Inexcusable (12 page)

“You are a good guy, aren't you, Keir?”

I examined the statement for any hidden message. Didn't find any.

“I am. I am a good guy, Gigi.”

“Why do guys find it so hard to be good guys?”

I shrugged. “I don't. Only sometimes.”

She giggled sadly again.

I took her hand, and she let me do it. It was wet. I did not care at all. Even better, in fact. Even nicer. There was more Gigi Boudakian in a wet hand than a dry one and more Gigi was an indisputably good thing.

One tear escaped, then another, running down that beautiful face, spoiling it, ruining everything. I took my free hand—the free hand because the other hand was not letting go, not on your life—and I daubed her high glorious cheekbones with the heel of the sleeve of my jacket once more. And then I reached into my back pocket for my wallet.

“Want to see my mom?” I asked Gigi Boudakian.

I had never before said that, or anything like that, in my life. Not once to anyone.

“I would like that very much,” she said, a smile coming through like sunshine burning away a fog.

I handed over the photo I carried, an inferior copy of Ray's piano-top picture.

“Also, that's what my sister Fran looks like. Pretty much. She was supposed to be here too, Fran was. And Mary, too. They were supposed to come.”

“I know. You said.”

“People are like that, though,” I said. “People are just like that. What are you going to do? You ready for another drink?”

“I'm okay for now,” she said.

“Don't you hate it when people you love let you down?” I said.

“Yes, I do,” she said.

“I hate it when people I love let me down. It's like, the worst thing there is.”

“It is.”

It is.

H
eaven on wheels. I may have thought Rollo's car and all that went with it was the ultimate before, but I had no idea what heaven was then. When Gigi Boudakian heard my idea and didn't so much as blink, when she shouted “Why the hell not!” I told the driver to drive and he said, “Yessir,” then I knew heaven and heaven knew me.

Even Rollo couldn't believe it, and Rollo had seen everything.

“What?” he said. “Where?”

“Take us to Norfolk, my good man.”

“Norfolk,” he repeated. “As in, the college.”

“Yup,” I said. “Me and my lady friend here are on a mission. To show my sad sisters just a little bit of what they missed.”

“You are serious.”

“I am serious.”

“Young lady, that's okay with you?”

“That is okay with me,” Gigi Boudakian said in a singsong to melt even Rollo's cold, cold heart.

I knew, okay. I knew, what we had here was Gigi's anger at somebody else more than it was her affection for me. But I also knew that I didn't care, and that whatever her level of affection for me I was grateful for it and wouldn't be letting go until it was pried out of my hands. Gigi Boudakian liked me and trusted me enough to make this possible, and right now I was the only guy in the world who could say that. Which, by my definition, made me the finest and luckiest guy in the world for at least some small time.

“Okay,” Rollo said, “but you know this is three hours—”

“And one state line,” I added.

“I know,” Gigi said, and nestled down deep in the upholstery. “I don't have any other plans or obligations. And a nice ride through the country, with my very nice gentleman friend, sounds like a better idea than any other right now.”

She was doing it again, mixing sweetness and sadness in the same foggy dew.

“We have loads of drinks and snacks,” I said hopefully. “You want a drink and a snack?”

She patted my leg. “Maybe later, thanks.” She scootched up closer to me, wedged herself against me, and
let all her weight rest on me. She didn't object when I raised my arm up and draped it down over her shoulders.

Heaven on wheels. Nirvana, Valhalla, whatever, this was as close to it as I was ever going to get.

Until
bleep-bleep-bleep
went the rotten little electronic birdcall of a cell phone. Shot through me like electroshock when Gigi bounced up in her seat, pulled my phone out of her bag where she'd forgotten it, and started staring at it.

“What?” I said.

He had returned her call, sort of. She showed me the text message from Carl,
HEARD YOU CALLED, WHAT UP?

“He doesn't even have the guts to phone me properly,” she said. Then she growled and turned the phone off with that exaggerated aggressive maneuver that doesn't really shut the thing off more thoroughly, but does bend your thumb painfully backward.

“Grrr,” she growled again, and I was getting to really like that sound. Then she popped right up, went to the refrigerator, and stuffed the phone inside before slamming the door shut again.

It was my new gift phone she was abusing, but I had no interest in objecting.

“Who needs 'em,” I said triumphantly as I grabbed a beer and waved at the phone.

“Who needs 'em,” she said lowly, slowly, and sadly.

She leaned up and against and into me once more. I draped my arm over her once more. I tipped my head to
one side, onto Gigi's head like a pillow, and I breathed her in. Carl, I thought, was a person who made no sense to me whatsoever.

*  *  *

Gigi fell asleep almost as soon as we left town, and she snoozed off and on for much of the ride. Me, I was right there, awake, alive, alert, but held in place between Gigi Boudakian on the one hand and a beer in the other. I was frozen there, and could not have been more content to be that way. I didn't even open the beer for the first hour, as I alternated between staring out the window at the scenery and staring to see that Gigi was still actually under my arm and I was still actually on this earth.

It seemed like no time and no space had passed when Rollo maneuvered the limo through the twisting roadways of the campus to finally stop in front of the girls' dormitory building. It was an ugly thing, very square and made up of red and white stone blocks and lots of windows that should have made things brighter but made them somehow danker—but the sight of it filled me with a kind of Christmas morning light.

“Gigi,” I said to her as Rollo came around to open our door. “Gigi, wake up, we're here.”

She stirred slowly, raised herself up slowly, and it was then that I realized how completely numb and dead my arm had gone. I hadn't moved it from that spot around and behind her for three hours. And it would have taken
a gunfight for anybody but Gigi to get me to move it still.

As it was, I couldn't exactly move it anyway. I let it sort of fall off the back of the seat and hauled it up out of the car behind me.

“Wow,” Gigi said, stepping out into the moonlit evening. “This is a beautiful campus.”

She spun around to check it out, and true enough, there wasn't a bad angle on the place. It was a great rolling landscape, laid out with a lot of attention to space. Every building, practically, was set atop its own little hillock, which made for fine views from each one of them, even if it meant a lot of walking for students. The air was so thick with pine you'd be checking your teeth for needles.

“Nice, huh?” I said, puffing up as if I'd built the place myself. “I'm coming here in the fall, you know.”

“I know,” she said, still gazing off. “I am so jealous.”

She was going to a community college in town, so she could still work in the family business.

“You could come and visit me,” I chirped. “Like, every weekend.”

She poked me in the ribs, which I loved, and I was thinking again, this was the best time and place ever to be. It made me think how much this was like prom night, which was the previous best time and place ever.

“So kids,” Rollo said. “What's the plan? Bearing in mind it's another three-hour haul back.”

“Well, maybe we won't
go
back,” I said, thinking as
soon as I said it what a magnificent and thoughtful thought that was.

“Yes, maybe we just won't,” Gigi said, but in a much more frivolous way. She had yet to understand the magnificence of my thought.

“Seriously, though,” Rollo said. “I think two hours should be enough for you to visit with your sisters, to interrupt their studies, and to get back home in reasonable time. I got friends in the area, I can go visit and cool my heels and be right back here to meet you. Two hours. Fair?”

“Aren't you coming in, Rollo? Just to say hello?”

Rollo stared at me hard, twisting his head sideways. “What are you talking about? You know your sisters can't stand the sight of me.”

“Oh, that is not—”

“Two hours, Keir,” Rollo said, ignoring me and walking around to his door. “Have fun, kids.”

*  *  *

“This is going to be so cool,” I said, standing in the hallway about to knock on the door. “This is going to blow their minds. They never in a million years would have expected me to do this, and they are just going to go mental.”

“What kind of mental?” Gigi Boudakian said apprehensively.

“Oh no,” I said, “the best kind of mental. Only the best kind.” I knocked, seven times. We always did that in our family, the seven-times knock.

We waited. I knocked seven more times.

“All right, I'm coming,” came an unfamiliar voice.

The door was opened by a wiry thin girl a couple of years older than me. She was wearing thick red socks for slippers and a pink velour robe. “Can I help you?” she said.

“Ah, I'm looking for my sisters. I'm Keir.”

She looked at me blankly.

“Keir. Sarafian. Fran and Mary are my sisters.”

“Oh,” she said politely, “sorry, I didn't know. I'm Grace. I room with your sisters.” She held out her hand and I shook it. So did Gigi.

“I'm Gigi,” Gigi said.

“Are the girls here?” I asked, peering kind of impolitely around Grace. I couldn't help it, I was anxious.

“Um,” Grace said. “No.”

“No?”

“No. Well, not right now. They'll be back, though. Anyway, Fran will, in about an hour. She's out with this really nice Mormon guy, and he always has her back right on time.”

I would not have been surprised if you could hear the air escaping from my inflated hopes. Or steam, more like it.
Hisss.

“And Mary?”

“Mary won't be back until late tomorrow sometime. She went to Baltimore for a couple of days with a few of the other girls. Kind of celebrating the end of exams. Some people
finished up on Friday, the lucky ones, so they took off.”

As fast as Grace could talk, no, faster than Grace could talk, my body filled with deadness. Starting at my toes and sifting upward, bit by bit, I could feel nothing, until I was simply floating there in the hall outside the door where Mary and Fran were not studying.

I became aware of Gigi Boudakian taking my hand, because I could see it out of the corner of my eye. I couldn't feel it, though, though it was a feeling I would have held onto tight if I could.

“You want to come in and wait?” Grace said. “Like I said, Fran shouldn't be more than an hour, so if you want to wait, you are more than welcome—”

“We'll walk,” I said, and started walking just like that. “We'll just go for a walk, Grace, thank you. We'll kill time. It's a nice night, so we'll just do that. Thank you, Grace.”

Still floating, still not entirely there, I led Gigi down the hall, down the stairs, out the swinging glass front door. I was still unaware of the fine bones of Gigi's slender hand in my hand. I must have been.

“Ow,” she squealed. “Keir, you're hurting me.”

She pulled her hand away, and I stopped and stared. “I am so sorry, Gigi. I didn't realize . . .”

“Well, no, I didn't think you realized.” She relaxed enough to take my hand again, to take both of them in fact, as she faced me and talked to me. “What are you thinking, Keir?”

“I'm thinking that's probably the worst question in the world. I'm thinking you should never ask anybody that question.”

She pulled her hands away from mine, and I was instantly sorry for whatever made her do that. I was quick to grab her hands back again.

“I'm thinking,” I said, “that I really, really hate it when people I love let me down.”

W
hy doesn't she hear what I'm saying? Why don't my words say what I am saying?

“I'm sorry. Gigi, I said I'm sorry, remember? I didn't do it.”

“Let me out of this room, Keir.”

“Why don't you hear me? I'm not keeping you here. I'm just trying to get you to listen to me, and you keep not listening to me.”

And she does, too, she keeps right on not listening to me. She keeps saying things that are not true and ignoring important things that are true. We kind of march around the room, circling after each other and away from each other, because I cannot let her near the window, because she is acting like she might do something demented, and I can't let her near the door unless I'm there with her,
because she can't be going out there without me. Without the truth. We have to look at the truth and agree on it.

“Can I just try one more time? Huh, Gigi? Okay, there was sex, we had sex, all right?”

Instantly she covers her ears and spins to the floor like a corkscrew. She remains there, clinging to two fistfuls of hair on either side of her head.

“We had sex and okay, it wasn't perfect, but I love you.”

It is like blood. Her beautiful liquid chocolate eyes are like spurting blood as she looks up at me now.

“Don't do that,” I beg. “Please, Gigi, don't do that to me.”

“It wasn't perfect. But you love me,” she drones.

She is scaring me. With her tone, her eyes, her presence altogether, she is scaring me. Intimidating me.