Hidden Confessions

      “The Greyhound station was deep in the worst neighborhood in town, but aren’t they all?” I recited as Jeff poured the wine into each of our coffee mugs, the closest thing to a wine glass we had in our room. “I didn’t care. My dad’s long-discarded Chevy wasn’t going to attract any thieves, that I knew.”

           “Not another story about some scumbag,” Jeff interrupted.

           “Write what you know,” I admonished him, and I went on. “I parked around the corner on Lake Avenue, and walked into the station just in time to see Steve getting off the bus from Boston. ‘Hey, man,’ he said, ‘Thanks for pickin’ me up. Too fuckin’ tired to walk to my mom’s place after that ride.’

“‘No problem,’ I said, but when he didn’t pick up his suitcase right away, I turned back toward the exit. He could carry his own luggage no matter how tired he was, and after a dirty look at me, he did.

“’You still drivin’ that piece of shit?’ Steve said when he saw the Chevy parked around the corner.’

“’It’s paid for and it runs,’ I said, and I unlocked the backseat door for him to toss his suitcase in. ‘Besides, I told you I’m joining the navy after I finish my associates. It’s only got to last me until then.’ And as soon as I’d said it, I wished I hadn’t, for once again I found myself daydreaming of the open sea and never having to look at the filthy streets of our hometown again. Or at Steve either.”

“’Yeah, go ahead, rub it in,’ Steve said as he got in the passenger seat and, as usual, refused to put his seatbelt on. ‘Still can’t believe those bastards wouldn’t take me. All I did was steal a couple of bucks from that bitch’s safe when she wouldn’t give me my last paycheck – she had it coming! Fire me because I told her husband she was fuckin’ the boss? Couldn’t they see it was her fault?’”

“Hang on,” Jeff said. “I’m not getting any feeling for why your narrator would be friends with this jerk at all.”

“Well, the story’s not done yet,” I pointed out.

“Yeah, but, I mean…why would anyone ask for a ride home from the bus station anyway? And why would he criticize your car when you did give him a ride?”

“Because he’s a scumbag, like you said.”

“All you ever write about are scumbags. Why? Don’t say ‘write what you know’, all right? You went to that hoity-toity boarding school, didn’t you?”

“I was a scholarship kid, remember? It was hoity-toity. I wasn’t.”

“Yeah, I guess, but…I don’t get the appeal. But go ahead and finish.”

And so I did. “The air had that late-afternoon staleness you always get in the city, and the air conditioner in the old car was busted, so I rolled the window down. Steve did the same on the other side, and messed around with the radio until he found a Bon Jovi song I could still remember us rocking out to back in junior high. “Bannnnhhh bannnnnhhh, whootch!” he howled, playing air guitar and drums.

“’I don’t think I’ve heard this since eighth grade,’ I said.

“’Still got the tape at home, but my boom box is busted,’ Steve said. ‘Thinking about stealing a new one.’ I laughed. Steve didn’t. ‘Serious, man, who the hell can afford a decent stereo? The stores don’t care, they get insurance money for it, and music wants to be free.’

“I still said nothing, and was glad I had to turn left – it gave me a chance to look away from Steve.

“’Oh, here we go again, man,’ Steve said. ‘Don’t get all goody-goody on me. So you were an honor student. So your parents are still married. Do I need to remind you what you got if you ever tried to sit with the popular kids in the cafeteria?’

“’I remember that just fine,’ I admitted.

“’How about what you got when they found out you had a crush on Kathy Goldstein? You still think she wouldn’t have laughed in your face if you’d asked her out?’

“’You’re just as much of a fuck-up from the slums as I am, dude. Best not forget that, it’ll only make you more miserable when someone else reminds you. They always do, you know.’

“’That’s a horrible attitude!’ I said. ‘This is America, isn’t it? If you work hard enough, you can get out. And I intend to.’”

“’Go ahead and believe that horseshit if you want,’ Steve said. ‘But look, man, maybe I’ll be stuck in this place until I’m eighty, drinkin’ cheap beer and takin’ the bus to Boston to see my old man until he croaks, but so what? I’ll be happy with what I’ve got. It’s a good way to be. You think the navy’s gonna turn you into some kind of superhero?’

“’You wanted to join too, didn’t you?’

“’Don’t fuckin’ go there, man.’ Steve sounded near tears all at once. ‘Look, you’re a friend of mine and you don’t owe me anything, but don’t you dare forget I took the rap for both of us!”

“’You were the one robbing the safe!’ I shot back. ‘I was only there to try to stop you!’

“’The navy wouldn’t care why you were there, and you know it. And so do I, man.’

“I couldn’t very well deny that. And so I said nothing on the last two blocks up Massabesic Street, to the house on the corner with only the barest memory of red paint, where Steve’s mother had managed to convince him to pay a hundred bucks a month to stay in the basement since he had somehow graduated from high school. I pulled over without a word.

“’I’ve got a six pack in the fridge,’ Steve said as he reached outside to open the passenger door, since the inside handle didn’t work anymore. ‘Come have a couple.’”

“’I’ve got to drive home.’

“’So what? The fuzz never come down here.’

“’Thanks anyway.’ I gazed off up the street, plotting the fastest route to the mall. I needed to be alone in a crowd right then.

“’Fine, all the more for me. Thanks for the ride.’ He pulled his suitcase out of the back seat and slammed the door.

“There was just enough of a break in the traffic for me to pull out right away, and it was off to the mall. I tried to focus only on what awaited me there – maybe a new book at Brentano’s, or some nachos from Guadalaharry’s on the food court – but it was no use. No matter how I tried to put it from my mind, there I was with Steve. We were fourteen years old, in the alley behind Eelio’s Pizza, with the key he’d swiped from his boss’ desk right before she’d fired him.

“‘Don’t do it, Steve! Tell the cops she was paying you under the table, then she’ll have to pay you back!’

“’You know what the fuzz think about kids like us. They wouldn’t do anything, and even if she did get in trouble, they’d say I shouldn’t have been workin’ underage anyway!’

“’And they’d be right, honestly. Come on, you could get arrested! It’s not worth fifty bucks.’

“’That’s ‘cause it’s not your fifty bucks she won’t give you! You gonna wimp out of me, fine. Go hide someplace for five minutes, and I’ll be back with my money. Just wait for me.’

“’Fine, but don’t tell anyone.’ And I was off across the alley, where I crawled under the hedges in back of the house on the corner. At least I had a view of Eelio’s from there. Five minutes came and went, and I ignored the bugs crawling over me as I kept my eye on the red back door that Steve had blocked open to make the getaway a little faster.

“He had the key, and he knew the combination to the alarm. He didn’t know the combination they’d given him was the one that signalled to the security company that someone had been forced to turn the alarm off. It was more than five minutes, but not by much, before a cop car roared down the alley past me and skidded to a stop outside Eelio’s back door. It wasn’t even one minute after that before the two officers pulled Steve kicking and writhing and cursing up a storm out the door and into the back of their car.

“They never noticed me, but I had my heart in my throat all afternoon just the same. When dinnertime came and they hadn’t come to arrest me, I figured I was safe. I got yelled at for seeing Steve as usual, but I had no problem putting up with that when I thought of what else could have happened.”

Jeff gulped his wine down in one swallow. “That’s a terrible attitude,” he said. “Of course you can better yourself if you try hard enough. I did.”

“That’s the point of the story!”

“No it isn’t. You said if you’re from the slums, you’re stuck there for life and you should just enjoy it.”

“Steve said that, but you’re supposed to see he’s wrong about that!”

Jeff stood up and picked up his coat. “Sorry, dude, you’re not half the writer you think you are, and it shows you don’t know what it’s really like coming from a neighborhood like that, like I do. Now, I’ve got to go do something more productive like my homework. I don’t suppose you’ve got enough of that, mister French major?”

“You think we don’t get homework?”

“I don’t care if you do. It’s not like the sciences. But stick to your French. The world needs French teachers. It doesn’t need prep school kids who think they can write about scumbags.”

I said not a word as Jeff let himself out. I’d learned a long time ago not to try to one-up him on anything, including our childhoods. We’d bonded over being among the few students at our elite college who weren’t from rich families, but there as everywhere, he just had to be Number One.

It didn’t matter how many times I told him I’d had a full ride to that boarding school. I should’ve known it wouldn’t matter just how close I’d come to losing out on it, either. But now I had that on my mind, and I had a few precious hours alone in my room to reflect on it. I reached under my bed and pulled the shoebox Jeff didn’t know about, and unfolded the clipping about Steve getting arrested at Eelio’s. Sure enough, not one word about an accomplice found hiding under the hedges, who had just been offered a scholarship to the best high school in the state, which he surely would have lost if he’d been spotted.

Steve got out of juvie hall when he turned eighteen – about two years ago now – and he was staying with his mother and studying for his GED. We talked on the phone a couple of times a year, and he’d never once asked me for anything. I dug out the scrap of paper with his phone number on it, and looked over at the phone.

I sat there with the number in my hand for two minutes or so, and then put it back in the box and shoved it as far under my bed as I could reach.