Lost Echoes (12 page)

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 supposed 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?”

“Seen her. Know who she is…Do you know who she is?”

“I’ve had coffee with her.”

“You have, have you? Well, her old man, John McGuire, he’s, like, a big dog in the oil business. He’s got more money than a wild dog has fleas. Everybody wants to hump his leg. He owns the golf course where my old man works. He owns a mansion just back of the golf course, through the woods there. It’s huge.”

“No shit?”

“No shit. Man, Talia McGuire. You must have been fuckin’ drunk when you met her, to think she’s got anything going for you. She’s a goddamn babe. I seen her wear a pair of pants tighter to her skin than a tattoo. When she walked, it looked like her thing was peelin’ a peach. There ain’t an ounce of fat on her, and all the meat that’s there, it’s sweet, dude. I’d give my left testicle to get a piece of that. So would you, but I wouldn’t be cuttin’ it off, buddy, ’cause you ain’t gettin’ none of that. That stuff, it’s for the fraternity dudes, guys with money and fast cars, not that turd-brown piece of shit you drive.”

“I’m not so bad.”

“Hey, you’re all right. I like you. You’ll go to college, get a job, do okay. Buy a fuckin’ Volvo. Do better than me. But Talia McGuire. Man, she’s outta your fuckin’ league, that’s what I’m tryin’ to tell you. Me and her, I might as well be on Mars, but even if you and her are on the same planet, you’re like, you know, Antarctica, and she’s here. Hear what I’m sayin’? No use jerkin’ you, and you endin’ up all disappointed and shit. She’s like some kind of goddess, and you’re like a fuckin’ goatherd. Hell, compared to her, you’re the Elephant Man. And she’s noted for fucking with people. It’s what she does.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Telling you what I’ve heard…She really had coffee with you?”

“Yes.”

“What were the circumstances? You were in the cafeteria, you were both drinking coffee at the same time, at different tables?”

Harry told him all about it. When he finished, Joey said, “There you are. She felt sorry for you. She was being nice. She knocked you down. Probably didn’t want you to sue. That would mean her daddy might have to shut down one of his about, oh, I don’t know, ten zillion-million oil wells.”

“Fuck you, Joey.”

“Hey, man.”

“It wasn’t like that.”

“Sure. Whatever you say. Doll like that, and you. Think about it. See what you come up with.”

Harry got up so quick the chair fell over.

“Don’t fuck the furniture up,” Joey said.

“Yeah, it’s so fine. Fuck you.”

“Well, fuck you. Get out of my shithole, be it ever so humble. Get the fuck out.”

Harry stomped out, and when he slammed the door the landing shook and the whole damn apartment vibrated and the light went out, and—

—there were all manner of flashes in his head, sounds, pictures, jump cuts of violence. Joey’s place was full of it, and the place was so flimsy, the slamming of the door activated it all, and it came rushing into his noggin like a flood.

The shotgun under the chin, the guy on the toilet, an explosion, brains and blood and a yellow light, a glimpse of that overlapped with a woman being slapped, a man with a young woman bent over a couch—a different couch than Joey’s—throwing the meat to her anus while she screamed—

A yell at a table, a man standing, grabbing up a plate of food, throwing it—

And the lights flicked inside his head like little atomic explosions, and the sounds grated and scratched and the screams all blended and the colors of violence ran together into a mural of darkness.

And as fast as it came to him, it went away.

Harry was less energetic going down, as the whole porch was starting to shake, and he felt as awkward as a man on wooden legs.

He went to the bar straightaway and started drinking. Some of what he was spending was for the water bill, but right then that seemed a long way off. He needed another kind of liquid refreshment right then.

The scrawny bastard was right, telling it like it was. A girl like Talia, a vision like that. She was taking pity on him. What would she want with him? Maybe she thought it was funny. Her sitting there slumming, and this guy drooling over her, trying to be cool, and her thinking: What a chump, and, isn’t this fun, and, maybe I’ll get close to him, let him smell—

What was it, the way she smelled, what was it?

Vanilla. That was it. She put vanilla behind her ears. He was sure of it. It was nice. It wasn’t overdone like Kayla, and it didn’t smell as good as Kayla, but it was good.

She had to be thinking: He leans toward me, that little hint of vanilla behind my ears, maybe I can get him to wet his pants. Wouldn’t that be funny?