Cody’s teacher this year was a relentlessly cheerful middle-aged woman named Mrs. Hornberger. She was sitting at her desk when I came in, with Cody and Rita sitting in front of her, like two bad children called up before the class. The three of them looked up at me when I walked in; Cody very nearly smiled, Mrs. Hornberger raised an inquiring eyebrow, and Rita, without even taking a breath, immediately opened fire.
“Oh, Dexter, for the love of- It’s twenty minutes past, and you didn’t even call-really, this is just-”
“Sorry I’m late,” I said. No one offered me a chair, so I dragged one of the student desks over next to Cody and squeezed into it. “How bad is it?” I whispered to Cody, and he shrugged at me.
“Okay,” he said softly. Of course, he would have said exactly the same thing if the teacher had set them both on fire. I had to admit, Cody did have a slight problem in the area of communication. The trauma caused by his biological father, a mean crackhead who used to beat him and Astor until he was finally tucked away in prison, had made Cody exceptionally silent. What his father’s savagery had done to Astor was not quite as clear, unless severe crabbiness is trauma-induced.
But Bio Dad’s beatings had also slammed Cody out of the world of sunshine forever, into the cool dusk where the predators live. It had made him into my true heir, the Crown Prince of the Dexter Dark, eagerly awaiting my training so he could take his rightful place on the Shadow Throne. I was fairly sure the meeting today would not touch on that part of Cody’s education.
“Mr. Morgan,” Mrs. Hornberger said sternly. All eyes automatically swiveled to her, and even Rita stopped talking. Mrs. Hornberger looked at us each individually, to make sure we were all paying attention. Then the smile came back to her face, and everyone breathed again. “We were discussing Cody’s … conceptual difficulties … with socialization.”
“Oh,” I said, and because I had no idea what else to say, I added, “Yes, of course,” and she nodded at me approvingly.
And then we were off in search of Arriving at Meaningful Accommodation in a Context of Achieving Appropriate and Symmetrical Social and Educational Goals, stopping along the way to fondle every New Age-Feel Good buzzword ever coined. It was every bit as torturous as I had feared it would be, and it was clearly much worse for Cody. He could understand only one word in every four, and he squirmed and squeezed his hands together and moved his legs back and forth, and after only ten minutes he had taken fidgeting to dizzying new heights.
Rita followed every word that fell from Mrs. Hornberger’s lips with breathless concentration, her brow furrowed with worry. She would interrupt now and then with one of her fragmented sentences, ending with a question mark. Mrs. Hornberger would nod as if she actually understood, and slide another cliché out of the arsenal, and Rita would nod eagerly and go back to scrunching her face into a mask of concern.
I watched her face squeeze into its wrinkled mask, and I marveled again at how old Rita looked all of a sudden. The worry lines in her forehead seemed permanent, and they were matched by others around her mouth. Beyond that, her skin had lost color and seemed to be fading into a pale, sagging, raised relief map of some desert. Was it merely worry over Cody, or had she actually gotten as old as she looked? We were the same age-did that mean that I was getting old, too? It didn’t show when I looked in the mirror-at least, not to me. Perhaps I was blind to what I really looked like and I, too, was beginning to wrinkle and blanch. I hoped not; I had a great number of important things left to do yet, and I did not want to look like a pallid walking raisin while I did them.
It is strange where the mind wanders when it is being assaulted with earnest and needless platitudes. I am quite sure I should have felt more sympathy for Rita, more empathy with Cody, and more admiration for Mrs. Hornberger’s wonderful command of multisyllabic educational inanity. But I didn’t; all I really felt was teeth-grinding annoyance at the Ordeal by Jargon, and faint repugnance at Rita’s sudden vault into visible old age-and mild alarm at the thought that I might be sliding into senescence, too.
By the time half an hour had slogged by, I had lost every glimmer of the contentment that had so recently lit up my life and I was beginning to fidget almost as much as Cody. But it was another fifteen minutes before Mrs. Hornberger finally marched to her triumphant conclusion-Social Goals must be Integrated into an Individually Tailored Plan for Cooperative Learning, with a Full Commitment to Successful Goal Attainment at Home and at School, on Individual and Institutional Levels-and I could finally stagger weakly from the classroom, clutching my fevered brow and yearning, surprisingly but powerfully, for a cold mojito with Jackie.
I walked with Rita and Cody all the way to her car, where we paused to allow her to finish a sentence. And then she looked at me with that same faceful of worry wrinkles, and said, “Dexter-are you really …? Because I mean, I don’t know.”
“Absolutely,” I said. Surprisingly enough, I understood her, or at least I thought I did. “And I really will be home in a few days, with enough money for a brand-new pool cage.” And as I said it, I felt regret stirring; was it really only a few more days?
“Well,” she said. “But it’s just- I only …” She fluttered both hands helplessly. “It would be nice if you- You really can’t even tell me what you’re doing?”
I opened my mouth to tell her that no, I couldn’t really-and then I remembered that yes, I sort of had to, in a way: captain’s orders. “Um,” I said, not really sure where to begin. I suddenly felt a little bit like a kid asking permission to have a cookie after eating all but one, and I didn’t know why. There was no reason for me to feel guilty or uneasy; I had done exactly what I was supposed to do, and all for the noblest motive of all-a pool cage. So I shrugged it off as a hangover from Mrs. Hornberger’s tirade and plunged right into it.
“There’s a TV show shooting in town,” I said, and Rita lit up like a birthday cake and took off into breathless response.
“Oh!” she said. “Yes, it was in the paper? And they said that Jackie Forrest- Did you know she’s thirty-three? I don’t think she looks it, but of course she must have had a lot of- And Robert Chase! He is so handsome, but he hasn’t done anything in practically- Is that what you- Oh, my God, Dexter, has something horrible happened to Robert Chase?”
“Not yet,” I said, fighting to keep the regret out of my voice. “But the point is, Captain Matthews assigned me to be a technical adviser to the show. And, you know, teach Robert about what I do.”
“Oh. My. God!” Rita said. “You’ve actually met- Dexter, I can’t believe it- I mean, this is just amazing!”
“It’s just more work,” I said, and I admit I was a little irritated at seeing Rita so excited over the mere idea of Robert Chase. “Anyway,” I said, hoping I could get the whole thing out without another of Rita’s verbal frenzies, “there’s another guy in the cast, a comedian, Renny Boudreaux?”
“Yes, he’s very good,” Rita said very seriously. “He uses some words that- And you met him, too?”
“Yes,” I said. “And he’s taping a special Saturday night. And the captain wants me to go.”
“Wants you to go?” she said. “That doesn’t make any- And why wouldn’t you want to go anyway? Because-”
“He thinks it’s good for the department’s image,” I said. “To show cops and the stars all together. And so I have two tickets-”
“Ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod!” Rita said. “Really? Oh, Dexter, oh, my God! This is amazing- But I can’t possibly get a sitter in time!”
It took another five minutes to get Rita calmed down enough to utter a coherent agreement to meet me at seven thirty in the lobby of the Gusman Saturday night, and I found myself growing increasingly anxious for my mojito. It was very odd; I have never been a drinker, and I was pretty sure I hadn’t turned into one overnight-and certainly not enough of a drinker to get the shakes when five o’clock approached without my usual dose. But I could almost taste the cool drink sliding over my tongue and down my throat, almost see Jackie looking at me over the rim of her dew-beaded glass, her large violet eyes alive with amusement at something I hadn’t said yet, and I felt myself growing increasingly irritated with Rita’s high-speed dithering.