by Jason Myers
Dropping the cigarettes in between us, I push my hands through my hair and lean back and close my eyes.
But the thought that Cliff’s still watching me, standing all alone, just staring at me, makes me uneasy, so I start my car and drive Claire back to her apartment.
Only once we’re there, she will not wake up. I shake her and say her name and even try tickling her stomach but none of it works. So I step out of the car and walk around to her door and pull her outside and stand her up. I dig through Claire’s purse until I find her keys. Then I hoist her off her feet, draping and folding her over my shoulder very carefully, like a towel made of diamonds, and carry her up to her room.
And when I lay Claire gently onto her bed, her eyes open briefly, and she smiles, and she says, “I love you, Travis.”
I know you do.
Claire scoots a pillow under her head. “You promised me,” she says.
What’s that?
“You promised you wouldn’t leave again.”
I know I did.
Claire’s smile fades as her eyes drift shut again, and once I’m through covering her with a sheet, I kill the lights and walk out to the living room.
I drop to the couch and turn on the TV and pass out at some point while watching License to Drive on the USA network.
36.
I LEAVE CLAIRE’S THE NEXT morning while she’s still asleep and drive home, and when I turn into my parents’ driveway, I about run smack into Laura’s car, which is pulling out of it.
I give her the finger and race to the top of the driveway and bring my car to a stop and step outside.
Laura does that same thing. She steps out of her seventeenth-birthday present, saying, “Travis, do not go inside. I need to talk to you. I have to explain to you what happened.”
Jesus Christ, Laura. I know what happened. You screwed my best friend and I paid for your abortion.
I turn my back to her and continue for the front door.
“Travis!” she screams at the top of her lungs.
I stop. My ears are ringing.
“Please hear me out,” Laura begs. “Please listen to what I have to say.”
I don’t want to at all. I do not want to listen to anyone anymore. But I turn back around to face Laura, who folds her arms across her body and walks toward me, shaking.
Go ahead, Laura. Talk.
Laura stops at the bottom of the front steps and takes off her sunglasses. Her eyes are red. “Nothing,” she starts. “Nothing I could say to you right now would even begin to let you understand how I, me, Laura, your fucking girlfriend, was feeling when Cliff and I did what we did.”
Did what you did.
My face is bright red.
You two fucked, okay. Just say it! You guys fucked while we were still together.
“I didn’t know that, Travis. I didn’t know we were still a couple.”
Bullshit.
Laura grabs her hair. She fakes like she’s pulling it out. “Baby, if I’d actually thought that you and I were still going out, or that you weren’t doing the exact same thing to me, then I would’ve never let Cliff near me.”
No, fuck that! That makes no sense, Laura, because if you were really thinking that way, then why would you call me in Arizona and break up with me?
Laura presses her fingers into her forehead. “Because I wanted you to know that for once I wasn’t going to wait for you to tell me everything was all right. That you and I were still cool,” she snorts.
That’s a bullshit answer, Laura.
“It’s the truth,” she sneers.
The truth.
I wipe the sweat from my face with my shirt.
The truth is so beyond you at this point. The truth is something you obviously can’t get a handle on.
“And you can?” she asks.
No. I don’t think any of us can.
Along moment of silence. The two of us stare at each other.
You broke my heart, Laura.
“And you broke mine,” she says. “I was your girlfriend, Travis. Do you understand how bad it hurt when you quit talking to me? You didn’t even tell me what was going on. I had no idea what you were thinking.”
Because I didn’t either.
“Why couldn’t you have just called me back?” She starts to cry. “I was so happy and then you made me hate myself. I hated myself, Travis!”
Don’t try to pin that crap on me. I am not the one who made you feel that way, Laura. You’ve hated yourself since before we were ever together.
I turn around again and reach for the front door handle and Laura grabs on to me.
“Don’t leave me,” she pleads.
I swing around.
Get your fucking hands off of me.
“Don’t be like this,” she screeches.
I knock her hands down, grab her arms and start shaking her.
Don’t you get it, Laura? You mean nothing to me anymore.
“I do too.”
You’re dead to me.
I press down on her arms even harder.
You are nothing, Laura.
“Travis, quit it. You’re hurting me.”
Nothing we had means anything anymore.
I’m shaking Laura so hard that her entire body pounds back and forth, carving the humid block of air around us into soft pieces of breeze.
“Let go of me, Travis.”
Not until you tell me that you are nothing.
“Travis, let go.”
Tell me, Laura.
“Travis.” Laura throws her arms into the air, destroying my grip. But her momentum carries her backward. She loses her balance and tumbles down the stairs.
You are dead to me.
Laura lies there weeping.
I hate you.
“I’m sorry.”
I hate you.
“I didn’t mean for this to happen.”
I push the door open.
“Travis.”
You are an ugly fucking person.
I step into the house.
“Well, fine then!” she screams, as I face her one last time. “Be that way, you small-dick faggot! See if I care. Cliff was much more of a man than you’ll ever be.”
I slam the door shut as hard as I can. Picture frames rattle. I light a cigarette.
Inhale.
Exhale.
37.
I WAKE UP FROM A nap later that afternoon, shivering and sweating and breathing so heavily that my chest hurts.
I’m scared.
My bad dreams are back.
I lift the sheet that’s covering me and look at my jeans and they are soaking wet from me pissing myself.
I slide the jeans off and get out of bed and walk to my closet and my stomach turns violently. My bowels start to move. Sprinting out of my room, I blaze down the hall and duck into the bathroom, slamming onto the toilet.
My asshole opens and shit starts falling out of it so hard that the toilet water splashes against my butt.
There’s a knock at the door.
I’m busy.
“Travis.” It’s my sister. “I need to talk to you.”
I’m busy.
“I have to talk to you now,” my sister says, then opens the unlocked door and walks in wearing a blue shirt with an image of Gwen Stefani on the front of it.
I cover myself as best I can.
Get out of here.
“No.” She storms across the room, stopping like five feet from me. “Did you tell Mom that I’ve been doing drugs?”
No. Now get out.
“Bullshit,” my sister snaps, fanning the air in front of her face. “Don’t lie to me.”
I’m not.
I fart loudly and more shit falls and more water splashes.
Now get out.
“You’re lying. Mom told me she talked to you about what I’ve been doing and then she asked me if I’ve been abusing drugs.”
She’s worried about you, that’s all. Now leave.
“So you did tell her.”
No, I told her I didn’t know shit and that she needed to ask you.
More shit comes out and I feel clumps of it sliding and falling off the lower parts of my butt.
Exhaling loudly, my sister sneers, “You stupid fucking asshole. Why didn’t you just tell her I wasn’t doing anything at all. Now Mom and Dad are saying they may not let me get my license when I turn sixteen next month because I might be using.”
I’m sorry.
“I hate you.”
I thought you already did.
“You are so pathetic. Look at yourself.”
I’m going to the bathroom.
“No,” my sister snorts. “Look at your life. You dropped out of school. You don’t have a job. You live at home. And your girlfriend of five years had your best friend’s abortion.”
My shoulders tense.
How did you find out about that?
“Katie told me. She was half asleep in the back room of the trailer when you went over there. She heard everything and now everyone knows!”
I want to stand up and shove my sister out of the room but I can’t.
“You big loser. Your life sucks so bad.”
I rip a huge fart and more poop tumbles out.
Just leave me alone.
“Gladly,” my sister says, smiling, fanning the air again.
I take a deep breath.
She exits the bathroom.
And I want to start crying, but I can’t figure out how to.
And then more shit falls out.
38.
“DUDE, IT COULD BE WORSE. You could’ve been one of the chicks that had to kiss Corky Thatcher in an episode of Life Goes On,” Michael snorts from the other end of the phone. “You could’ve been the other kid at summer camp who got molested with Wesley in that really awkward episode of Mr. Belvedere, brah.”
Fuck you, Michael.
And Michael says, “Hold up.”
He goes, “Dave says you could’ve been one of those guys who ‘pretended’ they were all into Natalie from The Facts of Life just so they could get superclose to Blair.”
I start laughing, which is the whole point of this conversation. Them cheering me up. Because according to Michael, things could be a lot fucking worse. According to Michael, I could be the dude who played Boner on Growing Pains, twenty years later. He says, “Not being able to get another acting gig. Falling completely off the face of the earth. Becoming so irrelevant, not even jokes about you make much sense.”
It could be a whole lot worse for me, according to Dave, because instead of finding out that I paid for my girlfriend to have my best friend’s abortion, I could’ve found out that my mom had been a groupie on the tour that Joey Lawrence did to promote his very first CD, Soulmates, and this, according to Dave, through Michael, would be much, much worse.
I’m laughing so hard, my body hurts.
That’s awesome.
“Of course it is,” says Michael.
And I say, But I’m still mad. I’m still pissed off.
“Dude,” Michael snorts. “What did you really expect? I mean, if Laura’s naive enough to spend three straight nights going to Björk shows in Chicago with her ironically hipster boyfriend, then she’s obviously naive enough to bang Cliff without any protection.”
But Cliff was my friend, Michael.
“So. He was my friend too. But that still doesn’t change the fact that he’s a fucking bastard. Don’t you remember like two summers ago when his old man got trashed and burnt him with a cigar before the three of us went to a party?”
I remember.
“And at the party, you remember what Cliff did?”
Pause.
Yeah.
“He put that chick’s cat into a microwave and cooked it.”
I said I remember, Michael.
“Cliff’s a scumbag.”
I don’t say anything.
And Michael says, “What are you doing tonight?”
I wanna party. I wanna try to forget about all of this for a few hours.
“Righteous. That’s what Dave and I are doing right now. We’re partying. Trying to forget about shit. You should drop into the new pad and kick it with us.”
Cool. I’ll be right over.
• • •
I show up at Michael and Dave’s crib around ten, wearing a pair of dark blue Levi’s and a plain white T-shirt.
Dave answers the door in a pink T-shirt that says “I Heart Izzy Stradlin” on it. He smiles and gives me a hug and says, “I hope you feel better now.”
Yeah, man. Thanks.
I follow Dave down this long hallway plastered with posters then into this huge living room aligned with three bay windows that overlook Kennedy Street.
The Bronx are blasting from the computer sitting on the desk to my left, and Michael is sitting on a bright red couch in the middle of the room, talking to a couple of kids I’ve never seen before, who look young—like fifteen, sixteen young—and who are seated on the sofa to his left.
“What up, what up,” Michael shouts, turning his head.
I like it, man.
Michael looks back at the kids on the couch. He gives them some coke. They give him some money. Then they get up and leave.
I sit down on the couch to his right after bumping fists with him, and Michael says, “Those two kids have been up partying since last night. I was in the bathroom doing bumps at this girl’s house in Little Minneapolis and they walked in and wanted to buy some coke. And the one who was wearing the shirt that said “Fuck You, Mom,” he was like, ‘I’ve never done it before—what’s it like?’ and I thought about it for a minute, then said, ‘Imagine having to say something so bad, worse than at any other moment in your entire life, and then imagine finally getting the chance to say it to everyone, only no one is listening because they’re saying the most important thing of their lives at the same time. It’s kinda like that.’ ”
I start laughing.
That’s awesome, dude.
And Michael goes, “Anyway. Welcome to the new palace, Mr. Wayne.”
Dave sits down across from me, right next to the huge television and entertainment system.
I say, This is the dream, man. This is what everyone wants.
“This, and a threesome with those gnar babes in t.A.T.u.,” Michael smirks, leaning forward in his charcoal colored jeans and black Hüsker Dü shirt. He grabs a can of Budweiser from the case sitting on the floor and hands me one.
I open it and take a drink, and pull my wallet out and grab two hundred dollars out of the three hundred I pulled from the ATM on my way over, and set it down on the coffee table in between the three sofas.
Let’s do this, boys.
Michael and Dave smile at each other. Michael tosses five baggies of coke at me.
Putting three of them into my wallet, I take the other two and dump them into one big pile on this pretty big mirror. Then I pick up one of the three razor blades lying at the top of the mirror and begin cutting.
“Do you wanna go to this party tonight on Baltimore and Twenty-eighth?” Michael asks. He picks up a flyer from the coffee table and hands it to me. “My presence has been requested.”
By who?
“Every coke head in this fucking city,” he snaps.
I look at the flyer. There’s a picture of a girl in a bra and underwear. She’s wearing a crown on her head and underneath the picture it says:
Delila—Katie—and Page
present the first annual
It’s Getting Hot In Here,
So Take Off All Your Clothes Party
Then:
Fuck The Heat! It’s Our Treat!
Free Kegs—Jungle Juice—And Wet The Bed While It Lasts!
Cool.
Then I slide a line from the pile and ask them how long they’ve been blowing rails today.
“Since we were at the studio trying to practice,” Dave snorts.
I chop another line from the pile
.
Trying?
And Michael goes, “We didn’t get shit done. Thomas and Rodney showed up straight from an all-nighter, and two songs into practice, I look up from my drum set and Thomas is sitting in a chair passed out.”
From being up all night?
I slide another line from the pile.
“No. From being fat. He’s fat and he ran out of oxygen while he was singing and passed out for almost ten minutes, and by the time we revived him and went around the room sharing our own special experiences about what had just happened, none of us felt like playing anymore so we started doing drugs,” Michael says, answering his cell phone.
I make a third line and put the mirror on the table.
And Dave says, “Travis, you know what you need to do now?”
What’s that?
“You need to fuck one of Laura’s friends, take some photos of yourself while you’re doing it, and MySpace them to her.”
I take a drink of beer.
I probably won’t do that.
Grabbing this black straw with Michael’s name engraved into it, I do a line and the tension falls from my body immediately.
Michael sets his phone down. “Holy shit,” he sneers. “That was April. Chris got his ass kicked by April’s dad and is in the hospital with some broken ribs and a concussion.”
What’d he kick Chris’s ass for?
“She said it was because he found out it was Chris who knocked her up, so he went over to Chris’s house and beat up on him.” Michael picks up the mirror and does a rail.
I say, So Chris is the father.
“Duh, Trav. That’s what I just said. Were you listening to me at all or were you thinking about Laura.”
Shut up, man.
Pause.
Should we go to the hospital?
“Fuck no,” Michael smirks. “Fuck that piece of shit.”
Dude, I say.
Michael turns to me. “Don’t, dude me, Travis. Fuck that. Besides the fact that he ripped on you every time you weren’t around, he came over here to score some shit the other day and snapped on me while we were passing a baggie around.”
For what?
“I told him that he and April should name their kid Cheese Sandwich and he completely freaked out on me. He put me in a choke hold and pinned me against the wall.”