“Not stupid.” I could tell from the pink blush coloring his cheeks he hadn’t expected his intervention to go this well. “Just human. We’re all fallen creatures.”
After we’d finished circling the car together and gathering up the rest of the nails, I said, “Can we keep this a secret, though? I just lost my head for a second. I don’t usually do stuff like this, I swear.”
Ernest bit his lip. “I suppose.” He looked up from the nails in his hand, and his eyes poked me again, but more kindly this time. “Listen, if you ever need to talk about it—about why you were so angry, I mean—I just want you to know you can come to me.” He gave my shoulder an awkward pat. “We can pray together.”
“Thanks.” I dropped the nails in the trash. “That’s very nice of you. Maybe I will. But right now I’d better get back to work.” I picked up my paper hat, smoothed it out, and stuck it back on my head. As I headed toward the movie theater’s back exit, I could feel a little swing work itself into my hips, like the spirit of one of my heroines had once again slipped inside my body. I threw a glance over my shoulder and said, “You’re a lifesaver, Ernie. I owe you one.”
*
Two days later Mike’s parents left for Italy. Mom watched from the living room window, shaking her head as they got into their taxi. “Leaving your son and his girlfriend in your own house for a whole summer to do Lord knows what,” she said. “It’s something I’d never do, that’s for sure.”
I told her I was running out to the Sheetz a couple blocks away to get a snack. Once I got there, though, instead of going inside, I stopped at the old pay phone next to the door and slid a few coins in.
I dialed the police.
“Hello,” I said, “I was just walking by 4537 Forest Street and saw someone suspicious entering the house. I really think you should send someone to check it out.”
“Who is this?” the lady taking the information wanted to know. I wondered if by some coincidence she might be Officer Crane.
“I’m ever so sorry,” I said with a breathy Rita Hayworth laugh, “but I don’t want to get involved. I prefer to remain anonymous.”
I hung up the phone and ran home in plenty of time to see, through my bedroom window, a police car pull up in front of the Morettis’ house and a cop walk up to the front door.
At the theater the next day, during a lull when all three movies were running and Rochelle had run out to get a Burger Bucket at the Burger Barn, I sidled over to the manager’s office door and stuck my head in. Mike and I hadn’t talked over the past couple days. When he noticed me there, his face went dark. He pushed some papers around on his desk, like he actually had something important to be doing, and said, “What is it, Cody?”
“Sorry to bother you. I just wanted to say I hope things aren’t going to be weird between us. I thought about it, and you’re right. I was being silly. What happened between us last Christmas . . . It was just a casual thing, and I’m letting it go. I’m ready for us to have a purely professional relationship.”
He squinted at me like he thought I was a lunatic. “Are you sure? Because it might be easier for both of us if you just stop working here. We can make up an excuse. No one would have to suspect a thing.”
“No, Mike, please,” I begged. “I need this job. My parents are so stingy with money, and this is the only way I can have some of my own. Plus, it gets me out of the house. I think I’m going to die if I have to spend another Saturday afternoon playing Christian Scrabble with them.”
He blew out through his mouth and shook his head. It killed me to talk to him like that, like everything was just okay, and to beg him for my job, but I had to do it.
“Fine,” he said. “Just keep your distance, all right?”
I nodded. “All right. I will. Thank you, Mike.” I started to turn away. Then, exactly the way I’d rehearsed in front of the mirror in my bedroom, I stopped in his office doorway, like I’d just thought of something. “Hey, can I ask you a random question?”
He rolled his eyes. “Come on, man. Rochelle’s going to be back any second.”
“But we’re just talking. She won’t think that’s weird. Anyway, the question’s a quick one. Did the police come by your house yesterday?”
He tensed. All of a sudden his hands got antsy and started shuffling papers around again. “Why do you ask?”
“It’s just that a cop rang our doorbell yesterday afternoon. He told my dad someone had called in saying there was a suspicious-looking prowler in the neighborhood, and he asked if he could take a look around the house. So the guy came in and searched all over. He even went in my bedroom, which I thought was weird.”
Mike gave a noncommittal shrug. “Okay.”
“So after that,” I said, “my dad was talking to Mr. O’Farrell on our other side, and he asked him if the cop had come to visit him too, and Mr. O’Farrell said he hadn’t talked to any cop. That seemed odd, though, since the officer had said he was visiting all the houses in the area. My dad got suspicious, thinking maybe the guy had targeted us for some reason, so he went by a few other houses near us and asked the same question. The cop hadn’t visited any of them either. And we just couldn’t figure it out. Why would he only come to our house?”
Staring at a stack of papers gripped in his hands, Mike said in a low voice, “He came to my house too.”
“Oh!” I opened my eyes wide in surprise. “So it wasn’t just us. That makes me feel better.” Once again I started to leave but then stopped. I grabbed the doorframe with one hand and peered back at him over my shoulder. “Although I still don’t understand why he would visit your house and mine and no one else’s.”
*
Now I needed to talk to Ernest again. I knew I’d see him that Sunday at church, and sure enough, there he was in the third row, boring into Paster Pete with his eyes and scribbling away on his pad each time he heard something he thought was important. After the service everybody went downstairs for something called fellowship, which was basically a time for the congregation to mill around in the multipurpose room drinking bad coffee and eating stale pastries and gossiping. As soon as Mom and Dad and my brother and sister split off to yammer with their friends, I scanned the room until I spotted Ernest’s round head of neatly combed hair. I closed in.
Ernest was deep in conversation with some old lady—it didn’t seem like he had many friends his own age—but when I edged into his field of vision and gave a little wave, he made an excuse and came right over.
“Hello, Cody,” he said, friendly but with a dash of sternness, like he wanted me to know he hadn’t forgotten the circumstances of our last encounter.
“Sorry for bothering you, but you said if I ever needed to talk . . .”
His eye went big and hungry. “Of course! And I meant it!” He waved me over to a quiet corner, grabbing a couple pastries on the way. After motioning for me to sit down in a metal folding chair, he slid a Danish at me across the table and said, “Go ahead.”
“You were wondering why I was so mad at Mike Moretti?”