“Well, I don’t just carry around stuff like that.”
“Give me that bottle,” I said. “I’ll open it for you.”
“You’ll just break it and get glass all in the wine.”
“Pass the bottle over here. I’ll show you,” I said like a father talking to insolent children.
The pointy nose kid reluctantly passed the wine bottle. I took my knife out of my pocket.
“Oh, look at this … he’s gonna hack it out.»
“You’ll get cork in the wine! That’s just as bad.”
“Shut the fuck up,” I said. I stuck the tip of the blade into the cork. I spun the knife, twisting and pulling, moving the cork out of the neck of the bottle by walking it up. The cork popped out. I passed the bottle immediately to K Neon. She took a big gulp.
The college guys weren’t interested in the wine now. I took a mouthful. I’ll drink a little wine sometimes, on a special occasion … like this. How bad can it be for a person? It’s holy blood. I passed it back to K. We looked at the three of them, the fire glimmering in our eyes.
The kids had a strange useless fear about them.
The bonfire was getting low. I threw more driftwood on it, even though the guys warned, “It’s getting late and the cops come over after 10 p.m.”
“I’m from here,” I said. “I’m not worried about the cops in the town where I live.”
“What does that even mean?” one of them said while walking away. They were done with K Neon. It was obvious she wasn’t interested. Up the beach, they kicked sand.
Sure, go away. Leave us. We have much to discuss.
K told me she was going to Brown University, majoring in nothing. The house belonged to her rich aunt. K kept laughing, talking about drained bottles of wine that were buried in the beach sand, her aunt’s sailboat, and someone named Brent.
“I met those guys at a party. Strange how you can meet so many un-fun people at a party.”
“They’re everywhere,” I said. “Shame on them.”
“They disinterest me, and disinterest is a weapon I’m highly skilled with.”
“Oh wow, shut up.”
She started to say something else, but then we were all over each other. Wrapped up. Breath on breath. Very much involved in stopping all the words ever from coming out each other’s mouths. Our tongues actively fought back all conversation. Our bodies collided together, a magnet for sand. Her hair fell in waves across my face as the wind pulled sparks from the fire at us. The driftwood exploded, showers of embers occasionally burning my back, her neck, our ankles — it didn’t matter.
I’ll never forget: we rolled over, and she let out a cry. Her sweatshirt had caught fire. I’d thrown it too close to the embers. We covered it in sand, and, laughing, lay back down. I recall throwing her clothes off piece by piece, trying to get each item to land in the fire. For some reason, that was my goal within the goal.
I heard a noise behind me and looked up. It was a cop. K covered herself with the colorful blanket.
“Someone called and complained,” the young cop said. He looked familiar but I couldn’t figure out from where.
“You’ll have to put out that fire,” he said.
“But it’s keeping me warm,” K pouted.
“I hear ya. Not my rules though. I just work here.”
I zipped my shorts up, and the cop ignored the fact that we were drinking on the beach.
“I know where I know you from,” he said.
As it turned out, I knew his sister, Victoria, and had been over the family’s house a time or two back in sophomore year. He didn’t write me a ticket and left on a good note, which was fine by me. I can watch cops walking away from me for any length of time.
I threw sand onto the embers. She kicked her bare feet to help and laughed and laughed until she stubbed a toe. Then we were in the sand again. She kissed her foot, in pain amongst the noise of the moon, the tide, the fading engine of the ATV carrying that cop away, the creak of the wooden fence on the dunes, the cattails slapping against it.
My head was feeling good, not minding the alcohol. After all, it was just a little bit, the first time in years, but with this girl, I could’ve drunk wine all night, all tomorrow, all the days of all the week, weeks, forevers. I didn’t care if I went crazy and ran off to Florida and disappeared afterwards. That’d be fine. The noise of my human heart slowed as my brain fogged up and she leaned over and said, “Pour some of that wine on my toe.”
And I did.
Helping her walk, both of us pretending that she was badly hurt — crippled by some war, she led me off the private beach, up the steps, past the swimming pool, and into the estate.
We closed the bank vault doors and engaged the security system. She released her grip on me as we stood inside, on that marble floor, with a look in her eyes like an excuse was about to be given.
I said, “You wanna see how to open a bottle of wine with a shoelace?”
“Yes, please.”
K NEON
K had eyebrows, but they were so fair I could only see them in certain light. “The curse of the Norwegians,” she said, “no eyebrows.” Her family descended from Eric the Red. We sat in the empty estate, and she showed me an ancient leather-bound encyclopedia of Norse legends and lore. She would open up to random pages, hold the book next to her cheek, and say, “Doesn’t that look just like me?”
“Without the Viking helmet, of course.”
“I have the Viking helmet. I’ll put it on if you want,” she said, kissing me through the air — the perfect combination of drunk and high.
“I’m afraid I’d laugh, and I’m afraid you’d kill me.”
“Why?”
“You don’t get laughed at, do you? Ever?”
“Not that I recall.”
“Ah fuck. Put the Viking helmet on. It’ll be good.”
She went down the hallway and came back wearing it. She didn’t look funny at all.
“Damn,” I said.
She placed it on my head.
“It’s not a crown,” she said. “Don’t turn into a punk about it.”
I looked in the mirror, adjusting the thing.
“You can have it,” she said. “if it fits your melon head.”
“Thanks.” She slipped the not-crown on my head.
“Works.”
The days were swallowed up by K Neon; no work got done. Sun up. Sun down. No progress. I vanished from the earth as if exiled to her lair.
“This is Ogygia,” she said, meaning the house was to me as that island was to Odysessus. When she poured more wine into my glass, it was the color of crushed cherries or blood.
“And you’re Calypso?”
“Worse,” K said. “I don’t believe in God, so Zeus has got nothing on me.”
K was slinky, catlike. She didn’t move, she floated. Everything, every surface, was a catwalk. She reminded me of Nico. She reminded me of Twiggy. I’m unoriginal like that; not to say that K Neon was unoriginal. I suppose she reminded me of all skinny beautiful blondes that had fallen out of some tree like it’d just been shaken by better men than me. These classically beautiful girls, like fruit, and me — with my ripped up hands, surprised as hell to have found one so randomly and inexplicably on the ground.
Or the beach.
Mostly, K Neon and me hung down in the depths of the vacant place — electronic music echoing off the marble and the glass and the exotic wood that everything was made of. Money. To be in a place so thick with money. It was crushing me as I thought about my meager room back at Lagoon House. The nicest things I owned there: some hardcover books I’d bought used that just happened to be first editions, my mattress on the floor, my guitar with its snapped neck.
The house, if you could call it a house, was made even more lonely by a maze of empty rooms. We split our time equally in each room.