Sociopath? (11 page)

“Have you got them all on cds so I can listen
to them?”

“Yeah.”

“Give’em to me. I’ll teach them to myself.
I’ll be ready by next week.”

Duke found the cds although he thought the
kid was blowing’ smoke to say he could learn that many songs in a
week.

But, he wasn’t, blowing smoke, that is. Duke
ran him through every tune on the list. He was letter perfect.

They had their first gig that weekend, a
senator’s daughter’s Sweet Sixteen party out in Falls Church. The
band was a hit and their new guitar player fit in like he’d been
playing with them all along. Duke, who paid attention to every
detail about his band (he was a lot like Chester Hughes in that
way), watched the interaction between Rafe and the audience. He
wore tight black jeans, a long-sleeved black turtleneck and black
cowboy boots with silver kicks on the toes. His too-long black hair
kept falling down so that he had to shake his head while he played
to throw it back out of his eyes. Slender hips and long legs rolled
in sexy time to the music. He was one of those natural showmen who
could look across an audience and make every girl there think the
midnight eyes and the flashing smile were focused right on her.

At the break, he told Todd to move back
farther so as to be sure Rafe was front and center.

“Why’s that, Duke?”

“Aren’t you watching, Todd? The teenies haven
fallen in collective love with The Kid. When word about him gets
around, we’ll be so hot, we’ll be able to double our prices.”

After it was over and the instruments had
been loaded into the van, Duke called Rafe over to the side.

“I forgot to tell you about the rules of the
band, Rafe. There are only a very few.”

“What are those, Duke?”

“One, never miss a performance unless you’re
on your deathbed. Two, no drugs and in your case, no alcohol
either. Three, and this might be the one you’ll want to keep in
mind, Rafe, no messing with the babies. I don’t care if you fuck
their old ladies or their big sisters. They’re adults and that’s on
them but there’s nothing that makes a Senator more upset than
somebody taking advantage of his little girl. Are you straight with
all that?”

Rafe nodded. “I can live with those things,
Duke.”

*

“Well,” Gabe asked Duke, “how’s it going with
my baby brother?”

“He’s a rather awesome kid, Gabe.”

“So, I’ve always been told.”

“Were you two not close when you were at
home?”

“No, nobody’s close to Rafe. Besides, there’s
eight years difference in our ages so I mostly remember him as a
little boy. All of us used to call him Injun because Mom and Dad
were always forgetting to get his hair cut so it was long and
black, and he was so quiet, we never heard him come or go. He’d
just be there one minute and gone the next.”

“Are you the one who taught him to play?”

Gabe laughed. “I guess you could say that. In
fact, it’s the most vivid recollection I have of us together. He
came down to the basement one day when I was practicing. He never
made a sound, just sat in the chair in front of me and watched my
hands. To tell you the truth, he was so intense, it made me kind of
nervous. When I was done, he asked me if he could try it once. I
went through my spiel about how you couldn’t just sit down and play
a guitar. You had to learn a lot of things first and practice until
you got good, etc., etc. He just said, “please, Gabe.” I handed the
guitar over to him just to placate him and prove a point. I was
astonished when he played the damn thing, almost perfectly. I know
he didn’t know about reading music or chording or anything then. I
don’t know if he does now or not. I tried to talk him into taking
an interest in some music classes but he never would. I told him
when someone was as naturally gifted in an area like music as he
was, he should concentrate on it. You know what the little shit
told me, Duke, just as matter-of-fact as could be?”

“What?”

“He said he didn’t have enough time to
concentrate on everything he was good at. He’s some kind of fucking
savant, Duke.”

“If you saw him work the women in a crowd,
Gabe, you say he’s some kind of fucking cocksman too.”

*

So on this bright sunny day as Rafe lay out
on that raft in back of the house, he was thinking that although he
was having lots of fun, his restful year was turning out not to be
so restful, in fact, he might be burning his candle at both ends.
He sometimes had to hustle to get from race meets to band gigs. And
then there was the sex. Between the race car groupies and the rock
and roll groupies (not to mention, Laney wanting attention at home)
he thought he might be pushing himself beyond his endurance, which
he had always thought before was pretty well limitless. It wasn’t
the first time he’d had the thought that he needed to start pacing
himself but he wasn’t sure how to do it. The girls at school had
known how to let him know they were interested but they’d been
bound by certain restrictions. Those same limitations didn’t apply
to either the race fans or the music fans who felt free to express
themselves in more direct ways. He’d never had so many breasts
thrust into his face, so many eager hands on his ass, so many
pussies pressed against his groin as he had this summer. School
girls tended to be note writers and he’d gotten plenty of written
offers detailing what he could expect if he took out this one or
that one and he still did get some of those passed up onto the
stage or thrown into the window of his car. But most of them just
came out and told him in graphic terms what they wanted and what
they would do for him in return. He accepted as many of those
offers as he could handle, maybe a few more than he could
comfortably handle.

Duke had ordered him off the young ones at
the dances and for the most part, he’d abided by that. There was
just that one time when the two beautiful twin daughters of the
head of the Congressional Black Caucus said they wanted to play
Oreo with him, him being the white icing in the middle. “Sorry,
Duke,” he’d said to himself, “this is where me and the rules part
ways.” Those girls had turned him every way but loose and when
finally, at dawn, he half fell down the hanging stairs from their
treehouse (yes, treehouse, which they seemed to use much as he used
the cabin on Mount Vincennes only there were mats instead of a
bed), he wasn’t sure he’d even have the strength to push the
accelerator down on the Corvette. When he got home and Laney
approached him, he’d told her, “not now, Lane, I just need a shower
and some sleep”.

One nice thing about the band chasers was
that, because of their following with Washington government types,
there was lots of diversity and diversity was something that Rafe
got off on. It was like having access to an ever-changing
international sexual smorgasbord.

By contrast, the race track devotees tended
to be more all-American, mostly white, some of them a little on the
redneck-y side, although not all by any means. Not that it mattered
- tight jeans, high cut tee-shirts and bleached blonde hair was
fine with him too. And he liked southern drawls almost as well as
British accents.

“Speed and sex and rock and roll,” he thought
to himself right before he fell asleep in the sun, “my fucking cup
runneth over.”

*

Laney was not so happy with the way things
were going. The high hopes she’d had for this year were not panning
out exactly as she planned. It seemed to her Rafe was gone almost
as much as he would be if he had gone to Princeton what with the
racing and the band. For sure, he wasn’t there on Friday and
Saturday nights. He was home most week days but she was at school
and half the time, he went off somewhere on week nights too. He
offered to take her to the races whenever she wanted to go and she
had gone with him a few times. She liked it okay, she guessed, but
it wasn’t her favorite thing and he didn’t get to spend all that
much time with her even when she was there. She’d also gone to
dances with him twice but she discovered she hated that. He’d asked
a group of girls if they cared if she sat with them and of course,
they were thrilled to have her. Not because of her though but
because they thought it would bring Rafe to their table more often,
which it did, but that was almost the worst part. She hated seeing
them fall all over him, touching him and cooing in his ear. She
even saw one girl put her hand on his crotch under the table and he
didn’t act like he minded either.

Just about the only good period was when her
folks spent a week in Las Vegas. He had stayed home that whole time
except just to do the races and one dance he had to do. He took her
to the mall and bought her some new clothes and the next evening he
told her to dress up nice and they went out to eat at Bridenthal’s,
which wasn’t a fast food place, but an elegant restaurant near the
harbor. They went to a movie and he lounged beside her the whole
time, his hand on her upper thigh, with her thinking she just
wished the damn film would get over with so they could go home and
go to bed. He let her spend every night that week with him. She
thought it was the closest she’d ever get to heaven - going to bed
with him every night and waking up with him every morning, knowing
as soon as he roused up, he’d start kissing her and touching her.
All that week she went to school so happy, people asked her if
she’d snagged some Valiums or something.

She thought he was probably doing part of it
on purpose, staying away as much as he did. He kept bringing up how
she needed to be prepared for when he wasn’t around at all. People
probably thought she was lucky, living in the mansion she lived in,
with the pool and the tennis courts and the horses and the boats.
They didn’t have the faintest idea how lonesome, and sometimes,
scary it was to live in a house so big, where bedrooms stretched
down the hall for about a mile. It was probably different when all
the big kids were still home and there were brothers and sisters
behind every door but now all those bedrooms were empty. And the
master bedroom where her folks slept was downstairs, at the other
end of the house, so far away they probably wouldn’t even hear her
if she screamed her head off. She still had nightmares some times
and if Rafe wasn’t there to come and calm her down, the nightmare
usually escalated into a panic attack. When that happened, she had
to jump out of bed, turn on the light and watch something boring on
t.v. until her heart stopped racing and her breathing returned to
normal. The kids whose families weren’t as rich as hers might envy
her but she’d give anything to live in a snug little ranch house
where everyone was practically on top of everyone else.

She really tried to take what Rafe said to
heart. Sometimes she’d look around at the boys in school and think,
“would I like to go on a date with this one?” or “how would it feel
to be in bed with that one?” and just the very thought just made a
shiver of revulsion go down her spine. She could not even conceive
of having sex with anyone but Rafe.

*

He was having lunch at the marina. He’d
noticed in an off-hand kind of way that his waitress was attractive
(he’d have to be on his deathbed not to at least notice). Probably
in her mid to late thirties with a trim figure in her uniform and
short black hair, beautiful brown eyes and a generous smile. He
certainly wouldn’t have given her a second thought though. Another
woman was the last thing he needed right now. But then she asked
him if he wasn’t Rafe Vincennes and when he told her yes, she said
her daughter, Misty, went to school with his sister, Lane, and her
name was Pam Madison.

And then he instantly flashed back to the
conversation he and Laney had had about the girls talking sex in
gym class and he especially remembered that Misty’s mother had said
most women faked it and that she had never been brought to a climax
by a man. And suddenly, it was a whole new ballgame. Now he saw
her, not just as any other appealing woman, but as a challenge. He
thought he would have to play this one very, very carefully.
Misty’s Mom seemed like the type who would be horrified at the very
thought of taking up with her daughter’s friend’s 16-year-old
brother.

So that first day, they just chit-chatted a
little whenever she came to ask him if he wanted more coffee or a
piece a pie (which he ordered although he didn’t want it) or was he
ready for his check - about the girls and how he’d be going off to
school next year. He didn’t attempt even the subtlest pick up line.
Just left a tip, neither too big nor too small, and went on his
way.

Rafe was nothing, if not patient about
something he wanted badly. He didn’t eat at the Marina every day,
just now and then, and each time they became a little friendlier
and talked a little longer. He felt like he was making progress the
day she agreed to sit and have a cup of coffee with him when her
shift was over. He confided in her then about the way it had been
with him and Laney.

“Mom and Dad just basically called it quits
on being parents after the first seven so I feel like I practically
raised her although,” he smiled his fleeting smile, “I’m pretty
young to be a Dad.”

That was another little opening to discuss
barely teenage girls and the problems they presented. Fortunately,
he wasn’t lying so he really did know about things like the
logistics of getting them back and forth to cheer practice and how
much it cost to outfit them for the Squad and how all the middle
school girls thought, Mr. Schmidt, their Biology teacher, was
creepy and called him Frog Freak.

After a month, he got her to open up a little
about her personal life. She was dating a guy named Joe. It wasn’t
a great love match but Joe was solid and reliable and she could
count on him for things like taking the car to have the tires
rotated and getting under the sink to fix a leak. And he was good
to Misty and to her and her first two husbands hadn’t been. Misty’s
dad was an alcoholic and she’d caught the second one cheating with
her next door neighbor.