“Senior year. Homecoming.”
She took it like it was made of ethylene glycol, held it in that way people hold old analog photos, with their fingers on the sides, afraid to get their smudgy prints on the surface.
She studied it a moment before handing it back, voice anodyne. “We look like babies.” He folded the picture, his eye catching Lisa’s sultry squint, Kaylyn’s purple pornographic kiss, Rick’s playful menace, Harrington’s goofy-ass fedoraed smirk, his own vanishing face flaking into oblivion.
He pulled the pack of cigarettes from his pocket and chucked one between his lips. Lit it, sucked in yet more poison. Kaylyn did not object.
“I was at the bar tonight and ran into a bunch of people from high school. And you know, I found Dan Eaton while I was driving around. He was just walking along the side of the road, looking like a ghost crawled up his ass and into his eyes. Wouldn’t surprise me if he’s homeless in five years living under a bridge. That’s what happens to kids like him. Sometimes I can’t believe how much we’ve lost. And even that’s only a fucking omen for what we might have left to lose.”
He glanced over at her. Her eyes had lightning in them, flashing like the violent skies of Venus. He wanted to tell her the story of what Rick had done about Todd Beaufort, but why? And why, since he saw the fat, faded kid in the bar earlier that night, could he not stop thinking about him? He realized he was having another hallucination, but this wasn’t a vision. This was honest-to-Christ time travel. They were all time travelers. Shit, every time you glanced at the sky you were getting a glimpse of the ancient past, stars burned out or traveled millions of miles from where their light once shone, and the stronger the eye you constructed—say the TMT on Mauna Kea in Hawaii, with a thirty-meter mirror telescope—the further back in time you could look. Some people were just more attuned to it than others.
“Kay,” he said softly as all time and space raced backward around his eyes. “Tell me what’s in that package.”
In early 2002, a few months after the night at Ostrowski’s, Rick called him on a Saturday night. He said he needed Bill’s help, but he didn’t explain. He only said he’d pick him up shortly.
Rick pulled into his driveway, his old Explorer coated in a hazy film of white salt. The winter night had rolled in quickly, the town bathed in darkness by six p.m. He asked Bill to grab his papers and a bit of weed.
“All I have are scraps.”
“Just get it.”
So Bill went up to his room and dug into the shoebox for his latest eighth, now mostly dust pinched into the corner. In the Explorer, Rick asked him to roll a joint.
“Dude, where we going? Aren’t we meeting at Harrington’s later?”
“After this.”
They bounced along 229, passing a trailer park, Bluebaugh Auto Body Repair, a metal-fabrication shop, and then Rick turned off Dudgeon Ditch, a real backcountry road that alternated between pavement and gravel. Meager moonlight cut through the branches as Rick’s SUV crackled across gravel and leaves, snapping twigs and just missing a couple of horny raccoons darting through the elms.
Rick pulled into a long driveway marked only by a battered black mailbox, twisting back through the woods, arriving at a one-story double-wide in disrepair. The siding was dull with dirt, awash in the hideous orange glow of a porch light, and the windows had storm shutters thick enough for a hurricane. When he spotted the black truck parked by the side of the house, the frame lifted high above the wheels so that it looked dinosauric, he understood.
“What the fuck are we doing here?” Bill asked.
“Just gonna talk,” he replied, yanking the key out, engine dying.
“You fucking kidnapped me? What are you trying to prove, Brinklan?”
“Shut up.” The anger in his voice actually caused Bill to do just that. “For just once in your life, shut the fuck up.” They sat in the car a moment, engine ticking. “We’re not here to fight him. You don’t have to say shit. Just stand there and offer him weed.”
Before Bill could say anything more, Rick bounded out of the truck. Cursing his friend’s meddling nature, his bullshit chivalric simplicity, he followed. Behind the small house there was a fenced-in yard that must have ran for an acre to the rim of the woods, and he could hear an army of dogs barking, mewling, yipping, screaming like angry little girls, and as the two of them passed by, the mutts all crowded by the fence or pulled at their leashes and gave plenty of warning as visitors neared.
Todd Beaufort pulled the door wide before they reached it. He wore black shorts that swamped his shins and a sleeveless T-shirt with the New Canaan jaguar crushing a football in its jaws. He looked confused, first by Rick and then very much by Bill.
“Yo what’s up, Fifty-six,” said Rick, extending his hand. They slapped palms and traded a few manipulations. Bill remained below on the porch steps, like a child on his first day of kindergarten hiding behind his dad’s ankles.
“Nothing. What are you two getting into?” Beaufort cast his eyes on Bill.
“Your mom home? We got some bud. Need a place to smoke up. We were driving around, and I remembered you lived out here.”
It was a thin excuse, but Beaufort seemed to find it reasonable. Bill attempted to scowl and it felt false, a mask rather than an attitude.
“What up, Ashcraft.” Beaufort extended his fist, which Bill dapped. Their first exchange since Beaufort leveled him in the hallway that fall.
“Hey,” he replied, thinking of their childhood. News of the alpha athlete of each class always filtered down, and he got his first glimpse of Beaufort during sixth-grade Little League, screaming at his mother in the parking lot. Bill watched this hefty woman the shape of a slope-shouldered lemon smack her kid in the face hard enough to spin him around, his heel skittering in gravel.
“My mom’s at work,” Beaufort said, and surely Rick had known this. He led them into his home, which smelled of wet dog and something sickly, like the vomit of infants. The kitchen, living, and dining areas bled into one another in a mess of furniture too big for the space. A couch and two chairs crowded around a forty-two-inch TV, nearly banging into the dining room table and its mismatched chairs. Stacks of video games, copies of the New Canaan News (mostly the Sports section), catalogues, and bills overflowed a coffee table. SpongeBob chirped on the television. A pustule of plugs was suspended along one wall, extension cords running in every direction from its vertex, one fixed behind the only decoration, which was a tacky ten-cent painting of Jesus, hands in supplication, eyes fixed Fatherward because he suddenly understood he wouldn’t be carrying on the family name.
“I got a lighter,” said Beaufort, and then they went about talking football for a while. This recruit Clarrett for the Buckeyes—man, he was going to be fearsome. Not to mention Beaufort’s teammate soon.
Bill sat on a blue couch and felt parts of the fabric that had turned stiff from long-ago spills never cleaned. He could see the little black pocks from dropped cigarettes. Rick took a seat in a chair opposite Bill so that the two of them flanked their quarry; he waited until the joint had made the rounds and Beaufort had his first drag.
“I wanted to ask you something,” said Rick. Beaufort had one leg up on the coffee table, resting his heel from a position of maximum lounge. The fabric of his shorts slid down, exposing a thigh of fine blond hairs. “I been hearing rumors about what you guys are up to with Tina. Gotta say it sorta has me disturbed.”
Beaufort said nothing. He frowned, then leaned forward to pick up a mug already full of cigarette butts to ash the joint.
“Don’t see how that’s none of your business,” he said finally and reclined back.