(KILL)
by
Anthony Vieira
OCTOBER, 1996.
FRIDAY, The Bell Game.
White Hills Saints (6-1) vs. Rockburg Rams (6-1)
"Mr. Keller. Sorry to interrupt your seventh period."
The vice-principal of White Hills High School was a shady-looking Italian, Mr. Ray Calavechi. He had a kind of goombah swagger and a penchant for mob-cut suits that seemed to hum out the theme to The Godfather. Still, he had always made Dave Keller think of Jaws; Sharky mows through the crowd of gabbering high school kids clotting his halls on a daily basis. Dave watched him throw his jacket across his desk and roll up his shirtsleeves. Calavechi’s hairy arms bristled as he gestured toward the empty chair. Dave sat down. He felt like a mob snitch right before he’s beaten with crowbars, chopped up and buried in lime.
"David. How are you today? We gonna win back the bell?"
Dave had been ready to start blubbering and begging for mercy but the question seemed so surreal coming from Calavechi’s viper’s stare, he gaped at the man and said nothing.
Like he cares, his father’s voice whispered in his head. He ignored it.
"Um...fine, sir. Uh, how are you?"
"Well, Mr. Keller, I was having a fine week. But you didn’t answer my question. You think we’ll get that bell back?"
The White Hills football team (go bloody motherfuckin’ SAINTS!) had for ten years been a source of agony for mostly-hopeless young bucks and their semi-fascist, Republican (or Democrat, it doesn’t really matter), real estate-gobbling, wife-swapping capitalist parents, hopelessly obsessed with their old school’s long-absent championship status. They undergo a yearly ritual football game: The Battle For The Bell against their up-river rivals, the Rockburg Rams. The winner gets The Bell, a cheap-looking, bronze-plated replica of the Liberty Bell that makes no noise whatsoever.
Dave was a running back, but hadn’t really been practicing much. He’d taken to ditching his last two classes and driving to Antioch to pick up weed, smoke out until six o’clock, then wait tables till ten, and do it all again the next day.
FUCK FOOTBALL! was what Dave wanted to scream at him. AND FUCK YOU, FUCKIN’ GREASY WOP BASTARD! but Dave looked down at his hands and saw that they were shaking, and thought oh how his guitar could gently weep at this. If only he could play the guitar.
Running, though. Running gave him peace. That was what David Arthur Keller, Jr. did the best, and he knew it. He smiled when he remembered this, and suddenly felt better.
"Yes, sir. We’ll get that damned bell back," he told the VEEP with a big, shit-eating grin. Maybe that’s it, he thought. Gladhanding the jocks. Right on. He was already planning on who he’d try to fuck at the Pregame Party that afternoon at Jesse Aaronson’s place. Jesse’s pops owned the town’s Honda dealership and was generally regarded as the richest richkid in the school. His fucking parents were taking off for Tahoe with his older brother...something about rehab and some cheerleader from Dixon High. Dave thought about how much he dug banging cheerleaders.
"Great!" Calavechi boomed, and sauntered toward his office door. Dave half-rose to leave, but Calavechi swept the door shut with a flat-sounding clap. He leaned against it and stared down at the seventeen year old. "That’s great, Mr. Keller."
You fucked now, son, Dave’s father whispered again. He curled his hands into fists and let his nails bite sharply into his palms. Shut up, you fucking corpse.
"Yeah," Dave said. It was all he could think of.
"Yes."
That one word froze David Keller’s spine.
"Mr. Keller, as you know, we had the drug dogs here this afternoon."
See?
Fuck. Shut up. Oh fuck.
"And I’m aware of your preferred parking spot, well off the school grounds down the block..."
Calavechi drew out his words, taking his seat with a dramatic slowness that was more annoying than intimidating. He said nothing. He understood he didn’t have to; was not, in fact, expected to say a word beyond tearful pleadings—which Dave could actually feel coming on, rising inside like a psychic tsunami. He swallowed hard.
"We took a little stroll out by your car, Dave."
He thought about that letter opener near this fat, balding fuck’s left hand, tried not to look at it too carefully and looked away. He knew he would cry, but he’d be motherFUCKED if he’d do it just yet.
Calavechi was looking at him with a bizarre, concerned expression. He looks like an iguana, Dave thought.
Naw, boy, his dad tells him, Big wad of flaming shit like this guy, he’s simple and dangerous the way a Grizzly is. Lots of idiot hikers die by thinking them faces are anything but a kind of mask they don’t know they’re wearing. See? He’s a bear, big and ruthless and smarter than he looks. Don’t fuck up.
"Mr. Keller? The black VW Golf—that IS your car, yes?"
"Am I under oath?"
"You’re in a shitload of trouble, young man."
"Look, Mr. Calavechi..."
"Mr. Keller, we took our sole hound out past your car this morning—"
"German shepherd." Dave said, instantly regretted the interruption. He could feel his dad waiting, though, to see if he’d go on with it.
"What?"
"It’s a German shepherd. The drug dog. Not a hound."
"Thank you. Well, the one dog the county allotes us to tour the school—"
Tour!
"—one day, one dog, every four months." Calavechi sighed, rose and walked around, planting his wide ass on his desk a foot from Dave. He looked ready to say something else when he sniffed a few times, looked around and patted down his pants. He found a Vick’s nasal inhaler in one of the pockets and breathed deeply. Dave had used one before, after an intense two-day coke binge in Berkeley for the junior prom that he really couldn’t remember much of...and always when rolling on E. Calavechi hid it away and looked at Dave shrewdly.
"David, three years ago I caught you and Sean Buvoy and Max Silva behind the radio station—"
"We weren’t doing anything, though! You said so!"
Calavechi hardened his quasi-concerned vice-principal’s nonexpression into the cold face Dave Keller had always imagined lived there when he wasn’t looking. Max Silva had told him weeks ago that Calavechi was probably out to get him, but Dave had thought he was just baked and paranoid.
"I’m fucked," he breathes. His father doesn’t say a thing.
"Shut your mouth."
Calavechi didn’t yell. Didn’t need to.
Dave sits there. If he pretended he was in fact part of the Void, like Max said to do before they gave those presentations in U.S. History, maybe he could, like, dissolve his soul into the walls or whatever.
Just fucking get away from here.
"Dave, I’ve watched you since then, the company you keep, your extra-curricular activities — or lack of..."
"I’m a running back."
"If your absence from practices doesn’t get you cut from the team, your grades will. Or would have."
Dave said nothing.
Greasy prick.
Shut the fuck up, man, Dave thought. For a small wonder, his father did.
"I just hate to see you squander such potential."
"Potential..."
"That’s right. All you kids have potential at this age—and little else going for you."
Calavechi stares at him.
"But you screwed yourself, son."
"Yeah..."
"Yeah, that’s right. I’m afraid I’ll have to call your mother, and then the police."
"Man, WHY?"
Because he hates me.
"You have been able to defy authority for almost four years, Mr. Keller. This has gone far enough."
Dave stares at him.
"Well?"
Dave only stares.
"You have nothing to say for yourself?"
Dave smiles. "This ain’t about me at all."
Calavechi arches his bushy wop eyebrows. "What?"
"It’s about my dad, huh?"
You bet, kiddo.
Calavechi smiles, sighs dramatically. He leans forward, his smile disarming Dave against his will.
"Is that right, Mr. Keller?"
Calavechi brings his fist down on his desk blotter. He pounds it twice, his eyes burning into Dave’s.
"Your father and I had a history, Keller."
"Yeah."
"Well, invoking a dead man’s name won’t help you. You miss him, don’t you?"
Bastard.
Dave is silent.
Fucking bastard.
Shut up, dad.
Put him in his place.
"I..."
"Yes, Dave?"
"I don’t know why you want to...to persecute me, man—"
"That’s a mighty big word, Dave. Don’t strain yourself."
"Fuck you!"
That’s it, Dave thinks. I’m going right the fuck down, ain’t I?
"Well," Calavechi says. "You probably fucked yourself, pal." Calavechi leaned down into Dave’s face. "The dogs certainly loved your car, Mr. Keller. They shit and pissed all over themselves, clawing at the door. So, we took a quick peek through the window. I don’t know, Dave. I saw some highly suspicious, bud-like objects scattered around the floormats."
Dave said nothing. He was listening to his father. He smiled. Calavechi smiled with him.
"I know what this is about."
Calavechi’s smile beamed a little wider, but Dave saw it stretch to its limit.
"You don’t think I know about it, but I do."
The smile was going.
"Senior Prom, 1975."
Going.
"My old man kicked your fucking ass behind the gym."
Gone.
"Keller..." the greasy prick warned.
"And from what I’ve heard, man, you deserved it. Getting’ up on my mom like that. Know what one of the last things he told me was?"
Calavechi said nothing. His face was reddening around his jowls.
Careful there, boy.
Like he needed any advice from some dead asshole. Careful.
He knew what he was doing.
Sure you do.
"No," said Calavechi.
Dave blinked. "What?"
"No."
Calavechi sat behind his desk and picked up the phone. He did not look at Dave at all.
"Hey, man. . ."
"You’ve had your little fun, David. That’s quite enough. My past is MY BUSINESS, understand? Now," Calavechi cleared his throat and looked blandly at Dave, "Who would you like to talk to first? Your mother, or the police?"
Dave sat there, waiting for his Dad to say something, anything. There was nothing. He took a deep breath and thought about holding it until he collapsed, like he’d done once when he was twelve or thirteen, on a dare from his cousin, Roy Lefreich. Fucking Roy. That was all Roy’s pot scattered all over his car. He felt tears now, finally ready, boiling in the back of his throat. He looked up at Calavechi and swallowed hard.
"I think you better call my mom."
4:15 pm.
Teddy St. George was fucking Meghan Horley in Jesse Aaronson’s basement when Dave walked into the party. Jesse was on drums, backing up Freddy Fallow’s band as they practiced their stoned, droning version of "Sunshine Of Your Love," which Max Silva was trying to sing.
"Max, give it up!" Dave yelled. Max spit beer on him and Freddy and his bassist Bo Krebs had to pull Dave off the skinny fucker.
"Fuck you, Keller!" Max hollered, and waved a fifth of Jack Daniel’s over his head. He headed off into the backyard to take a leak against the back fence.
"Jesus, who let him drink?" Dave asked Jesse, who was still grinding out little polyrhythms. Freddy and Bo sat down to take shots of the rum cooling in an ice chest behind the sofa.
"I didn’t," Jesse said between snare-shots.
"Hey, man, let him get wasted," said Freddy Fallow, haggling for a gram of coke Bo got from his older brother, down from Chico.
"Shouldn’t you be, like, sprinting or whatever?" Jesse asks, giving up on the drums. He stretches his hands and looks through the backdoor at Max. "Silva! Get the fuck in here!" Max flips him off. Jesse slams the door and locks it.
"Calavechi called me in." Dave says. They all look at him. Max pounds on the door, swearing.
"Yeah?" Bo accepts forty for the bag. He didn’t know (as Freddy did, as he had taught Dave and Teddy St. George, now winding down his fuck behind the green door) the sack’s worth at least sixty—Fred could sell half for twice that to some jagoff freshman, and Bo really had no idea.
"When, dude?" Jesse opens the back door for Max, who pulls on his shirt and stumbles inside. He leans up against the green door behind Jesse’s drumkit and listens with a leer.
"Silva, sit down." Jesse says. Max sneers and sighs. He looks at Freddy.
"Fuck, man. I’m fucked up."
"I know," Freddy says, "that’s the idea. We’re gonna jam more."
"I don’t know."
"Yes, we have to."
"Fuck."
"You could use that, too."
"Good luck!" Dave yells. Max punches him on the shoulder. This time Dave takes it with a grin. Max smiles and rolls his eyes around. They both look at Freddy’s coke.
He stares back. "What?"
They say nothing. Jesse just nods.
"Fuck you. This is for later."
"Fuck who, exactly?" Max asks.
They all listen through the green door. Meghan Horley had fucked Dave, Freddy, Bo, Jesse, and had made out with Max (who managed to diddle her up with his fingers, but they didn’t know that), but Jesse’s parents had come home early that day. Teddy knew none of this. Meghan liked to grunt and snort, they knew. It was like banging some wild, horny little wildebeest, albeit with great fucking tits and a crazy, luscious candy-apple ass.
"AH!" she screamed. They could say nothing, and only Dave Keller had to consciously try to suppress a hard-on.
"Jesus," Max Silva whispered. They ignored him.
"AH! AH! AH! OH FUCK! OH! OH FUCK!"
Max looked around. Everyone was desperately holding back wild laughter. He could see it in their faces, in the tears in their eyes. Freddy was doubled over, guffawing quietly into his lap. Bo was gaping like a dead catfish at the door, while Jesse just shook his head and took a shot. Dave clenched his fists and listened.
"FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!" Meghan screamed. Finally Jesse charged at the door and kicked it open. Neither Teddy nor the horny hell-bitch noticed at first, and all four boys were given an un-obstructed view of Teddy St. George ramming it home in Meghan from behind, the sultry redhead who’d fooled around with them in private and snubbed them in public, bent over Jesse’s desk, scattering his CD-ROM discs everyfuckinwhere, yowling like the nasty little animal they all knew she was. It was a perfect moment, and only Max Silva had the slightest inkling it would sum up their entire adolescence for them. He had a confused thought of amazing clarity that lasted a microsecond: This is all we'll ever be. Then Meghan looked up, saw them watching, and started shrieking.
Jesse let out a half-hearted snicker, but the rest were too honestly astonished for the half-second it took for Meghan to yank herself away from Teddy's dick with a wet plop and scramble around for her clothes to do anything more than gape in wonder. Tears streamed from her eyeballs, her tits jiggled around beautifully. Jesse and Max and Freddy stared, mute.
Sobbing, Meghan clutched her clothes to her chest and ran past them, all the way up the stairs. They all looked to Jesse, who cut his eyes to Teddy St. George. Teddy was slowly buttoning his fly. He pulled his T-shirt back on and smiled at the rest of them.
"Slick shit, Teddy," Max said. He shook his head and went back to the couch.
"Don’t be jealous, Silva."
"I’m not. Sammy Khun was telling people she gave him gonorrhea."
"No shit?" Bo said, looking up from the sofa. He didn’t care much either way. He started rummaging through the couch and tried to pour some rum at the same time.
"You’re sharing, Krebs?" Max said, and sat down, reaching for the rum.
Jesse walked past him, yanking it from his hand. "You’re done, Silva." Max scowled at him. Dave walked by and swatted Max in the head.
"Goddam it!" Max yelled, and hopped up, red-faced. Freddy sighed, rolled his eyes. He sat Max back down and gave him some greenbud to roll. Teddy came back in and preened around the room. He took a hit from a roach smoldering on a souvenir Oakland A’s ashtray next to one of Jesse’s spare amps, then took a shot of rum. He stood in his glory, to everyone else’s general indifference. Fuckin’ prick, Max thought. He would have been honestly surprised to learn that everyone else was thinking, to some degree or another, the same thing.
"Well, are you proud of yourself, Teddy?" said Fred Fallow, who had picked up his guitar and started strumming something that sounded like some acoustic Pearl Jam song.
"Yes."
"Where’d she go?" Max said, looking around.
"Who cares...Silva, you rolled that fucking thing yet or what?" Bo said.
"Hey, Bo," said Max.
"What?"
"Hey! Hey, Bo..."
"WHAT?"
"Just sayin...like, hey man, what’s up?"
Bo sneered at him. He’d found a Barely Legal under one of the cushions and flipped through it, only pretending to look bored. Only Dave knew how much tail Bo really got: not much, but Krebs liked to lay it on thick. He thought he was a smooth jackhole, and Dave let him play it out.
"Hey, Teddy," Jesse said, looking around from his stool behind the drum kit, "where did that fuckin’ cooze go? Did she leave? I hope she left."
Teddy looked at him, face bland.
"I don’t know," he said.
"Well, find out."
"Why?"
"Cuz it’s my fucking house. And if she’s curled up in a ball, bleeding from her rectum or something, I’d rather she, like, do it at home."
"She went upstairs," Max said, putting the finishing touches on his joint. He flipped it to Dave, who caught it between two fingers and admired it. The weird fucker really could roll, Dave thought.
Teddy shot Max a nasty look. Max stared at him innocently.
"Stay out of it, Silva."
"Fuck you, St. George."
"Teddy?" He looked up. Freddy Fallow stood in the middle of the room like some stoned referee with a Fender Telecaster strapped across his torso.
"Yeah?"
"Go find her." Freddy said, and motioned for Jesse to play. He looked at Max. Teddy made a face and sauntered toward the stairwell, moving as slow as possible.
"Lemme burn this," Max said, and Freddy rolled his eyes. He cringed at what Jesse had started to bang out. "Jesus fucking Christ, Aaronsen, can’t you play anything but 4/4 time?"
Dave fired up Max’s bomber and they toked in relative silence. Freddy and Jesse were playing completely against each other, but somehow it sounded right. At this point in his life, Max Silva was not yet the jazz aficionado he would later become, but his appreciation for gestures and actions that existed just behind the melody, just above or below the accepted range of behavior, mood, style and speech was already pretty well developed. As a freshman, Max had gotten into a nice steaming shitpile of trouble, the type of thing that he seemed to trip into without really trying.
He wrote a story, Dave knew, and while Max never once talked about it, they were "friends" in the sense that he could tell when Max was getting pissed off. He remembered a story about his dad...his mom rarely brought him up, but it was always some oddball fucking story out of nowhere...what did that shit with Max remind him of? Something about spraypaint, roadsigns or mailboxes. Fuck it. Didn’t matter. Dave waited for his dad to speak up, but he didn’t. He was relieved.
Max could write, they all knew that. It was the one thing, and probably the only thing, that gave Max any real confidence. He had outwritten everyone in the College Prep English class that quarter. Dave hated those essays, but he watched Max whip them out without really trying...and in-class essay about a character from Romeo & Juliet. Fuck. Dave scribbled some nonsense about Tybalt (because who’d fuckin’ pick Tybalt? Juliet’s cousin, killed by Romeo, but a mouthy hardass. Dave liked that...he barely skimmed through the play, but the movie with Leonardo DiCaprio was badass.) Max had written his on Mercutio, going on and on about how Mercutio proves that Shakespeare was bitter and pissed about love...that’s why the lovers die at the end, and one of Shakespeare’s best characters—good old Mercutio—dies in the middle of a bunch of selfish, bloody bullshit.
That kind of thing.
Dave got the joint going and passed it to Max, who peered at him through the smoke as he hit it. Max held it in, then looked at him.
"Yo, so what were you saying when you got here? What the fuck happened—" Max blew out the smoke, then passed the thing on to Bo "—in Calavechi's office?"
"Shit."
Bo looked up. "You shit in his office?"
Max rolled his eyes. Bo brayed his stoned laughter. Jesse stopped bashing his cymbals long enough to hurl a drumstick. It hit Bo just left of dead-center in the forehead, and he went sprawling off the couch in a showy display of agony.
"You motherfucker!" he cried, and for a second stood red-faced and seething in the middle of Jesse's basement. Jesse stopped and watched him, interested. He wanted to see if the dumb half-redneck, half-spic would charge, throwing himself over the drumkit, clawing and grunting. He'd seen Bo do that shit before—in the absolute fucking worst times and places—once in the middle of a party out at the thatch of trees in the Montezuma Hills everyone called Mickey's Grove (Jesse had no idea why that place was called this, and doubted anyone else did...it'd been this since time out of mind), Jimmy Reeder had come stomping into the party, shocking everyone (they'd thought Reeder was still in Juvey for possession of marijuana and running from the cops). He'd bumped his chest—not so scrawny anymore, they all had time to note—into Bo's, one of those ape-like signals of a challenge. Jesse couldn't really remember the dialogue, but like the best action scenes, it was only the set-up. Reeder thought Bo had snitched on him (which hadn't been possible; Bo was actually sick with the flu when all the shit with Reeder had gone down, Jesse hung out with him and watched Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure way too many times), and wanted a fight. Bo initially refused, since he'd been trying to get into Amelia Borenden's sister Amanda's pants (girl was in eighth grade, and what she'd been doing out there, Jesse never knew...he'd heard later that some little junior high girl had gotten raped at that party, but it was only a rumor, and died down after a few weeks), and Bo knew damned well that bloody fighting may spice up a kegger, it glued the girlies' legs shut good and fast, like superglue. Bo turned away, but Reeder socked him anyway, and Bo came back with the grunts and hisses and hands twisted into eye-gouging claws—damned creepy, as Jesse Aaronsen recalled. Krebs won that fight, too...knocked Reeder's ass out. Jesse couldn't remember if Bo got laid at all, though. But he knew Bo was fucking crazy, and capable of almost anything at any time. Max and Dave were watching, but Freddy Fallow just stood there tuning his guitar, calm as a monk.
"Krebs," Fallow said, almost offhand, and Bo locked his glare onto him, "will you relax for once in your life?"
"Hey, fuck you!"
"Fuck you, Bo. Can't you just chill? Why's everything a fucking test of your manhood?"
Bo looked confused for a second, then just sat down, looking disgusted. "Ain't a test of my shit, or no shit," he muttered, or something like that, then he picked up the joint from where it smoldered on the floor.
"Shit, Bo!" Jesse said, "did it burn through the carpet?"
"Missed the carpet," Max said.
"Good."
"Silva." Max looked up at Freddy. "We jammin'?"
"Me?"
"You gotta sing, man."
"Uh, maybe..."
Bo snickered. "You really wanna hear Silva fucking sing, man?"
Freddy just looked at him. "He can sing pretty good. 'S long as he's got his balls in hand, yeah?"
Bo looked at them, back and forth, as if eyeing a pair of queers. Max clearly didn't like it, but everyone knew that there were times when Max Silva knew how to shut the fuck up and let shit lie. He didn't say a word.
"Yeah," Freddy said, and fiddled with the knobs of the body of the guitar, "sometimes you just gotta grab yer balls and yank, you know?"
Max nodded, and a smiled spread across his face...and Dave watched, fascinated, as Silva's eyes got more bloodshot as he looked at them. He'd never seen that happen before, at least not right as he watched.
"You want me back on the bass?" Bo asked, but not with any real interest. Freddy thought he was a good player, but he was dumb and dangerous...well, he thought, maybe that's what makes him a good player.
"Yeah, eventually," Freddy said. "Silva?"
"Hold on a few, man, damn." Max looked at Dave. "Shit...uh...oh, hey...what were you saying about Calavechi's office, man?"
Dave just smirked and settled back on the couch. It kind of stank...of old, stale beer...of piss, and pot, and sex...but that's kind of what he liked about it down here. He gave Silva his most cynical look.
"What? You finally wanna hear my fucking story, asshole?"
Max appeared to deeply think this over. He looked at Dave.
"No, you prick, I don't. But I know you'll pout later, and I'll fucking feel bad when I jerk off, and I fucking hate that."
Bo burst out laughing, and Jesse joined him. Freddy smiled, and so did Dave.
"All right," Dave said, "I got called out of P.E..."
4:55 PM
Teddy St. George wanted a cigarette. As he wandered through Casa de Aaronsen, he thought about the kinds of shit he'd smoked in his life. Greenbud, resin, that nasty brown Mexican shit he used to get from his older brother Leo when he was a freshman, thinking it was a sweet fucking deal but was getting ripped off...he'd burned opium over greenbud bowls, smoked an "icecap" (cocaine and pot), even Turkish tobacco through a hookah at his brother's dorm that past summer. Everything he'd smoked had been designed to get him high. What about cigarettes? They didn't really serve a purpose, now that he thought about it. Did they? Fuck it. He wanted one. He'd smoked a clove once in Santa Cruz, trying to score mushrooms with a group of kids he didn't know...his best friend Sal Zomerfeld had been there. They ditched the little pothead hippie dipshits and tripped on the beach, shooting cap guns into the air until the cops scared them off.
He wondered if Jesse's mom (fucking scary bitch with acres of ass and layers upon layers of make-up) smoked cloves. Teddy wanted to rifle through the rooms to look for whatever (by now he had forgotten he wanted cigarettes), and would probably have done just that when he passed a slighty-open bathroom door. He heard low, female sobbing from inside and remembered why he'd come up here in the first place.
"Meghan? Hey, what are you doing?"
Teddy pushed the door open without giving her a chance to reply. She was fully dressed now, sitting on the toilet, crying into her hands. She looked up at him, her mascara running down her face. Teddy thought she looked like a raccoon and almost stifled a chortle, but couldn't.
"Fuck you!" she said, and hopped up, moving toward the doorway. He blocked her with his six-one linebacker's frame and tried his best surfer-boy-Tom Cruise grin. She stared dully at a point just past his shoulder.
"Hey, hey, come on, dude. I'm sorry..." Teddy reached for her, but she shrugged him away and pushed for the door again.
"Do you know what you've done to me?" she asked him, looking fully at him. Teddy looked at her now, really looked, and was a little stunned at the complete lack of flirty lust he was used to from every girl he'd come across. Easing their thighs open had never really been a serious problem for Teddy St. George. Sometimes he shot for the moon—those college chicks he and Jesse and Bo met on the Haight one time barely looked at him long enough to loudly scoff—but skanks like this? Easy fucking money.
"No," he said, "tell me."
"I'm so fucking humiliated now. I let you fuck me, and now the whole fucking school will know about this by tomorrow...oh shit! No, by TONIGHT!"
"I'm sorry..."
"Fuck you!"
"Babe..."
For some reason, this started her crying again, and Teddy was at a loss. He sighed, rolled his eyes, and stepped back to let her through. What the fuck? Let her go home.
Meghan stormed past without giving him a look. She fumbled with the front door (her eyes were blurry with tears and bleary with all that fucking mascara she'd put on...Kelly Black had told her that Teddy liked girls with make-up, and she usually didn't wear make-up, it felt wrong to her, liking shaving her fucking pits sometimes did), but she threw back the deadbolt and went off down the road at a half-run, toward the high school parking lot (less than two blocks from Jesse's house), and her second-hand Ford Escort.
Teddy ambled toward the front door. She'd left it standing open, and he watched her until she'd turned the corner and was gone. He shut the door and locked it.
In the bathroom, Teddy found blood swirled around the drain in the bathtub. He guessed it came from Meghan's ass, just like Jesse had said, and that gave him a chill. He shivered, then got angry. Fuck that! Fuck her! Fuck them, especially Max Silva! Smartass little prick. Never played sports, and most everybody hated him. Perverted fuck. Then his mother, of all people, spoke up in his head:
Why are you so mad at Max? You've known him since pre-school. What are you mad at?
Shut up.
What are you going to do about that poor girl? You violated her and embarrassed her. The whole school will know about your little romp by tonight, she's right. And shouldn't you be at practice.
"You're dead, Ma. Just stay dead." Teddy looked around the empty bathroom. The upstairs was now heavy and very fucking freaky in the silence. He wanted no part of this.
Fuck's that mean? Fuck if I know.
He noticed hair in the blood. Crinkly, shiny hair. Pubes? Something...maybe. They gleamed in the soft-fluorescent light. Teddy looked around the tub. Expensive, tasteful, but the blood pooled around the drain made it look seamy and sick.
Teddy abruptly turned and walked out. As soon as he hit the threshold of the room, he was actively forgetting everything that had happened, pushing it away, into the background. Which really wasn't hard; Teddy St. George was not a creature prone to reflection.
He walked down the hallway, ignoring the lurching, half-assed attempt at a jam from downstairs. He didn't recognize the song they were playing; Max Silva had started singing, and Teddy thought the asshole sang about as well as his own asshole might, given some whiskey and a microphone.
He stopped at the front door, opened it and looked out. The girl was nowhere in sight, but he wasn't thinking about that, right? No sir. No ma'am. Fuck no, no way. He went to his little black Mazda pickup, started her up, drove off. The Aaronsen's front door stood open about two inches. Teddy never noticed, and wouldn't have cared. Later, in a spare moment of clarity, he'd wonder about the door. If he had closed it. He might've kept some secrets inside. He wished he'd closed it.
5:07 PM
Max Silva had started singing Pearl Jam's "Alive," (and only mangling it a little), Dave Keller was flipping through the Barely Legal, wondering if he was playing at the game that night and seriously considering quitting the stupid bullshit altogether, Bo Krebs was plunking along half-heartedly on his bass, wishing Teddy hadn't nailed Meghan cuz he wanted a fucking taste too, shit, he and Teddy had been tight since grade school, why didn't the fucker ever consider his feelings? Freddy Fallow was trying to tie the jam together with his lead, but Jesse was playing against the rhythm again, and Teddy was gone, Freddy noticed, and was glad since he hated that prick and so did Meghan now, who had pulled up to the curb of her parents' house with a jerk, popping the clutch and stalling, her makeup smeared and her vision blurry.
She rushed inside and into her room before her mom could notice. Janice Horley stopped trying to gain access to her seventeen-year-old daughter's private life, which Meghan liked just fine. Still, had her mom seen the state of her just now there was no way Meghan could keep her away. But Janice was probably asleep; the house was as still as a mausoleum, and in its horribly clean, terribly modern way resembled just that.
Meghan quietly closed the door to her room and for a second just stood there, looking at her inner sanctum, thinking is this it? (Yes, and when she's at Chico State years later, drunk and naked and having just fucked some frat asshole at 2AM on New Year's, she'd hear the song by The Strokes for the first time on some mix-CD of his roommates..."Is This It?" would play, and Meghan's mind would blot out the rest of the lyrics, just the chorus rang through her head, repeating itself, chasing it's own echo: "Is this...it?" Over and over until she bites her tongue a good one to keep from screaming. She'll stagger to her feet, grope around for her clothes...then puke all over the floor, and crawl into the hallway, clutching her clothes, gasping and sobbing...)
She shuddered and suddenly has never needed a shower worse in her life. All seventeen years of it. She peeled off her clothes and stood in her bedroom, looking at the mirror. The mirror-Meghan looked back.
"Well?" She asked herself.
Well nothing, she thought back. She thought back to when she caught her brother Stan jacking off in her bedroom two years before. She hadn't known what to do, so she stood there watching for a full minute before he noticed her. Stan was twelve, bony, black hair and looked scared shitless. He blubbered an apology, hoisted his jeans up and scuttled out of her room. Meghan never said a word, just looked at the Rolling Stone photo spread of Johnny Depp her little brother had just sprayed with ribbons of come.
Now Stan lived her father in Boise. She never went there because her mom had never made her. Good for her mom. She wondered dimly where Janice was, then decided she didn't care.
Meghan walked through her seventeen-year-old girl's bedroom into her seventeen-year-old girl's bathroom. She tried not to look at the Eddie Vedder, Kurt Cobain, Chris Cornell and Val Kilmer pictures taped to her walls in an overlapping mural, surrounding her with flat boy-eyes. They all looked like Teddy St. George.
And my ass hurts just thinking about him! she thought to herself, then chuckled. As she yanked the shower nozzle up, the chuckle kept bursting through her nose, and as she stood under the scalding water, she leaned her head against the gleaming white, tile wall (identical in all three of the tract house's bathrooms) and laughed until she cried.
5:09 PM
In his head, Max Silva was onstage at the Shoreline Amphitheater. It was raining, the sky a roiling marble ocean. Thousands of fans crowded the stage as he sang "Alive," leaning back to back with Mike McCready as he seared the notes into the air, into the crowd, into Max's blood.
Max opened his eyes. Bo Krebs blew a cloud of bong smoke into his face, and Max lost the tempo.
"Fuck!" Max yelled, and almost hurled the microphone across the room. Then he remembered that the last time he did that, he had to buy Sean Buvoy a new computer monitor.
He waved Bo away and looked at Freddy Fallow, who was still in the throes of his outro solo. Even Jesse had stopped the incessant pounding that he called "drumming," and Dave Keller (one-eyed on the couch, the bottle of Jack cradled in his crotch – Max didn't think that fucker would be playing in any fucking bell game any time soon) even swung his head around to watch Fallow come to shuddering stop, then look around.
"What's wrong?" He asked, looking straight at Bo.
"Silva sucks, Fred. I'm going to the game." Krebs unplugged his bass and was wrapping the cord loosely over his elbow. Silva yanked the cord from him and coiled it right. Bo stared at him, then shrugged and walked toward the door.
"Max," said Freddy, "leave his fucking cord alone." Silva drops it and looks around. He wanted to be fucking anywhere else but here. Max was high, drunk, and had had enough. Of everything. Of the bullshit alleyway behind Jesse's parents' pad that he'd puked in at least once every weekend for the past four months of Senior Year. Of being fucked up in this basement with a bunch of assholes who don't really like him and maybe never did in the first place, before he secured his semi-pariah status Freshman year.
Fuck em, he thinks, fuck Fallow and his stupid Kurt hair, Jesse's a rich punk and doesn't know what the fuck is going on and where the fuck is Teddy? Why do I care?
“Silva.”
What the fuck am I even doing here? Max looks around wildly for the door. He watches as everything in the room becomes detached from the background. Jesse’s drums and party-scarred couch floated in some kind of murky haze. He couldn’t see the door.
“Silva!”
Max snaps his head around. Fred Fallow grabs him by the shoulder and spins him around, then taps him on the forehead. Max hiccups and takes a mad, ungainly leap at the door to the alley. Fred looks up at Krebs, lurching his way across the room like the shifty, nutso part-mongoloid and generally useless fucking lush he is.
“Move, Bo.”
Krebs looks around. Freddy grins. Max Silva collides with Bo, tossing him aside. Bo stumbles back. He bangs the back of his head on a rack of metal shelves. He grunts some kind of angry threat, but no one’s listening.
Max slams into the door. He spills out across the battered pavement behind the garage and yarks. Max sprays a short, thick stream of foamy, chunky vomit across the ground. His legs buckle and he staggers, retching, to his knees.
Freddy Fallow yanks Max up by his collar and drags him back inside.
...
JANUARY, 2003
The sun sets on downtown Los Angeles. The sky clouds over. A shifting haze of warm rain diffuses the glow of a bright orange streetlamp into a nimbus of fragmented reflections. A homeless couple camped out at the foot of the 110-South onramp are bathed in a light spray of orange the color of a creamsicle. They’re Picasso’d out in the frozen moment a blue glare of flourescent headlights hit them. The man looks down and away. The woman shields her eyes against the glare. They’re swallowed by shadows.
This is a city built on dreams. Some of them get pumped to life and take over the megaplex. Some dissipate back into the lofty ether where they belong. The old dreams moved downtown, is what Freddy Fallow is thinking, sitting quiet and grim in the back of a taxi from LAX. He hates L.A. He skin itches when he’s here, but not really. He’s never had hives but after too long a time spent in Los Angeles,
© Anthony Vieira