Nobody Bats a Thousand (24 page)

“So what have you guys been doing?” I asked Red.

He started rambling,” Ripped
off some brandy. Fuck you people. You call this a party?  We got people to see, things to do, we got your booze we don’t need you fucking
asswipes
. Cruised the Main, checked out the chicks…Fuck that bitch, she’ll be calling me, begging me, but
nooo
way I’m I taking that bitch back, no way
,
Jose…”

“I’m sorry I asked.” H
e was drunker than I thought, not yet slurring his words but just past coherent, his thoughts coming out unconnected like random sound bites caught channel surfing.

Benny came back across the room. “Come on, let’s go burn this.”

“Where’s
Papagian
? Doesn’t he want to smoke his own joint?”

“He did but I told him he wasn’t invited. Come on.”

I really didn’t like smoking weed. It made me lethargic, and I was basically lazy enough without it. But I
knew by Benny’s voice and manner that this was no time to argue. He was definitely deep into one of his fuck-everybody moods where he tried his best to fuck with and be insulting and obnoxious to everyone he could with hopes that somebody would challenge him and force him to kick their ass. This included his friends because that was part of the game to be as unpredictable as possible, so I was as careful as possible when he was like this. I’d seen him fight several times. He was good at it and enjoyed it whenever it came about, and I didn’t want to be on the wrong end of one of his quick, powerful sudden right hands.

We went out and stood in the dark by Red’s truck, a big, old, heavy beat-up Ford he’d gotten as a hand-me-down from his older brother. Benny pulled open the door of the truck, pulled out a liter of brandy, took a drink, and then handed the bottle to Red who just stared at it until Benny took it back and took another drink.

“We picked this up from a party we were at on the North side.
Lousy party.
I raided their parents’ liquor cabinet and had to settle for th
is. They didn’t have any scotch.
” Benny took another long drink then handed me the bottle.

I liked beer, and could drink rum, whiskey or tequila, but even just the smell of brandy almost made me puke because I’d gotten real drunk on it when I was about fourteen years old.  I put my tongue over the end of the bottle pretended to drink and handed it back to Benny. I didn’t have to worry about drinking anymore of it. Just like I didn’t have to worry about getting stoned, because Benny only passed the joint and the bottle around once then held on to both, going at it full tilt, the small town kid with the big city appetite, stymied by the small town and ready to explode on a Friday night.

“You can get us some beer, huh Gleason?” Hernandez asked me.

“Sorry, man, I don’t turn twenty-one until tomorrow.
After tonight, no problem.”
  

“You
gonna
have a party or what?”

“No, my old man wants to take me out to the bar.
Which is really strange.
My old man likes to keep to himself. I can’t remember the last time we did something together. But it’s like some kind of ritual with him. His old man took him and his brothers out for their first beer, and now he’s all excited about taking out his only son. I’ve never seen him get too excited about anything before. It’s really weird.”

“Then you got to do it
, man. You got to do it.
” Benny put the brandy to his mouth, cleaned out the bottle then threw it with a long hard throw out into the darkness of a vacant lot thirty yards from the parking lot where we were standing.

“Gleason, I’m in generous mood. I’m
gonna
let you in on the secret.”

“Secret?
About what?”

“About everything, the secret to life, man.
It’ll be like my birthday present to you. A present you’ll never forget.”

“Yeah, life is like a box of chocolates…”

“Charm, that’s all there is to it. Charm and timing, it’s all about who you con and how and when you con them. If you got charm and timing you got it made.”     

“Wow, thanks man, I’ve nev
er heard you get so philosophic.
” I paused and looked at him. “But how do I know you’re not just trying to charm
me
right
now to get over on something. Is this why you’re letting me in on this big secret?”

“Nope, I’m telling you because you don’t need it. You’re too fucking lucky to need it. I wouldn’t tell it to somebody who needed it and didn’t know it. That would be one more motherfucker I might have to outsmart.” 

I looked at Red, leaning against the back of the pickup, fighting to keep his eyes open. “He looks rather charming tonight.”

“Fuck this town is boring.
” Benny looked out at the desert night. “Karen Tillman is having a party. Let’s
go out there.”

“I don’t even really know her”

“So what, I do. She lives out in that big house out by the trestle, the one with the big fishpond out front. I bet
her
dad has some good scotch.”

“I was thinking about getting home early and getting some sleep.”

“Hey, nobody sleeps. Moderation is for the old and the weak. Come on, Gleason, we might get lucky.”

“Hey man, I’m damn near engaged. I’m practically a married man.”

“Hey, I’m going home to Cathy. It would have to be something
real
special to keep me from that. But you with that ring through your nose, that’s exactly why you should go out and have some fun while you can.”

“I dunno.”

“Come on you lucky fucker. You don’t have to worry about a thing. You got it made. Kurt Cobain already died for your sins you Slacker. You do
n’t have to worry about nothing.” H
e pushed Red into the truck, walked around to the driver’s side and opened the door. “Follow me,” he said like a command.

“All
right.
”
I shrugged my shoulders got into my bug, and we started out. I figured Benny didn’t want to walk into this place by himself, and he needed me like a prop since it looked like Red was done for the evening, but that was okay because even though it was almost midnight it was still over eighty degrees, and if I went home it would be hard to sleep.

The drive to this place took about twenty minutes along a road outside of town lit only by the full moon and the sky packed with radiant stars. The only station I could get on the radio was a talk show from Vegas where a bunch of
wackos
were talking about spaceships and alien abductions, which was a little too eerie for the circumstances so I turned it off.
I began to think about Hernandez calling me lucky and telling his secret to life. The funny part was I think he was being sincere with his advice. As long as I’ve known him he’d always seemed to know what he wanted and how to go after it. I guess I’d always admired that about him, but I just didn’t see things that way. I’d always thought that life was more like spinning the Big Wheel on
The Price is Right
where you could wish or pray, think you have a logical plan or hope you have just the right touch, but it all boiled down to giving the wheel a good spin and hoping for the best. Maybe Benny was right, maybe I was lucky, but I sure was surprised someone would come out and say that to me, because I sure didn’t feel that way.

Finally, Benny slowed Red’s truck and turned left into a driveway that lead up to a big house one hundred yards away. You could tell in the moonlight there was a small lake in the middle of the huge front yard.
Cars were parked
along
one side of the driveway.

We
found an open space close to the house,
parked,
left Red asleep in his truck and walked right in the front door of this big colonial mansion like we’d lived there all our lives. Right off a big entry way was a large room where twenty or so people were spread out in little groups. Most everybody was about our age but dressed better than either of us who both had on jeans and T-shirts. Benny nodded or said hello to people here and there. Through his girlfriend, and because he wasn’t shy and had always gotten around, he knew people from all sorts of different cliques, but I didn’t see a single familiar face because this party was all about people who had gone to the high-brow/shit-kicker high school just south of town; rich rednecks, third
generation
O
kie
white trash with money. There was a tiny old woman, less than five feet tall, who was either a maid or somebody’s grandmother, sorting through the room, dumping ashtrays and putting abandoned plastic cups into a
small
metal trash can she carried. A table against the far wall was filled with crystal plates and bowls, most barren, but some still holding dips or hors d’oeuvres.

I felt out of place and uncomfortable, so I spent the time scouting out the crowd while trying not to draw anyone’s attention. Across the room, leaning against the mantel of a huge rock fireplace, talking to a group
of girls was a big guy with a b
lack mustache and dark features. He wore
black boots, black pants, and a fancy black cowboy dress shirt. He was the kind of guy who probably was only twenty-two but looked about forty and probably had since he was fourteen. He and Benny kept glancing at each other with dark predatory eyes. I could feel a tension cutting across the room. Each was aware of the other, but they didn’t stare directly into the other’s eyes for long, both kept looking away, not like they were afraid, it was more like they didn’t want to be bothered. I took this behavior as a sign of how human evolution had raised their social graces a good notch or two above those of pit bulls, but actually it was probably
only
the presence of women in the room that kept them from charging across the carpet and chewing on each other’s head to prove who was boss. What interrupted this whole macho scenario was the sudden appearance of a tall thin blonde, who walked in
to the room, and stood appraising her surroundings for
a few moments before she sat at the table and began eating, carefully selecting things from what was left on the crystal plates.

“Now that’s special,” Benny said, and I couldn’t argue. She must have been nearly six feet tall, wearing only paint-stained blue overalls over a white T-shirt, and a cheap pair of flip-flops. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail. She wore very little if any make-up but despite that and the way she was dressed she stood out against all the other girls, in their expensive outfits with their carefully structured hair and make-up, like real life compared to a photograph. The tall blonde had a long thin face, full lips, and dark green eyes that didn’t seemed focused on anything or anyone, like she was alone in the room in some type of haze. Benny and the mean-looking redneck across the room were trying to check her out without being too obvious, and I could sense most of the other chicks in the room weren’t too thrilled with having her around.

Benny got caught up in a conversation with three girls. I think one was the girl throwing the party. She had come up and asked him something about his girlfriend, that started things off, and when he walked a few steps over to where they were crowded together it didn’t take too long before I began to feel even more awkward and alone.

I decided they must have some beer around someplace so I went searching, determined to get at least a brew or two for the trouble of the long drive out there to become Benny’s deserted prop. I found the kitchen. Nobody was in there so I checked the refrigerator but couldn’t score, so I investigated the rest of the house. I walked down a short hallway into a step-down den with a pool table and could see through a glass sliding door two guys I knew from school out in the backyard standing next to a keg sitting in a plastic garbage can. I walked outside.

“Billy Gleason,” Jack
Persell
greeted me as I came out
of
the door.

“Any beer left?”

Jeff Johnson, standing with
Persell
, tossed me a plastic cup, which I filled with a slow steady flow from the tap on the top of the keg.

“How long you
guys been
here?” I asked just before I heard a loud, harsh, painful sound coming from a few feet away. I looked to my right then down to see the back of the head of some guy on his knees, gagging and puking, his hands gripping vertical pieces of the black wrought-iron fence surrounding the pool.

“Could you keep it down, man, we’re trying to have a conversation here,”
Persell
said. Jack turned to me and smiled.
“Just like old times, huh Gleason?
Standing outside by
the keg listening to some guy
r
alph
. We’ve done this more than a few times,
ey
?  Probably more times then I’d like to remember.”

“Except usually we’d be out here wearing jackets and freezing in the middle of winter.”

“High school was fun wasn’t it? So what brings you out here, old man?”