“Fuckin’ stalker,” Lon mutters, still wondering how he and Brianna got themselves mixed up with this crew. “Crazy ass wackos.” He gives in, relaxing against the surface of the cool aluminum chair. “Sorry,” he apologizes for his language in the presence of an elder, his mother’s reprimanding tone flashing through his mind.
“Ah, it’s alright, young Lon. I’m sure I’d feel the same as you, given your circumstance,” Dr. Godfrey soothes. “You’re safe here. We’re not the enemy. It would be immoral of us not to test you, given the information we have.”
“If you’re so concerned with morals, then why are we here? In some secretive lab? What’s wrong with a regular medical facility?” Lon argues.
“They wouldn’t understand,” Dr. Godfrey answers simply, removing the blood catheter from Lon’s arm and disengaging the monitors, having recorded all of the information needed. “She doesn’t know, does she? Ms. Bentley? That you do this for her?”
“Nope. And I plan to keep it that way,” Lon warns.
“Would you like to know about Ms. Bentley?” Dr. Godfrey pries, treading lightly. “Where she is? How she is? What she’s been up to?”
Lon doesn’t answer, having grown accustomed to having no contact with her for her own safety, although his piqued expression surely gives away his interest in her whereabouts.
“She’s finishing up her degree at University in Lafayette,” Dr. Godfrey informs of the location two hours east of New Orleans. “Criminal Justice. She finished in just two and a half years.” He chuckles fondly at her drive.
Lon internalizes the information, figuring her parents’ death had a hand in her choice of study. “Is she okay?” The question escapes his lips at a whisper.
“Oh yes,” Dr. Godfrey answers encouragingly. “Fully involved in student life.” He takes great care in delivering the next verse. “She’s headed to law school at LSU this term.”
The heart rate monitor, still attached, alarms again as the knowledge fully hits Lon that she will reside in the same town, the same campus as him, close enough to touch. He rips the electrodes from his chest, ridding the telltale affection of his heart’s desire. Standing from the chair, he hastily pulls his t-shirt back over his frame.
Dr. Godfrey grabs his wallet from his trousers, pulling from it a hundred dollar bill. “Here,” he says, handing the money to Lon. “Fuel up and get yourself a good dinner on the way back to school.”
“Is that what a pint of blood goes for these days?” Lon quips sarcastically, uninterested in making friends or being indebted to ETNA Laboratories for anything. “I don’t want your money,” he refuses, heading for the exit.
“Drive safe, young Lon,” Dr. Godfrey calls after him, remorsefully tucking the bill back into his wallet.
Nearly two hours later, Lon’s foot mashes the clutch in his loud, souped-up Scout as he shifts down, pulling up to the fraternity house he has called home for the past two years. The first week of classes winding down, Friday night rings in the first official celebration of the school year. The sun now setting, he is late to his own party. Vehicles line the compact side street.
Unsuccessful in scoping out an open parking spot, he engages his oversized tires to climb the curb, coming to a stop smack-dab in the middle of the lawn in front of the frat house. He piles out, grabbing a few duffel bags containing his belongings from the open back of the Scout. Throwing them over his shoulders, his able-bodied arms and back flex supporting the weight.
“Castille!” A familiar voice, that of one Johnny Vito, calls from the front porch. “Thought you were gonna be a no-show, bro. Where the hell ya been?” Johnny’s jovial mood surely spurred by the two cans of Natural Light beer he holds, one in each hand.
“Had some stuff to do before I left Pop’s,” Lon dismisses. “By the way, thanks for being so prudent as to leave home early. Suck ass,” he spars. His reference to
home
being that Johnny took him up on Brianna’s offer three years ago and moved into her spare bedroom with Lon and his family on the bayou. The two having grown as close as brothers over the duration, even trekking off to college together. “Pop kept busting my balls all week long about getting back to school.”
“You missed the whole damn first week of classes, slacker,” Johnny joins in their usual banter. “Guess you can afford to though, huh? Genius,” he digs at Lon’s 4.0 GPA.
Lon doesn’t respond, knowing that maintaining such an average is not an option, seeing how he is dependent on academic scholarships, the full financial load too much for his parents to bear.
“Here.” Johnny cracks the tab open on a can of beer. “Have a
natty light,”
he throws around the slang for the cheaper-than-dirt beverage consumed by many a money hungry college student.
“You know I don’t drink that shit.” Lon pushes his hand away.
“Oh, that’s right!” Johnny howls. “I bet you’re starving for a little
Mary Jane,
aren’t ya, bro?” He roughly pats his arm about Lon’s shoulders, escorting him inside. “Did you go the whole summer without her?”
“What do you think?” Lon rolls his eyes, knowing he’d rather be caught dead than to get caught with marijuana in his parents’ home.
The two boys finagle their way through a growing rowdy crowd in the downstairs of the frat house, taking part in and responding to the usual insulting and profanity-laden greetings amongst their male counterparts, all in good college fun of course.
“Hey man, you’re never gonna guess who I ran into today, in class,” Johnny prefaces as they make their way upstairs to a more quiet and calm existence. “It was like seeing a ghost!” he mesmerizes.
“Just give me a minute here,” Lon dismisses walking into his bedroom, his mind certainly preoccupied with a more pressing matter. Lobbing his duffel bags down on his bed, he diligently digs through the drawer of his nightstand. His hands settling on a brown paper bag, he releases a most comforting exhale.
“I invited her to the party, tonight. Not sure she’ll come though. I doubt it’s her scene.” Johnny shrugs, standing in the doorway. He watches Lon, who is engrossed with the exact science of rolling a joint, wondering if he’s even heard a word he has said.
“I still got it.” Lon grins having successfully rolled the finely cut, green cannabis species into a thin paper roach. “Thought I might have forgotten how to do it.” He chuckles, considering his summer off from practice.
“Why do you like that shit so much?” Johnny debates, having never developed an appetite for it.
Lon leans back against the wall behind his bed, relishing in his first inhale. Holding it inside momentarily until he feels the chemical burning just under his chest, he finally exhales accompanied with a cough, the innate nature of his lungs attempting to rid his body of the toxin. Waiting momentarily until the sensation hits him, “Ahh,” he expels, the events of the day along with any other pressing and troublesome worries roll completely off his shoulders. “Sweet release,” he enchants, taking another indulgent hit.
“Keg stand!” a disorderly voice sounds from downstairs. “Castille…Vito…get your asses down here!”
“Hey Johnny,” a sexily-clad female sorority sister purrs, approaching him. Her fellow Chi Omega mate holds her hand, hanging shyly behind her shoulder as she throws Lon a philandering and most seductive glance, twirling her long brunette hair between her fingers.
“Well hello, ladies.” Johnny returns their welcome with a mile-wide grin, wedging himself between them, his arms looping around each girl’s waist.
“Y’all coming downstairs? Or are we having a private party up here?” The forward Chi O asks, pulling on Johnny’s waist to enter Lon’s room.
Lon clears his throat, throwing Johnny an advising look.
“Ah, let’s take it downstairs. The hermit needs a little time to come out of his shell,” Johnny redirects, turning the girls around and away from Lon’s room.
“Suit yourself, Castille,” the alpha Chi O responds. Stopping purposefully, she reaches across Johnny pulling her sorority sister’s face closer to hers, her lips seductively partaking of a lavish and perfectly show quality French kiss from her female counterpart.
Johnny’s eyes watch lasciviously, his mouth salivating. “You sharing the sugar?” he whispers ardently, unable to contain himself from inquiring.
Chi O One fully indulges him, her experienced tongue becoming intimately acquainted with his eager mouth. Her teeth delivering the grand finale, she bites down on his bottom lip firmly sucking it between hers. Johnny groans, his dark eyelashes pressed together, indulging in the rousing feeling. Chi O Two giggles, her cheeks growing flushed as she looks back over her shoulder at Lon, a most tantalizing glance reminding him he, too, could be part of the tongue-fondling fun.
Johnny tips his head back, emitting a boastful howl from deep in his chest. “Don’t worry, Castille. I’ll be sure and get them good and warm for ya.”
Lon shakes his head, unaffected, watching them walk off. Pressing the joint to his mouth for one last savory inhale, his lips are quite taken with their current position in the company of Mary Jane. His dream girl, she comes free of STDs and drama, asks for nothing and expects nothing in return for her enchanting euphoria.
Later that evening Lon sits completely entranced and copacetic, his demeanor in opposition to the raucous party atmosphere around him. His frat brothers guzzle beer, their loud voices carrying, so many of them packed into the tiny house their bodies like ping pong balls bounce one off the other. Many have their arms territorially slung around at least one sorority sister, stealing kisses and copping feels when and as initiated by their female counterparts.
On the couch, Lon lounges with fellow
stoners
as they partake in deep discussions on philosophy, books and theory. Another element to Mary Jane he quite enjoys is that she takes his mind to places it wouldn’t normally dwell, the conceptual much more interesting and easier to tolerate than the factual.
Chi O One and Two scope him out, their near inebriated forms squeezing in between him and his couch mates, one on each side. He wears only jeans and flip-flops, his t-shirt long since removed from the rising heat in the house what with all of the warm, sexually-charged collegiate bodies lingering.
Chi O One and Two snuggle tightly to him, their fingernails lightly caressing the brawn of his arms and chest. Lon acknowledges them, yet does not take part in their behavior. He figuratively and literally talks over their heads, finding the enlightening conversation amongst his peers to be much more stimulating.
“Castille!” Johnny calls through the crowd, making his way to the couch, undoubtedly Lon’s usual nesting spot. “Look what the cat dragged in.” He smiles proudly, his arm looped around the waist of and escorting a stunning female form.
Lon gives him the usual wave off, not even looking in his direction, fully engaged in heavy rhetoric.
“You’ll have to excuse him,” Johnny speaks to the blonde he still firmly holds tight to his side. “He’s all into this metaphysical crap. He’s so deep.” Johnny chuckles mockingly.
“Seems that’s not the only thing he’s into these days,” Brianna Bentley, the girl to Johnny’s side remarks quietly at the faint haze of green smoke billowing above the couch. “Hey,
bayou brat,”
she raises her voice in Lon’s direction.
Lon ceases his chatter, the familiar and once most pleasant sound making its way to his ears. Surely Mary Jane is playing another trick on him. Sometimes in his deepest, most serene highs he can hear her voice, see her face. His eyes graze across the coffee table in front of the couch as they continue slowly investigating from the floor up. Buzzed on Mary Jane, he does nothing fast. Each sight, sound and taste is heightened, meant to be meandered, fully taken in and appreciated.
He makes note of the red toenail polish peeking out from a pair of strappy black stilettos, leading up to form-fitting black leather pants that adorn seemingly endless, long and toned legs. His eyes are met with a sliver of ivory skin at her lower abdomen, giving way to a tiny black tank. Over the front of her shoulders, hangs long blonde hair coiffed into large, full curls. The image escorting Lon’s mind to his youth, the same hair he used to be compelled to touch, gliding his timid fingers through.
His eyes further track indulgently above to a small, round chin that sits under a full, pouty mouth, in this instance graced with red lipstick matching that of her toenails. Two angelic dimpled cheeks advance to a high bone structure as his eyes finally rest on a set of peepers—a rare color that became his favorite over the course of his childhood—a brilliant and exotic emerald green.
The woman’s face and form, although having grown mature and provocatively full, prove a dead-ringer of the image that most often haunts his dreams. Lon recognizes the changes in her style, surely indicative of the same change in her life’s attitude and experiences. At the end of a usual summer, his Brianna would not wear black. If she were the same effervescent girl he fell in love with in his infancy, she would be wearing something light and colorful, something vivid and cheerful.
Assured that his entire world stands still, that she and he are the only two people in the room, Mary Jane affords his tunnel vision. Momentarily coming to his senses, he greets her in a most provoking manner, using the moniker his
Pop
assigned her. Lon knows this will only irritate her, the last thing she wanted to consider herself after her parents’ death was pretty, the adjective merely a reminder of her soft and privileged life. But he can’t help himself, the desire to chafe her the same as her memory has distressed him over the past few years wins out.
“Hey,
Jolie Blonde,”
he bites out the title, his voice and eyes matching in their indignation. Chi O One and Two providing a perfect adjunct to his sentiment, he lobs his arms around each of their shoulders as he remains fully reclined on the couch, pungent symbolism that he is unmoved by her presence.
Brianna innately formulates his actions. Although a far cry from his boyhood response where he would have greeted her graciously with arms wide open, she can still read him like a book, three years much too short to have forgotten his mannerisms. His staged reply facilitating its purpose, alienating her, she stares back at him refusing to respond.