Page 12 of Rooke
Jericho half closes his eyes, thinking deeply by the looks of things. “Ferrari. Bugatti,” he says slowly. “Sports cars. I have people asking me for sports cars.”
“No one drives a Bugatti in the city. What would be the point? The average speed a car travels here is fifteen miles an hour and that’s if you’re lucky.”
Jericho shakes his head sadly, skirting around his desk, which is overflowing with paperwork and empty takeaway coffee cups. He descends the two steps from his office and meanders in between the sleek fleet of expensive cars that are parked on his garage floor. “You asked me what I would like and I told you. Do I expect you to bring me a Bugatti? No, I do not expect you to bring me a Bugatti. I expect you to bring me a Prius or some other bullshit.”
Cheeky motherfucker. “I haveneverbrought you a Prius.”
“And so what? Perhaps it would be easy to sell a Prius.” He looks indifferent as he points me in the direction of the exit. “You’ll bring me something I can sell, I’m sure. Thank you for stopping by, Cuervo.”
When he smiles at me, I notice for the first time that he’s had some dental work done: a gold-plated grill over his top row of teeth. On his grill, the word:Arrepiente.
Repent.
******
Twenty grand in a black plastic shopping bag. Twenty grand, banging against my shinbone as I walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. The long struts of the support wires look like long, skinny fingers stretching up towards the sky. The sun’s been down for hours already, and the thick layer of clouds overhead break occasionally, revealing the brief, sharp pin prick point of some unknowable star. It’s so cold, the air hurts as I draw it into my lungs. I think about a lot of things as I cross the bridge.
I start by thinking about what I’m going to do with the money swinging from my hand as I walk towards home. It would be really easy to flag a taxi down and pay to be taken to my front doorstep once I’m off the walkway, but I know I’m not going to. The cold feels like it’s restarting my heart, and walking always helps to clear my head.
Jacob. I could give the money to him. He has student debt up to his eyeballs just like everyone else, and struggling to make it as a musician in New York is pretty much the same as struggling to make it as an actor in Los Angeles. Nine times out of ten it just ain’t gonna happen. If I give the money to Jake, though, he’s going to want to know where I got it from. He’s too curious. He’d never be satisfied with the knowledge that it’s his to do with as he pleases, no matter where it came from. There would be questions, questions I obviously won’t be able to answer. We’d end up arguing or falling out, and neither of us need the drama in our lives right now. If I had a sibling, a brother or a sister, I could give them some of the money. I wallow in the strangely comforting idea of having an older brother to look up to. A younger sister to protect. Only those who are born as only children can know and understand the longing most of us have for a brother or a sister. I’m an adult, and even now I wish things were different.
I think about Lola, the last girl I fucked. Would I spend any of this money on Lola if we werestillfucking? Probably. I’d take her for dinner. Maybe buy her some flowers. I’d do clichéd, pointless things like take her to see a movie, and afterwards we’d get steaming hot salted pretzels from a bodega near my place. Would we disappear off on a plane to South America together, to adventure through Argentina and Patagonia? Abso-fucking-lutely not. She wasn’t that kind of girl.
Bicycles zip past me in blurs of blinking red bike lights and puffy black down jackets. I don’t hear their bells ringing. I listen to a heavy rap playlist on my phone, earphones blocking out the world, and I have one of those bizarre, out-of-body,how-is-this-my-life?moments.
It really is a surreal kind of life, y’know. Weird, unexpected things happen all the time. Twenty grand continues to thump against the side of my leg as I walk across the bridge, taking my time, in no hurry, even though everyone else seems to be rushing like their lives depend on it.
It takes me two hours to get back home. I find myself staring up at the building from the sidewalk, considering the yellowed light that’s on in the living room, shining out into the darkness. My father’s voice echoes inside my head, worn out and frayed a little, as though he can’t really decide why he’s even bothering to ask me the question he then posed.Why, Rooke? You have everything you could ever possibly need. Why would you do it? Why would you steal someone’s car?The bastard wasn’t really mad I’d been caught stealing. He was embarrassed that I’d been caught stealing cars specifically, that I’d committed such a pedestrian crime. If I’d been discovered red handed insider trading or performing some other white-collar misdemeanor, it would have been less humiliating to him.
“Because cars are a solid,” I’d told him back then. “You can mistreat a car. You can drive it too fast. Too dangerously. You can scratch the paintwork. You can crash it into a guardrail. You can set it on fire, until it’s just a burned out, unrecognizable shell.”
My father had paled at how uncivilized I’d turned out to be. Him in his fresh pressed, snow-white shirts and the set of seven plain, conservative ties he rotated through depending on what day of the week it was.
I knew it even then; I was never going to please him, no matter what I did. He wanted conformity. Obedience. Respect.
And all I wanted was something I could fucking destroy.
SEVEN
MOTHERFUCKER
ROOKE
5 Years Ago.
Goshen Secure Center
“You’ve lost weight.”
I look at my mother, sitting across the other side of the table from me, and I have to literally bite back laughter. What does she think this is, the motherfucking Ritz Carlton? “I’m in juvenile detention, Sim. The food here is dog shit. The guards aren’t exactly giving out seconds either.”
“All right. No need to be rude.”
There’s every reason to be rude. I told her not to come. Back when they locked me away in here eighteen months ago, I told her very fucking specifically not to come and see me. She's adhered to my wishes all this time, so why the fuck has she shown up now? I know my mother is an attractive woman. I’ve had friends tell me they want to fuck her my whole life. So having her come here, where my cell mates have nothing to do all day long but try and find ways to get underneath each other’s skin, is just fucking perfect. Honestly. I know exactly what’s going to happen the moment I walk back onto the block. Someone is going to say something. Someone’s going to make some kind of suggestive comment about my mother, and I am going to murder them.
“Where’s Dad?” I ask quietly.
“He couldn’t get away from work, I’m afraid. This is a very busy time of year for him, Rooke. You know that.”
