The Tragic Age (22 page)

“No,” Gretchen says. She kisses the blotchy flesh of my cheek. “No! I don't care! I'm glad you didn't.”

She kisses my mouth. “Just don't let this do anything to us!” She kisses my cheek again. My mouth again. She kisses my nose. My eyes. It's like a salve. Where her lips touch, the pain goes away.

“I miss Dorie,” I say.

Gretchen wordlessly takes me by the hand and leads me into the darkened house.

Fact.

The one thing that can influence fate and all its myriad chain of events is a creative act of the soul.

We don't make love at first.

We're on the first floor, in a small guest room. Gretchen quietly pulls back the bedcover and we get in with our clothes on. We just hold one another. She doesn't ask any questions. She hardly says a word.

“It's like I'm falling,” I whisper. “Falling down this deep, deep hole. The bottom is rushing up. Impact just doesn't get any closer.”

“So sad,” is all she says. “Such a sad, sad boy.”

When she feels me starting to get hard, she slips off her gym shorts. I push down my jeans. She rolls over on top of me. She guides me into her. She puts her head down on my shoulder. We lie like that. Not even moving.

“Do you love me, Billy?”

“Yes,” I say. “So much. Do you love me?”

She kisses me on the mouth. “I love you with all my heart, Billy Kinsey.”

Truth.

We love in order to know we're not alone.

 

59

When we come out of the guest room, Dr. Quinn is sitting in the kitchen. In a quiet voice, he tells Gretchen to go upstairs to her room. In the same quiet voice he asks me to leave and I do.

 

60

Easter. Old English translation—eastre—Goddess of the Dawn. Deity of Resurrection and the Returning Light.

In Madrid, a flash mob of one hundred fifty young people celebrate the day by looting a 7-Eleven Store.

So much for bunny rabbits.

In Brazil, a disgruntled mob protesting the Olympics throw three teenage boys off a six-story roof, killing one. In retaliation, soldiers open fire on a crowd of several hundred, most of whom are engaged in Easter mass. Fifty are killed, scores wounded.

So much for jelly beans.

In Nigeria, Islamist terrorists storm a Christian school, killing a teacher and twenty students, while in Eastern Jerusalem, a car bomb kills seventeen Orthodox Jews, including four children. This is just days after a similar blast kills nine Coptic Christians which is just days after an identical blast kills twenty-three Sunni Muslims which is just days after an even bigger blast kills eleven Buddhist monks visiting from Cambodia. Meanwhile in Sumatra, angry tigers trap six poachers in a bamboo tree for the holiday weekend, causing them to miss dinner. Sadly,
these
men are rescued. And as they are, perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, in the Netherlands medical experts report that due to the frenzied pace with which mankind is destroying wild habitats and disrupting ecosystems, the next deadly pandemic will be a virus that spills from wildlife into human beings. Because of urban density and human interconnectedness, it will kill millions if not billions.

Just another thing to look forward to.

Meanwhile, home on the ranch.

It was the writer Mark Twain who wrote that one of life's most overvalued pleasures is sexual intercourse and one of life's least appreciated pleasures is taking a shit. In popular online videos celebrating the modern rites of spring, young people do both.

In public.

Vegas, Daytona Beach, Panama City, and Cancún. Tour companies offer vacation packages, everything included except the booze, drugs, and condoms. Unfortunately, sallow-faced grunions from the Pacific Northwest, without the money to do anything else, often descend on the shores of High School Highville and take over, bringing their booze, drugs, and condoms with them.

So much for Easter eggs.

It's low tide and Twom and I walk the edge of the surf, staying as far away as possible from the drunken college morons farther up on the beach. Guys wearing board shorts so low their pubic hair is showing keep calling for tramp-stamped girls in Brazilian-cut bikinis to flash their tits. A sound system is blaring. There's the smell of pot in the air.

Twom doesn't look good. The scabs are gone but his face is tired and drawn and not quite his own. Twom's grandmother paid for new front teeth but they don't look right in Twom's mouth. Too white, too straight, too perfect. There's still blood in the corner of one eye. The doctors aren't sure if it will ever go away.

“Montebello's out of town for a week,” says Twom. “The whole family. Hawaii.”

“So?” I say.

“So I say we go in and trash the place.”

This totally stops me in my tracks. “I didn't hear you say that,” I say.

“You want I should say it again?” says Twom.

“Last time was the last time,” I say.

“Which is what you said last time. Ephraim's in. Dee is in. That leaves you.”

“I don't need this,” I say, and I turn to walk away. Twom circles and steps in front of me. I try to move around him. He doesn't let me.

“You sleeping much, Billy?”

I can see my reflection in Twom's eyes. Or maybe it's just that I think I can. My face is even more pale and exhausted than his. I don't think I've so much as dozed in two weeks. Twom knows this. He knows why.

*   *   *

“My mom and dad want us to stop for a while.”

We're in Gretchen's front yard. She's called and asked me to come over and now she's come out to talk to me. From the tone of her voice on the phone, I know something is up. But I'm not expecting this.

“Are you going listen to them?” My stomach is doing flip-flops. This isn't supposed to happen. I'm the one who's supposed to do the breaking up with her.

“I don't want to … but…” Gretchen can't seem to look at me. “They're saying I really let them down.”

“Why? Because you were screwing your boyfriend in the maid's room?”

Actually I'm not capable of talking.

“It was horrible, Billy. They even made me get an STD test. All these things I never even heard of.”

“Thanks, Dad,” I say.

I'm trying to be funny but it isn't. It makes it worse. All I can think of is a doctor sticking his fingers in Gretchen's vagina. I realize I'm angry with her. Angry that she's not braver than this and that she's not standing up for us. I expected more from her, I really did. It's as if she reads my mind.

“They're my
parents,
Billy.”

Like it's an excuse. I want to tell her that our parents do everything to us. Yes, they might try to provide for you, and do it because they even care about you and think they have your best interests at heart. But by doing so, they trap you, pure and simple. Even with the best of intentions they can mess you up completely. But I don't say that. I don't say anything at all. I'm dying inside.

Gretchen starts to cry. I hug her. She feels wonderful. I savor everything about her, trying to memorize it.

“Hey. It's a not a problem,” I whisper. “I'll wait.”

“You will?” Gretchen says. “Promise?”

“As long as it takes,” I say. But I won't. I know I won't. I never want to feel like this again. It's just that for this brief and final moment, saying it gives us both a little hope.

Sometimes you don't need a seashell to hear the ocean roaring in your ears.

*   *   *

“Do it for me,” says Twom.

He steps back. He stands down. “One more time, that's all. Because if you don't, I
am
gonna have to kill him.”

I don't have to ask him who he's talking about. And all of a sudden I realize I want to. Go truly, totally outlaw. I hold out my open palm. Twom taps it with the closed fist of chaos.

Fact.

Revenge is the dark side of justice. He who seeks vengeance digs two graves. One for his enemy. One for himself.

 

61

“Why, Ephraim, is that you?”

“Hey, Mrs. Kinsey,” says Ephraim.

“Well, what a surprise.” And not necessarily a nice one.

It's the day after the beach day and we're at my house. Mom glances at me, wondering what this is all about. Mom probably hasn't so much as thought of Ephraim since he was thirteen years old and was caught trying to sell downloaded porno stills from a makeshift stand in front of his house. Ephraim's mother screamed so loud the whole block thought she was killing him. She promptly sent him to off to overnight nerd camp for the rest of the summer.

“How is everything?” says Ephraim. He's trying to be nice. He knows. Everybody in the neighborhood knows.

“Fine, thank you,” says Mom. It's anything but. Dad and Mrs. Taylor are living who knows where, Mr. Taylor hasn't returned home, and lawyers are talking. It's already understood that Mom will keep the house. Dad just wants the wine cellar. Mrs. Taylor wants the dachshund.

“We're just going to hang out for a while,” I say.

“Have fun.” She quickly turns and leaves.

Here's the thing.

I don't think Mom was so much in love with Dad as she isn't sure what she's going to do without him. Even though they were like cars cruising in separate lanes, after almost twenty-something years together, I think she was sort of used to him. And they went through Dorie together.

Here's the second thing.

Both Mom and Dad would have been so much happier not having a lot of money. They weren't ready for it. They weren't trained for it. It wasn't in their DNA. Comfortable would have been just fine. Struggling slightly might have been even better. They would have stayed in Tulare and gone to small-town Fourth of July parades and backyard barbecues. Dad would play golf and go bowling with carpenters and plumbers on weekends. Mom might have taken a part-time job. Summers they would have driven to Yosemite with Dorie and me in a rented RV and we all would have really enjoyed it. When Dorie got sick, Mom and Dad would have felt supported by real friends and neighbors.

Rich people are totally isolated. They live in this state of terror that everything's going to be taken away from them at a moment's notice. You wonder how many of them would just once like a hot dog as opposed to a lobster tail.

I want to tell Mom that she's still pretty nice looking for someone in her early forties and that she still is rich. One day soon, the house will be filled with suitors feasting on the livestock. I just hope she chooses someone who isn't so desperate and miserable he can't make her happy. In the meantime, she sits around the house, staring into space and sighing. So do I for that matter. Thankfully, Mom's been too preoccupied to notice and worry about me.

“Got it!”

We're in my room. Ephraim is at my desk, on my computer. He's here because his grades have gone to hell, he's failing right and left, and his parents think it will help if they take away all of his computer privileges. This has been like trying to take heroin away from an addict and so of course Ephraim has found other sources. For the first time ever, he's been going to the school library where he can log on. After school, he goes to Kinko's and rents time at a workstation. And at night, under the sheets, he browses the Web with his iPhone which, because of its small keyboard, he doesn't like so much. Now he's on my Mac and even though Ephraim's a PC man it's taken him about two seconds to break into the Montebellos' home security system.

“Write it down,” I say.

There's no paper on the desk, and before I can stop him, Ephraim opens the middle drawer, looking for some. He is suddenly very still. The room, the whole house, seems very quiet. Ephraim takes Mr. Taylor's Glock out of the drawer.

“Is this real?”

“Put it back,” I say.

Ephraim turns and aims the gun at the wall. Comfortable with it. Ephraim cut his teeth on Doom, if not the first, certainly the graphic best, of all first shooter video games.

“It is, isn't it.”

“Put it back, you fuckwad.”

“Is it loaded?”

My voice rises. “Now!”

“Okay!”

He puts it back. Reluctantly.

“Now shut the drawer.”

He does.

“Now wipe the hard drive.”

After he does that, I tell him to go home. After he leaves, I go down to the drum room, take off my clothes, and play until my nails, feet, ears, gums, and nose bleed.

 

62

A police car cruises the street. It passes the Montebello house. As it turns at the end of the block, we jump out of Deliza's Mercedes, where we've been lying on the seats, and we race across the street. There is the bloodlike taste of copper in my mouth and the fast thump of double bass drums in my chest. I can't seem to take a deep breath. The air is vibrating.

Point of reference.

Oneirophrenia is a hallucinatory state caused by prolonged sleep deprivation. You're not aware of time. You're not attentive to place. The condition makes it impossible to formulate a suitable response to an emotional event.

Translation?

If I don't fall over the edge and down the hill into complete psychosis I should have a wonderful time tonight.

I retrace my steps around the side of the house and the others follow. In the back, I use the EZ pick to open the French doors. We enter to the beeping of the security system. I move to the panel on the wall to key in the code.

I stop.

“What are you doing? C'mon,” says Twom. “The code.”

I just stand there.

“What the hell, Billy?” says Twom. He sounds tense and annoyed. Maybe he's been experiencing what I felt at Casa de Esperanza. Good.

“Will you just do it!”

I don't.

At that moment the alarm goes off. If it's designed to scare the shit out of any would-be robber, it certainly works. I quickly punch in the code and the alarm goes quiet. Before the phone can ring, I take it off the hook.