Authors: Unknown Author
Kathryn’s hand slipped off the door handle. The questions hit her rapid fire. How did Jono, the bartender and struggling college student, . afford the matrix of electronics equipment in his apartment? Did she ever really believe the story about how he had a friend who got it for him wholesale? A friend she had never met? Where did he go after the sudden phone calls and abrupt departures from his apartment, when he assured her that he was not going to see another girl, and that he would be back in time to drive her home from Berkeley to Sea Cliff before her curfew? Suddenly all the unanswered questions, which had in the beginning given her boyfriend his enigmatic appeal and sense of mystery, solidified into the obvious conclusion; she should have figured it out during the many nights she’d spent alone in his apartment, waiting for him to come back.
“He had it in his jacket, didn’t he?”
Kerry sighed. “It’s not that big a deal.”
Kathryn slumped against the passenger seat, feeling as if the wind had been pummeled out of her.
“Kathryn, if you’re going to be his girlfriend, you need to grow up a little bit.”
“Grow up? You’re so fucking high you almost got us killed, and you want me to grow up!”
“Yeah. And you’re really bad at playing dumb,” Kerry said, all sobriety now.
Once she got out of the car at her house, after a ten-minute ride in abashed silence, Kathryn slammed the car door as hard as she could, because
dumb
didn’t even come close to describing how she felt.
Floating somewhere between sleep and waking, Randall was afraid to turn over for fear that any change in position would further twist his gnarled stomach. After several minutes of indecision, he managed to roll onto his back, and where he did he realized he was naked, He saw Jesse sitting cross-legged on the foot of his bed. His legs, the etchings of his past he carried with him always, had been laid bare before Jesse’s eyes.
He groped for memory and saw only Tim Mathis staring at him as he held him by both shoulders, and then a mad jump cut of flickering lights on the dance floor. “What time is it?” he asked groggily.
“Almost six.”
“What happened?”
“I found you out front. You were passed out.”
Alarm snapped Randall totally awake, and he tried to sit up. The comforter tumbled down his bare chest. He managed to catch it in his burned hand. Jesse hadn’t moved. “Why am I naked?” Randall asked, taking a breath between each word.
“You were out of it. Kind of awake but totally incoherent. Not like I haven’t had experience with that kind of thing . . . But anyway, you kept saying you were burning up. I opened the window and that wasn’t good enough so I — ”
“Where’s my jacket?’
Gray light teased the edges of the window shade, and Randall could make out Jesse moving to his closet, dressed in only his underwear. He reached in and pulled Randall’s leather jacket from a hanger. “It needs to be cleaned,” Jesse said, displaying the spill of caked vomit down one of the flaps.
Randall jerked one hand impatiently, and Jesse handed the jacket to him. He felt for the hard lump of the flask in the inside pocket, and, to his relief, found it. Jesse stood over the bed, watching intently as Randall removed the flask and uncapped it. It was more than half full.
“You must have hit the scotch pretty hard,” Jesse said.
No, I didn’t, Randall thought. I’ve hit a lot of goddamn things pretty hard, and never fallen so fast.
“Jesse, did I...” He couldn’t finish and let out a frustrated sigh.
“What?” Jesse asked, a smile in his voice.
“I didn’t...
try
anything, did I?” He brought one hand to his aching forehead.
Jesse spoke, mouth inches from his ear. “No you didn’t. And I was very hurt.” Jesse tousled Randall’s hair before crossing to his side of the room.
Randall tried to prop himself up on both his elbows and his stomach yowled. He landed on the pillows with a groan. Three deep breaths and the cramping in his abdomen abated. This was not a hangover. This was something worse. Had the scotch truly been rancid? Could scotch even go bad? He had no idea.
Something else had been in the scotch.
He froze, eyes on the ceiling. The realization quickened his pulse, flushing his veins, sending blood to his brain and clarifying his thoughts.
Jesse’s voice startled him. ‘Your hand looks like your legs. Only newer.”
Randall let his eyes fall to Jesse, who was leaning against the edge of the window. “Different,” was all Randall could manage.
“I figured.” Jesse seemed to lose interest in the subject, his eyes narrowing on the crack between the shade and the window. “Remember the phone call last Friday?”
Randall grunted no.
“The one you asked about.”
“Yeah?”
“It wasn’t my Father. It was his lawyer.”
“Jesse, I didn’t mean to .. . piss you off about it.”
“Yes, you did,” Jesse retorted calmly. “My dad’s a pretty good addict, if there is such a thing. I mean, I remember him showing up at school functions, acting all the gentleman, when I knew he’d sucked down a few lines in the limo on the way there. Well, a few weeks ago he kind of lost control. He was having some big party at the house and he and a few guests ended up in the neighbor’s pool. Considering this is the third time this year Dad’s got the two pools confused, the neighbors decided to file a trespassing charge. I’m sure it didn’t help that he refused to get out of their hot tub even when the police showed up.”
Pale light around the shade had brightened into a beam that sliced across Jesse’s chest.
“Anyway. He’s looking at twenty-eight days.”
“Prison.”
“No. Rehab.”
“That sucks,” Randall said, his voice wary. “So you’re not going home for the break?”
“I was never going home for the break,” Jesse said, his eyes on Randall’s.
Quickly Jesse lifted the shade. Even the pale light of dawn forced Randall to squint, and at first he didn’t see the flakes tumbling past the window, which seemed to hold Jesse in sudden thrall. "People like snow because they think it unifies everything,” Jesse said in a low voice. “They think it draws all these disparate elements into one landscape. Like how a layer of white over everything draws your attention to things you didn’t notice before. The telephone pole, the wires overhead, the rooftops.” Jesse paused, his eyes glazed and distant as they stared through the glass at the silent snowfall. “Bullshit,” he whispered. “Too much of it is suffocating. It robs each thing of what it really is.”
Randall realized he had been gazing at Jesse for longer than he usually allowed himself to, for fear of feeling that familiar hot flicker of panic that told him looking too long would make him want too much. But given what Jesse had just shared, it would be too rude just to curl up into a ball. For the first time, Randall felt Jesse’s solitude like a crushing weight; here he was at Atherton, friendless and having run across country to escape the nightmare of his only living parent. But the longer he watched Jesse gaze out the window, the more Randall could feel Jesse’s hunger for his companionship. It was too loaded an invitation for Randall to accept.
“Well.” Jesse broke the silence, turning to his bed. “Since you don’t look like you’re about to choke on your own vomit, I’m going to get some sleep, okay?” He slid beneath his comforter and rolled to face the wall.
Randall couldn’t say anything in response. He couldn’t tell Jesse that he knew his solitude, knew the damage that resulted from turning yourself into an orphan.
He reached down and shoved the flask under his bed.
In the driveway, Eric’s Camry sat alone in a bed of deepening shadow as late Saturday afternoon turned into an evening of darkening pewter sky. Randall’s hangover slowed his steps, even though he was invigorated by a strange blend of purpose and fear. By the time he reached the front steps, he had managed to convince himself that the bottle hadn’t been poisoned and that his mind was running wild with guilt-fueled fantasies. He’d skipped dinner the night before. Could drinking on an empty stomach drop you to your knees?
With one hand on the banister he realized there was still only one way to quiet the racket of accusing voices in his head. Get the bottle.
He’d taken several steps when he heard the unmistakable sound of voices raised in argument in the living room, and while he couldn’t make out the words, Randall could hear Eric arguing, and another male voice trying to trump his volume.
Randall squeezed himself between the Camry and the side wall of the house, moving slowly toward the gate to the backyard, illuminated by the bright halo of a security light. At first, instinct had driven him into the alley. He hadn’t called to say he was coming over, maybe hoping to catch Eric off guard, but that meant running the risk of being seen. Now, as he listened to footsteps and saw a shadow pass over the wall of the neighboring house, curiosity led him to eavesdrop.
Eric and his guest moved into the kitchen.
Randall shut his eyes, hoping it would help him concentrate on the muffled voices inside. The sudden song of water through pipes told him Eric was standing at the sink beneath the window. “How many times do I have to ask to be kept in the dark?” The other voice gave an inaudible response, and when Eric spoke again, he had obviously turned from the sink because he was harder to hear. “I don’t see why it’s so important to you . . .” Nothing, and then Eric again. “Just a look? That’s all? Even when you know you don’t have my approval?”
They left the kitchen and the conversation was lost within the house. Next, Randall heard footsteps plodding down the front hallway. When he heard the front door open, he held himself flat against the side wall.
Mitchell Seaver strode past the entrance to the driveway, tossing his head back and brushing his bangs off his forehead before he disappeared. Randall moved swiftly down the driveway and caught a glimpse of Mitchell a block away before he made a sudden right, heading away from campus.
Randall managed to wait almost a minute before mounting the front steps.
Eric threw the front door open with such force that Randall guessed he had been expecting Mitchell to return. “Did you call first?” he asked.
“No. Sorry.”
Eric nodded, his eyes flitting past Randall, probably checking to see if Mitchell was still in the street.
“Can I come in?”
Eric shrugged and let out a grunt. “Good to see you too,” Randall muttered as he brushed past Eric through the doorway.
The dining-room light was on and Randall’s eyes flew to a stack of stapled student papers on the usually empty dining-room table. Eric crossed briskly out from behind him, and Randall watched as Eric began to leaf through them with feigned nonchalance. “You should really call,” Eric said absently, holding his back to him.
No mention of Mitchell, Randall thought. Eric turned at his silence.
“You look horrible.”
“Thanks.”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Eric returned his attention to the stack as if Randall were too bright to look at. His altercation with Mitchell had agitated him, and Randall, woozy and squinting at the brightness of the dining-room chandelier, waited to see what Eric would say next. “Seems Mitchell couldn’t make it through all of these while I was gone.”
How many times do I have to ask to be kept in the dark?
Was Eric just averse to grading his own students’ papers? Randall doubted the imposition alone would lead to a shouting match. At the bottom of the pile, Randall noticed the label tag of a manila file folder. But then Eric lifted the stack with both hands and carried it to his satchel, which rested on top of the liquor cabinet.
“More emphatically written treatises on why the Greeks removed the arms from all their statues?” Randall asked, summoning an old joke between them. Eric didn’t laugh, just took extra care to shove the cumbersome pile of papers into the straining confines of the leather bag. Once done, he turned, letting out a fatigued breath of accomplishment.
“I think she dropped the course,” Eric sighed.
Randall averted his eyes from the liquor cabinet that Eric blocked with his body. “I hope .you didn’t fail her,” he said. “Her stuff had entertainment value at least.”
Eric couldn’t manage a laugh and his eyes fell to Randall’s feet. Randall could barely focus on Eric, feeling the distance grow between him and the scotch bottle that contained something other than scotch.
“Rough night last night?” Eric asked.
“You could say that.” Randall hesitated and drew breath, but the light was blinding him and he was surprised when the room went dark.
“Better?” Eric asked through the sudden shadows.
Randall grunted. “I was thinking ... Maybe tonight I could sleep here.”
His eyes hadn’t adjusted to the darkness when Eric answered. “I don’t see why not.”
Jean Pierre’s was all white linens and muted conversation. A lobster tank gurgled next to the host stand, and the other diners seemed to be locals Kathryn had never laid eyes on, or else professors in need of a refuge from the concentrated collegiate hustle of Brookline Avenue. Through the plate-glass windows, Atherton Bay lay in darkness pierced by the beacon lights of small ships making their way toward the Atlantic. Beyond the far bend in the coastline, Kathryn could make out the dark rise of the hill and the campus glowing atop its crown. It warmed her to be disengaged from the campus, if only for an evening.
“Thanks,” she said.
Mitchell looked up from his menu, gave her a swift smile, and raised his water glass. She toasted it with her own. When he had picked her up, she had been relieved that he had dressed for the occasion; khaki trousers, a starched white oxford, and a loose-fitting blazer. But the fact that he had traded his glasses for contacts was what struck her the most. All of it made her feel less self-conscious in the form-fitting black cocktail dress she had borrowed from April without asking. Despite the more formal attire, he seemed more relaxed, and less eager to get a laugh out of her.