Chapter 8
Friday, April 23, 1999
At eight in the morning he felt her soft kiss.
“Wake up, Ethan. We’re late,” her whispering voice cooed.
In a playful mood, he grabbed her hands and held them over her head, thrusting his body on top of her. He bit her neck quickly, recoiling like a snake.
“Not going,” he muttered, burying his face into her bosom.
“We have a test today in fourth period.”
“I’ll go then.”
He stripped off her shirt.
Their morning lovemaking was gleeful. The laughing, giggling, joking puppy love of two gaga teenagers echoed innocent happiness throughout an empty house.
After kissing Deborah goodbye, Ethan poured himself a cup of coffee and lit his joint.
As Ethan sat in his La-Z-Boy recliner, meditating on his history test by going over the text and lectures in his mind, he heard a knock on his sliding glass door.
“What’s up?” asked Joe Corolla.
Ethan handed Joe the smoking joint in silence.
“Aren’t we perky this morning?” Joe feigned an aged female voice.
“I’m not going to school until fourth period.”
“Fine. Umm, where the hell is Lulu?”
“She skips too, sometimes.”
“Hey man, sorry about coming by last night—you know, force of habit. But I have to know what you think of our plan.”
Ethan searched through his mind for the events of the previous evening—a difficult task considering that his mind had been in honors American Civilization class listening to a lecture on Jeffersonian politics—and found the midnight visit.
“Aren’t you putting LSD in someone’s coffee or something?”
“Not someone,” said Joe, waving the joint around frantically as he walked into the kitchen for coffee. “The entire counseling loft. Think about it. Every disciplinarian, counselor, most of the secretaries and three principals all tripping nuts. It would be insane.”
“You’re insane.”
“I’m telling you man,” said Joe. “I finally feel a spark. I finally feel alive like I can do anything. This is my legacy, man. My Legacy!” Joe threw his arms up as he shouted.
Ethan laughed marijuana smoke from his nose and mouth.
“What will that accomplish?” asked Ethan.
“It’ll freak ‘em out. It’ll let ‘em know to take us seriously and not shuffle us around like sheep—maybe even make them realize that we’re human beings.”
“Sounds like bullshit to me. Sounds like an investigation causing, arrest producing, possibly life-threatening prank. I mean, we’re talking serious jail time here.”
“Not if I don’t get caught. Atwood and I have a plan but I need to run it by you.”
“No, Joe. You need to shut up, smoke up and chill out. I got enough problems without having to curb your maniacal moods or aid your twisted, pseudo-terrorist schemes.”
Ethan closed his eyes and went back to history class.
He did not hear Joe leave.
As Ethan walked away from Luther S. Dunby High School to one of the Visitor parking spaces where his father’s Taurus Sho sat, he thought heavily—the kind of thinking that interferes with all other processes. He had been going over the test in his mind, thinking about the salesmanship involved in the Louisiana Purchase and about all the people who suffered as a result of the white man’s transcendental needs when he realized he felt no guilt. No guilt for the Indians, the slaves, the Asians, the Jews, no guilt for any of the poor saps who suffered at the hands of tyrants and no guilt for his own actions.
Jonathan Lowmire had ruined lives, had killed, had committed adultery and had committed more crimes than he could count. In fact, the very existence of Jonathan Lowmire was a crime, one punishable by federal law.
Wicked events, one by one, flushed through Ethan’s mind as he stood with his key in his father’s car door, book bag hanging limp off his left shoulder, eyes tightly shut, watching his mind’s picture show rage on: competition killed, robbed, shot, and maimed. Bloody scenes of human depravity, addiction, disease and death rained down on him from the gray cloud of a newly formed conscience. Narrow escapes behind overturned card tables, through open windows and through crowds of techno music fiends lined the gray clouds with silver, but the silver did not sparkle. He felt no gratitude for these narrow escapes, only the numbed sensation of good old dumb luck.
On that fateful day, Friday the twenty third of April, 1999, Ethan Lee realized that he had placed little to no value on life, his or any others, and this scared him.
“Hey, dumbass, wakeup! Those drugs are turning your mind into mush,” yelled some kid from the passenger seat of a passing car.
Ethan entered his father’s Ford and drove home to take a nap.
Epiphanies, he thought, are so exhausting.
Jim Phelps called in sick.
After his parents went to work, he retired to the confines of his attic where he sat cleaning the restored twenty-two caliber rifle that he had stumbled upon by accident, years ago, hunting alone. Jim, who could fix anything and hated waste, had restored the gun in some of his spare time. When he began planning his revenge on the insolence of teenage snobbery, he remembered that his twenty-two rifle was untraceable.
The telescopic sight had been added and the gun had been balanced, but it still needed one good cleaning.
“Take care of your weapons,” he muttered. “And they’ll take care of you.”
After cleaning the gun, masturbating to a Jenna Jameson porn video, showering and eating breakfast, Jim Phelps went for a walk down his street.
Jim walked past his car, an ’88 Reliant LE that sat in his driveway.
After walking down his street, taking one left and then a right, he came to a piece of shit Ford Gremlin at a dead end. Rust colored, windowless and barely operable, the car had been abandoned months ago. Jim, working at night had restored the engine and replaced the transmission (with the help of a few unknowing and trusting friends). After finishing the job, he pretended the car wouldn’t start (he had installed a kill switch next to the fuse box) and the job had been abandoned. One month later, the piece of shit Ford Gremlin started, drove out to the intersection of Highway T and Oler Rd. and stopped at the site of Saturday’s big bonfire party.
Deborah Van Klein beamed. As she walked through the hallways of Luther S. Dunby High School she held her head high and her shoulders back much like her boyfriend. She brushed by her new friends with the words, “we’ll talk later.” She responded to absolutely no hellos from boys and reached each class feeling triumphant in her battle against popularity.
She came to understand the difference between being popular in a small school and being popular in a large school. In her previous high school, with three hundred students, she had known everyone. She spoke with everyone. She was polite to everyone because for the most part she liked everyone. But in a big school, you were popular only if you did not have the time to actually talk. For Deborah, feigning a busy schedule was her way out—she didn’t want to speak to anyone anyway.
When she walked down the hallway, she could still feel eyes on her, crawling up her legs, her butt and her breasts. She heard the snickering of jealous women but was unmoved. They were her audience and she could give them as much or as little as she wanted. And she wanted nothing more than to offer them nothing. She didn’t necessarily want her audience to leave—they were a direct affirmation of her popularity (which she needed)—but she didn’t want her audience to dictate her feelings and emotions. Her outer shell was hardening. Deborah Van Klein was acclimating to the suburban high school scene. She was now hot, cool, mysterious and busy, just like her boyfriend.
After the deer-stand had been completed and camouflaged, Jim Phelps hid the Gremlin at the bottom of a hill a mile from the clearing where students would soon gather for festivities. In less than ninety minutes, Jim Phelps had created and camouflaged a quality deer-stand by himself. I’d like to see Ethan Lee do that, he thought. Phelps meditated on the idiocy of his peers as he covered the getaway car in loose brush.
After a few minutes of walking with his thumb out, he proceeded to hitch a ride from a pleasant older lady who swore he reminded her of her oldest grandson.
“What happened to you, dear?” she had said upon seeing the dirt-covered sweaty Jim Phelps in his Jean shorts and sleeveless white T-shirt.
“My friend’s car broke down. I’m just trying to get back to Chester.”
“Come on in, I’m going to the mall there.”
The conversation had been one sided: seven grandchildren, one named Dennis who apparently looked just like Jim Phelps, three children, a farm and a life full of blessings. He told her his name was Steven, and balked whenever she called him by the fake name.
She dropped him off by the dead end road where the Gremlin had lurked for months.
“I’d invite you in,” he said. “But my whole family has the flu.”
She thanked him nonetheless and he thanked her for the ride.
“What nice people this world has,” thought Jim Phelps before going over his plan in his head. The gun was in place. The car was in place. Now, all he needed was a ride to the party and someone to frame.
Jim Phelps hit the rewind button on the VCR before showering.
Ethan awoke at Six PM when Mario called.
“Meet us up at Roger’s,” Mario instructed before hanging up the phone.
Ethan drove his father’s Taurus SHO to the abandoned white house and became Jonathan Lowmire.
The silver Lexus shined in the moonlight as Jonathan Lowmire drove to a meeting.
Roger’s bar and grill was a nice place, so Lowmire wore Ethan’s black Perry Ellis suit with a checkered black and gray tie, a white, silk shirt and a pair of black, durable dress shoes.
“Happy birthday for Wednesday,” he said to his reflection in the mirror. “You’re getting old, Jonny.”
Roger’s bar and grill was small and anonymous from the outside. Located in a crappy neighborhood where plywood covered broken windows and cars sat wheel-less on cinder blocks, Roger’s nevertheless, provided a valet service and reserved the right to serve only a very select group of people. Indeed Roger’s was, as one food critic had written in the Riverfront Times (a free St. Louis weekly paper) “a dabble of class and taste in an otherwise unappetizing area.”
Ethan rolled down his window and spoke to the attendant. “How much?” he asked.
The large, dark, Italian attendant with hands like monstrous lion paws said, “Your name?”
“Jonathan Lowmire.”
The human gorilla checked for the name on the list, found it, crossed it out with a red pen (that he had removed from the greasy grasp of his upper ear lobe), opened Lowmire’s car door, then said, “This way, Sir.”
The faded red brick, rebar protected windows and blinking neon sign on the outside did the interior décor no justice. Roger’s had only six small tables, all of them occupied. The walls were covered in still life paintings of fruits, vegetables, and garden scenes. The men on staff wore tuxedos; the women wore black dress suits with bow ties. Flowers adorned every corner. An old mirror framed in brass adorned the far wall, reflecting the glimmering golden wealth of the evening’s customers. Behind the three-foot oak bar endless variations of crystal, golden plates and bottles of liquor all shimmered in the candlelight.
“May I help you, Sir?” asked the matre de—a tall, handsome dark man with no discernable accent.
“Yes, I’m Jonathan Lowmire and I’m hear to see—“
“Right this way, Sir.”
Jonathan was led to a table where Mario and two aged, silver-haired men in dark pinstripe suits sat. One large, almost obese man, whom Lowmire remembered from somewhere, sat picking at a small salad. The man’s huge hands dwarfed the salad fork. He looked like a large child planting seeds with a toothpick. Mario and the other man, a distinguished looking, slender man with a pink rose in his lapel, had drinks.
Mario stood.
“Mr. Bennidissi,” he said. “I’d like you to meet Mr. Lowmire.”
Jonathan shook Mr. Bennidissi’s hand as the older gentleman stood.
“And this,” added Mario as everyone sat. “Is Paul.”
“I remember you,” said Paul with a deep, cigarette-scarred voice. “We were on the Borrachio thing together, years ago.”
Lowmire remembered, smiled, then said, “Pauly, I swear those are fake.”
They started laughing. Paul stood up to hug Jonathan. They embraced, exchanged thoughtful glances, then say back down.
The ‘Borrachio thing’ had been a smooth robbery. Paul, a wasp named Sam and Lowmire had robbed a polite old jeweler in his store. The heist was an insurance scam. The jeweler, one Tony Borrachio, received one third the value of the diamonds from Paul’s bosses, received the full value of the diamonds from the insurance pay out, sold his shop then moved to Florida. The heist was pulled without so much as a gun or a threat. While Jonathan watched the elder jeweler remove cut diamonds from a safe in the backroom, he overheard Paul and Sam arguing over the reality of Jennifer Anniston’s tits. Paul voted for fake; Sam voted for real. Jonathan came out of the back room with a case of diamonds and interrupted the unnecessarily ardent argument with the words, “I swear those are fake.”
The four of them, Borrachio included, laughed for five minutes, mainly because Paul and Sam were unaware that Lowmire and Borrachio had been listening.
“I still say they’re fake,” muttered Paul.
“And I still agree.”
“Anyway, gentleman,” said Mr. Bennidissi. “We are not here to reminisce. I need to talk to you, Mr. Lowmire.”
Something about the way Mr. Bennidissi spoke scared the living shit out of Jonathan Lowmire. Bennidissi’s voice, his mannerisms and his stolid face oozed serious power. If they were going to kill him, he thought, they’d need a better location. After all, it’s impolite to murder someone in front of paying customers.
“Yes, sir?”
“Who the hell are you?” Mr. Bennidissi rubbed his hands together.
“Excuse me?”
Jonathan choked on his own throat. His mouth dried. He gasped for air.
“I been trying to figure out who you are for three years. You got no sheet, no school records, no phone number, no dentist, no doctor, no address and no relations around here. I thought you was a cop for a little while, but Mario and the boys straightened me out on that notion. You been earning too good, working too hard and risking too many lives to be a cop.”
Mr. Bennidissi was interrupted when a waiter took the drink orders for Jonathan and Paul. Ethan caught a glimpse of Mario, who looked especially alert and concerned.
“So about two weeks ago, my nephew Vincent died in a drunken car crash. He was in some fraternity, first year at college, a little careless. You know the story, I’m sure, being young yourself.”
Mario and Jonathan, the intended receivers of the comment, nodded accordingly.
“So, I find myself reminiscing. I go over to my sister’s house and start looking at all the memorabilia she had—you know, in those little scrapbooks that women keep. In this book was an article clipped from The Post about the state champion Luther S. Dunby High Pioneer baseball team. The article stated how my nephew, god bless him, hit the go ahead run in the bottom of the fifth. The winning pitcher of that game also got his picture in the article, right next to Vincent’s. Do you know who that pitcher was?”
“Ethan Lee” said Jonathan Lowmire.
Bennidissi pointed a broad finger at Jonathan Lowmire, “You,” he said dryly.
“Me,” agreed Ethan Lee.
Paul and Mario burst out laughing. Mario put his arm around Ethan in a playful fashion as the waiter brought their drinks.
“Do you believe this guy?” asked Mario.
“I love it,” said Paul. “All this time, a fucking high school kid, a fucking ball player no less. Jesus Christ, I love it.”
“Well I,” Bennidissi paused to silence the table, “don’t love it.”
Jonathan Lowmire, or rather, Ethan Lee had walked down three lanes of memory, suffered and identity crisis, felt love, companionship, hate and scrutiny all in the space of about four minutes. He wanted to be sick. He had to play it cool. His mind was teetering like a 747 in the eye of a hurricane. Would they let him live? Did it matter? Death, he thought, is just a part of life…
“I don’t like being mocked, fucked with or lied to, so here’s what I’m going to do: you are on a five year pass from my system. I give you this with the agreement that you keep your mouth shut and respect your former employers. Obviously, you lied so you could get the work. Obviously, you did good work, so, if you are polite and cooperative, you will walk out of here.”
“Excuse me?” asked Ethan looking softly into the blue eyes of Bennidissi—blue eyes that emotionlessly stared at him from behind a tanned, wrinkled face.
“Do I have to spell this out for you? You are dismissed. Go graduate college. Get some computer skills, and then, if you’re still interested, you can have a better paying, more prestigious, you know, white-collared job. Mario will take you home. If there’s anything you need from the Lexus, take it. Leave the keys to the Lexus.”
Ethan shook Mr. Bennidissi’s hand firmly. “Vinny was a damn good second basemen, one hell of a leadoff hitter and a great person.”
“I know,” Mr. Bennidissi said, like everything else, without changing expression. Ethan hugged Paul and told Mario not to worry, that he’d get a ride.
Mario looked at Bennidissi, who shrugged.
With that one shrug, Ethan knew he was free. If Mario wasn’t forced to escort Ethan home, then he couldn’t be forced to kill Ethan—not right now anyway.
“Hey, Jonny, Ethan, whoever the fuck you are, you were a good worker, a real hard ass. I’ll see you in five years,” Mario said.
Ethan hugged Mario (for the first and last time), put the keys to the Lexus on the table, and walked out.
In the night air, he smelled freedom. In a moment of glee, Ethan ran twenty long blocks to Su Lard where he found a nice quiet bar called The Hut. He pulled his cell phone from his suit pocket and dialed Joe Corolla.
Ethan Lee sipped his rum and coke slowly. His Jonathan Lowmire identification had received only a cursory glance from the chubby, red-faced bartender. Three drinks into the evening, when he spotted Joe’s Mustang through The Hut’s window, Ethan hid the Jonathan Lowmire identification on the bar underneath a twenty-dollar bill. Jonathan Lowmire, created in the suburbs, shot in Roger’s, now dead in The Hut, would never breathe again.
The sad part is, thought Ethan as he entered Joe’s Mustang and hit the offered lit joint, Jonathan Lowmire won’t even get so much as an obituary.
After flicking the roach out the window, Ethan kissed Joe on the cheek.
“What the fuck is wrong with you, faggot?”
“My weekend work is over. I’m free for the entire summer.”
“Good, man. Whatever. Just don’t fucking kiss me again.”
That evening, Ethan Lee dreamt of being the guest of honor at some anonymous yet heavily populated award ceremony. On stage, behind a black marble podium, he wore a tuxedo. Thousands of people applauded and cheered. A beautiful, leggy, female model handed him a small golden statuette of a dove. He took the offering and smiled.
“What can I say,” he asked the crowd with a shrug. “That hasn’t already been said?”
The crowd laughed hysterically.