Apples Never Fall

Troy’s parents had no idea that being abused didn’t automatically make you good. Savannah could be a petty thief, a psychopath, or just an opportunist who had seen their big house and soft, elderly, innocent faces, and thought: Money.

He and Logan were “the muscle” in case the boyfriend showed up. Troy covertly checked out his older brother, who didn’t have a gym membership but still looked gallingly buff, although he’d stacked it on around the belly. He wondered what Logan could bench-press if he could ever be convinced to bench-press.

How would they handle it if this guy did make an appearance? When Troy was in his “angry young man” stage he would have relished the opportunity to hit someone with justice on his side, to defend a wronged woman, to blow off all that angry energy, but he no longer walked around with his teeth clenched as tight as his fists, looking for someone to blame. That stupid angry kid no longer existed. Now the thought of being involved in a physical altercation seemed grotesque.

He gripped his fist, watching his knuckles. Did he still know how to hit someone? What if everything went pear-shaped and he got charged with assault? He imagined a twenty-year-old cop handcuffing him and leading him away, hand firm on the back of his neck. To lose control of his life would be unbearable.

If he got arrested he’d no longer be able to travel back and forth between Sydney and New York. He knew how lucky he was that he didn’t have a youth criminal record to cause difficulties at the borders, which he sailed through with such ease and regularity. It was all thanks to his mother that he’d been let off with a caution when he’d got caught with cannabis during his “entrepreneurial days.” She’d arrived like the cavalry, following a phone call from Troy’s girlfriend at the time, and launched a full-on Joy Delaney charm offensive that had taken down the older of the two police officers.

Troy had just ten minutes earlier made a profitable sale to the school captain of an “elite” school, which meant he had a lot of cash on him but only a small amount of drugs: small enough that he could argue it was for personal use. Troy could tell the younger officer badly wanted to charge him, that he represented something that guy couldn’t stand. “Your luck won’t last forever, mate,” he’d said to Troy, hatred in his eyes.

“Don’t talk to me, don’t even look at me,” his mother had said, rippling with fury, on the drive home.

His mother was also the one who’d somehow magically convinced Harry Haddad’s father not to call the police when Troy punched the kid in the face for cheating.

“If I’d been there I would have called the police on you myself,” Troy’s dad had said.

“Your dad would never have done that,” Joy had told him in private. “He’s just upset.”

But his dad had said those words and never taken them back.

Apparently Harry Haddad was going to release an autobiography next year. Troy wondered if he’d include the story of how his first coach’s son jumped the net and nearly broke his nose for cheating. Presumably not. Didn’t fit with his wholesome brand. Troy wouldn’t be reading the fucker’s book anyway. He hated Harry for dumping his father even more than he hated him for cheating.

Troy shifted in his seat, kicked at an old Subway wrapper

caught on the tip of his shoe from the floor of Logan’s car, and for no reason at all found himself considering what had happened in New York, even though he had not given his brain permission to consider it—in fact he had expressly forbidden himself to think of it again for another twenty-four hours.

His ex-wife had met him for a drink and presented him with an ethical dilemma so excruciating he thought it might have given him an instant stomach ulcer. Did people still get stomach ulcers? Nobody seemed to talk about them anymore. The word “ulcerate” seemed appropriate for the sensation he experienced at that moment: like a tiny cyst had burst and flooded his stomach with corrosive acid.

“This is not about evening the score,” Claire had said with a tremulous smile, after she’d taken a sip of an overpriced, overaccessorized cocktail. She’d flown in from Austin just to talk to him.

Logan turned onto the highway and stopped at the first traffic light. A dead bat hung from the power line. Whenever Troy left his parents’ place he got a red light here, and thought, I always get a red light here, and then he looked up and thought, Isn’t that dead bat always there? He got trapped in a permanent loop of pointless thoughts.

Further down the road a bus had stopped and a handful of people disembarked. Troy saw an ancient old lady totter toward the bus stop, face desperate, arm raised. She reminded him of his long-dead grandmother, who’d drunk too much and was spiteful to his mother, but Troy had adored her. She had a scar from when her husband, the grandfather Troy had never met, threw her across the room. She wore the scar with pride, like a tattoo she’d chosen for herself. “I threw that bastard out of my house,” she told her grandchildren. “I said, ‘I never want to see your face again.’ And I never did.”

The last passenger emerged from the bus. The old lady picked up the pace.

Troy reached across Logan and banged his fist hard on the horn to get the driver’s attention. Too late. The doors slammed shut. The bus took off. For fuck’s sake.

Logan looked at him sideways. “She’ll get the next one.”

Troy kicked again at the Subway wrapper. “Eeuuuuw. Christ almighty. It’s stuck on my shoe. Oh God, that yellow fake cheese will stain.”

“Looks like you’re due for some new shoes anyway,” said Logan.

“They’re brand-new Armani suede loafers!” protested Troy.

Logan smirked.

Troy reached down and grabbed the Subway wrapper, scrunched it into a ball, and shoved it in the side pocket of the car door, which was filled with coins, a pair of service-station sunglasses missing a lens, and a CD without a cover. “When did you last clean your car? Sometime back in the nineties?”

“Troy would rather not be seen in my car.” Logan looked at Savannah in the rearview mirror. Wait, did he just wink at her? He wouldn’t be flirting, because he was in a long-term relationship with Indira. Indira was way out of Logan’s league, as far as Troy was concerned. It was a mystery what these women saw in him.

The only skill Logan had was recognizing the good ones. Sometimes, Logan saw something in a woman that Troy didn’t see straight away. When they were in their late teens they’d both dated girls called Tracey, and Troy developed a secret, shameful crush on Logan’s Tracey. She was the superior Tracey! The worst part was, Troy had met Logan’s Tracey first, so he could have made a move, but he didn’t see her appeal until Logan saw it.

“You’ve got a fancy car, Troy,” said Savannah. “What type is it?”

They’d taken Logan’s car because he had a bigger trunk for Savannah’s stuff. Troy was happy not to park his car outside Savannah’s flat, which he assumed was in some crummy low-rent area where it would get keyed within five minutes.