The idea that this vagrant stranger would know the specific contents of Lindy’s room was outlandish to me. I deemed it a preposterous lie and threw it into the same stinking pile with his other monstrous tales. Because the truth was, despite our entire youth together, our series of glowing summers, I had never been inside Lindy’s room. I’d imagined it, sure, down to what I thought would be a green-and-white checkered bedspread draped over a white wrought-iron bed frame with white rose inlays next to a white wooden desk with colored construction paper fanned out on top of it beside a series of fluffy white pillows that Lindy would lie upon while talking on the phone beneath a white bulletin board lined with blue first-place ribbons that her parents had tacked along the edges in neat rows above a pink tape deck on the nightstand where my mix tapes would one day go beside a white bookcase full of yearbooks and picture albums that stood above a shaggy pink rug beneath a heaven of glow-in-the-dark star decals she had pasted to a white and latticed ceiling fan that was constantly turning.
Sure, I’d imagined it all. But I had never seen it.
“Like you’ve been in her room,” I said.
“Dumbass,” he said. “You don’t have to go in it to see it.”
The both of them laughed.
“This guy just doesn’t get it,” Jason said.
“Do I have to teach you fucks everything?” Tyler said. “Come on.”
Tyler then spat on his wrist and extinguished the still-burning joint, an act that looked immensely heroic to me, and one that I myself would ape barely a year later. He got off the grass and told me to grab the Hornet so we wouldn’t look suspicious.
When we got to the street, he instructed me to steer the car toward Lindy’s house as we followed behind it. “All right,” he said. “Check out three o’clock. The oak tree by their driveway.”
I looked over to see a tall water oak sitting alone in the space of grass between the Simpson house and its driveway. It stood about thirty feet high and had branches that Lindy could likely feel if she leaned out of her window just so.
“You notice anything about the trunk?” he said.
The trunk of the tree was warped and knobby, like many of these oaks are known to be. I saw a knot in its trunk about chest high, and I immediately knew what he was getting at. The thing had the look of a foothold.
“One hop on that knot, one jump to that branch, and bingo,” he said. “You’ve got an eyeful.”
“That is so wicked,” Jason said.
“It’s all right,” Tyler said. “How long can you watch some teenybopper talk on the phone?”
Forever, I thought. I could watch into a time with no end.
“The real action is at that house down the street,” Tyler said. “The one with the fat wife.”
“The Mouilles’?” I said. “Isn’t she pregnant?”
“Do I look like a doctor?” Tyler said. “I just call her Tons of Fun. I mean, that lady likes to fuck.”
As we stood there, lost in our own fantasies and looking anything but inconspicuous, Lindy came down her driveway with the bike at her hip. She was wearing green running shorts and a pink tank top, and I felt hugely guilty when she saw us standing in the road in front of her house, talking about how to spy on her. Her bronze and muscular legs. Her fit hips. Her smile. It was all too good for me.
“Hey, dorks,” she said.
“I was just playing with my car,” I told her.
“Hey, girl,” Tyler said. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“To the track,” she said.
“Why don’t you come hang out with us?” Tyler said. “We’ll show you ours if you show us yours.”
Lindy scrunched up her face.
“Gross,” she said. “Like you have anything I want to see.”
“Oh, I’ve got something,” Jason said.
“Shut up,” Tyler told him. He smiled at Lindy. “They’re just kids,” he said. “They don’t know what we’ve got going on.”
About this time, Dan Simpson, Lindy’s father, drove up Piney Creek Road in his silver-and-blue station wagon, just getting home from work, I suppose. We stepped out of the road and he rolled down his window by turning a crank with one hand while awkwardly trying to wave at us with the other. I waved back. After he pulled into the driveway, he stopped his car next to Lindy and said, “What’s on tap for today? We breaking the four-minute mile?”
Lindy smiled and walked her bike a few feet closer to his car as they casually rehashed what all of us already knew, where she was going, what time she’d be back, who she’d be with, and we all laughed sarcastically when Mr. Simpson used his horrible Italian accent to say, “Just do not-ah be late, mi amor, because tonight I make-ah the famous Steak Simpsone Pizzaiola!” He then kissed his fingers as if to say delicioso!, waved good-bye to all of us, and drove his car into their garage.
Lindy straddled her bike, smiling earnestly, as if that particular meal actually did sound good, and lifted the kickstand with her foot. She looked back at us, and then at Tyler specifically, as if she’d forgotten he was there.
“Shouldn’t you be out robbing old ladies or something?” she asked him.
Tyler laughed. “Maybe I will, mi amore.”
“Good, then,” Lindy said. “At least you won’t be bothering me.”
Lindy then stuck out her tongue and took off down the sidewalk on her bike. She pedaled hard with her rear end up off the seat in a way that I now realize, in my worst moments, seemed to me some juvenile invitation. Tyler grabbed the remote control from my hand and made The Hornet follow her up the road. He was an expert driver, it turned out, and almost caught her.
“You shouldn’t be so mean,” he called to her. “I know where you live.”
Lindy flipped us the bird as the car squealed up the sidewalk behind her until it finally died and sat still, out of radio range. We watched her ride out of sight.
“You should totally nail her,” Tyler told me. “She’s too bitchy for me.”
I had no reply.
He handed me back the remote control, now useless, and said, “Let’s go check on that fat chick. There’s this great row of shrubs right outside their window. She goes nuts before her husband gets home. Uses all sorts of toys and shit. I’m telling you. Don’t let chicks tell you any different.”
So the two of them walked down the road and I chose not to follow.
Instead I walked the path Lindy had taken and picked up my car, the battery now smelling of smoke. I thought I could smell something else in the air that day, too, however. A whiff of her, maybe. The way we leave a trail. I stood there for a long time.
And although I still think of Tyler Bannister often, I saw him only a few more times after that day: once when I was standing in the darkness beneath Lindy’s oak tree and holding that pair of binoculars in my hand. I heard rustling up in the branches, some soft grunting, and the clink of a loosened belt buckle. “Get the fuck out of here,” he hissed.
So I did, and Tyler disappeared from the Landrys’ about a month or so later.
He was gone before Lindy’s rape. He was never a suspect.