Lake City

by Thomas Kohnstamm

  “Wait, can I have a second—”

  “Get outta here, Lame-o. Lame-as-fuck-o.”

  Lane heads off before he stutters in front of Tom.

  “NO, YOU DON’T NEED ME, Kevin,” Inez says, her voice stern but heading toward a crack. “Everybody I know needs me. What about me? I need me too.”

  As Lane cuts through the refrigerated aisle, he bumps right into Inez and a man, about his age or a few years younger, arguing in the transition area between orange juice and the cases of domestic lager.

  Assuming this guy is Kevin, he is not as tough as Lane imagined. He’s not tough at all. He strikes Lane as a BMXer. A graffiti artist. A burner in oversized pants, an Adidas track jacket and a large backpack slung over a lean frame. Lane’s still not willing to admit to himself that he was afraid of Kevin. Or even that he ran away. But perhaps he did misevaluate things a bit.

  As a matter of fact, Lane is pretty sure he’s met this guy before. He thinks Kevin used to hang out with Robbie. Or J.C. Maybe they went to middle school together. Or rode the bus. All of that said, Lane doesn’t feel like trying to prove his masculinity right now in a public place. He’d rather avoid the whole dispute. But Inez sees him and Kevin registers her change in demeanor.

  Lane fixates on his wrist as if he has a watch. He heaves his shoulders to feign exasperation like he’s just realized that he’s in a huge rush to be somewhere that isn’t here. Somewhere behind him. He attempts a quick turnaround. An about-face. He’s not far from the end of the aisle. But, at the edge of his field of vision, he sees Tom starting down the opposite end, nose down in his shift-schedule clipboard.

  Inez turns toward Tom and then toward Lane and back to Tom.

  “Kevin?” Lane grabs the guy by the arm and pulls him around the corner of the aisle before Tom looks up.

  “Who the—”

  “Holy sh—That you, Kevin?”

  Kevin gives Lane a hard eye. “You the dude hitting on my girl?”

  “You remember me, right? You used to spin downtown with my boy Robbie. Robbie from Lake City.”

  “I dunno. Nah.”

  “You don’t remember me?” Lane shakes his head and laughs. “MDMA . . . shit works every time . . . Well, listen, I’m trying to help you out here.” He keeps pulling Kevin by the arm, but he resists.

  “Leggo a me, homo.” Kevin twists out of Lane’s grasp and starts back into the top of the aisle as Tom approaches Inez.

  Lane grabs his sleeve again. “Trust me, dude. That guy . . . he’s a cop.”

  “Cop?” Kevin does a shuffle step and starts to walk with Lane.

  “Plainclothes. Like a special kind of cop. He’s been waiting for you. Faster, man.” Lane speeds him along.

  “I saw him before, and he didn’t—”

  “He was IDing you. Checking you out. Gonna arrest you now for sure.”

  “What for?”

  “Shit, man, you know better than anyone else . . .” Lane keeps Kevin moving out through the door and out into the parking lot. “Keep going. Run, man. Run.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  LANE SITS ATOP THE CLOSED toilet lid with Toby’s cell phone to his ear. He has a few minutes to make the call before Toby comes back from taking the garbage out. Lane could have asked to use it, but he didn’t want to give Toby the satisfaction of feeling like he helped. In any way.

  After working through multiple dead ends and answering machines in the Columbia University phone tree, he finds his way to a monotone-voiced lackey in the bursar’s office who is holding down the department through the week between Christmas and New Year’s. He asks when is the latest he can pay for second semester. Lane wants to know if he can delay until later in the term, until Mia comes back around or he lines up some sort of private scholarship. If he can stay in the game long enough, some opportunity might still present itself.

  The receptionist goes to look up the file status. Lane chews at his cuticles and bounces his knees while he waits. The longer she takes, the more certain he is that she’ll tell him that he’s already been withdrawn. That there is a freeze on his enrollment.

  “You’re all sorted,” she says with the emotional outlay of someone taking tickets at a movie theater or bagging groceries.

  “Sorted? What do you mean ‘sorted’?”

  “Tuition’s paid through the end of the year.”

  Lane is not sure if he wants to scream with excitement or ask her to double-check that it’s not a mistake. He gives an abrupt “OK. Thanks. Goodbye” before any reaction can betray his surprise, if not the error of it all.

  He runs through the permutations in his head. All he can figure is that, in the chaos of Mia’s dad taking over her finances, he forgot to pull the money back out of Columbia. Or he didn’t know Mia had paid it in the first place. Or she was still protecting him. Whatever the reason, Lane isn’t going to question it. One shouldn’t poke and prod that kind of serendipity.

  He turns off the phone and slips it into Toby’s jacket pocket.

  BACK IN THE TRAILER, LANE puts his feet up on the cooler and stares at his check. He rotates it over and over. He thinks about the flight he could buy with it. The date. The departure time. The arrival time. The destination: JFK. Then he digs all the way to the back of the built-in cabinet to extract the amber pill bottle. He holds the check in one hand and the OxyContin in the other.

  This whole hustle can’t be that hard. Not on someone with a predisposition. A history. It’s like surprising a former serial adulterer with a prepaid escort at his hotel door at midnight. He has to make it available, that’s all. She’ll do the rest herself. Like she’ll do sooner or later, regardless. And he’ll be off to New York, back on track to a brighter future. Lane’s only challenge is to dig into himself to find the nerve. He has it. He knows he does.

  There’s a light rap on the door.

  “Hold on.” Lane scrambles to hide his escape package in his pockets. “What is it?”

  There’s no answer. Probably that Chaz redneck again. Lane opens the door to tell him to leave him alone but finds his mom standing outside in her pink terry cloth bathrobe. It’s the first time she’s come out to visit him for non–meal delivery purposes. He’s still wielding the silent treatment against her, letting her know how very hurt and betrayed he is. And she’s not the type to push.

  “You OK?” she asks.

  He doesn’t answer at first but looks around at his circumstances. His world. The collapsible table. The mini-fridge. The hot plate. The crawl space bunk. He wants to let it sink in. “With a couple of sleeping bags and, if I wear socks, then I can sleep—a few hours at a time.”

  “She came to see about storage space.” Toby arrives behind Lane’s mom. “Tell him, Dottie. We need to see if we can fit her sewing machine and my WeedWacker back here with enough room for us to sleep at night.”

  Lane exhales with a dramatic display of his frustration, making sure his mom notes his discontent.

  “You gotta stop guilt-trippin’ her, son,” Toby says. “You’re tearing her up.”

  Before Lane can jump all over Toby, Lane’s mom diverts. “If you want to try to get an apartment up north in like Lynnwood or something, you could—”

  “Lynnwood?” He has trouble saying the name. “That’s not even Seattle.”

  “Yeah, if you save up, you can get something up there. With roommates or something. And you can use my car while I’m gone.”

  “I’d rather you run over me with your car.”

  His mom tries to sweeten the deal. “My car’s so old. I never drive it. And Toby’s got his pickup. You know, Lane, you can keep using it even when I get back.”

  “It’s pretty beat up. And I’m not planning to be here long. Plus, you shouldn’t be planning on Toby’s car for the future. Who knows how things will, well, you know . . .”

  “The car runs, Lane,” his mom offers. “And rent is cheaper up north. Out of town. Up where Toby is. A car’d make that possible.”

  “You should say �
�thank you,’ Lane,” Toby interjects. “I could sell it for her for scrap. Make a few bucks.”

  “Bet you’d like that, Toby. Why don’t you two come back later? I need to organize my personal stuff—move somewhere, like out to the garage, before you start throwing WeedWackers and sewing machines in here with me.”

  “C’mon, Lane,” his mom says. “Please don’t be like that.”

  “Hey, almost forgot to tell you,” Toby adds. “A girl called for you.”

  “Mia?”

  “That Inez girl,” Toby drawls. “Told me to tell you to call her back. About New Year’s Eve or somethin’.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  “WHERE’D YOU SAY YOUR MOM is again?” Lane asks Inez as he lets the aluminum door slam with its metallic rattle.

  “Dialysis.” She is wearing her black dress again, same as their first date, and lighting candles and incense around the mobile home. “It was scheduled for early January, but she’s in bad shape. Had to go in early. Stay a few days.”

  Her shoulder strap slides down, revealing the curve of the top of her breast. She pulls it back up as she stands, pretending that she didn’t catch Lane looking.

  “Sorry to hear that,” he says, setting a mid-priced bottle of champagne on the few square inches of available counter space next to the sink.

  “Happens all the time. She doesn’t listen to me. Doesn’t take care of herself.”

  “And Jordan?” His left hand finds its way to his pocket, where he holds the pill bottle between his index finger and thumb, spinning it over and over again.

  “I don’t think I ever, you know, fully explained it to you. But he spends some time with his . . .” She takes a moment to consider her words. “‘Aunties.’ I’m pretty sure I mentioned them before. They’re like these long-term babysitters he got to know while I was going through a tough stretch.”

  “For New Year’s Eve?”

  “It’s complicated. A, uh—a deal I made in exchange for Christmas.” She slumps a bit and then looks at the bottle of champagne.

  “C’mon. One drink. Special occasion,” Lane tries.

  “I dunno.”

  “To new starts. A new year.”

  She thinks for a moment. “Yeah, OK. Screw it. I’m in the clear now.”

  “Nice. ’Cause I stole it from the state liquor store, special for you.” Lane pretends he’s joking.

  “First Kevin at the store. Now this. Such, what do you call it?”

  “Chivalry.” He pulls two plastic tumblers out of the sink, washes them with the nub of a sponge, shakes off the water and fills them with champagne. They clink cups, making the extra effort at eye contact, and Inez tosses her whole cup back in one go.

  She slides a Converse All-Star box out from under the coffee table and opens it to reveal a stack of photos. They pour another drink and sit next to each other on the floor and look at pictures of Inez and Jordan at the hospital when he was born. No Kevin in sight. She follows with a photo of her on Lake City Way as a teenager wearing ripped and faded 501s tucked into knockoff fourteen-hole Doc Martens and a blue-and-white plaid with a black motorcycle jacket. She smokes a cigarette in front of Video Time Movie Rentals and crosses her eyes for the camera. Although she’s trying to look wild and hard, her youth and innocence are what strike Lane. He thinks she’s beautiful in the photo. Looks like someone who could make it out of the neighborhood. Like someone who might have a future.

  She flashes another photo with her and a girl working the Chicka Latte stand in a gray, wet parking lot. She’s in a bra and panties and is still clinging to a rebellious sneer. Lane sees her exposed midriff and the low drop of the front of the panties. He feels his heartbeat start to race and he becomes more aware of his physical proximity to her, but she moves on past the photo, mumbling about how he wasn’t supposed to see that one.

  The next is a photo of her holding Jordan—no longer a tiny baby, but not as big as he is now. She describes it as “the day I got back.” Jordan is crying, and Inez has a nervous smile shot through with disorientation, relief and a bit of sadness. He’s not sure why she showed this photo either. It’s not the kind of picture that one keeps and displays as part of the curated visual narrative of her life. A milestone, yes. But one with enough dark undertones for it to live separate from the rest.

  They pour another drink and are already chasing the bottom of the bottle. He wants to get to the point and get this all over with but is even more nervous than he anticipated. Lane thought the champagne would get his confidence up, but it’s nowhere near enough. Good thing he has a backup plan.

  She starts rummaging through her CDs, looking for something to put into the dented Discman attached to small Coby speakers. “Who’s your favorite Seattle band?” she asks. “Please don’t say Nirvana.”

  “I dunno. Hendrix?”

  “Safe choice. Predictable. But classic,” she says.

  “You know I went to middle school with Hendrix’s nieces?” he says. “Gorgeous girls. Family didn’t have a pot to piss in. All of the money was going to some label.”

  “The family didn’t get nothing?”

  “The dad did, eventually. After a lot of legal fees. But he still cut out Jimi’s brother and nieces. Said the brother was a druggie.” Lane starts spinning the pill bottle again in his pocket. “Jimi partied himself to death by my age—and the grown brother doesn’t get any of the inheritance because he does drugs. Can you imagine that? People are too hypocritical about that shit, huh?”

  “Yeah, I dunno. Depends what he was doing, I guess.” Inez pulls out a burned copy of the Alice in Chains Sap EP and puts it in the player. They listen for a moment. “My ex sees Layne Staley around. Buying smack and shit. It’s not doing him any favors. Dude’s a rock star but lives in some crappy condo down by Kinko’s on Forty-Fifth.”

  “I figured he was in Hollywood these days.” Lane pours them a final round of champagne.

  “Yeah, but fuck Nirvana, you know. Fuck Pearl Jam too while we’re at it. I was always more into Alice in Chains and Soundgarden anyway. They’re real Seattle.”

  “I saw Soundgarden at my first concert. Bumbershoot in the late ’80s.”

  “You serious? I was there,” she says, and high-fives Lane, but their hands stay together, clasped. “With the Posies, right?”

  “Right. Yeah, right. The Posies got booed.” They continue to hold hands.

  They avoid facing each other until she leans in for a kiss.

  LANE GETS THE LAST DROPS of champagne out of the bottle. He can feel the pressure shooting the alcohol right through his blood-brain barrier.

  “Man, it feels good to drink.” Inez’s volume starts to rise. “This is like the first time I’ve felt happy, like actually happy, in forever.”

  Lane can see the clock on the microwave in Wanda’s bedroom. “The countdown to midnight is gonna start soon.”

  “What’s your New Year’s resolution?” she asks.

  “I don’t believe in all that. You?”

  “Yeah. First time in a long time that I got one. I’m gonna do more for me. For me and Jordan.”

  “Like what?”

  She pulls up the corner of the rug and digs out a small roll of one-and five-dollar bills. “I’ve been saving. It’s only”—she flips through it—“like two hundred and eighty-three dollars now. But I want to give me and him a fresh start. I want to make his life better, not this . . .”

  Lane tries to be encouraging, but a train of anxiety barrels through the fog of the alcohol. He rolls his head and looks toward the floor.

  “What?” she asks.

  “Nothing.” He maintains his focus on the ground. “That’s a great idea. Really. I’m excited for you.”

  “You OK?” She reaches a hand out to his knee.

  “Yeah, of course.”

  “I mean, I know I have a shitty life here and it’s not much compared to what you’re used to.”

  “I didn’t say that. I just have a lot on my mind.”

  �
�You have a lot on your mind? Like what? At least you’re not worried that you’re a horrible mom. That you don’t have what it takes. That you have too much of your own failed mother in you.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you. The parenthood thing looks hard. I mean, I don’t know that I could ever do it.” He starts to panic; time for the backup measure. “I need to go to the bathroom.”

  “What about the countdown? It’s”—she cranes her head to look for the clock—“in less than like five minutes.”

  “I’ll be right back.” He thinks of Mia. The millennium. Of Columbia. That he never has to come back here. Inez’s situation is fucked. And it will always be fucked. No matter what he does. No matter what she does. Right? He must remember that. He can fix his life; that’s all he has control over. Him. “One second. I promise.”

  THE BATHROOM IS SMALLER THAN he remembers and even more overloaded with trinkets. While urinating, Lane digs the pill bottle out of his pocket and sets about opening the childproof lid. He needs to kill the anxiety. Blunt the nerves. Then he will be able to follow through and do what needs to be done.

  His hands are shaking. Sweating. He struggles to open the bottle. He knows he waited too long and won’t have time for the pill to kick in after he swallows it. Lane decides he’s going to have to crush it up and snort it. Maybe he needs to scrape off the coating with his thumbnail before crushing it. He’s not sure. How difficult could it be? J.C. doesn’t know how to write half of his lowercase letters, and he’s capable of putting a number of pills up his nose per day.

  As he pries the top off of the bottle, a couple of the pills fly out, ricochet off the sink top and disappear. He is too distracted by the fact that he’s pissing all over his pants to see where they land.

  “What’re you doing in there?” she asks through the door.