Another Life

by Robert Haller

  He nodded, eager to have something clear and simple to do. “Right, sure!”

  “Oh, and, Jon,” she said as he turned to go. She lifted the wrist that still had Michael’s hand attached to it. “Could you take this guy with you?”

  When they were gone, April put her hands on her hips and looked at the two boys, who still hadn’t moved. “So does either of you want to tell me what happened?”

  Neither of them spoke.

  “Ben?” she asked.

  DeShawn snorted.

  April turned to him. “DeShawn, do you have something you’d like to say?”

  DeShawn squinted up at the sky. “Could think of a couple of things.”

  “Look, I don’t know what happened between you two,” April said, “but you guys should know, if you have a problem, you need to come to a counselor or me about it. So we can work it out together, okay?”

  “This is bullshit,” said DeShawn, kicking at a tuft of grass.

  “What is, DeShawn?”

  He looked at her as if surprised by the question, then gestured around them. “All of this.”

  April wasn’t clear whether he was referring merely to the vacation Bible school or to life in general, but she didn’t ask him to clarify. “Let’s try to work this out,” she said. “Whatever happened, there’s no reason for you two to stay angry at each other.”

  “I’m not apologizing to him,” said Ben. It was the first time he’d spoken since all the shouting, and his voice sounded wet and hoarse.

  “Good. ’Cause I don’t want your apology,” said DeShawn, kneeling down now and examining the grass.

  April pulled her phone out of the back pocket of her shorts. “All right, well, if you guys aren’t calm enough to have this discussion now, I’m just going to call your parents to see if they can pick you up. We can sort this out tomorrow.” She realized that tomorrow was Saturday, but decided to let it go.

  DeShawn had pulled up a dandelion and was picking the yellow petals off with his fingernails, swaying back and forth on one foot. “She’s gonna call my parents,” he muttered. “She says she’s gonna call my parents.”

  “You know what she meant, DeShawn,” Ben snapped, “so shut up.”

  “Make me, nigga,” DeShawn said calmly, without looking up from his flower. “You’re not the boss of me.”

  “Maybe I will!”

  “Boys!” April barked, putting her phone back in her pocket. She realized she had handled this all wrong. She should have separated them at once, before there was any chance of escalation. Now here she was, alone with two boys who were just about ready to come to blows.

  “Hey, DeShawn!” a voice called from behind April, and she turned to see Paul Frazier standing on the other side of the field, a coil of wires slung across his shoulder, and two music stands in one hand. He held the other hand to his forehead, shielding his eyes from the sun. He was looking at the three of them from maybe forty yards away, and April could see that he was smiling slightly. “DeShawn,” he said again.

  “What?” DeShawn kept looking at his flower.

  Paul moved his hand away from his eyes to beckon DeShawn over. “Could you do me a favor and help me bring this stuff over to the stage and set up?”

  The stage was on the other side of the field, and April realized that Paul must have seen them from a long way off while bringing the equipment out of the church and came all this way to investigate.

  She didn’t think DeShawn would go for it—it was too easy and too simple, and kids his age seldom wanted to take the easy or simple solution. But April watched as DeShawn dropped the dandelion, crushed it under his shoe, and moped his way over to where Paul stood, muttering as he passed, “Better than being with these two.” Paul handed DeShawn one of the music stands, and they headed off in the opposite direction. Paul didn’t look at her once.

  April stood in the grass, the sun beating down on her, and Ben sighed and plopped down on the ground. “I want to go home,” he muttered.

  “Yeah,” said April, watching Jon return with the water bottles no one needed. “Yeah, me, too.”

  At Maxy’s Bar and Grill, the atmosphere was turning decidedly “bar.” April saw the young people beginning to arrive, crowding the bar and taking command of the pool table and jukebox in the next room. April checked her watch: nearly ten o’clock. Soon it would be time to go. She felt warm and relaxed now. The muscles in her arms and back and neck had unwound, like knots being loosened. She laughed at her friends’ talk, although she hadn’t really been listening.

  Angie was leaning forward across the table to get right in Joe’s face, imperiling her own margarita. “Joe, I’d really like to know, what was your mother like? Were you breastfed as a child?”

  April stood up to use the bathroom and, for a moment, had to steady herself. The wine was getting to her more than she had realized. She felt it rise to the top of her head and swirl around up there, making her a little dizzy. Then she shook herself and began making her way across the room.

  She was standing by the door of the women’s room, waiting, when she saw him.

  He was at the bar, leaning forward and talking loudly at the somewhat annoyed-looking bartender. There was something manic in his face—he looked angry, although he was laughing. A small blond girl sat on the bar stool next to him. She had her hand on his shoulder and was talking in his ear.

  April had not actually spoken to Paul Frazier for two weeks, since the first DeShawn incident. Ever since they argued under the tree and she inadvertently made a reference to his touching an eleven-year-old boy in the locker room, they both had made it a point to stay out of each other’s way. She wanted to thank him for helping her out yesterday, but something had kept her from approaching him. Now here he was. The woman came out of the bathroom, and April was free to go inside, but she hesitated, watching Paul laugh. He looked very drunk. She wondered whether the girl beside him was his girlfriend, or just some girl he had met and planned to sleep with. Then the bartender handed Paul his beer, and before April could do anything, Paul had turned in his stool and was looking right at her. He smiled. “Ms. Swanson!” he cried, beckoning to her as he might to one of his friends. “April! April Swanson!”

  She felt herself redden. She didn’t know what to do. After a slow second, she turned and went into the bathroom, pretending not to have noticed him, although she knew there was no way he would believe that—they’d been staring right at each other.

  So embarrassing, she thought as she used the bathroom, washed her hands, and then looked at herself in the mirror. So, so embarrassing. It was all she could think about. She couldn’t think about why it was so embarrassing, only that it was. Embarrassing. I’ll just go home, she told herself. It’s time to go home. She gave herself one last glance in the mirror and then opened the door.

  “Omigod,” she said, all in one breath, before she could stop herself.

  Paul was leaning on the wall opposite her, quite close, in the narrow passageway to the restrooms. He pointed dumbly at the men’s room to the right. “Just waiting for the bathroom,” he mumbled.

  “Paul,” she said, when she’d recovered her breath, “how are you?”

  “Fine,” he said, and smiled. “I’m—what do you people say?—‘filled with the spirit,’ or whatever.”

  April had distant memories of being as drunk as Paul was now, when she’d been a different person, before her world had shifted itself into clear definition. His head was drooping toward the floor as if pulled there by a magnetic force; his hair was in his eyes. “Paul, are you okay?” she couldn’t help asking.

  He swung his head back up to look at her. “Don’tchu worry ’bout me, Ms. Swanson. I’m keeping out of trouble. Haven’t been molesting any kids in the church locker rooms, or anything.”

  “Oh, Paul, I didn’t … When I said that, you know I …” She gave up, seeing t
hat it was useless. Anything she said to him now, he wouldn’t remember tomorrow.

  The song on the jukebox had changed. April didn’t really pay attention to music; she wouldn’t even have noticed except that it was a song she used to love and hadn’t heard in ages. It seemed to her that she hadn’t heard it since she’d been as drunk as Paul was now, in her college dorm room or in the passenger seat of some boy’s car. Stevie Nicks, but not that really famous one, the one about the dove. Another one, April’s favorite. She had even owned the record. But she couldn’t remember what it was called. She waited for the chorus: Stand back, stand back. For a second, she could taste the cigarette in her mouth, feel the night wind whipping across her face.

  “Take care of yourself, Paul,” she said. “Make sure you get some sleep.”

  “I don’t believe in sleep,” Paul muttered, now craning his neck up, looking at the ceiling. Then his head swung down again, and he was looking in her eyes. “You know, I used to have a crush on you,” he said. “I always thought you were very pretty.”

  April swallowed, felt her hair stand on end. “Get some rest, Paul.”

  The next moment, the blond who had been at the bar was at Paul’s side and apologizing to April as she led Paul away. “So sorry, ma’am. He’s just really drunk. We’re gonna take him home.”

  Don’t call me “ma’am,” April wanted to say, but she only nodded. She stood for a long moment, against the wall. She listened to Stevie. Then she rubbed her face, took a breath, and returned to her table and her friends. “Well, I’m about ready to call it a night,” she said, standing over them. “I think I’ve had enough.”

  PAUL

  Paul woke up to his stomach announcing its refusal to hold its contents any longer. He shot up into blackness, feeling the prespasm rumble. He leaped up off whatever he’d been lying on and waited for his immediate surroundings to make themselves visible. They didn’t.

  A thin, pale light came from somewhere to his right—seeping in from under a closed door, he supposed—and he moved toward it with his hands outstretched, like a blind man feeling his way through the emptiness in front of him. Something caught his left knee, and a sharp pain shot through him. He cursed and half stumbled, half crawled the rest of the way to the light. He pushed against the door, and it swung open.

  The toilet sat partially illuminated by a green night-light plugged into the wall, and when Paul felt the next rumble, he knew he wouldn’t be able to keep it down. He charged into the room and knelt at the toilet like a penitent kneeling before an altar, just as the vomit spewed out of his mouth in a heavy brown gush.

  At last, he wiped his face and fell back against the wall, breathing heavily, sweating. He sat in that position for what felt like an hour, although it could not have been more than a minute before he felt the next surge and knelt once more before the bowl.

  When his stomach was so empty it felt weightless, Paul stood up and went over to the sink and splashed water on his face. He found a bottle of mouthwash in the cabinet behind the mirror and gargled some of it.

  He turned on the light in the bathroom and opened the door, so that the light spread across the room he had been sleeping in. The room was large, with a low drop ceiling. There was a couch against the far wall, and in front of it, the reason for his now throbbing left knee: a coffee table littered with empty beer bottles and Chinese takeout containers. Looking at the room began to bring back the memories, which were only half defined, like the objects in the dim room. This was Tommy’s apartment—Nicki’s little brother’s. Paul had come here yesterday evening, after he called Nicki to hang out. And that had been when the drinking began, yesterday evening—that is, if it was still Saturday. How long had he slept? The last thing he remembered was being in a bar with Nicki and Tommy, and then …

  Paul made his way back to the sofa and searched for his (mom’s) phone. He found it wedged in a crevice between the sofa cushions. He checked the time: half past midnight and, technically, Sunday. There was a text from Nicki: Hey, u were pretty out of it so we brought u back here. Sleep. We’ll be back later.

  The text, with its lack of smiley faces or exclamation points, felt cold and slightly hostile. Either Nicki was the rare sort of girl who texted with great detachment, or he’d done something in his drunken state over the past two nights to piss her off. The latter explanation seemed the more likely, but he couldn’t say for sure. His memory was hazy and full of holes.

  He went into the kitchen, where more beer cans and half-full bottles of liquor sat on the grimy table, and got a glass of water from the tap. He drank and tried to remember.

  He remembered calling Nicki on Friday night, and her surprised, excited voice when she answered. She told him to come here to her little brother’s apartment and gave him directions. He remembered sitting around in the living room, drinking and smoking pot with Nicki, Tommy, Tommy’s housemate Seth, and Seth’s girlfriend, Krista. Paul couldn’t say he didn’t enjoy the almost reverential way the kids treated him. Tommy (the drummer Nicki had told him about) seemed especially in awe. He kept asking Paul if there was a specific kind of beer he wanted and if the music was okay.

  But it was Krista whose attention Paul particularly appreciated—the way she laughed at everything he said, and kept staring at him with her big, just-graduated-from-high-school brown eyes, even as her boyfriend sat with his arm around her. As the evening wore on, Paul could see Seth getting more and more annoyed with his girlfriend’s blatant flirting, and Paul actually considered taking him into the other room and telling him, Don’t worry, I’ve already decided I’m not going to sleep with your girlfriend. But he found it entertaining just to watch poor Seth wallow in jealousy.

  He remembered, around midnight, heading to a bar downtown. He remembered sitting at the bar with Tommy, doing shots of Southern Comfort and lime. He remembered complaining loudly about the music—Top 40 country and heavy metal. He remembered taking control of the jukebox, and when some dumb hick with a John Deere cap and a half-assed goatee complained about the Bruce Springsteen, Paul remembered putting another five-dollar bill in the jukebox and playing “I’m Goin’ Down” over and over, until the bartender switched it after it started up for the fourth play. He remembered swearing at the bartender, demanding that he put back on the song Paul had paid good money for. “I was trying to compromise here, asshole!” Paul shouted. “It’s fucking Springsteen! I thought even Republican fucking rednecks like you were cool with Springsteen!”

  He remembered Nicki talking in his ear and rubbing his back, telling him to calm down. He remembered being led out of that bar (or maybe they were kicked out) and wandering down Main Street. Then they were at some house party. He remembered beer pong. He remembered more shots. He was in the bathroom, and Krista was there, giving him something to slip under his tongue. He remembered laughing when Seth burst into the bathroom, yelling at Krista and yanking her away. He remembered being alone in the bathroom, staring at himself in the mirror sweating, and wanting to put a fist through the glass.

  Then he didn’t really remember any more from Friday night. They had come back here. He had a vague memory of sleeping with Nicki, but he couldn’t recall whether they’d had sex—not a good sign, in his experience. On Saturday, by one in the afternoon, the drinking had begun again. They had driven into the country for a bonfire with a bunch of Nicki’s friends. They sat around the fire in lawn chairs, drinking and smoking and watching the flames. More kids had shown up, pulling into the clearing in an assortment of jeeps and pickup trucks. Boys in muscle shirts and backward hats, girls in summer dresses or shorts and tank tops.

  It was summer, and everyone was tan and happy, and Paul felt irritated that it was summer and everyone was tan and happy. He kept thinking about Sasha. That was when he started to really drink. He remembered being really drunk and watching the flames. He remembered being really drunk and riding back to town in the back of some guy’s pickup with Nick
i as the sun set. Then he was in a bar again. He was drinking again. He was talking to … He was talking to April Swanson. Jesus. She’d been there at the bar. He was sure of it, although he couldn’t quite remember what he had said. All he remembered was her shocked expression as he made a fool of himself. That was the last thing he remembered.

  Paul put the empty glass on the counter and ran his hands through his hair. Although he had consumed enough alcohol in the past forty-eight hours to kill a large dog, and although he knew that legally he should be nowhere near the keys to a car, Paul now felt completely sober. This was basically how his last months in New York had gone: for a few days he would drink himself into a stupor, and then there would be that moment of collapse, followed by the vomiting that left him feeling new and empty, weightless. And now came the restlessness, the urge to be doing something. The drunkenness had left him, but not the adrenaline. He needed action.

  In the city, after stumbling out of the last bar of the night, Paul would wander the streets of Manhattan or Brooklyn sometimes till dawn, passing gaggles of other drunk kids heading to the trains, and homeless men sprawled out on the sidewalk, and construction workers getting their coffee and breakfast sandwich at the bodega before starting their day. He would feel completely alone but also a part of something bigger. Wandering around drunk was what cities were made for.

  For a moment, he considered calling Nicki, finding out where they all had gone, but he decided against it. He knew that if he met them, he would just start drinking again.

  His car keys were still in his pocket, which meant his car was still parked out front. He would have failed a Breathalyzer test, but there were only a few cops in this town.

  Paul drove aimlessly through Grover Falls. He kept off Main Street to avoid the small strip of downtown, where he knew he wouldn’t be able to resist the golden light and laughter spilling from the bars out into the night. So he drove slowly down the side streets, looking at the houses lining either side, interchangeable in the night, the same square shadow repeated endlessly.