Dinner with Father Alba was fun and easily the high point in the last nine days of Will's life. He was an interesting man and had stories seemingly from every country on the planet. He ate, laughed, and talked enough for two people. But as usual, it was Katie who had Will cracking up. Near the end of the meal, she had caught on that Father Alba tended to repeat little parts of his sentences. It was when they were just serving the apple pie the priest had brought with him, that Will first heard Katie.
"Now, who wants a big piece? A big piece?" Father Alba had inquired.
And right after, Will heard: "A big piece." Katie said it in a small voice. It was like a little echo and was almost not noticeable at first.
A minute later it was: "The villagers say they saw the lion. A lion!"
"A lion," came her little echo.
Will looked at her with a smile of utter disbelief and she gave him a smile right back. Hers held a naughty joy that only mischief could bring out.
The adults didn't seem to notice and Katie's echo got just a little louder each time. This continued for a while until their father spoke icily, "Katie, would you please clear the dishes away. Thank you." She got off lightly in Will's point of view, especially since she made such a show of tottering around under piles of dishes that it caused their mother to hop up to help.
The after dinner chitchat was mercifully short. Will had things to do, foremost of which was that he needed to look for Lisa.
3
He was fast becoming an addict.
It wasn't that he wanted to look for her—he had to. Therefore, after saying a quick good bye to Father Alba. Will headed out into the evening. As was usual, there was no sign of Lisa.
With a weary sigh, he strolled over to see his friend Carlos who was throwing one of his weekly parties. Will's best friend Doug Prouders had been trying to talk him into going to it for days, using encouraging words such as, "Stop being such a mopey pussy."
Will was actually looking forward to a bit of fun and distraction and after an hour at the party he was well on his way to getting drunk enough to temporarily forget about Lisa.
However, it was then that Lisa decided to show up. Will had spent the last year trying to get her to come to these parties. And now nine days and two hours after they broke up, there she was. He had been working on his fifth beer and was finally starting to relax, when Brian Galt walked in and gave Will a large grin and an equally large handshake.
"Brian, how're you doing buddy?" Will asked and looking about added, "Where’s Tal?"
"She wanted to talk to you out back." Brian should have been quicker. He had just started to tug a slightly unbalanced Will to the back door when Lisa walked in with a man. Not a boy, but a man. He was as tall as Will and looked almost as strong and Will guessed his age at twenty-five. Moreover judging from the regulation haircut, he was likely a Coastie. Anger doused any happy buzz Will had been feeling, and he immediately started heading in their direction with a terrible fierceness in his eyes. He only made it three feet before Brian grabbed up his left arm and swung him around.
"Hey man! You don't…" Will shoved him hard and the smaller boy went over the back of a couch and landed amidst a collection of beers. His foot came down on the edge of a bowl of chips and they shot into the air, a brief golden brown fountain. Will paused only the briefest moment, looking at the sprawling boy covered in beer and potato chips, but his sudden jealousy could not be denied and he turned back to Lisa.
Carlos and Doug both came at him then, but Carlos got to him first.
He should have waited for Doug. Carlos was Filipino and small for a Filipino at that. He made Brian look big in comparison and might have weighed a scant hundred and ten pounds. Will saw them both coming from either side and as Carlos reached out for him, Will grabbed him first and threw him bodily at Doug. Carlos slammed face first into Doug’s chin and an inch long gash immediately opened over Carlos’ right eye.
The two boys went down in a heap.
Will turned toward Lisa and her man, the fierceness in his eyes matched by a wicked smile playing on his face. He had been fighting what he had called "melancholy madness" since the breakup. Waves of terrific anger at his ill treatment would wash over him, followed quickly by sadness would have him lying on the floor of his room, crying. He felt trapped by his emotions and had longed for an end to the pain and anger.
This was the release he was looking for.
The pair had barely walked in the room and were standing in the doorway as Will made his way toward them. Will saw the 'chivalrous,' bastard push Lisa behind him to shield her and the action drove Will into an almost uncontrollable rage.
Only ten feet and a chair were between Will and his enemy. The chair seemed weightless and flew aside like a toy, as Will’s hands became rock hard fists. The Coastie looked prepared for him, but there was a slight apprehension in his stance and in his eyes. This made Will only want to hurt him more, but he had barely cleared half the distance before Talitha stepped in between him and his victim.
"Stop it Will, now!"
The wicked smile left his face abruptly, replace by angry surprise. His hands opened and close a couple of times and then he tried to dodge around her, but he was obvious and she was quick.
"Talitha, move!" he roared his demand.
"No."
He dodged to the other side, but it had been his only real option and she had long before seen it, so that again she was between the man and her brother. He stared over her head and his blood began to boil. "Move now or..."
"Or what?"
"Or…or..." he was at a loss.
Her calm was as powerful as his anger, but far easier to maintain. It would be impossible for him to hurt her and he wouldn't be able to get around her without doing just that. He stood in a terrific wrath for a few seconds and then abruptly the rage within him deflated.
He turned away, suddenly apathetic to everyone and everything. Walking back into the living room of the small house he surveyed the destruction he had caused. His melancholy returned like a dead stone in a chest and stooping, he picked up a beer, opened it, and drank it in a matter of seconds.
"Hey look, I don’t want any trouble here," the Coastie said. Will’s tremendous jealous wrath returned in an instant. He turned toward him, and if Talitha had not still been in the way, he would have crushed the man.
Talitha saw all of this and with her amazing calmness said to the Coastie, "I think for your own sake you should be quiet, you cradle-robbing-asshole." At this, the low murmuring of the surprised guests ended abruptly, the broken beer bottles stopped fizzing, and it even seemed as if the crickets in the nearby baseball fields ceased their incessant chirping.
Will’s anger was doused again as suddenly as it had flamed up. In his entire life, he had never heard Talitha curse once. And not even close to once. She could keep her emotions in check with the perfection of a Zen master. Yet she had purposefully cursed. He stared hard at her, just as she had done to him countless times. He saw the love she felt for him and he saw that she was angry, not with him but with Lisa and finally he saw his own pain mirrored in her eyes.
The melancholy threatened to sink him again and what she said next caused tears to spring into his eyes. "Would you like to have a beer with me?" Talitha walked over to him and turned him away from Lisa and the Coastie. "What kind of beer tastes the best? I’ve only had sips of dad’s and it's always repellant."
Will was blinking back his tears when Brian, Carlos, and Doug walked over to the brother and sister. Carlos had a blood soaked rag pressed to the right side of his face. "What the hell, Willy J! Look what you did to me! Look what you did to my dad’s place." Will was at a loss for words, so he looked to the ultimate source for words.
Talitha stepped forward unbidden by her brother and peered into Carlos’ battered face. He glared back angrily. "That scar is going to be a rugged one," she said. "It already makes you look much manlier."
His face went from angry to hopeful in a sec
ond. "Really?" Was all he said before he ran to the bathroom mirror to check for signs of manliness.
"Don’t sweat how the place looks Willy J, it would have looked liked this by the end of the night anyway," Doug said. "Hey Talitha? How’s my manliness quotient?" He showed her his bruised chin.
"Well Doug, as you know, in mathematics, a quotient is the result of division. So if we divide your looks, deficient as they are, by your substandard penis length, the quotient, on a scale, termed for your understanding, would place you slightly above geek, but well below nerd."
Doug stared at her for a few moments, then turned to Brian, slapped him on the back and muttered, "Have fun with that one." He then walked away.
Watching Doug get put in his place by Talitha was usually hilarious to Will, but he felt hollow and stared about him with unseeing eyes. There was a great dark cloud hovering over his mind and he was having trouble catching up with the conversation around him. The word repellant that Talitha had used just came to him suddenly and he chuckled weakly.
"Talitha at a party, in the middle of a fight, drinking, cursing...what’s next? You gonna start smoking?"
"About the party: we were told to anticipate fireworks by none other than Amy Harris." Talitha replied. "I'm expecting her to show up within the next fifteen minutes. She is the most obvious…gross!" She had taken a drink of her Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. Her pretty face contorted and she gave her head a violent shake. "How can you drink this stuff?" she asked Brian who was taking a long pull from his can.
"It’s a combination of maturity and acquired tastes," Brian answered calmly and patiently.
Talitha’s eyes widened at this and she took in a large breath to begin her rebuttal. But she paused looking at Brian, and Will saw that he had been just a little too casual.
The two loved to play the game of who was smarter than whom. Brian had been hoping that Talitha would respond too quickly to the word maturity, since there was little evidence of maturity in the fourteen or so beer drinkers in the room.
The empty feeling had not left Will so he grabbed up another beer, drank deeply, and sighed heavily. Talitha gave him a quick commiserating smile but then turned back to her challenger.
She stared at Brian intensely, rubbing her chin gently as if she was stroking a beard. "First off, mine was a rhetorical question but, since you chose to answer a question that didn’t need a reply, we will discuss the topic. Be warned however that from now on I will have to tell you when I'm asking a rhetorical question since you get so easily confused."
"If that'll make you feel better about yourself, please feel free," Brian retorted and gave Will a knowing smile, but Will did not know. He was feeling slow and stupid and wanted to drink.
"Obviously you are referring to the physical and not to either the emotional or the intellectual, when you mentioned the word maturity." Brian nodded and Talitha went on, "Taste buds do change over time so it's not inconceivable that one day I will be found sipping," she consulted the can, "Pabst and gorging myself on a plate of brussel sprouts. It's the term 'acquired tastes' that has me most perplexed."
Talitha looked long at Brian. "The term itself suggests the necessity of prolonged exposure to a substance one would initially find naturally abhorrent. I can easily imagine the rest of these future alcoholics." She waved her hand to indicate the teenagers around them. "Forcing themselves to drink and to smoke due to social pressures, but you would never do that." He smiled agreeably at her reasoning. "Soooo…you acquired the taste…at the outset, how? Hmm…by linking the drink with another food item!" She said this in a rush as she was thinking it. "Pizza! A few months ago, you mentioned you only like red peppers on your pizza every once in a while, but by my recollection you like them only when you have a beer to go with your pizza." She smiled triumphantly. "You began acquiring your taste for beer by drinking it with pizza. Your father enjoys the combination as well, and I surmise this was where you were originally acquainted with the pairing."
"Yes, right down to the red peppers." He gave her a mock bow, then stepped forward and kissed her.
Will didn't realize it at first, but he had enjoyed their little nerd courting ritual. They both truly seemed to love each other and watching them he felt the dark cloud over his mind weaken. It came back, but less strong when they started to kiss. He glanced away then and saw Lisa by herself. She had never looked more beautiful.
She'd gone all out.
Her hair was curled and teased, so that it resembled a flowing blonde mane. Her makeup appeared as if an artist had worked on her, making her green eyes fairly blaze out of her face. She wore a very short, tight mini skirt and the muscles of her inner thighs were clearly visible, making Will long for her badly.
She stood next to the ice chest, holding a can of beer in one hand and rooting around in the cooler with the other. Without thinking, Will stood up, and had taken two steps toward her when he came to his senses. He stood there watching her. Lisa looked up a minute later, their eyes locked, and the connection that had been with them for the last year was still there. He thought nothing, but felt everything. His heart began to hurt, his chest constricted and it was only when his tears started to fall off his chin that she looked away, confused.
A second later Lisa turned back to him and anger burned in her eyes. She marched over to him then and now up close, he could see she was fighting back tears of her own. "No! You had your chance," she hissed at him. She wiped the back of her hands against her eyes. They were a bright green and he wanted to kiss the tears away. "You were right last week. You're like a kid. You're like a kid who only wants what he can’t have."
"Lisa, wait I do lo…"
"No! No! Don’t say it! Stop trying to talk yourself into loving me. I don’t want your pity. I’m going to be selfish from now on, you hear me?" She poked him angrily in the chest with her tiny finger. "I thought I could love you forever, even with the knowledge that you didn’t truly love me. I thought if I was unselfish and gave and gave, it would be enough for me just to have you near. But it wasn’t! I'm the bad guy here! I wanted more. I wanted to be able to trust you."
"Lisa! God damn it!" Will roared and grabbed both of her arms. He towered over her in his rage, but like Talitha, she knew he would never hurt her. "I have done nothing for you to doubt me; I never cheated on you a single time. I have been devoted only to you."
"That's not the kind of trust I'm talking about." She cast her face down and her tears were huge and heavy. They splashed as they hit the cracked linoleum of the kitchen floor. "I told you all of this last week. You're cheating me, not cheating on me. You're not giving me all you have." She looked up but not at him. Her wonderful green eyes were unfocussed and far away. "I don’t think I can love a man who doesn’t love me," she said to herself.
Will was on the verge of expressing his love to her when the Coastie entered the room and stood in the doorway. He had a sneering contemptuous look on his face and anything Will was going to say that might have saved his relationship, drowned in the blackness of his jealous anger. His body went stiff as his muscles tightened.
"Will, listen to me," Lisa said, and her maturity focused him. "Forget about him. I was wrong to bring him here; I was just trying to make you jealous." She shook her head as if to clear it. "That was a mistake, but it doesn't change the fact that you still don’t love me. You're an open book; I see the anger and the jealousy and the sadness, but not the love. You have always held back, waiting to see if something better might be coming along...well here’s your chance, go find it. I won’t stop you."
4
Lisa turned and walked out of the house followed by the Coastie. A silence engulfed Will. It extended past the staring of the other teenagers and went deep within him. He felt as though he was submerged beneath a lake. His vision doubled and then tripled and everything around him went out of focus.
Talitha hugged him and told him that it would be ok and Brian, still with potato chips encrusted to his shirt, handed him a beer. They t
alked to him, and around him as he drained the beer. Another one was pressed into his hands and still he heard nothing but echoes and saw nothing that was real.
Timing is everything in life.
If Amy Harris had shown up while Will had been in his fugue state, his night would have ended in a much different manner. But she arrived a few minutes after Doug came over with more beer. Doug sauntered up and giving Talitha a wide birth as if she were a dog on a chain, gave Will another drink. "Alright widdle baby, time to take your medicine," he said jovially.
"Alcohol is actually a poison," Brian said and then guzzled from his can.
"I think laughter might be the best medicine for Will," Talitha added. After the confrontation, she had started sipping at her beer and had just finished her first.
"It would be, if there was anything to laugh at!" Doug exclaimed in a loud voice. "Could you believe that Coastie hitting on teenagers? Does anyone know who that asshole was?"
"I think he works over at the firehouse," Brenda Dillers chimed in. "He's always trying to flirt with all the girls, even my fourteen-year-old sister!"
"Holy crap!" Doug became even louder and grabbing Will, he gave him a great shake. "You know what…you know what? We're gonna report his stupid ass!"
"Somebody call Skipper!" a voice yelled out and the room exploded in laughter.
"No I’m serious, the guy is a pervert." Doug did seem quite upset despite his drunkenness.
Anger started to work its way out of the black cloud of Will’s mind. It was a low simmering anger and the focus shifted constantly from Lisa, to the Coastie and then to himself.
It was then that Amy came in.
He would find out later about the lack of underwear but the fact that she was braless was immediately apparent to everyone, drunk or not. She wore a white T-shirt and a short flowing skirt. Her breasts swayed rhythmically back and forth, as she strutted up to him. Amy ignored the people around Will and knelt down next to him, placing her large breasts on his arm. She leaned into him.
The Trilogy of the Void: The Complete Boxed Set Page 14