Page 7 of Nobody's Fool

We are a little more than halfway through class when someone slinks in through the side door.

My spidey senses tingle. Or maybe that’s hindsight.

I only see the form in my peripheral vision. I don’t take a close look. People wander in here all the time. Last class, a man with a dirty-gray beard so bushy that it looked like he was midway through eating a sheep shuffled in. He cupped his hands around his mouth and screamed, “Himmler likes tuna steaks!” and then left.

This part of the class is show-n-tell. Leisure Suit Lenny is up. I don’t know what to make of him. He sits a little too close to the influencers, but there is something harmless about him too. He puts a box on a decrepit concrete slab we use as a table and starts taking out gizmos.

“These are tracking devices,” Lenny tells the class.

You’ve probably heard the “Yep, that’s me, you may be wondering how I ended up here” record-scratch movie cliché on some meme. That summer with Anna knocked me off the rails. When I came home, nothing felt right. I hid in my room a lot. I didn’t want to go to medical school anymore. My parents understood the best they could, but they were also sure it would pass. Defer a year, they urged me. So I did. Defer another year. I did. But I still couldn’t go back. I spent my life wanting to be a physician. I tossed it away. This crushed my parents.

“I always carry at least three tracking devices with me,” Lenny continues.

Instagram Influencer One says, “Seriously? Three?”

“Always. See this one here?” Lenny lifts what looks like, well, a black rectangular tracker in the air. “This is an Alert1A4. Do you remember those ‘I fell and I can’t get up’ commercials?”

Lots of nods. Raymond presses down on the nail clipper. The cut nail flies.

Golf Shirt Gary grabs his cheek: “Ow, what the…? That almost went in my eye!”

Raymond raises his hand and then points to himself. “My bad, that’s totally on me.”

Lenny remains steadfast in his presentation. “This is a more advanced tracker because it can do more. I can mute it from this end”—he demonstrates—“and leave the speaker on so this can be both a listening deviceanda tracker. Problem is, the battery life isn’t great.” He looks around the room. “That’s true for all of these, by the way. The GPS’s battery drains too fast. Now this one—” He pulls out a device shaped like a thick coin. “This can last for up to six months—but you have to be within twenty yards to pick it up.”

Instagram Influencer Two raises her hand, chews her gum, and says, “This is kind of stalkery.”

One (also chewing gum): “Definitely.”

Three (also chewing gum): “Perv-level stuff.”

Two: “Like, there’s other ways to meet people.”

One: “Do you carry zip ties too?”

“No!” Lenny’s face turns red. “I don’t use these for anything like that!”

One: “Then, like, what do you use it for?”

“In case there’s a crime in progress. Like this one.” He lifts a small GPS tracker high in the air with both hands like it’s Simba in the beginning ofThe Lion King. “This one has a strong magnet. I can stick it on a car.”

Two: “Aaaaaand you’ve definitely done that before, right?”

One: “Like, more than once.”

Three: “Like, to meet a girl.”

One: “I had a guy do that to me once.”

Two: “Get out.”

Three: “For realz?”

One: “Like, he slapped a GPS on my car so he could set up a time for us to”—finger quotes—“‘bump’ into each other.”

Two: “Ew.”

One: “You mean like a pervy meet-cute?”

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