The Rules of Inheritance (33 page)

 

I move from gin to vodka. From tonic to club soda. Tonic masks the taste of the alcohol too much; soda makes it just tolerable enough to swallow. I'm one of the regulars now in the group that heads across the street each night after we close.

 

Lila and Riley and Nathan. Another couple of waiters, the manager. And Colin, always Colin. Colin with his dark eyes and steady hands. Colin who killed his sister. Colin who drives me back to my car one night after we've all ventured out to another bar, farther away. I am supposed to meet some friends, they are waiting for me back in my neighborhood, but Colin and I sit in his car, the engine off, talking.

 

The windows are down to let in the night air, and crickets chirp as a breeze rustles the trees. Colin leans over and kisses me. It's something we've both been waiting for. For weeks, ever since that night I first approached him, we've circled each other. In the café, at the bar, a careful dance, each of us afraid to get too close too fast.

 

His kiss feels like a drink—immediate warmth flowing through my whole body. I can feel myself opening.

 

We stay there in the car for a long time, leaning into each other quietly. My friends who are waiting for me back at home give up. Later I will find a note on my bedroom window, an empty bottle of whiskey in the grass. Nothing really missed. Not compared to the feel of Colin's lips on mine.

 

The summer goes on like this. Kissing in darkened cars at the end of drunken nights. There are no real dates, no formal meeting of each other's parents. The rules of this relationship are that there are none, that it isn't a relationship.

 

The last thing either of us wants is something more to lose.

 

We keep it a secret from the other kids at the café, avoiding each other for the most part but making sure we're always the last to leave, pushing against each other as we walk through the darkened parking lot.

 

Some nights I leave with the rest of them, angry at Colin, angry at myself, too drunk to know what I'm really angry about. My mother's death drags behind me, heavy and unidentifiable in the dark.

 

We sleep together a few times, and it's more than I want it to be. Colin inside of me is too much. It's too real. We push off each other, afraid of what we're starting.

 

I'm frightened by Colin. Not just by his anger and his intensity, but by the way he seems to know me. He sees straight through everything I've ever tried to cultivate about myself, sees past the girl with the dyed crimson hair and the nose ring, past the authors I've read, the music I listen to, the way I hold my cigarette. All these things I've worked so hard to become are immediately discarded in his eyes. He sees a much simpler version of me, a version I'd long forgotten about.

 

A month goes by and Colin and I stop seeing each other. I can't figure out what happened, but all of a sudden we're avoiding each other in the café. On the nights that I go out after work he's not there, and on the nights that he goes I find something else to do.

 

Part of me is glad for this end to things. No good would have come of it, I am sure. I force myself to go on dates with the kind of boys I think I should see. One night I let a tall, sweet customer named Chad take me to dinner. We sit across from each other in a restaurant downtown, and he stammers as he tells me how pretty I am. Later I let him kiss me in the bucket seat of his convertible, his lips dry and quivering against mine. I can't help but think about Colin, about the deliberateness of his kisses.

 

I start hanging out with some of my high school friends again too, going to their parties, leaning against balconies in depressing apartment complexes as I listen to some boy describe some band he plays in. I exhale my cigarette in long, thin streams and wish I were somewhere else.

 

One night when I show up to work at the café everyone is jittery with conversation. Riley pulls me aside excitedly.

 

Did you hear what happened last night?

 

I didn't.

 

Colin and Lila got arrested for beating up some cop.

 

What?

 

I won't see Colin for another day, and when I do the black eye he has will have deepened into a flushed eggplant, fading down one cheekbone. The skin will look tender and fragile, and I'll want to place my finger there. I'll turn my back instead, cry in the car on my way home.

 

They'd been drinking at a friend's apartment when some off-duty cop with anger issues got aggressive, asking them to turn down the music. Colin told him to go fuck himself, and the cop pulled a gun on him. Colin went ballistic. Lila, drunk and fierce, jumped on the cop. It's a wonder that none of them were shot. It all ended in handcuffs, black eyes, fuming anger, café gossip.

 

When I see his black eye, the skin there soft like a bruised fruit, I realize that I miss him.

 

It's obvious that something is going on with him and Lila though. I feel foolish for thinking it was me who was taking a break this last month. I avoid them both, leave each night as soon as I'm finished counting my tips.

 

One night Colin grabs my arm before I can walk out the door.

 

Can we talk?

 

I have to meet friends, I say.

 

Just have one drink with me.

 

I know he's going to tell me that he's moved on, that he's seeing Lila now. I feel like glass, transparent and breakable.

 

Just one drink, he says. I wait while he finishes counting out his drawer.

 

We drive in my car to a bar nearby. Once we're settled at a table he looks at me with a mischievous glint in his eye. I am annoyed.

 

Why did you bring me here?

 

I wanted to have a drink with you, he says, grinning.

 

Colin is arrogant. He's overly confident. In years to come we'll argue with each other wildly, debating for long hours absurd subjects like the idea of immortality and the malleability of one's core values. He never budges, never backs down. It's always me who gives in, gives up.

 

This is stupid, I say. I'm leaving.

 

No, wait. He touches my hand lightly and in that moment I know.

 

I sink back into my seat.

 

I miss you, he says. I made a mistake. I was afraid.

 

My insides are tightening. His hand on my wrist is like electricity, reaching into me.

 

After the bar closes we sit in my car in the parking lot. We are smoking cigarettes, listening to the Allman Brothers.

 

Let's go somewhere, I say.

 

Sure. Where?

 

New Orleans?

 

Okay.

 

Really?

 

He shrugs, and I start the engine.

 

Can I stop at my house first? I need a couple of things.

 

He shrugs again, and I press my foot against the accelerator.

 

Colin waits in the car while I tiptoe inside. My father is asleep. Downstairs in my room I throw things into a backpack. Underwear, a couple of shirts. Upstairs I look around the living room. Summer is almost over, and my father and I have begun to pack up the house. We are moving out soon, into a condo.

 

All week we have been on our hands and knees, sorting through the bookshelves, the trunks and closets. We are having an estate sale, and a woman comes each morning to help us. She has little stickers for everything. A pile of my mother's purses sits in one corner, her collection of Yves Saint Laurent dresses, her stacks of archived
Gourmet
magazines.

 

It's no coincidence that I want to run away.

 

In the kitchen I grab a bottle of red wine from the counter and a bottle of those little blue pills my father gives me when I can't sleep. I hurry. I am afraid that Colin will change his mind.

 

Or that I will.

 

He is still in the car when I return, leaning back against the headrest, his eyes closed. We drive all through the rest of the night, taking turns at the wheel. It is dawn when we reach New Orleans, that rare time in the city when the streets are empty. Dew glistens on the French balconies, strings of beads lie in the gutters.

 

Colin drives us to a hotel in the French Quarter, and I wait, bleary-eyed, as he parks the car, checks us in. Our room has a balcony overlooking Bourbon Street. I grab the bottle of wine from my backpack, open the doors to the morning air. Colin takes the two tumblers from beside the coffee maker and joins me at the wrought-iron table outside. He opens the bottle carefully, pours two glasses.

 

Light is breaking across the rooftops, and for the rest of my life I will never forget the way that glass of red wine tasted. I take gentle sips, breathing in the warm glow of the sun glancing off the buildings around us. I am afraid to look at Colin. I cannot believe what we have done.

 

It's not that we've run away to New Orleans in the middle of the night. It's that we've fallen in love.

1999, I'M TWENTY-ONE YEARS OLD.

I
AM SITTING IN the mayor's office in the small town of Troubky, in the Czech Republic. My father is on my left, and Michael, our translator and guide, sits to my right. Five minutes ago we were shown into the room by a secretary, and now we are waiting anxiously for the mayor to appear.

 

We arrived in Prague almost a week ago—I flew in from New York and my father from Southern California. This trip came together only a few weeks ago, my father calling me late one night with the idea.

 

Want to take a little trip with me?

 

Sure, where?

 

I half paid attention as I listened to him. I had just gotten home from my bartending job and was distractedly taking off my coat, unwinding my scarf and emptying the contents of the school bag that I'd been carrying around all day.

 

The Czech Republic.

 

I stopped what I was doing, allowing myself to fully tune in to what my dad was saying.

 

The Czech Republic?

 

Sure. Why not?

 

Why not was mostly because my father would turn eighty in a few months and his health has been deteriorating by the day. This would, in fact, be his last trip anywhere, something I think we both already knew.

 

I didn't have to ask why he wanted to go. For the last few years, ever since the availability of the Internet, my father has been obsessively researching his World War II past. He has uncovered information about his missing crew members and even been in communication with European war historians, trading back and forth obscure puzzle pieces making up the air wars that took place in December 1944.

 

One such historian, a man named Michael, in Prague, has been a major player in my father's quest to unearth just such information. They have been exchanging e-mail for months.

 

Michael thinks I should visit, my dad said. He's come up with some eyewitnesses and other people for me to meet with.

 

It sounds like an adventure, I said.

 

I've usually listened to my father's reports of his World War II findings with halfhearted interest. It's not that I don't care—it's more that I've never really been able to really connect with World War II.

 

Even the name World War II immediately dredges forth an image of dusty history textbooks and painfully boring descriptions of military operations. I've listened to my father's stories for my whole life, and they've always seemed like just that: stories. Compared with my bright, shiny New York City life, something like World War II never even seemed real.

 

Until now.

 

Sitting here, in the mayor's office of this small town, all of that has changed. My father's past has been brought to life, and it's more interesting than I could have ever imagined.

MY FATHER WAS twenty years old when Pearl Harbor was attacked. He was a sophomore at Michigan State, studying engineering and going on double dates with his best friend, Bernie. When the reports of what happened in Pearl Harbor blasted out through the speakers of the radio, my father dropped everything and enlisted in the war that very afternoon.