Pharmakon

by Dirk Wittenborn

  As I ran by her, I could see the blonde down of her unshaved armpits. For a heartbeat I was close enough to imagine what it would be like to count the freckles that dappled the hollow of her belly just below her right hip. Before I had time to ponder the weight of that fantasy, my legs had carried me past her. Now there was nothing but the empty road and the race ahead.

  Of course, I had to look back. I was still running, but instead of looking where I was going, I was reexamining what I had passed by. She was looking at me now, then she waved. If it had been a friendly, up-in-the-air wave, a “hello, see you around” wave, it would have been easier to resist. But it was a low-armed, lazy wiggle of the fingers. Subtext: Don’t even think about it.

  Still, I kept running. It wasn’t until I heard her laugh that I stumbled. At first, she laughed because I was out there on a beautiful day busting my ass running. After I lost my footing she laughed because I was lying facedown in a mud puddle. When I got to my feet and turned to demand “What’s the joke?” she had disappeared.

  My brother’s chronometer weighed on my wrist. I checked my time. I’d lost less than three minutes. I still had a chance to show my character. I did when I ran back to the stretch of the wall where I’d seen/imagined her standing. There was no sign of her. I was disappointed and yet relieved to know that, once and for all, I did have a screw loose.

  I was just about to start running when I heard her voice echo up from a grassy berm on the other side of the wall. She was singing “Sunshine of Your Love.”

  First her head, then her body, surfaced on the far side of the berm. She walked in time to Cream as she crossed a stretch of lawn, as flat and green and chancy as the felt on a poker table. Unlike me, she didn’t look back. My eyes stayed on her even after she disappeared amid the ornamental shrubbery in the distance.

  My thirty minutes were up by then. The race wasn’t over, it was lost. Mind, body, and heart too weak to stay the course; I retraced my steps and headed back to school. When I got to the field house, my brother was the only one still waiting.

  “What happened?” he called out.

  I feigned a limp as I answered, “I sprained my ankle.” I had no intention of telling Willy what had really happened, in part because I was embarrassed, but mostly because I did not want to share her.

  “You’ll do better next time.”

  “I hope so.”

  The sprained ankle I didn’t have got me out of track practice. The next day, as soon as my brother and the rest of the team took off after Coach Wyler on his bike, I slipped out of the school grounds and took off down 512 toward the stretch of road where I had first seen the sunshine of my love.

  She wasn’t there. I ran my hands over the stones where she had stood, barefoot and life changing, and reimagined it. When it began to rain, I still waited for her to appear. She didn’t, but I was glad I had made the pilgrimage. For if I hadn’t, I would have been convinced she was waiting for me and that I’d blown yet another challenge.

  The next day, I continued my deception. Struggling to remember which ankle I supposedly had sprained, I limped through my classes. At three o’clock, I again waved good-bye to my brother and teammates, then immediately snuck off. Changing into my track shorts in the woods so as not to sweat through my school clothes and give myself away, I ran my own race back to the wall.

  This time, I was in luck, or so I thought. After fifteen, twenty minutes of peering over her wall, scanning the horizon, as nervous and anxious as the teenage Green Beret sniper I saw Dan Rather interview on last night’s news from Vietnam, I caught sight of her. I heard her calling for somebody named “Bill.” I was jealous until I realized Bill was a dog that looked to be a golden Lab. She wasn’t wearing her bikini top, but it was still nice to see her. I have a distinct memory of envying Bill as she bent down to rub his stomach.

  Not knowing what I could or should say to her, I ducked down behind the wall and hid. Knowing I was there, she punished me with a song. “In-a-gadda-da-vida, baby/Don’t you know that I love you?” She was singing Iron Butterfly. But she was still the sunshine of my love.

  Low as the sideswiped animal I was, I crawled the whole length of that wall on my hands and knees. I could not face her. I knew I was in love by then, not with her, but with the possibility of a world beyond the web of family. A realm of the senses that would make me feel less alone with the strain of being human.

  After three days of limping, my ankle in fact began to swell. The DSM told me my symptoms were hysterical. It wasn’t funny to me. On Saturday, my mother took me to the local hospital to see if I had a hairline fracture. Needless to say, what ailed me didn’t show up on X-rays. The doctor told me to keep it elevated. As we drove down Main Street, I had my ankle up on the Volvo’s dashboard. We were just pulling into the parking lot of the supermarket when I saw her coming out of the drugstore carrying the new issue of Rolling Stone.

  She walked the pavement barefoot and had a wreath of daisies in her hair. Her leashless dog followed at her side, sporting a bandanna instead of a collar. She drew stares from the passersby, and not just because she wasn’t wearing a bra beneath her Grateful Dead T-shirt. Even my mother would have given the sunshine of my love a sideways look if she weren’t so worried about my ankle.

  When the subject of hippies came up, Mom always made a face like she’d just found a hair in her tuna fish. It wasn’t their politics that bothered her. My mother was against the war, and all for peace and love. But having grown up in the Depression, she could not get her head around the idea of anyone wanting to look poor.

  When Mom asked me what I wanted for dinner, I answered, “I don’t care.” she thought I was depressed about my ankle, and tried to cheer me up with the promise of roast beef. I shrugged ungratefully, pointed to my imaginary injury, and told her I’d wait in the car and keep it elevated. As soon as the electric doors of the supermarket opened for Mom, I gave chase to my fantasy.

  Cutting across the street, keeping low behind parked cars, I stalked her as she and her dog proceeded down the opposite sidewalk. I had made up my mind. This time I was not only going to see her, I was going to open my mouth. For it seemed to me, in the hysteria of my neediness, if I blew it again, chickened out one more time, I would be trapped in the cellar of loserdom for the rest of my life.

  She turned down a side street. The sidewalks there were empty. Better for me, I knew I was not at my best with an audience of more than one. I sprinted to catch up to her. Silent in sneakers, just as I was close enough to touch a strand of the warm ginger of her hair, her dog caught sight of a squirrel and gave chase. Not wanting to be interrupted by the competition, I waited until she had gotten him on the short leash she kept in the back pocket of her jeans. She tethered him to a bike rack. Just as I was finally welling up the courage to speak, she darted into the hardware store. Standing outside looking in, I hid behind the chain saws on sale in the window and watched her shop for dog toys. Five minutes, ten, when she disappeared into the back of the shop, I made up my mind to go in and blurt out the truth: “I need to talk to you.”

  Then, just as I swear I was about to make my move, the scent of patchouli filled the air and goose bumps rose on the back of my arms. And even before I felt the whip of her hair on my skin, I knew she was behind me. Her eyes were lidded in a blue-gray squint, like she was looking at something small, alive, and annoying. I hadn’t realized she had a chipped tooth. Before I could remember how to speak, she hit me between the eyes with a loud, “What do you want?”

  I wasn’t sure, except she was part of it. When I gave no response, she took a step closer, wrinkling her nose as she inquired loudly, “What is your problem?” I didn’t know where to begin. But I wanted to tell her something that was true, not just a pickup line. All I could do was stare. She spoke slowly now, so I’d be sure to understand. “Why . . . are . . . you . . . such . . . a . . . freak?”

  A gray-haired lady across the street looked over at me like I’d exposed myself. I hadn’t, but I w
as about to. The only thing I could think to say was, “Casper Gedsic.” My voice broke as I said his name.

  “What the fuck is that?”

  I shared my secret in a burst of adrenaline and honesty. I don’t know exactly when it was, but some time in the course of the story, we shifted positions. Before I was finished, we were sitting shoulder to shoulder on the curb, our feet in the gutter. I forgot how frightened I was of the mystery of her girlishness and was reminded how scared I was of Casper. I jumped back and forth in time, from the drowning that turned into a swimming lesson, the murder of Doctor Winton, the death of Jack, the accident that wasn’t, the Yugo bodyguards that took us to hide in Greenwich Village, the TV’d cell at Needmore, and the drugs he was being fed as we spoke.

  She was still and silent and interrupted me only to offer condolences, “That’s heavy . . . far fucking out . . . what a mind fuck.” That was my favorite.

  When I was finished, it was as if Casper was sitting right there with us. She took a deep breath, then exhaled with a whistle at all that I had unloaded on her. Studying me for a moment, without warning she wrapped her arms around me with a hug that flattened her breasts against my hollow chest. “Poor you.”

  “Not really.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Poor Casper.” I suddenly felt bad for him being so alone while I was feeling so unbelievably close to her.

  Then she stood up. “I gotta go. My mother’ll kill me if I’m late.”

  “My mom’s waiting, too.”

  “Wanna hang out?”

  “Sure.”

  “Meet me at the wall, tomorrow morning. One thirty.”

  “That’s not morning.”

  “It is for me.” She and the dog were running down the street now.

  “Hey, what’s your name?” I called out after her.

  “Sunshine.” It was too good to be true.

  “I’m Zach.”

  She stopped and looked back at me. “See you, Z.”

  A girl, a nickname—I didn’t know what was next, but whatever it was, I wanted it.

  The next day, I told my parents I was going fishing and rode my bike toward the wall. Down our hill, along the river that no longer beckoned me, through the town—I pedaled with a secret beating inside of me that made me feel for the first time in my life that there was no one else in the world I would rather be than me.

  I felt a little less that way when I arrived and she wasn’t there. Then it began to rain. Was there some part of our conversation that I hadn’t understood? Had I gotten the time wrong? Had she remembered I was the jerky kid who had hidden behind the wall and stalked her through town, and decided I was unworthy of a rendezvous, much less the nickname Z?

  It was raining hard now. Cars and pickup trucks towing horse trailers honked and splashed me as they drove past. The secret I harbored still beat within me. But now I felt stupid for holding onto it, for not being able to let it go and ride back home. Slumped against the wall, knee-deep in weeds, my head resting against the “No Trespassing” sign, I was so lost in self-pity, I did not see the convertible Mustang skidding toward me down the mud-slicked lane with its brakes locked until it came to a stop a foot from my head with a metallic crunch. Its right front tire had flattened my bike lying next to me.

  The window on the passenger side of the Mustang rolled down with an electric whirr. “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay.” It was better than that—it was her.

  She put the Mustang in reverse, then pushed a button that folded back the roof. The rain was coming down in sheets, “What are you putting the top down for?” It was a brand-new Mustang.

  “I lost the key to the trunk. You can put your bike in the backseat.”

  “What about the rain?” I was putting the bike in now. “It’s leather upholstery.”

  “It’s my mother’s car, fuck it.” She said it with a laugh that made me laugh; though I didn’t know many girls, I knew this was my kind of girl.

  Rain pouring, soggy cigarette in her mouth, Led Zeppelin blaring on the eight-track, “Been dazed and confused for so long it’s not true/Wanted a woman, never bargained for you,” the interior of her mother’s Mustang filling with water, we fishtailed through the gates of her world.

  “My parents are home.” I saw two cars parked in front of a house so white and tidy, it looked like an ad for Sherwin-Williams paint. She drove around back to the pool house and screeched on her brakes. “You can’t stay that long.”

  “You want me to leave now?”

  “No. I’m not ditching you. I just mean this guy’s coming over this afternoon.”

  Not wanting the Mustang to feel as neglected as I did, I raised its roof. “Is he your boyfriend?”

  “He’d like to be.”

  “Maybe I’d better go home.”

  “Want to get high first?”

  “Sure.” I’d never seen pot, much less smoked it. We were in the pool house now. The shades were drawn, it smelled of mildew, and was dark. When she flicked the lights on, it seemed even darker because all the bulbs were ultraviolet, and the posters on the wall Day-Glo. A lava lamp bubbled voluptuously as she pulled out a knee-high Plexiglas bong.

  My father, being a psychopharmacologist, had warned me about marijuana, cocaine, heroin, amphetamines, and the brain damage they were guaranteed to inflict. He had warned me about so many things that attacked the brain: mosquitoes bearing encephalitis; dementia due to syphilis; snake venoms that tell the brain not to breathe . . . when you’re conditioned to be frightened of everything, you end up being scared of nothing.

  When the first toke of cannabis hit my lungs, I gasped, sputtered, and gagged. “I thought you said you did this before.”

  “I lied.” She thought that was hysterical. “So who’s your boyfriend?”

  “Some jock. And he’s not my boyfriend, Z.”

  “Why do you call me that?”

  “Sounds cooler.”

  “Why not el Magnífico?” We both thought that was a scream.

  “You’re not that cool.” It was good pot.

  “How’d you get the name Sunshine?” We were trading hits.

  “The first time I took acid, it was all groovy. And then I started really bumming on myself, and who I was—I mean, I was sooooooo square, you wouldn’t have recognized me: sports, honor society. And then on acid, it just seemed so bullshit. I decided, if I wanted to be a different person, I should come up with a new identity.” She held her toke on that word, then exhaled. “So, like, I was standing there in the sun, and it was warm and felt good, and I knew that’s what I wanted to be, like the sun. Sunshine.”

  “Wow. Where’d you get the acid?”

  “I was visiting my roommate in Boston. Her older brother knew this dealer guy who hung out in Harvard Square. He turned us on for free.” Her eyes were lit like sparklers as she twirled a band around her third finger that spelled L-O-V-E. “He gave me this ring that night.”

  “Is he your boyfriend?”

  “He was. Sort of. Until he got busted and gave my real name to the police. That’s how I got kicked out of boarding school.” She said it with pride and stood up, turned her back to me, pulled off her wet T-shirt, and reached for a sweater. “It’s okay, you can look.” My mouth felt like someone had stolen my saliva. “Tell me some more about your friend.” She flopped back down on the couch next to me.

  “What friend?” The pot made me feel as if I were adrift in a fog bank.

  “Casper.” I hadn’t thought of him as a friend until I met Sunshine.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Like, could you tell he was crazy?” She lit a fresh stick of incense. A Moody Blues album was playing.

  “No . . . well, he seemed a little weird. Even though he wasn’t wearing a watch, he looked at his wrist to check the time.” I hadn’t thought about that for a long while.

  “Did he tell you why he wanted to kill your father?”

  “No.”

  “Ever wond
er if your dad gave him acid? Doctors did stuff like that.” Timothy Leary was all over the news that spring.

  “My father doesn’t work with drugs like that.” But she had me wondering. Until that moment, the thought had never occurred to me that my father had done something to Casper to make him crazy. What if my father had made it happen? What if it was his fault? Questions beamed through the cloud of THC in my brain like searchlights piercing through the fog, looking for wreckage of a ship lost at sea.

  Too high to grasp what had been momentarily illuminated, I let go of my father and the past when she took my hands in hers and peered at my flattened palm. “You have a cool life line.”

  “How come?”

  “It’s really short.” When she finished predicting the future, she didn’t let go of my hand. “Once I had this bad trip where I was suddenly sure I killed my parents but had forgotten about it. And then remembered it, like it was just, ‘Oh gee, I killed my parents.’ You know, like I’d left my purse in your car.”

  “I don’t have a car.” As I said, I was high.

  “That’s not the point of my bad trip. The point is, it really, really freaked me out that I killed them and forgot it and left them in the kitchen, like leftovers.” She started off like she was telling a funny story. Now she was crying.

  “Everyone has crazy thoughts.” At that moment I was thinking about what it would be like to get naked with her in the shower.

  “I think I’m having one now.”

  “You mean, like an acid flashback?”

  “No, just a crazy thought.”

  “What is it?”

  “That you tell girls about Casper just to get into their pants.” She smiled with tears on her cheeks. Then she pushed me back on the couch and began to tickle my stomach.

  “You’re the first girl I ever told.” She liked hearing that. Pinning my arms back behind my head, she kissed me on the mouth, her tongue licking unseen wounds.