This One Time With Julia

by David Lampson

  “Of course you are. She’s barely more than a kid. So are you. Everything that’s happening is just a phase.”

  “How did you kill my brother?”

  “I shot him. But it’s not like I enjoyed it. Now listen, Joe—”

  I put my hands around his neck and strangled him again. For a while he tried to pry my fingers off his throat, and then he started waving his hands and slapping at my legs while he made these little gurgling sounds. He obviously had something extremely important to say, and so I let him go and he sat there gasping with his head between his knees, trying to get his breath back.

  “This isn’t safe for me,” he said. “You’re too damn strong.”

  “I’ve always been damn strong.”

  I was glad to get a little rest, because I had pulled some kind of muscle in my neck. I took off my seat belt so it wouldn’t get in the way again.

  “You’re going to ruin everything,” he said.

  “You shouldn’t have killed Alvin.” I was thinking about all the times we had played basketball. It would have been nice to play a little more. “You should have thought of this before you decided to kill him.”

  “When are you going to stop thinking like a little boy?”

  Then Houston lost his breath and coughed some more until I put my hands around his throat again. He fought a little while longer, but not much. I strangled his neck until he died. Then I dragged him out of the car. I let a car pass, and then hoisted him onto my shoulders and carried him over to the bridge. I propped him up on the railing and pushed him over.

  The river was pretty far down there, I guess, because it seemed like Houston fell forever—long enough to spin a couple of times on the way down—and when he hit the water I could barely hear the splash. Then he disappeared right away. I think he was too skinny to float. The river was wide and strong but also very deep, so I still don’t know if Houston got carried away by the current or just sank right to the bottom.

  Right after Houston disappeared into the water, I really expected him to pop up and start heading to shore with a nice strong crawl stroke, because he was the one who’d taught me how to swim. Of course that was never going to happen, because he was dead before I threw him in the river. But for some reason I sort of expected it anyway.

  When Alvin died, I actually talked to him more than when he was alive. And since Houston was my first friend, I figured he’d basically still be around. I really thought he’d come visit me at least once in a while, like Alvin had, but Houston never did.

  That’s pretty much how I killed Houston that day in the car. I felt pretty sick afterward, and threw up for a little while into the river, leaning over the railing. Then I suddenly felt freezing cold, so I went back to the car and got Houston’s jacket out of the trunk. I couldn’t hear anything. Both my ears hurt like crazy. I figured I’d thrown up so hard that I’d burst my eardrums. I could still taste acid on my tongue and both my eyes were stinging as I started the car and got back on the road.

  I’d never driven to the hotel alone, and I really had no idea how to get there. The road got very narrow right away with thick woods on both sides. I drove pretty well for a while, but I was basically still too far on tilt to operate a car. After a few miles I made a couple of bad mistakes and crashed into a tree. I slept for a minute or two against the steering wheel and woke up to find some deer watching me through the passenger window. Both my legs seemed to be working fine, so I got out of the car and stretched out my back while I looked at the accident. The tree that I’d hit wasn’t even broken, but I’d done a terrible thing to Houston’s car.

  Across the road there was some kind of recreation area, and a bunch of women were sitting in a circle on the grass. I think they’d been having a picnic, but now they all stood up and started to get angry about what I’d done.

  “You can’t even come to the park anymore,” they said.

  “What on earth is happening to us?” they said.

  They all lit cigarettes and scowled. I thought about apologizing for ruining their picnic, but I knew I should probably just get out of there. I left the car behind and continued down the road until this trucker pulled up next to me and asked if I needed any help. I explained that I’d ruined my car.

  The trucker was pretty nice, though I don’t remember much of him except his moustache and the Coke can he was always spitting into. He rode with all his windows open, so I had to zip up Houston’s jacket to keep warm. He said he’d been driving for fifteen hours straight, all the way from New York. I asked him how New York was. He said it was pretty good. For a little while I remember driving through thick walls of smoke that poured out of the forest on both sides of the road. He told me the forest rangers were intentionally burning the trees, to prevent forest fires. At first I thought he was joking, but he wasn’t. He explained it a couple of times, but I still couldn’t understand why anyone would do that.

  He dropped me off about a mile from the hotel, and I walked home from there. I found Julia on the back lawn hanging laundry on a clothesline tied across some trees. By now it was the middle of the morning.

  “Smell these clothes.”

  She handed me a shirt. It was warm from the sun and smelled sweet, and it reminded me of her even while she was standing right there. When I took the shirt off my face I saw that she was staring at me.

  “You’re wearing Houston’s coat,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “What happened to his car?”

  “I crashed it.”

  “Why? Where is he?”

  “He’s gone.”

  “What are you talking about?” Julia snatched the shirt away from me. “What did you do, Joe?”

  “I did what you wanted me to.”

  “I never asked you to do anything.”

  “You didn’t have to.”

  “Joe.”

  She came very close and held both my shoulders, looking back and forth between my eyes.

  “Did anybody see you?”

  “No.”

  “Has anyone seen you since?”

  “Maybe five people so far.”

  “Who?”

  “These four women having a picnic. And this trucker. But he said he was going to New York. You wanted me to do it,” I repeated.

  “Don’t say that. I don’t ever want to hear you say that again. We have to get you out of here.”

  Soon we were doing a million things: sneaking me upstairs, packing my book bag, clearing out my room. Within ten minutes we were fighting our way through the woods, looking for where we’d hidden Alvin’s car. Once we found it and pulled off the tarp, it started on the very first try. I’d already crashed one car that day, so I was relieved that Julia wanted to drive. Soon we were rolling along the dirt road, leaving the hotel behind us.

  Julia hadn’t done much talking this whole time, and I also noticed that she would barely look at me. Once we were on the highway she said she’d faint unless she ate something, so we stopped for lunch at this place that was supposed to have excellent cheeseburgers. It was called Frenchie’s, or Frenchman’s, or France or something. Julia’s family used to stop there on the weekends to drink lemonade, because it was exactly halfway to their summer farm. But she hadn’t been there for years.

  Outside it was barely afternoon, but inside that place it was already nighttime. You could tell that most of the air had been blowing through cigarettes all day. A lot of people were drinking and playing pool. It was hard to picture Julia’s family eating there. “I’m remembering it all completely wrong,” she said. Then she shoved me up against the wall and kissed me. It was the hardest kiss she’d ever given me. She whispered in my ear, “Just hold me here and don’t let go.”

  “Okay.”

  “I know the waiter from high school, but I don’t think he’s seen me yet. It was a stupid idea to come in here.”

  “Should we leave?”

  “Just hold me here and tell me when the coast is clear. But make sure you look in a na
tural way.”

  I looked toward the bar in a natural way. The only waiter I saw was this big blond sunburned guy. He had a haircut like you’d probably see in the army.

  “What’s he doing?” said Julia.

  “He’s just standing at the bar.”

  “Kiss me again.”

  I kissed her again. I guess this was the last time I ever kissed her. It didn’t last too long, because the bartender was coming over. He said, “Julia,” and touched her on the shoulder, and we had to stop kissing and talk to him. With one hand on my belly Julia whispered, “Just a minute.” Then she turned around and said, “Brian,” and soon the two of them were hugging.

  “Julia Manning,” he said. “About time you stopped by. I haven’t seen you since graduation.”

  “I know,” she said. “I’m terrible, I know. But here I am.”

  “How’s Cecily?”

  “She’s fine.”

  “Your dad?”

  “He’s doing fine. And yours? How are you all doing?”

  “Aw, we’re doing fine.”

  “And your folks?”

  “They’ll be in later,” said Brian. “They’ll be pretty thrilled to see you.”

  “Meet my friend,” said Julia. “Brian, Joe.”

  Brian and I shook hands. I don’t know why he had to squeeze so hard. His smile was amazing, but he never stopped looking at Julia the whole time we shook hands. “I’ve read some pretty nasty things about your father,” he said. “If you want to know, I don’t believe a word of it.”

  “Well, thanks. Thank you, Brian.” She smiled at him harder than ever.

  “If you want my opinion, it’s all the lawyers who should go to jail. The FBI and the damn lawyers, all of them. They just can’t leave a man alone to earn a decent living. We’re slow right now. I’ll sit with you for a bit.”

  “We can’t stay long.”

  “Just sit right there,” said Brian sternly. “I’ll bring us all some nachos.” He squeezed Julia’s hand, then went off and came back with some nachos and a bunch of sodas. Then I just sat there while they talked about a lot of people that I didn’t know. They also talked about churches and golf clubs, and geometry teachers, and track and field meets, and some of the funny things that happened at their high school. I had nothing to contribute, so I just sat there drinking my soda too fast, and I eventually started to go on this very blurry kind of tilt. When I went off to pee, I got distracted by some people gambling on pool, and it took almost an hour to lose all the money I had on me plus another hundred from this ATM they had there at the bar. When I got back, Julia and Brian were singing a song I’d never heard.

  “Looks like you play a mean game of pool,” said Brian.

  “What are you doing?” I asked Julia.

  “Just telling some old stories.”

  “Can we leave now?”

  “I guess we should.” She turned sadly to Brian. “What do we owe you?”

  “No Manning will ever pay me for food,” said Brian. “It’s just so good to see you. And I’ll let everyone know you’re back in action. You have to come to my barbecue on Sunday.”

  “I’ll try,” said Julia. “Tell everyone I said hi.”

  By the time we were back on the road, it was late afternoon and the sky had clouded over. “There are so many people that I never make the time to see,” she said. “And Brian told me such a good story about my dad.”

  The story was about how Brian’s dad owned the storage company, and it caught fire one day, and how Mr. Manning had talked to some important friends who were able to keep the publicity from getting really bad. Brian said he’d saved the family business. He thought Mr. Manning was a great man. And talking to Brian had reminded Julia that she thought this too.

  “Where are we going?” I asked her again.

  “I think we just have to get you as far away as possible. Nobody at the hotel would ever help the police, but you should still be out of town for a while.”

  “What about you?”

  “I can’t run away. Don’t you think it’s a little suspicious if I disappear too?

  “Where am I going?”

  “Have you told anyone you’re from Los Angeles?”

  “No.”

  “Then why wouldn’t you go back there?”

  “I can’t drive that far myself. Plus I have no idea how to get there.”

  “That’s why we’re heading to the bus station.”

  “We are?”

  “You shouldn’t be driving Alvin’s car anyway. As soon as I drop you off, I’ll have to get rid of it somehow.”

  “When do I come back?”

  “We’ll just have to see,” said Julia. “We didn’t exactly plan this out, did we?”

  I hadn’t made any specific plan, but I definitely never thought that I’d be leaving by myself. If I’d known that I would have done something completely different. But I didn’t have another idea at the moment, and everything was happening so fast.

  “I put some cookies in your bag,” said Julia. “Will you hand me one, please?”

  I got the cookies out and gave her one, and then took one myself. They were pretty great cookies. They had big chocolate chunks and sometimes a little hunk of brown sugar that never got mixed in right. Maybe I ate them so fast because I had no idea what else to do. By the time Julia finished her second cookie I had almost finished the whole bag, and when she noticed she got pretty annoyed. She wrapped up the last cookie and put it in the glove compartment. “Don’t eat this one,” she told me. “I’m saving it for later.”

  I promised, but when we stopped for gas and Julia went in to pay, I could smell that cookie melting in the glove compartment. I got out and walked around the car a little, trying to forget about the cookie while I stretched my back; but then I couldn’t help it. I got back in the car and carefully unwrapped the cookie, just to lick it once—just to get another tiny little taste—and then I put it back where it belonged.

  Julia came back and got behind the wheel again. We drove less than a minute before she asked me, “Did you eat that cookie, Joe?”

  “No.”

  “I was saving that cookie. I specifically asked you not to eat it.”

  “I swear I didn’t eat that cookie Julia.”

  She reached over my knees and opened the glove compartment. She took the cookie out and looked at is suspiciously. “What did you do? There’s chocolate all over your chin. Did you lick the cookie?”

  I couldn’t answer. I was so ashamed.

  “Joe, did you really lick this cookie?”

  It was the sort of thing that normally made Julia laugh, but now she didn’t laugh. For a second she squeezed the steering wheel so hard that her arms started to shake. “You unwrapped the cookie and licked it.”

  “Just the part that was melting.”

  She started twisting the wheel back and forth. We were swerving all over the road. It was extremely dangerous. Finally she slammed on the brakes and pulled over to the shoulder. I didn’t have my seat belt on, so I sort of crashed against the side of the car.

  “We can’t keep kidding ourselves,” she said.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m not going to let you go back to Los Angeles and wait and wait and then slowly realize. We both already know what’s going to happen.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Well, I do.”

  It all happened so fast. Maybe I could have stopped it if it hadn’t happened so fast. She found this tissue in between the seats and wiped the chocolate off my chin. “This isn’t really who I am,” she said quietly. “I don’t even think I can say it.”

  “You’re breaking up with me.”

  “There, I made you say it. Don’t you think it’s probably for the best? Did you really think that we were in it for the long haul?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, then I’m sorry that I fooled you. My only defense is that I fooled myself too.”

  “But I didn’t do anything wrong.�
��

  “Are you sure?”

  “Houston even admitted that he killed Alvin.”

  “Really?”

  “And plus you wanted me to do it.”

  “Stop saying that,” said Julia. “Don’t ever say that again. That’s a terrible thing to say. Why would you think that?”

  “How am I supposed to know?”

  “This is hard enough without you saying that.”

  “But I love you.”

  “I love you too,” said Julia. “I’ve never met anybody like you, Joe. But now I’m off to college, and I’m going to start caring about things again. And I don’t want to make you have to care about anything.”

  “But I love you so much,” I said. “And I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Please. You’re going to make me cry.”

  Julia put the car in gear again, and eased us back on the road. I knew if she cried I’d start crying too, so I didn’t say anything else for the rest of the ride. I just sat there trying to remember what I’d done to make her love me in the first place so I could start doing it again, before it was too late.

  The station was almost empty. The last bus to Los Angeles was leaving in half an hour. I’d lost all my money playing pool, so Julia bought me a ticket and gave me some cash for the trip. I held my book bag in my lap while we waited on a bench together for my bus. Julia took my hand. “I didn’t mean for this to happen,” she said. “I even said it, didn’t I? Remember? I said, ‘Julia, you can’t be falling in love with any boys right now.’”

  “Can’t I just keep you until tomorrow?” I asked. “We’ll just spend one more day together. Then I’ll go home and I won’t complain at all.”

  “That wouldn’t help.” She shook her head, and wouldn’t let me see her eyes. “Does it have to be tragic? Let’s try not to make this too sad, if we can help it. Here, I’ll get some candy.”

  Life is so full of impossible things that I can’t understand. The main thing I did with Julia in our last few minutes at the station was wait for her to come back with some candy. While I waited, I opened up my book bag and took out the picture I had stolen of her—the one where she was standing in front of Golden Oaks, before the place burned down. Something occurred to me the day I stole that picture, and I’d forgotten it right away, but it came back pretty easily now. It occurred to me that Julia hadn’t really turned out how she seemed she would from that picture. It was like she’d taken a wrong turn somewhere—just a small one—but it was enough to make her come out a little crooked. When Julia came back with the candy and looked at the picture, I think maybe she saw the same thing, because it seemed to make her a little sad.