Last Primer

John David Gomez sits waiting for me in his 1986 LTD Crown Victoria, the same one his mother used to drive, though he has touched up the car's paint and tinted its windows in the many years since she left him, and the car, at her mother's house so that she could pursue a future with an amateur boxer she'd only known for two days. He's parked at the end of my block, so I jog-step to his car so we can drive off before anyone sees us, though I don't know that any of my neighbors would be up at this hour. The sight of him behind the wheel of that car reminds me of his mother and those rare times she was waiting for him after school, times when I would have to kick JD and his friends out of my classroom so I could go home to my wife and daughter. He's even smoking like she always was when she waited, though he's smoking a Black and Mild rather than the Doral 100s she used to smoke, the kind my mother had switched to towards the end of her life. I get in the car and JD turns down the radio to greet me.

"Hey sir," JD says as he turns the car on and puts it into gear, "You don't mind the smoke do you?" He is wearing his work clothes. He must have just gotten off; I don't think he would go in after what we're about to do.

"JD, it's been ten years since I was your teacher. You can call me Frank." Neither of us speak and, for a while, the thumps of the wheels passing over the freeway section splits mark time. JD turns the radio back up. "I don't mind the smoke," I tell him. "My wife doesn't know I'm out and if she wakes up when I get home I'll tell her I went to a bar."

"How's she doing with everything?" He doesn't look over at me.

"I don't know. She was so strong after it happened. She stayed day and night with Sara in the hospital. But now that Sara's home and, for the most part, physically better, it's really hit Imelda. She sleeps a lot, so does Sara, she's taken to sharing Sara's pain pills. So, I just don't know."

It's strange being this honest with someone who sat in my classroom before his voice changed. I look at JD driving; his cigarillo, the speedometer, and the radio the only lights in the car. It's just so unreal—looking at him from the passenger seat, sitting in a car that I've never sat in but seen so many times. I feel as small as he must have felt all those times I drove him home after school, those numerous times when his mother was elsewhere after Lexington Middle School closed down for the day.

"And you?" JD looks at me.

Now, I need to lie. "I'm fine. I think it hurts less, but with this investigation bullshit I'm so angry all the time."

"Yeah. I would be too." JD shakes his head empathetically. "There's a flask in the glove box. You can smell like that bar your wife thinks you're going to. Or, you know, just numb it all a bit."

I open the glove box and sitting on the flask of Tanqeurey is a .38 revolver. The light of the moon shining through the window reflects blue off of the gun's nickel plating. I push off the gun lightly with the back of my hand and reach for the flask.

The mouthful of gin I throw back is burning in my belly when I pull the gun out of the glove box. "Is this the one I'm going to use?"

He glances over briefly and then looks back to the road in front of us. "Yeah. It's a .38 like you asked...