal.” He was making sure he set it in his memory.

“No prob, will do,” I said.

“Thanks, Hal.”

I have no idea what, if anything, he does for a living. Maybe he’s a trustifarian. Most of the time he sits in a corner—he wants his back to at least one wall, preferably two—and watches people and draws them in a big black notebook. He’s really good but he doesn’t want anyone to see him drawing.

Besides drawing and pounding down coffee and pastry, he also reads newspapers, sits on his huge ass, and helps college students with their papers by spelling and defining things for them. I guess if he pays his bills he’s about the most harmless guy I know, and really one of my favorite customers.  And I'd just taught him to call me Hal.  Today was being surprisingly good.

Inside, it was almost deserted—everyone wanted to be on the patio. I passed Gary’s order on to Megan (probably my favorite coworker, she's pretty cool for a nineteen year old who knows everything—you know how that  is). She got going on the pot of Thick and Sticky Baby—espresso, microwaved condensed milk, and molasses, blenderized with steamed milk so you can drink it instead of having to saw pieces off. It’s like caffeinated molten candy.

As she was getting it, and I was stowing my pack and washing my hands in the back room, she called out, “You have a job applicant coming in, should be here about now. Note from Breit about it on the board.”

On the bulletin board there was a folded paper with “Dim” scrawled on it. I read,

Yo Dim,

Of course I appreciated that he was the one who started people calling me that. But hey, the “Yo” made his fat old ass seem like, so ... hip.

Applicant named Gayle Westron coming in for interview 1:30 pm.

It was 1:35 now. Breit hated lateness. I never gave a shit.

Sarah quit TT4G before I could fire her TT4G.

That was his abbreviation for This Time For Good. Considering the way he and Sarah screamed at each other, and that for the last two months he’d only put her on shifts where I supervised, so he wouldn’t have to try to communicate with her, this was not exactly a surprise.

So we need coverage NOW, so if Gayle looks right to you, she’s hired.
                                                            Breit
            P.S. Warn her about me if you hire her, so we don’t start off the way Sarah and I did.

He didn’t need to worry about that; if anyone came within ten miles of working for John Breit, I warned them,  just like I told people when there was a mess where they were about to sit.

“Hey, Hal?”

“Yeah, Megan?”

“The applicant is here. Shall I heat up the branding irons for the ordeal?”

“Let’s get the blood sample first,” I said. “Break out the leech.”

The giggle  from the counter seemed weirdly familiar. As I came back in, Megan said, “Hey, and she laughs at our jokes. We have to hire her.”

It was the copper-haired mother in the Christian tee shirt, still towing the kid, which I was guessing was why she was late.

“Oh, wow,” she said, “You’re the manager?”

“That’s what everyone says when they first meet Hal,” Megan said.

I gave Megan my best Cut that out, young lady, look. “So you’re Gayle Westron? I’m Hal Dimmesdale, and this is Megan Salazar.”

“I’m sorry I had to bring Elisha,” she said. “My sitter ducked out at the last minute, and since it’s my mom, I can’t fire her. If I get the job I’ll try to line up something more reliable.”

We took a table in the corner by the counter, away from the couple who were reading Westword together and the guy doing organic chem, and I got out a pad to take notes. I had no idea what I was going to ask her, but I thought I was supposed to write down the answers. Elisha scribbled diligently with a marker on a pad she’d given him. I guess he had a lot more ideas than I did.

 “So,” I said, “You need a job, and you talked to Breit. Have you ever worked at a coffee house before?” I wasn’t sure which was being more brilliant, just then, my managerial acumen or my sparkling repartee.

She winced and looked down. “Uh, no. I um—the last job I had was in high school. I guess you’re going to wonder what I was doing, you know, between?”

“This is the first interview I’ve ever done. I probably wouldn’t have thought to ask.”

“I’ll try to be sneakier.” She took a sip of the coffee we’d poured for her. “This is weird.”

“The coffee?” Every so often Nancy, on the morning shift, forgets to rinse the cleaner out of one of the big urns before refilling it.

“No, the coffee’s pretty good. I mean after this afternoon. I mean—well, anyway, I kind of wanted to thank you, I mean, it’s kind of nice to know that some guys will stand up to—you know. What you called him.”

“I guess,” I said. “I just hate people who do things just to ruin other people’s days.”

“Me too.”

It got real quiet. This was starting to resemble the world’s worst first date.

“Uh,” I said. More brilliant repartee. “Um. Tell you what. I don’t know how to interview anybody. You don’t know how to be interviewed. How about if I show you what goes into the job and then if you say you want to do it for the money that Breit offered you, I’ll say you’re hired and we’re both out of the awkwardness.”

“Sure. Gosh, I’m scared to death of all this.”

The “gosh” reminded me of her shirt, and I said, “Okay, let me tell you what might be the hard thing first. Look at the menu up there on the board and you will see what John Breit means when he calls himself Nasty John, and remember he gave that name to himself.”

She looked up at the board, which reached ten feet up to the tintype ceiling, starting from about waist height, and ran maybe thirty feet across the back; Nasty John's serves more than a hundred named coffee drinks, about twenty different pastries, and maybe thirty kinds of other stuff like soup and sandwiches and so on. It takes a while to read a representative sample. Gayle's jaw dropped; she covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh my god.”  A pause. “Uh. Sorry.”

“I’m not worried about you offending me,” I pointed out. “Yeah, that’s really the menu and yeah, Breit insists on us using those names. The most popular orders are the Hot Black Mama, the Petite Sweet Blonde Whipped, and the Pussy Warmer. And you’ll have to take orders for all those and say them back to people, especially when Breit is watching you. Gary outside, the guy that draws?  He gets so embarrassed that he can only order from a guy. If he's desperate to order and he can't say it to you, ask him if he wants a Thick and Sticky Baby—that's usually it. Anyway, you’ll have to say all those things all the time. And some guys do get cruel about it if they can tell you’re embarrassed.”

“They like to trick you, make you to say extra nasty stuff,” Megan put in. I looked up at her, grateful to have help with this; I hadn’t realized she’d been standing over the table. “Long as you don’t let it get to you, you’re okay. My first day here I took a tray out to a table of guys on the patio and I said, ‘Which one of you is the Virgin Buster?’ and they all laughed, like I mean it was ridiculous, till Sarah—the girl who just quit, that you’re going to replace—she said, ‘Megan, you forgot the comma before Buster,’ and they all laughed twice as hard but all the sudden I’m their favorite–huge tips from them, ever since.”

“Not everyone’s as tough or as fast as Sarah,” I said.  Gayle still hadn’t moved. I asked, soft as I could, “Are you okay? Did we kill you?”

She shrugged and blinked the way someone does when they’re afraid they’re going to cry. “I don’t know. I need a job soon. Mr. Breit told me about the pay and hours and it’s all perfect, he said mostly you’d be my boss—“

Maybe trying to lighten things up a little, Megan said, “Well, everything has its drawbacks.”

Gayle looked a little annoyed at her. “Poop,” she said. “I like—um—okay, this is embarrassing.” She’d obviously forgotten my name. So much for my hopes for some hot Jesus-Mommy action.

“Uh, Hal,” I said. “Hal Dimmesdale. Some people around here sometimes call me ‘Dim,’ but I hate that.”

“He really really hates it,” Megan put in.

Then I saw it happen—Gayle recognized my name. Corey Carone had put something about me in his newspaper, anything from a full menace-to-the-public editorial to a cheap shot one-liner, every week since school started. Everyone knew who I was.

People say it all the time, but with all my martial arts, I know: being kicked in the stomach was literally, exactly, really, totally what it felt like.

It got real quiet.

Memories came at me like a flung fistfull of filthy splinters of broken glass:

Headline in the Pitkin Post, front page:  

Drug Dealer Jock Back on Campus

Paroled in Death of Girlfriend

 Overheard at the Tree Trunk when I was in a booth eating chili and studying; it caught my attention because I'd known that voice since we were little kids and he was my best bud: “So he was all hot shit in college judo and Pitkin College has been a small-college judo power, like, forever, so they totally forgave him for like, all this other shit.  But I went to high school with him, and I used to go to tae kwon do with him when I was little, and by the time I was seven my mom told me I wasn’t allowed to play with him."

That was true, but Jimmy didn't mention all the years of sneaking around to see me again. 

 "Dim is basically just trailer trash, his whole family’s like that."

Nobody ever called me Dim till Breit started it, long after Jimmy and me parted ways.

“So he got into drugs and was dealing at clubs. And he had like this super-achiever Asian girlfriend, brainy and gorgeous, so one night he was driving crazy impaired and she got killed.  He walked away without a scratch. Now they fixed it up so he can come back, fresh out of prison with a full-ride scholarship. It just shows, like, they really will do anything for a jock.”

One time at dinner in Cañon City, a big guy, one of the real bad ones, sitting right behind me and talking loud to make sure I heard him: “Yeah, he a snitch, that’s why the guards watch him like they his en-tou-rage. Got him a scholarship to college and his own sexy Chinese bitch, but he so fuckin’ dumb he goin’ the wrong way on a freeway and one side the car hit a semi.  That China bitch, she just fold up in the metal, you know, in the metal, like you put a bug in  a Coke can and you step on it. And he a snitch.”

The Magical Kaleidoscope of How Hal Sucks. Especially if you remember that what you do with a kaleidoscope is, you hold a bunch of pieces of broken glass up to your eye to see a pattern.

I didn't know how long it had been since it got so quiet, but long enough for Megan to have taken Elisha over to another table, where he was drawing her a picture. I finally looked up.

Gayle said, “I really, totally, definitely … I need this job so bad. I can deal with the language. Can you deal with me, you know, knowing about what happened?”

I did what Coach Park always said, took a deep breath; thought my hands and feet warm as it was coming in; thought the undersides of my arms and legs heavy; felt ki coming in through my feet and flowing into hara and pushing my tired, dead, old ki out through my fingers, toes, and head; took another breath now that my ki was pure, and let it out into the truth, looking her right in the eye. “Everything you heard about me is true,” I said. “I got so screwed up on vodka and X that I rammed an abandoned car on the shoulder of the Park Avenue freeway entrance, spun out, got turned around without even knowing it, and drove into an oncoming semi, and my girlfriend Chelsea was killed instantly. I guess I think about that, like, every three minutes or so. Because I can’t believe I was that guy that did that, but shit, I was. I am.”

“And you loved her,” Gayle whispered.

That was so weird that I stopped trying to sound tough, and blurted, “Yeah, I did.”

 “Well.” She looked, saw Elisha  safely involved with drawing for Megan,  and said, “well. Fuck. That must be totally fucking horrible.” She sort of smiled at my startled look. “Just recently some guy told my little boy that when grownups are very upset, they sometimes say things they shouldn’t. It seemed like the time.”

“Sorry I upset you.”

She nodded and ran her hand over her face. “I’m just sorry you didn’t kill Corey.  It must hurt so bad to be you. So can you deal with me knowing?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Well, then, all right, if some guy asks me for an Extra Slippery Pussy Warmer with a Popped Cherry, I’ll cope. I’d like to have you for my boss.”

“You would?”

“Hey, when you stood up to that creepy little guy, and then took off like a rocket right after you talked to Elisha—I thought either I’d just found the world’s shyest knight in armor, or possibly you had to go change into a costume, fly through the air, and fight evil. So if we’re working in here and some guy pats my butt, will you say ‘Boo’ and make him fly backwards through the air?”

“If it means you’ll take the job, sure. Glad to.”

“And is Mr. Breit as awful as Megan says he is?”

“Even worse,” Megan said, returning Elisha to the table, holding the now-completed drawing of a blob-person with a blob-sun, “but so monotonous you get used to it. Like after a while you get used to him talking to your chest because he always does it, and he has about the same fifty middle school jokes that he just goes through over and over. Please take the job, Gayle.”

“Okay,” she said. “Mr. Breit said my first shift would be tomorrow evening?”

“That’s what Sarah’s old shift was,” I said. “But I work a private party for that one, and I might not be around as much as you'll need me on a first shift, so can you come in sometime during the day tomorrow to learn the ropes? That way you’ll get some extra hours and it sounds like you could use a fat first paycheck. Could you come at, like, two, tomorrow?  Just for a couple hours to learn the system?”

“I’ll find a way.” Gayle stuck out her hand and we shook. “Thanks, Hal. I’m going to make you so glad you hired me.” She led Elisha away; he turned and waved to Megan at the door. “Cute,” I said.

“And her little boy is a sweetheart.”

I had meant Elisha, actually. One of the few things I didn’t like about Megan was that she had appointed herself my matchmaker in chief.  I didn’t think Gayle was even looking; a lot of single moms aren’t. And god knew I wasn't, anyway.

 § 

 For the next couple hours, Nasty John's was dead but not totally dead. That gave me too much time to think and not enough time to study, so I mindlessly knocked off piddly manager shit, worked through a calculus problem set, read half a chapter of logic without understanding it, and listened to Megan about this new guy that was, like, definitely nice but so confusing and maybe just wanted some make-outage.

Late in the afternoon, big classes let out at DU and Pitkin, and Iliff Seminary always had a few classes that de facto met at Nasty John's. Today we were slammed. No Denverite ever voluntarily wastes any of those late fall days with perfect blue sky, a hint of cool wind off the mountains, warm enough to walk without a sweater and cool enough to run without sweating; there aren't more than five or so in a November. People get out into them as fast as they can, and any place with a patio crowds up. 

I'd just set up a Peter Yanker and two Virgin Busters, when I turned back to the counter and Stacy Hilburn was there.

I hadn't seen her since she'd testified against me at my manslaughter trial. She looked better than I remembered, and what I remembered was pretty good. Slim all over, small blonde, came up to my shoulder maybe, a few of those pale freckles that look all cute and All-American, tummy that looked planed and sanded, thighs like Minnie Mouse. Freshman year, when she'd been my best bud, she'd picked up some cash doing leg modeling.

She was looking down at her money, deciding how much she wanted to spend, I guess, so she hadn't really seen me yet. 

She said, "Petite Sweet Blonde, Whipped." 

I just said, "Okay, that all?" like I would to anyone else.

"Hal?" At least she was smiling. "Hal!" I'd forgotten about the gray-blue eyes, though I don't know how.

"Yeah, I uh, I work here." Where I'm noted for my repartee. "Are you still around?" 

"Still at Pitkin, doing the fifth year senior thing, and I was out of school a while too." She sounded just like someone inventing a reason not to have read the Pitkin Post. "But I'm graduating this spring. How long have you—I mean—"

"They paroled me in July. I'll graduate in three years—I flunked out that semester." I figured no need to say which semester.

"Yeah, that sucks. But at least you get to finish."

The door swung open and a warm whiff of November Indian summer blew in. The guy looked so prof—little goatee, round glasses, worn out suit jacket, new Dickey pants, and one of those lumpy cloth hats that looks like someone sewed a folded-up sock to the top of his head—that I was sure the bums just said, "Hey, prof," when they hit him up for change. Probably he was so absent-minded he just told them he'd give them an incomplete, maybe adding, "Sorry about your grandmother."

I figured he'd take a minute or so thinking, so I fixed Stacy's order. A "Petite Sweet Blonde" is a shot of espresso, dash of vanilla, and tablespoon of honey in steamed milk. "Whipped" means "froth it and squirt Reddi-Whip on top."

I finished Stacy's order, and the guy in the prof costume decided on a Stud Muffin and a Green Eyed Skank. I didn't look up while I was taking his money and putting his order together, but after he drifted off to a table, Stacy was still standing there.

Well, figure, if she'd wanted to avoid me I'd've never seen her or if she'd wanted to give me shit she'd've started right in. I guess I had to accept that she wanted to be friends.

But I couldn't see why. By the night I got all fucked up and killed Chelsea, Stacy wasn't hanging with us anymore, usually, but for some reason she went to the club with us that night. Couldn't have been old times' sake, she'd never done that kind of shit with us before.

Much later, when they put Stacy on the stand, looking totally all-American good-girl college chick in an interview suit and pearls and all, she told the truth: I was totally trashed that night, martinis, weed, and X. Less than an hour before I peeled out with Chelsea in my car, Stacy had seen me fall across some people's table and fix it up by giving the guy I hit $300 and the bouncer $200.

All the prosecutor had to do was point to that for the jury. Here's a kid, his mom gets food stamps, dad's in prison. But he's got a new car, paid cash for it two months before. How can he even afford to be in that club, let alone pull out five benjamins to fix some guy's weave?

The jury found me guilty on all counts, forty minutes flat, made it home in time to see themselves on the news over dinner.

I didn't blame Stacy one fucking bit for telling the truth, you know, no hard feelings. But … she had no way of knowing that I'd be glad to see her—she'd taken a big risk, seeing me, just to be friends again. I didn't deserve any friend that good, and I knew it.

Besides, I didn't have a clue what to say, know what I'm saying? Like casual, About killing your roommate, you cool with that? Or maybe like inspirational, Hey, thanks for testifying, it helped me get my life together, no really, I mean it.

Meanwhile I must be making hella impression by staring off into space. "Sorry I zoned out on you," I said.

"It wasn't for more than half an hour, and I think it's kind of cute the way your mouth hangs open and saliva drips out."

I was so clueless I checked the clock and wiped my face. Of course I'd only actually been standing there like a dumbfuck for like a couple seconds.

"Score," she said. And that twinkle, I'd forgotten how her gray-blue eyes could twinkle.

"Definitely," I admitted.

She hopped up on a bar stool at the counter, like a pixie perching on a mushroom. The big rush was over till dinner time, and Stacy and me just talked, establishing that somewhere down underneath we were still the freshgeeks that talked till oh god thirty about Harry Potter and Firefly and local bands and all that stuff that you think is your identity when you're just out of high school.

Along the way I said prison hadn't been as bad as I'd been afraid of and that I was picking up judo again pretty quick, considering I'd missed two seasons, and kind of angled to see what had kept her from graduating on time.

She just said it was some kind of trouble with her family, and she thought the trouble was over, "but you know how that family bullshit can go, even when it's over you never definitely know it's totally over, you know?"

"Oh, yeah, I have a family too," I said. God I sounded retarded.

"Yeah, I know, your sister crashed with me and Chelsea for a couple days, that 'you too can go to college' dealie they had at the start of sophomore year, remember?"

I'd forgotten completely, because it was just before I grabbed my pretty good life and extremely wonderful girlfriend with both hands and shook them all to shit till there was nothing left. "Yeah," I said, "Now you remind me, for about two months there, Leigh wanted to be you."

"I was a good influence—me?"

"I think she just wanted to be blonde and thin," I said. Stacy stuck her tongue out at me, I said, "Score back," and she grabbed my wrist and lasered right through my head with those blue-gray eyes. "I've missed you. I am still your friend, Hal. Say hi when you see me. Got it?"

"Uh, yeah." More of my famous repartee.

Then I was saved by the bell: Nasty John's regular pack of Yakky Dumb Chicks—you know the kind, all teeth and hair and shrieks—pranced in, yelling directions to each other like our main room was a fucking corn maze instead of eighteen tables and a counter with eight stools.

Stacy winked, raised an eyebrow, and vanished like she really was the Pixie Queen.

I set about supplying the demands for Pussy Warmers, Peter Yankers, and Wide Open Honeys. Not one of them wanted their order the regular way. I guess when you look, talk, and dress just like all your friends, you have to be a fussy eater just so you can remember which one is Aymee and which one is Jekka. (Aymee is afraid of chocolate sprinkles "cause they're bad like clowns and flags and things" and Jekka has to have "half the usual amount of honey and it has to be organic and use French Vanilla not Dark Roast kay? Cause that's what I like.")

As I set up their orders on the counter behind me, that little coterie of intellectuals conducted a focus group on my appearance. Aymee liked my shoulders and hair, Melody thought my eyes were nice, but all of them agreed I had a great butt. Eventually they went clopping away in their noisy shoes, to find a table outside where they could smoke and shriek.

They pretty much trampled Dr. Lang, coming in. Taller than me but probably half my weight, he had very dark skin, a white mustache like an albino walrus, and a very round shaved head. In old rumpled khakis, a jacket that was expensive twenty years ago, and down at the heels moccasins without socks, he looked about as much like a professor as a guy in a space suit looks like an astronaut. In that very-educated-Jamaican accent that sounds more British than you can find on any actual British guy, Lang said, "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good butt must be in want of a hookup."

I was sure that was a reference to something, so I laughed.

He grinned. "I was more entertained by the way you became just as invisible as any teacher."

"Invisible?"

"I need only turn my back to write on a blackboard and instantly I am invisible. They start talking at once about their HIV tests, or how drunk they were last night, or what excuse they think will work on me."

"Does 'I got drunk and now I have to get an HIV test' work?"

"Oh, for that I require documentation—video, preferably."

Dr. Lang had been my favorite teacher before, the last guy whose classes I attended. Then last summer, when I was just getting out of Cañon, some of the profs were organizing to boycott me, because if none of them would be my advisor I couldn't enroll, but Lang stepped up and said he would. On local Fox News he said, Hal has paid a debt to society, which is more than you can say for most of my colleagues. "Would your insane boss be around anywhere?"

I glanced at the clock. "I'm expecting him back in half an hour."

"Splendid. I'll wait. Hot Black Mama."

I pulled a three espresso shots and dropped them in a mug of hot water with a square of dark chocolate and a squirt of molasses. If you have one of those at nine in the morning, you'll be awake till Christmas. I left room "for cream." actually from Lang's flask.

He settled into his favorite corner table and I avoided looking that way, so I wouldn't see Lang drop a double shot of dark rum into his Hot Black Mama. He was at least half in the bag all the time, and all the way in the bag at least half the time, and still a better teacher than most of them.

I started on my accounting homework, something about quarterly reports, but I was being distracted by my own accounting of the quarter year. November 6 was was my three-month anniversary out of Cañon. Counting Megan, Stacy, Dr. Lang, Gayle, and Elisha, I could now say I had exactly a handful of friends. All the girls were beautiful, all the men were chill, and I didn't really know why any of them liked me. Growth was slow this quarter, but it was growth. Maybe next quarter wouldn't totally blow.

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