Pete went into the kitchen to get a beer from the fridge. Two girls were talking at the table. Liquor bottles stood on the counter and paper cups oozed bad mixes. Pete opened a beer and went back into the living room. Nancy was standing near the kitchen entryway. She smiled when she saw him. She was sweating a little bit and it gave a high clear edge to her perfume. Everybody was singing the chorus to “Hey Jude” while Billy played, and Emily was sitting beside him again. They came to the end of the song and Billy plucked a final note from the strings.
— You guys are great, said Billy.
But then the lacrosse player and one of his friends appeared at the edge of the crowd.
— Hey, Emily, said the athlete. I want to talk to you for a couple minutes.
Emily gave him a serene look, told him no thanks. He made an O-shape with his mouth. Under other circumstances, it might have looked funny.
— I want to talk to you.
— I don’t feel like talking right now, Roger.
— Emily.
— Hey, man, said Billy. She doesn’t feel like talking right now.
— Who asked you, asshole?
The situation got ugly in seconds. Pete found himself standing side by side with Billy in the middle of the living room. In some ways, he had already been resigned to it. Voices were rising, challenging, protesting. Billy and Roger were almost nose to nose, trading brisk shoves to each other’s chest. Then Roger’s friend came on the run. He leapt over the couch and landed in front of Pete and gave him a push. Pete stumbled on an ottoman behind him and went over backwards. He hit the floor with the ottoman between his knees, his vision wheeling sickeningly.
A sharp whistle cut through the noise. Emily had her fingers in her mouth. She took them out and said: This is so goddamn stupid.
Beside Emily, Nancy nodded fervently. Her eyes were wide. She looked a little frantic, while Emily looked stern and composed and beautiful.
Roger and Billy had hold of each other’s collar. Billy also had hold of the boy who’d pushed Pete over. Pete concentrated on the ceiling and then he sat up. His face felt hot and his head was spinning.
— What are you going to do, Emily? said Roger. Call your dad?
Emily lifted her hands: How did I know you’d say that. Really. How did I know.
— This is all bullshit, said Roger. You know we’re only kidding around.
He and Billy warily unlatched and stepped back. Roger offered a tentative smile and a handshake. He came over past Billy and pulled Pete up.
— All good, right, Pete?
He put out his hand and Pete shook it.
Then Roger and his friends got their jackets and their beer. They took their time leaving, hanging around the front yard, talking, looking at the house. Finally, they got into a wood-panelled station wagon and drove away.
— Here, Pete.
Billy had brought him another beer. Pete opened it and Billy slung an arm around him.
— What kind of bullshit was that? You okay?
— I’m fine.
Peter drank the beer quickly. He went into the washroom. The toilet seat stood upright and dry vomit scum caked the bowl. Pete gripped the sides of the counter, breathing slow. He balled his fist and drove it into the wall. Once, twice, three times, until the knuckles were stinging and the skin was broken. He stayed in the washroom for a long time, letting the anger and the humiliation subside. Then he held a hand towel under a stream of cold water. He cleaned his knuckles with it and tossed the towel into the bathtub.
He came back into the living room. Nancy was on the couch. She got up and blundered forward and put her hands on his arms.
— I am so sorry about those guys.
— If Billy and me knew we’d cause you any problems we probably wouldn’t have come.
— No, you’re more fun than them. I am so sorry.
Pete looked around. The house had mostly emptied and only four or five people remained. All around were cups and beer bottles and small spills. The pictures on the wall hung askew. He did not see Billy or Emily. His earlier anger was gone, and in its place was a bitter taste of jealousy. He tried to shake it away, wondering what was happening to him. He said: Your living room is a goddamn mess.
— I know, said Nancy. But whatever. I’ll make my little brother clean it up tomorrow. Come on.
— Where are we going?
— Just to talk, you know. Come on.
Nancy took him into her bedroom and closed the door behind them and turned on a bedside lamp. The room was many shades of pink and there were clothes strewn about and there was a rack of figure-skating trophies. Over the bed was a poster of Michael Jackson, and in the corner, she had a television. But then she had the light out again and she was groping at him and then he groped back and tasted the liquor in her mouth and the sweat on her breasts and her stomach. She sucked her breath in.
— I don’t want you to think I do this all the time …
— I know, said Pete.
It didn’t go very far. She was shirtless by the time they got into the bed, but after a few minutes of rolling around she seemed to slow down. Then she stopped responding entirely. He said her name. He touched her shoulder. She had passed out. Pete settled down beside her. It took him a little while to come down, to stop thinking about falling over the ottoman, to stop thinking of other things. He listened to the sounds of the house. He was listening for Billy and Emily and not hearing them.
In the early morning, Pete dressed in his work clothes. The light from outside was grey and cold. His knuckles were sore from striking the wall and his head hurt. He looked at Nancy. She was a stranger. She was snoring and was still wearing her jeans. Pete picked up her hand and put it down again. She did not stir. He shoved the clothes he’d worn the night before into his backpack.
He moved through the house. No one was around. He had no idea what room Billy and Emily might have ended up in, and he gritted his teeth against the idea of going door to door to find them. In the living room, he could smell burned carpet and spilled beer. It made his gorge rise. He went out the front door and down to his car and got his work jacket out of the trunk. It was a lined canvas jacket with his name stitched at the breast. He put it on and rubbed his hands together. He got into the car and started it. It was then that he saw Emily out on the front porch. She was wearing a cable-knit sweater and she had a steaming mug between her hands. She saw him and gave a little wave. He got out of the car and shuffled back to the porch.
— I was in the kitchen making tea, said Emily. I usually don’t sleep the whole night through. But I would have a nap every single afternoon if I could. Where are you going?
He found himself looking at Emily’s hair, looking for it to be askew, but it hung as dark and straight as the first time he’d seen her. At some point, she’d washed off her makeup, what little she had seemed to be wearing the night before, and though there were darker spots under her eyes, even in the early morning light she remained almost too pretty to look at.
— Well, some of us can’t sleep at night because they have a guilty conscience, said Pete. And some of us can’t sleep because they have to go to work.
— Guilty conscience?
— I’m teasing you.
— I know you are. You work at the gas station on the bypass, right?
— Yeah, that’s right.
— How long have you been doing that?
— Since May.
— And what else? said Emily.
— What else what?
— What else anything, Pete. What’s your story?
— Oh, said Pete. I don’t know. There’s not much to it. I was born in North Bay. We lived there until I was eight or so, then we moved back here, because this is my mom’s hometown, this is where she grew up. She’s married to a pastor now. I never met my dad.
— My mom teaches grade two, said Emily. My dad is a cop.
— And you play the piano better than anyone I ever heard.