Part 15 (1/2)

”Excuse me?” George says.

”Joke, little man. Joke.” He slides down to the other end of the bar to take an order.

”Hey!” Robin calls out.

”This guy's a d.i.c.k,” George says. He turns and walks back toward the door they came in, moving through the black curtain.

Robin calls his name, to no avail.

”Let him go,” Calvin advises.

Robin nods. He can't give up on this place yet, a.s.shole bartender or not. He recalls an exercise he was given in acting cla.s.s: Get the attention of someone ignoring you. The instructor offered three options: go big to intimidate, go small to elicit pity, or become like the person you need to impress.

So he deepens his voice and calls out, ”I hear she was a f.u.c.king b.i.t.c.h to deal with. You should try being her brother.” The bartender looks back toward him. Robin pulls out his money clip, bulging with bills. ”Man, I gotta clear this up before my mom gets on my case. Anyone here who can help?”

”Hang on, I'll call the office.” The bartender picks up a phone mounted on the wall and mutters a few sentences. Then he tells Robin. ”Mick is coming downstairs. He was at the door last night.”

”Thanks, man.” Robin begrudgingly leaves a couple singles on the bar.

A minute later, a big guy appears from the dark reaches of the club. Robin extends his hand, and the guy grabs it so that only their thumbs interlock, like they're old pals b.u.mping into each other at a rock concert. ”Que pasa?” ”Que pasa?” he says, though he doesn't look like he has a drop of Spanish blood in him. He looks more like an Amish farmer, his pale face obscured by a broad, fuzzy beard. His eyes are small, the pupils large, as if he never leaves the club during daylight. Robin can see that the guy is probably only a couple years older than he is, a young face disappearing into hairy manhood. he says, though he doesn't look like he has a drop of Spanish blood in him. He looks more like an Amish farmer, his pale face obscured by a broad, fuzzy beard. His eyes are small, the pupils large, as if he never leaves the club during daylight. Robin can see that the guy is probably only a couple years older than he is, a young face disappearing into hairy manhood.

Calvin says, ”Hey, man.”

The bouncer takes notice of him. ”Oh, you. That's That's what this is about.” what this is about.”

Calvin says, ”His sister, my girlfriend, was one of the girls who got kicked out-black hair, blue eyes, kind of pale?”

”Oh, yeah. The foxy preppie chick. I had to get in there and f.u.c.kin' break s.h.i.+t up, 'cause that other one, the really wasted t.w.a.t, was wiping the floor with her. Another minute and somebody was gonna get hurt.” Pointing at Calvin, he tells Robin, ”This guy was the only one making any sense.”

Robin is still absorbing Ruby as a ”foxy preppie chick” there's hardly room to imagine her in the midst of a scuffle, much less Calvin stepping in as a sensible hero.

Calvin says, ”The last I saw of her was when she left with two other girls. A fat one and a skinny one.”

But the bouncer shakes his head, his beard floating in front of him like seaweed on the surf. ”Nah, I'm pretty sure those two chicks went one way, and your girlfriend went the other way with some guy.”

”A skinny, c.o.ked-out guy?” Calvin asks. ”Dressed in black?”

”It was new-wave night. Lots of guys fit that description. But yeah, he was skinny. They went-” He points toward what Robin guesses is the south side of town.

”Are you sure?” Robin asks.

”That's what they pay me for,” he says, with obvious pride. ”I don't miss anything.”

”That f.u.c.ker,” Calvin says, stamping his foot on the floor and twirling around. Even in the low light of the bar, Robin can see the frustration on his face. And who can blame him, betrayed like that? Maybe the beach patrol was right when they told Calvin that stuff like this happens all the time. Even so, it's not like Ruby. He tries to imagine the kind of guy who could get Ruby to go off with him. When he tries to picture Chris, what forms in his mind is a picture of Douglas.

Outside the club, there's no sign of George at first; then Robin spots him across the street, waving them over.

Robin starts an apology, something about the bartender and his insults, but George stops him. ”Wasn't your fault,” he says. ”I have an idea. Let's check out this parking lot.” He points farther down the street, to a sign announcing, PARK HERE FOR CLUB XS PARK HERE FOR CLUB XS, BAMBOO BAR BAMBOO BAR, YAKETY YAK'S YAKETY YAK'S.

The lot is presided over by an old man sitting on a folding lawn chair. He wears dark gla.s.ses and a baseball cap and keeps his hands folded over a f.a.n.n.y pack at his waist while Robin asks him questions. Turns out this guy wasn't on duty last night, but his son was, and if they leave a number, he'll have him call.

The old guy looks past Robin's shoulder. His eyes are on George and Calvin, who are wandering around the cars at the perimeter of the lot. ”Hey!” he shouts. ”Get away from the vehicles!”

When Robin joins them he sees that they've huddled together over a discovery: a mound of clothing that includes a woman's s.h.i.+rt, yellow and damp, and a pair of boxy madras shorts, smudged with dirt.

”She had those on!” Calvin exclaims.

”They don't look like Ruby.”

”She borrowed them from Alice. I spilled a beer on her,” he says, his face going slack, ”so she had to change.”

For the first time since leaving Philly, Robin feels what must be dread: a chill along his skin, a tightness in his throat, sour as bile. ”We don't know what it means,” he says quickly. ”She might have just changed when she got to the car.” He finds George's gaze and holds it, wanting some measure of George's customary calmness to transfer to him.

But George seems rattled, too. ”If she was just changing her clothes, why would she dump these on the ground?”

”I don't even want to say what I'm thinking,” Calvin mutters.

It's what they're all thinking, Robin knows, understanding, too, that it's time to go to the police. He's been resisting. To tell the cops means giving in to his worst fears. And it probably means telling his mother what's going on, too. He had wanted to spare her the anxiety of a missing child. Especially today.

But he knows he's in over his head. ”Calvin, let's go to your sister's house. I want to use the phone there to call the cops.”

Calvin nods. He picks up the cast-off clothes and tucks them under his arm.

George suddenly grabs hold of him. ”It'll work out,” he says and surprises Robin with an arm around his shoulder and a comforting kiss planted on his forehead. It feels very public: Calvin is looking back at them, another car is moving slowly past toward a parking spot, and the old guy in the baseball cap is now standing up and waving his arms in the air. ”You're all trespa.s.sing,” he yells. ”Move along!”

Then it finally hits him that the person he needs to call is his father.

They don't talk much these days, and Robin isn't sure he knows how to talk to him, not about anything deep. Clark's expectations have always seemed at odds with what Robin wanted for his own life. While Jackson was alive, the burden of being the right kind of son was alleviated for Robin. He had a brother who could play sports, who liked to roughhouse and tease, who wanted a father's advice (as opposed to a mother's, which is where Robin always turned). During those months when Jackson was in the hospital, in a coma, his father dealt with the pall of uncertainty that hung over all of them by knocking out the dining room wall and beginning construction on a new room, built to be the bedroom of a handicapped child. No one used that word, handicapped, but phrases like ”diminished motor skills” and ”permanent damage” were spoken quietly, and Robin would rehea.r.s.e the scenarios in his mind, the various ways that Jackson, once the fastest sprinter in his elementary school and the most reckless tree-climber of any kid in the neighborhood, would return to them in some frightening, diminished version of himself. But Jackson didn't return.

Inevitably there was an argument between his parents about what to do with the room. Robin listened as they went back and forth. Dorothy had a.s.sumed it would make sense as a breakfast nook or a pantry, some expansion of their kitchen, which had never been quite large enough. Instead, Clark announced, ”It's going to be my office.”

”But you have one at your job.”

”I'm claiming a little personal s.p.a.ce.”

”s.p.a.ce for what?” Dorothy demanded.

”For myself.”

Personal s.p.a.ce struck Robin as an odd fit with his father's personality. Clark had always been pragmatic, social, and not one for self-a.n.a.lysis. Now he installed a couch that took up an entire wall. It was wide and plush, and it cost, his mother complained to Robin, ”a pretty penny.” He would work late at the office, as a sales manager for a j.a.panese company, in their battery department, a job that Robin never understood. (Battery sales? You just buy them at the store, right?) At night, Clark would close himself into this room. Robin would spy him through the partly opened door, reclining on the couch, some technical manual splayed on his chest. He became a ghost presence, sealed off from the rest of them. struck Robin as an odd fit with his father's personality. Clark had always been pragmatic, social, and not one for self-a.n.a.lysis. Now he installed a couch that took up an entire wall. It was wide and plush, and it cost, his mother complained to Robin, ”a pretty penny.” He would work late at the office, as a sales manager for a j.a.panese company, in their battery department, a job that Robin never understood. (Battery sales? You just buy them at the store, right?) At night, Clark would close himself into this room. Robin would spy him through the partly opened door, reclining on the couch, some technical manual splayed on his chest. He became a ghost presence, sealed off from the rest of them.

After the divorce, Robin and Ruby's weekend visits to Greenlawn had the atmosphere of time spent with a distant relative, more a chaperone than a parent. They shopped for groceries, cooked for their father, ate together in front of the TV. Then they went to their bedrooms to do homework or talk on the phone while Clark retired to his office. It was a kind of limbo. Life as aftermath.

Right before Robin went away to Pittsburgh for college, Clark pulled him aside and said, ”I hope we can be close again one day,” and Robin, at a loss to think of when they were ever close in the past, simply said, ”Yeah, sure.” He didn't really have a sense of what a close relations.h.i.+p with his father would even look like. But eventually, he decided he might test things out. During a phone call, when Clark asked Robin if he had a girlfriend at college, Robin said, ”Dad, I don't think I'm going to have any girlfriends.” Clark seemed taken aback, and managed to say, ”Time will tell,” to which Robin replied, ”I'm telling you now, I don't think so.” And that was that. The idea of a renewed relations.h.i.+p seemed to be sucked away into the vacuum of this unspeakable subject. Clark wasn't invited to the dinner party Dorothy threw for Robin's eighteenth birthday, and Clark in turn didn't find a way to make it to Pittsburgh to see Robin onstage in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Clark was contributing to his tuition. But that was the extent of it.

So when Robin stops at yet another phone booth and places a collect call to Greenlawn, he doesn't at all know what to expect.