ALL THAT WINTER WE used to drive around in her car, me and Suzanne and Jimmy, drinking Southern Comfort and listening to tapes. Not Russell. She never liked him so much, and to tell you the truth, I don’t think she was his type either. But the three of us, we were just like that. We did everything together. Well, not everything of course.
I didn’t have my license yet but Suzanne let me drive so her and Jimmy could make out. She was a different person, when it was the three of us together like that, from how she was when we were making our video, and giving her weather reports on TV. She’d take her hair out of the ponytail she wore. Then she’d sit on his lap, stick her hand down his pants and stuff. At first I’d be embarrassed, but you got used to it. They said if it wasn’t for me, they never could’ve been together. If it wasn’t for me being with them, everybody’d be suspicious, instead of just figuring we were working on the video. She said I was kind of like that nurse in the Romeo and Juliet movie, that believes in their love and tries to help them be together, when the whole rest of the world is against them. Without her, they never could’ve got together. And that’s how it was, with them and me.
We did dumb stuff. We’d buy pizza and have food fights. Go to malls and look at tapes. Go down to the boardwalk and get cotton candy. One time we went to this car dealership to test-drive a convertible. I mean if it was just Jimmy and me of course no one would take us seriously. But her being the way she was, the salesman was happy to let us take the car.
But mostly we’d just drive around. Suzanne was always saying how much she missed just hanging out and being crazy like that. She said Larry used to be like that, but then he got all serious, and now he wasn’t any fun anymore. “It’s like he’s dead already,” she said.
I always hated it when she wanted to talk about the plan. I don’t think it was exactly Jimmy’s favorite thing to do either, but Suzanne said it was important to get all the details worked out so nothing went wrong. And of course we knew she was right.
So we’d be driving along, blasting the music or sticking her bra out the window, tied to the antenna or something, and then she’d get that other way all of a sudden, like she was on the news, only it wasn’t the weather she’d want to talk about, it was stuff like “Where are you going to put the gloves after it’s over?” or “How do you think I should act when I find the body?”
The plan was, Jimmy and Russell were going to make it look like somebody just broke into the condo to steal the TV and stuff. They’d hide in the living room closet, and then when he came home they’d shoot him. Jimmy said Russell wanted to use a knife, on account of then they wouldn’t have to come up with a gun, but Suzanne had these brand-new white couches, and anyways, she was afraid if she saw all that blood she might just faint or something. My mom had this gun she bought after Chester left and she started hearing about all these sex killers on the loose. I said I figured they could use it, so long as they got it back without her knowing.
Jimmy and me were helping her just because we were all friends, naturally. But you knew Russell had to get something out of it. Suzanne said to tell Russell he could take Larry’s gold chain that he always wore, and some CDs. They had this portable color TV she thought he’d like. And later, when the insurance money came through, she’d pay him a thousand dollars. He was going to buy a car.
In the summer, when it was all over, Jimmy and Suzanne and me were going to take off in her car, and drive to Orlando. She was going to take us to Disney World. She was always telling us how great it was there—the rides and everything, and Epcot Center, where you could walk around for a day and feel like you’d seen the whole entire world, you never had to go any farther. She said they had these horses pulling carriages that take you all around. And everything’s so clean there, the minute a horse starts to drop a turd on the street, there’s some guy jumping up with a broom and dustpan to clean it up before it even hits the ground. That’s how perfect it is.