Admission (7 page)

SHANE MARCUS AND HIS WIFE
, Tracy, were sickeningly perfect but impossible to dislike.

He picked Bruce and me up from the Jacksonville airport with surprise and elation when he saw there were two of us. “No way. Where’d you find this guy?”

Shane was shorter than us and trim. He gave us hugs and patted Bruce on the back. “You’ve gotten taller and skinnier. Why can’t I do that?”

“Before there was Atkins, there was Atkinson.”

“You don’t want that diet,” I said as we followed Shane outside toward the parking lot.

“So you guys flew out together from San Francisco?”

“I decided to tag along,” Bruce said.

He glanced at me, and we both knew the truth. It was probably good for him to pack a suitcase and get out of town. Someone was looking for him. Maybe Bruce held some secrets he still hadn’t told me. But he didn’t hold any special ties to California. Not anymore.

“I can’t believe both of you guys are here. Good thing you’re packing light.”

“How come?” I asked.

We arrived at his car and saw how come. He had a red Mini
Cooper that Bruce was really going to have an interesting time fitting inside.

“They’re bigger than they look,” Shane said. “Bruce, get in the front.”

Coasting down the highway toward his home, blasting the new U2 album, Shane talking a mile a minute, the sun out and the wind whipping in through the sunroof, I realized that sometimes people don’t change. And sometimes that’s a good thing.

Shane’s house sat in the woods in a private development off St. John’s Lake. We pulled up to the sweeping driveway and stopped. The three-car garage and two-story house looked impressive even in the fading light of day.

“Here we are.”

“This looks just like my place,” Bruce said with a grin as we entered their house.

We met Tracy, Shane’s cute and friendly blonde wife. They were perfect hosts in an ideal home. Their house was modern with unique framed paintings hanging throughout.

“Like these?” Shane asked, giving me a glass of wine.

“Very cool.”

“Tracy painted them.”

Of course she did. The wine probably came from grapes they personally trampled from their vineyard in the backyard.

Bruce had already helped himself to a few drinks on the plane, so he welcomed wine. We sat in the large, open living room, light background music piping in.

“You should have come down here a long time ago, though we really only got the place fixed up in the last year.”

“So what do you do again?” Bruce asked, needing some explanation for his surroundings.

“Basically sales.”

“He lives out of a suitcase,” Tracy said from the kitchen.

“I get companies to invest their money with us. We offer 401(k) programs, stuff like that.”

“Maybe you could look at my portfolio sometime,” Bruce said.

This time Shane got the joke and laughed.

“We never pictured ourselves in Jacksonville, to be honest,” he said. “But they have a branch down here, and the opportunity came a couple years ago.”

“Yeah—hurricane season is always fun,” Tracy said, holding a bottle of Perrier in her hand as she sat beside Shane on the couch.

“You see living here for a while?” I asked.

“Eventually we hope to move. Maybe head back to the Midwest. Buy a place and settle down.”

“This isn’t settling down?” Bruce asked.

“No way. I mean it’s great, but we’re going to sell this place sometime and try out new things. I want to go to Colorado and get this guy to take me on a trek around the world.”

“It’s going to cost you big.”

“You’re living out your dream, huh? No responsibilities. Your own business.”

I nodded, wondering why everybody who heard I owned my own business suddenly thought that I must be wealthy and successful. Anyone can own his own business. That’s why so many fail each year.

And that’s why you had to take this trip down Memory Lane
.

“It’s so great to see you guys,” Shane said for about the fifth time.

We spent an hour catching up. Bruce spent a lot of that time drinking. He had no shame, and Shane obviously didn’t care. He talked about their recent trip to Europe, partially for work and partially for fun, and Tracy’s recent exhibit in a local art studio, and the dinner they were planning to make for us. And just when I thought things couldn’t get any more picture-perfect for the Marcus family, Shane made an announcement over our second glass of wine—Bruce’s fourth.

“Well, Tracy would be toasting, but the doctor has said she can’t because she’s expecting. In about five months, boom. A little Shane.”

“God help us,” Bruce said.

“That’s incredible. Congratulations.”

We toasted and talked about their news. I couldn’t tell Tracy was expecting—maybe it was the baggy shirt she had on. She
must have a tiny waist to begin with. She was three years younger than Shane, and they’d met when he lived in downtown Chicago working for the same company. Theirs was a love story that really sounded like happily ever after.

As we heard their story, I couldn’t help thinking of Alyssa. She’d been on my mind a lot since leaving her a couple days ago.

Shane and I wandered into the kitchen. Shane, always to the point and always the intuitive one, asked me the question he had saved for just the two of us.

“How was going back around school?”

“It was fine.”

“Really? That all?”

I looked at him, and he knew I was hiding something.

“Who’d you talk to?”

“Kirby.”

“And what’d he say?”

“Nothing. He hasn’t seen Alec. Talked about college and the growth of Providence.”

Shane nodded. “I get stuff from Kirby all the time.”

“I had dinner with his family. He’s got three really cute kids.”

“And what about you?” Shane asked, leaning against a kitchen counter.

“What about me?”

“No wife? No kids?”

I shook my head. “I’ve dated on and off. A couple from my church in Colorado Springs tried to get me to do one of those online dating services. That turned out to be a disaster.”

“We know a couple who met like that. They’ve been married a couple years.”

I chuckled. “Some people manage to achieve the dream. Some aren’t so fortunate.”

“Come on now. We both know things always look different on the surface. You peel the layers away and always find something else. Happily-ever-afters take a lot of work.”

I looked in their family room and heard Tracy talking with Bruce about video games.

“She’s awesome. I’m glad you found someone.”

“Yeah, me too. Come on—we should babysit Bruce. There’s time to talk later.”

Sometimes I think that half of the stunts I pulled back in college were done just so I could sit around a dinner table years later with friends recounting the memories with tears of laughter in my eyes. For an hour Bruce, Shane, and I told an interested audience of Tracy stories from our Providence days. Most of them involved me. Driving on the soccer field. Decorating half of a dorm hallway with shaving cream. Pulling off the mattress stunt. Getting kicked out for drinking. Stealing the stupid college mascot.

I couldn’t help but laugh and try to think of something else to top that last story. But Bruce, already good to go from the steady flow of alcohol in his system, managed to top everyone.

“How about the time on spring break when you stole my car and spent the night in it? When all of us thought you were dead or something.” He laughed and kept eating.

I couldn’t help but glance at Shane, but neither of us said anything.

“What was that?” Tracy asked, humor still filling her pretty face.

“That was just like any other story,” Shane quickly said. “You add a bunch of guys, a lot of booze, and the next thing you know you wake up wondering what happened.”

“Jake used to have a lot of those stories.”

I nodded and only smiled at Tracy.

Bruce looked and acted as if he hadn’t said anything. I don’t think he knew. I think somehow he had managed to forget all about that spring break. He’d surely forgotten talking with the police and the campus buzz. He’d surely forgotten why that was the last thing any of us would ever bring up. Maybe even why Alec had gone missing in the first place, and why we might be looking for him now.

It was the story we all shared, this specter that hung over all of us, waiting to block out the light and stop the laughter.

It was around ten o’clock when the power went out. Shane and Tracy didn’t seem too bothered.

“This happens all the time,” Tracy said.

“Can I smoke?” Bruce asked.

“Yeah,” Shane said. “Take it outside.”

“Let me get some candles.”

Shane got on the phone to report the outage. I followed Bruce outside onto the back deck. We sat in wooden chairs overlooking the large lake.

“I didn’t know Jacksonville was by water,” Bruce said, lighting up.

“Pretty nice, huh?”

“It’s sticky and hot,” he answered.

“It’s going to get sticky and hot inside if they don’t get the power on.”

Bruce seemed lost in his thoughts. I decided to bring up his earlier comment. “What do you remember about that spring break?”

“Huh?”

“The last spring break. The camping trip.”

Bruce shook his head. I could barely make out his face in the darkness outside.

“We should’ve gone to Cancun. Or Florida. Maybe down here.”

“None of us had the money,” I said. “Well, Franklin did. But he was the only one.”

“Why’d we go camping?”

I shrugged, not really remembering whose idea it had been. “You don’t remember anything?” I asked again.

“Not really. I just remember looking for you that last morning.”

I waited, but he said nothing more. Maybe that was all he really did know.

Crickets droned on, but otherwise it was quiet. Woods surrounded us.

“Think we’ll find Alec?”

I noticed the way he said
we
. “To be honest? No.”

“What’re you gonna do if you find him? Handcuff him and take him back?”

“This guy just wants to know if his daughter is okay. That’s all.”

An hour later, we all sat in the living room lit by flickering candles. Bruce had drifted off due to a lack of interest and a stomach full of red wine. In the middle of telling a story Tracy stopped talking and looked at one of the back windows.

“That’s odd,” she said.

“What?”

“That looks sorta like a face. Staring at us through the window.”

“Huh? Where?”

And then she freaked out, jumping up and dropping her mostly empty glass of Perrier. It hit the wood floor and shattered. Bruce sluggishly shifted up to see what was happening.

“There was somebody there—Shane, I swear there was a face right there, and when I told you it suddenly disappeared—”

We both got up and ran to the back.

“Hey—go out the front,” Shane said to me. “I’ll go out back.”

“Neighbor?”

Shane shook his head. “No. There’s an older couple on one side and a family on the other.”

I opened the front door and stepped out into the darkness. I walked to the driveway slowly, listening. My heart was racing. I went out toward the trees, walking in the grass.

I heard a slight rustling of bushes on my right and started to turn, but then heard steps. Suddenly something heavy cracked against the back of my skull, and before dropping to my knees I pictured the old apartment and the opened door and the spray of blood spilling on the white wall, and then I was out.

JAKE PULLED AWAY FROM
anxious lips and found himself in the arms of Laila. She sat behind the wheel of the car, the snow falling on the windshield, heat blowing out on his legs. Music pulsated in the two-seater, Sinead O’Connor’s voice sounding off a war cry. He was leaning against Laila, and in the moment, the picture seemed surreal.

I’m dreaming
, Jake thought to himself, but he knew he wasn’t.

He kissed her, giving in all over again.

And trying to figure out how he’d gotten here in the first place.

It had started a week ago with Mike Fennimore getting tickets to Pearl Jam. They had only released two albums but were already the “it” band (along with Nirvana) for grunge. Neither Mike nor Jake was a die-hard Seattle sweetheart. Pearl Jam rocked and Nirvana was raucous and raw, especially after about eight beers. The other groups that were being anointed by the movement—Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, even the pretenders known as Stone Temple Pilots—weren’t in the same league as the bands led by Kurt Cobain and Eddie Vedder. Back
in October,
Time
magazine featured Vedder on the cover, making him their generation’s unofficial spokesperson.

Mike just wanted to see them live, so he got three tickets off a scalper for $250 apiece. He said it was an early birthday present for Jake.

“Who else is coming?”

“The biggest fan who will take my bribe.”

“Huh?”

“Whoever wants it has to drive.”

Jake laughed. “I’ve taught you well, young Jedi.”

A week later, Bruce sat behind the wheel of Mike’s white Toyota Celica. It still smelled new—a college gift from his parents. Mike sat in the passenger seat, with Jake in the back.

That was how the trouble started, designating Bruce as the driver.

“No heavy drinking tonight,” Mike made him promise after Bruce named every song on the two Pearl Jam albums and even a few on their upcoming release.

Mike forgot, or perhaps just didn’t realize, that Bruce’s vice wasn’t of the liquid sort. By the time they were heading downtown to the venue, Bruce was, as the old saying went, high as a kite.

On the drive to Chicago, listening to rock and barely able to talk over the volume, Jake recalled how he’d first met Mike. It was music. Pure and simple.

After a typical night out, he had come back to his dorm and passed a gauntlet of students hanging out and talking and living a bored life. Mike was among them, wearing a T-shirt that read NIN. Jake paused for a moment and called out to the skinny guy with the spiked black hair.

“You like Nine Inch Nails?”

The kid looked a bit surprised at being singled out. Or maybe he was reacting to the slightly drunk tone and look that Jake gave off. He gave a suspicious nod.

“‘Pretty Hate Machine’ is awesome,” Jake said, then left without waiting to hear the underclassman’s opinion.

He ran into Mike again a few days, maybe a couple weeks, later. “You’re the guy who likes Nine Inch Nails, right?”

The guy, whose name he still didn’t know, nodded. Then said, “You ever heard of Meat Beat Manifesto?”

Jake shook his head, so they talked awhile. Eventually Mike invited him to walk down the hall to his room. He was only a freshman, and Jake could tell, but he didn’t care. Good music was good music, and a lot of people around campus liked Poison or Metallica or junk like that. Then there was Carnie, who liked big-haired bands like Firehouse.
Firehouse
, whoever they were. Anybody who liked great music was a kindred spirit.

The first thing he saw on entering Mike’s room was a poster of The Smiths.

“You gotta be kidding,” Jake said, then noticed the two posters of Depeche Mode.

He saw a CD collection bigger than his own, along with stickers of half a dozen groups adorning the top of a stereo.

That was the start of their friendship. Simple as that. Mike was more mature than most guys his age, but needed to be taught how to have a little fun. And since Jake accepted him, the rest of the guys eventually did the same.

“What’s this? Our fifth concert?” Jake asked him now from the backseat of the car.

Mike turned around, a can of beer in his hand, shaking his head. “Sixth. Don’t forget Lollapalooza.”

“Oh, yeah. How could I?”

“You were hung over all day.”

“That was brutal.”

“You miss all the fun,” Mike said.

“Not tonight,” Jake said.

But he was wrong. Again.

It was easy to become enveloped in darkness. And it happened sometime during the concert.

For the moment, Jake didn’t think of anything. He inhaled the music, loud and aggressive and searing. The cup in his hand finally went dry, and he discarded it so his hands could
wave around freely. He no longer kept track of the beers he drank, no longer felt the slight buzz those first few gave him. He took some drags from Bruce’s hand-rolled and homegrown joints, but he’d never really liked the taste and sensation of pot. It dragged him down and he didn’t want to be down, he wanted to ride up this roller coaster.

The music sounded heavy, angry, and visceral, and the singer whom
Time
had dubbed “All the Rage” demonstrated every ounce of it with a mass of hair and a howling voice. Songs familiar and new went by in a haze, and somewhere between the screams of “Even Flow” and “I’m Alive,” Jake dipped into that dimension drunks know as blackouts.

But at some point, Jake wasn’t sure when, the music slowed and he caught his breath and lit up a cigarette and listened to the slowest song of the night.

What was everything?
Vedder sang in the song “Black.”

And Jake put an arm around Mike and smiled. He would remember this moment years later. Perhaps the friendship and the times would fade to black, but tonight under the spell of the singer and the song there was something, some connection, and Jake felt it.

The cold air outside gave off the impression of sobriety. The walk to the car, the drive back to the suburbs, a soaring high Bruce driving and raving about Eddie Vedder’s fall into the crowd and his amazing recovery at the end of the show. Jake dozed off a few times, taking an occasional sip from Bruce’s can of beer. Then they reached Summit and faced the almighty question: to go back to the apartment or not. Mike wasn’t about to go back to campus; he would crash at their place as he had so many nights before. But they didn’t want the night to be over, so they decided to check out the crowd at Shaughnessy’s.

It was there that Jake saw Laila. Or she saw him, and walked over to the table where they sat.

“Where’d you come from?” Jake asked. She looked amazing, actually wholesome.

That’s why they call it blind drunk.

And now the music throbbed and the lights blinked and Jake kept his eyes on a remarkably long-legged Laila in tight jeans and a mesh shirt that looked see-through unless you studied it as Jake did without a care.

“We’ve been here since ten,” she said. Two of her friends came over and joined them.

Bruce rambled on about the show as Laila pressed up against Jake’s leg, looking down at him as he drank a beer and gazed at her from his bar stool. He wondered if his eyes were as revealing with their intentions as Laila’s were.

Snapshots of the night downtown with Alec and Laila’s friend streaked through his mind. This time Jake didn’t bury them. He enjoyed them as the shadows and music and liquor and laughter proved to be too big an equation for his weak heart.

She brushed back her blonde hair and licked her lips. “I was beginning to think you were ignoring me,” she said in his ear.

Jake didn’t answer her and ignored the voice telling him
Look out—she’s a chick and she’s got your number and you’re a moron not to get up and run away
.

And then, out of the blue, in the haze of the night, he pictured Alyssa’s sweet smile, so different from this temptress clinging to him. The image was so out of place in this context, and thinking about her only made him sad. He got up and bought another round of beers.

Sometime later, maybe half an hour and three rounds later, Laila danced in front of Jake. He didn’t hide his eyes, the way they moved over her. And she moved closer and his eyes moved lower and then she took his hand.

“Why haven’t you seen me since that night?” she asked him.

And he could only smile and pull her close. They had a history and he couldn’t let it go, not now and not on a night like this.

“I didn’t know you wanted me to,” he lied.

She seemed okay with this fib. She moved between Jake’s
open legs and leaned down to kiss him. It was a long kiss, and not the first of the night.

“I’ve missed you,” she said.

But instead of replying, he kissed her again.

It was a little later that Jake said something to a bouncer, and the guy took offense to it. But it was true, the guy didn’t have a neck and he acted like he had the brains of a bat. Jake probably shouldn’t have said it, though, or made jokes about the guy’s masculinity and the fact that he needed to lay off the Dunkin’ Donuts. It was all that, plus the fact that he was undeniably drunk, that led to Jake getting thrown out of Shaughnessy’s.

The guy Jake called Rufus, the bouncer he’d insulted, led him out the door with the help of another guy. Jake tried to go back to tell the gang. The mistake he made was slapping Rufus in the face. It was an innocent slap and not really powerful. But the other bouncer put an arm around him and squeezed, not allowing Jake to breathe until the cold chill of night greeted him outside the door.

They closed the door and Jake tried to open it. He hurled profanities and slammed his fist against the solid oak door several times, the last hurting exceptionally hard, even though he could barely feel much of anything in his body. His legs, his lungs, his breath, his mind. All felt like some endless dub, a high-speed continuous play CD that just kept going, a club song that never stopped.

That’s when he took off running, heading toward a destination only his drunken mind could understand. He hit road signs and wavered between the street and the sidewalk and the grass and the parking lots.

Jake didn’t remember the car turning into a parking lot of the Denny’s and blocking his way. But he saw an eager face behind an open window.