The Drifter(29)

When they pulled into the parking lot with another crunch of gravel, the building before them looked all but abandoned, with nothing but a couple of cardboard boxes green with mildew to be seen. But once they walked around the busted planks of the boardwalk, there was a small, flat, teal lake surrounded by an infinitely soggy, lush, green landscape. To the right, there was a guy, presumably J.D., who sold a carton of worms for a buck, bags of chips for fifty cents, and cold beers from a cooler for two dollars each. Three guys were sitting silently at a picnic table in the shade: Weird Bobby; Jacob, who played guitar and sang for a local band, Boba Fett and the Bounty Hunters, which had been gratefully shortened to the Bounty; and Teddy, who lived with George, the first of Betsy’s many mistakes back in 1988, and was one of the only truly decent guys she knew on campus. Teddy taught her how to play Spades when she was hanging out at their house. At least Betsy got something out of it other than a bad reputation.

Weird Bobby was in his late twenties, thirties tops, but he was considered an elder statesman in town. He wore an Orioles hat pulled low over a mass of curly hair and his signature tube socks up to his knees under threadbare Converse high-tops. Jacob, with dirty blonde hair, a dirty red T-shirt, dirty, shredded Levi’s, and dirty work boots, was gorgeous in the filthiest possible way. Once, she caught him sneaking out of Ginny’s room at 5:00 a.m., but his then-girlfriend, a beatific Deadhead named Marion who wore long, Indian print skirts with bells stitched around the waist, was none the wiser. Marion had disappeared earlier that summer after a Dead show in Atlanta and no one expected to see her back anytime soon.

Teddy’s equally dirty blonde hair was snarled in the back of his head like a toddler’s. His glasses, sort of round and square at the same time, a mottled tortoise, slipped off of his nose, and his tattered blue oxford shirt, Duck Head cutoffs, and leather flip-flops hinted at a preppy past that was getting little upkeep. He played with a bottle cap, absentmindedly, listening to Weird Bobby’s nonsense.

“I bet he’s some total psycho, like Jason, with a, a hockey mask or something. Maybe a chain saw! Or a sickle,” said Weird Bobby, who punctuated every sentence with a silent, body-shaking giggle. The conversation had steered toward the murders, since the news had spread slowly across town and eventually made it here, a place that seemed immune to current events of any kind. Nobody seemed to have any new information, but that didn’t stop them from repeating it.

“I heard the cops were tracking down all of the first victim’s old boyfriends, like it was some kind of lover’s spat gone batshit crazy,” said Jacob, taking a long drag from a cigarette. Betsy spotted his soft pack of Camels on the table, and he offered her one.

“What do you think, Betsy? Psychokiller on the loose?” asked Teddy with a smirk. No one had bothered to introduce her, and this seemed like the closest she’d get.

“I don’t know,” she said, blushing from the focus suddenly trained on her. “I’m thinking it’s a good idea not to go to sleep tonight so I can make sure I don’t, you know, never wake up again.”

She was dead serious, but it got a big laugh nevertheless.

“We can arrange for that,” said Weird Bobby, shaking again. “Who wants another?” And he walked over to the bar to replace the empty steel bucket full of longnecks with a full one.

Gavin and Betsy took their beers to the end of the dock and sat with their legs dangling over the water. In the distance, there was a small Boston Whaler on the move, its engine buzzing like a lawn mower. Otherwise, the lake was silent.

“So this is J.D.’s,” she said, leaning down to graze the water with her fingers.

“Ah, first-timer, are we?” he said. “Not much to it.”

“Nah, but it’s great. I’d keep it a secret, too.”

“How do you know Teddy, anyway?” he asked. She suspected that he feared another failed fling with a friend, which would make her officially un-datable, according to unspoken guy protocol.

“We played cards together once awhile back and he was in this Nineteenth-Century Lit class I took last year,” she said. “He’s a friend.”

She paused.

“I’ve seen Jacob play a few times. He may have hooked up with a friend of mine,” she said. “But I’m told he left before dawn. I guess he snuck out in the middle of the night? I took that as a very subtle but bad sign.”

“Yeah, that’s subtle alright.”

“Weird Bobby, is, uh, interesting?”

“Yeah, it’s a well-deserved nickname,” he said. “The story goes that he inherited a little money when his grandparents died a few years back and just decided to stay here, never graduate.” He shrugged. “The guy’s a professional Frisbee golfer. And by pro I mean he’s won a couple of fifty-dollar Little Caesars pizza gift certificates. He’s harmless, but he’s fucking crazy. The thing is, he always has parties, and so he always has friends.”

“Huh. Seems like he’s goal-oriented,” she said.

“What about your crew? Ginny and Caroline? They’re real sweethearts,” he said, his tone confirming that he knew them better than she thought he did.

“Ginny’s a drunk, but she is a sweetheart, no joke. Caroline is complicated.”

“So you three were tight?” he asked her. “And now, it seems, maybe not.”