by Jason Myers
Laura squeezes her forehead. “Come on, guys.”
“What?” asks Greg.
But Bruce goes, “No, you’re right, Laura. We’ll leave you two alone now.” He turns to me. “Nice meeting you, Travis.”
Pleasure was all mine, boys.
Bruce hugs Laura again. He says, “We’ll see you back in the city.”
“Okay,” she whispers. “Bye.”
They walk out a side door that says EXIT above it.
I slam the rest of my drink, and stand up.
I’ll be right back.
“Where are you going?” Laura asks.
To the bathroom.
“I’m sorry about that,” she says, reaching for me as I walk past her.
I knock her hand away.
Don’t be.
In the bathroom, I splash water on my face repeatedly. My body shakes. It feels like I just got punched in the gut, but I’m not as mad as much as I am scared.
I need Laura. I need this to happen.
Inhale. Exhale.
I dry my face off and walk back to the table and sit down.
“Travis,” Laura says, “nothing ever happened between me and those two guys. I know them from work. They come in—”
Laura.
I cut her off.
I’m not mad. I don’t care about them. I just need this to be real. I need something I can hold on to right now. I don’t care about anything else.
“Okay,” she says.
I trust you.
“You do?”
Yes.
Laura leans forward and her mouth opens like she’s about ready to say something but nothing comes out. She just nods and smiles instead, her lips pressed together hard.
• • •
And from the restaurant, Laura and I drive to the town’s park and watch the fireworks display from the infield of a small baseball diamond. We split a pint of Jim Beam and we make out. And when the red, white, and blue explosions in the sky have finally concluded, we walk to my car, hand in hand, and drive back to the cabin with the windows rolled down, listening to an old Beehive and the Barracudas CD.
“Do you remember when we drove to Minneapolis and saw them play?” she asks me.
Of course I do.
“That was one of the best nights of my life, Travis. I’m serious. I’ve had the best times with you. I missed you so much while you were gone,” she says before throwing her arms around me and letting out this little high-pitched scream. Biting my neck, she says, “Goddamn, I missed you.”
• • •
Back at the cabin, Laura rolls a joint and I make mimosas, and when I hand her one of the glasses, she looks at the joint, then looks back at the drink, and goes, “The mimosa, now this is a real gateway drug.”
We smoke and we drink and we watch the rest of the Arrested Development episodes.
And after almost all the booze I picked up the night before has been drunk or accidentally knocked over and spilt, the two of us are back in the bedroom, fucking and clawing and choking each other. And when I’ve finished coming all over Laura’s stomach and chest, and when she’s through cleaning herself up—shower, mouth wash, that sorta thing—the two of us lie in bed and listen to the Vincent Gallo CD When.
It feels nice to have her body pressed up against mine the way it is. To feel her breath blowing gently against my neck. To hear the light breeze outside blowing and the sound of Gallo singing. . . .
“Let’s find a place, a happy place . . .”
And for a moment it feels about perfect, and then Laura digs her elbow deep into the mattress, propping her face against the palm of her hand, and she asks me if people who mess up, like fuck up really big-time, she asks me, “Do you think people like that deserve a second chance?”
I roll onto my back and I think about this.
Yes.
“Even if it’s something terrible? Something that could really hurt another person?”
I rub my eyes and sit up.
Everyone deserves a second chance, Laura, no matter what they may or may not have done.
Pause.
Why?
“No reason,” she moans, dropping her arm, falling back on the pillows underneath her. “It was just a question.”
Bullshit.
I flip on my side.
Nobody asks something like that for no reason. Especially no one that I know.
Laura lets out this huge sigh. She pushes herself to her knees. “I wish . . . I just wish . . .” She stops and rubs her forehead.
You wish what, Laura?
Crawling on top of me, she snorts, “I fucking wish I would’ve known what the hell you were thinking, what you were fucking doing during those months we didn’t talk at all. That’s what I fucking wish, because maybe then if I’d known what I’d done to drive you away . . .” She stops, covers her face with her hands.
Then what, Laura?
Her hands part. “I would’ve made better decisions and things wouldn’t be the way they’ve been,” she snaps, pounding her hands into my chest.
She jumps out of bed and I sit up and I ask her, What sort of bad decisions did you make?
Slipping on a pair of shorts and a white Pound Puppies T-shirt, Laura goes, “I did some stupid things—things I wouldn’t have done if I’d known what was going on between the two of us.”
Like fucking other people? Those kind of things?
Laura sighs. “All kinds of things, Travis. Because I just didn’t know anything. You left me in the dark, baby. I didn’t know.” Laura covers her face and she begins to cry. “Why did you leave me?” she sobs. “Why couldn’t you have told me what I did wrong so I could’ve fixed it?”
I lie back down and stare at the ceiling. I’m at a loss for words at the moment. I’m surprised by Laura’s sudden outburst. And this is when it all hits me. Everything. Hitting me like a big sack of shit. I need to tell Laura everything, right here and now.
I need to tell her about Hawaii and what happened and how scared I got and how I didn’t know what to do because I wasn’t sure I’d even done anything wrong.
So I grab her hand and I go, I need to tell you something.
“Travis, you don’t have—”
No. You need to hear this.
“Fine,” she says, done crying. “What is it you have to tell me?”
After Christmas, when I was in—
But I get cut off abruptly by that eighties band the Bangles.
It’s Laura’s cell phone and it’s blowing up, and she has one of those ring tones that’s the tune of a song. And the song she’s assigned to whoever’s calling her is the Bangles song “Walk Like an Egyptian.”
“If they move too quick . . . (oh-way-oh) . . . they’re falling down like a domino. . . .”
Laura pulls her hand away and walks over to her purse and pulls her phone out. “I have to take this,” she tells me.
You do?
“Yes.”
And like a second later, Laura’s freaking out, going, “No fucking way! You bad girl! I cannot believe you did that! You dirty little slut! Ohmigod!”
So much for my big, bold moment of anything.
I reach down to the floor and grab the VICE I brought with us and fall back on the bed and start flipping through the pages, landing on a CD review of this Oakland band, the Lovemakers, who have this totally hot girl for a singer.
Laura hangs up the phone.
She knocks the magazine out of my hands and goes, “Holy shit. I need a cigarette after hearing that.”
Annoyed, I ask her, What? What’s so big of a deal?
Lighting a smoke, then bumming me one, Laura says, “Do you remember Michelle Thomas from high school? She was in our grade. She’s Puerto Rican.”
What about her? I didn’t know you guys ever hung out.
“We didn’t,” Laura snorts, “until she started working at the Waterfront a few months ago with me.”
I take a drag.
So what, you’re like
best friends now or something?
“Not exactly. But we’ve been hanging out some,” Laura answers, flicking some ashes into an empty Heineken bottle. “Actually we’ve been hanging out quite a bit. We went and saw the Yeah Yeah Yeahs in Minneapolis back in May and we also saw Cat Power play at Gabe’s in Iowa City.”
So what’s the big deal, Laura?
Laura takes a drag. “She slept with one of our old teachers from high school tonight.”
Which one?
Hysterically, Laura’s like, “Mr. Hodge.”
What did Mr. Hodge teach?
“American History, Travis. Like Paul Revere and the fucking Indians,” she snaps, obviously annoyed.
Is he old?
“He’s gotta be in his late forties,” she shrieks. “Ohmigod!”
I take another drag and I shake my head but I’m really not that surprised.
And Laura says, “I can’t believe this,” right as I’m trying to get a visual of Michelle taking it from Mr. Hodge, but it doesn’t work because I can’t remember what Mr. Hodge looks like.
“And you wanna know the funniest thing?” Laura asks.
What’s the funniest thing, Laura?
“The funniest thing about it is that Michelle told me it was in the backseat of her Volkswagen, which was parked behind Bottoms Up bar. That little slut,” she smiles.
And I take a huge drag, wondering what exactly Mrs. Hodge may have done, but this thought ends abruptly when Laura wraps a hand around my arm and says, “Oh, I’m sorry. You were about to tell me something before Michelle called.”
A big lump forms in my throat.
It wasn’t important.
“Are you sure?”
I’m sure. It was nothing—especially compared to Michelle Thomas sleeping with one of our old high school teachers.
Laura smiles.
Totally not important.
Let’s find a place, a happy place . . .
25.
ON THE SECOND-TO-LAST NIGHT OF my trip, bored out of my fucking mind, I decided to call the number of the connect that the New York dudes had given me.
I met the guy outside of this record store and scored two grams of coke, then went back to my hotel room. My plan was to do one gram that night and go out and hit some bars and save the second gram for my last night, but of course that didn’t happen. Things never go the way you plan them when you’re on cocaine. That’s not the way this shit works.
What ended up happening is that I got back to my room and cut up four huge fucking croc lines and blasted them one right after the other—BAM—BAM—BAM—fucking BAM—and got so tweaked out of my mind that I couldn’t possibly leave my room. I was way too paranoid, and when you’re that paranoid and blazed only on blow, you end up trying to act normal, which makes it that much more fucking obvious to the people around you that you’re fucked out of your brain. And I ended up staying in my room instead and did both grams and listened to the first 400 Blows album sixteen times in a row (it was that good) and made phone calls to people I hadn’t talked to in years. There were even a few hours where I flipped through the pages of the escort listings. I made calls. Asked for prices. Said I would call back. But I never did. What I did do was stand in front of a mirror next to my bed and got undressed and jacked off, imagining the gnarliest scenarios possible, scenarios full of young chicks and ropes and bruises and crying.
A couple of times I picked up a notebook and wrote down these plans for my life. What I’m really gonna do. What I’m really into. Plans like these seem so righteous and amazing at the time ’cause you’re so fucked up, only to realize later, during those boring, sober moments, that none of it is an option and there isn’t any sort of way that shit will happen.
So I closed my notebook and restarted the Blows album and cut some more lines and ended up downing like five Xanax to pass out so I wouldn’t have to see the sun come up.
Travis Wayne
26.
AFTER I DROP LAURA OFF at her parents’ house the next afternoon, I drive to see Claire. I park my car near her pad and start walking and it’s hot. I’m having a hard time breathing.
The front gate to her stairs has been left unlocked and I push it open and walk up and knock on the door.
Her roommate, Skylar, opens up wearing a black skirt, a black blouse, and black heels. “How’d you get up here?” she asks.
The gate was wide open.
She looks past me, down the stairs. “Shit.”
I probably should’ve rung the buzzer anyway.
“Don’t worry about it,” she says. “You here to see Claire?”
I nod.
“Come in,” she says, stepping back and letting me in. “She’s in her room. She might be sleeping. We just got back from Emily’s funeral.”
Oh. How was it?
Skylar stops dead in her tracks. “It was a funeral, dude. That’s how it was.”
I’m sorry.
“Don’t worry about it.”
I follow Skylar down a small hallway to Claire’s bedroom. The door is closed, so Skylar knocks and Claire goes, “What is it?”
“You have a visitor, sweetheart.”
“Who?”
Skylar turns to me. “What’s your name?”
Travis.
“Travis,” she yells.
“Just a minute,” Claire says. A minute comes, a minute goes.
“She’s had a long day,” Skylar tells me. “Claire!” she shouts, much louder this time.
“Okay, you can come in,” she groans back.
I tell Skylar thanks and open the door and slide into Claire’s bedroom, the sound of the Jesus and Mary Chain coming faintly from a CD player somewhere.
Huge piles of clothes sit everywhere. A fucking mountain of shoes, mostly heels, has transplanted itself smackdab in the middle of the hardwood floor. Like seven pounds of accessories litter the areas around her bed not already littered by books and VICE magazines and drawings.
“Sorry about the mess. It’s not always like this,” says Claire, who’s laid out across her bed with a glass of wine in her hands, still somewhat stuffed into a black dress. Smiling, she scooches herself up the headboard. “You look warm, Travis.”
I sit down next to her.
So do you.
“I’m fucking hot,” she says, running her fingers down the side of my arm. “It was like a hundred degrees during the funeral. I felt so bad. Two old women fainted during it and one of them had to be taken away in an ambulance.”
Jesus.
“It was awful,” Claire stresses.
How are you feeling?
She takes a sip of wine. “I’m doing better now. Emily’s little brother Jake gave me a couple of Xanax at the reception afterward. He told me he gets them from this old guy in Waterloo who sells his prescription drugs to pay his bills.”
Whatever you have to do, right?
Claire nods, half-smiling. “Right.” She reaches across my body to the edge of her Kleenex-covered nightstand and grabs a pack of cigarettes and an ashtray. “You want one?” she asks, opening the top of her pack.
Sure.
“You want a glass of wine also?”
I shake my head.
Claire lights a cig then hands it to me, then lights her own. She goes, “Did you go somewhere a few days ago?”
I went to the cabin with Laura.
Claire rolls her eyes. “Oh.”
She said she tried calling you but you never returned her call.
“A lot of people tried calling me.”
I take a drag.
Have you thought about Kyle at all?
“Dude,” Claire shrieks. “Don’t start with that shit. I’m not in the mood. I just saw the person he fucking killed get buried this morning.”
I roll my eyes.
“If you really want to help me, just lie with me and listen to music with me.” She drops her smoke to the bottom of the glass then picks up a remote for her stereo and changes the Jesus Mary and Ch
ain to Blonde Redhead.
Patting the pillow next to her, she says, “Lie,” then scoots over so I can snuggle in next to her.
Claire wraps an arm around me and buries her face into my chest. Like two songs later, she flips her eyes at me and goes, “Do you think I’m a good person, Travis?”
I think you’re fucking rad, Claire. Maybe the best person I know.
“But why do you think that?”
Because you give a shit. Your dad bails on you and your mom when you’re like three. Then your mom gets arrested a bunch of times for shoplifting and you end up bailing her out of jail every single time with your own money from working. You’ve had a fucking job since you were thirteen. I mean, shit, you just made the dean’s list. . . . You’re Claire, ya know, that’s all anyone has to say.
She squeezes me. “Thank you for that,” she says.
I light another cigarette from her pack and then she yawns and says, “Tell me a funny story, Travis. I wanna hear something funny.”
You’re gonna put me on the spot like that, huh?
“Yep.” She burrows her face deeper into me.
I look up at the ceiling and notice all these tiny white stars sticking to it that probably glow in the dark.
“Anything,” Claire yawns. “Just as long as it’s amazing and funny.”
I think hard. So many stories start pounding through my skull. I could tell her a million but I want it to be right. I want to take her mind off of Emily. It’s the fucking least I could do.
So I say:
When I was fifteen, I went to visit my cousin Eric out in San Francisco for a long weekend. He had apartment on Haight Street, and one night while we were hanging out, this guy he knew from some odd job, maybe even community service, stopped by to pick up some CDs that he’d loaned my cousin.
The guy’s name was Buttrock Steve, and he had long, gross red hair and was wearing these really tight stonewashed Bugle Boy jeans, and a Nelson T-shirt, and he was like twenty-nine and had a way bad lisp. Anyway, he stayed and chatted for a while and my cousin mentioned that he was trying to put a band together but that his amp was shot, and Buttrock Steve was like, “Dude, I have two really good amps at my mom’s house up north in Happy Camp. If you wanna ride up there with me and pick them up, they’re yours for a hundred each.” And my cousin was like, “If you’re serious, we’ll ride up there with you right now. Tonight.” And Buttrock Steve was serious. So the three of us left in his minivan. It took us like six hours to get there and his van broke down once. His mom lived in a shack out in the middle of the sticks and we rolled in there at like four in the morning and Buttrock’s mom was sitting in a chair in front of the television, sleeping, and Steve was like, “That’s my mom, and that’s my cat and that’s where my room is.” My cousin and I spent the night in the van, and the next day we loaded up the amps, but before we left town, Buttrock stopped at his friend Eugene’s house. Eugene was out back with some friends, sitting around a fire pit boozin’, and we ended up sticking around there for way too long and had to spend the night again because we were wasted. Some girls came over to Eugene’s later that night and they were all fucking haggard, and at one point, while I was pissing, I saw Buttrock Steve making out with this really chubby blonde with glasses, wearing black leotard bottoms and a purple shirt with a unicorn on it.