“Why’s that?” she said.
“Cuz I like you a lot.”
“Shut up.”
“No, I really do.”
“Hmmm.”
“What?”
“I was just thinking.”
“…Yeah?”
“I was just thinking…that you’re shady.”
* * *
—
WE WALKED back together, Emily and I, all the way along the tree lawns and with the headlights going by us. Neither one of us was wearing shoes. She hadn’t worn shoes to the party and I was carrying my flip-flops because I wanted her to think I was nice.
“You don’t have to do that,” she said.
I said, “I feel like I do.”
“Look at you,” she said. “You are shady, aren’t you?”
“You’ve got me all wrong.”
We went like that. And we came to the room where we kissed for the first time. Where she looked away and said, “Do whatever you want, man.”
* * *
—
WE WERE awake in the morning. I had to be at work in two hours. Then the shoe store called and said I was fired. I said I understood and I hung up and went back to bed. I said to Emily, “There’s been a change of plans. I just got fired.”
She said, “Oh, fuck. I’m so sorry.”
“No, it’s alright,” I said. “It’s a good thing. Now I don’t have to go to work.”
“Was that the revisionist fat man you told me about?”
“It was his mother.”
“Your boss had his mother fire you?”
“Yeah.”
“What a fucking pussy!”
“Right? I told you he was no good, didn’t I?”
“What are you going to do?”
“I dunno. But I’ll think of something….Hey.”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for taking my side on this whole me-getting-fired thing. You’re a really nice lady.”
She smiled.
I said, “I think I adore you.”
“Stop it. Did you see my bra?”
She bent over and felt around under the bed; and I was thinking, No one’s ever had a better one of those.
I reached for her hips. “You’re fucking beautiful.”
“Hmm…fuck! Where did it go?”
“You don’t need it.”
“Yes I do. It’s my best one.”
“You’re an angel.”
“Help me find it.”
“No. I won’t. I’m sorry.”
“Fuck you.”
“…You’re killing me.”
“Goddamnit.”
“Come back….Please. I’m fucking serious.”
“Oh yeah?”
She was gushing.
CHAPTER FOUR
You’ll have friends. Usually it’s nothing. James Lightfoot was alright though. He’d remember your birthday, didn’t ever start shit. Strictly a pacifist. He had a lazy eye and half a heart. Born that way. Wore his hair long. Brown hair. Lived at his mom’s house. It had been a while since his mom had lived at his mom’s house; still it was done up like a family place. There were pictures on the wall, showed James growing up, year in and year out. School pictures. And the one eye, all the way back, fucking him up.
Tuesday he drove me to the bank. He’d just bought a $300 GTI. Faded blue. I could have walked to the bank, but I thought well of James Lightfoot and I thought well of his GTI so I went for a ride with him. The sun was shining on us that day: we had burned a peach White Owl with Train Wreck in it, and so we were high as fuck. Roy was with us. Roy painted houses but he wasn’t working that day. He was riding in the front seat. Roy was tall. Black hair. I was riding in the back. James Lightfoot had a noise rock album going on the stereo; it was like TV static set to blast beats; I thought it wasn’t possible that he could actually like the album. I thought maybe he was being full of shit about it, but it was his car.
James Lightfoot was yelling at Roy. Roy’s cousin Joe had been saying he would join the Marines. And James Lightfoot didn’t want Joe to join the Marines. But Roy was more or less okay with it and James was yelling at Roy about this now. Earlier he had said that Roy needed to talk Joe out of joining the Marines.
“IT IS THE OBLIGATION OF YOUR LOVE,” he had said. “YOUR LOVE FOR YOUR COUSIN, WHOM WE ALL LOVE SO MUCH.”
And now he was yelling at him again about this shit with Joe and the Marines and I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but I saw James waving his arm around and I couldn’t help noticing that he looked helpless and that probably no one would ever listen to him as long as he lived.
I had received a letter earlier that afternoon. The bank said I owed them money. It was a mistake. I was going to sort it out. James Lightfoot parked the car and Roy got out and put the seat forward so I could get out and I went into the bank and waited in line. I hadn’t thought about how much I smelled like Train Wreck. One of my shoes was coming apart, and I looked like my life was more fucked than it really was. But I was in earnest. I had a receipt and that was as good as the truth. I had their letter with me and I had the receipt and I was going to have the mistake sorted out. This wasn’t gonna be a problem.
I said to the lady behind the counter, “You guys sent me this overdraft notice but it isn’t right. I paid this off already.”
I showed her the receipt. The receipt was from the other day. I hadn’t taken any money out since then. She typed me into her computer.
“This is a new overdraft,” she said.
“But that’s impossible. I haven’t made a withdrawal since the last deposit. I put a hundred and sixty dollars in.”
“That deposit brought your account up to ten dollars’ credit, but there was an additional overdraft charge against your account that put you back into the negative.”
“How could you charge me another overdraft fee after I’d paid it off?”
“The deposit didn’t clear in time.”
“I paid it in cash. Right here.”
“It didn’t clear, sir.”
“It was fucking cash.”
“It. Didn’t. Clear.”
I went outside and the car was on fire. Smoke was pouring out from under the hood. James and Roy were watching it go. I walked over to where they were, and I stood beside them.
I said to James, “I’m sorry about your car.”
He asked me if I’d got my money back.
I said I hadn’t.
We took what we could from the car: the tags, the CDs, what stereo equipment we could carry. We started walking to James’s mom’s house. Roy had some Train Wreck and he packed it in a bowl and passed it to James.
We said nothing.
We hit the Train Wreck and we felt like we were winning again.
* * *
—
EMILY KEPT leaving her hair ties in my bed and I would give them back to her. One thing about Emily was her parents had divorced when she was 13. She was always saying how she thought love didn’t really exist, how it was just pheromones playing tricks on people and I was probably a dog and a liar. She told me about how she’d been the first one in her family to find out about her dad’s affair; she’d been eavesdropping on the phone. I asked her why she’d been eavesdropping in the first place.
She said, “You’re being a fucking jerk.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I mean, that must have been awful.”
“I confronted him about it, and he tried to buy me off. He said he would send me to volleyball camp if I promised not to tell my mom.”
“Goddamn.”
“I wanted to go to volleyball camp,” she said.
“What did you do?”
“I told my mom.”
“Did you ever get to go to volleyball camp?”
“No.”
She had a habit of disappearing. Sometimes I’d go looking for her. It wasn’t always easy; she might be hard to find. I’d found her under a grate in the sidewalk before. I asked her how she’d got down there. She said she didn’t know.
“Let’s go for a walk,” I said.
She said she’d have to think about it.
“Whatcha doin down there anyway?” I asked.
“Studyin.”
“You been down there very long?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Are you hungry?”
She held something up to the light.
“I brought a little bag of Cheerios,” she said.
“What’ll you do if it rains?”
“Drown, I guess.”
And then there was Rollerblades. She was hanging out with him more than I’d have liked. So I said to her, “Why’s that fucking asshole always got those stupid Rollerblades on?”
And she said that I was the fucking asshole, that they were just friends and they’d never done anything.