Exit Here.

by Jason Myers

  You’re such a bitch.

  “Hey, you two,” my mother snaps, jumping in. “I want to have a pleasant dinner, all right? All right?”

  All right.

  “I was just giving you shit, Travis. Jesus,” my sister snorts. “Calm down.”

  I light another Parliament.

  “So, Travis, did you pass any of your classes last semester?” my mother asks, lighting a clove cigarette.

  I swallow a little water.

  I think. Maybe one.

  “Really,” my father says, folding one arm over the other. “Which one?”

  Inhale. Exhale.

  Maybe economics.

  “Jesus Christ,” he snorts. “Economics.” He says, “You don’t even know what you’re talking about, son.”

  I look at my mother as my father continues, “You call me out of the blue to tell me that you flunked out of a school I didn’t want you to attend in the first place, and then you show up here, at this beautiful restaurant, late as hell, looking like a zombie, lying about passing a class you didn’t take.”

  “Lance,” my mother quickly interjects. “Not here.”

  “What the hell happened to you? Where did my son disappear to?”

  I’m right here, Dad.

  “We’ll see,” he says. “We’ll see.”

  Maggie returns with my drink. “So what are your plans while you’re back?” she asks me.

  Glancing at my father, I tell her, I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it. I’ve been . . .

  My voice fades. And I stop because I don’t know how to finish the sentence.

  “He’ll be getting things in order,” my father jumps in. “Maybe the two of you could hang out sometime. You seem to be well adjusted.”

  My sister bursts into laughter, and my face turns bright red. I feel like an asshole, with my father hooking me up.

  “Yeah,” Maggie says, her face a little flushed. “Maybe we could.”

  “Can I get another glass of wine?” my mother asks.

  “And another scotch,” my father says.

  Maggie smiles at me. “Sure,” she says, then winks. “I’ll be right back with those and to take your orders.”

  I flick ash into the tray again.

  “You know, I was serious about what I said,” my father tells me after downing what’s left of his drink.

  What? About kicking it with the waitress?

  “No, Travis.” My father goes, “I’m serious when I say you need to get your shit together.”

  He says, “Just because you’re back, around all your friends again, doesn’t mean you can keep fucking around. I didn’t raise a loser.”

  I nod. Take a sip of my whiskey drink.

  And my father continues, “I don’t know what happened last semester, and at this point I don’t care. But something will have to change.” He leans forward, waving a finger at me. “Please don’t try me, son.”

  I nod again.

  Maggie comes back.

  My father’s still staring at me.

  What?

  “Do you understand me?” he snaps.

  Yes.

  Raising his voice, he goes, “Are we clear?”

  Yeah, Dad. Crystal.

  “Good,” he smiles, swinging his eyes from me to Maggie. “I think we’re ready to order now.”

  • • •

  After we’re through eating, I ride with my parents and my sister back to the house in my father’s brand-new Lincoln Navigator. My mother drives because she’s not as drunk as my father, who doesn’t want to risk being pulled over and at least charged with another DUI.

  The house is in the Dove Hills, which means we have to drive through the financial district, go around Harper Square, cut through the Little Minneapolis neighborhood, and roll past the old township housing additions, up to the hills where the house sits, nestled within a huge mass of trees and ridges.

  For most of the ride, I don’t say a word. No one really does except my sister, who’s been on her phone since we left the restaurant. And at one point, while we’re sitting at a busy red light across from a downtown Macy’s store, she says, “God, Amy. You can be such a little bitch sometimes,” then ends her call.

  I watch my mother and father look quickly at each other, and then I catch my mother looking at me in the rearview mirror. “Are you feeling all right, Travis?” she asks.

  But instead of answering her, I close my eyes and lean my head against the window and pretend I’m sleeping. Pretending until my own cell phone starts ringing.

  I pull it out of my pocket. Look at the caller ID. Michael.

  Hello.

  “What the hell, brah?”

  What?

  “You came back to the city and you didn’t even call me. Dick.”

  Sorry.

  “You should be, man. Totally.”

  I know.

  “So what the hell’s crackin’? What are you doing right now?”

  I’m going home. Why? What’s up?

  “Kyle just came by and dropped off a gram of the white bitch for me and I’m about ready to roll to this rehearsal space and jam.”

  You’re in a band? Since when?

  “I’m drumming. You woulda known, too, if you’d actually answered your phone or called me back, ever.”

  Yeah, sorry about that.

  “Whatever, man. Fuck it.”

  What’s your band’s name?

  “Lamborghini Dreams.”

  Cool name, man.

  “I just wrote a new song called ‘Pound Puppy Cemetery’ and we’re gonna work on it tonight.”

  Sweet.

  “You should drop into the studio, man. Check it out.”

  I’m too tired. I just wanna sleep.

  “Fuck sleep, dude.”

  I need to, man. Trust me. I really need to sleep.

  “That’s cool. But hey,” he says, “there’s a huge fucking blast going on tomorrow night at this pad on Livermore and Twenty-second. Get ahold of me. We’ll get smashed.”

  Sounds good.

  “So you’re gonna call me, right?”

  Yeah.

  “Because I’ve called you like ten fucking times since I saw you in December and you never called me back once.”

  I know.

  “You bailed for Hawaii and no one’s heard from you until today.”

  I don’t say anything.

  “So call me.”

  I will.

  “Don’t be a fuckin’ pie grinder, man.”

  Right.

  I hang up just as we’re pulling into the long driveway that leads up to the house, and my sister goes, “Who was that?”

  Michael.

  “My friends think he’s so hot,” she says.

  What about you?

  She smiles. “He’s okay.”

  I put my phone away and stare at my parents’ two-story house with its huge basement—its twelve bedrooms, five bathrooms, and five-car garage, and its hot tub and swimming pool in the ten-acre backyard that’s been fenced in.

  It’s just past eight. The sun is fading fast, although not quite as fast as I wish it would. My mother parks the Navigator in the garage and the three of them file into the house while I struggle with my things.

  I finally get inside. The air conditioner is blasting. It’s freezing.

  Slowly, I move down the hallway that leads to the kitchen and notice that the family pictures that had been hanging along the wall when I was home at Christmas have been taken down and replaced by two odd-looking metallic pieces of art.

  I try not to think about this and walk into the kitchen. Watch my father take a beer from the fridge, then walk into his work den and slam the door shut behind him.

  Across the kitchen, through the large bay windows that surround the dining room table, I see my mother and sister standing by the pool, talking. I also notice the new portable bar and the new lawn furniture and the new top on the hot tub.

  Swinging my eyes back through the kitchen, not
a whole lot has really changed in this room since the last time I stood here.

  The marble counters are still shining. The antique china cabinets my father had flown in from the Hamptons last summer still sit in the same spot.

  Grabbing my things again, I walk through the living room and head upstairs to my bedroom and lock myself inside. Drop my things on the blue carpet floor. Sit down on the edge of my bed, black sheets still unmade from a Christmas visit. Light a cigarette.

  Inhale. Exhale.

  Laura. I think about her deep blue eyes, ocean waves. How soft her pink lips were as they slid down the skin of my chest, around the cusp of my ears. About the first time I saw her, fourteen years old, sitting on a faded green bench behind the peeling concession stand at school. The palm of her right hand pressing her blue skirt against the bench seat. Her black socks pulled to her knees. The thin veil of smoke, from the Virginia Slims cigarette she held between two fingers, that swirled loosely around her face, her sand brown hair. The pearl necklace that clung perfectly around the pale veins of her neck.

  Laura. I think about the last time I saw her, Christmas night, the night before I left for Hawaii, when the two of us were here, in my room, and had just finished fucking for like the fifth time. And while I ran my fingers over the long, thin, red scar on the right side of her face—a sledding accident during the winter of fourth grade, she told me once—Laura told she me still couldn’t understand why I’d left the city for college in the first place if I was so glad to be with her, and I said, Because that’s what kids are supposed to do, Laura. They’re supposed to finish high school and experience other things. Way better things. They’re supposed to leave home and get away from it all.

  “Well, I’m just glad we stayed together. It might have made us even stronger. It feels like we’re past all that petty crap, baby.”

  She told me she was still happy and that she was going to visit me during her spring break and I told her that would be pretty awesome and that I was glad she was so happy.

  I stand up and it still hurts.

  Everything does.

  I finish my cigarette and walk to the middle of my room and grab a small brown satchel from inside the bigger one of my suitcases.

  Unzip it and rummage through it until I find the orange tinted plastic bottle that can make all of this go away for the rest of the night.

  I open the bottle and dump its contents into a metal jar sitting on the roundish end table next to my bed, and run my fingers over all the Vicodins and Valiums and Xanax and find my last Percocet and swallow it with a glob of spit.

  The way I figure, I have maybe twenty minutes before I won’t be able to do shit, so I use this time to hang up the posters I brought back.

  A shot of Vincent Gallo.

  A promo for the movie Badlands.

  And a Stooges one that Laura gave me after she got Ron Asheton to autograph it.

  Once I’ve finished, I empty the trash bag of DVDs and CDs on the floor and fall to my knees and dig through them until I find what I want.

  A knock at the door.

  Who is it?

  “It’s me.”

  It’s my mother.

  What do you want?

  “Will you open the door?” she asks. “I’d like to talk to you for a minute.”

  About what?

  “Some things.”

  Like what?

  “Please open your door, Travis. Don’t make me talk to you through a piece of wood.”

  I push myself to my feet and get really dizzy.

  Hold on.

  Stepping over big piles of stuff, I make it across the room and open the door.

  What, Mom?

  My mother lifts a hand and dangles a set of keys from it. “A guy at the dealership owed your father a favor,” she says. “There’s an Eclipse out there. It’s yours for the summer.”

  You two don’t have to do this.

  “Yes we do,” my mother nods. “Take the keys.”

  I do.

  “I know your father’s upset with you, but he’s still on your side, Travis.”

  That’s pretty cool to know, Mom.

  “I’m being serious, Travis. He’s upset with what happened. We both are. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t rooting for you, because we are.”

  I know you are, Mom.

  Our eyes lock together and neither of us flinches. I wonder if she can see through me.

  I wonder why I can’t see through her.

  “Get some sleep,” she says.

  I will, Mom.

  My mother disappears from the door and I push it shut.

  The Percocet comes on strongly, like a black sword slicing through puffy pink clouds. And I get confused about which CD I wanted to play, but then I remember when I see this Stone Roses disc lying a few inches away from everything else.

  I grab it. Pop it into the CD player and hit play. Crawl into bed. Smoke a cigarette. Then I take my phone out and scroll down to her name.

  Laura.

  I stare at it. My thumb on the call button. My heart speeding up. My cheeks turning red.

  But I can’t do it. Not yet.

  I flip to my side and reach into the end table and pull out a picture of Laura and me. It’s a Polaroid, and in it Laura is sitting on my lap. She’s wearing a gray wife beater and has an unlit cigarette hanging from her lips, both arms around my neck. I’m wearing a white V-neck T-shirt, left arm around her back, right arm across her stomach. We’re also rocking these small party hats, these gold-colored cones that say “Happy Birthday” on them in big, crazy, blue lettering. It was Laura’s eighteenth-birthday party. We were in the basement of this shitty Chinese restaurant that I’d rented out, and everyone was there. Tons of coke being passed around. Two kegs of Budweiser. Three strippers. Sitting on a table in front of us is the birthday cake I asked Michael to get her, lit with candles. The cake was decorated to look like Winnie the Pooh, except in this interpretation, this Pooh bear has two black eyes, tinged with purple. Lots of blood drips from this Pooh bear’s nose. His left ear has been chopped off. A sharp vampire tooth has manifested itself out of the left corner of his mouth. And instead of the red shirt that has always read “Pooh” in crooked letters, this bear’s red sweater says “Get Fat and Die.” Or as Michael put it that night, “When the cartoon got canceled, Pooh did what every other child star does when the show they’re on comes to an end: He turned into a gnarly drug addict, man.”

  Staring at this picture carves a big smile into my face as I remember how much fun everyone had that night as we screamed at the top of our lungs and yelled over each other and told each other the same stories over and over like they’d just happened and no one had heard them before, everything leading up to the very end, after all the drugs had been snorted and swallowed, the booze guzzled, and the strippers long gone with their residue-covered dollar bills, when I pulled out a gold-colored boom box, stuck in a cassette tape, jacked the volume, and we all sang along to Alice Cooper’s “Eighteen.”

  Feeling my eyes beginning to water, I put the picture away and pick up my phone again and continue scrolling over the names of my past. I scroll past Claire and land on Cliff. This time I do make the call. It rings and rings and rings, and then Cliff’s voice mail comes on, and before I’ve hung up, I’ve told Cliff that I’m back, and that he should call me, and that I’d like to see him real soon.

  Click.

  My headache fades away and my eyes begin to close and I laugh to myself a few times over, thinking about the joke the guy I was sitting next to on the airplane with this afternoon told me.

  Guy: What has nine arms and sucks?

  Me: What?

  Guy: Def Leppard.

  2.

  I WAKE UP AROUND ONE the next afternoon and walk across my room and stand in front of the large mirror that hangs above my dresser. And although, sure, it is true that I may not look as good as I did my whole life (voted most attractive, best-looking, and best dressed by my high school graduating
class), I’m not exactly ugly. My body is still fairly cut. My face still has a hint of that same boyish thing that drives girls nuts. And my dark brown hair is still kind of in order.

  I feel better and decide to do some laps in the pool, and go downstairs. No one is home. In the kitchen there is a note for me on the dining room table. It’s from my mother. She and my sister and my sister’s friend Katie and Katie’s mother all went out shopping for the day and won’t be done until late. Next to the letter is two hundred dollars.

  I leave it and walk outside. The air is blanket thick and brutal. My skin feels sore, almost blistered from the sun. Standing on the edge of the diving board, I watch the wind make small ripples in the water, wondering if my sister’s friend Katie is the same Katie that got tag-teamed by Cliff and Michael in a bathroom during a party at Laura’s parents’ house last summer.

  It probably is and I dive into the water, and even though it’s very warm, it still feels good, and I start swimming laps and do almost fifty before I become too exhausted and have to quit.

  • • •

  Later that afternoon, while I watch this pretty good movie called Me and You and Everyone We Know, the front doorbell of my house rings.

  It’s Cliff, and he looks pretty wrecked. His shaggy black hair is all greasy. His stubble is thick but patchy. His white T-shirt is full of paint-drip stains. Black circles have devoured his droopy eyes.

  Hey, Cliff.

  Cliff flips his head back. “Hey, man,” he says. Then he walks past me, into the house, a lit cigarette wedged between his chapped lips.

  Out of all my friends, Cliff and I go back the farthest. We met in preschool and were pretty much best friends after that until I said I would be leaving the city to go to college. But Cliff was the kid I had a ton of firsts with. We did blow for the first time together. We both got laid for the first time by the same sixteen-year-old chick when we were thirteen, one right after the other, in the basement of an abandoned school just a few blocks from his parents’ house.

  Grabbing an ashtray from the coffee table, Cliff flicks some ashes into it and says, “You look like shit, Travis.”

  It’s nice to see you too, Cliff.

  “Don’t fucking lie to me, man,” he says. “Just ’cause you’re back doesn’t mean you have to say nice things to me now.”