It was always damp in Will Wilson's house and it smelled bad, and you'd wake up on the thin hard carpet feeling sick and like you'd never slept at all. His stepdad was always teaching himself to play the guitar, this bright pink guitar he'd bought at a pawn shop and that he'd rigged up to run through the old console stereo that filled one wall of the living room, which was one of only a few rooms in that whole house, so a lot of the time I'd end up sleeping against that hard wooden stereo with the tan cloth over the speakers. I'd wake up hearing the feedback still ringing quietly from the speakers, my face against the floor and having to pee, feeling cold and wet in my jacket, wet maybe from the night before out in the rain or just wet from the air in the house, with the curtains pulled shut and the floor and couch almost damp when you touched them. I'd wake up in the silence, turning over and staring up at that gray ceiling sprayed rough with texture and mixed with the thousand glimmering bits of pink and green and gold, lying there feeling so gray through my body, hurting, and wanting to throw up, and staring up at that ceiling and now hearing the buzz from the speakers next to me and hearing the others sleeping in the room and remembering all that beer we'd drunk and the half gallon of gin and the dope his cousin's friend had had, because you couldn't not remember it, every drink and all that smoke now so deep in every part of your body, turned sick now and dying, and for me staring at that ceiling glimmering pink and green, I could remember every drink and every breath of smoke and would feel it still, wondering now if I was really sick or just stoned or drunk, all of it turning bad through the end of the night, that fight in your mind that you'd forgotten in the drinking and smoking and that had finally just sunk you, so you'd only known to drink more, drinking through the smoking hoping another drink would make you feel like you had when you'd started, that soft, warm moment of the first hit of the pot and the first sip of the first drink. But now it was lost, everything awful, and worn, and gone. And I'd sit up finally, among my sleeping friends, finding Will Wilson sitting up, on the couch, sipping a beer, staring at me, gray eyes in a leathered face, nodding at me like he'd never gone to sleep.
Bad things had happened. I'd feel my hand then and know we'd gone out and fought. Know we'd driven to each corner of Tacoma. I'd close my eyes and see dark figures tearing at each other, hidden faces in the black backyards of the houses we'd passed, faces turning gray as they ran in groups through the pale white light of empty parking lots.
And I'd blink my eyes and know there'd been a dream I'd just woken up from, that I couldn't quite remember, a dream of the hidden faces in groups, in backyards, roaming.
Bad things had happened. We'd started here and ended up here, on this floor, in the quiet of this small, forgotten, almost unidentifiable home.
"What happened?" I'd ask Will Wilson then, my mouth hurting just to speak.
And he'd sip beer. "Fuck you," he'd say, swallowing. "You know. You know what happened."
"Hung over," I'd say, and close my eyes, touch them lightly with one hand, then another, pain shooting through my eyes to the top of my head, my neck, the front of my chest.
"Fuck you," he'd say. "You were right there."
And I'd still have my eyes in my hand, pressing just that bit harder, the pain going white, with the other hand finding a Valium in the pocket of my jeans, slipping it across my lips, biting it once before swallowing it down.
And I'd be nodding now. Saying, "Right," realizing my face was damp too, like the carpet and my jacket and the insides of my jeans, and I'd know that I was damp from this house we were in and from the rain we'd run through and from the sweat of all that we'd done. "Yes," I'd say. "Yes, you're right."
Coe's low, heavy body is moving so gracefully in the dark, silently bouncing on couches, stretching out easily on carpets, walking quietly across dining room tables. He is trying to circle the room without stepping on the floor, hiking up his badly fitting jeans as he noiselessly leaps from a piano bench to a radiator to a TV on a rolling stand that he uses to pull himself three feet before the cord goes tight. And only when he seems on the verge of thrashing about and finally making noise does Will Wilson step in front of him and grab his face at the jaw, shake it: No.
Often the four of us don't speak at all. We just move our lips or point.
The guy was still smiling as I broke his first finger. My hand already holding his thick, wet hair, pulling his head back and another finger back, and I was pulling him to the ground, the side of his head smacking loud against the sidewalk, the second finger breaking easily in my hand.
When I was a child, one night I watched my dad lean over the kitchen sink, washing blood from his swollen face as I stood near my babysitter. There's nothing you can't do in a fight, Brian, he said to me quietly, his voice slowed and heavy. Long hair in his blue eyes. Pushing his fingers along the thin lines leading to his lips. Twenty-two years old. Maybe twenty-three. You just want to win, Brian. You just want to hurt him.
I was hitting this guy in the face now, striking his nose, his eye, his cheek. We were in front of a mini-market near school, and it was raining, hard, after school and this guy, eighteen, he'd pushed Teddy hard into a door, being cool in front of his friends, this guy from school who'd tried to push Teddy around a few times that week, and today I'd told him to fuck off, and he'd turned to me, smiling, leaning close and pointing his finger in my face, smiling down at me, a foot or more taller.
"Fucker," I said quietly, feeling the light rain against my lips as I spoke. Breathing steadily, finding a rhythm between my words and motions. Feeling all that anger, feeling it run through my chest and arms and hands.
And I turned slightly as I swung, seeing Teddy standing near the window of the store. Watching.
And the guy's friends, they hadn't moved.
Will Wilson had shown up. Standing near Teddy. Not smiling, just watching. He carefully sat down. Cross-legged on the wet sidewalk. Watching.
The guy rolled away from me, standing and turning and trying to find me, his right eye covered with blood and the left side of his face bleeding too, his twisted hand wiping at his good eye, and when he saw me he came at me. Not wildly. Moving forward, saying, "No," and breathing hard. Swinging straight and almost hitting me again. "No."
I hit him in the throat and he leaned over. I moved to my left. Watching him gag. I kicked him in the chest.
"Don't ever," I said. Spitting blood from my lips. Tasting blood in my throat. "Don't ever fuck with my friend."
Teddy had stepped forward. Standing on the curb, a few feet away. Watching.
The guy's nose poured red and yellow. He sat up. I knocked him onto his back.
My hands were wet with spit and blood and rain.
I was tired. I was mad.
The guy looked toward his friends, three of them standing on the sidewalk. He stared at them for a moment but didn't ask for help. Didn't expect them to do anything.
I hit him in the ear. His face hit the street. He was laid out on his side. In a moment, he asked dully, "Why won't you stop?"