Reunion at Red Paint Bay (2 page)

The car bumped along
Crescent Street, Red Paint’s perpetually torn-up road, as Amy squeezed a perfect
line of ketchup onto a French fry. He always marveled at how steady her hand was. He wondered how many fries she would eat. Invariably he underestimated. She said, “Did you hire your replacement for the pressroom yet?”

“Didn’t I tell you? The guy was in the Red Sox farm system for a while then worked at the
Portland Press Herald
.” Simon turned on the radio. “That reminds me, the game should be on.”

The station was always tricky to dial in this far up the coast, and static filled the air. Amy touched the knob to tune the channel better. “How did you lure him to the
Register
, promise a drastic pay cut?”

“He left there seven years ago.”

“Where’s he worked since?”

It was a helpful trait for a psychiatric therapist to be curious, as his wife was by nature, pushing every odd bit of information to the bitter end in case it held some unforeseen significance. But in normal conversation he found this habit irritating. Some topics were left unfinished for a reason.

“He hasn’t really worked.”

“What’s he been doing since leaving the
Press Herald
?”

Simon thought of the claim the man had made during the interview—that he had read more than a hundred books in the past year. Mostly crime fiction, but still. “He’s been reading a lot, two books a week.”

Amy ate another of Davey’s French fries. “Who has time to read that much?”

“Retired people, the sick, the unemployed, people without TVs or kids.”

“Which is he?”

The option was there for him to pick. But one lie would necessarily lead to another, as Amy pursued his story. “Actually, a prisoner.”

She rolled up the top of the Burger World bag. “He was in jail?”

“Still is, up in Warren. His release date’s tomorrow.”

“What did he do?”

Simon didn’t want to say. He didn’t really know anyway, not specifically, at least. “I probably shouldn’t be talking about this.”

She reached over and poked his neck. “Come on, spill it.”

“Okay, he assaulted a woman.”

Amy lifted her arm from his shoulder, the understanding instantaneous. “He raped her?”

Simon drove.

“You hired a rapist?”

The description seemed so all-encompassing, as if a single word could sum up a man’s whole nature rather than just one awful act. Didn’t a person deserve at least a few sentences about his life before being judged?

“I assume he didn’t put that on his résumé,” Amy said.

“He had a record, not a résumé.”

She glanced out of the window, then back at him. “You didn’t tell me you were thinking of hiring a rapist.”

“I didn’t know I was. I just went up there to check out the new incentives the state has for hiring prisoners when they’re released. I ended up doing some interviews.”

“And hiring a rapist.”

“As it turned out.”

“There weren’t any pedophiles or murderers available?”

Simon braked hard at Five Corners, even though normally he would take his chances coasting through on the yellow to avoid waiting through the multiple lights. “I sense you don’t approve.”

“I’m just wondering why you would hire a rapist.”

Rapist
—how many times would she say it? “This guy has a name, which is David Rigero, and David scored higher than most of our regular applicants on the employment test. I liked him, too.”

“Liked him how?”

“As someone to talk to. If I were sitting next to him on an airplane, I’d enjoy our conversation.”

“You’re planning trips with him?”

“No,” he answered, even knowing she was being facetious. “But it’s a small office, and I prefer to like the people I hire. He wants to do some stringing for us, too. He has an aptitude for writing.”

The traffic crept by in front of them—a few cars, a gasoline tanker, and a white unmarked truck, the kind often mentioned on crime reports as spotted leaving the scene. Should the people inside these vehicles all be judged by the worst thing they had ever done? Who could survive that scrutiny?

“So,” she said, “whose life did this wonderful conversationalist of yours ruin?”

Simon debated with himself for a moment making up a name.
Sally Jenkins
popped into his head. It sounded believable. “I didn’t ask.”

“You weren’t curious about his victim?”

“What would a name tell me? I didn’t ask him anything specific about what he’s in for. It didn’t seem appropriate.” Simon waited for a woman carrying two bags of groceries to cross in front of the Toyota, then pulled carefully through Five Corners. It was the most dangerous intersection in Red Paint.

“Maybe she could use a job,” Amy said. For a moment he thought she meant the woman crossing the street. “That is, if she’s gotten over the trauma of being sexually assaulted by your new hire.”

Simon accelerated quickly, and the rattle started up again. Amy whacked the dashboard with the heel of her hand.

“You might trigger the air bag that way.”

She pounded harder with her fist. “At least it would stop the goddamn rattle.”

He took her hand in his. “I’m sorry, okay? I wouldn’t have hired the guy if I knew you would react so strongly.” He said this clearly, no qualifications. It was easy to apologize for something he didn’t have any intention of changing. “I thought I was doing good here, giving a second chance to a person who’s paid his debt to society.”

She started to say something, then thought for a moment. “You know that half my practice is women who have been abused in some way. I hear their stories every day. Their abusers get out of jail after a few years and move on—and those are the ones who even get convicted. The women never escape, especially from rape.”

“So David Rigero should be locked up forever, throw away the key? Or let him out with no job and no future?”

“I didn’t say that. But you didn’t have to hire him.”

“Right, I should have just let him pick from all the other job offers he had.”

They rode on in silence. Amy rarely let arguments die out like this, with his getting the last word. He wished it would happen more often. In a few minutes he turned onto Fox Run and into their driveway. He switched off the engine and opened his door. She stayed in her seat, holding the Burger World bag. He never realized how idiotic the grinning cow looked.

“Coming?” he said.

She looked over at him. “I never want to meet this man, Simon.”

He nodded. But Red Paint was a small town. It was impossible to say that any two people might not meet some day.

By tradition the editor
of the
Register
sat at the original oak desk facing the arching window that overlooked Mechanic Street and the tree-lined Common. When he bought the paper ten years ago Simon Greenleaf Howe did as his predecessors for the last century, letting anyone who wanted see into the offices, day or night.

He sat alone now in the editorial room late Tuesday, production day. The overhead fluorescent lights swayed in the stiff currents of air coming from two floor-size fans in opposite corners. There was the faint hum of the large air conditioning units from the municipal offices next door. Otherwise not a sound. He felt groggy, as if overwhelmed by some sleep-inducing aerosol injected into the office. He rubbed
his eyes, trying to bring focus to the page-one proof on his desk and the last-minute story that needed his attention.

Simon pictured the scene—Randy Caine in his blood red
RAISIN
’
CAINE AUTO PARTS
T-shirt plunging into the fire to save a little girl. Randy wasn’t a guy to hesitate while considering consequences. There probably weren’t any consequences worth considering in his world. There was just plunging into the fire or not. This time he plunged. Simon circled the headline with his black marker and wrote, “Inc to 36 pt.” In the body of the story he crossed out
literally
. How else could a person jump? He drew a line through the whole Northside Firehouse sentence. There was no need to portray the local firemen as practicing at their job while a car burned. It would gall them enough that a Caine, not exactly the first family of Red Paint, was being lauded for courage. The town rowdy had become a hero, and what was Mayor Samuels to do, give Randy a Get Out of Jail Free card? No doubt he would need it soon enough. Simon drew a star in the margin at the dice being thrown clear during the spinout, as if luck had saved them from cremation. It was the kind of quirky detail the
Register
was known for.

He scanned the rest of the proof.
Man Sues Town Over Landfill Mishap
read the lead headline, and underneath:
Big Toe Worth $500K?
A provocative question indeed. Just below the fold, a grip-and-grin shot of First Red Paint Bank president John DeMonico handing out twenty-year service medals was cropped so tightly that the recipients looked like smiling heads on a platter. Simon scribbled, “These people have necks, don’t
they? Recrop.” In a small box next to the picture was the headline
25th Reunion
. He had run the notice for the last month, a recurring reminder of his own impending milestone. He could anticipate the question from classmates he hadn’t seen in decades—
What happened, Simon? You’re the last person I expected to get trapped in Red Paint
. The boy the yearbook had declared
Most Likely to Go to Mars
now owned the only newspaper in town and lived just a mile from the house he grew up in. There was his name on the last line of the box.
Simon Howe—Reunion Publicity
. It was hard to explain, even to himself.

His eyes drifted to the bottom right corner of page one and The Weekly Quotation: “
Humankind cannot bear very much reality
”
—T. S. Eliot
. “Intriguing choice, Barb,” he wrote to his newly divorced editorial assistant, “but how about something a little more upbeat next week?” That was it, another edition ready for press with barely a glimmer of hard news. On the positive side, he had stretched copy and enlarged pictures to cover all thirty-two pages. It was an achievement worth noting, but to whom? Did Pulitzer give an award for filling space?

Simon dialed the pressroom, then cradled the phone at his neck as he pulled on his jacket. “I’m done marking up page one, Meg,” he said. “I’ll leave it on my desk.” A few moments later the rear door opened, and
the rapist
came in. How else could he think of him? It was the first time Simon had seen his new hire at the
office. Rigero’s hair was trimmed to the scalp on the sides and his mustache was shaved off, which made him look ten years younger. But instead of seeming like a younger version of himself, he looked like an entirely different person, a complete change of face. It unnerved Simon a little to try to match up the image in his mind with the man in front of him.

“Ms. Locklear sent me for the proof, Mr. Howe. She’s on paste-up.”

Simon didn’t recognize the voice, either. It was lighter, with a kind of smoothness to the tone, nothing halting or clipped.

“Mr. Howe?”

Simon held out page one. “Here it is, David.”

Rigero stared at the lead headline. “Kind of strange.”

“What’s that?”

“If a big toe’s worth a half a million, how much would fingers go for, or like a head or something?”

“I don’t know of any blue book of body parts,” Simon said. “They’re worth whatever a jury says.”

Rigero held out his left hand in a fist and opened his fingers one at a time, as if counting up how much each one could bring.

There was something
about Davey that seemed odd to Simon lately. The boy hadn’t grown noticeably.
His hair was the same—gelled up to make him appear taller. His voice didn’t have any hint of adolescent timbre to it yet. He still dashed and crashed around the house, still curled up on the couch between them watching a movie on Friday evenings, still wanted to be read to at night and tickled to get out of bed in the morning. But there was an added dimension to all these things, something unfamiliar just below the facade. Like at this moment, standing in the driveway with an object in his hand, staring into the backyard. His chin was slightly turned up, inclining his gaze to the trees. Simon watched him for a minute and was amazed at how motionless the boy could be when he wanted to. Not a trace of hyperactivity. But what could make him want to stay so still? Simon pulled back from the kitchen window, went to the side door, and stepped outside. Davey’s hand was empty now. He was looking at his feet.