King Geordi the Great Page 11

  “My dad sent me down to pick up the stuff he left here,” said Toff.

  “Oh, right. I got it together earlier today. It’s in a box here.” He went behind the desk again, bent down, and came up with a small cardboard box in his hands. He placed it on the desk in front of us. There wasn’t much inside: a Baltimore Orioles baseball cap, an insulated coffee mug, a pair of shades, a broken keyring, and a silver belt buckle.

  Toff stared down at the items as if he couldn’t figure out what they were.

  “We’ve been a little worried around here about your dad,” the receptionist said, his smile dimming. “He was quiet the last couple of days he was here, more quiet than usual. When he stopped showing up, his supervisor called and called him but never got an answer or a return call. Is your dad all right?”

  “Yeah, he’s fine,” Toff answered. “He’s on a fishing trip down in the Delta. After that, he says he’s gonna drive around to some of his usual hangouts.”

  The receptionist stopped smiling altogether. “Usual hangouts?”

  “Yeah, you know, like… Hot Springs. And the other places he always talks about.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t know,” said the receptionist. “Mr. Toffler never talked to me all that much, not like he did to some of his coworkers. I guess the age difference kind of kept us apart.”

  “What would a man like Gerry have in common with a wet-nosed kid like you, Tom?”

  Toff and I turned at the sound of the lighthearted but gruff voice. A man decked out in scuffed work boots, dusty jeans, and a dingy T-shirt had just walked through the main entrance. He had a sweaty blue bandana tied around his head and a thick mustache that had just about turned pure gray. He was in his fifties, but he had a lean, work-hardened build. “I keep telling you, boy,” the man said with a laugh, “you need to mind your place around here.”

  “This is my place to mind, Cole,” the receptionist said, gesturing at his desk with both hands. “I was just talking to Gerry’s kid here, Sandor, about the trip Gerry’s off on.”

  The man named Cole looked at Toff and me as if we’d just popped out of thin air. He pointed at Toff. “You’re Gerry’s son?”

  “Yes, sir,” answered Toff. “I came by to pick up my dad’s stuff.”

  “Pick up his stuff? Where the hell is he?”

  “He went fishing.”

  “You mean to say Gerry walked away from his job to go fishing?” Cole’s tone was so skeptical it made me want to grab Toff by the arm and leave.

  “Sandor was telling me that Gerry’s off to the Mississippi Delta to do his fishing,” said the receptionist, cutting in.

  Cole’s face tightened in confusion. “When did he do that?” he asked Toff.

  “He left… uh, yesterday.”

  “Well, he must’ve made a hell of a quick visit to the Delta,” scoffed Cole. “I just got a call from one of our guys working the Platinum Estates subdivision out past Selmer. He swears he saw Gerry’s car turn off Highway 64 on Route 28Z this morning.”

  Toff walked right up to Cole. “Is the guy sure it was my dad’s car?”

  “I asked him that,” Cole replied. “He said it was a brown 2001 or so Toyota Camry with ‘Toflr 1’ on the license plate.”

  The man was only fuzzy on the year. Mr. Toffler drove a 2005 Camry; the rest of the description was spot-on.

  “What the hell’s your daddy doing out there, sonny boy?” Cole asked suspiciously. “There’s not much out that way except bears, deer, and open country.”

  “Hunting,” I said loudly without thinking. “He’s going hunting out there.” I grabbed the box with Mr. Toffler’s things off the desk and turned back to the receptionist. “Well, thanks a lot for this, and for the water. We have to be going. Have a wonderful day. Bye.”

  I spun around like a model on a runway and hurried through the double glass doors with Toff on my heels. I swear I could feel that man Cole’s eyes burning into the back of my head like a laser.

  Chapter 10

  “ARE YOU freaking kidding me?” Nobody does shock and disbelief like Jessica. Her eyebrows arched so high they practically merged with her hairline. And she’s got a big-ass forehead.

  We were sitting in the tire swings that hung from the big oak tree in her backyard. Mr. Sanchez had put up the swings for Jess and her brother nearly a decade ago. The spot was far enough away from her house to ensure nobody inside would overhear us.

  “I kid you not. The man just took off and left Toff without even telling him he was leaving. He’s gone for good, and he didn’t even take time for a see-ya-later with his son.” I was angry again, so angry I was grinding my teeth. “Who does that, Jess? What kinda man does that to his own kid?”

  “There has to be something more to this, Geordi. That can’t be the whole picture.”

  “Whether it’s the whole picture or not, Toff is screwed.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “At his house, sleeping. Emotionally, he’s wiped out. I’m going back for him later.”

  “He doesn’t have any idea where his dad went?”

  “We went to Mr. Toffler’s job a while ago. Some guy who works for the company saw his car turn off Highway 64 on Route 28Z this morning past some town called Selmer. We need to get out there and see if we can find him.”

  Jess pulled out her phone and tapped away at the screen. A few seconds later, her eyebrows went up again. “The intersection of Highway 64 and Route 28Z is more than two hundred miles from here.”

  “Dag. Are you serious?”

  “There’s no bus that goes out there. Somebody will have to drive us.” She looked toward her house. “I can ask my mom, or maybe even my knothead brother—”

  “You can’t tell your mom or Javier.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “That’s the way Toff wants it. He says I can tell you, but nobody else for now. He doesn’t want the police involved yet, and he’s afraid if your mom or my parents find out, the first thing they’ll do is call the cops.”

  “I guess I can understand why he feels that way. The police will probably bring in Child Welfare, and they’ll probably try to stick him in a group home or something. But if we don’t tell our parents and get one of them to drive us, how do we check out Route 28Z? We sure as heck can’t walk all the way out there. And if we find Mr. Toffler, how do we get him to bring himself back home without another adult to talk some sense into him? He’s not gonna listen to a bunch of kids.”

  “Toff can do it. Toff can convince him.”

  Jess spat something harsh in Spanish, probably a cuss word or two. “That man never cared about anything Toff had to say before. What makes you think he’ll give a crap now?”

  “That’s how Toff wants to play this, Jess. No one else can know. I promised him that. We’ll just have to figure some way to get out to Route 28Z on our own.”

  “Well, I didn’t promise him a thing. I’ll tell our parents if that’s what it takes to get Toff’s dad to go home.”

  “Speaking of our parents, how do we time this whole going-after-Toff’s-dad thing if we don’t tell them what we’re doing? It’ll take like, three hours just to get out to that intersection, and another three hours to get back to Memphis. And that doesn’t include the time we’ll spend looking around. It’ll be dark in a few hours. If we go after Mr. Toffler today, it’ll be midnight or later when we get home. My parents will ground me for life. But if we go in the morning, we’ll have all day to look for him and we can get home before dark.”

  “It’d be best to go after Mr. Toffler today. He was seen at that intersection this morning, and I’m pretty sure he’s moved on from there. So the longer we wait, the more of a head start he gets. It’s no big deal to me. I can tell my mom I’m spending the night with a friend.”

  “Some of us have a problem lying to our parents, Jess.”

  “Who says I’d be lying? After we get back to town, I’ll spend the night at Toff’s. You could do the same.”

  I was about to
argue with her on that point but her ringtone—Beyoncé’s “Crazy in Love”—cut me off. She put her phone to her ear to answer the call. “Hello.” She listened briefly and broke into a smile. “Hi, Papá.”

  She switched to Spanish, and I promptly tuned her out, digging my own phone from my pocket. For a moment, I considered calling Jake. I felt bad for the guy. Coming out may not have been the best experience of my life, but I was never confused about my sexuality. It was hard for me to imagine what Jake was going through, overcome by desires he didn’t understand with no way to explore them. There wasn’t much point in calling him now for what would most likely be only a short hi-and-bye kind of conversation. The crap situation with Toff’s dad was sucking up all my oxygen. What kind of friend was I to Jake when I couldn’t even give him a sympathetic ear?

  I checked out Uber’s website for an estimate on a trip from Toff’s house to our desired destination and back. That estimate was eye-popping to a person of my limited funds, and riding Uber required a credit card to boot. I was fresh out of credit cards.

  Jessica’s conversation with her dad took a sudden loud turn. I looked at her and saw that she’d become agitated, her eyes fiery and her lips curling with anger. What the hell was her father saying to her? She rattled off a long, rapid stream of heated Spanish that ended with “Goodbye, Papá! Maybe I won’t see you then!” And with that she curtly disconnected the call.

  For a second there, I thought she was going to throw her phone down. She shoved it into her pocket and went “Agh!”

  “Jess, what’s wrong?”

  “That man!” she snapped before spiraling off into another explosion of Spanish.

  “English, Jess. English.”

  She shut her mouth, taking a moment to force her face into a portrait of sweetness that was as fake as it was frightening. “My wonderful dad, the wonderful Señor Santiago Vicente Sanchez, called to say that he’s coming to town next month for my quinceañera.”

  “Wow. That’s… great?”

  “My wonderful brother, the wonderful Javier Jesús Sanchez, sent my wonderful dad a photo of me and my truly wonderful new girlfriend, who my wonderful dad knew nothing about because I hadn’t told him yet. So, after telling me he’ll be here for my quinceañera, my wonderful papá went on to say he was surprised at how confused I was. He told me I am becoming a young woman, not a young man, and that if I know what’s good for me, I’ll have a wonderful boyfriend by my side at the quinceañera.”

  Jess glared at me. I didn’t open my mouth, afraid of saying the wrong thing and having all the anger pent-up behind her glassy-eyed stare blast me into orbit.

  “Sorry.” Jessica raised both hands, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. She blew it out in a long sigh. After that she actually seemed to be calm. “No need for me to be upset because nobody controls my life but me. This is my quinceañera, celebrating me, all of me. Anybody who can’t celebrate that can just stay away, including Señor Santiago. Okay. Now, Geordi, what were we talking about?”

  Warning bells were still going off in my head, but I opened my big yap anyway. “There’s something else… about Toff.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “Uhm… here’s the thing. I’m not in love with him, not like he is with me.”

  “You’re not?”

  “No.”

  One corner of her mouth crooked up in a knowing smirk. What the hell was that about? “Really, Geordi? Do you really not know what’s in here and here?” She touched her finger to my temple, then to my heart. “I can see it plain as day.”

  I scratched my scalp hard. “You can see what plain as day?”

  Jessica let her head fall forward in this sort of hopeless way. “God, boys are so dense. How do people like you even breathe on your own?”

  None of what she said made sense to me, and I didn’t waste time trying to figure it out. “I don’t know what to do, Jess. Toff told my parents that he’s my boyfriend, and now they’re all happy that I’m in my first relationship, which isn’t really a relationship. On the one hand, I feel stuck in a place I don’t want to be, and I want to get out of it. On the other hand, I don’t want to hurt Toff, especially now with all the stuff he’s going through, and I don’t want to disappoint my parents either. I’m going crazy here. I don’t know how to get myself out of this. I mean, don’t I deserve to be happy with my life at least every now and then?”

  The portrait of sweetness came back.

  Uh-oh.

  “You know, Geordi, sometimes you have this wonderful habit of turning everything around to you-you-you when it should be about something-something-something else. And I know your parents sometimes make everything about you-you-you, and maybe that’s where this wonderful habit of yours comes from, and most times I just kinda overlook it and let you be a wonderful little self-centered yo-yo. But you know what, I’m not in the mood to overlook it today. Right now I think the focus should be on Toff-Toff-Toff, so why don’t you get the freak over your wonderful self, step down off your royal throne, and focus on Toff! How about that?”

  Yup. Should’ve listened to those warning bells.

  I LEFT Jessica’s house in a daze. I’d never been spanked, but I imagined this was what a little kid felt like in the aftermath: chastened and embarrassed. There was so much whirling around in my head—Toff’s abandonment, our lopsided love affair, Jake’s sexual identity issues—and it left me as confused as ever. Getting Jess pissed off at me didn’t exactly help things either. Also still freaking me out was the timing of this trip. I didn’t have a curfew or anything, but my parents expected me to be in the general vicinity of the neighborhood come nightfall. And by 10:00 p.m., I should be in the house or at least in my own yard. Jess was right; it would be best to go after Mr. Toffler this afternoon. But I couldn’t just disappear for hours and leave my parents to worry themselves to death. Maybe if I went home, took a shower, and chilled for a minute, I could regroup and figure out what the hell I was supposed to do.

  The sun was one harsh glare, and there wasn’t even a hint of a breeze. I decided to take a shortcut across the campus of the elementary school where Mom taught. With my head down and my hands in my pockets, I tried to make myself as small as possible. I didn’t want to be noticed. It would be nice if I could just fade into the background for a while.

  “Faggot!”

  The shout came from somewhere behind me. As the only friendly neighborhood homosexual in the immediate area, I instantly stopped and turned. Carson was marching across the campus toward me. My first reaction was frowning disbelief. Did Carson Meyer just drop the F-bomb on me? For a moment I was highly offended.

  But only for a moment. Because then I saw how horribly pissed Carson was, his face twisted into the kind of primal hatred that had burned villages to the ground and sent whole populations running for the hills. And then I realized all that rage and hatred was directed exclusively at the only friendly neighborhood homosexual in the immediate area. And then Carson charged like the frontline of the New York Giants defense going after a Dallas QB.

  I have to confess that, at fifteen, I was still a little afraid of Carson. He was bigger, stronger, and meaner than I was. With bigger, stronger, and meaner rushing me on a rocket of rage, I thought it was time to run for the hills myself.

  I took off like the proverbial shot. My one advantage over Carson on the basketball court was that I was faster and more agile. I poured on speed, knowing my continued good health depended on it. As I ran my terror diminished slightly with the certainty that I was leaving Carson far behind in my dust trail.

  A risky glance over my shoulder a few moments later slapped away my overconfidence in a single horrific instant. Carson was practically on my heels and steadily gaining. Something in his rage was fueling his muscles in a way mere sports cockiness never could. He reached out with his right arm, straining, and I saw with an awful sense of doom that he had me.

  He caught me around the waist. With a single sharp motion of his arm, he
flung me violently to my left. I slammed against a section of the chain-link fence surrounding the school’s playground. As I bounced off, I was already thinking I would duck around Carson and take off again. But before I could get my balance, Carson grabbed the neck of my T-shirt and, with his fist at my throat, shoved me back against the fence.

  “Stupid fag! Why’d you do it?” He shouted the question in my face and followed it immediately with his other fist. The blow landed on my nose and mouth, smashing the back of my head against the fence. A dry thickness seemed to explode in my sinuses, as if a dust bomb had gone off in there, but I felt no immediate pain.

  I opened my eyes just in time to see Carson draw back for another punch. Block it. My hands started coming up almost simultaneously with that thought. The punches landed on my jaw before I could get my hands in place, however, a rapid-fire one-two-three. I definitely felt those blows, the pain shooting down into my neck.

  “What’d I do?” I managed to shout, terrified and confused as hell, trembling hands up now to protect my face.

  “Don’t fucking stand there and pretend like you don’t know!” He grabbed the front of my shirt with both fists and threw me down. I hit the ground on my shoulder and hip, landing so hard my body actually rolled over three times. That put a little distance between me and Carson, and I saw my opportunity to jet again. I scuttled like an oversized crab, got to my feet, and ran.

  Carson was on my ass like a hungry bird on a bug. He was too close, moving too fast, and I knew I couldn’t get away from him. Still, I kept running, shouting over my shoulder, “Wait! Wait!” Take a minute to at least tell me what the problem is before you kill me!

  He landed a powerful punch right between my shoulder blades, knocking me off stride. I went down hard on the asphalt in front of the west entrance of the school.

  When I was in third grade, I got into a shoving match with a boy named Phil Gottfried outside this entrance on a quiet autumn morning. Our teacher, Mrs. Glass, stepped in before things could escalate. It was the closest I’d come to being in an actual fight.