by David Kummer
“Just lost it,” he muttered. “Hate that guy.”
“I know, but never… never like that.” I sighed, then propped an elbow on the table and leaned against it. “Gonna be tough to explain those bruises to your dad.” A feeble shot at humor, but I had to try.
“No kidding.” He murmured, but I could hear a hint of amusement.
“Your first fight?” I asked. I knew the answer.
“Yeah.”
“Didn’t go so hot.”
He laughed a little. “Shut up.”
Another few moments passed. The air grew increasingly chilled, or maybe my skin just cooled off. There were no voices anywhere, no cars pulling out of the driveway out front. For another five minutes, we waited there. Everybody would have gone by now. We were alone. I didn’t expect the aftermath of the party to be like this, but that was part of the appeal. When you throw a party or go to one or get really drunk in general, you never know how the night will end up. You just wait and see. There wasn’t much else to do around here, anyway.
“How drunk are you?” I asked him, breaking our silence.
“Not much.” His words weren’t slurred, just groggy. “That punch really sobered me up.”
“Figures.” Another brief pause. Sometimes I hated conversations with him. Not the most forthcoming of people whenever I broached serious topics. “Seriously, though… why’d you get involved like that?”
He shrugged. “Couldn’t ignore him.”
“Bad excuse,” I persisted. “Try again.”
“I just hate that guy, babe.” He groaned and pressed a hand against his forehead. Probably a searing headache. I’d expect so. “He acts like… like he runs the goddamn town.”
“Mason, honey.” I tried to smile, tried to dip my words in some amount of empathy. “I don’t think you understand how similar you two are.”
“No, I do, I really do.” He paused. Dabbed at his forehead again. Took a deep breath through gritted teeth. “I know we are and maybe that’s why I hate him so much. I see stuff in him that I don’t like. All the parts of me that I want to ignore. He’s them.”
“I get it.” I reached out, placed a hand on his knee. “Next time, though… Don’t lose.”
He smirked and turned away from me.
Seconds blending into minutes, and the scenery remained unchanged. No signs of Hudson. I pushed him from my mind. Just Mason and I, alone. The party had been a success, at least, even with the fight. Though I didn’t enjoy having to sheep-dog Mason, keep him out of trouble. I didn’t expect him to throw another one, not now. He’d be too embarrassed, too stuck on his fragile masculinity. It was times like these I wished for another girl friend, somebody who could relate on a different level. I had a few from work, but people generally avoided me. Another downside of living at Liberty Apartments.
“I think we should move near Louisville in the future,” I said, replaying the fanciful conversation we had many times before. My hand rested gently on his thigh and I smiled. “Like the suburbs, you know?”
Only he didn’t respond like normal. He just stared into the distance, grimacing.
I glanced up at the stars, as if they would offer me some level of support. They did not. “I think we should go away for college. Somewhere like… California or New York. Maybe a Carolina.”
He still didn’t answer. I thought I might have to repeat myself. It sort of worried me that he didn’t respond, since usually we breezed through this topic. Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned it, not after the rough night for us both.
Mason turned halfway, glancing at me. “Why?”
“I think we need to… to get away from this town. From people like Blough.” I cleared my throat. “And it’ll be good for you.”
“My family’s here,” he said. His voice sounded really dead now. Lacking of all emotion. Hollow. “My dad’s business. My friends.” He took a breath, maybe to steady his thoughts or maybe to buy some time. “What about… what if we just went somewhere in state? Like IUS? Or maybe, like, Evansville? It’s cheaper and all.”
As if money was ever a concern for him. “But… Mason…” I couldn’t smile at this point or even muster a cute laugh. “It’d be good for us. To live a little, you know. Experience something else besides… Little Rush.”
“I know, but there’s so much here I can’t leave.” He drummed his fingers on the table, but his voice held no energy. Just hopeless resignation to this fate.
“Are you being serious?” I folded my arms and turned away, holding back a torrent of words. I wanted to yell, get in his face.
“Sorry, babe.”
I didn’t answer this time because I chose not to fight, even if I wanted to. Not with him bleeding all over the table. Not with us both in a post-drunk, bitter mood. But it was one of those things where I knew a fight was coming, one way or another. Maybe in a few days or maybe in a month.
People always say you shouldn’t date seriously in high school because you’ll both have different plans for the future. I didn’t believe them until that point. And I really dreaded the fights that would grow from this disagreement. But either way, I wouldn’t be the one crying about it.
Mason shut me down again later when I tried to bring up colleges. I suggested a compromise, somewhere like Ohio or Illinois. Somewhere in between. He didn’t give me a real answer. The same bullshit as earlier. And for the first time in probably a year, I started to have my doubts. That’s how I remained as we drifted off to sleep.
He’d always had a side to him that I didn’t enjoy. A more sarcastic, drawling tone that sometimes crept to the forefront. Mason was by no means the ideal man or my dream guy. He might’ve had the body of Mr. Perfect. I mean, damn, who doesn’t enjoy abs? But something about his personality, you might say, or his nature. Just… something off.
Did I think at times that by choosing Mason and sticking with him I’d settled for less than what I wanted? Even deserved? Sure. But so was everybody in Little Rush. This rural town felt like the edge of the world in some ways. On the coldest of nights, lost in the wild cornfields of southern Indiana, you might have to throw your hopes on the fire just to keep it burning. Just to stay alive. Settling wasn’t the worst thing in the world. You just have to… become okay with it.
Not that this realization relieved my aching heart. It sent me spinning. I wondered if we would make it after all. I wondered if we would have that wedding we dreamed of, those kids, the careers. We’d seen eye-to-eye on most things up to that point, but I knew the topic of college held a much deeper truth. He wanted to stay, and I wanted to go. Whatever the reasons, whatever the pros and cons, it boiled down to that simple truth.
If someone came up and asked whether or not we’d stay together, I wouldn’t have known what to say. I would only have my doubts, my creeping suspicions. Little Rush had always been my home, had been my whole world. It had been the place where I met the person I loved more than anybody or anything else. A place of complex people, astounding scenery, hushed adventures in the local Walmart.
At the elementary school we all attended, the playground had a chain-link fence around it. As early high schoolers, we’d sometimes go there on weeknights and climb over top of it. On the swing set where we spent our childhoods, we once again wasted away countless hours. Talking about life and about the future and how much trouble we’d get in if we were caught. We even managed to break into the school one night. I snagged my leg on the fence and ripped a hole in the sweatpants I’d worn, but it didn’t matter. We’d roamed those dark hallways for hours. I had smoked a cigarette, sitting at a teacher’s desk, and then made out in the corner while the others played hallway bowling. That night, one of the best I ever knew.
In a sense, Little Rush was that chain-link fence. Sometimes you just have to jump it.
This town, for all its glory, had always been a place best suited to those with patience. A place of virtue, sure, but rarely excitement. No, Little Rush, my home and my undoing, for all its pain and soft-spoken g
oodbyes, was a place of incredible boredom.
Part 2
A Place of Empty Dreaming
1
Bruce
Only moments before she arrived did I realize I had to hide it. With a quick glance out the window, I snatched the photograph from my coffee table and carried it away into the bedroom where I hid the thing under a pillow. A secretive location. And, truth be told, I never planned on removing it from that spot ever again. Just in case. They didn’t need to know, and most definitely not her, a journalist.
When she did finally show up, the woman took a hesitant first step into my house, not that this surprised me. Her eyes were wide, darting all around, and she clutched a small purse tight against her side. The journalist had a youthful glow to her, despite her age. The shorter-than-normal skirt didn’t hurt, either. She couldn’t have been more than thirty-five. After all, the local paper wouldn’t send anybody new for this assignment.
“Thank you again, Mr. Michaels,” she addressed me once I’d closed the door behind us. She beamed, looking around the simple sitting room, her eyes fixating on the couch against the wall. I’d left an empty beer bottle on the table and quickly disposed of that.
“No problem.”
With the bottle in the trash can, I reentered the sitting room and found her inspecting the window curtains. An odd journalist, this one. Overeager, a little too pleased. I cleared my throat, and she turned around, that smile wide as ever. I couldn’t help but grin a little. She had a certain air to her that felt familiar. Maybe something in the way she stood. More like me than any other person in this town.
I went on. “I’ve been wanting a… an interview like this since I moved in. But waiting for the…” I caught myself before I said paparazzi. Maybe as a journalist she would find that offensive. “For the out-of-towners to clear out,” I finished.
She nodded appreciatively and extracted a small pad from her purse. Her eyes arched just a bit, and her lips opened an inch. I noticed for the first time how red they were. Matching the color of her tight top. Surely not all journalists dressed like this? I hadn’t seen another woman in this whole town quite as attractively intimidating.
“So… I…” I struggled to collect my thoughts under the weight of her gaze. I could feel myself changing a bit. Opening up. To her, to the town. “We can sit here, I’d say.” I gestured to the couch and then to the flimsy folding chair across from it. The coffee table rested in between the two, barren.
“That’ll do.” She took her place in the folding chair, shifting uncomfortably at first, but then settled back and crossed her legs. Pulling out her notepad and leaning forward a few inches, the skirt rose higher up her leg than I think she realized. Or maybe she realized perfectly. What a woman.
I leaned back on the couch and observed her more intently. She had a darker tan than most people around here and no pale lines to be seen. Her hair was dark, pulled back, and she wore sleek glasses that gave her the aura of wicked intelligence. Sharp cheekbones and lipstick completed the look. I wondered where in Little Rush women like her were hiding. Surely, I wanted to visit that place. For a guy my age, porn held no real enjoyment. I needed the real thing.
“Mr. Michaels,” she started, but I cut her off.
“Call me Bruce.” I gave her my best, sly smile and added, “I insist.” Flirting, if it could be called that. It felt good, or at least not bad. I felt like a human again.
She nodded then and scribbled something on her notepad. “Bruce. I just have a few questions if that’s alright.” Her eyes rose to meet mine, a reassuring curve gracing those perfect lips. “Won’t take much of your time.”
“Take as much as you please.” I extended my arms to either side, opening up my whole body. Times like these, I wished I’d kept up my physique over the last few years. All those workouts as a twenty-something, all those crunches, good for nothing in the end. At least I didn’t have a beer belly yet, not a noticeable one. “And what do I call you? Just so we aren’t… strangers.”
“Gina,” she said. Something about the way a person says their own name. It can tell you a lot about them. She said it kind of cutesy, real quick, like she didn’t often go by her first name. An air of intimacy, then, between us. A good start. “You understand why I’m here? Interviewing you?”
I shrugged. Thought about pulling out a cigarette. Would that impress her or scare her off? As a woman around here, she’d seen plenty of guys smoke. But then again, I didn’t see a wedding ring, so maybe the guys around here didn’t check all her boxes. No smoking, then.
“The local paper wants to run a lengthy article in next month’s special edition,” she said. Her pen hovered just above the lined surface, like a cocked gun. “I’ll start, I suppose, with a simple question. Why did you move away from California?”
“LA, baby.” I chuckled. “Not just Cali. And… I’d say a few reasons.”
She laughed politely. “Go on.”
“Well...” I cleared my throat, fidgeted with the seams of the couch. Without a cigarette or a drink, I didn’t know what my hands should be doing. “I’d say... I got bored of the movie industry. No, truthfully. Just couldn’t find anything suited for me.”
Gina chewed on the butt of her pen for a moment. “So is that why you’ve had so few appearances in recent years?”
“Eh, suppose so.” I kicked my legs up onto the small table. I could fall asleep in this position, really. Instead, I found myself gesturing with one hand. “I like to make serious movies, see. Don’t even consider one if the runtime is under two hours. Not a single role. So, yeah, maybe that’s why I got bored of the whole scene. Not enough movies like I wanted.” I pointed at her. “See here, these people… they want me to be some Steve Carrel old man type, right? Nah. I’m not. I’m more… serious.” I smacked my fist against my chest to emphasize the point. “I really do things.”
“Are you aware critics have attacked you for that stance in the past?” An eyebrow rose as she waited for my response. “Some might say you have a… self-aggrandizing attitude.”
“Ah, fuck ‘em. That’s what I always say about that.” I batted a hand through the air. “Maybe it makes me a bad person to meet, I dunno. I don’t care, either. I do real, meaningful work, see? Who cares what they think. I know the truth.” That felt great to admit. I hadn’t spoken on this topic in years. I guess the attention was nice, especially coming from somebody like her.
“Interesting,” she mumbled, scribbling a few lines on her notepad.
I grasped the remote, which had been laying on the ground, and pointed it at the television. “You want some… some background noise or something?”
Gina didn’t answer. She just kept writing, so I flicked on a rerun of some half-hour comedy I didn’t care for. A perfect illustration for my points, I thought. This garbage, cable television stuff.
“What appealed to you about Little Rush specifically?” she asked at last, raising her eyes from the notepad to me.
I shrugged again. “Dunno. Just chose at random.”
“Hmm.” She wrote something with sharp movements. I wondered what that meant. “So no… prior relatives here? No history?”
I scowled at her without meaning to. “Nope.” I never liked when journalists did that. When they asked a question and then felt the need to ensure you were telling the truth. If I wanted to lie, asking again wouldn’t stop me. And when talking to a small-town journalist like this, lying was the best option.
I thought I saw her chuckle just a bit, but I couldn’t be sure. She went on with the questions for another fifteen minutes, and I quickly lost my infatuation. All the questions, variations of the same stuff. Why had I chosen this house? Why had I been so secretive moving in? What did I miss about LA? What did I like about Little Rush? Did I feel like I’d made the right decision? All stuff that I didn’t want to trudge through, but I had agreed to this whole thing.
The longer she went on, the more irritated I became. It felt like hours, sitting there with her
. Even when she bit her lip a time or two, I didn’t feel anything. By that point, no attraction to her. No primal desires. She’d been just like all the others, just stupid people asking stupid questions. Sure, she had a nicer body than the rest of them, but that didn’t mean much. Back in LA, I could fuck somebody twice as good with zero effort or care.
“I have one last question, Bruce,” she said. Gina stored away the notepad into her purse, which I found odd. If she really had another question, wouldn’t she want to write my answer down or something?
“Go ahead,” I said, still reclining on the couch.
She stood up and grinned, but it was different this time. Less cutesy, more prickly. The way her eyes cut into mine, void of any emotion. Just cold orbs that swam in the tan sea of her face.
“I have a friend that you might know,” she began. “And I wondered if I could maybe… get an autograph?”
I cocked my head, unsure where this was going. “I can sign something, yeah. Like a magazine.” I started rummaging in my pockets for a pen or a sharpie. “What’s his name?”
“Her name.” Gina hesitated. “Madeline Suso.”
“Oh. Um… sorry.” I tried to force a smile, feeling panic rise in my stomach and throat. “I’m actually… in a hurry, I have to be somewhere. You know how it is.”
Our eyes met for a second, and she pierced into me. That face, so entrancing to me earlier, now glowed with mischief. I refused to look away, to even budge. She nodded once, slung her purse strap over a shoulder, and turned away to the front door.
“Nice chatting with you, Bruce,” she called over her shoulder, easing her way outside. “I hope to see you again before too long.” Then I was completely alone.
The remote flew across the room before I could control myself. It smacked the wall and dropped to the floor, two batteries rolling out to either side. For a moment, I sat there, shoulders hunched, seething. Deep breaths, I told myself.
I rested my forehead on the coffee table and grabbed a handful of my hair. Her car churned to life outside and then sped away, back to town. Gone for now.