by Jason Myers
Then I turn back to Chris.
Chris in his dirty clothes.
Chris with his face covered in thick stubble.
Chris with eyes as red as blood.
“What are looking at?” he asks.
Someone I don’t know.
“What’s that mean?”
You’ve changed, man.
“We’ve all changed.”
No. You’re a scumbag. You spent almost your entire life hating your old man and trying not to be like him or your older brothers, but that’s exactly who you are.
“Well, ya know what, Trav,” Chris sneers, the words seething through his clenched teeth.
I wrap my hand around the door handle.
What, Chris?
“Why don’t you take your self-righteous bullshit and go ask Laura what that three hundred dollars you gave Cliff in March was for.”
My hand slips off the handle.
How do you know about that?
“Because he came to me for the money first, but I wouldn’t give it to him after he told me what he needed it for. I’m a good friend.”
Why would Laura know what it was for?
Chris starts laughing. “Man,” he says. “You really got fucked. You really aren’t that bright.”
What are you talking about, Chris? What are you even talking about?
He continues laughing harder and louder.
I say, I’m not listening to this anymore. You’ve been up for days. You don’t know what’s going on.
Chris steps over the same picture book April was flipping through at the beginning of the summer and stops in front of me. He quits laughing on a dime. His face goes straight. “You’re right,” he snorts, his voice sounding almost rejuvenated. “I have been up for days. I am fucking exhausted. But I do know about the money you gave Cliff and I do know what it paid for. So ask Laura about that. Ask her why Cliff needed the money so bad and why a week later she called your ass in Arizona and told you it was over. Ask her.”
My entire body goes numb for a second.
My eyes slam shut.
And Chris says, “Then come back here and tell me she’s not a whore.”
BAM.
BAM.
BAM.
Everything I tried to put back together. Everything I tried to build back up. All of it begins to break apart.
Just like that.
It cracks and it falls and it shreds into a million fucking pieces and when I open my eyes, it’s just me and it’s just Chris.
In this room.
In this house.
It’s just me and it’s just Chris and we both have blood on our hands and we’re both horrible people and we both know exactly what he’s talking about.
I have to go, Chris.
“So go,” he says.
I walk back to my car, the sun and the smell fighting me every step of the way, and when I open my car door, my stomach turns and my mouth opens and this green and yellow matter falls out of it in big, thick chunks, and it falls out of it in long, skinny strings.
I look over my shoulder, back at Chris’s house.
There is nothing.
I wipe my face.
Dry my lips with my shirt. Then I climb into my car and blast the air conditioner.
Think.
I almost call Laura but I know she’s working.
Think, Travis.
I should’ve gone with Claire and watched hot naked girls like Snow and Kate dance around. At least I would’ve seen something beautiful.
Think, Travis Wayne.
I turn the steering wheel toward Cliff and the trailer, and I start to drive.
33.
I GET TO THE TRAILER and waste no time I slam through the door and scare the shit out of Cliff, who jumps from the chair at the kitchen table to his feet.
“What are you doing?” he blurts out.
Getting answers! I scream.
Grabbing Cliff by his collar, I slam him so hard against the fake wood paneling of the wall that it comes unglued.
“What are you doing?” he stutters again, his beady eyes squinted halfway shut.
I’m only going to ask you this once, so don’t lie.
“Ask me what?”
Did you fuck Laura while I was still with her, knock her up, then borrow the money for the abortion from me?
Cliff closes his eyes. He turns his head to the side and doesn’t say anything.
Answer me, Cliff. You’re not getting out of this.
I push harder against his chest.
Cliff swings his head back around. “Yes.”
You fucker!
I ball my hand into a fist and swing it into his face, my knuckles cracking against his jaw, sending his head slamming against the wall.
Fuck!
I punch him again, this time square in the nose, and blood immediately starts running from it.
Why? I yell, letting go of him and stepping back. Why would you do that to me?
And Cliff goes, “She said you didn’t love her anymore. She told me it was over.”
Grabbing him again and slamming him back against the wall, I take another swing, but this time I don’t hit him.
I shove my face right into his.
Ya know what, Cliff?
“What?”
You’re not even worth this.
I step back again.
Fuck you, man. Fuck both of you.
I wipe my face with my shirt and leave the trailer. Drive to the Waterfront. Inside I ask the hostess where Laura’s section is.
“She’s off.”
I thought she was closing.
“She switched with someone.”
Fuck.
I turn to leave.
“She’s still here though,” the hostess girl says. “She’s at the bar drinking with some people.”
Bursting through these two chandelier-lit dining rooms and into this other room where the bar is, I spot Laura right away. She’s seated at the bar with like six guys and one other girl.
I begin to make my way to where she is and she sees me and hops off her barstool and goes, “Hey!” Then she runs around the corner of the bar and tries to give me a hug, but I hold her off.
“What’s wrong, baby?”
You! Fuck! You stupid fuck!
I yank a glass off the bar and whip it to the ground, sending pieces everywhere.
“Travis!”
I hate you!
“What?”
How did it feel to have Cliff’s abortion? I scream at the top of my lungs before grabbing another glass and throwing it to the ground.
Laura covers her mouth and runs to where the bathrooms are. Everyone in the entire place is watching me, watching this, watching this whole thing unravel.
I have nothing.
Fuck you, Laura Kennedy! I yell as I turn around to leave. And then I pull fifty dollars from my wallet and toss it at the bartender.
For the glasses, I tell him, then run to my car.
34.
JUST OUTSIDE OF THE CITY, next to an abandoned motel called the Last Chance, on a road that had once been the city’s main point of entry before most of the big housing additions and the super interstate had been built, there is a sign that says EXIT HERE.
An arrow points down.
I pull my car to the shoulder of the road and shut it off.
Step outside.
It’s nighttime and the air feels so much better out here. It feels better than it does in the city. I think about lighting the joint I found in my glove compartment but decide not to, and I actually throw it into the ditch, then look back at the sign.
EXIT HERE.
My eyes follow the arrow down the sign’s legs and I see the dried remains of a flower bouquet still loosely attached to the sign by a metal band. It blows in the light breeze.
There must’ve been an accident here.
I wonder what happened, how many people died. I wonder what the articles said and if anyone was called a monster
and a killer and a murderer.
I close my eyes and inhale deeply.
I begin thinking that maybe going to USC is the right thing to do. Maybe if I leave again, I can forget that anything bad has happened to anyone.
Maybe if I leave again, I’ll be able to forget about everything.
35.
ALL MORNING I LIE IN bed, smoking cigarettes, drinking ater, watching over and over the part in the Vincent Gallo movie The Brown Bunny where Gallo gets head from Chloë Sevigny.
All afternoon I try to get ahold of Claire, screening phone calls, listening to the messages Laura leaves on my voice mail. Messages that are all basically the same thing: She needs to talk to me right away; it’s important that I call her back; she needs to explain a few things to me; she really does love me. . . .
I erase them all.
I stalk around my room. I take out this notebook and start writing things down.
Things like:
When I see her, I see need,
I see a black gift wrapped in pink paper,
I see a skeleton draped in red velvet,
I see a frown hiding in a smile,
I see filth and dirt, covered by a rose garden
I crib:
What the fuck is love anyway?
Is it a phone call the next morning?
Is it picking up a hundred-dollar-meal tab?
Is it flowers on the fifth date?
Or is it sleeping on the wet spot?
With my notebook in my lap, my left hand draped against the side of my face, I slam:
You are wrong to think I have no feelings,
You are wrong to think I would not care,
You are not sorry so don’t tell me that you are,
You are nothing to me, just some distant black star
I scribble:
July eighteenth.
Three forty-five in the afternoon.
A Team Sleep CD spinning around the player.
I have no one else but myself to blame.
This is all my fault.
It hurts.
It will always hurt.
I will never forget.
I could try, and I will try, but I will never forget.
It will burn in my memory forever.
Just like everything else.
I will not be able to put this away.
I write and I write and I write and even though it’s all horrible, it makes me feel better. It helps me calm down. So I keep going. I keep writing until Claire finally calls me back around seven. She’s back in town.
Will you meet me tonight? Like soon. Like at eight, Claire.
“Where do you want to meet?” she asks.
The Drunken Whale.
“At eight?”
Yes.
“Okay.”
Pause.
“Is there something wrong, Travis? You sound bad.”
No. I’m fine. Everything is great. Everything is perfect. I am fucking wonderful.
“You’re lying.”
How do you know?
“’Cause nobody in the world has ever felt that good, dude. Not even James Brown on grade-A coke has ever felt that fucking good.”
I laugh for the first time in days.
“I’ll see you in an hour,” she says.
• • •
I beat Claire to the bar and order a PBR and a shot of Jäger, and while I wait, this 311 song starts playing. It’s horrible. It hurts my ears.
I turn around in my seat.
Standing next to the jukebox is this kid with short spiked hair dyed blond. He’s wearing an American Eagle-type button-up shirt and baggie shorts with flip-flops on his feet. I watch him make another selection. Then he walks over to the pool table and starts talking with these three other guys who look just like him, who are probably his bros, who all probably have Bob Marley posters hanging above their beds, right in between the Dave Matthews and Jason Mraz ones.
When the bartender sets my drinks down, I ask him when the hell they added bad shit like 311 to their box.
You guys used to have one of the best jukeboxes in the city, I tell him.
“We didn’t add it,” he says, taking the five bucks I hand him. “We got one of those new Internet boxes a couple of weeks ago and now you can look up any band online from the bar.”
That sucks.
I slam the shot.
“Tell me about it,” he grimaces. “At least you don’t have to work here five nights a week.”
I take a drink of beer, make my way over to the box and pull out a five-dollar bill and slide it in.
According to the screen, I get ten picks.
This is what they are:
Van Halen, “Jump”
Scorpions, “Wind of Change”
Faith No More, “Epic”
Alice Cooper, “Eighteen”
Digital Underground, “Humpty Dance”
Kiss, “God of Thunder”
Alice in Chains, “Down in a Hole”
L.A. Guns, “The Ballad of Jayne”
Aerosmith, “Dream On”
Dio, “Rainbow in the Dark”
I go back to the bar and down the rest of my beer and light a cigarette.
Like a fucking rock star, Claire bursts into the joint strapped perfectly into this short pink dress with black lace trim all around the bottom and top of it. There’s a black skull and crossbones stitched near the bottom of the dress, on her upper thigh. Her forearms are draped with white fishnet sleeves, and she’s wearing a pair of black midcalf boots.
I slide around the stool to meet her and she throws her arms around my neck. “Muthafucka,” she says, stretching both words out.
Squeezing her back, the dry skin of my face pressed firmly against the soft, sweet, moist skin of hers, I tell Claire how glad, how really fucking glad, I am that she’s here with me right now.
You have no idea, I tell her.
“Awwwww,” she smiles. She kisses the corner of my mouth. “That’s so sweet.”
I let go of her and she plops down on the stool next to me. Turns to the bartender. “I’ll have a gin and tonic,” she says, showing him her fake.
The bartender winks and goes to work on it.
I ask Claire about the show in Chicago, right as the superlame Linkin Park song that douche bag picked to follow 311 turns into some awesome Van Halen.
“It was a blast,” she says, opening her purse, pulling out her Parliaments. “I had just gotten back to my place when you called again. But I’m so glad you did.”
The bartender sets Claire’s drink in front of her. “The first one is on the house, on me,” he grins.
“Awesome.” Claire winks, sliding three bucks over to the guy, who stuffs them into his tip jar.
My eyes flip back to Claire. Her legs are cocked wide. She lights a cigarette.
I say, You seem to be holding up well.
“I am,” she says. “Some days are better than others, obviously. I mean, Emily and I had become so close.” She stops for a moment, staring at the bar. “It’s like my right foot was chopped off, replaced with this completely useless left one.”
Pause.
“If that makes any sense.”
Van Halen flips into the Scorpions.
I guess it does.
Claire and I both take sips of our drinks.
“How are you doing?” she asks, arching her back, shaking her neck loose.
Pretty well until yesterday.
“What happened yesterday?”
I found out that Cliff fucked Laura while I was still with her.
“I fucking knew it!” Claire snorts.
What?
“Well, I didn’t—”
I cut her off.
You knew, Claire. And you didn’t tell me. What the hell?
“Travis, I didn’t know know.”
I choke down a mouthful of beer.
What does that mean?
“I didn’t know for sure or anything like that,” she says.
I roll my eyes.
“Just listen,” she pleads, putting a hand on my thigh. “A few months ago I saw Laura at the Glass Castle talking to Cliff. She looked superupset. So I asked her about him later that night, if they were sleeping with each other, and she freaked out on me. She started screaming that I was a horrible fucking person. Then she stormed out of the bar.” Claire stops to take another sip of her drink. “And after that I figured they’d at least done something, but I wasn’t sure, ya know, so I didn’t want to say anything to you.”
That’s not even all they did.
The Scorpions flip into Faith No More.
Chomping at the bit, Claire asks, “What else happened?”
I finish my beer and light a cigarette. I go, Laura got pregnant and had Cliff’s abortion.
“What?” Claire snaps, practically falling off the stool. “Are you fucking serious?”
Yep.
And Claire says, “Oh-my-fucking-god! I cannot believe that.”
Pause.
She flips her eyes toward the ceiling. “Well, I guess I sorta can.”
Pause.
She looks back at me. “But I’m so sorry for you,” she frowns. “I am.” She slams the rest of her gin and tonic. “I really feel horrible about it,” she swallows.
And that’s not all.
Claire’s jaw drops.
They got the money to pay for the abortion from me.
Claire yells, “What?” And all the other heads in the bar turn at us. “You’re not serious are you, Travis?”
I’m completely serious, Claire.
“How could you be the one to pay for it?”
Faith No More slams into Alice Cooper.
Claire and I both light cigarettes.
Cliff called me in March begging me, absolutely begging me, for three hundred dollars.
“And you gave it to him?” Claire snorts, jiggling her empty glass to get the bartender’s attention. “You gave Clifford Miles three hundred dollars.”
Pause.
“Dude.”
Pause.
“Why?”
My shoulders drop.
Because I thought he was in a lot of trouble, Claire. Because he was a friend.
The bartender walks over and Claire orders us both double whiskey sours.
“That’s good that you were trying to help him,” Claire snorts. “And I’ve always felt bad for him, knowing some of the shit his father put him through growing up. But still, it’s Cliff. You had to have known the money was for something shady.”