Betwixt

by Tara Bray Smith

  “Working a lot.”

  Bleek frowned. “All work and no play —”

  “Makes Morgan very happy.” She turned. “Look, Bleek, what do you want? I haven’t spoken to you since you came in here with doped-out Evelyn Schmidt hanging off you.” She worked the pitcher up and down to foam it. In one deft movement she scooped some of the foam off the top and into a waiting cup of espresso. She pushed it toward the boy and firmly smiled. She was a professional, after all.

  “Three bucks.”

  Bleek pushed it back to her. “A sprinkle of chocolate on there, sweets. Just a dusting,” he said, picking the tiny spoon up and balancing it between his thumb and forefinger.

  She stared. She got the reference. Morgan had bought the stuff from him that night at the party in Eugene and always sensed that he’d use any chance he had to leak the information to her ultra-square student council faculty leader, who was always around the Krak checking in on the McKinley kids. Morgan was going to be class president senior year and didn’t want anything screwing her up.

  “Well, I want some information … love. An address. Wondering if you’ve heard anything about a certain … gathering.”

  Gathering. What was it with the lame code words? Yet the mention of the Ring of Fire made her stomach tighten. The morning after Ondine’s party she’d asked around at the Krak for Moth, even thought of calling Ondine or Neve to ask if they’d seen the boy, but then decided against it. Neve she didn’t much want to talk to, and Ondine she didn’t want knowing her business. She heard Moth had gone back to Eugene, where he was from. So she had decided to wait. He’d turn up sooner or later. Every day she tried to remember what he’d said, but all she could come up with were a few images: confused stumblings in the dark, blue lights flashing. Then nothing. She gave up thinking about it and let herself disappear into her work at the Krak or spent her time daydreaming about sexy Raphael Inman. The party was ancient history, she told herself. The party? What party?

  Which made her response to Bleek that much weirder. Even as the words spilled from her mouth, Morgan wondered whether she was saying them.

  “Highway ninety-seven … twenty-mile point … Little Crater. Park there.”

  “I knew you’d be the right person to ask,” Bleek countered.

  “Sometimes it’s not good to be too … clean,” she said, lowering her voice but unable to look into the older boy’s eyes. She watched her right hand wipe circles on the counter in front of her. It wasn’t quite that she was in a trance, but something peculiar was happening. She hadn’t told a single person what she had learned from Moth about the Ring of Fire, barely remembered it, in fact, and wasn’t planning to go. The Flame? Right. Morgan’s favorite local band was the Berms — an experimental suburban slacker outfit from Beaverton, of all places. Raphael Inman said he even jammed with them a few times on his electric cello.

  “Fantastic.” Bleek smiled, and pushed his empty demitasse toward her. “I’m so glad I came.”

  Morgan took the cup and saucer in both hands, conscious of it trembling. She turned to the sink behind her.

  “See you there, darling.”

  She hung her head. He might as well have had her neck in his jaws.

  “Feels good to be a little dirty, doesn’t it, Morgana?” Bleek whispered. The song playing over the speakers ended. “Yeah, it does.”

  The next thing she heard was the light tinkle of the Krak’s back door ringing as he left.

  IT WAS K.A. WHO BROUGHT IT UP.

  It was a cool night in mid-June and Ondine had invited the crew over for K.A.’s last night before a weeklong soccer camp in California. He was leaving for Stanford in the morning. Scouts were going to be there; he could come back with the scholarship that would determine where he’d spend the four years after high school.

  They were watching movies. Neve and K.A. snuggled on the couch while Nix and Ondine lazed on the floor, picking at the last slices of pizza from Jacob’s and sipping root beer in sympathy with K.A., who couldn’t drink before camp. Nix kept one eye on Neve. She seemed normal, giggly, all her attention focused on K.A., but Evelyn had sworn she had seen “Clowes’s daughter” hanging out a few times with Tim Bleeker by the river. Nix kept the knowledge to himself so far, though it worried him. Once was a coincidence. Twice, a mistake. More than that, a habit. And Nix knew all about habits.

  Morgan had been invited, of course, but she said — through K.A.; she didn’t return Ondine’s phone call — that she’d picked up a few extra shifts and couldn’t come. Neve, guileless, or perhaps just less inhibited than everyone else, had asked if Morgan was mad at her. She hadn’t seen or heard from her since Ondine’s. At the mention of the party everyone got quiet, until K.A. said, “Aw, you know Morgue. She’s moody. Sometimes she just likes her downtime.”

  “Dude!” he said now, stretching back onto the couch and smiling at Nix. “You have to admit, Jacob makes a mean pie.”

  “Yeah,” Nix replied, uncomfortable at the mention of his old boss, but grinning anyway. Ondine winced. Two weeks together alone on N.E. Schuyler had made Ondine feel joined with the boy, and it was almost painful to have other people around, even ones as close as K.A. and Neve. Sensitive to her friend’s moods, she tried to change the subject.

  “So, K.A., next World Cup. Think you’ve got a shot?”

  K.A., unfazed, unclasped the arm he’d draped around Neve and reached down to tousle Nix’s long hair.

  “He misses you, you know.”

  “Who?” Nix said, though he knew who K.A. was talking about.

  “Jacob, man! I was just telling Neve today how Jacob was asking after you.”

  Neve nodded and trailed a long rhinestone-studded fingernail — she was doing ghettofabulous that week — around the lip of her root beer glass.

  “Yeah.” Her pierced tongue clicked. “K.A.’s been wanting you to come back, Nix.” She tickled the boy’s shoulder with a stripey-socked foot. “He misses you.”

  From the floor Ondine watched with a protective half frown. “Nix is taking it easy. It’s been a rough spring.”

  “Yeah, well,” K.A. resumed, “it would help to have him around so that he could run interference for me with Tim Bleeker —”

  Nix looked up at the mention of the dealer’s name.

  “What?”

  “Yeah, man. He’s been around almost every day since Ondine’s party, macking on Neve. And let me tell you, Jacob is not happy about it. He knows Bleek is bad news. But you know how Clowes is with Neve. If she wanted to walk on Mars, he’d figure out a way to get her there. But man, Bleek is lame. I’m like, dude, that is my girlfriend, and that is my girlfriend’s dad, and you are a lame-ass drug dealer, and he’s all like, it’s cool, dude, it’s cool. And he’s always asking me if I know where you are. He wants to get the four-one-one on the rave — for some reason he’s convinced you know where it is and so he’s always bugging me. ‘Nix coming by?’ ‘Heard from Nix, man?’ One time Jacob overheard him asking, and after he left, Jacob was like, ‘Is Nix all right? Why is he hanging out with Tim Bleeker?’”

  Throughout his speech Neve had been still, her eyes aimed at the TV, but glazed. Nix thought it was weird that K.A. would think Bleek was hitting on Neve, and that was the end of it. Love truly did conquer all. Tim Bleeker was a drug dealer, though, just like K.A. had said. His first priority was his next sale, and not even premium tail was enough to put that out of his mind. When Nix caught Neve glancing his way, she fixed her eyes on the TV again.

  K.A. sighed, readjusting his lid. “I have enough drama at home with Morgan and Mom fighting constantly.”

  Nix looked back. “Tim Bleeker’s an asshole, Neve.”

  His voice came out harsher than he’d intended, and K.A. glanced at him, then at his girlfriend.

  She sat up and pushed K.A. away.

  “Jesus Christ, boys. I’ve got one daddy. I don’t need two more, okay? Jacob is up in my shit enough. He got to have his fun and now he wants his daughter to be the goo
d girl? Yeah, well fuck him.”

  Silence swelled after her outburst.

  Finally K.A. spoke: “Neve?”

  A panicked look came over her face, as if she were as surprised by her words — by their vehemence — as everyone else was.

  “Oh, don’t pay attention to me. It’s just that Dad’s been riding my ass ever since the party. I mean, you have a little too much to drink one time and suddenly it’s homeland security. I mean, I caught him checking my odometer. My odometer. When I called him on it, he said he wanted to know if I was doing more driving than I should.” She snickered. “I told him Bleek has his own car; I didn’t need to drive mine if I wanted to sneak around.”

  “Neve,” K.A. began. “You’re not …” His voice indicated he didn’t know which was worse: the idea of Neve fooling around with Bleek, or the idea of her doing dust.

  “Oh, relax,” Neve scoffed. “It’s just a little taste to mellow me out.” She looked at Nix but spoke to K.A. “What, your best bud can do it but it’s too good for your girlfriend?”

  Nix tried to piece through what he was hearing. He knew when he saw Neve at the party with Bleek that things were bad, but not so bad she would flaunt it in K.A.’s face.

  “I’m off it, Neve.”

  She threw back her head and laughed. “Yeah, right, Mr. I-Wore-Sunglasses-to-Wash-Dishes-for-a-Year. Tim told me all about your intake, man. I don’t see you going cold turkey.”

  Ondine smiled at everyone and no one. “Is it true, Nix?”

  Something seemed to have come unstuck in Neve. In a wild voice she let fly, “Man, don’t try to put this all on me, Miss Goody Two-shoes. You were the one who threw a party attended by not one but two of Portland’s biggest dust dealers. If you serve it up, don’t be surprised if your guests partake.”

  K.A. was looking at his girlfriend as though she’d zipped off her skin.

  “You — you know about Moth?” Ondine asked, her arched brows high.

  “Yes, I ‘know about Moth,’” Neve mimicked. “And don’t tell me you don’t.” She stared at her three friends. “Tim told me about him. Figures he knows about the party, wanted to see if I could get it out of him.”

  “Who in the hell is Moth?” K.A. said.

  “‘The Ring of Fire,’” Neve scoffed, ignoring his question. “Somebody needs to hire a new ad agency. And the Flame? What is this, last year? Everybody knows the Flame sucks now.”

  Ondine stood up. “I’m getting some water. Does anyone want anything? A beer? Some dust? Maybe a couple shots of heroin?” She walked out of the room.

  Her departure seemed to silence Neve, who sat picking at a loose thread on her perfectly tattered jeans.

  K.A. got up, looking at his girlfriend. “We’d better get going. The bus leaves at seven tomorrow. You ready?”

  Neve stood up, half sullen, half coy. She took his hand in a mock-flirtatious way. “Don’t be mad at me,” she said in a baby voice. “I’m a good girl, really I am. I’m just playing is all.”

  K.A.’s mouth opened and then closed. He turned to Nix.

  “So you’ll talk to Jacob?”

  Nix scanned the room for Ondine, who stood in the kitchen doorway with a worried frown on her face. Then he looked at Neve. He didn’t want to talk to Jacob, didn’t want to see the light again, but he knew now that Neve was in serious trouble, and that Jacob was her only hope. He wished it was something K.A. could take care of the way he took care of everything, but even if K.A. weren’t going away to soccer camp, Nix knew that Jacob would never believe these things from K.A.’s mouth. Nix was the transient, the slacker, the “user.” He would take the blame and might have to leave Portland, but at least Jacob could get his daughter away from Bleek. Moth, of course, was another question.

  “Yeah, man. I’ll talk to him.”

  When K.A. walked to the door with Neve in tow, it was hard to tell if he was holding her hand, or if she just wouldn’t let go.

  NIX DIDN’T TALK TO JACOB. When he went into the restaurant the next day, Leon — Portland’s self-proclaimed best pie maker — told him that the Cloweses had taken off that morning to the coast for a vacation. Leon was an ageless waxy-haired hippie who had known Jacob “since Altamont, man,” and Jacob had confided to him that the main purpose of the “vacation” was to get Neve as far away from Tim Bleeker as possible, especially with “the square” out of town for a week. Nix assumed Leon meant K.A.

  “Hey man, mellow out. Why do you need to see him so bad, anyway? You knock up the pepperoni princess or something?”

  If Nix ever had doubts about when to quit dust, one look at Leon reminded him. The man coughed, passed a burning joint to him, raising his eyebrows. Nix waved it off, shaking his head.

  “Suit yourself, man.” Leon let a stream of smoke trickle from his dry lips. “But it’s better than that shit you do.”

  Later that day, Ondine got a surreptitious phone call from Neve. She almost hadn’t answered because she didn’t recognize the number on caller ID. “I’m on a fucking pay phone,” Neve said, half pissed, half amused. “We’re at some gas station halfway between hillbilly central and B&B hell — ugh. I hate bed and breakfasts. All that fucking lace. And my loser dad confiscated my cell. He said we need some ‘family bonding’ time, but I know it’s just cuz he doesn’t want me calling Bleek.”

  Ondine exhaled. “Nix said he heard the cops are on Bleek’s trail.”

  “Yeah,” Neve cooed. Ondine didn’t like her tone. It was almost wistful.

  “Neve,” she ordered in her sternest seventeen-year-old voice. “Tim Bleeker is pathetic. Must to avoid, girl. Must. To. Avoid.”

  Neve laughed, a breezy tinkle. “Aw, he’s like a lost puppy, moping around the Krak asking anyone he sees where the Ring of Fire is gonna be. He just needs someone to take him out to play.”

  “What he wants is to sell dust to a thousand blissed-out Flame fans.”

  There was silence on the line, and then Neve whispered something.

  “What’d you say?”

  “And me,” Neve repeated softly. “He wants me.” Then, annoyed — and louder: “Jesus, Dad, back off! It’s just Ondine! Ondine. Gotta run, baby,” Neve said into the phone. “Love ya!”

  With Neve and K.A. gone, and Morgan in avoidance, Nix and Ondine were on their own. Phil D’Amici had gotten Nix a job at the Burnside D’Amici store, working in the stockroom, so he spent his days leading up to the solstice there, coming home late, when Ondine was already in bed. Nix had always been a loner, but Ondine wondered what had happened to the girl who just a few weeks ago had to turn her phone off, it rang so often. She had always been the popular girl, the one who walked into a roomful of strangers and walked out with a new posse of friends. Now when the phone rang — if it did at all — she answered it only if it was Ralph or Trish, and the idea of calling someone to grab a cup of coffee or go shopping or catch a movie didn’t even occur to her. The girl who did those kinds of things was someone else named Ondine, not her. This Ondine stayed close to home, cleaning, cooking — though she had never made anything more complicated than ramen noodles before — spending long hours maintaining Trish’s flower beds. Gardening was Trish’s passion, but not something Ondine had ever shown any real interest in. There were magazines and manuals everywhere, but she ignored them, just as she eschewed tools. She wandered into the garden and sank to her knees and worked the earth with her fingers, pinching off a leaf here, a twig there; she whispered to a cupped leaf, “Grow.” Under Ondine’s watch the Masons’ yard exploded. It was almost eerie how every plant seemed to bloom at the same time. How the flowers didn’t fade, or rust, or even close when the sun went down. Ondine knew, because she had looked. She had gone to the window late one night when Nix still wasn’t back from the store, and seen an army of roses and peonies and irises all staring up at her window. When a breeze stirred them, it was as if they were bowing. Ondine felt like Evita of the flora. She would have laughed, if she hadn’t been so creeped out.

  She thoug
ht about telling Nix, but didn’t. At least not out loud. What could she and Nix say to each other that they hadn’t already said in their dreams?

  Ondine didn’t know what to do with all the fractured thoughts, the hints of imaginings, the subtle intuition, and the plain anxiety she felt alone that last week, so besides gardening and cooking, she painted. She finished her first piece for Raphael Inman’s class; her crit would be on June 19. She hung her canvas in her bedroom against the sliding doors of her closet, covering the oak floors with D’Amici paper bags to catch the paint. She worked from sense — from feeling — wasn’t that what Raphael had told them that first day? His hazel eyes had burned under a frizz of gray hair. Find out what is in your heart first. Then shape it with what is in here. He had touched a finger to his chest. The head only knows what the heart feels.

  Ondine had looked at Morgan. She missed her friend, yet didn’t know how to ask what had happened at the party to drive a rift between them. She watched Morgan’s eyes narrow when Raphael said those last words. Had he noticed, too? Morgan was by far Raphael Inman’s best pupil. A genius, almost, in her rendering. Ondine envied her talent — her lines, her gesture sketches that seemed to walk off the page. Though Raphael had been speaking to Morgan then, he had also been speaking to Ondine. What had he been saying to her?

  Alone in her room, she painted. This painting was blue. All the blues she understood. The blue of sadness. The split blue of the sky meeting the sea. Her mother’s favorite blouse. The blue of emptiness. The Virgin’s dress she had seen in a Giotto painting. The blue of the ocean of Alaska, of Nix’s home. A blue waiting to be filled.

  Something emerged. The painting was still wet when Ondine pulled it off the wall and headed to Raphael’s class.

  BITCH.

  Staring past the heads of her classmates at Ondine’s impossibly beautiful painting on the opposite wall, Morgan couldn’t stop the word from springing into her head, straight from the pit of her stomach. Bitch bitch bitch. She looked at Ondine’s painting, watched Ondine nodding at Raphael, Raphael beaming — beaming! — back at Ondine. A proud smile that usually only Morgan received during one of Raphael’s harsh crits.