Lawn Boy(58)

“It was your idea behind the parsonage,” I said.

“What are you talking about?”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

“No, Mike, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I’m talking about youth group.”

Goble checked his watch, then pulled out his cell and checked that, too.

“Youth group? You mean with the Bible songs and the crackers? What the hell? You’re fucking crazy, Mike. Good luck,” he said, without looking up. “Nice job on the Wardwell place.”

“Why won’t you admit we sucked each other’s dicks?”

He looked up from his phone. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me. Why won’t you just acknowledge it?”

“Mike, you’re talking nonsense. Did you forget to take your meds or something? Look, I gotta run. I’m doing an open house at one thirty.”

“Wow,” I said. “You are really in denial.”

“I don’t think so, Mike. But you may want see a psychiatrist.”

The fucking nerve of the guy! I wanted to punch him in the throat! How could he look me in the eye and just flat-out deny something we both knew was true?

“You hatched the plan, Goble, and you know it. You lured me behind the parsonage. We talked about girls. We shared a Hershey’s bar. Then you showed me your dick.”

“Whoa. What the hell are you talking about?”

“The next thing I know, it’s in my mouth.”

“Are you high?”

“I can’t believe you, Goble! Dude, you’re insane. We sucked each other’s dicks, and you’re pretending it didn’t happen.”

“Have a nice life, Mike,” he said, repocketing his phone.

And just like that, he turned and started walking toward his condo.

“You’re the one who needs a psychiatrist!” I yelled, practically foaming at the mouth. “You’re fucking crazy!”

He didn’t even look back, the cold-blooded little prick. That’s when I realized what I should have realized years ago: that there were people in this world who either had no conscience or just severe memory deficits, tailored to their convenience. I could see the advantage of either one immediately. Yet both ideas were abhorrent to me. Either you didn’t care, or you chose not to care. The way I see it, you’ve got to be accountable, or you’re nothing. Without personal accountability, you can talk yourself into anything. You can leave rubble in your wake and never look back. That could mean wars. Genocides. Ecological disasters. And what for? What was the advantage?

Fuck those guys, and their money and their power.

It was starting to sprinkle, and a wave of futility washed over me.

“Hey, wait!” I yelled after him, the logistics of my situation suddenly dawning on me. “What about my gear? You gotta drive me to my house!”

“Yeah, sorry,” he said. “Gotta freshen up for my open house. Good luck.”

The rain was picking up force, starting to blow in slantwise.

“This is bullshit!” I hollered. “You sucked my dick, you crazy fuck!”

Goble just kept walking. A little old lady on the second floor opened her window and peered out to see what all the shouting was about.

“Your neighbor Doug Goble likes to suck dick!” I yelled up to her. “And he doesn’t want anyone to know about it!”

Doug stopped his forward progress just long enough to give the old lady a little wave and a bemused shrug before she shut the window and abruptly lowered the blinds.





A Good Place to Start Over the next week, I tried to be as invisible as possible on the home front. I started avoiding the house, mostly for the sake of everybody else, so I wasn’t using hot water or electricity, or eating other people’s food out of the refrigerator, or even taking up space. I must have lost five pounds that first week. When I wasn’t out fruitlessly submitting résumés—Safeway, Central Market, even Walmart—I found a warm place to sit and read, the only place where nobody gave me the stink eye about loitering.


One day at checkout, I got in Andrew’s line, even though it was longer than the other one. As usual, his thick, curly hair was all over the place. Bald guys must hate him. He was wearing one of his cardigan sweaters, a bile-colored affair, and a T-shirt that said COEXIST. The instant he opened his mouth I was confronted with a gleaming mouthful of braces—the big clunky kind that looked like you might get radio reception on them, the kind that always seemed to be digging into tender flesh. Normally a guy would look like a mouth breather or a dweeb with that much metal in his mouth. But Andrew didn’t appear to be self-conscious about it.

“Michael!” He sounded genuinely happy to see me. “I see you’re reading Timbuktu. I love that book.”

“Yeah, you recommended it.”

“I did, didn’t I?”

We talked for a minute about books, me looking back over my shoulder every ten seconds to make sure I wasn’t holding up the line.

“So, what do you do for work, anyway?”

“Look for it, mostly,” I said.

“What are you doing at three?”

“Nothing.”

“You wanna occupy Walmart?”