Page 66 of Nobody's Fool

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I sit on the kitchen floor with Henry and read our favorite book. It’s a somewhat chewed cardboard edition of P. D. Eastman’s classicAre You My Mother?My dad read it to me when I was a boy. It’s the gripping story of a recently hatched baby bird who thinks his mother abandoned him and thus goes on a search (walking—he’s too young to fly) to find her. He asks the titular question to a kitten, a hen, a dog, a car, and a boat, and he finally ends up on the scary tooth of a giant steam shovel. It’s a creepy and kick-ass book. When you think about it,Are You My Mother?is our first experience with horror.

Molly finishes up in the shower and comes out in my bathrobe. We are about the same size, and I love when she uses my bathrobe or dress shirts or boxer shorts. It’s a different kind of intimacy.

Molly says, “You okay?”

“Fine.”

“That was…”

“… bizarre,” I finish for her.

“Yes. I feel sorry for her.”

Henry reaches out and pulls down on the book. This is his signal he wants to hear more. We are on the page where the baby bird sits on the head of a large dog. I don’t know what breed the dog is. I once googled it, but there was nothing out there. I have a dormant socialmedia account, so I asked on that too. The most common answers were bloodhound or basset hound.

I can waste time with the best of them.

Molly sits with us. “Do you know what I found particularly strange?”

“Tell me.”

“You spot an ex-girlfriend at your class. Someone you were only with a few days, maybe a week. You haven’t made clear how long you were with her.”

“Five days,” I say.

“Five days,” Molly repeats. “And now, more than twenty years later, you spot her in your class—and when she chooses to leave, you react by chasing her and trespassing on her property. I remember when you dated Jayme Ratner before we met. If you saw her in your class now and she took off, would you go through all that trouble?”

“No.”

And then I tell her. I tell her about waking up with blood. I tell her about the bloody knife in my hand. I tell her how Buzz suddenly burst in and started shouting, “Oh my god, what did you do…? Get out! If they find her body, we will both go to jail. They’ll think you killed her and I… just get out!” I realized a long time ago, when I replayed what happened, that whatever compound Anna had gotten from Buzz was more potent, that I still wasn’t thinking straight, that Buzz was able to get me to acquiesce because I was roofied or drugged. I complied. He dragged me out. I went downstairs and outside and ran and ran. I don’t really remember much about that, just bumping into things and ending up on the beach and passing out, and by the time I was back awake, I didn’t know what to do. I was confused and scared, and I just wanted to leave. I wanted to forget all this and chalk it up to a bad dream. It would be simple enough—just rejoin the Lax Bros and keep backpacking…

But I couldn’t do that.

Even as a stupid kid, I knew I couldn’t just do that.

So I went to the local police station on the Avenida Condes de San Isidro. I met with a young detective named Carlos Osorio. But as soon as I started explaining to him that an American girl named Anna had been murdered, I could hear how bizarrely the words echoed in my own ears. Part of the problem was that it all did feel a bit like a bad dream. The drugs probably made that happen. Or maybe, I don’t know, maybe it never really happened.

Except I knew that it did.

The other part of it was that, well, I was lying to Inspector Osorio, at least by omission. I’m a kid of Pakistani descent in a tourist destination jammed with white Europeans. I’m not dumb enough to say, “Oh, I woke up with a bloody knife in my hand,” so even as I’m trying to convince Osorio that I’m telling the truth, I’m lying to him, and I think he knew that.

Eventually Osorio agreed to go with me to Anna’s. But her apartment was in a complex of like-size buildings. I had trouble remembering which building was hers. When we finally found it—this was now a full day later—the place was empty and clean. Osorio gave me a look. I wanted to argue. I wanted to say that Buzz must have cleaned it up, like he said he would, but even then, I realized that Buzz would probably have that knife with my fingerprints on it, and remember, this was twenty-two years ago—taking or possessing illegal drugs in a foreign country could lead to a hefty prison sentence no matter what.

So what could I do?

I didn’t know.

I went back to my hostel on the outskirts of the city for the night to think it through. Then I called my dad on the pay phone and told him what happened. As I did, I got an urgent message from the front desk telling me Inspector Osorio wanted me to come by the station immediately.

“Don’t go,” my father told me.

“Are you serious?”

“You never got the message. Don’t talk to anyone. Don’t even pack. Get on the next plane to the USA. I don’t care what city—”

“But, Dad—”