This One Time With Julia (16 page)

“None of those other girls count.”

“Do you remember Olivia Tory?”

“Who’s she?”

“The point is you don’t remember her. Why do you think Julia will be any different?”

“Because I’m not going to forget her.” I don’t know why I got so angry, but talking with Alvin about Julia always put me on this very ugly tilt. “Sometimes I wish you wouldn’t come around to talk to me anymore.”

“Don’t say that unless you mean it.”

“Come on. Just tell me what to do.”

“Don’t worry so much, Joe. If you don’t think too much, the answer will be obvious.”

“Are you really not going to help me?”

“What do I know? I can’t even figure out why I’m so tired all the time.” Alvin rubbed his eyes and smiled at me. “That suit really is fine on you. It makes me want to offer you a job with an outstanding package of benefits.”

That was the first time that I’d felt sort of happy when Alvin disappeared. I finished walking to McDonald’s, and ate as many cheeseburgers as I could, and came home much later than I ever had before. The hotel was totally quiet as I snuck up to Julia’s room. She was still sleeping peacefully when I got back, and the covers were in good shape. So if she’d been talking in her sleep while I was gone, it must have been pretty calm. I remember that I cracked my knee really hard on the edge of the coffee table as I was coming in, because I was afraid she might wake up if I turned on the light. It was an extremely painful thing to do, but I just held my knee and hopped around silently holding it in. I guess love can be something like that too sometimes: slamming your knee on a table but not making any noise because somebody is trying to sleep. When most of the pain went away, I realized I’d broken this little teapot, which had fallen off the table when I cracked my knee. I picked up the pieces of the teapot and threw them out the window as far as I could. When I got into bed with Julia, she purred a little and woke up long enough to ask me, “How many cheeseburgers did you eat?”

“Three.”

“Will you please warm me up?”

I put my arms around her and warmed her up. The next thing I remember is waking up when the first warm bit of sunlight hit me in the morning, and I guess by then I had basically decided what I was going to do. I went over to the window and looked at the sun and made myself remember all the reasons one more time, just to be sure. Then I took a quick shower and put on my suit again. After I combed my hair and smoothed myself all down, I snuck out of Julia’s room without anybody seeing me leave. Then I went down to check on the pool and to wait for the day to start.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Julia and I were
in love all Tuesday, and at night we saw this pretty good travel movie at the last remaining drive-in theater in Tennessee, and we were in love on Wednesday too. The hotel was basically empty, so Julia came out by the pool for most of the afternoon, and we even swam a little bit together. By this time I was good enough at swimming that we could have a decent race.

I guess there was some kind of convention in the city, and so Houston’s hotel was packed and I didn’t see him again until Thursday. He stopped by in time for lunch, and we sat around trying to read the newspaper for an hour or so. When Julia came by with some tea and cookies, I watched him to see how he acted around her, but it was hard to know who to compare him with, because I’d never really spent much time around a brother and sister. I did notice that he teased her a lot about the temperature of the tea and so on, and when he toasted us with his teacup, he wasn’t really smiling that hard. Also, when I held Julia’s hand and kissed her right in front of him, I thought I saw him flinch a little; but for all I know, every brother in the world would flinch in that situation.

I wasn’t sure exactly what I was waiting for, but I knew it when it came. After the reading lesson, we got in Houston’s car and headed for the basketball courts. On the way he asked me if I could drive him to the dentist the next day, because his tooth was acting up again.

“They’re going to be drilling,” he said. “Now, nobody knows this about me, Joe, but I’ve got a little phobia when it comes to people drilling around inside my head. I start freaking out. I’m pretty embarrassed about it, actually, so please don’t tell the girls, if you don’t mind.”

“Why is that embarrassing?”

“It seems weak to me. A man should be able to stand it. Suppose I had to pull out my own tooth some day?”

“Why would you do that?”

“What if I was stranded on a desert island? Anyway, it’s just impossible for me to sit there blinking like an idiot while some guy I barely know destroys the inside of my head, so I get general anesthesia whenever they do any serious work in there. I’ll be groggy after, so I’ll need someone to drive me home, if you don’t mind.”

“What kind of car is it?”

“This one.”

“It’s an automatic?”

“You bet it is.”

“Not a problem,” I said. “That’s the kind of car I drive.”

We played forever that afternoon. The park didn’t have any lights, so when it got dark we all pointed our cars at the court and turned on all the headlights. Houston and I played on the same team. I really thought it would feel different, now that I knew he’d killed my brother and that we both loved the same girl. But it was just as fun as ever, and we won all our games pretty easily as usual. In fact I don’t think we ever lost a game in all the time we played together.

When I remember Houston, this is how I picture him, playing basketball that night in the white and yellow high beams. He’s spinning into the lane, surrounded by defenders. His face is shining and his eyes are wide open. He isn’t looking at me but I’m sure he knows exactly where I am. And I know the ball will be coming my way any second, so I start getting ready to shoot.

The next day Houston picked me up early and told me to get behind the wheel, so I could get used to his car. I hadn’t done any driving since our trip from Los Angeles, but Houston’s car turned out to be basically the same as Alvin’s. I made it safely into the city without getting distracted and even parked in a pretty tough space on only a couple of tries.

The dentist’s office had this tiny waiting room, with nothing to look at but pictures of the worst teeth you’ve ever seen. Half the room was filled up by this enormous fish tank, so there was barely any space to sit. The receptionists were both behind a big glass window. I remember Houston getting annoyed at them because he had to wait for half an hour, and how he had to crouch down and complain through the little holes in the glass.

Finally the dentist came in and took him away. They had some
Sports Illustrated
magazines in there, which I could always recognize because they were all over Marcus’s apartment. I’d always wondered what Marcus liked so much about those magazines, but I was too nervous to handle any reading now. So I just looked at the pictures until I saw the dentist come into the receptionist’s area to take a phone call. Then I got up and walked quickly down the hall and tried two or three empty rooms until I found the one with Houston in it.

It was exactly like the dentist’s office that Marcus used to make me go to in Los Angeles, with the same mechanical chair and the little spitting cup. Houston was sleeping in his chair with his mouth hanging open. I walked over to him and looked into his mouth. The room was very clean, but the inside of Houston’s mouth was very nasty—full of blood and little bits of bone—and he was breathing with a kind of gurgling sound.

I was on a very strange kind of tilt. I still wasn’t completely sure what I was going to do until I put my hands around Houston’s throat and started strangling him. The gurgling sound stopped, and after a few seconds he stopped breathing entirely. Then I heard the dentist in the hall, so I let go. Houston started coughing in his sleep as the dentist rushed in looking all confused.

“What’s going on? Why is he coughing?”

“I don’t know.”

“What are you doing in here?”

“I thought Houston had my phone.”

“Get out of here. You’re not supposed to be in here.”

I went back into the lobby and picked up my magazines again. Houston finally came out about an hour later with his mouth full of gauze, still groggy from the sleeping drugs they’d given him. We drove around downtown a little bit and then stopped for some milkshakes at this diner he loved. All through lunch he was rubbing his throat, but he didn’t bring it up until we were back in the car, heading home.

“I can’t understand why my throat would hurt,” he said. “It’s my mouth that should be hurting. Does my neck look all bruised?”

“It’s hard for me to tell when I’m driving.”

“So pull over.”

“Right now?”

“Sure.”

“Where?”

“Pull over at this bridge.”

Just before the road turned into a huge concrete bridge, I pulled the car over to the shoulder and then up onto some grass. Houston turned to me with a strange smile on his face.

“Turn off the car.”

“Okay.”

When he rolled down the window, I could hear the river bubbling away far underneath us. Houston took the last piece of gauze out of his mouth and threw it out the window, still with the same weird smile, like he had some good news that he couldn’t wait to tell me.

“I can’t believe I didn’t recognize you,” he said.

“What?”

“I think it’s time we were honest with each other, Joe. We’ve known each other long enough. What do you say?”

“All right.”

“You’re Alvin’s brother, aren’t you?”

“Are you going to be honest with me, too?”

“Absolutely. But you were the one he picked up at McDonald’s that night.”

I admitted that I was.

“I’ve caught the resemblance a couple of times in the corner of my brain, but I never made anything of it. The kid I saw in the parking lot that night was a shaggy-haired punk with stains all over his clothes. Really an amazing transformation.”

“I cut my hair.”

Houston nodded thoughtfully. He rubbed his throat and coughed a couple of times.

“I think it’s a lot more than that. But now I have another question for you, Joe.”

“Okay. Then maybe I’ll have a question too.”

“Did you come in and strangle me while I was at the dentist?”

When he saw I didn’t want to answer him, he patted my arm in this really comforting way.

“Don’t feel bad. The important thing is that you didn’t go through with it.”

“You know why I had to do it.”

“I know.”

“You killed Alvin.”

“I know I did,” said Houston. “You don’t have to explain yourself to me. I get it. How could I blame you for reacting that way?”

I couldn’t make any sense of Houston’s attitude. He was talking about killing Alvin in such a casual way, like he was showing me the breaststroke or something.

“How could you tell?”

“The dentist mentioned that you came in for your phone. But we’re not focusing on the important point. It isn’t that you strangled me. It’s that something stopped you. What stopped you, Joe?”

“I don’t know.”

“Really?”

“The dentist came in.”

“Is that really why you stopped?”

“I never killed a friend before,” I said. “You’re the first one I ever had.”

“That sounds more like it,” said Houston. “You’re no dummy. You knew that strangling me wouldn’t bring Alvin back to life. You knew that in my place, you’d probably have done the same thing. Most of all, you knew you had too much to lose. You’re risking a lot more than our friendship here.”

None of these reasons had occurred to me, but they did sound pretty true when Houston said them. I rolled down my window and let the cold air blowing through the car sort of calm me down. I could smell the trees, and I thought I could smell the river too.

“You have a great situation,” he said. “You have the best possible job for somebody with no education. You’re learning a lot from me, and living here is changing you, turning you into a man. Strangling me would shake everything up.”

“But what about Julia?”

“I’m saying that we can get past this.”

“Are you in love with her?”

Houston laughed.

“You’ve been talking with my mother.”

“Are you?”

“That word might mean two different things to both of us.”

“It sounds like you are, then.”

“I’ll admit it if you like. But I can’t be sure it’s love, because I’ve never felt anything else. I just can’t remember any second of my life where I wasn’t positive I’d marry her. But that doesn’t mean I will.”

“So it’s true then.”

“Let’s just say that if this isn’t love, then I’d trade love for this.”

“So why did you kill Alvin and not me?”

“You’re acting like it’s a bad thing.”

“Just tell me why.”

“I like you, Joe. I don’t want to kill you. Life lasts a long time, and you’re not doing her any harm, like Alvin was. I’m here for the long haul, so you can have your shot.” Houston smiled. “Let the best man win.”

“You don’t believe she’s serious about me.”

“Of course I don’t.”

“You think I’m just a phase for her.”

“Of course you are. She’s barely more than a kid. So are you. Everything that’s happening is just a phase.”

“How did you kill my brother?”

“I shot him. But it’s not like I enjoyed it. Now listen, Joe—”

I put my hands around his neck and strangled him again. For a while he tried to pry my fingers off his throat, and then he started waving his hands and slapping at my legs while he made these little gurgling sounds. He obviously had something extremely important to say, and so I let him go and he sat there gasping with his head between his knees, trying to get his breath back.

“This isn’t safe for me,” he said. “You’re too damn strong.”

“I’ve always been damn strong.”

I was glad to get a little rest, because I had pulled some kind of muscle in my neck. I took off my seat belt so it wouldn’t get in the way again.

“You’re going to ruin everything,” he said.

“You shouldn’t have killed Alvin.” I was thinking about all the times we had played basketball. It would have been nice to play a little more. “You should have thought of this before you decided to kill him.”

“When are you going to stop thinking like a little boy?”

Then Houston lost his breath and coughed some more until I put my hands around his throat again. He fought a little while longer, but not much. I strangled his neck until he died. Then I dragged him out of the car. I let a car pass, and then hoisted him onto my shoulders and carried him over to the bridge. I propped him up on the railing and pushed him over.

The river was pretty far down there, I guess, because it seemed like Houston fell forever—long enough to spin a couple of times on the way down—and when he hit the water I could barely hear the splash. Then he disappeared right away. I think he was too skinny to float. The river was wide and strong but also very deep, so I still don’t know if Houston got carried away by the current or just sank right to the bottom.

Right after Houston disappeared into the water, I really expected him to pop up and start heading to shore with a nice strong crawl stroke, because he was the one who’d taught me how to swim. Of course that was never going to happen, because he was dead before I threw him in the river. But for some reason I sort of expected it anyway.

When Alvin died, I actually talked to him more than when he was alive. And since Houston was my first friend, I figured he’d basically still be around. I really thought he’d come visit me at least once in a while, like Alvin had, but Houston never did.