by Nathan Holic
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Jose and the other one.............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
“Hello,...............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................under the impression that I wasn’t...............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
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............, three more of those.”...........................................................................................................................................................................................and he..........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
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“Hey,.....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
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................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................a crashing noise against the bar.......................................................
..........................................................BULLSHIT!!!!”
“!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
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..........................................pink and purple..............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
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.....................................................off my shirt....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
......................flesh................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................XXX...........................................................................................................................................................................................................hand on.......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................XXX............................................................................................................................................................................................
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................................................................................................................................... the sink and I grab ...........................................................................................................................
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CHAPTER TWENTY. Charles Wakes Up.
I slide out of the bed and stumble toward the door to Jose’s bathroom so I can piss-puke-shit/ whatever-the-fuck-my-aching-body-is-screaming-that-it- needs.
But then the black shapes throughout the room start focusing: posters on the wall, colors, purples and pinks, an Alpha Alpha picture frame atop an end-table next to the bed.
Blackout night. Just a series of strobe-light snapshots. And just before I open the door, I remember the most vital snapshot from last night: this isn’t Jose’s living room, this isn’t Jose’s pull-out couch where I’ve been sleeping. I came back to Maria’s dorm room. And there, across the room, buried beneath the fluffy purple comforter, pressed against the far edge of the bed, is a young woman, swaths of glittery dark hair spilling from underneath the blankets. Maria. And on the other side of the room, close to the door, is another bed and another shape under the blankets: two bodies: Shelley and Sam Anderson. Everyone sleeping.
It’s sometime early in the morning in Maria’s dark dorm room, so early that it might still be last night, so dark that almost everything seems indistinguishable from everything else.
These are the only snapshots I remember:
The bar in Juarez. Dios Mia? The dance floor. Packed, hundreds of bodies brushing against mine throughout the night; barely enough room to breathe, but I didn’t feel crushed under any collective weight. All those bodies, and still my legs were free to move however I wanted to move them, still my arms were free to slide around Maria’s waist and bring her close, still my pelvis was free to grind, my head was free to nod to the music. We moved with ease through the crowd and to the bar, we floated.
Then: crawling into bed with Maria, sloppy-drunk sex, and—after she fell asleep—vomiting in the community bathroom at the end of this dorm floor’s hallway. And not just “vomited,” like into a toilet, but, like, a spectac
le…across sinks and mirrors.
I shouldn’t be here, and yet I am here. The cold certainty of my morning.
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I creep through Maria’s dorm room, hunched over, patting the dark carpet and searching for the shirt and jeans I tossed on the floor. Random shapes across the floor, boxes and giant plastic bins and folders and textbooks, maybe even a bean bag against one wall. Tequila hangover right now, but I do remember what this dorm room looked like in daylight: a pink and purple mess, notebooks and envelopes of developed photographs scattered everywhere.
Lumber forward, head spinning, and finally bump into what I thought was the bean bag, but when I lean to touch it I discover that it’s actually a waist-high clothes pile. Dirty, clean, I don’t know. These girls either don’t have a hamper, or they don’t have a dresser. Stick my hands into the clothing mountain, hope my jeans and my shirt lay somewhere on its slopes.
I grab a white skirt. Toss it. A black halter top, a studded belt. Toss them. Girl’s clothing: all of it. I toss each item into a separate pile so that I don’t keep searching through the same clothes over and over again, but soon I realize that I am grabbing and inspecting the same clothes, and I’m spinning and can’t tell one pile from the other.
Across the room, the blinds are shut tight, not a single slip of sunlight sneaking through. And there are sounds on the other side of that window, cars driving past, distant lawnmowers, the noise of the world grinding back to life for the Wednesday work day.