“I fucked up.”
“You mean . . . like . . . with heroin?”
“Everything.”
“Oh, uh . . .” Ziggy sorts frenziedly through that word everything for a second. “Don’t worry . . . uh . . .” He almost, almost blurts out one of the worst possible things he could say, i.e., that Calhoun’s the greatest person on earth, which, despite being unbelievably true, as far as he knows, and a nice thing to tell someone else, at least in theory, would almost for sure ruin the, uh . . . mood?
“Shit,” Calhoun mumbles. “Maybe I should just kill myself.”
Ziggy’s instantaneously as stiff and inoperable below the neck as a carved figure. “Calhoun, I . . . don’t know what to say, you know?” He can’t breathe all that well. “’Cos you hate it when I tell you you’re great, but . . . I just . . . think . . . you are, and, uh . . . I mean, I know you are.” He gasps. “And you have to believe me, ’cos . . . your being alive is, like, so important.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah. It is.” Ziggy manages to disengage his bunched fingers. Phew. “And . . . when you quit heroin and stuff . . .” Gasp. “. . . there’ll be all these new people you’ll know, and, uh, fans of your novel who’ll feel like me.” He slugs his chest once, twice. “I know you don’t want to be close to your friends, but . . .” Slug. That one helped. “Uh . . . but we’re close, and that’s not so horrible, right? I mean, there are things about me that annoy you, but—”
“It’s not you, it’s me.” Calhoun clears his throat. “It’s my problem.”
“No, I know I’m, like, needy and insecure and all that bullshit. The school therapist says I’m so mentally fucked by my dad’s molestations and stuff that I don’t even . . . know what to do with other people, but . . . ” He squints at the dark around Calhoun. “I’m trying really hard to be cool to you, ’cos . . . you make me happy, and . . . shit . . . if something happened to you I’d be destroyed.”
There’s a second or two of that weird, uninterpretable silence, then . . . “Annie came by,” Calhoun says.
“Already?” Ziggy sort of bodily defrosts in surprise. “That was quick. Did you guys . . . do it, ha ha ha?”
“Yeah. I made her come.” Calhoun chuckles. “Or I think I did.”
“Cool.” Ziggy slugs his leg.
“Yup.” There’s this rustle, then several, like, knocks, which, as far as Ziggy can tell, is one of Calhoun’s hands feeling around on the night table. “So . . . how was your father . . . and everything?” Scratch, scratch— An orangish flame lights Calhoun’s face, cigarette between its lips, blue-green eyes wide, pupils pinned and sort of staticky, though that could be the lighter’s reflection.
“Oh, God.” Ziggy slams shut his eyes. “Well . . . we had this orgy with Brice.” He cracks one lid. Calhoun’s too low-lit to read. “I was passed out for most of it, but . . . this is cool . . .” The other lid flies open. “I really, like, studied them while they were . . . molesting me or whatever? So I can write about it in my magazine, and . . .” Ziggy gawks at his sketchy friend. “. . . Roger is so insane. It’s amazing.”
“How was your other dad?”
“You know, a monster.” Ziggy feels himself stiffening again. “Maybe a little nicer than usual, but . . .” His facial skin’s knotted horrendously, or so it feels. Shit. “. . . I, uh, don’t want to . . . think about it.”
“You all right?”
“Yeah, yeah. My ass hurts, but otherwise . . .”
Calhoun snorts.
“Otherwise, uh . . . Fuck.” Ziggy slumps forward. “Forgive me, okay, but . . . I’m so glad to see you.”
Calhoun inhales, exhales. The air gets tobaccoey. “Yeah,” he says. Ziggy waits a few beats on the off chance his friend might elaborate, but that’s dreaming, he knows, and, actually, the “yeah” was incredible enough, ’cos it had this, like, calm that can almost for sure be translated as happiness, whatever that involves. “Shit,” Calhoun adds suddenly.
“What?”
“Oh, I was an asshole to Annie.”
“But . . . how?” Ziggy scrunches up his face. “I can’t imagine that.”
Calhoun glares at his cigarette. “I don’t know. The sex was fine, but . . . I hate emotion.” He peeks at Ziggy. “So when she got on my back about not quitting heroin, I just . . . freaked out, I guess.” Shrug.
“Yeah, well . . .” Ziggy shrugs back. “Uh, your heroin thing is pretty scary.”
“To you, sure. I understand that. We’re best friends, and you’re worried. But she’s a fucking junkie herself. And she doesn’t even know me.”
“I probably shouldn’t tell you this,” Ziggy says, and cracks an inadvertent, uh, grimace. He splays, shuts his legs bear trap–style a few times. “But I . . . snorted heroin.”
“No shit.” There’s a whish, whish, whish. The cigarette’s tip does a firefly zigzag through the dark. Maybe Calhoun sat up.
“It made me totally sick.”
“Hm . . .” Calhoun, who, yeah, is much closer to Ziggy now, even inches away, takes a drag, blows it out. “Well, that’s probably good.”
“Right.” Ziggy tries to get a glimpse of what little there physically is of his friend. Mostly a fat, ghostly hand, skinny wrist, a minor stretch of one bruised, scabby arm. “’Cos . . . I can inspire you to quit.”
Calhoun’s hand trembles, moves, plugs the cigarette in his mouth. He sucks. His tense face fades in, out.
“I mean, when you decide you want to quit.”
Calhoun nods, then, for the next, oh, minute, smokes and makes brief dramatic appearances. Each time, his face looks a fraction less scared or pissed off or whatever. Ziggy squints in that direction, really moved, listening to Calhoun’s breaths, and kind of studying the smoke he exhales, since it has the guy’s being in it, however minuscule the portion. Occasionally Calhoun glances up from wherever he’s looking, meets Ziggy’s probably blissed if hysterical eyes, and grins for a long second.
Tick, tick, tick . . .
Calhoun clears his throat. “I should crash.” He reaches out, kills off the cigarette, disappears.
“Oh, okay.” Ziggy nods frenetically.
“You can stay, though. Turn on a light, if you want. It won’t bother me.” Calhoun, or, rather, his bed makes a few being-laid-down-on noises.
“Thanks.” Ziggy slugs his knee.
“Or if you want to crash, we can share the bed. Just don’t—”
“I know. Don’t try anything, ha ha ha.” Slug, slug, slug.
Calhoun chuckles. “Sorry.”
“That’s okay, but . . . Really, I don’t even want to. It’s not about sex at all. I—”
“I know.” Calhoun clears his throat. “I’m an asshole.”
“No, no, you’re great. That’s not what I mean. I . . . uh . . .” Shit. Ziggy’s stumped. “Never mind.” Still, he lets his lips silently finish the sentence, although there’s so much he wants to clarify, and every possible word he could use seems so clunky, etc., that it’s more like he’s mouthing some prewritten, incomprehensible prayer which has nothing to do with how weird he feels while he’s pronouncing it.
“Well, good night then.” Calhoun . . . rolls over?
“Yeah,” Ziggy whispers. “Sleep . . . tight.”
Calhoun yawns.
Ziggy’s getting so, like, emotional he can’t think.
Tick, tick, tick . . .
Fuck everything else.
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