Every Time I Think of You (5 page)

“Nothing. It’s fine.” I patted the couch. It would do, except of course for any moment that his sister would walk out the nearby door of what I assumed was her bedroom.

Seeing my glance, he added, “It’s cool. She zones out with music and headphones before falling asleep. I used to sneak up on her at home all the time.”

For what, I wondered.

“It folds out,” Everett explained, nodding again toward the couch.

“Oh,” I tried to relax, but sitting in the home of someone I had yet to meet, whom I assumed knew of our imminent intimacy, left me confused. Almost everything I did with Everett left me confused, at first.

While Everett was in the bathroom, I tried to ignore the slightly erotic sound of him pissing, and set my eyes on the largest of the French painting posters. In it, mustached men in top hats and women in long skirts inhabited the rainy city along a wide cobblestone street where a horse-drawn carriage seemed to have just casually passed. What struck me was that there was nothing exactly in the center except the open street and a narrow building angled to fit a V-shaped intersection. It all appeared so calm, yet I sensed some kind of underlying tension, the bustle of an ordinary day hiding under the umbrellas of the painting’s inhabitants.

I felt Everett’s arms wrapping around me from behind. He said softly into my ear, “Kai boat.”

“What?”

“Gustave Caillebotte. French Impressionist; actually, sort of a Realist. Big benefactor for Monet and some other impoverished painters.”

“Your sister likes French art.”

“She spent a year abroad before dropping out of college altogether. Came back with lots of trendy clothes, tubes full of posters, and a fetus.”

“What?”

“The parents were scandalized, of course. They didn’t want a bastard frog ruining her chances of a real marriage, and she didn’t want the little tadpole either.”

“I don’t really think I need to–”

“Abortion,
le scandale de la famille
,” he hissed with a bad accent. “She’d already refused a debutante ball, and the hairy hands of local boys who probably wanted to inherit Forrestville’s wealth more than her hand in marriage. Ever since then, she’s been the bad kid, leaving me plenty of room to misbehave.”

Having changed into different clothes, a hooded sweatshirt, jeans and boots that disguised any trace of the dashing appearance he’d previously maintained, he appeared to be any average young man, not the shivering horny wood elf or prep school suck-up I’d come to know in those few days. I wasn’t aware of any dress code for making drug deals.

The apartment of the mysterious pot dealer was on a small cramped side street in Lawrenceville, the working-class section on the north side of town. Row houses were stacked along a steep hill like playing cards. For some reason he didn’t explain, Everett suggested I park the Plymouth down the street, and not in the empty driveway of the building which he’d pointed out as our destination.

“Testy.” He left the car, closing the door quietly. I followed as he climbed up the porch stairs and knocked on the door. We heard the new Cheap Trick album playing inside. Everett knocked again… and again.

The inside door opened. Behind the screen door, a very tall man eyed us, wearing a T-shirt and denim vest, and what could only be described as a Yosemite Sam mustache. He could not have more fittingly played the role of the prison-worn drug dealer.

The small front room was oddly empty. In what had apparently been a dining room converted into a living room, two rumpled sofas were arranged at angles, with a large circular coffee table in the middle. Various mismatched chairs were lined up along the other wall like some hastily furnished frat house.

In one of the cushier of chairs, a young woman with long hair sat, intently weaving some kind of macramé plant holder. She gave us both a glance, but didn’t greet us.

Rising from the opposite sofa, a young man greeted us. With his conservative haircut, an Izod shirt, tan pants and loafers, he appeared to have just arrived from a Young Republicans meeting. Everett’s change of clothes had been unnecessary.

Momentarily surprised that Everett hadn’t invented a fake name for me, I waved and stood still, worried that I might fumble the pseudo-ethnic handshake.

For the first time, I saw Everett become uneasy. He leaned toward me, quietly singing the lyrics of the song blasting through the stereo as a sort of instruction. “Surrender, surrender, but don’t give yourself away, ay.”

Macramé girl smiled at us, but said nothing.

The Young Republican (I never heard his name) returned, pulled a drawer from under the coffee table and casually tossed out four medium-sized bags stuffed with pot. “We got … some shitty local, Mexican Gold, Mexican Red, and Hawaiian. That stuff has the biggest kick.”

Negotiations settled, and the Gold was chosen. Everett handed over some cash. Mr. Young withdrew a large cluster of pot and placed it in a smaller plastic bag, then measured its weight on a tiny scale and handed it over. Just as Everett pocketed it, a series of loud knocks rattled the front door.

Yosemite Sam jumped to action, stomping toward the door. At the same moment, Mr. Young abruptly reached into the drawer and withdrew a large black pistol.

I visibly tensed. Everett clutched my knee, his white knuckles betraying his otherwise outward calm. Macramé girl sighed, annoyed, and retreated into a back room.

“Easy,” Young soothed, hovering his palm over the gun.

Whoever Yosemite Sam met at the door was in an audibly argumentative mood.

Mommy’s all right, Daddy’s all right. They just seem a little weird…

Once in the dark back yard, our pace quickened. After closing the rusty back fence door, we ran down an alley, momentarily confused.

He followed as I instinctively figured out our passage from the back alley, past garbage cans, around the block. Cautiously, back onto the street, I peered nervously around the corner and saw my mother’s car.

The argument on the porch continued. I remained resolute in our escape. Everett followed as we crossed the street, slowing our pace until we reached the car.

Yosemite Sam’s glance past his irate customers led the attention of the two other men, one of them the loud one, to us.

“Start the car,” Everett muttered.

“Is that them?” One of the men jumped from the porch steps in a bound. I scrambled to unlock my door, got in, started the car, then leaned over and pulled the other door lock up.

Everett darted inside as my limited parallel un-parking skills were further hampered by a skinny angry man who thought we were someone else. He pounded the hood. On the porch, the other man and Yosemite Sam began a sort of shoving match.

A soft metal crunch assured me that backing up any more would be prevented by the car I’d just hit. Suddenly searing with adrenaline, I abruptly veered the car out into the street, as the confused hoodlum gave the car another fist pound.

Several blocks and two run stoplights later, I glared at the rear-view mirror, then to Everett. Despite the temperature outside, his face was coated in a sheen of sweat.

Having approached a wide and empty intersection, I screeched to a halt, pulled a U-turn, spinning on a patch of ice, and raced the car in the other direction.

More silence followed, until Everett began singing, softly at first, “Mommy’s all right, Daddy’s alright, they just seem a little weird …”

Chapter 8

Fortunately, Holly had arrived home soon after we’d returned. Instead of feeling relaxed while alone with Everett, I felt edgy and frustrated, despite his flirty small talk and attempts to calm me.

We’d changed into more comfortable sweatpants, and for myself a T-shirt and Everett a rather cute thermal undershirt. He’d warned me that Holly’s apartment could be a bit drafty. We’d waited for her arrival before stuffing the small bong with the frighteningly acquired pot. I didn’t want to meet her while high, and Everett understood.

Holly turned out to be as wild, gregarious and self-aware as her younger brother, and as beautiful. Her long brown hair kept her tugging it back behind her ears. We had ordered a pizza from a flyer attached to the fridge by a magnet, which pleased her as she dug in while Everett told of our minor misadventure.

“Oh. My. God. I have to call Barry.” She abruptly left for the kitchen, where it seemed the only phone was. So that was the name of Mr. Young Republican.

Promising to “clear things up,” she assured us that no tattooed felons would come banging on her door, and that the gun was her dealer’s way of showing off. The distant one-sided conversation in the kitchen made me wonder how much of that laughter was at our expense.

An old black-and-white Cary Grant movie set in some small town played on the television. Most of the pizza had been consumed, and Everett and I sat on the couch, which would soon be our bed. I felt a bit awkward, and the pot gave me that dizzying tingle I’d recalled from the few times I’d smoked any.

As Everett once again leaned in for a little pizza-flavored smooch, I felt a sudden rumbling in my lower intestines, and headed abruptly for the bathroom.

As I ran sink water to disguise what I knew would be a rather noisy release, I flushed the toilet, then waited for a second round. Dutifully washing my hands, and my face, then impulsively slurping down some tap water, I was dismayed to see how red my eyes had become. I looked in the cabinet for eye drops, found some, and dabbed a few drops while staring at the ceiling.