14
The next day, Auggie went home for spring break. Fer had bought the tickets months before, and Auggie wasn’t ready to break the peace by changing plans at the last minute. Theo had understood, of course, because he was Theo. He’d kissed Auggie before helping him onto the shuttle and said, “Come home soon.”
By the second day, Auggie knew he’d made a mistake. The first night, he and Fer smoked down a joint while they watched a Pawn Stars marathon, and Fer had quizzed Auggie about Theo. Well, quizzed sounded like a game show. Interrogated was a better word. Or conducted a full-on inquisition. He wanted to see pictures of Theo. Auggie made the mistake of mentioning Ian and Lana, and then Fer wanted to know all about that. He wanted to know if Theo was ever going to get a job. He wanted to know what kind of car he drove.
“What does it matter?” Auggie asked. “He doesn’t even like to drive. Mostly he rides his bike.”
“Oh, that’s perfect, Augustus. That’s just great.” Fer was trying to smoke the roach, and after sparking the lighter three times and failing to get a flame, he gave up and threw it onto the coffee table, swearing. “This is classic you. Do you realize that? Let me get this straight: you’re dating this ancient fucking dinosaur—”
“He’s the same age as you, almost!”
“—and he’s got no job—”
“He’s finishing his PhD. He’s going to be a professor.”
“—and he’s got no money—”
“He’s fine. We’re fine.”
“—and he’s divorced—”
“He’s not divorced. He’s, I don’t know, a widower, but that sounds weird. And that’s none of your business anyway.”
“—and to cap it all, the perfect fucking quintessence of an Augustus fuck-up, this fuckwad dinosaur doesn’t have a car and rides a bike everywhere.”
“He has a car. Why are you being such a bitch about this?”
“What did you say to me?”
Auggie stood, and Fer launched out of the recliner. He was a head taller than Auggie and probably weighed close to fifty pounds more than him, and he used all of it now, pressing in on Auggie’s space, looking down at him.
“I said you’re being a little bitch about this. Why can’t you just be happy for me?”
“Happy? Who the fuck cares about happy? Happy doesn’t put food on the table, Augustus. When you start squirting out babies for this guy, who’s going to pay for all that shit?”
“What are you talking about, Fer? What the hell is going on?”
“Not me. Do you hear that?”
“I didn’t ask you to pay for anything!”
“Are you fucking serious?” Fer laughed. Skunky breath washed over Auggie, with the bite of alcohol behind it. “All I do is pay for your shit. And I’m not going to empty my fucking wallet so you can buy silicone dog tails to stuff up your ass and nipple clamps and a riding crop for this guy to tan your ass with.”
“You are such an asshole.”
“Yeah? Well, I’m the asshole paying your credit card bills every month.”
“Why are you being like this? We were having a good night.”
“We were having a good night until I had to sit here and listen to you tell me how you are fucking up your entire life, Augustus, because you threw a bone for daddy and can’t just rub one out and move on. For fuck’s sake, Augustus. A bicycle? Do you have to ride bitch when you go out on the town?”
“I hate you.”
“Yeah? Reality checks are hell, aren’t they? Too bad you can’t just jerk off with your dinosaur and pretend everything’s going to be ok.”
“I hate you so much, Fer.” Auggie took off down the hall.
“Get your ass back here and apologize to me.”
Auggie stepped into his bedroom and slammed the door behind him.
“Apologize right fucking now,” Fer screamed, coming down the hallway. “Or Daddy Dick can start paying your fucking bills!”
Auggie locked the door a moment before Fer tried it. Fer rattled the knob, still screaming, and Auggie climbed into bed and pulled a pillow across his face. He let out one wordless shriek, trying to smother the sound with the pillow. Then, when he was spent, he lay there, breathing in the smell of his saliva and the cotton, listening to Fer rant. When Fer finally went away, Auggie pushed the pillow aside. He looked up into the darkness. He listened to the garage door rattle up, the squeal of tires as Fer raced away.
No, he told himself.
Then he cried, fists balled up, until he fell asleep.
The second day, Fer was gone when Auggie got up, and Auggie refused to text or call to try to make the peace. He tried watching TV, but every few minutes, he found himself changing channels or getting up and checking the cabinets in the kitchen or walking out onto the deck to look at the pool and try to talk himself into a swim. He tried working on his social media accounts. First, he scratched out the draft of a script. Then he deleted it and spent half an hour telling himself that everything he’d ever done had been shit. He pulled numbers and looked at engagement for his last few posts, filling in the data on various spreadsheets, trying to track what had done well and what his audience hadn’t connected with. Eventually, he pushed the laptop away and went back to his phone. He looked at pictures—some of Theo, some that he’d snapped in those perfect moments when Theo didn’t even know he was being perfect. Theo pushing his hair back as he looked out the window. Theo in the car, the strong diagonal of the light accenting his cheekbones. Theo on the rickety back porch, the Riverside Shakespeare across his knees, bare feet propped up on the rail. In that one, he had a pen between his teeth and a smudge of ink on his nose. He’s not a dinosaur. He’s not old. He’s in his prime, and he’s smart, and he’s kind, and he’s patient even though he makes all those jokes about undergrads. He’s a lot like you Fer, which you’d see if you’d listen to me for five minutes. Which is why I love him, actually, if you could read between the fucking lines.
After dinner—just a few frozen burritos heated up in the microwave, what he thought of as a classic Fer-is-working-late dinner, and which he ate in front of the TV while texting Theo and watching a Law & Order rerun—Auggie drank two of Fer’s beers, some sort of local craft IPA with a lizard on the label. Even that wasn’t any fun because, of course, now he was allowed to do it, and there was no fun in doing half the stuff he did if it didn’t wind Fer up. He was rinsing the beer bottles to toss in the recycling when the door to the garage opened and Fer came in. He had Chuy propped up with one arm, and Chuy’s shirt was soaked with blood.
“Oh shit,” Auggie said. The bottles fell and clinked together at the bottom of the sink. He hammered off the water. “Holy shit, Fer! Chuy, are you ok? What happened?”
“Hiya Gus-Gus,” Chuy mumbled, his head rolling onto Fer’s shoulder. Fer made a disgusted noise. “Trouble.”
“Trouble,” Fer snapped. “He got cut open like a fucking fish and then called me from a fucking whore’s crib to pick him up.” He hauled Chuy toward the hallway. “I was in the middle of a really important dinner, you sack of shit. Do you understand that?”
“Sorry,” Chuy mumbled. “Sorry, Fer.”
“What the fuck are you talking about, sorry? You’re so high you don’t even know what you’re saying.”
“Sorry.”
“What the fuck are you sorry for?” Chuy made an indistinct noise as Fer carried him down the hall. His voice drifted back to Auggie. “See? You don’t even know what the fuck you’re apologizing for.”
Auggie hurried after them, drying his hands on his shirt, and when he reached Chuy’s bedroom, Chuy was already on the floor.
“Get a towel,” Fer said as he tried to pull Chuy’s shirt off. Chuy was batting at his hands, making sharp noises when Fer tried to pull the blood-crusted fabric away from his skin.
Auggie ran to the hall closet, found one of the old gray towels at the back, and knelt next to Fer in the bedroom. Fer had Chuy’s wrists locked in one hand, and he was trying to get the shirt off with his other. Chuy was writhing and moaning and, as per usual, making everything Fer did a hundred times more difficult.
“Go to your room,” Fer said.
“Let me help you.”
“I told you to go to your room. Or get the fuck out of the house. Take my car.”
“I can help.”
“I don’t want your help!” Fer reared back. His eyes were dark and wide. “I want you to have a fucking chance at a normal life, and where the fuck does dealing with your shitheel junkie brother fit into that?”
For a moment, it was almost what it always was: Auggie ratcheting up, screaming back at Fer, and then the whole thing would escalate until Fer forced Auggie to leave. Auggie made himself take a breath. He tried to think what Theo would do.
In as even a voice as he could manage, he said, “It’ll be easier to cut the shirt off him.”
Something twisted Fer’s face, something that looked, to Auggie, dangerously close to grief. But after a moment, Fer nodded. “There’s a first aid kit in the kitchen.”
“I know where it is.”
When Auggie came back, Chuy looked like he was asleep. His breathing was too shallow, and his eyes moved restlessly behind closed lids. The first aid kit had a little pair of scissors, which Auggie thought of as sewing scissors, the kind they’d used in Home Ec in ninth grade. While Fer held Chuy still, which wasn’t as hard now, Auggie snipped a line down the shirt and then along the seam at the shoulder. He peeled it back. Then he said, “Oh my God.”
The cut itself wasn’t actually that bad—it was a few inches long, but it wasn’t deep or wide, although it had still bled plenty. What was worse was seeing Chuy like this—so thin he looked emaciated, his ribs showing through his skin, the purplish-brown of bruises around his throat, across his chest.
“I can handle this,” Fer said, and he gave Auggie a gentle shove.
Auggie shook his head, blinking back tears, and rummaged through the first aid kit while he got himself under control. He found the disinfectant wipes, and opened one and held out the torn foil packet to Fer. Fer took it, but when he went to wipe down Chuy, Auggie said, “You’ve got to wipe your hands down first. Or go wash them really well.”
Fer hesitated. He wiped down his hands carefully, tossed aside the wipe, and accepted a fresh one. After cleaning the cut, he held a bandage in place while Auggie taped it. Then he sat back, studying Chuy. His hands hung in fists at his sides. He closed his eyes. Then it looked like something broke inside him, his head falling forward, fingers uncurling, his chest hitching. He stood and left.
Auggie cleaned up the trash, packed up the first aid kit, and turned Chuy onto his uninjured side, with the towel as an improvised pillow. He found Fer in the kitchen, a beer in his hand as he stared out the glass slider at the valley lights. Another beer stood open on the counter, and Fer gestured at it without looking. “I thought we both might need one, although I forgot you were a beer-guzzling weasel-fuck, and I see you’ve already helped yourself.”
After taking the beer from the counter, Auggie moved over to Fer. He leaned against him. Then he leaned harder, until Fer grunted, staggered a step, and his elbow banged the slider. He made an annoyed noise, but he slung an arm around Auggie’s shoulders. They drank in silence for a while. The hoppiness of the beer floated on Fer’s breath.
“Do you think he needs to go to the hospital?” Fer asked.
Auggie fought it, but the grin won.
“What the fuck are you so happy about?” Fer asked. “Your brother just got stabbed, and you’re grinning like you’re six inches down a foot-long dick. Psycho motherfucker.”
“You realize that might possibly be the first time you’ve ever asked me my opinion about anything. And it’s definitely the first time you’ve ever given me a beer.”
“I don’t ask you questions because I don’t need access to the twenty-four-seven porn reel you’ve got playing in your head. If I want to know about fancy boys coring each other out, there are websites for that. And I don’t give you beer because, like I already said, you’re a beer-stealing weasel-fuck.”
“You said guzzling.”
Fer made a face at their reflections. Then he closed his arm around Auggie’s neck and began to squeeze. In spite of everything, in spite of how horrible this night had been, in spite of the night before, Auggie laughed and pried at Fer’s arm, while Fer drank his beer and pretended to try to choke Auggie out. It went on until Auggie tried to tickle Fer, and then Fer released him and leaped back, pointing the beer bottle at him in warning.
Auggie wiggled his fingers.
“Don’t you fucking dare.”
“I still think you peed yourself one time,” Auggie said. “That time Chuy held you down and you couldn’t get away.”
Fer was darker than Auggie, but if he was embarrassed enough, you could still see him blush. “I didn’t pee myself. I spilled my drink. And I should have known right then you were a cock-goblin, you treacherous little fuck. Get the fuck out of here before I have you neutered and make you get a real job.”
Instead, somehow, they ended up on the deck, looking down at the valley. The air smelled dusty, with a hint of sage coming back to life, chlorine from the neighbor’s hot tub wafting over in the stillness. Fer leaned on the railing, and Auggie leaned on Fer. Below them, the lights were amber and blue-white, and cars kept the night busy. Up close, it would have been a traffic snarl, but from far away, the movements were smooth and strangely soothing.
“How much do college professors make?” Fer asked. He was picking at the label on the beer with his thumb, and he kept his eyes on the valley.
“I don’t know.”
“A little town like that, it might be forty or fifty thousand.”
“Ok.”
“If he gets a job at a big school, it might be sixty or seventy to start.”
“That wouldn’t be bad.”
Fer got his nail under the paper and peeled away a long curl. “If you came back to California, they’d have to pay him more. Cost of living and all that.”
“Yeah,” Auggie said, letting his head fall on Fer’s shoulder. “That’s true.”
It wasn’t until Fer made a noise that Auggie looked up and saw he was wiping his eyes. Panic rushed through him, and in that first instant, he had no idea what to say except, “Fer, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong. Jesus fucking Christ, Augustus, I got dust in my eye from this god-fucking-awful wind and from having god-fucking-awful neighbors with a god-fucking-awful zeroscape yard.” Some sort of doubt must have shown on Auggie’s face because Fer hocked a loogie over the rail and said, “It’s kind of like when you get a really thick facial from a guy and some of it gets in your eye. How’s that? Now do you understand?”
“You are demented. You’re beyond demented, saying stuff like that. I’m your little brother. You’re perverted.”
“I’m not the one wearing sixteen ounces of come when he gets home Friday night.”
“You’re, like, pathological. They should put you in a hospital and study you.”
“Yeah,” Fer said. More of the label came off, and it fluttered down into darkness. “Yeah, they should, shouldn’t they?”
After a minute, Auggie let his head come to rest on Fer’s shoulder again. When he spoke, he made sure he was facing out into the night. “Were you on a date?”
A laugh exploded from Fer. “What?”
“Tonight.” Fer was laughing again. “It’s a reasonable question—stop laughing, dumbass. Were you on a date when Chuy called you?”
“No, Augustus. Unlike fancy college boys, I don’t have the luxury of dipping my wick whenever I want. Some people actually have to work.”
“Fer, last year—” Auggie tried to think of how to say it. “I think you’re such a great guy.”
“Oh my God.”
“I’m trying to be nice!”
“For fuck’s sake, Augustus. I do not need this tonight. I was at a work dinner. That’s all.”
“Ok, but are you on any of those dating apps—”
“You know why Chuy got stabbed?”
“He didn’t get stabbed; he got cut. And hold on, we were talking about—”
“Because he tried to steal from a dealer. He couldn’t buy the shit he wanted, so he tried to steal it. Jesus Christ, he’s lucky he didn’t get shot. It was a fifteen-year-old kid. He about put a knife through Chuy. Fucking idiot.”
“Fer—” Auggie stopped. Have you ever tried talking to someone, he wanted to ask. Have you ever tried talking to someone who could help you? Not Chuy, but you.
Fer made a questioning noise. He wasn’t crying anymore, but he was rubbing his eyes with his free hand, like he had a headache.
“I’m sorry,” Auggie said. “I’m sorry I’m making your life harder. I know it’s already harder than it needs to be.”
“’sokay,” Fer mumbled. Then, in a stronger voice, he said, “You’re basically the human equivalent of that dried-up bit of come that gets stuck in your shaft, but you’re my brother. I’m going to take care of you.”
“You don’t have to take care of me anymore, Fer. You did a really good job taking care of me, but you don’t have to do it anymore.”
Fer snorted, and it was the first thing all night that had sounded like the real Fer. They stood in silence for a long time, the lights moving in the valley below them. It was late when Fer finally said in a small, tight voice, “What the fuck am I going to do, Augustus?”
The next day, Fer went to work, and Auggie was alone with his mother and Chuy. It took approximately fifteen seconds for Gabby Lopez to complete the full cycle of grief when Auggie told her Chuy had been hurt. She cried, but not enough to ruin her complexion. She checked on Chuy, who was still passed out. She stood at the window, dramatically staring out at the cruel world, dabbing at the corners of her eyes.
“Do you think the neighbors know?” she finally asked through a handful of tissues pressed to her mouth. “Do you think I should tell them? I mean, it’s drugs, which, you know.” She made a face. Then her expression grew pensive. She had once been in a print ad for a literacy campaign, and she had worn a pair of cheaters she didn’t need. “But, of course, we’re victims too, and people need to know.”
After this maternal display for the first half of the day, she went back to what Auggie considered normal: mostly oblivious to him and Chuy, focused on her Pilates, her yoga, her smoothie, her hydrating mask. It wasn’t that she ignored Auggie; from time to time, she asked him questions. But they were always the broadest of strokes.
She was curling her hair in front of her iPad, scrolling through Instagram videos about hair and makeup, when she asked, “How’s school going?”
“Terrible. I’ve got all F’s.”
“Mmm-hmm,” she said as she flipped to the next video. A few minutes lapsed before she realized she’d dropped the ball on the conversation and said, “And how do you like your classes?”
“They’re great, Mom. One of my professors is Buffalo Bill, and he’s making everybody stick a road flare up their bunghole.”
In a distracted voice, she said, “Oh, that’s terrible. Did I tell you I saw Chan’s mother the other day? Did you know Chan is making six figures with those product endorsements? Six figures. Isn’t that something? I always knew she was special.”
Auggie wriggled lower on the couch. Maybe, if he wriggled enough, it would swallow him up.
But sometime that afternoon, everything changed. From his mom’s bedroom came her raised voice and then a shrill noise that wasn’t quite a scream. Then she did scream. Then glass broke. Then a door banged. And then the house was silent except for the drone of The Price is Right as Auggie tried to zone out. She didn’t come out of her room for dinner—she was doing the keto diet, and Auggie had watched as she’d made fat bombs, or whatever they were called, that morning. He knocked on her door, and she didn’t answer. He texted Fer, and Fer didn’t text back.
When Auggie went downstairs, Chuy was stretched out on the sofa, smoking a blunt, the air stinking with it. He was watching anime on TV. His color looked bad, but that might have been the dim light that filtered through the blinds.
“Gus-Gus,” he murmured when Auggie sat on the sofa. “Come here.”
Auggie made a face and bent over so Chuy could riffle his hair. Then he sat up, already smoothing it back into place, and said, “Did you change the bandage?”
Chuy made an OK sign with one hand.
“Did you actually change it, Chuy? Yes or no?”
“I’m going to.”
“You have to change it or it’s not going to heal. You might get an infection.”
The OK sign again, and then a cloud of smoke. Chuy scratched his arm. The track marks made a blue-black web.
“Mom’s, you know, having a bad day.”
That’s what Fer had always called it: having a bad day. Even when the bad day lasted a week. Just like he’d always said, Mom’s friends. Just like he’d made up spaghetti dogs when they didn’t have anything else to eat, and he’d even tried to make the mess of spaghetti and sliced-up hot dogs look like the shape of a dog on Auggie’s plate. Little kid stuff. Auggie was surprised he’d remembered it now, and surprised, too, he’d ever forgotten.
Chuy’s eyes followed the movement on the TV.
“Chuy.”
Chuy made a noise.
“Chuy!”
He turned his head. “Hey Gus-Gus. What’s up?”
Auggie tried not to scream. He stood, shook his head, and said, “Never mind.”
“Relax, man,” Chuy mumbled, turning up the volume. “You sound like Fer.”
Auggie rapped on his mom’s door again, louder this time, and when she didn’t answer, he opened the door. She was lying on the floor, still in her yoga pants and racerback sports bra. From time to time, her whole body quivered.
“Mom.” Auggie sat crisscross next to her, where he could see her face. A dark smudge marked her under one eye. She’d been applying her mascara when it happened, he guessed. “Are you ok? Fer and Chuy and I are so worried about you.”
Sometimes that was all it took, the three loving children and their doting mother, everyone so concerned for each other.
This time, however, his mother lay there, breathing into the carpet, her eyes blank.
“Are you sick?” This one worked sometimes too. “Do you need to see the doctor? Or do you want me to call Shannon?” Shannon-the-life-coach, who couldn’t legally call herself a therapist, had provided Gabby with direction and meaning and purpose and vision, depending on what package she was selling that year, since Auggie had gotten his first iPhone.
“Shannon can’t help me,” his mom croaked. “Nobody can help me. Eagle won’t answer my snaps, and—and—and nobody loves me, and I’m going to die alone.”
This launched her into a storm of sobbing.
“It’s ok,” Auggie said, and he heard himself, sounding eight years old again. “It’s ok, Mom. I love you, and Fer loves you, and Chuy. We all love you. We’re here for you.”
She cried harder, turning her face into the carpet.
Silly, goofy things sometimes worked too; or they had worked, a long time ago. “Let me show you this video I made,” Auggie said, fumbling for his phone. “You’ll get a laugh out of it. I’m pretending I had a breakup, and—”
His mother reared up from the carpet, her eyes bloodshot, her face puffy. “One of your videos? My life is over, and you want to show me one of your videos?”
Auggie froze, phone in hand. “Lots of people liked it—”
“Not everything is about you, August.” She got to her feet, using the bed to prop herself up, and then crawled onto the mattress. As she pulled the blanket over herself, she shrieked, “The universe does not revolve around you!”
Auggie fled.
He was in his bedroom when Fer got home. He heard the usual procession: Fer’s familiar steps, the jingle of his keys hitting the bowl near the door, the mixture of swears and groans and thumps as Fer took off his shoes. The steps came toward his room, and then the door opened.
“Why are you creeping in here in the dark?”
“I’m not creeping,” Auggie said.
Some of the lines of Fer’s body softened, and he swore under his breath. He walked down the hall. Another door opened. He asked, “What happened?” Their mother’s reply was indistinct. “Well, fuck him, then,” Fer said. “Get out of bed. You’re upsetting Auggie.” She said something else, her voice shrill. “Then do whatever you want,” Fer said. “For fuck’s sake, that’s what you always do anyway.”
The door slammed. There was more movement, more opening and closing of doors, and when Fer came back, he was in jersey shorts and a Corona tank top. “Get out of bed,” he said from the doorway.
“I’m fine, Fer. I just want to lie here for a while.”
“I’m ordering Imperial Kitchen. If you’re not out of bed by the time I get off the phone, I’m going to take a slipper to your ass, and not the fun way you like jerking off to.”
“You’re a psychopath,” Auggie shouted after him as Fer’s steps moved down the length of the house. But after a minute, he got out of bed. He found Fer in the kitchen. “You’ve got verbal diarrhea. That’s your problem.”
“You’re my problem,” Fer said as he disconnected the call. “You’re like this sweaty ass-crack rash that won’t go away.”
“Why does she have to be like this? She’s so dramatic and attention-seeking. I know what she wants. She wants us to feel bad for her, and she wants us to make a big production out of it, and she wants to be the center of the universe until she finds the next—what do you call them?”
“The latest one was ‘micro-dong.’ She’s skimming from the guppy pond at this point.”
“Ok, I’m not going to call them that because as usual, it’s super weird. But you know what I mean?”
Fer sat at the table, pulled out a baggie and a sheet of rolling paper, and began assembling a joint.
“Why can’t she just be normal? Fine, if he’s going to be an asshole and ignore her, she should dump his ass and move on with her life.”
Glancing up, Fer offered a surprisingly unreserved grin. Then he returned his attention to the joint.
“What?” Auggie asked.
Fer shook his head.
“No, tell me. What? I’m old enough. You don’t have to protect me anymore.”
“Jesus God, I wish,” Fer said with a smaller smile. “Fucking family, that’s all. You and Mom.”
“Me and Mom? What the hell, Fer? We’re not anything alike.”
Fer raised an eyebrow. He wetted the rolling paper with his tongue and finished the joint.
“We’re not,” Auggie said.
“Ok.”
And then Auggie could glimpse it: the theatrics when things went wrong, the need to be seen when it felt like nobody in the world saw you, even the way they both used what they knew they had—good looks and a pleasant personality—to keep people in orbit. His brain started to list all the ways they were different, but now that he’d seen the shared behaviors, he couldn’t unsee them.
Fer laughed. “It’s ok, Augustus. We’re all like her in different ways. At least you didn’t get what Chuy did, spending most of your life packed in bennies and weed so you don’t have to deal with real life.”
Auggie looked at the joint.
Another laugh. “Nope,” Fer said. “That’s not my thing. I’ve got to keep my head clear for work.” He sparked the joint and, after he got a good hit, held it out.
Auggie hesitated and took it. Fer was breathing out slowly as Auggie filled his lungs with the smoke. Some of the unevenness smoothed out of the world. He coughed a little on the exhale, and, passing the joint back, asked, “What, then?”
Fer was silent a moment, holding the smoldering joint. Then he took another drag, the cherry flaring. He let his hand fall to his side, tilted his head back, and blew out the smoke. He had new lines around his eyes. “How’d you put it? Why can’t she move on with her life?” He was still for a moment. Then he stood and headed for the slider, saying over his shoulder, “And she can’t break up with him, Auggie, because he’s got all the power. That’s how it always is with her. That’s her whole fucking problem.”
“But she’s older.” The words escaped Auggie before he could stop them. “I mean, she’s got to be twice his age.”
“For fuck’s sake, Augustus.” Fer shook his head as he stepped out onto the deck. “When did you get so fucking stupid?”
That conversation, bits and pieces of it, came back to Auggie over and over again for the rest of the trip. He found himself thinking of it on Thursday when Eagle called and apologized, and his mother was so happy that she spent the day practically dancing from room to room in the house, telling Auggie about it, telling Chuy, posting a post-workout selfie on Instagram, talking on the phone to her girlfriends about—as she put it—“all the drama.” He found himself thinking about it on Friday when he was doing homework.
He found himself thinking about it—in the back of his head—on Saturday while he was reading Theo’s dissertation chapter on Pericles. He had a tab open to a full-text online edition of the play, and he went back and forth as he read, scanning the lines Theo quoted. Mostly, he was proofreading, but Theo had also asked him for feedback on clarity, so Auggie was doing his best to follow the argument. Like the rest of Theo’s work that Auggie had read, it was concise and densely intelligent and still somehow highly readable.
The play, on the other hand, wasn’t one of his favorites. Most scholars accepted that it was only partially by Shakespeare, and it seemed likely that he had only written the last two acts. The rest of the play was a jumble—the eponymous Pericles started off in Antioch, courting Antiochus’s daughter. To win her hand, he had to solve a riddle, and if he failed, he would be killed by her father. To Auggie’s way of thinking, it was about the worst possible first-date scenario imaginable. But then, with one of those gruesome Renaissance twists, it got even worse. Not only does Pericles solve the riddle, but the answer puts him in further danger. The answer to the riddle reveals the incestuous relationship between Antiochus and his daughter. Once Pericles understands this, he gets out of there, and Antiochus sends men to kill him and hide his secret—which then sets the rest of the play in motion.
It is interesting, Theo wrote, that although Pericles begins the play with a show of his perceptiveness, he is, perhaps, the least perceptive character in the work. Having solved the riddle, Pericles offers, among other sententious comments, the following: “Who makes the fairest show means the most deceit.” In this case, of course, he is correct, since Antiochus and his daughter, the “fairest show” to which he is referring, are concealing not only their crime but also, in the act of concealment, plotting murder. But Shakespeare, even in his collaborative works, is unwilling to let questions of identity, knowledge, and self-knowledge pass with such simple treatment. The play’s great irony is that Pericles the riddle-solver is blind to the identity of first his daughter and then his wife when he is reunited with them at the end of the play. In a particularly savage twist of the knife, it is their goodness and virtue—their fairest show—that prevents Pericles from knowing them. The inversion of sexual power that Marina so skillfully executes in the brothel in Mytilene offers an approach for understanding…
It was the mention of incest, which made him think of the killer who had wanted the world to believe Harley Gilmore and his daughter were sexually involved. It was the idea of hidden relationships, one layer hiding another, and the willingness to kill to conceal the perversion at the heart of it. It was his conversation with Fer about their mother, about the fact that age and status had nothing to do with power in a relationship. It was his own mistaken expectations about sex with Theo. It was the concept of a struggle fuck, which haunted him with Dylan’s face. It was Marina, in the play, who held all the sexual power and overturned the audience’s expectations. All of it came together at once, and the idea seemed both wildly impossible and, at the same time, compelling.
And once Auggie tested the idea, once he tried it hypothetically, it explained so much more. It explained the muscle relaxers they’d found in Harley’s house. It explained what everyone had told them about his changed behavior. It explained his fear when he had warned Chief Pitts that someone might come looking for him. It explained why Harley hadn’t told anyone what was really going on.
He grabbed his phone and texted Theo: I know who killed Harley and Suemarie.
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