Nicholas' watch marked the winner's time. "Three point one seven seconds," he read to Drusus evenly as I placed my bottle next to Lee's, who had edged me for second place. Angst and Chuck followed quickly, Chuck taking last and spilling beer down the side of his face. He noticed me staring at him and raised a cocky eyebrow. I looked away. We never were very fond of each other, even after we started pledging the same fraternity. Chuck had been one of those hopelessly boring lofars from the beginning of school, so perhaps you can see how unexcited I was when Nicholas decided to bring him out with us that night.
It was the middle of October, and in the time since I met Shanai my bouts of drinking had increased tremendously. It's what I was brought up to believe I was supposed to do in college, and the truth is that I loved doing it. I loved doing it because it represented freedom. And also, of course, because it took my mind off the grave belief that I had no future, that my past was pinned to my back like a third arm and would deny any salvation possible. I found myself thinly divided between two heavy fronts - one at home, in the dormitory with my lighthearted freshmen friends and the other somewhere out in the wilderness of the mind with Shanai, her boyfriend, and his two fiends.
"Jesus, Angst," Nicholas purred, throwing an amused wink in my direction while strapping his watch onto his wrist, "maybe you should take some lessons."
"Maybe," Angst answered evenly, reaching for another Budweiser, "you should do something about that pusticle on your forehead." Looking up at the round of us, he asked in a bored tone of voice, as if the question were bothersome, "Another for everyone, I guess?"
Angst's room was disgusting. I admit, once before I pardoned, perhaps even extolled Shanai for the bothersome clutter that was her room, but the way Angst lived and the way Shanai lived freshman year were altogether different. As much as Shanai's odd possessions were strewn about the place there was nothing you were afraid to touch. You simply pushed aside some books or clothes or whatever there was and made space for yourself.
Angst, however, was a slob, and he laughed whenever we told him so. He was one of the lucky few who had signed up for a double but whose roomate never showed. That probably was best. The unfortunate roomate one night might have mysteriously caught fire. In any case, Angst had joined both beds on one side of the room, but that didn't spare his sheets or pillows any damage from our frequent bouts of drinking. There were empty beer bottles that had been conveniently converted into ashtrays all over the floor and his furniture, some overturned, and a whole slew of cigarette butts that hadn't made it into any of the bottles. Portions of the tan rug were stained with a curious mixture of beer and ash, and the smell of stale drink permeated everything. At the beginning of the year his walls had been richly decorated with posters, but by November most of them were torn and hanging mutely from their tacks like corpses.
"No, really, I did," Lee was saying, clasping an empty beer bottle as if for support. The skin on his face was gleefully pink. The colorful patterns there were almost worthy of contemplation, the way the darkness of his skin and the blood of the drink fought beautifully for space on his face. "I used to have a key to my high school. I stole it out of some department head's office once. So this chick I knew teamed up with me. The head janitor thought she was pretty and liked sneaking her cheap feels. I'm telling you, with my key we could get into any room we liked and that janitor never minded letting us inside at night. The last two years of school I had a copy of almost every exam I took the night before."
"Fucking A, man," Drusus slurred, swaying uncertainly on the floor next to me. "Most of us had to work to get into this place."
"Did you ever get caught?" Nicholas asked him, passing Chuck and I another beer.
"What are you, an idiot?" Chuck snapped as he took the bottle. "Now pass me that opener." But Nicholas didn't move, only stared back at him blankly, so after a brief moment of silence Chuck explained with that obnoxiously superior attitude small private school boys attain somewhere between the first and fifth grade, "Nicholas, they would never have let him in here if he had."
"Open it with your hand, asswipe," Nicholas said as he and I demonstrated with our own. "They're twist-offs."
"Oh," Chuck grunted, staring stupidly at his hand as if he were expecting to find cum there.
"Actu -" Lee started to say, but he was untimely interrupted by a series of hiccups. One of his hands flew to his chest while his body heaved uncomfortably.
"Here, man," Drusus offered, leaning over to the other side of our malformed circle and offering Lee his beer bottle. But by the time Lee had the thing in his hands the hiccups had ceased. Drusus nodded meekly and took the bottle back, then drank the rest of what was inside. Lee threw him another, taking at the same time one for himself.
"As I was about to say," Lee continued, "I actually did get caught. Not red-handed or anything, but at the end of the year I got messy and dropped one of the carbon copies on the floor while I was putting them back."
"Did they pin it on you?" Angst demanded somewhat angrily, peering at him intently.
"No, but what really pissed me off was that from the beginning the vice principal suspected me. He tried to do everything he could to prove it was me. He even told some of my friends that I told him they did it, just to see what they'd say."
"Those fucking cunts! Hanging out in the back rooms sticking each other up the ass and licking the shit off! You know," Angst snarled, "if I was you, I would have popped that asshole's tires. No, even better, cut his brakes. Put sugar cubes in his gasoline. Ever try pouring tuna oil down the ventilation shaft?"
A hint of a smile crept onto Lee's face. "Actually," he said, taking a brief swig of beer, "I waited until after graduation and then I walked right up to him, still wearing my gown and everything and holding my diploma in my hand. 'Why, hello there, Lee,' he said. That asshole had the nerve to hold his hand out to me! There were some faculty heads standing there with him. Let me tell you, I was so mad I flicked them all off." He giggled conspiratorily then, and sitting there on that bed with his face so red he looked almost like a child. "You should have seen their faces. Afterwards they had a talk with my parents, but what could they really do, you know?"
"I'll drink to that," I said, motioning with my bottle in Lee's direction before taking a drink. "A valiant story."
"I think," Angst said after he finished his beer and was reaching for another, "I would have slugged that dickwad in the stomach."
"Right," Chuck muttered.
Sometime after we were each into our last beers I found myself talking to Drusus. The other four were on the bed discussing animatedly who was going to buy more beer. "I hear you're going with that chick down the hall," Drusus said to me quite suddenly.
I let out a slow hiss of breath. "Nancy, you mean? Yeah, I guess so. I wouldn't say we're going together, though, you know? I'd say, more like - oh, I don't know - fucking. You know?"
Drusus grunted with obvious displeasure, looking away at the floor. "Fucking," he repeated softly. I remember distantly wondering what could be wrong with him, why he was carrying on so much like a victim. But I didn't know Drusus then like I know him now. "What about this chick Shanai downstairs I always hear you talking about?" Almost gingerly he was running some of the fibers of the rug along a smooth finger. "What about her?"
"What about her?" I shrugged, not exactly sure where this was going and certainly never suspecting, in that month-and-a-half-long drunken stupor, what should have been obvious for some time. It's funny just how blind we can fix ourselves when it suits us. "She's going with this guy Antonius. He's a sophomore," I said, as if that explained everything.
"Is that the guy you're always going off with?" Drusus asked, leaving the rug and looking up at me. "Doing all those drugs with and everything?"
"Hey, hey," I grunted, sitting up in my chair and taking a long swig from my bottle. "What's this about 'all those drugs'? We smoke the occasional joint or two." I stopped myself and reconsidered for a moment. "Okay, no. Actually we smoke a lot more than that. They do, at least. But what's wrong with smoking pot?"
"You never hang out anymore," Drusus said to me softly, his eyes cutting deftly into my own. There was something in his gaze that made me uncomfortable, so I looked towards my beer as if to see how much I had left. Drusus always had the habit of staring in such a way that I suspected he could pick the thoughts from behind my pupils.
"Of course I do," I answered a bit hastily. "What do you think I'm doing now?"
"And you're doing more than smoking pot," he continued. "I could really care less about the pot, actually. Actually, I'd wish you'd bring me some by here if you could. But it's the other stuff. The acid, man. Angst tells me you've been dropping acid."
I shrugged coldly then, not really liking the turn of the conversation. It was almost as if I were answering to mother, and I didn't like feeling guilty about doing something that made me feel good and didn’t hurt anyone else. "A couple of times, yeah. But it's such a mind opener -"
"David," he interrupted me, "don't be an asshole."
I stood up then, more than angry enough, feeling invaded. Drusus was still staring into my eyes, so still but somehow with so much passion. The expression on his face was hard, and I could see that he was going to try and play mother after all. But not with me. All the years I've known him I've always got the feeling that Drusus was looking out for me, even if it was from far away, and perhaps after a time I came to live with it because I understood where he was coming from. But not then, sitting in Angst's room that night. This was all so new to me, all these people and the feelings I had over them. It's difficult to behave openly with those whom you don't know very well at all. Or who don't know you. "I don't need anybody else to look after me," I told him, lurching for the door. "Thanks, anyway." But on the way I stumbled and, flailing, had to grab on to Angst's dresser to steady myself.
"Hey, David!" Nicholas called after me as I threw open the door of the room. "You going for a walk? Great! Get some beer on your way back."
I didn't feel the need to answer him. I was consumed with rage, thinking about so many different things, so I slammed the door closed behind me and started walking. To where I do not know, nor did I ever discover because the next thing I knew Drusus was out the door after me.
"David," he called. I could hear footsteps behind.
"Jesus Christ, Drusus," I hissed, bringing my hands to my head and not even bothering to look. "Just leave me the fuck alone." I don't know why but I started running. Perhaps I was simply trying to flee from Drusus and his boyish innocence - from great, strong Drusus and the gentle manner that brought me to love him - because I didn't want a friend like that. Maybe I was uncomfortable, because I had discovered already that the one person I could depend upon was myself, and myself alone. But those days are farther away than I'd like to think and it's difficult to say what I was really feeling. All I know is what we did, what was said.
We were outside in the freshman quad, swathed in the comfortable October night, when he overtook me. "Fuckin A, man," he slurred, and looking into his bloodshot eyes I could see that he was more drunk than I was. "Just listen to me!" There was something firm in his voice, something hard, and it caught me. All resistence was overcome and I found myself staring into his face and listening to the tumult of words that were falling around me. " - treat her like she's a whore or something! Don't you ever think about how she's feeling? Do you ever think about anyone but yourself? Nancy's a beautiful girl, a good person, something rare around here and to tell you the truth it's too bad that she's wasting that on you if that's how you're going to treat her. Like she's a fucking body for something! If you want to be with this Shanai chick then dump Nancy and -"
"But then I wouldn't be getting laid," I interrupted him, but immediately after the words were out I regretted saying them.
"See, that's what I mean!" One of his livid hands brushed my chest. His face, illuminated with a passion I began to recognize, leaned dangerously close to my own. I think somewhere in those smooth features I began to understand. "You don't even spend time with us anymore - us, your friends - never mind Nancy. No, you go off and take acid with those freaks and fucking Shanai. Fucking A, David, you only think of yourself, only yourself -"
"Drusus," I said then, taking a step back from him, putting out a stern hand to keep him at arm's length. "You're drunk. You've no idea what you're saying."
But he just batted the arm away and closed the distance between us again. "I've more of an idea -"
"Fuckin A, Drusus!" I shouted then, and he seemed to stop in midmotion, glaring at me intently. "You hardly even know me. You hardly fucking even know me and you're already judging me. Well, fuck you. If you want to know what I think, I think you're jealous!" And much to my surprise, as soon as the words slipped out I knew that I was right. I hadn't intended them to describe the truth, I was just in need of something scathing to say. But as the anger deflated from his eyes and I saw something like guilt there my mouth dropped open and for a moment there was nothing left to say. Drusus took a defeated step backward, realizing that there was no hiding it anymore. He turned away, stood looking off over the freshman quad at all the people coming home drunk. "Jesus, man," I breathed when I found my voice, "you want to fuck my girlfriend!"
"No," he said softly. "I want to be with her, too."
"You asshole!" I said, not because I meant it but because there was nothing else to say. We stood like that for a moment, I facing his broad back and not really knowing how I should feel. There was the guilt again, and it made me uncomfortable. I started thinking about all the time the four of us had spent together - and about all the time I didn't. How long had they been running around together behind my back? Why hadn't she said something to me? She had never even tried to make me feel jealous, and when I realized that it was because she could have cared less it was my turn to feel jealous. "How long have you been -"
"We haven't," Drusus cut in evenly. "We've just been talking."
Just been talking, I repeated to myself. My mind was racing over other matters. What was I to do? Was I supposed to try and win Nancy back knowing always that Drusus, my friend, would always be watching in the background? Or was I supposed to break it off nobly and allow the two of them to be romantically united while I watched the girl I really wanted draped over a god for whom, by comparison, I was no match?
But we were thankfully spared the resolution to that awkward moment. Just as I was trying to think of something to say - because I knew Drusus well enough by then to understand that he would say nothing - some familiar shouting reached us from the entrance to our dormitory. My eyes swept the lighted courtyard just ahead where I saw Angst, shirtless, screaming vehemently at the night around him. "Wake up!" he was shouting at the blank windows looking coldly down at him. In his eyes they must have appeared contemptuous. "Wake up Johns Fucking Hopkins University!" This time he threw his fists against the heavy brick of the building. But the building did not budge. "Wake up all of you, you mother-fucking cock-sucking pussy-assed cunts!" He struck the building again with his fists, and even from a distance it looked as though he were putting considerable force behind his blows. It was only then that I saw Lee, jumping up and down next to him and laughing. "Wake up!" he was crying, I think, but Angst's monstrous bellowing completely eclipsed him.
"Hey, shut up!" a greatly annoyed voice drifted meekly across the campus. I looked up and saw a dim face appear somewhere above Angst on the third floor of a neighboring hall. "Some of us are trying to get laid around here."
"O really?" Angst thundered obnoxiously, his head thrust aggressively forward while he moved to stand beneath the boy's window. Lee followed laughing after him. Even from where Drusus and I were standing, watching, we could see that Angst was infected with the proud willingness to destroy. His skin seemed to be stretched tightly over his body except where there was fat. He was not a very muscled young man, not like Drusus, but he was strong, and anyone as drunk and worked up as he was that night can be intimidating. "Getting laid? You? Please," he laughed up to the boy. "By which hand?"
I couldn't help but laugh. Seeing Angst standing there, his chest thrust out defiantly and his arms ready to engulf the entire building, screaming up to that boy in the window, was too much. And then, amidst my laughter, Drusus turned to me. In that runaway second when our eyes met it seemed that everything for the moment was put aside. He took a few steps back to stand beside me. "Fuckin A, man," he said gently, with something like admiration, "that motherfucker's pretty wasted!"
So he was. The boy in the third floor window had fled, and Lee and Angst were laughing together in the courtyard, the beefier Angst with one arm perched precariously over the lean shoulders of the taller Lee. But the place was growing restless, I could see, and other people were shouting down at them, too. Of course, Angst, consummated with drink, only laughed harder. He picked himself up after a moment and stumbled unknowingly out of the courtyard and towards us while Lee tried answering them all. At one point, someone opened a window and threw something at him. It narrowly missed his head and landed in a bush behind him. Casting a fierce glance about himself as if to ascertain the whereabouts of the assailant, Lee bounded lightly to the hedges, leaned nimbly inside and stood up with something that looked like a chunk of pavement in his hand. Glancing behind him he aimed and launched the projectile. Of course, he missed - he didn't even come close - and the thing smashed through somebody else's window. A startled "What the -?" reached my ears, and Lee only hesitated a second before running away.
But Angst had been eyeing one of those metal, industrial sized trash barrels that lined the campus, and perhaps it was Lee's voice that made up his mind. Lee was just coming up behind him, when Angst leaned over, grabbed the barrel in his arms, and lifted. "Ahhhhh!" he screamed fiercely, and lurched with his prize through the dark of the quad. He frightened away two rather ghastly looking female medical students.
"Shit," I said to Drusus then, nodding in their direction, "we better do something before somebody sees them." Drusus nodded, and together we started towards Angst with his barrel of trash and Lee skipping happily behind him. We had only gone a few feet, though, when we noticed two security guards striding uncompromisingly in Angst's direction from the other side of the quad. They were still quite some distance away, but neither Angst nor Lee had caught sight of them. Drusus cut me a quick glance and I nodded quickly. We both knew there was only one thing to be done.
Angst launched the barrel angrily somewhere towards the center of the quad. It started to roll down a slight incline, spilling all sorts of filth along the way. He was looking after the thing warmly, perhaps taking a moment to pride himself on the fine mess he was making, when Lee caught sight of the hopcops coming their way. Yelping in surprise, he pointed them out to Angst and then took off. Fortunately, he chose a direction somewhat behind Drusus and I. As Lee passed by with Angst on his heels I somehow managed to catch his eye. The grin on his face was immesurable, and then he disappeared into the looming darkness behind us.
The hopcops were so intent upon catching Angst and Lee that they never saw our shapes cutting deftly through the darkness at them, didn't realize until we were almost upon them that they had engaged themselves in a collision course. There was a brief moment when the world turned upside down and something hard hit me in the chest, and the next thing I knew the four of us were on the ground panting heavily while Angst and Lee slipped quietly away.
"Dumb kids!" one of the hopcops spat, sitting up and glaring across the quad, past the now empty barrel that had come to a stop by his feet. "Can't you look where you're going?"
Drusus and I winked at each other in the darkness and smiled.
| * | * | * | * | * |
The room, this place of destitution and need and impoverishing, painful desire, is small. Or maybe it's large. I can’t be sure of anything. It's round, like the inside of a sphere, yet oddly stretched across its width as if something - maybe the phantom image of God with which we assuage ourselves in the everyday world - is pulling on it. Nothing seems solid along the perimeter. The walls themselves seem to be undulating, shifting, falling into each other when you're not looking directly at them with the smoothly calculated concentration of a serphent. Sometimes the walls appear black, sometimes they're white. And sometimes they don't appear to be any color at all. I think it's the shadows, really. The harrowing shades of darkness can play tricks on the eye. They're everywhere in here, like spider webs, thick and pasty and crawling, all with minds of their own. And they, too, form ominous patterns that are constantly under change.
There are the queer faces of clocks everywhere, on the walls, dripping from the ceiling, looking up at me from the floor. The cataclysm of time rings in my ears with confusion, fills me with an acute need that cannot be answered here because the clocks are all lying to me. So it is that I am left to stand here softly, whimpering, and ringing my hands in frustration while the clocks linger dreadfully on.
Tick tock, tick tock, tock -
Tick.
| * | * | * | * | * |
When Canine answered the door, I could see that he was frightened. His eyes flinched from mine, found the floor. At the sight of him my words of greeting were instantly struck from my lips. "Jesus Christ," he rasped, pushing roughly past me into the hallway, "they don't know what they're talking about."
"What's up?" I asked uncertainly. Thoughts of ritualistic human sacrifice leaped to mind.
"Sure, fine," Canine snapped, trying to look me in the eye. I could see that his pupils weren't dilated but he was quite stoned. Behind me, Nancy stood uncomfortably in the doorway, trying not to be obvious as she peered through the sickly, yellow light that was bleeding on the three of us. "As fine as it's ever been."
"So what's the matter?"
"I don't know, man." He laughed nervously, but the way his voice trembled he sounded all the more scared. "Try to have one simple argument with those guys and they turn it into a question of your sanity. Christ, they've always been like that. Jesus Mary mother of God - Look, David, I've got to go." And before he had even finished speaking he was walking down the hallway, his steps quick and unsure.
I looked after him, my lips parted for the words that I had planned on speaking but were by now hopelessly lost. "Canine, man." I did not know whose words these were - certainly not my own, standing there in cold confusion wondering what could possibly be wrong. But Canine flinched at any sudden event in his life when first I met him. Which is why it is no wonder that when he met his horrible end he did not flinch at all. "You look like you've just killed someone."
Nancy's eerie chuckling bubbled behind me. But Canine didn't seem to find it funny at all. He stopped not fifteen feet in front of me as if struck by my words, suddenly still and stony. His back spoke of a long and tiring ordeal that was not close to its conclusion. In that short moment I gained a strange insight into the bitter and hidden struggle that seemed to occupy the bulk of his mind and energy. Whatever it was, it was destroying him, tearing him to shreds in a quiet way that none of us could perceive. I did not have to see his face to imagine the haunted look in his eyes, or his lips half parted ready to scream. And then he broke into a run, ran all the way towards the stairs until he passed out of sight, and still I heard his heavy steps pounding, echoing and reverberating throughout the heavy concrete of the building, fading.
"Is he always like that?" Nancy asked me softly from the doorway, the traces of her chuckling still fresh around her mouth, near her eyes. I forgive her now, of course. How could she have known?
Looking after him, somewhat somber, I shrugged. "I can't explain. You've just got to know him."
"Strange friends you have," she breathed, coming closer. "I hope this Anthony person -"
"Antonius," I corrected, turning around. She stood a few feet away, just out of the doorway, looking tantalizingly up at me. Nancy was a fiercely beautiful woman, and she knew it. "His name's Antonius."
"Yes, yes, whatever." Her eyes narrowed slightly then, and one of her hands found its way to indiscreetly to my dick. "And his girlfriend," she purred, "what's her name? Hmmmm?" Ever so slowly she was pressing her body to mine, closing the distance not only with her flesh but also with those piercing eyes, eyes that wanted to know but were so blind - and so blinding.
Coughing uncomfortably, I answered her. "Shanai."
"Oh, yeah," Nancy breathed, her voice barely more than a whisper, her hand groping me toward a full erection. "Shanai." We stood for a long moment in tense silence staring into each other's eyes. But it was more a contest, a competition with high stakes, than a prelude to a pleasurable and sensuous evening. It certainly wasn't something I enjoyed, but it was at the same time wonderfully erotic. Besides, at that age my body entertained any excuse to get it up.
It didn't take long for Antonius to find his way to the open doorway. "Where'd Canine go?" I started at the sound of his voice. "Sorry about this," Nancy whispered conspiratorily in my ear and then moved quickly away, smiling, leaving me to try and hide as best I could the obnoxious bulging in my pants. It's always been much easier to get an erection than lose one.
"Antonius," I coughed, trying to hide behind Nancy, but she moved away. "Antonius, this is Nancy."
"Hello, Antonius," Nancy offered meekly, slipping by the thin figure in the doorway. "I've heard so much about you."
"And I obviously haven't heard enough about you," Antonius remarked, his eyes lingering after her. I hit him lightly on the arm, surprised him because he looked slightly confused as he turned back to me. "Sorry, David. Just couldn't help myself."
I grunted on my way by him as I passed into the tiny, dimly lit foyer between the bedroom and the living room, leaving him to close the door.
"Don't you find it embarrassing," he continued, coming up behind me as I followed Nancy into the living room, "walking around in public with your pants sticking out like that?" I cringed, willing that my hard-on become less noticeable.
"Thanks," I muttered.
"After all, you might start attracting other chicks. Shit, other guys, too. What about Nancy? You ever think about Nancy"
"Enough, Antonius."
"Just trying to help, of course. I don't want you getting yourself into any situation it would difficult to get out of."
"Antonius, just let it lie."
And then we were in the hazy living room. As I had discovered in the last month or so, Antonius' living room was a great place to sit, relax, and take bong hits in the revered company of loud music. The sound system was very expensive and crystaline clear to an extraordinary volume. He had only one neighbor who was never home, so there was nobody to complain. The living room was otherwise largely unfurnished, with empty while walls and a large, tye-dye tapestry draped across the ceiling in the standard fashion of the day. A couch, two tables, a small rug, some swivel chairs, and the tall, hulking black CD case that was half empty were the only other items in the room.
There were two people sitting in the swivel chairs when Antonius and I came in, stoned and listening to the dangerously gentle chords of Pink Floyd's If landing in sonic booms around them. One of them was Shanai, dressed in a delicate, brightly colored dress that bloomed before my eyes. The other, of course, was cruel Salvatore.
Nancy was standing just inside the broad entranceway, waiting for us uncomfortably. These people didn't suit her style, and I knew it instantly. Salvatore was staring eerily at her, coldly. Nancy was trying not to notice but doing such a poor job of it that he could only have felt triumph.
Antonius retired to the couch where he started packing the bong and I, seeing Nancy perched so uncomfortably in this unfamiliar cavern, came to her side. I laid a soft hand on her shoulder and could actually feel her relax a bit. When I introduced her to Salvatore he just nodded as if I were in fact repeating something he already knew. Nancy, in a desperate attempt to be friendly, offered him a flash of one of her pretty, alluring smiles. He did not return it. "Don't worry about him," I whispered in her ear. "Salvatore doesn't like people he doesn't know. He's just trying to intimidate you."
"I know!" she snapped bitterly, nudging me away. Another, slightly different smile appeared on her face then, as if to assure me that she could not be daunted. But her fingers were wrestling with each other nervously beneath her stomach. My advice to her, though, was from prior experience, and it would have done her good to listen.
I can remember quite well the first time I met Salvatore. He had been sitting in that same chair, probably just as stoned, and tried that staring trick with me as well. I ignored him until Antonius introduced us, hoping he would just go away or that Antonius would forget about him. Of course, Antonius did not forget, and then I could no longer avoid his black, spiraling eyes. "Hey," I said, trying quietly to hold his gaze. Those first few moments I actually marvelled at how strong willed I imagined him to be. Of course, over time I realized that Salvatore was not strong at all, that he was infected with a fear entirely different from that of Canine's but a fear nonetheless.
He looked at me for a long moment or two before he finally spoke. "So, how does it feel to have killed your grandmother?"
I could tell that he had meant the question to take me aback, but I was used to it by then. So I just shrugged and smiled coolly. "I didn't kill her." I was not insisting, or denying, but rather stating an indisputable fact.
"That's not what it looked like to me," he replied evenly.
Salvatore took anti-depressants when he could. It was his only answer to the fierce intensity of his pessimism. Partly because of him, partly because of them all, I can understand now what it's like to operate in a world perceived to be so horrible. Dry and blunt to the point of offensive, Salvatore expressed to us the bitter truth of the world as he knew it. He was the man doomed to betray his own way out and the prophet who loved him. And he sured loved those anti-depressants.
"And over there," I said, pointing towards Shanai, "is Antonius' girlfriend, Shanai."
Nancy cast her radiant smile in Shanai's direction for an instant, then rudely looked away. One of Shanai's slight eyebrows lifted, the words of greeting now buried somewhere in the confines of her throat. I tried catching her eyes, but they avoided me.
I guided Nancy to the couch, sat myself in the middle next to Antonius to spare Nancy Salvatore's heavy gaze across the way. "Bong hit?" Antonius offered Nancy, waving the bong like a flag in her face.
"No, thanks," Nancy answered him lightly. "I don't smoke pot."
"You don't?" Salvatore echoed incredulously, leaning slightly forward in his chair.
Before Nancy could answer, Shanai was already speaking. "Don't mind these guys, Nancy. They think there's something wrong with you if you don't accept whatever they offer."
"Thanks," Nancy replied rather coldly, refusing to look in Shanai's direction. Perhaps unconsciously she scooted a little closer to me on the couch.
Shanai looked over at me, her eyes questioning, but I just shrugged and took the bong from Antonius. It was becoming clear to me then that I'd probably need quite a good many bong hits to carry me through what was looking to be an uncomfortable evening.
| * | * | * | * | * |
Antonius borrowed Salvatore's car so the four of us could get off campus. He picked a place in Fell's Point where he knew we would have no trouble getting in. I think he was selling pot to the bouncer. I can't remember the name of the place, only that it was dim and smoky and the music very loud. There were a lot of people out for a Tuesday night, most of whom were much older than the four of us, but it was a nice break from the continuity of campus life. Of course, the drinks were absurdly expensive, and Nancy was a mixed drink type of girl so for me it was even more so. Shanai was content with the Anchorsteams Antonius ordered for her. I don't think she was ever consulted on the matter, but she didn't seem to mind.
The four of us sat around our small, dim table talking about nothing in particular and drinking our beers. Antonius couldn't stop talking about pot and Nancy was doing her best to ignore Shanai's presence altogether. I didn't really have very much to say so I just listened, trying to keep my eyes off Shanai. But no matter how much I tried I would eventually get lost in the endless drone of Antonius' voice and my eyes would stray inconspicuously toward her. The few times I caught myself I thought perhaps no one had noticed, but once Nancy pinched me tightly on the thigh. "Don't embarrass me tonight," her eyes were demanding.
"Shanai, you're wearing too much makeup," Antonius said suddenly, breaking a short silence that had fallen between us. He sounded so serious that it took a moment to realize he wasn't joking. "Why don't you go to the bathroom and clean some of it off?"
Nancy tossed Antonius a powerfully cutting glance, but that was all. After a moment, Shanai stood up, lowered her head, and walked off toward the toilets, refusing to look any of us in the eye. Her cheeks were blushed with a drink akin to shame and for a moment I was so astounded I could hardly believe Antonius had spoken the words.
"You -" Nancy started to say after Shanai was gone, ready to accuse, but Antonius cut her off almost absently.
"Shit," he sputtered, leaning his tall head against his hands, "that didn't come out right." He remained bowed over us like that for a moment, left Nancy and I to exchange questioning glances. "I didn't mean to embarrass her." His voice sounded muffled, uncertain, but not helpless.
"Then why don't you go apologize to her?" Nancy suggested after a moment, pronouncing each word clearly and distinctly, condescendingly almost.
Antonius lifted his head glared at her darkly between narrow eyes, as if he wanted to strike her, before pushing himself away from the table. "That's what I was going to do," he announced coldly.
Nancy shook her head at him. "Look, don't do it for me -"
"I'm not." Already he was pushing through the crowd.
Nancy shook her head. "What is up with him, David?" she asked. "Does he always treat her like that? With no respect?"
Shanai had never fully expressed to me any reservations about her relationship with Antonius, but as I sat thinking it occurred to me that Nancy had a good point. I was instantly reminded of all the times I had seen Antonius hand her orders, or cut her off in the middle of a sentence, or make plans without consulting her. One incident came vividly to mind, that time they had gone camping near the reservoir. Antonius had made all the plans and didn't even tell her about it until the day they left. "Can you imagine that?" Shanai laughed when she told me. "I had a horrible time, too. But he had fun, so I guess it was worth it." But that is the way it has been between men and women for some countless ages. Until that moment with Nancy the arrangement simply never struck me as wrong.
I shrugged sluggishly, biting my bottom lip. "Yeah, now that I think of it. But she never seems to mind."
"David," Nancy responded firmly, looking me firmly in the eyes, "the poor girl looked as if she was about to cry." She was shaking her head again. "I don't know, David, but I've been trying to figure out all night what it is you actually see in her."
It took a brief moment for her words to register, but when they did I found myself suddenly very angry. "And what is that supposed to mean?" I demanded, my voice perhaps a bit louder than the situation required.
"Just what it sounded like, David," she retorted, her voice rising as well. "You can't keep your fucking eyes off her."
"That's not true," I insisted petulantly, this time not so loudly.
"And do you think you're hiding anything from Antonius? Do you? Do you think he doesn't suspect anything?"
"Fucking A, Nancy," I returned, my voice rising again to match her own, "who the fuck are you to talk? You've been going around behind my back with my best friend!"
"At least he pays attention to me."
"I pay attention to you!"
"Not nearly as much as that weak minded little fool! Look, David -"
"Weak minded what? Look, Nancy, you were rude to her from the moment you met her -"
"And I have every right!"
"So, have you fucked him yet?"
She paused briefly before answering. "No. I wanted to, though."
"I haven't even touched Shanai."
"You would if you could, David, but you can't! She's got that tall, overbearing asshole to hang on and feed her dope. She doesn't even want you!"
"That's not true."
"Oh, she does want you, is that it?"
"Yes."
"Fine." She leaned back in her chair, crossed her arms and her legs and looked defiantly away. "Tonight I'm sleeping in Drusus' room."
"Fine," I said, knowing very well where I would be sleeping. I tried desperately to think of something to say that could hurt her without bringing Drusus into it. "Go ahead."
"I hope you're happy," Nancy hissed at me softly, refusing to look my way.
"For what?" I responded sullenly, also refusing to look at her.
"For embarrassing me in front of my friends! And for embarrassing me in front of your friends!" Now she was glaring at me, and out of the corner of my eye I could see that she was holding back tears. I felt somehow like it was my fault, so I kept silent. "I hope you're happy watching her, David, because that's all you're going to be doing for a long time!" Of course, she was wrong about that. And when she heard that we were going out her hate for me deepened to such an extent that she was a long time getting over it. We sat in a forced, heavy silence until Antonius and Shanai returned. They weren't looking at each other either.
Shanai had been crying and had gone through great pains to try and hide the fact. But her eyes were still a bit red and the skin underneath seemed somehow rusty in the wake of sorrow and a fresh coat of makeup. There was much less of it on, I noted dourly. Smiling faintly she looked the both of us over. I looked back but couldn't bring myself to smile. Perhaps the bitterness, the anger was plainly written on my face because she looked sadly away again, her head low, as if I had been accusing her and not myself.
"I want to leave," Nancy announced bitterly after a brief moment. She stood up quickly, grabbed her coat and her purse. "I want to leave now." And with that, she pushed energetically through the crowd towards the door.
"What happened?" Antonius muttered, looking between her and me. His hands found their way to Shanai's shoulders, seemed to be mocking me there. Shanai was looking at me, too, perhaps beginning to realize that my angry face was not for her, but I couldn't bring myself to find her eyes.
"Never mind." Needless to say, I was grumpy. "Let's just drop her off, go back to your place, and do bong hits."
"Sounds good to me," Antonius said as he followed after Nancy. "I wasn't having very much fun, anyway."
A shallow gloom settled over me as I pushed my way through the convulsing sea of people. My eyes were set for the floor and I was dreading the car ride home in the back seat with Nancy. I also realized it would be my last chance to say anything to her, but when I realized that there was absolutely nothing I could say or do the gloom seemed to thicken, like chocolate. So it was that I never noticed the commotion at the front entrance until I was almost upon it.
"You have to leave immediately," someone was saying very loudly, very firmly somewhere ahead of me. Antonius nudged me, so I looked up, but there were too many bodies gathered around what looked to be the door. After all, I didn't have his advantage in height.
"There's this guy in a wheelchair, man," Antonius whispered. "I think he wants to come in."
"Why?" screeched another, presumably the man in the wheelchair. "You need a fucking degree to come in here? I got a degree! From the University of John Hopkins!" The words were jumbled and frantic, seemed to be falling precariously out of his mouth and dripping with volume. They struck a distant chord in me somewhere. I distantly wondered what Hank was doing. Was he still alive?
"There's nothing I can do about it," came the condescending reply, the voice trying to remain calm but most certainly exasperated. "It's policy. Frankly, you look like a vagrant and you're obviously - " The sentence was left hanging accusingly.
"What, on something? Fuck yeah, I'm on something. This is my city, boy. These are my streets. My home. I seen you around here."
"Charles, where's the phone?"
"What, are you going to call the police? Fine. Tell them Junior says fucking 'Hello'! I fought in Vietnam, punk, before the night your daddy come home drunk and made you."
"Look, man, I give you people money sometimes."
"You got something you could spare right now?"
"Will you get the fuck outa here?"
"Five bucks." There was a moment of silence. Some of the people ahead were laughing. "Thanks," rasped the man in the wheelchair. "I'll be by next week."
"You better not!"
The man in the wheelchair chuckled. There were some awkward noises, the sound of a door closing, and the knot of people in front of me began to loosen.
"Man," Antonius muttered to himself. He smiled and jabbed me in the shoulder. "You didn't see it, David," he whispered to me, laughing, "but that guy was super fucked up!"
On the way outside Antonius took a joint from his pocket. He came from a wealthy family and liked to think of himself as a nobleman, offering little trinkets to the grateful masses in exchange for their fidelity. I looked to the left and saw the man in a wheelchair. There was a blanket covering his legs. His eyes were suddenly sharp and livid and piercing, the whites showing prominently against his dark flesh. But I knew it was an act, that he was trying to take advantage of our eternal fear of the black man. I wasn't sure how Antonius would react.
I should have known, though. Antonius smiled and offered the joint to him. I'm sure he had planned it all along. "It's not a cigarette," Antonius told him.
The man looked at him for a long moment before reaching out and taking the thing. He sniffed it, breathing in deeply, and put it in his pocket. He appeared to relax. "Here," the veteran muttered and plucked from underneath the blanket what appeared to be a shiny, black box. It was tiny, shaped like a chest, and seemed to be made entirely of metal. "A little something to remember me by," he repeated, dropping the thing to the ground. He smiled blandly and, without another word, he wheeled himself away.
I watched as he faded into the grime of the Baltimore streets. I wondered briefly where he was going. "Look, can we get out of here?" Nancy was saying, and once again Antonius nudged me on his way towards the car. But when I turned around I saw that the black box was still lying on the ground. Antonius had neglected to retrieve it. So following after them I snatched it for myself. It was small enough to fit in the inside pocket of my leather jacket. Later on, I dropped it off in my room and got so stoned I completely forgot about it.
This site and all its contents are the result of the tumultuous workings of the mind of one Adam Wasserman.