by Erin Saldin
Oh, I recognize the music now. The Pixies. “Here Comes Your Man.”
I’ve jumped out of the boat and am holding it against the dock with one hand. I raise the other as the two guys walk down the dock toward me.
“Hey,” I say, and I watch Henry’s eyes widen.
“Georgie. Hey. I didn’t know you were working tonight.” His face turns crimson. Nothing about gonna call. Nothing about meant to invite you. I can smell the liquor on him from here.
Greek T-shirt looks me up and down. “Well, hey, yourself,” he says, then turns to Henry. “Man, you weren’t kidding. Boat deliveries? This place is off the hook. Worth the drive, man.”
Henry doesn’t say anything, but as I turn back to the boat, I think I see him nod.
Wordlessly, I reach back and pull out a bag. Hand it over. Wonder how he’s going to explain putting an order in for enough drugs to basically fill a piñata.
Sure enough: “Gotta keep the guests happy.” But I know he’s saying it for his friend’s benefit, not mine.
His friend is still staring at me with something I like to call “resting letch face.” “Yeah,” he says slowly, the alcohol making him sound both sleepy and kind of dangerous, “what’s it my dad always says? The customer’s always right.” And before I can step back, his hand is on my arm, pulling me. “Hey,” Greek T-shirt says. “What about a different kind of order?”
“Fuck off.” I look at Henry, but he’s staring at the bag in his hands like it’s the most interesting fucking thing in the whole fucking world.
From behind me: “Let’s go.”
From Greek T-shirt: “The girl might want to stay.” Another tug on the arm, this one pulling me off-balance. To me, he whispers, “Get out of work early,” his wet, boozy breath on my ears.
From Henry: “We should probably head back up.” He shifts from foot to foot.
Greek T-shirt steps in so that my eyes are level with his neck. I can’t breathe, and he’s holding me so tightly that I can’t move an inch away from him. “Hey, Henry,” he says, and when he sways, I sway with him. “Don’t you think we should get a taste of the local flavor?”
“Dick,” I say, but my voice sounds small. Then, louder: “Asshole.” I step in even closer, my chest against his, and he loosens his grip in a reflex. I bring my knee up once, hard, and then twist away, my back toward him as he doubles over.
“Bitch!” he yells.
I climb into the boat and turn. “Great to see you,” I say to Henry. “Really great to finally see you.”
He steps toward the boat and looks at me with a stricken expression. Just when I think he’s going to apologize—though who am I kidding? What apology would make up for this?—he says, “College friends.”
From next to me, Dodge’s hiss: “The money.”
“Right.” I look at Henry, trying to keep my eyes empty. It’s hard, though, because I can feel the tears building up behind them.
“College friends, right?” he says again, like that’s all the explanation I’ll need.
I hold out my hand for the money, don’t say a word.
“Georgie,” he says quietly, so his friend can’t hear, “I’m sorry.”
Except there’s something so casual about the way that he peels off seven fifties from a money clip, flips the fifties into a small fold and holds them out to me, wrist steady, palm down. Like, this is still business. Like, this is the kind of thing he does often. Like, let’s not forget: I’m working for him.
It’s wrong. All of it.
“Henry.” His name sounds strange suddenly. Like the word for a very exotic bat. “What the fuck.”
He looks at me for a long time. His eyes are glassy, face already a little puffy. “Can you just—” He slurs a word and then starts again. “Can we just, like, talk tomorrow?” From behind him, I watch Greek T-shirt straighten up and move down the dock toward the cabin, swearing and stumbling. “Hey.” Henry reaches out, misses my arm, stares at his hand. “Hey.”
I turn and look out at the lake so he can’t see my chin quivering. I glance at Dodge, who circles the hand on his wrist. Speed it up.
“They’re only here for a couple nights.” He keeps squinting like he’s trying to get me in focus.
I nod. “So I’ll see you later, I guess.”
“Yeah. Georgie,” he says, and points to the house. He speaks slowly. Trying so hard. “This isn’t, like, a thing. It doesn’t have to be a thing.”
“You can say that again.”
He looks at me, confused. Then he turns and heads back up to the house, practically sprinting.
When I get back in the boat, Dodge is looking at me.
“The QP,” he says. “Thought he looked familiar.” He sneers. “Not just a customer, after all. That explains it.” He leans back in the boat’s passenger seat.
“Explains what?” I turn the wheel slightly, heading back toward town.
“Strange that he reached out to me for the order. Guess he didn’t want you to know how bad he wanted it.” And before I can say anything, Dodge leans toward me, grabs the wheel, jerks it so that the boat careens to the right in a tight circle. The wake rushes over the side, splashing us both.
“Shit!” I yell, and pull the wheel straight again.
He grabs me by the neck. “How’d he know how to reach me? I don’t take direct orders. This isn’t some fucking artisanal shit. They go through you. That’s the process.”
I can’t breathe.
“You’re getting sloppy,” says Dodge, jaw set. “Sloppy and reckless. And I don’t care if you screw yourself over. But I do care if you screw me, too. I’m not going down because you couldn’t keep your pants on.”
Then he lets go.
• • •
By the time I park the boat, the sun’s gone down behind the mountains. Main Street is packed with Weekenders in their sundresses and shorts, eating ice cream, laughing, making plans to go to the Pancake Parlor tomorrow, shouting across the street at one another. At the marina, boats idle just outside the buoys, no one ready to call it a night. One last drink. One last chance at something new.
It all reminds me of one of Gold Fork’s slogans. The city’s playground. Not that anyone actually says it. Because who wants to live on a fucking playground? Who wants to watch everyone leave, sit there as it shuts down at night, listen for the tweakers and the drunks as they make their way onto the swings, the forgotten slide?
Any asshole can use the playground. And if you live on a playground, any asshole can use you, too.
ERIK
“And then, I don’t know, maybe art school.”
Layla’s sitting on her bed, winding and unwinding the leather wrap bracelet that she always wears. It’s studded with what I have to think are fake diamonds—because even Weekenders don’t bring their diamonds to the lake. I’m at the foot of the bed, putting on my socks.
“What if it doesn’t work out?” I ask her. “The pottery. What if it’s not what you think it’ll be?”
She looks confused for a second. Then she smiles at me. “Oh, I know I’m not going to make money at it, if that’s what you’re asking. No one does.” Then, when she can tell I don’t get it, she adds, “But, like, art school would be this gift I’d give myself, you know? Just time.”
“Time.”
“Why are you smiling?” she asks, and leans forward so that she can push some hair off my forehead. “You look like you’ve got some inside joke.”
“Time is an inside joke,” I say. “It’s what Week—it’s what some people have and some don’t.”
“You’re not making sense,” says Layla, frowning. She scoots back so she’s leaning against the headboard. “We all have time.”
“Never mind,” I say. Georgie would understand. Ana, too. Even Davis, to a certain degree. They’d get that just the idea of buying time—art school or a year in Europe or whatever else the Weekenders do when they leave Gold Fork—is a joke to the rest of us. But I can’t tell Layla that. I can’t
tell her anything. I reach over and rub her leg. “But first, senior year, right?”
“Yeah,” she says. “God. It’s going to be amazing.” And she gets the far-off look that I’ve seen on her before, the one that reminds me of a shut door.
“Hey,” I say, like the thought has just occurred to me. “What if I visited? Like,” I add quickly, when I see her start to open her mouth, “I’ll probably be in the city this fall for random things. So maybe I’ll call? We’ll hang out?”
“Sure,” she says. “I mean, yeah.” And there’s something in her voice, something I haven’t wanted to hear. Hesitation. And more. I’ve almost convinced myself I can’t hear it. Then she kind of twists the bracelet on her wrist and looks down at it. There’s writing on one length of leather—a name, I think, not hers—and I see things just as clearly as if she told me.
“You’ve got a boyfriend,” I say. “In the city.” I’m still holding one sock in my hand, and I look at it.
Layla moves so that she’s sitting beside me. She runs a hand through my hair again. “No,” she says. “Not a boyfriend. Not this summer. We agreed—” She shrugs. “On a break,” she adds.
“But you’re wearing the bracelet he gave you.”
Her eyes widen. “Wait. Did I tell—” She shakes her head. “Never mind.” Holds the bracelet up. “It’s not about that. I like it. It suits me.”
“Sure.” The sock in my hand is plain and white. I could throw it away. There are ten more that look just like it.
“Listen,” she says, still trying to salvage this—whatever it is. “It’s not a big deal. I mean . . .” She pauses. Tries again. “Do you want”—she glances toward the door—“want to go out? Burgers, or—”
“I’ve got something,” I say, and put on the sock and my tennis shoes. I speak to the laces. “But I’ll call you.”
“Yeah, okay,” she says. And she smiles at me in that way that she has.
It’s a smile fit for a Kelly. Except I’m the Kelly.
We kiss good-bye before she opens her bedroom door, but we don’t talk about later and we don’t make plans, because you only make plans when something is real.
God. I’m so stupid. When she talked about leaving things better than I found them, she was talking about me.
Well, I’ve got a platitude for her in return. If you love something, set it free. If it comes back to you, keep setting it free until it fucking gets it.
• • •
“I know somewhere we can go.”
Kelly’s looking at me with these big eyes, kind of like a deer, or maybe a frog.
“Oh yeah? Where?” I’m only half paying attention. Not sure why I called her, anyway, except I couldn’t be home. Couldn’t be alone.
“Some guys I met? College guys here for a long weekend? Party’s been going since yesterday? That’s what they said, anyway?”
I’d forgotten this about Kelly: She’s one of those girls who can’t just make a statement without framing it as a question. Her room is blue, with pink accents. Like she’s never taken the time to change the sheets since she was twelve.
“Sounds awesome,” I say, pulling my shirt back on over my head. “Really awesome.”
But she doesn’t hear the sarcasm in my voice, because she says, “It’s out on the east side of the lake? Pretty cool, I guess. We could go? I mean, if you—”
And because I can’t stand to hear her voice lift up in a question mark one more time, I interrupt her and say, “You drive.”
God. This is going to be a long night.
Still. At least I’m not home. And ever since leaving Layla’s this afternoon, I’ve been feeling jittery. Anywhere is better than nowhere.
We’re driving along the east side of the lake in no time, my hand on her thigh even though I’m not really into it, and I’m wondering whether maybe I’ve had enough of these girls, whether maybe I should just call it and go home, call Georgie and see if she wants to hang out, when Kelly turns into the driveway of the Den.
I sit up straighter. Take my hand off her leg. “You sure this is the place?”
“Yeah. I mean, this is the address they gave me?”
And when we get closer to the house, I can see she’s right. There are a few cars parked in front of the door and off to the side. The curtains are open. People are milling around inside, but most of the action’s on the deck. I can hear them all when I get out of the car.
“Dude.”
“Man!”
“No way!”
Bro-speak. I don’t need to see them to know what they look like.
I’m not wrong. When she and I turn the corner onto the back deck, they’re all standing around like the spread from the state university alumni magazine that I remember reading cover to cover as soon as Ms. Henderson told me about my scholarship. Messy hair. T-shirts with beer logos or Greek symbols. Baseball hats. Chino shorts. Really, I can hardly tell any of them apart. There are some girls, too, but not many, which explains why the one I’m with heard about it. Gotta keep the numbers even, I guess, even if it means dipping into the high school pool.
My dad and Abby are nowhere in sight. But then I remember that they’re in the city.
One of the bros detaches himself from the group and comes over to say hi to the girl, and another one, tall, black hair, board shorts, is suddenly shaking my hand (like what, are we investment bankers or something?) and saying, “Hey, man. Grab a beer.”
Like I need an invitation.
I’m on my second one when I finally see Henry. He comes outside, looks around, sees me, walks over. He’s got this kind of electric look in his eyes, and I’m not surprised. I’ve seen the guys going into the house, two or three at a time, and coming out a little bit faster, a little bit looser. Kelly went inside at one point, too, and now she’s sitting on the arm of an Adirondack chair (mine, I want to tell her, that chair’s usually mine) and talking a mile a minute to some sorority sister who looks like she couldn’t care less.
Georgie’s been here. Or maybe just whoever she works for. Because I don’t see her now, and I’ve been looking.
“Hey,” Henry says. “Cool you’re here.”
“I didn’t know I was coming.” Fuck, that sounded stupid. I’m almost done with this beer. Take one last swig. “Where’s Georgie?”
Henry crinkles his eyebrows like he’s trying to put together some child’s jigsaw puzzle. “She couldn’t—I mean, this isn’t really her scene, right?”
“But it’s yours.” I’m feeling a little buzzed, but it’s nothing on him. Whatever Henry’s taken must be some powerful shit, because he looks like he can’t hold a thought together with a bottle of superglue. Blitzed. “What, you didn’t even invite her?”
“Noooo,” he says slowly. “I mean, kind of. I saw her yesterday when she brought the . . . appetizers.” Then he adds, “But, like, these guys. You know.” He waves his arm around.
“I don’t.”
Henry shrugs. “She’s cool,” he says. “She’s cool with it.” But he doesn’t sound sure.
I could laugh. “Yeah,” I say. “I bet she is.”
Then Henry’s face brightens. “You want a tour? Like, of the house?”
Is he serious? Or is this, like, the world’s worst joke? Do I want a tour of the house my dad semi-legitimately owns and is now selling without himself ever actually inviting me inside? Do I want to see family pictures, a fruit bowl on the counter with any kind of fruit you want, laptops and gear and new shoes and enough of everything, always, breakfast dishes that no one put away, suitcases maybe even already packed?
“No thanks,” I say. Where is the cooler? I can’t do this without at least two more in me. In fact, if it weren’t for my ride, who’s standing up now and swaying to the music that’s coming from the speakers, I’d have left as soon as we got here.
“Yeah,” he says, “I guess not, right?”
Henry’s acting nice but also too nice, like I’m some foster kid and his parents told him to keep an eye
on me or something. I have to hold my hands steady at my sides to keep from punching him.
God. Get it the fuck together, Erik. This kind of thing is usually my scene. I look around again, hoping he’ll just leave. Remind myself of what it takes. Drink a beer, flirt a little, see what happens. If not Kelly, then one of these other girls. I mean, that’s the way it works, right? Anything to keep the demons at bay. The things I’d rather not think about, rather not remember. Like the thing that is staring me in the face and saying, “He’s kind of a dick. Kyle. He’s a real dick sometimes.”
A beer. Where is a goddamned beer?
“Thanks for the PSA.”
“I mean, you haven’t missed much, is all.” He’s looking at me with this pitying expression. Face is puffy as shit, kind of plastic-looking from all the pills he’s probably taken, but you can see pity in plastic. You can see it everywhere.
“I haven’t missed much.” I take a step closer to him. “You don’t know a thing about me.”
He tries to step back, but he kind of stumbles. Grabs on to my arm for balance. Some beer sloshes out onto the sleeve of his other hand. “It’s not exactly easy,” he slurs, “having a mom like mine.”
“A mom like yours.”
“Yeah. And Kyle—I’ve always wondered if he’s playing the long game, you know? For the money?” He leans toward me. “Sometimes I wonder if you have it easier.” He shrugs.
This. This is the thing about Weekenders. They are so fucking sorry for themselves all the fucking time. Too much money. Too many choices. Too much useless freedom. They don’t know what to do with any of it.
I’d know. I’d know exactly what to do with it.
“I’ve got nothing to say to you,” I tell Henry, then add, “Asshole.”
“What did you call me?”