Inexcusable (14 page)

“Ray is not a strong man, Keir,” she went on mercilessly. “And we needed him to be, especially you. You need to look at yourself, Keir, and look at life and reality a little more clearly, and Ray has never made you do that. You need to take responsibility for yourself, for the things you do, and not make excuses for yourself. I heard, Keir, about all the stuff this year, all the frat boy antics and destroying statues and everything else and instead of getting excited about having you come up here, I started dreading it. You have grown progressively more spoiled and irresponsible,
and I am not purely happy you are coming here. Do you hear me? Do you get the magnitude..

Whether I heard it or got it or whatever, I was never going to be able to tell her. Because I was choking near to death with what was inside. And I was holding back what was already feeling like a full-blown, full-force monsoon of fear and hate and disgust and self-pity.

And then I didn't have to tell her at all.

“That's enough, I think,” said Gigi Boudakian. She pulled me by my weak and pathetic hand, right up out of that rank college sofa. “I don't actually know you, Fran, or Mary, but I can tell you that Keir talks about you all the time. And he talks about you like you are angels. And I can tell you that whatever flaws he has—and nobody's going to argue that he hasn't got them—he is a sweet and soft-hearted guy at core. And if he says that your family was once an amazing and beautiful thing and his heart is broken now because it isn't what it was, then I am inclined to believe him.

“This is a good guy, Fran. Innocent he is not. But he is a good guy. Maybe if he does make things up, maybe he made up the part about how wonderful
you
were.”

Just there where I would have expected Fran's back to get further up and her approach to get harder, I figured wrong again. Her voice went suddenly all soft.

“I think probably he did,” she said.

Nobody had anything to say to that. We stared for a few seconds.

“We shouldn't have come here like this,” Gigi said with her good timing and manners, “and I'm sorry for that, Fran. Come on, Keir.”

She tugged me the short distance to the door. She didn't even turn back as she opened the door and we went out, and whatever protest Fran might have been making was lost on me because I couldn't even make it out. There was nothing but Gigi.

And I wanted to cry more than ever.

*  *  *

We walked around the campus again. We didn't talk about it, we just did it. It seemed like the best thing to do. Like the only thing to do. There was no limousine, nor would there be one, though Gigi didn't know that yet.

“I'm sorry,” she said, putting an arm around me at the hip. It was warm and reassuring the way we bumped off each other as we tried to get into the rhythm of walking together. “It really is terrible when people let you down.”

“It is. It's inexcusable,” I said. “And I'm sorry too. For Carl letting you down.”

“Yes,” she said, “Carl.”

We didn't walk the whole way around like before, though that would have been my idea of the best plan in the world. We stopped at the mansion houses when the inevitable happened and Gigi inquired about the ride home.

“Shouldn't we get back there?” she said. “When's he coming?”

What was I thinking? That would be a good question. I had actually allowed myself to believe that this moment wouldn't come. So what did I think would come in its place? That's the thing right there, that's the place where I tend to make mistakes. I am good at that, at refusing to accept that something bad is coming when it may seem obvious that something bad is coming. But I'm less good at figuring out what is going to come in its place. Because something always has to come in its place, doesn't it? Something always has to come and fill in that space.

“You want a pill?” I offered generously.

“Quit fooling, Keir,” she said, beginning to walk ahead toward the dorms.

When I was behind her, I popped a pill.

“I'm getting really tired now,” Gigi Boudakian said in an all-new, all-adorable tired voice.

“Well, that's why,” I croaked through a dry, choked throat, “the pill is a good idea.”

“The pill is not a good idea,” she said. She sounded like she was moving quickly now through the stages of sleepiness. This stage was grouchier. “Let's just go and wait for the car.”

Right there. Right there was when I should have admitted what I'd done. It would have been the right thing to do. It would have been the right moment.

“Okay,” I said instead.

We sat on the curb in front of my sister's building for over an hour. Gigi Boudakian leaned over and dozed on my shoulder while I sat upright, rigid, wide awake now and buzzy. I was playing along in this fantasy where a limousine was coming any minute, and even though I knew it wasn't coming I was waiting for it—and the kicker was, I was having a pretty all right time of it.

If I could just keep her for a little while. If I could just hold her for a little while. There, glued to my shoulder, she could sleep and I could watch over her and I wouldn't even mind, sitting on the hard curb in front of my cold sister's awful little new home. I could love this.

“Ke-ir,” Gigi Boudakian moaned, two syllables, child- sleepy, eyes still shut. “Ke-ir. Where is the car? Why isn't the car here? I am dead. I'm starting to get a headache. I don't feel good.”

She had finished my short-lived idyll. The time had come. I couldn't expect to avoid the truth any longer.

“I guess he's not coming,” I said. “I guess something went wrong. Maybe he came when we were out walking. I don't know, Gigi. Rollo can be funny.”

“Oh, Keir. Keir, what are we going to do? What time is it?”

“It's almost four.”

“In the morning?”

“Afraid so.”

“Oh, no! We'll have to stay with your sister.”

“Absolutely not,” I said. “I'll sleep on the street first.”

“Well, I won't. What are we going to do?”

I knew what we could do. Don't know why I didn't think of it before. Maybe I did. Maybe part of me did. I knew about it, that's for sure, because I had known about it for months.

“There's a place we can stay,” I said.

I took sleepy Gigi Boudakian by the hand, pulled her up, and led her on. The sudden whoosh of blood to my head made me all floaty as we walked and talked.

“There's a building down this way, at the far edge of the campus. In some woods. It's for guests. Visiting family, visiting sports people, speakers, conferences, stuff like that. It's empty most of the time, and definitely at this point in the year.”

She looked at me sideways. “What's it got to do with you?”

“I have a key.”

“You have a
key
? Who are you? You don't even go to this school yet.”

“It's not my key, exactly. It's the football team's key. For their use. For our use. It's in a spot in the rosebush out front. A key to open the front door, and another one for the last room on the top floor. It's one of the perks.”

She stopped walking.

“What?” I said. “It's perfectly all right. It's okay.”

“Oh, Keir, I don't know. I don't know about this at all.”

“What's not to know? We don't have a lot of options. There is nowhere else to go at four in the morning way out here. We'll go up, catch three or four hours sleep, then get the bus back home in the morning. It's the best plan.”

She looked at me sideways, but her lids were pulling down again. “I have to sleep,” she said.

“I know,” I said, walking on, “and we will. We will.”

We trudged the rest of the way to the three-floor block at the edge of a wood at the edge of the campus. I got down on my knees and fished out the sandwich bag with the keys, just like the football seniors had shown me. In another minute we were at the top of the industrial staircase and letting ourselves into room 312.

“Honey, we're home,” I said.

She looked up at me, exhausted and unamused.

I flipped on the light, a long harsh fluorescent strip down the middle of the ceiling. The room itself was like a jail cell. There were two single beds up against opposing cinder-block walls, and nothing but bare pale linoleum floor between them. In the far corner was an extremely basic oak desk built into the wall and carved with lots of initials and primitive artwork. The place smelled strongly like rubber. Tire rubber. There was a single window on the wall directly opposite the door.

“Please turn that light off,” Gigi said as she sat on her bed, the one close to the window. I did, and watched as she dropped first her bag, then her shoes, on the floor. I took
off my jacket, threw it at the desk, missed, left it there. I kicked off my shoes and sat there on the side of my bed, staring at nothing.

She was there, like a ghost. I wasn't even aware of any movement before Gigi Boudakian, in angel-blue light, was there in front of me. She bent down, put one hand on my shoulder, and kissed me.

It was a nice kiss. It was nicer than any other kiss she'd ever given me, and it was not a brother kiss. She let it touch just the corner of my mouth, and stay there for three, four seconds, just long enough to burn her brand into my flesh for life. It was nicer than any kiss anyone ever gave me, or ever would.

And then she was done. Her face floated there in front of my face for a few seconds more.

“Remember, first thing, we are out of here,” she said in a weary, raspy whisper.

“Uh-huh,” I said.

And she was back to bed. I wasn't even lying down yet. I was still sitting there upright, in the space of the kiss. I was still living in it, happily ever after.

“Lie down, Keir,” Gigi said kindly.

I tipped over sideways and lay there.

Before minutes had passed, I could hear the soft snuffling noise that must have been the Gigi Boudakian version of a snore. I listened to it, closer, like a lovely old record. I listened to her breathing for a long time. I was a lucky man.

I was not a sleepy man, however, and I knew I would not be for some time. I knew I needed help, and I rooted in my pocket for it. I found the antidote, the reliable come-down friends that Quarterback Ken kept in quantity. I swallowed one. I lay there for a minute and realized the futility. I swallowed the other one.

I felt the tears rolling out of the outside corners of my eyes, along my temples, into my ears. I always hated when that happened, when the tears would run that way because you were on your back looking up when the tears decided to come. Tears in your ears will make you crazy, and they were making me crazy and making more tears come.

I was so lonely. I was so so lonely.

I wasn't up to anything other than not being alone.

“Gigi,” I said softly, standing by her bed. “Gigi, can I come over?”

She didn't say anything. She was breathing deeply, peacefully.

“Gigi, I want to come over,” I said, and she didn't say yes or no.

I looked over her. The space between Gigi Boudakian and the wall was plenty of space. She was huddled up on the edge of the bed and so there was more than enough room for me. It seemed all right. I thought about it—I didn't
not
think about it, which is a problem sometimes. And it felt all right.

Quietly, easily, I went to the end of the bed and climbed my way up into the space like a cat. Like a pet cat just coming up to get some warmth and not disturbing anybody.

Gigi shifted. She was on her side, facing away, and then she sort of backed into me some. I could smell her hair. It smelled faintly of oil, faintly of smoke. I let my face hover there, in the tangle of Gigi Boudakian's hair on the pillow.

Until she rolled over. She rolled over and all of a sudden there she was, Gigi's face there right up to my face on the pillow. Her long eyelashes looked like they had lengthened in her sleep, and were now tickling her cheekbones. Her skin, with the moon angling in from the window, was polished amber marble.

But her mouth. Gigi Boudakian's sleeping mouth was a living, thriving thing, heart-shaped and full and pushed out in the direction of the world like a gift.

It was all right to kiss her lips. It did not seem all right not to kiss them. I kissed Gigi Boudakian there on her lips, first lightly as if I did not want to be known, then harder and realer like I definitely did.

Her lips were so soft I could have fallen right in. I would have loved to.

But the glory of it was that she kissed me back.

She did not open her eyes at first, but there was a definite shift, from Gigi Boudakian lying there being kissed like Sleeping Beauty, to Beauty waking, to feeling it, to her
kissing me. I put my arms around her then, and she kissed me more. Her eyes were still closed, but she made a sound, a sad sound straight out of the heart without any voice, like a moan, a cry, a call like one lost bird to another and I knew what I was doing was right when I recognized that sound as the same lonely sound my own heart was making, my better heart, the exact same sound it was making and had been making for a long time.

I had my clothes off so easy it was like there was a backstage assistant helping me. “I love you, Gigi Boudakian,” I said, kissing her eyes, which were still closed. Kissing her mouth.

I did not stop kissing her, not enough to even let us breathe. She was moaning then, moaning that familiar heart sound that I knew, that I wanted, and she was moving, leaning, rolling. Her eyes were open now, and she was moaning, and she was moaning loud, and I was pressing my mouth so hard to hers it hurt, but it was right. It was so right. I held her hands in my hands tightly on the pillow above her head, and I held her, her face, her mouth, her whole being, with mine, holding her as completely as one person can hold another person.

I
'm worn down. Everything is catching up with me now and I can feel myself physically melting down. She is doing nothing, Gigi Boudakian, other than kneeling there in the middle of the floor in the middle of the tire-smelling room, but she is wearing me down. She won't even sit on the bed or anything, and she won't even listen to what I am saying.