I got to Cogbill’s first. Everybody was staring at my face. I actually kind of enjoyed the attention. At least somebody around here was living life for once and this time it happened to be me. I went up to the bar and ordered an ice coffee from Craig the bartender dude.
“What the hell happened to you, bro?” he asked.
“Skiing accident.”
“In August?”
“Himalayas.”
“Seriously?”
“I got on the triple black diamond by mistake.”
“In August.” He smirked.
I sat there and downed my coffee in relative peace. Ben finally showed. He was dressed up like an astronaut, wearing a light navy jumpsuit with a NASA iron-on patch on the chest. His wispy little mustache was gone and he had a new short haircut. And he was carrying an old motorcycle helmet that had five or six old stove knobs and guitar amp volume knobs glued in a crazy row across the front above the visor.
“Man,” he said. “Jesus.”
“Let’s sit at a booth.”
“Damn, dude.”
So we sat at a booth, the astronaut and the guy-who-got-his-ass-kicked.
“What happened?”
“Well, I really fell off the wagon hard.”
“And landed face first, it looks like.”
“Thanks.”
“Are you okay? I mean…”
“No. Look at me. Not okay.” I shrugged. “So I take it you’re done with the cowboy thing? I’m gone for a few days and now you’re an astronaut?”
“I fixed the scooter,” he said, as if that somehow explained the change in outfits.
“Cool knobs.”
“Yeah? I thought you were just gonna give me shit about it.”
“No, I like it. Creative. You can use them to regulate your personal electricity.”
“My what?”
“Never mind.”
“You really got your ass kicked.”
“Well aware, thanks.”
“What the fuck happened?”
I let out a big black sigh. “I got drunk, acted like a jerk and some people beat me up.” I shrugged.
“What people?”
“My cousin’s friends.”
“He couldn’t do anything to stop it?”
“I don’t remember. I’m pretty sure that I wasn’t doing anything to stop it.”
“Sorry, dude.”
“It was my own stupid fault.”
We sat there and drank our respective beverages. I caught a couple of people staring at me, so I smiled and nodded their way.
“So, what all happened with the pervert guy?”
“You mind keeping it down a bit?”
So I told him about going to Motorcar’s and all about Shred and Farns showing up, the flare gun and mannequin rape scenario and bitch-slapping him and yelling “fuck you” and calling him a perv SOB and then going back and doing what I did.
“Totally ruins the car,” I said. “You just can’t get the smell out. And it’s his livelihood, so it…it may really fuck his life up.”
“That is sooo awesome,” Ben laughed. “You must feel a lot better now, huh?”
“Not really. I’m just glad the whole thing’s over. And I’m not in the hospital. Or in jail. Or in rehab.”
“Oh, man.”
“Or dead.”
“Maybe you should’ve gone ahead and killed him. That’d be, like, the most awesome redemption ever, dude.”
“I’m not even sure I wanted redemption. I think I just wanted the feeling of redemption.”
“Um…what’s the difference?”
“I have no idea. I’m not even sure what redemption even is. What are you redeeming, anyway? Coupons at the self-esteem outlet mall?”
Ben looked confused. I felt confused. He started rubbing his hands together and looking around. He started to say something but then he stopped.
“What?” I said.
“Nothing.”
We sat there for a while, looking vaguely up toward the ceiling.
“So…um…have you talked to Carly at all?”
“Nope. I’ve moved on, anyway, man. Met this totally cool girl in Richmond.”
“That’s good, that’s great.”
“She’s this awesome punker chick. Got tattoos and piercings and everything, but she’s actually kinda normal.”
“A punker chick is normal? Come on…”
“She’s a lot nicer than Carly, I’ll tell you that much.”
Ben studied my face. “Wow, man. I hate to have to say this, but…I might have to postpone your start-date at the call center.”
“Why?”
“Man…” He gestured vaguely at his own face.
“Why do I need a pretty face to talk to people on the phone?”
“Well, it’s a…I dunno. We’ll see, we’ll see.”
“We’ll see? It’s not like I’m sitting here flat broke or anything, Bucko Rogers.” Wow, I thought, that was a pretty sweet zinger.
“I’ll see what I can do, I’ll see what I can do.”
Ben started looking away and fidgeting. He swallowed hard a couple times.
“What’s wrong?”
He just looked at me. I could see stress building up in his eyes.
“What?”
“Well,” he said, “there is something we kinda need to…talk about. Probably.”
“What?”
His voice dropped. “I feel bad.”
“Why?”
“She didn’t…”
“She who? What the fuck are you talking about?”
He didn’t say anything. He looked like he was about to get hit by a bus.
Something was messed up.
“What!” People were looking at us.
“Man, dude, this is so…I dunno.” He took a deep a breath and let it out like it hurt.
“What? What?”
He swallowed. “The other night, me and my mom went to Eddie’s for dinner, and Carly was there drinking at the bar with some friend of hers. She seemed…pretty wasted.”
“And?”
“She said a few people we coming over to her apartment later to party and she asked me if I wanted to come too. So I said sure, why not? I dropped Mom off and went over there but when I got there Carly was just by herself…”
“No, you did not.”
“…acting all crazy and wasted.”
“You did!”
His face looked like he’d just chewed up a whole bag of lemons.
“She came on super strong and it just…it happened so fast.”
“Dude—I thought we were friends!”
He was barely looking at me. “I’m really fucking sorry, man.”
“You’re really fucking sorry? What kind of lame-ass apology is that?”
He shook his head. “I was hoping you wouldn’t take it so bad.”
“How the fuck did you expect me to take it?” My personal electricity instantly went nuclear, as in reactor core meltdown stage. “You disloyal fucking tool!” I yelled, slapping my hand down on the table. Then, without even thinking about it, I threw my ice coffee into his face. “Have a nice day, Captain Butt Wipe.”
I started to get up when somebody grabbed my shirt collar from behind and started pushing me toward the door.
“What the hell are you doing!” I yelled. “I’m not drunk!”
“Get out and don’t ever come back.” It was Craig the bartender.
“Who elected you mayor of Cogbill’s? Huh, dickface?”
He pushed me out and pulled the door shut. I got into the hot car and sat there baking in unreality. Things were strangely calm. I was pissed and felt completely insane, but somehow calm. I sat there for a minute and breathed. So my best friend stabs me in the back—how fitting for the most fucked-up week of my life. Then I pictured Carly and Ben having sex, but I stopped myself. Then I pictured it again—a straight-up horror movie. The furious death fumes were boiling to a whistle.
By the time I passed
the strip mall with the Korean cleaners and Baskin Robins I was cooled off, more or less. I was more mad about getting booted from Cogbill’s than anything else. Maybe I was too drained to be mad at Carly and Ben. Or maybe I just didn’t give a shit.
26
When I got home I made a strong pot of coffee, strong even for me. As in dark black. I did some stretches in the living room. My whole body hurt and my swamp gut was churning. Maybe Shred was right. Maybe coffee was destroying my stomach lining. In a flash of revelation I poured my cup out in the sink and then the whole rest of the pot too. It looked like slow-moving tar. This gut-worm thing I had, maybe it wasn’t some “nervous stomach syndrome” after all. It could totally be the coffee-and-tea-destroying-my-guts-syndrome! I swilled the stuff like water. What was it with me and liquids? I threw all my coffee beans into the trash and dumped out my iced tea mix. Empowerment was mine. I was going to quit caffeine and the idea was giving me new life.
The headaches started that afternoon. Sledgehammer specials. Über-brutal. But I took it. Took it like the Sheriff of Pain. It really put all my bruises, cuts, scabs, scrapes, ruptures, dents, knots, contusions and other wounds in perspective. Spent a lot of time massaging my temples. Three days of utter hell, during which time I was completely useless. At least it kept my mind off Carly and Ben, Motorcar, space robots and other bad things. Thinking hurt too much. Unless the topic was Summer. Oh, the sweet tattooed punker chick who liked country music and strange movies and kissed me. Crazy sweet little electric Summer! She made my headaches a bit less horrendous. I loved her, godammit! I wanted to share my news with her about quitting coffee. She’d be impressed followed by supportive. I wanted to sit on her couch and feast on lentil salad and take Klavin to an amusement park like we were his parents. I wanted to hold her and kiss her and thank her for all the moral support and the corkscrew. For teaching me that there was more to life than meets the neck. She was the non-beige creamy neon sex blossom wonder girl of my dream shire. But there I was, stuck in the beige suburbs. I didn’t even have her number. How could I be such an idiot for not getting her digits? I never felt so isolated. Life was going on in Richmond and I was missing it. Shred and Farns. Those guys were probably having a blast. Who could even guess what wacky new adventures they were already on. In their own sick way they really had my back. Hell, I was glad Farns shot Motorcar by his head with a flare gun. If it made Motorcar’s nauseating life pass before his eyes, then all the better. I got my bitch slap in. And maybe Farns did play a major role in my beat-down at the Ditch, but I was being an obnoxious drunk.
So I waited for the headaches to dissipate and dreamed about Summer and her luscious blue lips. She didn’t really have blue lips, that was just part of the fantasy. One of her mannequins probably had blue lips and that was close enough.
On the fourth day of the no coffee experiment, I got results—my swamp stomach was gone and my headaches were gone. It was unreal. Too good to be real. I had zero desire for coffee or tea. Still felt like I was floating through a sterile beige-hole of dullness and medicine fog, but without the constant stomach worms. I took a walk and breathed in the humid air and the pines. My life was a shit-mess but I felt somewhat awesome. I couldn’t tell for sure, but maybe somehow things were a bit different. I hadn’t fantasized about killing anyone in a while. I had no desire to burn or kill at all. Wasn’t bending over sideways trying to think up clever zingers to burn people with. I didn’t want to die. Didn’t even feel like sticking my head in the freezer. Something was happening. Was all this mentally healthy stuff I’d been trying to do starting to work? No. No fucking way. Nothing had changed. Who did I think I was kidding?
That day at about six, I heard a knock on the door. I knew it was Carly. It was her old after-work visiting time and I knew that knock. I wasn’t surprised. In a weird way, I’d been expecting her.
“Hi!” she said, beaming, her freshly lipsticked smile stretching the sides of her face to their limits.
“Can I help you?”
Her smile plummeted as she scanned my face. “What happened?”
“I got my ass kicked.”
“Oh, you poor thing!” She reached toward my face but I waved her off and stepped back.
“Eh, I’m fine.”
“Can I come in?”
I shrugged and she came in.
“So, what’s up?” I said.
“Oh, just wanted to stop by and say hi.” The smile was back.
“Hi.”
Then a silence descended on our conversation that was so dense and heavy you could’ve stabbed it with a machine gun. I held my ground and stared at her.
She finally said: “I’m sorry I didn’t return your calls.”
“Oh, okay.”
“And the texts. Sorry I didn’t write back to all the texts.” She put her hand on my wrist and I looked down at it. Then I looked back at her.
“Hm. So…how about Ben?”
The smile left again. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, since you’re handing out apologies, maybe you’d like to say sorry for fucking my best friend.”
She shook her head. “That was…we had broken up and I was just…I was feeling…”
“Lonely?”
“Yes.”
“Horseshit! Seriously.”
“I can’t believe he told you.”
“You know what, Carly? You know what you are? A loser. Yeah, that’s right. You’re a superficial, backstabbing loser.”
“Wait a second—you’re calling me a loser? That’s a good one.”
“You’re right. It is a good one. Because it’s true, loser. So why don’t you walk out that door, drive home and cook Ben some meats. Oh, wait—you already did that.”
“You’re disgusting.”
“See ya ’round, loser face.”
“Fuck you, Jarvis.”
“Have a great afternoon!”
“Your face looks like shit!”
I shut the door behind her and locked the dead-bolt. A warm wave of sweet triumph started washing over me, a feeling I’d never felt before. Where the fuck were those ice-hot zingers coming from? I felt purified somehow. I was so energized, I didn’t know what to do with myself. So I put on my running shoes and went for a high-speed, invigorating run. All the way to the lake and back. Then I did laundry. I did the fuck out of some laundry.
That night I slept better than I had in weeks. In months. Years. Freaking decades.
I was now officially on a roll. Got a new phone, reported my cards stolen and went to the bank to apply for a new debit card. While I was there I withdrew the majority of my balance, which wasn’t much. Then I went to the DMV to get my replacement license. I was kicking ass. Something must have been seriously wrong with me because the DMV wasn’t even that bad. I capped it off by going to the Patient First and getting my stitches out. The doctor asked me what happened and I told them I got into a fist fight with a gang of cinder blocks on a renegade escalator. He smirked and said: “Well, stranger things have happened.”
“No, they sure have.”
When I got home, I got a blank sheet of paper out of the printer and wrote a note:
Kenny –
Before I left I took twenty bucks out of your wallet so I could get gas money for the ride home and some coffee. Sorry, I’m an asshole. Here’s sixty. I hope this makes up for my shitty deed. Hope your leg gets better soon. And thanks for letting me stay there.
Peace off,
Jarvis
I had their address but I didn’t know Kenny’s last name, so I just addressed the envelope to “Kenny,” put the twenties in, stuck on a stamp and mailed it. My new phone had seven voicemails and three texts, so I got a nice tall glass of ice water and sat down on the couch to check them out. First voicemail was from Mom. She called while I was still in Richmond but after I’d lost the phone. She wanted to know how “Evan” was. The next three were from Ben, apologizing profusely. Each message was longer and more uncomfortable than the preceding
one. At least he didn’t say he was “fucking sorry” this time. All three texts were from him: 1: really sorry man, 2: let’s talk, and 3: dude I am soooo sorry bro! I figured I would forgive him one day, but I wasn’t ready yet. The next one was from Carly, but she hung up and didn’t say anything. Vindication is sweet. Another one from Ben, sounding like a wounded puppy. I was starting to feel bad for his sorry butt.
The last voicemail was from Shred.
“Hey, cuzzo. It’s Shredly. Hope you’re doing better. I mean, like, your face. Listen—gimme a call, man. I got something ass-wacky to tell you. Arright, later.”
I wondered how Shred could tell me anything not ass-wacky. Of all the messages, he was the only one I wanted to call back. So I did.
“Hey, Shred. It’s Jarvis.”
“Hey man! How the crap are you?”
“Not too crap bad. You?”
“Okay, okay,” he said, sounding chipper. “How’s your face?”
“It’s still here on the front of my head, last I checked. My ribs still hurt. And my shoulder. And my neck. And my face.”
“Man, that blows.”
“So what’s your thing you have to tell me? Farns get arrested or something?”
“Dude, check it out: yesterday Kenny’s family came and did an intervention on his ass.”
“Seriously?”
“Threw him into fucking rehab.”
“For the painkillers, I guess?”
“Huh. Painkillers, beer, liquor, bong-hits, skydiving, you name it.”
“Skydiving?”
“Adrenaline junkie.”
“Ah.”
“I was actually getting a little sick of his sitting around moping like a seven-year-old girl who lost her dolly.”
It made me feel good to hear Shred criticize him. “Yeah—what’s his problem, anyhow?”
“I don’t know what his deal is. Leg was crushed pretty bad, but he’s always been, what’s the word I’m looking for...”
“An asshole?”
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