“Speak English,” Gerry said, and he wasn’t joking.
So today, when Victoria appears with her sheaves of paper and phone, ready to talk business and errands, he is not initially alarmed when she says: “Um, before we talk about anything, I guess I have to tell you there’s something on Twitter.”
“There’s always something on Twitter,” he says, meaning to be jovial, but she winces as if he’s been cruel. “Something about me?”
“Not directly. Someone tweeting at you.”
“You know how to handle it. Queries about work or public speaking can be directed to the proper avenues. Everything else is to be ignored.” The Gerald Andersen Twitter account follows exactly three other accounts: Barack Obama, God, and Marina Hyde, a UK columnist he admires. Yet he is followed by almost three thousand people, although Victoria says at least half of them are probably robots, or bots, as she calls them.
“It’s just that this one—it’s a woman named Aubrey. I mean, her handle is DreamGirl@Aubrey. The avatar is, um, your book.”
“There is no Aubrey. How can Twitter allow this?”
“I checked, but it doesn’t violate the terms of service? It’s pretty common, I think?”
He can’t help himself: “Victoria, are you asking me questions or telling me these facts?”
“Telling you? I mean, telling you. This isn’t a violation. Because Aubrey’s not real, she—he—isn’t really trying to deceive anyone.”
Gerry gets that. He follows God, after all. Although only on Twitter.
“So I care about this because—”
“I thought you should know about the content?”
Is it so wrong that he wants to hold her head under water every time she ends a sentence on a rising note?
“What is the ‘content’？”
“Yes, well, I think I should probably show it to you, or paraphrase it, or just—”
“Victoria, please tell me what this ‘Aubrey’ is doing that has you all bollixed up.”
“She was tweeting about your penis.”
At least she finally managed a declarative sentence.
1975
THE TOWSON PRECINCT of the Baltimore County Police Department was relatively quiet on the Fourth of July. The not-quite-arresting officer did not bother to put Gerry and his friends in a holding cell, but left them on a bench where, one by one, the other boys were picked up. Alex, Sean, Steve, Roderick. Still Gerry’s mother didn’t come and she didn’t come and she didn’t come. It was almost dark when she arrived and she offered no explanation for the delay.
He had never seen his mother’s face so white and tight with fury, not with him. Not even with his father.
“What happened?” she asked once he was in her car, a secondhand AMC Pacer.
“There was this mass of wet leaves on the road and Alex was going a little too fast and he lost control—”
“The police said there was beer in the car.”
“It wasn’t our beer.”
She gave him a look.
“Alex picks up his father’s booze for him at the package store on Falls Road. Call him and ask. That’s how cool Alex’s dad is. Also, Alex turned eighteen two days ago.” A lie, except for the part about Alex’s age—his parents had held him back a year to allow him to excel at lacrosse—but he knew his mother would never call the home of Alexander Simpson III.
“I have told you before and I will tell you again—I do not approve of this fast crowd you have fallen in with, Gerry.”
“They’re not fast,” he protested. “They’re fun.” He wasn’t sure this was even true, but they were more fun than any other options he had. He helped them with their school papers and they, in turn, let him hang out with them with only a modicum of teasing. They spent their summer evenings scouting for beer, then used the liquid courage to approach girls. But they didn’t really know what to do with girls. All four were star lacrosse players and they could do marvelous things with a stick and a ball, but face-to-face with a girl, they were hopeless. That’s what they had been doing at the Elkridge Club all afternoon, splashing girls and tormenting them, then wondering why the girls didn’t want to go see fireworks with them. Gerry secretly thought he would do better with girls without Alex and his gang, but how would he ever get into any place as rarefied as Elkridge without Alex?
They had been in Alex’s green Mercedes sedan when he lost control on a bed of wet leaves on Falls Road. That part was true, too. Alex had been driving much too fast for the curvy country road. The car spun in circles, making what felt like five rotations before it came to rest on the opposite side. No one was hurt, but the car hit a retaining wall, popping the battery cable. They had the presence of mind to hide the empties, so the only beer in the car was an intact six-pack. Still, the Baltimore County cop who came to their aid decided it was time they learn an important lesson about drunk driving, so he had taken them to the precinct and made them watch a film they had already seen in school, Mechanized Death, then called their parents to pick them up.