Dream Girl(22)

He had never seen his mother’s face so white and tight with fury, not with him. Not even with his father.

“What happened?” she asked once he was in her car, a secondhand AMC Pacer.

“There was this mass of wet leaves on the road and Alex was going a little too fast and he lost control—”

“The police said there was beer in the car.”

“It wasn’t our beer.”

She gave him a look.

“Alex picks up his father’s booze for him at the package store on Falls Road. Call him and ask. That’s how cool Alex’s dad is. Also, Alex turned eighteen two days ago.” A lie, except for the part about Alex’s age—his parents had held him back a year to allow him to excel at lacrosse—but he knew his mother would never call the home of Alexander Simpson III.

“I have told you before and I will tell you again—I do not approve of this fast crowd you have fallen in with, Gerry.”

“They’re not fast,” he protested. “They’re fun.” He wasn’t sure this was even true, but they were more fun than any other options he had. He helped them with their school papers and they, in turn, let him hang out with them with only a modicum of teasing. They spent their summer evenings scouting for beer, then used the liquid courage to approach girls. But they didn’t really know what to do with girls. All four were star lacrosse players and they could do marvelous things with a stick and a ball, but face-to-face with a girl, they were hopeless. That’s what they had been doing at the Elkridge Club all afternoon, splashing girls and tormenting them, then wondering why the girls didn’t want to go see fireworks with them. Gerry secretly thought he would do better with girls without Alex and his gang, but how would he ever get into any place as rarefied as Elkridge without Alex?

They had been in Alex’s green Mercedes sedan when he lost control on a bed of wet leaves on Falls Road. That part was true, too. Alex had been driving much too fast for the curvy country road. The car spun in circles, making what felt like five rotations before it came to rest on the opposite side. No one was hurt, but the car hit a retaining wall, popping the battery cable. They had the presence of mind to hide the empties, so the only beer in the car was an intact six-pack. Still, the Baltimore County cop who came to their aid decided it was time they learn an important lesson about drunk driving, so he had taken them to the precinct and made them watch a film they had already seen in school, Mechanized Death, then called their parents to pick them up.

“You cannot afford to screw up,” his mother said. “Do you understand that? Those other boys have parents, fathers, who can get them out of trouble. They have money. All you have is a mother who works as the office manager for a pediatrician.”

“Jeez, Mom, I didn’t even do anything.”

“You drank beer! You got into a car with other boys who had been drinking beer. You could have been killed.”

“Maybe if Alex drove a piece of shit car like this we would have been hurt. He has a Mercedes; you could T-bone that thing and walk away without a scratch. If the battery cable hadn’t popped, we wouldn’t have ended up at the police station.”

His mother carefully checked her blind spots, pulled over to the shoulder, and slapped Gerry hard enough that he saw strange lights around his eyes. So that’s what was meant by seeing stars. They weren’t stars, not exactly, but—

“Apply yourself and maybe one day you can buy yourself a Mercedes. If you care about such silly, empty things. But you’ll have to work, and work hard, for any money you get. That’s how life is going to be for you. It’s not fair and it’s not right. But it’s not fair to me, either, and you don’t hear me complaining.”

Gerry started to cry.

“I’ll be good, Mama, I promise I’ll be good. And I’ll buy you a Mercedes. I swear I will.”

“Just be a good man, Gerry. That’s all I’m asking. Be a good man.”

“I will. I will.”





February 22




IT TURNS OUT that “scrubbing” one’s penis from the Internet is a thing. Of course it is. There is an entire industry designed to help people manage how they appear in online searches. But trying to delete a mention of one’s penis from Twitter is something else entirely—and more complicated.

“You’re not understanding me. I did not send anyone a ‘dick pic,’” Gerry tells Thiru. “I have never even taken a selfie, or allowed anyone to make a video, a sex tape, of me. I don’t know what this ‘woman’ is talking about. And let me remind you, no photograph has been posted. She’s just, um, claiming to know something about my personal anatomy.”

He can’t believe he even has to say these words—dick pic, selfie, sex tape. To utter them is an affront to his dignity. He has been assiduous about not cluttering his mind, his work, his life with this silly digital world, and here it is, dragging him in, like some whirlpool or abyss. Then again, it wasn’t that long ago that a porn star told the world a sitting president has a penis shaped like a mushroom. The claim about Gerry is not only preposterous, it’s derivative.

“But you are not, in fact, circumcised?”

“Thiru.”

“I’m sorry, it’s just that’s what she—”