“I don’t know. Should we?” we/they say.
From here, the bar’s second floor, their mouths are moving, but their words are only groans, one continuous, monotonal groan, a sort of mooing, punctuated by the occasional squeal—“Ohmygod!”
There’s too many of them, of us. Too many, too similar. What are they all doing here? All this standing, all this standing, sitting, talking. There isn’t even a pool table, darts, anything. Just this loitering, lolling, this drinking of beer in thick glasses—
I’ve risked everything for this?
Something needs to happen. Something huge. The taking over of something, a building, a city, a country. We should all be armed and taking over small countries. Or rioting. Or no: an orgy. There should be an orgy.
All these people—we should close the doors and dim the lights and be naked together. We could start with ail of us, K.C. and Jessica, go from there. That would make it all worthwhile, that would justify everything. We could move the tables, bring in some couches, mattresses, pillows, towels, stuffed animals...
But this—this is obscene. How dare we be standing around, talking about nothing, not running in one huge mass of people, running at something, something huge, knocking it over? Why do we all bother coming out, gathering here in numbers like this, without starting fires, tearing things down? How dare we not lock the doors and replace the white bulbs with red and commence with the massive orgy, the joyous mingling of a thousand arms, legs, breasts?
We are wasting this.
What could we possibly be talking about?
Pete sidles up.
“Hey there,” he says, with a trace of the British accent he cultivated in high school.
“Tell me,” he asks. “How is young Toph?”
“Fine,” I say.
“Where is he, anyway?”
I love Pete, and he means no harm, but why this question? Why this question twice in one night? Much like the “What a good brother!” refrain, “Where is your brother?” has become a sort of required question, but with no internal logic. Why ask me, when I am out trying to drink and incite orgies, where my brother is? What answer could Pete, could John, be expecting? A ridiculous question. How would be fine. How is your brother? makes sense, and can be answered easily: Toph is fine. But why Where?
“At home,” I say.
“Oh. With who?”
Razors, chain saws, freezers—
“I have to go.”
I plow my way to the bathroom.
These questions. These people should know better. Are all my friends morons?
In the bathroom someone is peeing in the sink. As I am noticing that there is someone peeing in the sink, that someone notices me noticing and naturally thinks I was looking at his penis, which I was not, which was sitting there on the sink like a newborn chick, purple and wrinkled, reaching for water.
I want to leave but immediately realize that would make me look even more suspicious, as if I entered the bathroom specifically to see the man’s penis on top of the porcelain sink, and having done that—yes, I see—I was free to leave. I get a stall, close the door behind me. And there, at eye level, is one of our stickers. Screw those idiots. Might Magazine.
Moodie and I designed them a month ago, passed them out to friends with instructions to put them in bathrooms, on walls, lampposts, cars. It was to be the first step of a three-month preliminary marketing campaign, getting everyone’s tongues wagging with the word “Might.” What is Might? They will ask, intrigued. / do not know, but when it becomes clear what it is that they will be doing, I will be interested in their doings.
There was not much of a debate involved in deciding what the stickers should say. It was obvious, and as far as we were concerned, it said it all:
Screw those idiots.
But now, looking at the sticker, crookedly slapped on the cinder-block wall, I realize there’s a problem: It’s unclear who is being screwed. Who are the idiots that should be getting screwed? Oh fuck. Sure, we intended it to be fairly vague, the “idiots” inter-pretable as anyone—other magazines, employers, parents, hippies, the corner grocer. But now, a terrible question rears its head: Are we implying that the sticker’s reader should be screwing us?
Oh God, it does, it does. After all, just after it implores the reader to “Screw those idiots,” it says “Might Magazine.” We’re the ones to screw! It offers no choice!
It’s a disaster. We’ve covered the city with stickers telling people to screw us. There are so many ways it could have been better phrased. For instance:
Might Magazine Says: Screw Those Idiots. Or
“Screw Those Idiots,” Says Might Magazine. Or
Screw Those Idiots
(“those idiots” not referring to those behind
Might Magazine, the makers of this sticker,
who are good people and should not be screwed).
This is terrible, this is Armageddon. We’ve already printed 500 of these things. I lean over the toilet and try to peel this one off—I’ll remove every one, by hand!—but it only shreds, feebly. I pick and pick, with no discernible progress, my fingernails black with gobs of sticker-matter. My shins are wet from toilet-bowl moisture. And I’m still hanging through my zipper.
When I leave the stall, the purple-chick-penis man is gone, and when I get back to our spot by the railing, half of the people are gone; Jenna is standing alone.
We chat idly for a good two or three minutes before:
“So how’s your little brother?”
“Fine, thanks.”
I am worrying, but there’s no way...
“What’s his name again?”
“Toph.”
.. .that she would ever...
“Where is he?” she asks.
Jesus. These people. I look down at the crowd, all the dumb people down there.
“Toph? Oh, I haven’t seen him in weeks.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, he’s probably somewhere in the Dakotas about now.”
“What?”
“Yeah, it’s fucked up. He just took off one day. Hitchhiking. Around the country, with some friends.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I wish.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Oh don’t worry. It’s partly my fault, I guess. He was a little pissed at me, I guess. Typical adolescent stuff.”
“What do you mean?”
I have been looking down, watching a middle-aged man in a beret and black leather jacket mingle with two college-aged women, the poor man, not knowing that it’s all over for him, forever, beret and all. I glance over at Moodie to make sure he isn’t hearing us. He’d kill me. He’s not paying attention, so I look at Jenna, both for dramatic effect and also to make sure she’s still with me.
She is, so I continue. I am not sure why I continue. People ask questions, and before I can formulate a truth-oriented answer, I lie. I lie about how my parents died—“You remember that embassy bombing, the one in Tunisia?”—about how old I am—I always say forty-one—how old Toph is, how tall he is; when they ask about him they get the most elaborate lies—he just lost an arm, he’s got the brain of an infant, a halfwit, a badger (I only use that one in his presence); that he’s in the merchant marine, he’s in jail, in juvie, is back out, selling crack—“Oh, give him some crack and you should see his face light up!”—that he’s playing in the CBA.
“Well, he got into some trouble at school,” I tell Jenna.
“What kind of trouble?”
“Well, you know how you’re not supposed to bring guns to school?”
“Right.”
“Well, I had told him not to bring his gun to school. Simple as that. Everyone knows that. You can play with it in the house, in the neighborhood—whatever, I told him, but not at school, because rules are rules, right?”
“Wait. He has a gun?”
“Of course, sure.”
“How old is he?”
“Nine. A
lmost ten.”
“Huh. So they caught him with the gun?”
“Oh it was much worse than that. See, Toph has sort of a temper, you know, and so this kid, Jason somebody, had been bugging him, singing some annoying song all day, some song Toph didn’t like at all, and finally he just snapped—whack, just like that, he takes the gun from his locker and squeezes one into him.”
“Oh my God.”
“Yeah, I know.”
No, I tell her, little Jason isn’t dead, he’s fine now, pulled out of his coma a week ago. And that naturally I took away Toph’s gun privileges, and of course beat him within an inch of his life, so zealously that something snapped in his leg somewhere, a tendon maybe, and he fell to the floor, squealed like a pig, couldn’t get up, had to be taken to the emergency room. That while we were at the hospital some doctor must have snitched or something, because a cop shows up and—
“What did you tell the cop about his leg?” Jenna wants to know.
“Oh, that was easy. I told her he and a friend were whipping each other with wet towels.”
“And she believed you?”
“Of course. Of course. You wouldn’t believe what people will believe once they know our story. They’re ready for anything, basically—will believe anything, because they’ve been thrown off-balance, are still wondering if any of this is true, our story in general, but aren’t sure and are terrified of offending us.”
“Yeah,” she says, not getting it. I decide to wrap it up.
“Anyway, then he’s on crutches for three weeks, really resenting me and everything, really holding a grudge, and then boom, the second he’s off the crutches he’s gone.”
“Hitchhiking.”
“Right.”
“I’m so sorry. Listen, if there’s anything I can do...”
“One thing?”
“What?”
“Don’t tell Moodie about this.”
“Okay.”
“He’ll worry.”
He’s going to kill me. I better leave. She’ll tell him, and then he’ll kill me. He’ll punch me. He’ll punch me like he did in high school, after Homecoming, at the lake, when I was drunk and fell on him, from a tree. He’ll hit me like he hit me then—one good shot, in the sternum, sending a quick, simple message—You’re an asshole—that I felt for months, every time I breathed.
I find my car and drive across town, all the passing headlights glaring, mocking—that was probably bad, what I just did to Jenna; a therapist would say that was bad—up Ninth, across Market, up Franklin and down to Cow Hollow, where Therese lives. Down the hill and over a few blocks and her turreted third-floor apartment comes into view. Therese lives in the top floor of a huge light blue house on Gough, a few blocks up from Union Street, in an apartment she decorated with her mother, complete with pot holders and curtains and about a hundred overstuffed pillows. The plan is for me to end up in her bed. Her bed is huge and has posts.
I pull up across the street, which is set on a forty-five-degree angle, and look up for a light in her window. It’s dark. There’s that little plastic owl on her fire escape. She is asleep. No, no, a faint light near the kitchen. A TV? She could be up. She could have gone out and come home and could be up. It’s only eleven-thirty— Oh, to be inside! No, no, no. This is stupid. I drive around the block. I have no excuse to be there.
I turn and go back. I will think of something.
I park in the driveway behind her car and jump up the wooden steps of her porch and ring the bell. I will say I want to sleep there. I will say that I need to sleep there—that I was locked out of my house. This is so embarrassing, I will say, chuckling. Heh heh. One of those weird things, I will say. Was close by, was in the city when I realized. Toph’s at Beth’s, I’ll say. Sorry. How are you? Were you asleep?
She’ll let me in. We’ll go to the beach, like we did that other time, the last time I showed up at midnight, needy. When I asked her to come to the beach she had been in her pajamas but had gotten excited about going, had gotten dressed, and while she got dressed I packed a bag full of bananas, Fig Newtons, and a bottle of wine. She brought blankets and when we got in the car, dark, seats cold, we turned on the heat, squeezed each other’s hands, and sped over the Golden Gate and through the Headlands, the black road winding through purple hills, like driving around the contours of huge sleeping bodies. Past the old rickety wooden military buildings, the gun turrets high over the Pacific, and to the beach at Fort Cronkite. We parked by the darkened barracks and got out and took off our shoes and walked over that little pond on the gray wooden bridge—so loud—and the ocean was black, the wind was coming straight off the water. We huddled under the blanket, still barefoot, warming our hands in each other’s armpits—
She is not answering her bell.
She will shake her head when she sees me but she will let me in. I push the bell twice more. I turn around and face the street.
A car, black, shiny, comes up the hill and stops at the corner. Inside is a woman, maybe thirty-five, dressed up and driving alone. She sets the brake and fumbles for something in her purse. I am no more than twenty feet away. She will look up my way. She will look up at the porch and see me. She will open the passenger door and tell me to come with her and share her bed. / was hoping you’d ask, I will say, kind of suavelike. I will not care what we do, anything would be fine, nothing is okay, too. It does not matter. A bed with room and warmth and her legs entwined with mine underneath. I will comment on how cold her toes are and she will rub them against my legs—
Things like that often happened. To people all over the world.
The woman finds what she wants in her purse, relaxes the brake, drives up the hill and turns. Therese is not home. I leave.
At Union Street the bars have just let out and there are people everywhere. Julie bartends at a bar called the Blue Light, which, besides being imbued with just that, is full of mirrors and people wearing loafers and white pants. Julie I met at Moodie’s last party; I will drop in on her. I will pretend I’m looking for someone there, or else I’ll be forward and tell her I just came to see her, because suddenly I was thinking of her and wanted to see her. She will like that. She will be surprised and flattered. She might say it: / am both surprised and flattered!
I park five blocks down. Union Street is bustling with people in white pants and loafers. People from Marin, New York, Europe. At the door the bouncer will not let me in. I’ve left my driver’s license in the car.
“Need I.D.”
“I know, but—“
“Sorry. Go away.”
“I just—“
“Turn around. And walk away.”
Of course I picture killing him. For some reason with a huge, two-handed sword. Just lopping off his bald melon of a head.
“Listen, just— Is Julie here?”
“No.”
“Did she leave?”
“Didn’t work tonight.”
I walk back toward the car, past a few dozen more people in white pants. A few loners in khakis. Oh if only something would happen. Nothing ever happens. This is all some terrible machine, where only the expected passes through.
I go to the White Hen Pantry to use the pay phone. I’ll call Meredith. Meredith will come out.
She answers. I ask her what is up. She says that nothing is up. I ask her what she is doing. She says that she is doing nothing. I ask her if she wants to do something. She says okay.
Meredith and I have never been more than friends, and since college, when she’s been in L.A. and I’ve been here, we talk only on the phone. She’s up visiting for a week, is staying just off Haight.
I pick her up. We walk down to Nickie’s. It’s small, full of bodies, sweltering.
“Should we be dancing?”
“I have to drink more,” she says.
and after drinking at the bar, pounding like in a prom limo, we dance. Clumsily, bumping into other people, sweating profusely, immediately. The crowd is tight on the small floor, an
d we are forced to dance close. Looking for space, we edge toward one corner, under a speaker. It’s deafening, whatever it is (Earth, Wind and Fire?), the bass is massive, invasive; the bass knocks loudly and then just pushes like floodwater into our brains and then is everywhere, forcing out all thinking; it brings ten suitcases and sets up in the master bedroom; it rearranges the furniture; the bass vibrates through our heads, adding a sound track to synapses, to everything stored there, to remembered phone numbers and childhood memories. We let our bodies get closer and of course the only place to look is down, where Meredith’s body is gyrating, her parts becoming bigger, smaller, bigger, smaller—
We leave the bar; we’ll go to the ocean.
The drive to the ocean is long.
By now, the baby-sitter’s done with whatever he wanted, has left on his basketed bike and is back, at his hideout, telling his friends about it. They are having a good laugh. He is showing them the Polaroids—
No, Toph would find a way. He’d pretend to be asleep or dead, and then, after Stephen fell asleep—after gorging himself on everything in the fridge—he’d come up behind him and bash him with something. His bat. That one we just got, the metal one. He’d bust Stephen’s head in with the bat, and when I get home he’ll be a hero, tired and bruised, but a hero and happy and he will not blame me for leaving, will understand.
me: Whew! That was close!
he: I’ll say!
me: You hungry?
he: Now you’re talking.
Meredith and I park and take off our shoes. The sand is cold. As we walk toward the water, bonfires burn up and down the beach. Close to the waves, glowing from the headlights behind us, we set down a small towel and sit, lean into each other. But something has happened to our momentum; we were about to fall into the guiltless pleasure-taking that we had worked hard for earlier, that seemed inevitable only twenty minutes ago, but now we are here and it suddenly feels forced, silly between us, friends who should know better. And so we talk about our jobs. At the moment, she’s working in postproduction for the television reprise of Flipper.
“Really?” I say. I did not know this.
“It’s better than it sounds,” she says.
But she wants to be making movies, wants to have a whole studio, wants to be producing more and better movies, weird stuff, have a kind of collective, something like Warhol’s Factory, all these people around—