by Jason Myers
All the bands are in one big room.
The room has purple walls covered with graffiti, three leather sofas, a fridge, a CD player, and a long table with a glass top.
When I enter the room, Michael’s like, “There he is, the man who will someday own everything.” He introduces me to the girls and guys from the other bands, my eyes fixed on the girl from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs cover band, Modern Romance.
She really looks like she wants to look like Karen O. For a moment I even think it is Karen O in the flesh.
But it’s not.
The girl’s name is Rachael. And her band is from Chicago. And tonight Rachael is wearing a shiny red tank top with yellow Xs all over the front of it and leather gloves on both her hands, and her jet black hair is much shorter than most of the other girls I’ve seen tonight, hanging just below her ears. Rachael also has on a pair of black jeans and a red and yellow belt, and she has a purple streak running from one eye to the other.
I shake her hand and she says, “Michael was just telling us that your dad owns like sixty percent of the city.”
I look at Michael, who’s holding two grams of blow between his fingers, and he shrugs. Says, “It might be more like seventy-five percent.”
None of that’s important.
“Sure it is,” Rachael says. “Someday you’re gonna own this whole damn place.”
I don’t say anything.
And she’s like, “Do you have a cigarette?”
I fish one out and light it for her.
Michael dumps both grams onto the glass tabletop and goes, “Scarface!” Then he drops his face right into the pile and shoots back up. “You guys can cut the rest of that shit up and do whatever you want with it,” he says.
I light my own smoke.
“Trav,” Michael says. “Make sure you do some of my free drugs.”
Nah, I’m good.
“What? No. Fuck you. Do my shit. Don’t disrespect me by turning my goodwill down.”
I’m just drinking tonight, Michael.
“Asshole!” he screams, wiping the coke residue off with his fingers. He rubs his fingers against his gums. The whole room gets really quiet. “You don’t come back here and not do what I give you to do.”
Fuck you, Michael.
“Fuck me?” he says. “No, fuck you. Get the hell out of here.”
I smirk and look back at Rachael and take a swig of beer.
“I’m serious, big shot! Get out of this room. You’re being an ungrateful piece of shit and ungrateful pieces of shit make me come down, so leave.”
“Dude, chill out,” Dave snaps. “He doesn’t want your drugs.”
Michael turns to Dave. “Stay out of this, Dave. He either wants my drugs or he wants to leave the room.”
Pause.
He takes a huge pull from the bottle of Jack Daniel’s in his hand and some of it runs down the sides of his face. “If you’re gonna act like a faggot, Travis, I’m gonna treat you like one, so what’s it gonna be?”
I’ll leave.
I slam the rest of my beer. Whip the empty can against the wall and tell everyone else, Have a good show.
“Get out, fag,” Michael says.
Fuck you, Michael. I’m moving to LA anyway.
I flick my smoke to the floor.
Fuck you, man.
“Faggot,” he yells, then takes a swig and spits it at me, most of it missing, but some of it spraying against my skin.
I shake my head and flip him off and leave the bar.
Walking to my car, I run into Claire like a block away.
She’s walking to the show with Skylar, and the two girls I saw her modeling Skylar’s clothes with way back in June.
I try to avoid her by looking down at the sidewalk, pretending I don’t hear her going, “Travis, hi. Dude. Travis.”
But it doesn’t work because she grabs me as I’m passing her. “Travis,” she snaps.
I tilt my head up and look at her. I glare at Claire.
Claire with her blond hair done up in short pigtails.
Claire with a brand-new tattoo on her left arm of Dennis Hopper, holding an oxygen mask over his face from Blue Velvet.
Claire looking amazing, stuffed into a pink dress with white polka dots all over it, a pair of white and pink socks pulled to her knees, and a pair of black Chuck Taylors strapped to her feet.
“Where are you going, Travis?” she asks.
I’m going home. I’m over it already.
“What for? Didn’t the doors just open?”
I knock her hand away and step back.
I don’t know if they did. I don’t know when the fucking doors opened.
“What’s wrong with you, Travis?” She tries to grab me again.
Don’t touch me, Claire.
I take another couple of steps back.
You don’t have any business asking me why I’m leaving, not after the other night when you left me.
Claire turns to her friends. “I’ll meet you guys by the front door, okay?”
The three of them walk away from the two of us.
Claire pulls two cigarettes from her black purse, handing me one and lighting hers. I light mine.
“I’m sorry I left you the other night,” she tells me. “I totally am. But I was embarrassed as shit.”
I don’t care what you were. You bailed.
“I’m sorry.”
Fuck your apologies, Claire. Fuck everyone’s apologies. I’m sick of hearing them. No one is sorry about anything. None of us care that much to be sorry about anything.
Claire shakes her head. “You’re wrong, Travis.”
No I’m not.
Complete silence passes.
And Claire goes, “What happened inside? You looked really pissed walking away from the club.”
I take a drag and look at the ground.
Michael and I got into it in the back room. I’m sure he was just trying to mess with me and I took it all seriously.
I look up at Claire again.
But who knows. I might be losing it. I’m completely on edge right now.
“I can see that.” She reaches out and grabs me again and this time I let her because it feels too nice to stop her. “Do you wanna kick it with me tonight?” she asks.
I’m not going back in there.
“No, we can go back to my crib. I’ll tell the girls—they won’t care. Skylar drove, so I can ride with you.”
Finishing my smoke, I tell Claire that I don’t want to fuck her plans up.
You shouldn’t have to bail on your friends because of me, I say.
“I’d rather hang with you, though. You’re moving soon.”
Pause.
She squeezes my wrist.
“Okay?”
Fine.
Claire tosses her smoke and tells me she’ll be back in a sec, then bolts for the club, and I stand there all alone, looking around, feeling uneasy.
Thoughts of my sister in rehab pound through my skull.
I wonder what Cliff is doing.
I wonder where he is.
I wonder if Cliff is even alive.
A thought of him and Katie, sleeping in a car somewhere in the middle of nowhere, smashes through my head, but disappears quickly when I hear this girl freaking out.
She’s walking from the Glass Castle with a friend, crying hysterically, and her friend has an arm around her and is telling the crying girl that everything is going to be okay.
“No it’s not,” the crying girl sobs. “I spent ten hours getting ready for tonight.”
“That guy judging the outfits didn’t know what he was talking about, sweetie,” the friend says.
And the crying girl sobs, “He told me I looked like a PG version of Ashlee Simpson. I’ll never get over that for as long as I live.”
“Yes you will,” her friend goes. “I think you look good. You look more like Karen O than Karen O does.”
And the crying girl says, “You really think?”
“Um, of course I do,” her friend says as they turn a corner.
Claire comes back. “You ready to go?” she asks me.
If you are.
“Let’s do it,” she says in a deep, manly tone. Then she hooks an arm through one of mine and we walk to my car.
46.
HARDLY A WORD GETS SPOKEN during the ride. We fill the silence with a Sparklehorse CD, smoking cigarettes, rolling through the neon glow of the city, all the way to Claire’s.
I follow her inside and she takes my hand and leads me into her room and shuts the door behind her.
A minute later it begins.
She takes my shirt off and kisses my chest and my stomach and then I push the dress straps off her shoulders, sliding the dress all the way down to her feet and she steps out of it, one foot at a time.
We kiss slowly and we don’t look each other in the eye and then I grab the back of her thighs, her warm, soft skin squishing between my fingers. I lift her up. She wraps her legs around my waist, and I lay her gently onto the bed.
“Do you have protection?” she asks.
I close my mouth and nod. I unbutton my jeans and roll them off.
Claire grabs my shoulders. “I’m already wet. You can put yourself in anytime you want,” she tells me, smiling.
Whatever you say, Claire.
I reach into my wallet and pull a condom out and slide it on and shake my shoulders out.
“Just relax, baby” she says. “Take your time.”
Making fists with my hands, I drop them both into the pillow, right above her shoulders, and scoot close enough to rub the tip of myself against her.
This is when I look Claire in the eyes.
She smiles and she nods, and then I slide myself inside of her, and the two of us have amazing sex.
47.
AROUND ONE IN THE MORNING it begins to rain, The soft pitter-pattering sound of the raindrops caressing Claire’s windows.
I lie in her bed, shirtless, smoking a cigarette, listening to the Team Sleep CD she put in before leaving to go to the bathroom.
Part of me thinks I should go home—that it can’t get better than it has during the past four hours, but another part of me, the stronger part of me, thinks I should stay—that I need this and that being alone is not a good idea.
Claire pops back into the room in her pajamas. She climbs back into bed, setting a pillow on my lap. Burying her head in it, she goes, “I’m exhausted. Are you sleepy yet, Travis?”
I’m beat.
“Let’s go to bed.”
My throat tightens.
I don’t wanna sleep anymore.
Claire pushes herself up. “But you’re tired.”
I know I am.
Her eyebrows rise. “I don’t understand,” she yawns, patting her mouth with an open hand. “Do you want to leave? Is that what you’re saying?”
No. I wanna be here with you, Claire.
“Let’s go to sleep then. Pleeeeease.” She makes this pouty face.
I drop my cigarette into an empty wine bottle sitting on the floor next to the bed and rub my face.
I’m afraid to.
Claire moves the pillow to her side of the bed. “Afraid to do what?”
To sleep. I’m afraid that if I fall asleep, I’ll lose this feeling. I’ll start dreaming and everything good that’s just happened will mean nothing.
Claire reaches into her nightstand and grabs a small sack of pot. “Do you want to smoke some of this? It’ll help you relax.”
I knock it away.
I don’t want drugs right now, Claire. I don’t know if I want drugs ever again.
She drops the pot on top of her nightstand and says, “What’s wrong with you? Why are you afraid to sleep?”
’Cause I might dream.
“Why are you afraid to dream?”
Pause.
This huge chill runs down my back. My hair stands straight up and I start shaking.
Claire leans over and runs a hand through my hair. She kisses my shoulder. “Tell me what’s wrong, Travis.”
I inhale and hold my breath and when I exhale, I tell Claire, It’s this dream I’ve been having.
“What about it?”
It started the night I left Hawaii and it’s barely stopped since.
“How does it go?”
It’s not important how it goes.
I pull a blanket over me.
It’s what happened in Hawaii. That’s what’s important.
“Tell me, then,” Claire says.
I pull the blanket back down and swing my legs over the side of the bed and lean forward. Drop my face into my hands.
“Travis.”
It wasn’t my fault, Claire.
“What wasn’t?”
What happened to that girl.
“What girl?”
I flip around and face Claire, who looks startled, almost scared.
The girl I met in Hawaii. Autumn Hayes.
“What happened to the girl, Travis?”
I don’t know for sure. I don’t remember.
Claire leans over and kisses my forehead. “Tell me what you do remember,” she says.
And this is when I finally let it out of me. I finally open up. I tell Claire the story as best as I can remember it.
I say:
It was my last night in Maui. I met this girl on the beach. She was really pretty. Her name was Autumn. Anyway, we started talking and she invited me to her motel room, which was in like some piece-of-crap economy building. On the way there, she told me that she’d been in Maui for almost a week and that the friends she’d come with had split two days earlier because one of them had gotten food poisoning or something and the other one missed her boyfriend. I don’t really know.
What I do remember is that right when we got there, she started doing all sorts of crazy shit. She was taking coke hits, shooting speedballs, just mixing everything together. So I started getting into it with her. We started going at it, going all crazy, getting really aggressive, but then I couldn’t get it up and she pushed me off of her and told me to take a break. I grabbed this bottle of lotion sitting next to her bags, and I started stroking myself while she shot another speedball.
I stop for a moment to catch my breath.
I feel like crying.
I look at Claire and she says, “Let it out, Travis.”
So I do. I keep going:
That was when I kind of lost it. I like spaced out for a minute. It was weird. But when I came to, I was hard and ready to go, so I went back to the bed and crawled on top of her.
I hold my hands over my mouth and shake my head.
I go:
I could’ve sworn she was breathing, Claire. I mean, I heard her moaning while I was inside of her. I heard her! But when I finished, I rolled over and passed out, and when I woke up the next morning, she was still lying in the same spot and there was puke and blood on her chest and these gnarly hand marks all over her neck. Her eyes were closed, all normal, but her skin was cold. I tried everything to wake her up but she wouldn’t move, and I got scared. I was still jacked. So I threw on my clothes and slipped out of the room and I left her there.
Claire is glaring at me. “Are you lying to me, Travis? Please tell me you’re lying to me.”
I can’t tell you that. I’m not lying.
Claire pounds her mattress. “Did you kill that girl, Travis?”
No, Claire. I don’t think so.
“How do you know you didn’t?”
Because she might’ve ODed. She had to have.
“You don’t know that, Travis. You could’ve killed her.”
Maybe.
“And no one’s looked for you at all?” she asks.
I don’t think anyone saw me. I don’t think anyone cares. I haven’t heard anything about it in the news at all. Nothing.
Claire squints. “That’s really weird.”
I shrug.
Pause.
And that’s why I don’t want to sleep. Because I’ll dream about the girl in Hawaii and I know I did something fucked up, but it wasn’t my fault.
“Yes it was.”
What?
“Travis,” she shrieks. “You might’ve killed that girl. It is your fault.” She covers her mouth. “Oh my god.”
Claire.
I reach for her but she moves away from me.
Claire.
“Travis,” she says, getting to her feet. “You have to leave. You can’t be here. I don’t want you here.”
But I—
“Leave!” she screams. “I can’t believe you did that!”
I don’t know what I did.
“You left! You fucked that girl up and you left. Get out of here!”
I stand up, tears rolling down my face.
What are you going to do?
“I don’t know,” she says.
Are you going to tell anyone?
“I don’t know. Just leave!”
Don’t tell anyone, Claire. Please. Please don’t tell anyone else.
“Travis, I—”
Please, Claire, I beg again.
She runs a hand over her face.
Please.
“Fine, Travis. I won’t. But you need to leave my place right now. Go!”
Okay, Claire. I’m sorry.
“Apologies don’t mean shit, Travis. That’s what you just told me.”
48.
IT’S JUST AFTER EIGHT IN the morning and I’m still awake, lying in my bed, listening to my mother crying about my sister in the next room.
I’m cold and I’m sweating and I use my T-shirt to dry my face off, and then I put my head back down and stare at the ceiling and try to relax.
Everything has gotten worse.
Inhale. Exhale.
My eyes find a spider.
It’s a big black one and it’s inching across the ceiling, trying to get back to its web, and it’s actually doing pretty well, going really strong, until it gets too close to the air vent then—
WHOOSH.
It gets blown away, just like that.
All of that work and all of that time just for nothing, and maybe that’s how things have to be sometimes.
And it’s right now, at this exact moment, when I finally make a real choice, a real fucking decision.
I finally figure out what really needs to be done next.