Page 49 of Try Me
He’d been right, too. The money had been easy. Scary fucking easy. Easier than double shifts and shelving books in the library. Easy enough that I’d actually spent a day considering the bags of Oxy he tried to get me to offload a few weeks later before ultimately telling him no.
I yanked the keys from the ignition and got out of the car. Inside the facility, I emptied my pockets, handed over my ID, and walked through the metal detector to the sign-in area. I filled out the paperwork, answered the monotonous questions, was buzzed through another set of doors, and led down the hall to the visitors’ area. This was a white-collar prison, not the rougher shit I’d seen on TV. Still, the air was stale, and everything reeked of hopelessness.
I sat at one of the tables and waited until they led my father in and uncuffed him. The guard supervised a brief hug, during which all I could feel was the stiff cloth of my father’s uniform, and then we sat.
“How’s life? Summer classes?” He always led with that, along with an attempt at an earnest smile.
“Good. Thinking I’ll make at least a B in my history course. The internship and restaurant are eating up a lot of time.” It was a struggle to keep up with everything, but I didn’t want to say that.
“Ahhh. The law firm. You’re liking that? It was quite a feather in your cap to get it.”
“It’s good, too, yeah.”
“Good.” Dad clasped his hands together, thumbs idly circling each other. “That’s good,” he repeated. He glanced out the window, then back at me slouching in my chair. At the brief frown, I straightened. “Your mom’s not coming today, after all?”
“Think she’s working. She said she’d bring Carrie next time, though.”
“Ah. All right, that sounds fine.”
Our conversations used to be easier. They’d felt like intertwined interest, not this stiff back-and-forth volley of questions and answers. It was hard to look at him. I kept doing it in short glances the way you avoided staring at the sun because it’d hurt your eyes. If I looked at him too long, I saw how much he’d aged, the bags under his eyes, the wrinkles and salt-and-pepper hair, and my mind tried to fit that up against the memories I had from when I was a kid. Him teaching me how to ride my bike, the steady hand on the back of my seat, the other on the handlebars.
Steady now, steady, pedal like the devil. Don’t think too much about what you’re doing. Trust yourself. Your body knows how to balance. Just pedal and go.
And here I was wobbling all over the fucking place. I dragged a hand down my face and tried to tune in to what he was saying. I answered a few questions about Carrie, and then we ran out of conversation. It was as predictable as a dead-end sign, and happened sooner and sooner these days, leaving me sad and frustrated because I didn’t know how to stop it. It usually coincided with my dad’s veneer starting to crack and regret seeping through. I wondered how long that kind of armor took him to polish and put on. Maybe as long as mine.
“How’d you meet Mr. Farrow?”
The change was swift, my father’s eyes creasing, then hardening as he drew a sharp breath through his nose and let it out the same way.
“We shouldn’t talk about this. Especially not here.”
“You’re in here for a hundred and forty fucking years, who the fuck cares?” The guard nearby perked as my voice rose, his attention homing in on us.
“Lower your voice.” A tremor ran through my dad’s fingers as he rested them on top of his other hand and gripped tightly.
“What’s wrong with your hand? Why’s it shaking?”
“Just a little low blood sugar. Didn’t care for the breakfast this morning.”
I blew out a breath, shifting my focus back to his lined face. He’d aged ten years in a matter of four. “You and Mr. Farrow built that other company together. Before you split apart.”
“We were in the same fraternity.” He gave me a wan smile. “We met freshman year.”
“How did I not know about that? I thought you had a finance class together. That’s what you always told me.”
“That happened, too. But before that we were in the same pledge class for Sigma Psi. Roomed together for a while, then I dropped out of the frat and went independent.”
“Why?”
“It wasn’t necessarily my choice. I did something the other guys didn’t agree with. Mark’s dad stood by me, and we kept in touch, had that class together. And a while after graduating, we started talking again and thought it’d be a good idea to join forces.”
“What’d you do to get kicked out, though?”
“Asked to leave,” he corrected. “Something stupid that’s not worth getting into. I hatched a scheme to package and sell old tests. Most fraternities and sororities have them. It’s an open secret, but no one’s supposed to acknowledge it, so that was an issue.”
My palms were sweating for some reason. I rubbed them on the thighs of my shorts and then asked the question I’d never had the balls to ask him before.
“So did you do it? Was it your idea to cook the books and get all those investors to…to…” I squeezed my eyes shut, then tried again. “I mean, there wasn’t anyone else maybe making you do it for some reason? Maybe blackmailing you or something?” Fuck how my voice cracked desperately at the end.