It would be easier to blow it all off, buy a twelve-pack, take it home, sit in the dark inside the tested room with the cardboard and egg cartons on the wall.
There had been a rape in the bushes on the right. He had found that out by shaking the shrubs, just passing through, grabbing at them idly, shaking them, going from sunlight to late night and seeing it all, her hand clutching at the shrubs. Some girl coming back from the library most likely. Some guy she knew thought she owed him a piece, and decided to take it.
He had never found any record of it being reported.
The guy got away with it.
Son of a bitch.
From the way they were dressed, or almost dressed, it looked to have happened way back. The seventies, perhaps. Maybe she never told anyone. Maybe the guy bragged about it. Did it again.
Don’t think about that now.
Not now.
You can’t undo the past. It’s not even your past.
He studied the notepad awhile, mapped out some safe spots. Problem was, he had to go over uncharted territory to get to those known safe spots. Anything could happen.
He put up the notebook, grabbed his backpack, and went left.
17
Harry sat down and wrote:
Tad, I’m not drinking.
Right now.
I didn’t drink last night either.
And already good things have come to me.
For one thing, when I woke up this morning I didn’t have a headache and feel like forty miles of bad road.
I know you haven’t been sitting up nights, between drunks, thinking about me, worrying if I was drinking, but there was no one else I could tell but you.
No one else I could turn to.
Well, there are others. I could tell Joey, but he’s a dick and wouldn’t get it. And my mom, but she’s got enough worries. And there’s a special reason I’m writing you.
I want to stop drinking.
No, that’s not true. I like drinking. I need to stop drinking. That’s different.
You see, I don’t really think I drink to forget, like you. I drink to numb, so I won’t have, you know, the experiences.
Okay. I drink to forget as well. I’ve seen some bad business, stuff to do with the ghosts in the noise.
But I’ve told you that.
Let me put it like this: You haven’t always been as fucked-up as you are now. Me, I’ve been pretty much like I am always: insecure, worried, and confused since I was a kid.
My parents didn’t do it.
The sounds did.
I’m not going to tell you what I already told you, and I’m not going to try to convince you I’m not a fruitcake (I’m not, by the way), but I am going to say it again.
You haven’t always been so fucked-up.
Me, I have. For a long time.
You once had a center.
Before the mumps, as a little kid, maybe I was centered. I don’t know for sure.
Maybe when my mom and I used to watch cartoons out the windows, watch them at the drive-in theater across the way. I might have had a center then.
Shit. I don’t remember if I told you about all that. The drive-in and stuff. But it’s unimportant. It’s not the point.
What I’m saying is this.
I want to find my center.
You know how to do that.
Maybe we can help each other. You can relocate yours, and I can find mine.
And there’s a real special reason I want to do this. Something wonderful happened to me today, Tad. Something fucking extraordinary. I haven’t felt this way since I was a teenager and Kayla, my neighbor, gave me a kiss, and I thought, at least for a moment, I was Emperor of the Universe.
With a gearshift.
Think on that one.
But this feeling, I’m crazy with it. I’m consumed with it. I’m on fire with it. I’m covered up in it and eaten up by it.
I’m talking about love here, Tad.
The arrow through the heart, my man. Cupid’s straight shot.
It’s what I’ve always wanted.
And you know what? She might even like me.
Here’s what happened.
Dig this. Because of construction, I have to walk around my usual path. For me, this is a BIG FUCKING DEAL. No shit. A big deal. I’m like Superman doing this, taking a different route, because the world—again, for me—is full of all kinds of uncomfortable surprises.
It’s like a world filled with dog doo and I’ve got to thread my way around it blindfolded. Only the dog doo, it’s not just messy, it explodes, and I see—
Again, been over all that.
But this construction thing, this holdup, this snag, this snafu…Guess what? I gird my loins, and—
I do it.
I go around the construction that’s messing up my path, and nothing happens. I didn’t really expect anything, but you never know. Stuff is out there lurking.
So I’m moving along, you know, preoccupied, and as I go, guess what happens?
I get knocked down.
That’s right. I’m going into the building, to my class, running up the steps, almost to the top, head down, and the door blows open, and bam, I’m knocked on my ass.
Fortunately, no one has taken a beating there before, so my rolling over the steps doesn’t excite anything in the stone, and I wonder if, in that sudden moment of surprise, or fear of falling, if my own thoughts are registering there, and would I be able to read them, wondering all that while I’m falling, see, and I’m pissed too, because all I was trying to do was go to class, and someone has thoughtlessly and carelessly knocked me on my ass, and then—
You know what, Tad? All of a sudden, I’m not wondering about any of that stuff at all.
Because, what they say about there being angels, and how they show up in times of need, at least for some people, it’s all true.
An angel was looking down at me.
I’m at the bottom of the steps, on my back, legs almost over my head, my pack has slipped off, and the books have come out, and there’s a paper of mine twisting in the wind over my face, and as it floats down past me, it’s replaced with the face of that angel I was telling you about.
A really good-looking angel, but with features that are, well, a little devilish. A really fine mouth, thick lips, and you know what some anthropologists say—the reason women with full lips are attractive is that the lips, they remind us of those other lips, down there; and man, maybe that’s true. And her hair, it was black, black, black, and long, long, long, the eyes, big doe eyes, and she’s leaning over me, and she’s just absolutely fucking gorgeous. And I’m trying not to look down her shirt, which is hard, because she’s right there bending over me, and she looks so frightened, and those breasts are banging together like two wrecking balls.
She says, “Oh, shit. Are you all right?”
“Sure,” I say, and I’m witty, Tad, get this, I really said this, said: “The concrete broke my fall.”
She grinned.
Let me tell you. She has the most beautiful teeth you have ever seen. A brand-new piano doesn’t have ivory like that.
Nice teeth.
She puts out a hand, and I take it, and she helps pull me up (strong girl), and I grin at her, and she says, “Really, you okay?”
I tell her, “Yeah, I’m fine. You ought to see how I look when I jump out of a plane without a parachute.”
Okay, I was reaching. But it wasn’t bad, and she laughed a little, and she started helping me pick up my books and recover my papers, put them in my backpack.
Then she sees the papers.
She says, “You got old man Timpson for Psychology.”
“Oh, yeah,” I say.
“Well, I’ll tell you a little something: He talks stuff in class, but if you take notes, it doesn’t do you that much good.”
“I’m finding that out.”
“Yeah, he gives tests on the book. You can forget his lectures. Read the book from cover to cover, and tha
t’s the test.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yeah.”
Now I’m really looking at her, Tad, and she’s got on some really tight jeans, and there are no bulges. She looks like a model. A movie star. A goddess.
“Well,” she says, and she’s really smiling at me all the time she’s saying this, “I’d take you out for coffee, to make up for the fall, but I don’t want to keep you from class.”
And you know what, Tad? I’m thinking, she kind of likes me. Maybe I’m not too ugly after all. You know, maybe I’m all right. And I think, what the hell, and say, “I’ve been known to miss a class now and then. Especially since I know now the tests come from the book.”
So now get this. I go over with her to the student lounge, not even thinking about places that might hide bad memories, bad moments, and she buys me coffee. Two creams, no sugar, Sweet’n Low. We take our coffee just alike.
I know. It’s a little thing. But it’s a start. I’m beginning to get a sense of things here. I’m feeling comfortable.
And we talk.
We’ve got a lot in common, Tad.
The coffee business. It was a good sign.
We talked until I missed all of that class, and then the next, and she looks up, glances at her watch, shrieks. She’s missed a class too. She had one during the next hour. So I’ve missed two and she’s missed one, and she says, “Well, we’re screwed now. Why don’t we just go to lunch?”
I’m thinking, you know, we’d go there, on campus, but we walk out to her car—and here’s a big flash: I’m not even thinking about the bad places. Not even once. I’m thinking about her. Hanging on her every word.
And she’s smart, Tad. Did I say that? Smart. I can tell by the way she talks. She’s not some airhead.
But we get in her car, which is some cool ride, by the way, brand-new, and we go to lunch at Cecil’s. You know the place. Kind of nice. Nothing fancy, but the food’s good, and when we finish I’m worried about the money, see, but I’ve got just enough to pay for us both, but she says, “No. I still owe you for that fall. You get the next.”
And she pays, Tad.
Well, there’s not much to tell after that.
She dropped me off at my car, said, “See you,” but it wasn’t a dismissive kind of “see you,” ’cause I got her name and phone number, and let me tell you her name. It’s Talia McGuire. Isn’t that just the coolest name?
Talia.
I like saying it and I like writing it. Talia.
So I don’t want to be a drunk like you.
I don’t want you to be a drunk anymore like me.
I want us both to quit. I want you to teach me how to find my center while you find yours.
P.S. I hope this letter doesn’t embarrass you too much. I know looking it over, I feel a little queasy.
Help.
18
That evening Harry drove over to Tad’s, parked at the curb, went to the front door. There was a letter slot there. He took a folded envelope out of his back pocket, looked at it.
On the front he had written in big block letters: TAD.
He slipped the letter through the slot and turned away.
Inside the house, Tad, drinking a beer from the can, heard the letter slide in.
He went to the door, looked out the peephole.
Nothing.
He went to the window.
He watched Harry’s back as he walked away briskly.
Tad started to go to the door, call out to him.
But didn’t.
He feared it might interrupt his drinking.
He put the envelope on the table, sat in a chair at the dining room table, and kept sipping at his beer, considered when he should break out the whiskey, maybe get some Kleenex, shell the old corncob.
Nah. All that drinking. It would be too limp.
He might just watch some TV.
Course, he had already gotten up once to go to the door, see who was out there. Getting up twice, he had to give that some consideration.
You didn’t want to overdo it, this getting up business. Not when you had drinking to do.
Besides, the channel changer was far. He had left it in the kitchen. Why he had been carrying the channel changer around was beyond him, but from the dining room table, he could see it lying on the counter. Waiting for him.
“Come get me, Tad,” it called.
Course, he got it, then he had to find the TV.
He looked at the envelope on the table.
If he opened it, he might get a paper cut. Might be best just to let it lie, call in the paper cut squad, have them open it for him.
Was there such a thing?
Really ought to be.
A whole team, glove wearing, so they could open letters and not get cut, a bunch who would do it for someone didn’t want to take the chance.
A paper cut, it could be downright annoying.
Under certain circumstances it could even get infected and you could die.
He patted the letter and let it lie.
Tad took a long drag on his beer, held the can up, said, “Yee-haw. Ain’t life grand.”
19
Harry went over to Joey’s that night. He was surprised at himself for doing it, but the girl, the fine girl, Talia, had emboldened him. Still, he thought he’d stay out of the toilet, make sure he was drained good before he went over. Didn’t want to go there and have his new confidence shaken by the rattling of a toilet lid.
Joey’s place wasn’t much worse than his own, actually. It was down a back alley behind some buildings that looked like a place where Death might go to die. The alley smelled of urine and vomit, and there was a drunk or a bum or a drunk bum always laid out against the wall on a piece of cardboard. It was his home, that stretch of concrete, that piece of cardboard, or one like it. When it rained he was somewhere else, but most nights, when it was warm, he was here.
How’d a guy end up that way, sleeping in an alley on cardboard? How could something like that happen?
Harry went past the bum, carefully up the rickety stairs that led to the second floor where Joey’s apartment was. There was a porch of sorts up there, and a bug-swarmed dim light by the entrance. The bulb was on and there was a knife-thin slit of light sliding out from under the door. Harry knocked.
“Who is it?” Joey said. The walls were so thin it sounded as if Joey were out on the landing with him.
Harry answered, and Joey let him in. There wasn’t much to the place, and like his joint, there wasn’t even a bed. Joey had a foldout couch he had quit folding out months ago. Now he just slept on the couch, same way Harry did. The air smelled funny. A mixture of boiled soup, alcohol, and jack-off juice. There was a kind of stink from the bathroom as well. Which was all the better reason not to go in there.
The lightbulb, a single job in the center of the room in a dusty glass cover, had a greasy quality to it, and it gave the room the feel of a cell.
Joey was in his skivvies. His short, skinny body looked even more emaciated than usual. His ribs poked at his skin as if they really belonged on the outside. His black hair was twisted up on top of his head in what looked like a midnight rooster’s comb.
Joey dropped down on the couch, scratched his balls, said, “What’s up?”
“Nothing, just thought I’d drop by.”
“Midnight?”
“Shit. Is it that late? I had no idea. Believe it or not, I thought it was, like, eight, nine maybe.”
“No, it’s fucking midnight.”
“Hey, I’ll go.”
“Naw. Couldn’t sleep anyway. Was trying to jack off, but I couldn’t imagine a pretty sheep. Sit down.”
There were two chairs and a table with sugar packets under one leg to balance it. Harry took one of the chairs and sat, cautiously.
“You didn’t come over here this time of night just to hang out, did you? Shit, you ain’t come here in a coon’s age. We’re always at your place, or the bar. Which reminds me, weren’t we s
upposed to meet there?”
“We didn’t say that.”
“You always get drunk on the night after school, sleep in the free day, work in the afternoon…. Hey, how’s the job?”
“For ten hours a week, it’s okay. I like bookstores. But I’d like more hours.”
“Well, I got more hours than you do, times four, and I don’t like it much. You build enough mobile homes, you sort of get so you see one parked somewhere, you want to get out and rub dog shit on it. I hate them sons a’ bitches. You saw how cheap they was made, you would too.”
“Yeah, well, I could use some hours.”
“You, you’ll get through college and make something of yourself. Me and the rest of the winos will keep making mobile homes. I’m looking to fucking retire there, and I’m only twenty-two years old. You know what kind of future that is?”
“You could take some college courses.”
“I’m about as good for school as you are for the women.”
“Things change.”
“You coming over here this time of night, looking like you look, kind of moony, I’m starting to think you might have got lucky and got you a piece,” Joey said. “Am I in the box on that one, or were you in the box?”
“Nothing like that…It’s not like that.”
“It’s always like that. You meet a girl, it’s always about the business, you know? There’s always the talk of love and romance and how we’re gonna plan our life, but you get down to it, it’s about the ol’ dunkin’ stick.”
“It’s not that way.”
“Is it a girl?”
“Yes.”
“Then it’s that way.”
Harry felt himself getting hot under the collar. “I just met her, and it is about romance. I think. I don’t know, really. It’s not like we’re going steady.”
“You stalkin’ someone?”
“No. Hell, no.”
“Lighten up, Harry. I’m kiddin’.”
Harry began to think: This is a mistake. Joey, he’s not the guy you open your heart to. Should know that by now.
“Who is it?” Joey asked.
“Her name is Talia. Talia McGuire.”
“No shit. That gal?”
“You know her?”