All-Day Breakfast (54 page)

“Appreciate your patience,” Megan said into the onstage microphone. “Be right with you.”

And
that
got Colleen going—she gave a half-swallowed snort and a drop of something ran off her nose onto her skirt. My nose must've been running too, because Mrs. Bradford handed us each a Kleenex as she rose from her folding chair.

“I see Amber's parents up there. They're not together so I should sit with them,” she whispered. “Those girls made a wonderful team.”

We nodded as she slid past. Colleen inhaled raggedly then blew her nose with a majestic resonance. She dabbed her eyes. How long had it been since I'd seen her?

“That old fucker was right.” Her tongue seemed to be sticky. “Doug really was flattened and Jocko didn't know
what
to do.”

“Old guy shouted like he'd seen the whole thing, didn't he?”

Though I couldn't remember any old guys out on our block that day—of course my memory was shaky. Maybe there'd been nbzambi witch doctors watering mums.

“One of my salvage guys got into the DMV for me,” she went on, “but the yellow Mustangs and ones we talked about were all the wrong years, at least the ones registered in Hoover.”

“That leaves the whole rest of Nebraska.”

“Even in Burroughs County alone, eighteen yellow sports cars with spoilers but the wrong years, so they were all too big, but I've got guys keeping their eyes open, and weekends I still drive around the impounds. It's good you met Doug even for a minute, you know? He'd be doing just as much if it'd been me, I know that.”

Up amongst the front seats, a tall, gangly brunette jumped and threw her mortarboard in the air, well ahead of schedule, so on stage Clint raised his hands and made a face to discourage anybody else from joining in. I remembered the yellow car disappearing around the hedge, the woman's gardening gloves—but why fixate on that, when we had dead kids scattered on all sides?

An old couple glanced back at us, then quickly away.

“I'd seen people who were dead before,” I said slowly. “But he was the first poor guy I ever saw killed right in front of me. Plain murdered.”

“They've got it on the books as an
accident
, but after—”

“No,” I said, “that's right.”

“I'll find the guy.” She smoothed the hem of her skirt. “And I'll smash his head.”

“I will be right there with you.”

Though if she ever did find him I'd likely be on the other side of the world.

“That old fucker was right,” she murmured again.

Cam tapped the microphone though the screen still swayed above his head.

“All right, guys, a couple of announcements and then we're done! The grad committee has snacks prepared in the library if you'd like to mingle for a few minutes, be happy to see you there. So thank you all for coming, and even though it's already a hundred degrees outside, the mayor's asked me to remind you that Hoover's a great place to stay and raise a family. Okay, at this time, grads, you may move your tassel from the left side of your cap to the right, signifying graduation. Please rise, turn and face your relatives and friends. Ladies and gentlemen, we present to you the Hoover High School graduating class of 2015.”

Boys produced air horns from beneath their robes and blared them into the ears of their venerated classmates, while others let loose cans of green and orange spray foam down the front of people's robes and arcing onto the rows of grandparents. A clutch of blond girls covered their ears and burst out the exit doors onto the football field.

“This concludes the ceremony,” said Cam.

The relatives rose from their chairs like a time-lapse lawn growing.

“And I keep wondering,” Colleen said as they filed past, “did Doug see it coming, did he try to get out of the way? Had he been scared? When I try to sleep it's still in front of me.”

“It's not the same, I know that,” I said. “My wife, Lydia, she knew for a long time she was going to die, and Doug, maybe he only had a second or two. Hopefully he never knew at all. But the last thing my wife told me was, ‘I've been so lucky.' The pain she must've been in if the morphine wore off, I didn't see how that could be possible. ‘Lucky.' Made me think maybe
everyone
thinks that in their, you know, the last thing. So don't keep thinking about the death, because he didn't. Really he thought about everything else.” I tried to smile, which couldn't have looked good. “Okay. I'm right-handed, I'm a Libra, I had a love of my life but she passed away, none of that's going to change. I figured that out sitting in the car a couple of weeks ago. I realized that Lydia will keep going as long as I keep going, which was about the least depressing thought I'd had in a long time. No matter what else happens, that part never leaves.”

Here we were, two years later, and finally it was Lydia's day to sit up with the sun on her face. Colleen rolled her eyes.“Thanks, Father Time, for that fucking insight.”

She blew her nose again. Already the gym was mostly empty, so I realized I'd have to hustle to the library if I wanted to give Megan and Clint so much as a hello.

I hustled past Colleen's unjust looks toward the hallway, and held the door for a brown-haired woman who looked familiar, though anybody in Hoover ought to have looked familiar. No sign of Svendsen skulking beneath the Class of '81.

“Mr. Giller! You remember me?” the woman asked. “Kim!”

She held a mound of hair against her shoulder. She wasn't old but was too old for me to have taught.

“I was Harv Saunders' stepmom, it's so good to see you!”

She threw her arms around my neck and I confess I got my hand onto the small of her back and held her pretty tight, because she sure looked different without lipstick on her cheek. I glanced back into the gym for her husband.

“How—how are you?” I said into her temple.

“Oh, good!” She stepped back and looked at me, all bright eyed. “You must remember Dave.”

“Your guy, right, the masseur?”

“Well, he's gone to parts unknown. I'm seeing Bill the optician now! Hey, Myrtle and I were saying just the other day how
sweet
it was of you to come to the house that time, just to see Harv! His sister, you met Myrtle—she said, ‘I wish
I'd
had a teacher like that.' ”

Yes, then like her brother she might've been torn apart by dogs.

“Myrtle was the one at Pizza Hut?” I asked.

“She
was
. She's at agricultural college now in Curtis—she loves sheep! Now, you weren't here last year or you'd be running to the snack table for their rolled-up bacon, amazing, and I have a client meeting in twenty-five minutes, we'd better move! Oh, gosh, I forgot you only had one arm now.” She bunched her jacket up at the throat, looked up at me beseechingly. “I'm so sorry for your loss.”

“I'm sorry for yours too. More than you can really know.”

“Oh, Dave? Don't be, no, he's a piece of shit.”

Mrs. Abel stood
in a hairnet beneath the American flag. The hungry crowd bumped me on either side as I loaded my paper plate with pineapple segments, and all the time I smiled up at Mrs. A with zero effect while she surveyed the snack tables despotically.

“So I guess you want gum?” Grace's mom asked someone—I couldn't pinpoint if she was behind or beside me.

And what I'd thought were humdrum cantaloupe cubes were actually mango! Gary had been alive the last time I'd tasted bacon, and since then my gastronomic energy had turned entirely toward tropical fruit, to the detriment of the kids' birthday parties. Did they have the least idea how hard it was to get mangosteen in season in Nebraska? Someone squeezed my elbow.

“Are you free for dinner?” Kim asked, despite the bacon between her incisors.

“Uh, no, afraid not. I need to get back to my kids tonight.”

“Oh, that's sweet—you've got kids of your own?”

Fuck you if you think I don't have kids.
I turned and showed Mrs. Abel my twenty-eight fierce teeth, all wolfman, the thin veil protecting civilization, but Mrs. A didn't notice that either. My plate bent in my hand like a big taco. Kim swirled away into the square dance of small talk, but Megan and Clint, surrounded by celery-chewing admirers, had circulated nearer.

I led with my elbow to get within six feet of them, until I ran up against Colleen. She raised an eyebrow and stole a segment of my pineapple.

“Megan looks beautiful,” I said gently.

“If you're so stressed, go ahead and pull your ear.”

“Hilarious. Are you still pissed off?”

“I'm here for Megan, period. And for that matter I don't need you around to be pissed off.” She tucked her toothpick into my breast pocket. “I quit the insurance so I could work full-time at the junkyard, know why?”

I shrugged, nearly tipping the plate—a hundred people were talking so I had to concentrate like hell on what she was saying.

“Because that's what the world is—salvage. Junk. Selling insurance demands that you care the least crap about the future. Anyway, forget that, I'm going to stand here smiling for Megan's sake, that's good parenting.”

“Sure,” I said.

We gazed at the valedictorians. A white-haired woman swayed in front of them, miming she was dragging on a joint. Clint guffawed good-naturedly. Kirsten née McAvoy stepped in and Megan hugged her tight, the purple gown enveloping them both.

Colleen started talking without looking at me, so I didn't catch on right away.

“And I'm right where you are,” she said, “I understand you're broken up about her, you did cartwheels on the stupid
tv
, but don't take it out on your kids, you know? I bet your daughter looks more like her all the time, but even so you should hang out with your daughter instead of these kids, because what do these kids care?”

With the plate in my one hand, I realized I'd have to eat straight off it like a dog. She folded her arms and seemed to study my face. I was trying not to listen to her.

“When's the last time you saw the poor kid?”

“Yesterday,” I said.

“I can't get used to how weird you look.”

I pushed the paper plate against her chest and she grabbed it before it tipped, then I angled past the white-haired dope-smoker to extend my hand to Clint. We shook.

“Clint, buddy,” I said. “So great to see you up there. I'm so proud of you guys.”

He gave a tight-lipped smile and let my hand go. Kirsten took a step back, watching, so I shook Megan's hand too. It felt dry and tiny.

“Oh, hey, Mr. Giller, you came! That's so great.”

“Sure,” I nodded. “Wouldn't have missed it.”

They defaulted to their toothiest smiles. They'd rehearsed watching the “In Memorium
”
slideshow a dozen times so it was all old news, which was how it ought to have been. Maybe they didn't even remember Velouria. It was time for them to start college and have sex with hundreds of people. They swayed their enormous sleeves back and forth.

“So,” they asked, “everything good with you?”

I walked back
down the hallway, past bored younger sisters pulling off each others' Band-Aids, toward the open doors to the parking lot—a square so bright I couldn't look right at it. I was done with Hoover. The dead kids had all graduated, so I could forget that everybody had been put through a meat grinder in order to further the military-industrial complex. I could exhale. I stepped out into the grasshoppery heat.

“Here now, Giller. Okay,” Svendsen said.

It was too bright to even see him at first, but who else could it have been?

“Not entirely polite to leave a citizen waiting so long. But, oh well.”

He took a swig from a can of Pepsi, pivoting on the ball of one foot there beside the yellow garbage can.

“Yes, sorry, Lieutenant.” I scratched hard at the back of my neck. “You know, I think we might still have a couple of things to talk about.”

“I'd better show you something,” he said. “Any private place around here?”

He straightened his red tie and grinned at a pair of grandparents hunched in the dark doorway, squinting out at the shimmering cars.

“You know, secluded,” he murmured, “where the children give each other their, I don't know. Their hummers. Don't you have a house around here?”

“Not any more, no.” Asshole. “Got a car parked over here.”

We crossed the sticky blacktop, Svendsen clenching and unclenching each hand like a wrestler coming out of his corner.

“The Federal government, see, allows its citizens to get away with anything if the Federal government feels that behavior is for the greater good, though history inevitably proves the Federal government wrong.” He raised his chin high. “This your car? Must be, big enough!”

It was a special-edition Lexus hybrid with a cushy leather backseat as wide as a church pew, and Mark had even managed to park in the shade. I unlocked it with a beep and flash of tail lights.

“I do a lot of business in it,” I explained. “Lobbyists.”

“My, this
is
where the children come to get hummers!”

It would've been easy, standing behind him, to grip the back of his stubbled head and break his nose against the side of the car. But violence was no way to move the human race forward so I held the back door open for old Svendsen and he slid into the cognac-and-cigars atmosphere that the interior perpetually exhaled.

I sank in beside him, shut the door then opened the mini-bar that Penzler Innovations had installed between the front seats. I was sweating from my forehead so I pressed the button on the key to start the ignition, and the air-conditioning came on.

“Have a drink?” I asked.