Flings

by Justin Taylor

  “Honey,” I said, “I’ve got some bad news.”

  I was rarely in a hurry to get home when camp let out, so most days I stuck around at the JCC and used the gym. Once or twice a week I’d follow Isaac in his F-150 over to the park, where he’d sell me a half-eighth for twenty-five bucks and we’d match bowls and talk shit about Camp Klippot. We made jokes about our campers—the pisser, the crier, the clinger, and Benjamin Schneer, this freaky kid in our group who hardly talked or blinked and devoted every art class to drawing elaborate mazes that he then gave to the other kids to try and solve.

  I had to hand it to Isaac—he did great impressions of the kids. I admired that. I didn’t know how to be anybody but myself, and half the time it felt like I wasn’t even pulling that off. But in the park it was all okay. We smoked and laughed and bullshitted, secure in the knowledge that our jobs were pointless, all the rules we had to follow were stupid, and every last one of our wards was a head case, doomed to fail at life.

  “Well, there’s Alana at least,” I said. “In that bathing suit.”

  “Fuck that,” Isaac said. “Fuck that bitch and her fucking attitude.” He was mad because she’d banned him from picking up the kids’ afternoon snack from the commissary. This was a job he loved doing—the only job he loved doing, indeed the only job he did—because it meant he could swing by the pay phone in the lobby and call back whoever had beeped him since lunch; plus it meant he got to choose the snack. Isaac picked Nutty Bars every time. Nutty Bars were kind of like giant Kit Kat bars crossed with some Reese’s knockoff you’d find at Dollar Tree. Alana hated Nutty Bars. She described them, with uncharacteristic candor, as packing foam filled with imitation peanut butter and slathered in genuine dog shit. Isaac refused to take Alana’s preference into account, so she had decreed that picking up afternoon snack was my job now. Personally, I didn’t care what the snack was because I didn’t eat it. I brought clementines from home and ate those. Which reminded me—I still had one left! I took it out of my pocket and stuck my thumb into the rind and unraveled it in a long thin spiral, unbroken, while Isaac loaded us up a new bowl with weed from the bag he’d just sold me. We sat there passing the bowl back and forth, the only sounds the flick of the lighter, the low whistle of the carb, and the buzz of the woods: dragonflies, birds, and mosquitoes; squirrels scrambling through the carpet of fallen leaves. We never once talked about his brother, or the fact that we had used to be friends.

  The next day was a Friday and Isaac was absent from camp. I couldn’t believe how much better the day went. Alana and I made a good team—no, a great one. I did whatever she asked me to and made her laugh. When I picked up the snack I got her favorite: those chocolate cupcakes with white frosting in the center and the curlicue of icing across the top.

  Benjamin Schneer came up to me holding a big piece of green construction paper covered in close-set curving purple lines, like something halfway between Arab calligraphy and a pile of intestines. It was one of his mazes. He held the paper flat on the palm of one hand like a tiny waiter; in his other hand was a yellow crayon for me to use. “I forgot to make an exit on this one,” he said solemnly, “but you can still try.” So I sat there and worked my way through his sealed maze while he watched me, making all the wrong turns and hitting all the dead ends until every purple pathway was filled with a yellow line. I put the crayon down. He took the paper back and walked away without saying another word.

  Before we knew it Alana and I had strapped our last kid into her car seat and were walking together through the parking lot. I asked her if she wanted to get high and her eyes lit up. She asked if there was somewhere we could go. I told her there was and she said she’d follow me.

  I didn’t want to go to the park in case Isaac was there, so I decided to bring Alana to my spot under the road. I had never shown it to anyone before and felt like this made our outing into a kind of adventure. We parked our cars at my house and walked down the block. I went down the embankment first, offering my hand to her to help her down, and we continued to hold hands as I showed her the skinny oak that made the mirror tree, then led her around the corner and onto the concrete ledge. We sat with our legs hanging out over the water and our backs against the curved stone wall, which felt cool through my shirt even though it was a hot day. Naturally, I gave her greens.

  “Oh, wow,” she said, coughing out a thick cloud of smoke. “This shit is great. I thought you were never going to ask me.”

  “Well, I sometimes smoke with Isaac,” I said. “And he can be pretty weird about stuff.”

  “You know what? Fuck that dipshit pain-in-the-ass. I don’t care if he is my cousin.” She passed the bowl to me. I hit it and passed it back.

  “Wait, hang on—Isaac’s your cousin?”

  “Yeah. That’s why he’s in my group. My aunt wants me to help straighten him out or keep an eye on him or something, and she’s on the J’s board, so even though he’s like a walking child neglect lawsuit they have to put up with him.” She passed the bowl back. The cherry was burning. “Did you know he had a twin brother?”

  “Seriously? Isaac’s a twin?” I took my hit while she answered so I didn’t have to worry about the look on my face. I made a little show of holding the smoke in and blowing it out through my nose while I listened to her.

  “They were identical. Like, they’d switch places at dinner and you wouldn’t know it. His brother’s name was Jake. He had cancer.”

  “Oh, shit. I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s okay. I mean it was awful, but it was, I don’t know, like four years ago now. Anyway Isaac’s mom is convinced that that’s what his problems are all about. His gangsta bullshit and everything. She donated like half a building to his high school to keep them from kicking him out this year. God knows what she gives to the J. And he freaks out every time she suggests therapy, so here we all are. I just hope he’s not ruining your whole summer, too. Jesus, wow, sorry to lay all that on you. So TMI, I’m sure.”

  “Oh, no way,” I said. “I’m glad that you told me. Things make a lot more sense now.” We sat there with our backs to the wall and the cashed bowl cooling between us. I asked her if she wanted to share a clementine. She said sure and watched my fingers as I worked the rind.

  I tossed the spiral peel into the green-brown water. We watched it splash down and resurface, then float off. Leaves and bits of trash bobbed by as well. I halved the fruit and held her piece out to her and our fingers brushed when she took it. She ate hers section by section. I put my whole share in my mouth and chewed it up. I wiped my hands on my shorts and then put the bowl away. Now there was only empty space between us. Alana shifted position, stretched her legs out on the concrete, leaned back and let her head rest in my lap. I knew she could feel me through my zipper, poking at the back of her skull. “Listen,” she said, “I’ve got a boyfriend at school so we can’t go all the way. That’s like my serious rule.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Yeah, that works, sure. We can just do whatever you want.”

  “You’re a good guy, Adam,” she said. “Do you know that?”

  I told her I did.

  Isaac was back at camp on Monday, no explanation offered (or sought) for his absence, and Alana went back into senior counselor mode—bubbly and solicitous with the kids, curt and impersonal with the two of us. Did she regret what had happened, or was she being overly cautious about her cousin finding out? Maybe, I thought, she was as sorry to see him again as I was.

  When snack time came around that afternoon, Isaac walked out of our room without a word. He returned fifteen minutes later, red-eyed and reeking, a smirk on his face, the box of Nutty Bars already open. I could feel Alana’s rage coming off of her in waves. When he offered her a Nutty Bar she smacked it out of his hand. It spun across the floor and a couple of our campers gasped. “Hey,” I said to her. “Do you want a clementine?” Ignoring my question, she walked over to her cubby, dug around in her purse for a granola bar, and took it outside to eat alone. Isaac shrugge
d, picked Alana’s Nutty Bar up off the floor, unwrapped it, and took a big bite. “Bitch,” he said.

  “Ooooh,” said Brianne. “You said a swear.”

  “True. But that’s gonna stay our little secret because otherwise you might never get snack again ever, which wouldn’t be too fun—right?” Brianne nodded, her eyes already wet. He surveyed the crowd of small faces looking up at us. “That goes for all you bitches,” he said.

  That night I dreamed that I was swimming at the Adelmans’ like old times but Alana was there, too, only she was her real age but me and Isaac were young again. Jake wasn’t around. It was dark out and the pool light was bright as the moon—a moon at the bottom of the pool. I saw Isaac standing on the top step at the shallow end. “Let’s see who—” I said, but didn’t finish because I heard that my voice wasn’t mine; it was Jake’s voice, and I realized then that I was Jake, or part of me was, that when he had died a spark of his soul had joined with mine so I carried him with me, and so did Isaac, and so we had these strange sparks in us that could never be absorbed or expelled. Alana dove deep into the water, all the way to the bottom of the pool where she swam in tight circles, going faster, a dark form outlined in churning brightness, which was the last thing I saw before I woke up with a seizing pressure in my lungs like I’d stayed underwater too long or slept with a stone on my chest.

  It was a quarter to six, dishwater light trickling through my blinds, and I could have gone back to sleep for another half hour, maybe forty-five minutes if I’d wanted to. But I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to go back to that other world for anything. Instead I closed my eyes and slipped my hand into my boxers and thought about Alana and the things we’d done under the road. I thought about the way she’d smelled—lavender soap and pennies—and the sweat under her tits and the impatience with which she’d guided my hand into the slick hot hair between her legs. True to her word, we hadn’t gone all the way, but she let me touch her and also did things to me nobody had ever done before, except for Isaac, which the more I thought about it somehow seemed like it shouldn’t count, though I knew that it did. And what would Alana say if she ever found out that I’d used to be friends with him, that I’d feigned ignorance about Jake’s existence and death? Was Alana the reason he was in our group, as she thought, or had the pairing been about both of us—or just me? Mrs. Adelman wanting to rekindle an old friendship—a “positive influence” is probably how she would have phrased it—or maybe it had somehow been Isaac’s idea? And what about me? I wasn’t . . . whatever, obviously, because I’d hooked up with Alana and only in general ever usually thought about girls, but then what about what Isaac and I had done? I had hardly thought about him and what we used to do since it had happened, but now all that buried stuff was coming unearthed.

  I reached around for something to wipe up with, then decided to get into the shower. It was full light outside and time to start my day.

  “Hey, bro,” Isaac said. “Don’t you think that braces are bullshit? Like they’re this giant scam Doc Mizzum’s running on us?”

  We were at a picnic table in a thickish copse of oak, our usual spot, well off the main path and away from the road. We were sitting on the table with our feet on the bench. My teeth had come in straight—straight enough, my mom had said—so I had never had braces, and therefore hadn’t given them much thought other than to count them as one more thing that everyone else but me had in common with each other.

  “When do they come off?” I asked.

  “He says the end of the year, maybe.”

  “Nice,” I said. “You can ride that out.”

  “Yeah, unless it’s a fucking lie.”

  We were quiet a minute. I took a deep breath. “Hey,” I said. “Have you ever, like, come when you’re high?”

  “Huh?”

  “Like if you’re smoking with a girl and she wants to . . . you know, or if you’re even stoned by yourself at home and you just decide to go for it.”

  “Dude, I don’t know, why are we even talking about this?”

  “I’m just saying if you never tried it, it’s, like, pretty cool. Different, you know?”

  “I mean high’s high,” Isaac said. “Everything’s better. So what?”

  “Hey,” I said, easing myself off the table and standing in the dirt before him. “Put the bowl down for a second.”

  “What the hell, bro,” he said—but it wasn’t a question. He did as I asked. He put the pipe down on the table next to him, put his hands on his knees, and stared at me, waiting to see what I was going to do. I wondered what he thought I was thinking about, would have given anything to know what he saw when he looked at me. I hit him square in the center of the face with my fist and knew as soon as I made contact that I’d broken his nose, and the skin on my own knuckles. I swung again. He reeled backwards, landed flat on his back, then rolled over onto his side, half curled up, one arm protecting his face and head, the other dangling limp over the edge of the table. There was blood seeping into the wood and dripping between the slats, clotting the dirt below. I climbed onto the tabletop and stood over him and kicked him in the gut. He moaned. Blood ran into his open mouth and I could hear him swallowing it. A crimson bubble appeared between his lips, grew large and thin like chewing gum right before it pops. I wanted him to piss himself but as near as I could tell he hadn’t.

  I took everything he had, even his pager. As I clipped it to the waistband of my shorts I reminded myself that he was the one who should have gotten sick. He shouldn’t have been alive to suffer this. I thought of Mr. and Mrs. Adelman: one son dead and the other this poseur delinquent, this waste. I tried to imagine the chasm between the life they’d planned and the one they were actually living.

  “Why are you crying?” Isaac asked me. I could hear in his voice what it was costing him to get each word out. I kicked him in the stomach again. And then I ran away.

  Isaac didn’t come back to camp, but he didn’t rat me out either. After all, what could he have possibly said that wouldn’t have gotten him into trouble, too? According to Alana, who heard it through the family, he said he’d been jumped by some punk rock kids.

  We were down in the culvert under the road again, for what was probably the last time. Camp was ending. Her boyfriend was coming to visit. He’d be there a week; then they were driving back up to school together. She had her shirt off but her bra on and wanted to know if I could hook her up with some pot. “I know it’s a kind of fucked-up thing to ask, but it would make him super happy if we had some and you’re like the only person I know with a steady connect. I’ll pay you for it, obviously.”

  “I don’t want your money,” I said. It was almost true. I gave her the last of what I’d taken from Isaac—sixty, maybe seventy bucks’ worth.

  “Wow, holy shit, thanks.” She opened her purse and tucked the baggie away somewhere inside, then zipped it shut. She took her bra off, folded it, laid it on top of the purse. “God,” she said. “What a funny summer this turned out to be.”

  The summer ended. I started buying my pot from Kenny Beckstein, a hippie kid who could also get mushrooms and LSD. I figured out that half a green gel tab was the perfect dose: you could count on an interesting day but also on being basically sober enough to drive home when the last bell rang. For winter vacation, I bought five tabs to last me two weeks. But then I woke up on Christmas morning with this idea in my head that I should take the remaining three all at once. For Jews Christmas is like this total blank day: no school and parents don’t have work, and you can’t go out because everything is closed except the movies and the movies are mobbed.

  I loaded my pockets with clementines and grabbed my Discman, thinking I’d take a walk around the neighborhood. I thought about going to my spot under the road, but whenever I went there now I thought about Alana, who was away at school, or maybe home for winter break—she never responded to my IMs anymore so I didn’t know what was up with her—and I didn’t want to think about all that, so instead I turned the
Discman volume up as far as it would go and walked right past the embankment on the street that was my old spot’s roof, my shitty headphones shrieking, the noise like green fire burning my mind clean, my heart beating in time with the propulsive drumming or maybe my own feet on the pavement; I was running and the clementines bonked against my knees through my cargo pockets and I hoped they wouldn’t burst and the Discman was skipping and I couldn’t find a good way to hold it where it wouldn’t skip but I couldn’t stop running, sensed the ground falling away behind me, and then the headphone cord slipped out of the jack and there was this rushing silence like a tidal wave and the loose cord was flying around and whipping me as I wove through the neighborhood, throwing the Discman down and not hearing it shatter—it had either landed in grass or fallen into the nothingness—but I didn’t—couldn’t—look back to see, focused on getting the headphones off, dropped them, too, and kept running until I came to the elementary school, where I shimmied up a drain pipe and swung myself over an eave onto the lowest point of the peaked roof of the library, where I lay flat on my back and felt sick in my stomach and tried to catch my breath.

  The whole sky was alive with pale phantoms, metamorphic clouds like wax bubbles in lava lamps. When I had my breath again I crawled to the top on my hands and knees and belly. It was a fairly easy grade, no worse than the embankment had been, but I had to go slowly, because my knees and fingers wanted to pay attention to every subtle contour in the tiles; my mind flooded with a trillion fragments of worthless glittering information, every stray kernel of grit lit up my skin.