12.
The house was hollowed. The life had been sucked from it and now the three of us drifted through it. Marie and I together, and sometimes Bev, though we rarely saw her. Four days passed. Marie and I would knock on the crawlspace door and call to Bev and ask if she wanted to lie in the park with us but she would say no. Sometimes we could hear her strumming Tom's guitar and I wondered if she remembered he was breaking up with her before all of this and if she thought this was some great tragic romance.
13.
Lying in the park, my head in Marie's lap I was scribbling in my notebook. I had abandoned the story of the young man in his dead fathers house. I wrote about us. In June the four of us were something else. We were friends and we were happy. We had the summer ahead of us and it felt like it was our summer alone. As if no one else would ever understand our months because they were not meant for them. We circled each other and the sun fueled us and the water cooled us and the booze warmed us and we were a single unit forever, the four of us.
Now it was Marie and I and we lived with a ghost. The adventure had disappeared and the irresponsibility had disappeared and with the coming autumn I felt the world tolling behind. Soon it would be time to look at the bank account and soon it would be time to drive back to the city and soon it would be cold.
"We have a couple months left on the house," I said.
"Yes... we do...? Where did that come from?" Marie was reading a book about kissing and vampires, shaded by a large straw hat she had bought from a shop on the strip the day before.
"I was just thinking. This is the end, you know. Today, yesterday, tomorrow. These are all the epilogue. We're in the clearing smoke after the great bomb. The end. Go home, kids."
"Don't be such a dramatic ass. We're still here. We've got until the end of September to be here." She put her book down and wrapped her arms around the front of me. "It's not the clearing smoke. It's August. The 'dog days'. There's a reason they call it that. Shit slows down. Of course the middle of summer would blow up like that. I mean Christ, how'd we not see it coming? July burns so bright and hard."
"I think we just assumed it would be Bev."
"Yeah, I guess you're right. But that's no reason to think the world is ending. In a couple of months the cold will be here and you'll be pacing around the house and shivering and this clearing smoke will be a paradise to you."
"Well, sure. I guess I just thought the whole summer would be perfect. We'd all go back to New York in the fall and we'd have an entire summer to look back on and smile. It's, I don't know, tainted now. Seems like a waste."
Marie kissed my forehead. "Things happen. That doesn't mean I won't smile about all of this later. I have had a wonderful, sometimes strange, and beautiful time here with you."
"So you think we should stay then?"
"In the house?"
"Yeah."
"Of course. I mean, we have almost two months left on it. Who knows what could happen in two months?"
I smiled a little and Marie went back to her book. The grass was soft under me and the sun was warm above me and I began a short story about times from earlier in the summer.
Hands moved, I wrote.
14.
It was my birthday. The day before I had picked up a box of wine for myself and a couple of bottles of tequila for the girls. Bev had been more of a presence over the last few days and there was no more cocaine that I had seen and the day was bright.
I slept until noon and when I woke up I pulled a cut-off pair of pajama pants on and after pissing walked into the kitchen. Marie was in a black bathing suit and had an apron around her. She was cooking french toast and I walked over to her and held her hips from behind her and kissed her neck.
"Mmm, good morning you," she said.
"Good morning beautiful. Is that for me?"
"What this? The french toast?"
"Yep."
"Nope, that's for Bev. If you want some you'll have to fight her for it."
I looked behind me and Bev was at the kitchen table in in her underwear. She held her fists up. "I ain't afraid to knock out no birthday boy."
I laughed. Marie kissed me. "Now sit so I can finish cooking."
I poured a cup of coffee and sat next to Bev. "How're you feeling?" I asked her.
"Hungry for french toast."
"Good luck. What do you guys want to do today?"
"It's your day honey," Marie said. "What do you want to do?"
"Cake and presents?"
Bev laughed. "With thirty little candles, too?"
"Twenty seven," I said.
"Oh shit, sorry. Twenty seven." Bev snickered and Marie came over with a plate of french toast. Peanut butter spread over them and a lake of maple syrup on top.
Marie kissed my cheek. "Happy birthday my love."
"Thank you, honey."
"I have your present, but I was lazy and didn't wrap it. If you want a cake today we'll have to walk into town and buy ingredients. You usually don't want cake so I didn't get anything."
"We'll see. Maybe."
"Okay, just let me know."
I ate my french toast and drank a glass of milk. We sat there in the kitchen and Marie and Bev had egg whites and we drank coffee and laughed as Marie told us a story about the first time she made french toast. The light bloomed through the window and the sounds of the world danced in the distance and I thought about how nice it all was. The girls smiled and I smiled and how nice it all was.
15.
I held Marie's hand and Bev walked next to us on our way to the grocery store. Marie was wearing her large new hat and black sunglasses and a white sun dress. She fit in the air. In the day. I thought that she had never been more beautiful. Smiling. Holding my hand and laughing.
The neighborhood was quiet. I thought it was a Saturday. People may have been out of town. A man a few houses up was mowing his lawn and I thought there was always a man mowing his lawn. That maybe it was the same man. Just going from house to house all summer and that maybe he was starting up a lawn care business and I thought that was good for him if he likes it, but I hated mowing lawns. Even though it smelled nice.
Our feet echoed down the street with each step and I sipped from my water bottle of Chianti and passed it to Bev. Marie wouldn't drink it and had decided she was saving herself for the tequila later.
"What's green and has wheels?" Bev asked, passing the water bottle back to me.
"A green car?" I asked.
"Nope."
"A John Deer tractor?" Marie asked.
"Nope."
A car drove by. It wasn't green and I could see a baseball field behind some of the houses. I thought it would be nice to lay in the outfield for a bit.
"You give up?" Bev asked.
"How do you get to that baseball field?" I asked.
"Hmm?" Marie said.
"The baseball field over there, do you know where it is? Like, how to get to it without cutting through lawns?"
"Nope. We could look if you want."
"No, it's fine. I'll find out eventually."
"Guys," Bev said.
"Jesus Christ, Bev," I said. "What?"
"Grass."
"What?" Marie asked.
"I lied about the wheels."
"Wonderful, Bev." Marie said.
"Oh come on, that's funny," Bev said.
"Sure," I said.
"Fuck you guys," Bev said. "Stop hoarding the wine."
I handed it back to her.
We rounded a wide corner. It was the last quiet bit before the main strip of the town and at the end of it the grocery store was nestled. It was a small store, not a supermarket, and despite the money it must have pulled in each year it looked like it had not been renovated since the early seventies. Inside, the floor had become uneven. The walls and ceiling had yellowed. There was too much inventory in too little space, but I assumed they eventually would sell it all and in the winter they probably didn't have as much. There was a cashier at her post and what I assumed was the manager with a clipboard slowly moving down the beer aisle.
Marie and I stood in front of the baking section while Bev disappeared somewhere else.
"So, what do you think?"
"I'm not sure. What do you want?"
"It's your birthday. I'll have whatever you want. Do you want to bake one or buy one?"
"Oh no, we should all bake. It'd be fun."
"All right, so which one?" She waved her arm in front of the shelf of red boxes as if presenting a game show contestant with a luxurious prize.
Cake never really appealed to me. It was a mash of flavored clump in my mouth. It tasted fine. It was a texture thing. This year however, I figured I'd try again. I tried guacamole a few years back and that had worked out well, so I figured I'd give cake another go. I liked the look of the German chocolate cake and took the box of the shelf.
"This is fine," I said.
"You want that frosting too?"
"What is it?"
"Looks like..." She looked over the frosting next to the cake mixes. "This one. Coconut-pecan."
"Sure, that sounds all right. Is that good with you?"
"Yep. That sounds good."
"What about Bev?"
"Bev," Marie said loudly into the air.
"Yeah?" Bev answered from a few aisles over, the beer aisle I assumed.
"German chocolate cake. Good?"
"Yep."
"Coconut pecan frosting?"
"Yep."
"Okay," Marie said to me. "We have a winner." We went through the store and picked up vegetable oil and eggs. Bev bought three twenty-twos for the walk home and they carded all three of us even though we had been buying from there and from that cashier for months. We left the store and as we moved back into the neighborhood, opened our beers and headed home.
Marie and Bev held hands and I kept a watchful eye on where I thought the entrance to the baseball field might be.
"What a nice day," Bev said.
"I'm glad your back," Marie said.
"Back?" Bev asked.
"From your head. From the crawlspace."
"I've got you guys. I love you guys."
"Well, it's good your back," Marie said.
"I can't feel guilty all the time. You guys were right. He made a choice and maybe I facilitated it somehow, but it was his choice."
"Have you heard anything?" I asked.
"Not really. I tried to call his mother the day before yesterday but it went to voice mail. I don't know, I'm assuming I would hear about anything. Someone in our circle would tell me."
"Yeah, that's probably true. No news is good news, as they say."
"Exactly. So I decided I wouldn't worry about it anymore and until, if, I hear anything, I'm going to wake up and spend time with you guys and we're going to enjoy the time we have left here. No sense in wasting it."
"I was just saying that to him the other day," Marie said.
"See, James? Your girls know what's up."
"My girls?"
"You know we're you're girls," Bev said. "Your posse."
Bev bumped into my shoulder as she walked.
No comments:
Post a Comment