The Disenchantments

by Nina LaCour

  “Pop Art seems so shallow,” Alexa says.

  “That’s the point,” Meg snaps. “That’s what makes it Pop Art. Sometimes it’s okay for art to be fun.”

  Alexa is right, I know. The trouble is that sometimes I read too much into things. Like, okay, I understand it’s a joke: the thing that makes “today’s homes so different” is that there’s a moon where a ceiling should be. Ha. But I remember the moon striking me as important and dangerous, like the man and the woman were trapped, like it was the beginning of the end of the world.

  I’m still thinking about the collage as we traipse into the lobby. Once inside, though, it becomes apparent that the decor is more family room than it is Pop Art. Faded black-and-white photographic portraits cover the walls, mostly stiff studio shots, but some more casual photos of kids in backyards and men with slicked-back hair standing next to shiny vintage cars.

  No one is at the counter at first so we have time to get a good look at the pictures. There are class photos and prom photos, girls with cat’s-eye glasses and guys with Elvis hair.

  “I would kill for this dress,” Meg says, pointing to a photo in the corner.

  I’m headed over to see when a voice behind me drones, “You here for a room or what?”

  I turn around. A scraggly-haired man in rumpled clothes stares at us with an expression of complete boredom.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Just for the night.”

  At the counter, I catch a glimpse of his name tag: MELVIN.

  When I tell him that we only want one room, his expression approaches disapproval but never quite gets past boredom, and as he fills out the paperwork I ask, “What’s up with all the pictures, Melvin?”

  “Family who used to own the place left ’em behind. How many keys you need?”

  “Two’s fine. So they sold the motel and just left all their photos?”

  Melvin looks up from the paperwork to me with hooded, watery eyes.

  “Appears that way,” he says. “Doesn’t it.”

  I am deciding whether to continue this conversation with Melvin, who apparently thinks that I’m either a little slow or trying to make trouble, when Alexa appears next to me, bright blue earrings peeking through her long black hair.

  “How could they do that?” she asks.

  “I know, right?” I say. “It’s crazy.”

  “Look at all of these,” she says, and we wander back to one of the walls as Melvin continues filling out his forms. “Look at how happy they are here.”

  In the photograph we’re looking at, a young, smiling mother and father stand together on a front lawn. The mother holds a little boy’s hand, the father has a baby under his arm.

  Alexa shakes her head. “What would happen to make a family just leave all of this?”

  We stand together, searching their tiny faces. Were they living the lives they wanted? They look strong and healthy; they have perfect photographic smiles. Still, it’s impossible to know.

  “I need your signature,” Melvin says.

  I head back to the counter, and Meg prances up, too, cocks her head, and asks, “Is there anywhere nearby that’s still open for dinner?”

  As bored as Melvin has been with me, he appears equally unimpressed with Meg. His eyes scan her pink hair, her tattoo, her short dress, before turning to take the keys from a Peg-Board.

  “Around the corner. River Bar and Grill.”

  “Is there a river near here?” Alexa asks, excited.

  Melvin points to me to sign the receipt, hands me the keys, and says, “No.”

  The River Bar and Grill has a veggie burger on the menu. I turn to Bev, show her. She thanks the universe on my behalf.

  We are sitting at a table in the center of the dim room, with ice water in smudged glasses and the promise of nourishment and a lady with too much makeup on a stage singing karaoke. Soon our orders have been taken and our food has arrived, and my veggie burger is the best thing I’ve ever tasted. Bev and I see a man eating in a corner who reminds us of a guy we once met on Muni who talked to us the whole ride home about sadness. He told us that we were too young to understand but that soon we would be old enough.

  “What did you say?” Alexa asks.

  “Colby tried to be polite. Like, ‘Well, maybe we don’t know exactly what you’re talking about but we do know what sadness is.’”

  “Yeah,” I say. “And you just told him he was being ridiculous.”

  “It was ridiculous,” Bev says. “I mean, really? Everyone knows what it’s like to be sad. It’s a universal feeling. Adults are always telling kids that they won’t understand till they’re older, and yeah, maybe that’s true with some things, but I wasn’t going to let him get away with that one.”

  “Was he crazy?” Meg asks.

  Bev looks at me and smiles her amazing smile and says, “We couldn’t tell, right?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I mean, he seemed, like, distressed. Like it was a really terrible day. But I don’t think he was crazy. I didn’t get that feeling from him.”

  Still watching me, Bev nods up and down, very slowly. I could talk with Bev about sadness forever if only she would keep looking at me this way.

  “I felt the same,” she says. “I think he might have been having some kind of crisis, but he wasn’t crazy.”

  “Well, check out his doppelgänger,” Meg says. “I think he might be in crisis land, too.”

  I don’t look until Bev turns her face away from mine.

  And then I do, making us a table of four nosy, staring teenagers in a restaurant full of older locals who are talking to the karaoke host, finishing their dinners, and making their way to the dance floor.

  The man is polishing off the third pint of beer he’s had since we became aware of him. He is alone, his dinner is untouched, and now he is carving into the table with a pocketknife.

  “Poor guy,” Alexa says. “Where are his friends?”

  Meg shrugs. “Maybe he doesn’t have any.”

  “No.” Alexa shakes her head. “He has friends.”

  We watch him for so long that he senses something, glances up. We all look away quickly except for Alexa, who smiles and waves.

  “Alexa,” Meg hisses.

  “What? I’m just trying to be nice.”

  The waitress comes by our table with the check and we pull out our wallets and divide the total, leaving her many small, crumpled bills and a nice tip. I head toward the door, combing through childhood memories, ready to remind Bev of something great that she’s forgotten about when we get back to the Starlight. I imagine us staying up late and talking far past the time everyone else has fallen asleep. Remember that? I’ll ask, and she’ll say, Oh my God, I haven’t thought of that in forever! And when we finally do drift off to sleep we won’t move from where we were, and she will lean against me like she did in the car, and by the time she wakes up she’ll have changed her mind.

  But Meg shouts, “Colby, where are you going?” and I turn to see them at the karaoke machine, sifting through the song choices.

  “The Runaways!” Meg is saying when I make my way back to them. “Colby, I’m so being Joan Jett tonight.” She writes her name on the list, followed by “School Days.”

  “Want to sing a duet with me?” slurs a voice behind us. We turn to see the Muni guy’s doppelgänger with his eyes fixed on Alexa.

  “Oh,” she stammers. “Um . . .”

  “Nope, sorry,” says Meg. “This one needs the spotlight all to herself.”

  He narrows his eyes at Meg and then returns his attention to Alexa.

  “Lemme know if you change your mind.”

  She nods.

  When he leaves, she says, “Maybe I should just do it.”

  We all shake our heads no.

  “It’s only singing. He seems so lonely.”

  “You look miserable just thinking about it,” Meg says. “And his loneliness has nothing to do with you.”

  “I feel so mean.”

  Meg says, “Forget hi
m. I think I saw Joni Mitchell in here.”

  “Really?” Alexa’s face turns hopeful. “I love Joni.”

  “I know you do,” Meg says. “Look, here she is.”

  Alexa chooses her song. We suffer through a couple of strangers singing country, and then Meg’s name is called and she pulls Bev up with her. They beckon for Alexa but she says no.

  “Let’s go watch from over there,” she says, pointing to a less crowded part of the room, and we head over as the opening bars blast from the speakers.

  “Here, sit here,” Alexa says. “Now I’m going to lean against your back and you can lean against mine.”

  We sit, back-to-back, heads turned to the side, and listen to Meg shouting out the lyrics, “School days, school days/I’m older, now what will I find,” and watch the two of them jumping around, one teenage girl band imitating a much better predecessor.

  When their song is finished, Alexa and I stand up and watch a man sing a rock ballad. Alexa sways to the music, offers me a pistachio from her bag, smiles. A green feather in her black hair, peace signs painted in blue on her hands. She is okay now: the drunk guy has vanished, the Magic 8 Ball disappointment and the pains of being coldhearted are behind her. Soon the host calls her name again and the music for Joni Mitchell’s “Help Me” begins, and she turns and walks onstage.

  She starts singing, almost in time with the music. Bev and Meg appear next to me, and with a little cheering from us, Alexa slips off her sandals and prances around, doing her best Joni impression, all high and sweet and fluttery.

  Then she drops the line and winces, reaches down to her foot.

  “Uh-oh,” Meg says.

  Alexa picks up the next line and finishes the song, trying to smile, dancing more cautiously. When the song is finished she limps to the side of the stage as a gray-haired woman in leather pants takes over to sing “Satisfaction.”

  “Splinter?” I ask Alexa. She nods. Her feet dangle over the side of the stage. We’re in a corner, well out of the spotlight.

  “I think I have tweezers,” Meg says, and hands me her makeup bag.

  “You were great. Everyone loved you,” I say as I unzip Meg’s little case and sift through all the girl things to find the silver tweezers. I climb onto the stage and hold her foot up to the light.

  “Okay,” I say. “I see it.”

  She frowns.

  Holding the soft arch of her foot, pressing in with the tips of the tweezers, I get the splinter out easily. I hand her the thick, sharp piece of wood and she holds it to the light. Her eyes are sad.

  She says, “The world is against me.”

  Bev and Meg walk across the street to the liquor store, and return ten minutes later. It’s so perfect that I have to beg all night if I want a single drink and they, out of nowhere, have two six-packs of beer, like, We’re girls and we’re pretty, so look!—anything we want.

  My phone buzzes in my pocket. Jasper.

  “Not much to report,” he says. “I’ve left that lady a couple messages but she hasn’t called me back. I’m gonna ask Spider if he’ll call. Maybe since they used to be a thing or whatever she’ll answer.”

  “Hey, man, are you okay?” I ask, because his voice lacks its usual buoyancy.

  “Uh,” he says. “I don’t know. You know, hanging in there I guess.”

  “Is something going on?”

  “It’s cool,” he says.

  It sounds for a moment like he’s going to say something else, and I wait, let the quiet last, because a heart-to-heart with Jasper sounds pretty fucking great.

  “But anyway, I just wanted to let you know. Thought I’d have more by now but I’m working on it.”

  “No worries,” I say.

  Across the room, the girls are getting changed into more comfortable clothing, suddenly unconcerned by my presence, braless and bare-legged, stepping out of jeans and into boxer shorts or cutoff sweats.

  I contemplate saying good-bye and hanging up, but then I say, “Okay, but really. What’s going on?”

  “Honestly?” Jasper says. “I just have to get the fuck out of this town. I get depressed just walking out the front door every morning.”

  “You should leave,” I say.

  “Yeah,” he says. “When the time is right. But I got a mystery to solve first. A guy I work with has this complicated theory about, like, stolen identity. He was going on this afternoon about how maybe the guy got the tattoo to convince people that he was in your dad’s band.”

  “Why would he want to do that?”

  “To impress people. To seem important. Shit, I don’t know.”

  We talk a little longer, and he sounds better by the time we hang up, but I’m pretty sure he’s faking it.

  I set my phone down on an end table next to a closet that Bev is exploring.

  “We should put stuff in here,” she says.

  “Why?”

  “Whenever I take trips with my parents they always unpack. They hang up their jackets and put their clothes in the drawers like they’re going to stay awhile.”

  “But we aren’t staying awhile,” Meg says. “We’re staying, like, ten hours.”

  “Yeah, I know. But we have this whole closet. We should use it.”

  “We’re supposed to be rock stars,” Meg says. “We’re supposed to trash hotel rooms, not get all domestic.”

  Even though it was only karaoke, Bev has her post-show glow, and watching her now with her messy hair and strong, wiry arms, black eyeliner, and jeans tight and low on her waist, I can see Meg’s point. Bev doesn’t look like the kind of girl who stays anywhere long enough to unpack. But I can also see that, for some reason, this matters to Bev. She has her bag unzipped and all of her clothes are neatly folded. I look around, pick up an amp, and say, “Here.”

  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.” Alexa is watching from across the room. “What if we forget it?”

  But Bev takes the amp from me, sets it down on the closet floor, and shuts the door.

  “I won’t forget,” she says, ripping a strip of paper off a Starlight Motel brochure. Remember amp, she writes, and drops the note into her bag.

  She looks satisfied, and I decide that this is a good time to bring up the first memory.

  “Hey, Bev, remember that time we got caught cheating on the vocab test in seventh grade?”

  “Yeah?”

  “We told Mr. Hastings that we weren’t cheating, we were collaborating.”

  “Yeah?” she says again, giving me this So what’s your point? look.

  “We were such con artists.”

  “Not really,” she says. “That was a pretty lame excuse.”

  She walks away from me to the other side of the room, and with her goes all of the good from earlier today. She joins Meg and Alexa, who are getting out pens for round one thousand of their question game. And I want to say something to Bev, I want to ask what the fuck her problem is, because I know that she remembers us standing in the principal’s office together, when I was still shorter than she was and she was still called Beverly, defending ourselves and one another, believing we were smart and mature and able to talk our way out of anything. I know that girl better than I know this one. I can’t believe she would pretend that who we were then doesn’t matter.

  “Who has paper?” Meg asks.

  I say, “We don’t need paper. It’s completely obvious who wants to know what, and even if it wasn’t, we all know each other’s handwriting.”

  Meg shrugs. “Fine with me. So who wants to start?”

  “Bev, tell us the saddest moment of your life.” My words come out loud, forceful, and I walk to their side of the room and look down at her.

  Bev turns to the window.

  Alexa’s eyebrows furrow in concern. “We asked her that already.”

  “She didn’t answer.”

  Meg opens her mouth to say something, but thinks better of it. Bev looks up at me. Her eyes are challenging like they used to be when we were kids wrapped up in ga
mes. She always cared more about winning than I ever did.

  “Okay, Colby. The saddest moment of my life. Do you remember the science fair at the end of eighth grade, when we did that experiment on magnets and electricity and we left the wire at my place?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Remember that I ran home to get it before the judges got to our station?”

  I nod. She doesn’t look at anyone else, and I understand that this is a story that’s only for me.

  “So I got to my house, and I went in the front door, and there was this pair of boots in the living room. They were green, scuffed-up cowboy boots that I had never seen before. Everything was quiet, so at first I was afraid that some man was robbing the house, but then I realized that was stupid—why would the guy take off his shoes?—so I walked through the house, to the end of the hall by my parents’ room, and then I started to hear things.”

  “What things?” Meg asks.

  And it’s the most awkward feeling, like when a room full of people quiets all at once, and nobody wants to be the person who breaks the silence.

  “They were fucking, obviously,” Bev says.

  Alexa moves closer to Bev, puts her arm around her shoulders. Bev doesn’t pull away.

  “What did you do?” she asks.

  “Nothing. I got the wire and then I ran back to school.”

  “You never told me that,” I say.

  Bev takes a swig of her beer.

  “Bev,” I say. “That’s really fucking huge, and you never told me.”

  “I never told anyone,” she says, shrugging off Alexa’s arm.

  “But I’m not anyone,” I say. “Fuck.”

  And my hands fly up to my face and I stand there like a pathetic asshole and say, “I’m your best friend, remember? I’m not anyone.”

  Alexa starts to say something calm and reasonable, but I don’t want to hear it. Bev’s been keeping things from me for too long. Since eighth grade? And then it all starts to come together—the summer we were fourteen. The song she listened to on repeat, about a life that used to seem perfect. The way she started to get quiet and distant, and I mistook it for an affect, or a natural part of growing older. But most of all, the fact that the science fair was near the end of the school year, and only a couple weeks after that was when we watched all of my parents’ Godard films, and Bev said, Let’s go the second that we’re free.