Jesus Christ! Here I was, finally, in a fucking college lecture. I wanted to shake the kid sitting next to me and ask, “What took me so long to get here? Why did I hold out tooth and nail against this?”
About ten minutes went by. The light changed below; the door had opened. I watched a figure walk into the lecture hall. A girl.
It was her.
I couldn’t see her. She was cast in shadow. But I knew it was her. No doubt in my mind. She sat about six rows below me and two seats in.
Instantly, I stood up and started making my way down the aisle like a lunatic. I climbed over the back of the empty seat beside her and tapped her on the shoulder as I sat down.
“June,” I said.
She flinched away from my touch.
“June,” I said, “it’s me.”
“What the fuck,” she uttered as if drenched in cold water. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m here for the lecture.”
“Lecture? Are you insane?”
“You were late,” I said a little too loudly.
The professor stopped talking into his microphone and looked up into the seats. He couldn’t see us because of the lights shining on him, but he was conscious of our noise.
“Seriously, why are you in Texas?”
“You,” I said. “For you!”
“Don’t be crazy,” June said.
“Hey, I got off an airplane and came here to find you.”
The professor spoke into the microphone, “Is there a problem out there? Am I interrupting something important?”
“Let’s get outta here,” June said.
She stood up, and I followed her through the lecture hall, down the hallway, and into the brightness.
I kissed her.
We fell against the block wall. The security guard at his little desk leered at us. We were high entertainment to him. June kissed me deeper. I was looking for all the answers to my life in her mouth.
I found most of them.
Ace
That Christmas, June came back to New Jersey. We’d been seeing each other a lot. I took whatever excuse I could to go see her in Texas. She came and stayed with me in Seattle on all her breaks.
We both missed snow. There were many feet of it in my hometown, where all my friends were. We met in Denver and hopped on a flight together to Newark. Feral picked us up at the airport in Seth’s old car. The Altima.
“Why are you driving this?”
“Van was hit by a train. Cut in half. Probably for the best.”
“Oh,” June said.
Feral said, “How’s your hot blonde girlfriend?”
“I wouldn’t know. She’s a bitch. I haven’t talked to her in a year,” June said.
“I stole a fancy painting from her. Burnt it in my backyard.”
June Doom stared straight ahead and said, “Just as well.”
Feral didn’t live with Trish any longer. They were still seeing each other, but I got the impression that things were on the rocks. That it was just a matter of time. They were both incomplete. They were both still on search and destroy missions.
But it was the holidays.
Denise and Trish had an apartment together. It was a nice place — a condo that’d sprung up on the same vacant lot where Commando Video had once been: an acre and a half of woods between the road and Food Universe.
I looked out the window in awe of the beauty of the snow falling on the industrial slums of Newark/Elizabeth/Linden — New Jersey. The armpit of America. You have to be from here to think it’s beautiful. Even then, there’s something wrong with you.
Feral turned his head.
“You alright?” he asked me.
“Ahh, it’s a lot of things,” I said, pointing all around the interior of Seth’s car. (I’d never been in it comfortably like this. I was always stretched around the drum set, fighting for survival.) “It’s the snow, I think.”
“Snow? Doesn’t it snow, like, every day in Seattle?”
“It doesn’t snow at all in Seattle.”
“Get the fuck outta here,” he said.
“For real.”
Feral looked in the rearview.
“June, tell me this bad man is lying, playing me for a rube.”
“He’s not, Feral. People think he’s fucking around, but he’s never lying.”
Jesus Christ, that almost brought a tear to my eye. June had somehow gotten to know me better than anybody else had ever gotten to know me in my entire life.
I decided right then — in the Nissan, as we drove past the Bayway oil refinery with all its sick smoke and toxic waste bellowing into the sky — that I wouldn’t let June get away.
“Actually got a job,” Feral said.
“Who, you? No fucking way.”
The ride was good. We spent it with the radio on low and just shot the shit, told jokes, recounted things that seemed like a decade away … though it’d only been a year.
When we pulled off the highway onto route 9, Feral said, “They’re at Mary Beth’s house. You guys mind going there?”
“Not at all,” I said. Trish’s mom… I wondered if she’d ever gotten that LeSabre fixed.
“Tomorrow, I’ve got to get over to the Mayweather,” I said out loud to no-one in particular. “Aldo is being Santa Claus again and passing out gifts.”
“He lost a lot of weight,” said Feral.
I was honestly surprised.
“He’s skinny now. Looks good for an old fuck. He’ll have to stuff pillows under his shirt to play Santa Claus now.”
“You see him around?”
“Aldo? Damn right. Trish says he’s doing good as fuck. She knows better. She takes his blood … I don’t know why. But I see him almost every other day at my job. I’m a big shot orderly at that place now. You should see me, man. I mop the hell out of the Mayweather. I’m a mopping maniac.”
“An honest job … holy smokes.”
“Yeah. Ha! Tell me about it. It sucks in its own special way, but then that’s alright too I guess. Your boy Aldo reads to this… Well, I’m not sure what’s wrong with the guy, but Aldo reads to him a lot.”
“Sounds about right,” I said.
“I’ll take you over there,” Feral said. “Tomorrow. Just say when. Nothing else going on.”
He pulled into the development behind Food Universe. The sun fell. Christmas lights blinked on. That’s the good thing about the development back there. It didn’t seem like the people had any money, but Christmas lights didn’t suffer in the least. I guess when you have less, you’ve got to have spirit to survive.
Feral pulled up to the front of the house. There was the LeSabre. It looked beautiful with the lights blinking around it. Good as new. Some things can be fixed.
“Looks good.”
“Bro, it’s an old-ass LeSabre. Get a life.”
Feral knocked so loud on the front door that he shook the wreath and bells.
Mary Beth shouted, “Come in!”
They were at the long, wooden table when we walked in. The house was warm. Willy Nelson was singing “Pretty Paper.”
I heard a baby softly cooing.
Denise, Trish, and the young boy Jackie, whose birthday party I crashed that time, were all playing Yahtzee. The dice rattled around in the plastic cup then tumbled across the table. Mary Beth met us in the doorway and gave us all hugs.
“I don’t know you Belle,” she said to June, “but I can tell right away that you’re my favorite.”
“Ma, I’m right here,” Trish said. “Don’t be telling strangers that they’re your favorite with me right here.”
“Well, you keep hitting Yahtzee. I can’t help it.”
We stepped into the kitchen. Trish gave me a kiss hello. Denise waved awkwardly. Things had ended strangely between the two of us.
I walked right to the baby and peeked down.
“What’s this little guy’s name?”
“Ace,” she said.