Sleeper
"This isn't right..."
"Oh, come on, Mr. Aquino, don't be such a fuddy-duddy." Angela grabbed the front of his trousers. "You can't hide from me."
The phone rang.
Noel straightened up suddenly, smacking his head against the heavy glass of his computer monitor. A spastic grab with both hands kept it from tottering over the back of his desk.
"Morning, sleepy head. You gonna get that?" Lewis nodded toward his phone.
Noel smiled, sheepish. "Yeah, why not." He picked up the receiver. "Oak Valley Police Department Robbery-Homicide, Detective Noel Aquino speaking." Noel was perhaps the only detective who answered the phone so completely. Detective Lewis shook her head and laughed; Noel waved at her to be quiet. "I'm sorry, could you repeat that?"
"Mr. Aquino, Ed Rooney here, Vice Principal at Shermer High School."
Noel straightened up. "Is something wrong?"
Mr. Rooney's voice had an acerbically lyrical quality. Noel immediately recognized it as a trademark of the Eternally Self-Important Prick. "Yes, I'm afraid so, Mr. Aquino. It seems your son Ricky was caught sleeping in class again. That's four times in the last two days. Is everything all right at home?"
Noel bristled. "Yes, of course." At least it was as far as this petty bureaucrat was concerned.
Rooney's reply was so patronizing the phone practically oozed. "Yes, I'm sure you think so. --Mr. Aquino, I would be happy to facilitate a conference with myself, you and your son. Sometimes all a boy like Ricky needs is to see his parent working in concert with another authority figure and they shape right up."
A boy like Ricky? Another authority figure? This man was quite a piece of work... Noel took a moment to calm himself.
When he finally answered, he was polite, but firm. "Thank you, but no. I will speak to my son when I get home."
"See that you do. If this happens one more time I'll have no choice but to suspend him."
"Good day, Mr. Rooney." Noel hung up before the man could reply.
"Caught sleeping in class?" Lewis smirked.
"Yes." A raised eyebrow asked: How did you know? Or are you talking about me?
"Lucky guess. It seems to run in the family." She seemed to want to say something more, but thought better of it.
"Rick." Noel leaned into the bedroom, finding his son in front of his computer.
The boy's "Uh-oh" face was no doubt a response to the missing "y". He played it cool by not looking up. "Yeah dad."
"I want to talk to you."
"Okay, hang on a second." The keyboard racket increased.
"Now."
The sharp tone made Ricky jump. He quickly folded his hands in his lap in submission, fixing his father with the best good-boy look he could muster.
"In the living room," Noel gruffed, retreating down the hallway. He wasn't going to let Ricky hide behind his desk for this one.
"Yeah, dad?"
Noel didn't wait for his son to confess anything; the situation was past that. "You've been sleeping in class."
The boy's face fell, but he didn't reply.
"For starters, you're grounded." Punishment, right up front. Starting with punishment was a signal that this was a lecture, not a discussion.
Grounded. Not that Ricky generally went anywhere anyway -- or that being forced to give up video games, television, or even the Internet was much punishment for such an inwardly-directed young man. But it was a symbolic gesture, made to underscore the seriousness of the situation.
Noel knew that Ricky wouldn't ask how long the grounding might last. The teen simply waited for his father to continue.
"It's irresponsible." The actual consequences weren't so important as the slippery slope it represented. Noel was fond of spinning the old saw about thoughts becoming words, actions, habits, character, destiny.
"You're sixteen now. I know you think you know everything, but you don't." This was actually a running joke between them -- Ricky was atypically humble and respectful for a boy his age, and eager to hear his elders' advice -- but there was neither humor nor irony in the way father spoke to son now.
"I know things have been... tumultuous lately." The word wasn't over Noel's head (or his son's) but it was more ornate a word than he was accustomed to using. The choice of that unusual word did more to describe the situation than its meaning.
"But that's no excuse for ignoring your commitments. To other people, or to yourself. And it's no excuse for inappropriate behavior."
Ricky seemed unsure whether he was more uncomfortable with the words his father spoke, or the silence between them.
"You can't throw everything away just because you've met a girl. You can't let her change the man you are."
It was if Noel was counseling himself as much as his son.
Not that either of them seemed to heed the words.
"Dad, it's not what you think."
Noel's response was quick -- and accusing. "It's not?"
The condom wrapper left little to the imagination...
"No, it's not." Ricky looked back to his feet. Apparently that was all he was prepared to say.
"What I think is that a young man who should be taking his school studies seriously is instead studying something else." Noel dared not be more specific, lest the visions of Angela infect him again...
"Dad, I can handle it."
The son's quiet unaffected answers only exacerbated the father's unease. It seemed to validate Noel's fear that the situation was quite serious.
"Can you? School, a job, and a relationship? You're not handling them all now, or I wouldn't be getting phone calls at work from Mr. Rooney. If you can't make an adjustment and figure out a way to balance them, I'll just have to step in and do it for you."
Noel was treading on dangerous ground here -- there wasn't much he could really do about it. He couldn't watch the boy 24/7, and for good or bad, he couldn't just kick Angela out of the house. (Couldn't he, or did he simply not want to?)
And he was loathe to try to tell his son that he couldn't draw -- Ricky was at times so driven by his muse that he'd grab anything he could find and start sketching. Noel had long ago lost count of the number of pocket notepads he'd found lying around -- in the house, in the car, there was even one in Noel's desk at work -- every one of them filled with Ricky's creations, anything from abstract scribbles to fully-formed miniature landscapes rendered in details that seemed too small for the mundane instruments from which they'd sprung.
Frankly, Noel was surprised that Angela's attentions were ever able to draw the young man away from his easel.
Then again, social quirks and upbringing aside, Ricky was a young male, and teenage hormones gave no quarter.
And Angela seemed as alluring as any young woman could be...
Of course, there was not drawing, and then there was simply not drawing for hire. Ricky had a freelance job inking for an independent comic book company -- mostly promotional materials and other one-offs, but Noel did see the occasional comic book panel tucked away in large flats in his son's room -- not that Noel admitted any interest in the details of Ricky's job, any more than Ricky seemed interested in volunteering them.
Noel couldn't take away Ricky's art, but he could make him quit his job.
Ricky seemed to come to the same conclusion. "Dad, you wouldn't."
"Until you're eighteen you're not allowed to work with a permit, which requires my consent. If I don't think you're up to managing all of your responsibilities..."
"That's my career."
"You're sixteen. You still have two years of high school. Your career will be there when you graduate. Don't be in such a hurry to grow up." Which he could interpret any way he liked...
Ricky fumed, but held his tongue.
Noel hoped he hadn't crossed a line. The last thing he wanted to do was push his son toward the very things he should avoid. Maybe he'd taken too tough a stance. Maybe he shouldn't have unveiled such a threat. Was a couple of naps in class really such a big deal? Maybe Ricky had just been a little too enthusiastic in sowing his wild oats. Maybe if he were left to his own devices he'd recover his moral compass and the balance in his life. Ricky had always been so responsible and serious about his future, far more even than Noel had been growing up...
But the young man who glowered at his father now wasn't the same Ricky. He'd changed.
Angela had changed him.
It all came back to the condom wrapper, laid down like a gauntlet. Ricky wasn't a shy little boy anymore. He was different -- Noel could only guess how much. He'd seen a glimpse of the man Ricky was becoming on that fateful night at the convention center. There was a strength and a compassion Noel hadn't expected, at least not so young. Noel had been so taken aback that he'd given Ricky (and Angela) huge lattitude. Perhaps too much. Clearly too much.
Yes, Ricky showed signs of becoming a good man. But that strength and compassion didn't come alone. Apparently Ricky had undergone other changes as well, and Noel wasn't sure he approved of all of them. No, he knew he didn't exactly approve of some of them. And while he believed to a certain extent that Ricky would have to learn from his own mistakes, Noel wasn't about to stand idly by and let some hussy ruin his life...
Woah.
Hussy?
The vision returned -- Angela, her face a mask of lust, slowly bobbing up and down... Noel shook his head clear.
Well, if the shoe fits...
This one came in a size five.
Speak of the devil and she shall appear.
"Hey."
Angela stood in the entryway. Apparently she'd been in the house the whole time.
Had she heard the father-son talk?
She gave them a quizzical look. Apparently not.
"I'm going out."
Ricky didn't turn around to acknowledge her. Understandable, considering he'd just been raked over the coals because of her.
Noel looked her up and down. She wasn't doing anything to improve her standing with him. Dressed to the nines -- if looking practically naked under a sleeveless half-open trenchcoat could be considered dressed at all. High heels, skirt too short to be seen, top with a modest neckline made of a decidedly immodest material, makeup too heavy for anything but a Friday night, and hair swept back in a meticulously-disheveled updo.
The parental autopilot applied just enough disdain to generate irritation but not irascibility. "Out where?"
The question seemed to take the girl a long time to understand.
Noel cursed the reflex that generated the question -- at this moment, given the territory he'd just covered (and skipped over) with his son, "out" was more than adequate, so long as it didn't include the Aquino residence. But he'd asked, so eventually she answered. With a terseness that Noel would have assumed to be hostility, if he'd had the energy to pick a fight.
"Corey Feldman movie marathon at the Guild Theater. Don't wait up."
Hostility didn't begin to cover it. But the brief lecture Noel had just given his son left him drained. Or maybe it was the fact that he'd been up for thirty-six hours straight. Thirty-six hours of dark thoughts and disturbing visions. He was too defeated this night to take up the fight with her.
So he nodded his consent.
Not that she'd waited to receive it. She'd already turned on a spiked heel and was halfway to the door.
He watched Angela stalk out, like a predator on a pair of silky slender stems...
When Noel's eyes finally broke free of her, he found his son fixing him with a suspicious stare.