October 19, 2002, 9:00 P.M.;
May 26, 2007, 9:00 A.M.
I splash cool water in my face and look into the gold-framed mirror in the bathroom at Striped Bass. My tie—Chase’s tie—has started to come loose, so I pinch the silk at the knot and tighten the half Windsor and then brush some lint off my blazer. Even after the oysters and the smoked salmon terrine my mouth is still flavored with traces of gin, which is still new and foreign, and I’m starting to equate with pinecones. In a stall behind me, a toilet flushes.
“How you doing, champ?” Chase yells over the gargle of water.
I dry my face off with a hand towel. “Fine. I’m fine.”
The stall door swings open and I see Chase in the mirror tucking in his shirt. I turn to face him and lean against the cold marble of the bathroom sink.
“I can’t believe we’ve had three drinks and we’re only on appetizers. I should probably have some bread or something.”
Chase laughs and pats my shoulder a few times. “Don’t be ridiculous, bud.” He looks in the mirror and straightens his tie, which is knotted in a full Windsor and doesn’t need tightening. “Who eats bread anymore, anyway?”
Well, a lot of people, I think. The French, for starters. And me. I eat bread. I had a sandwich for lunch. Chase continues to straighten his tie.
“Kip’s a huge fan of yours.” I look up from my—Chase’s—loafers, which have become no more comfortable during the past hour.
“How can you tell?”
“He’s my dad, Taylor. I know these things.”
I smile and start feeling something in my chest that’s somewhere between pride and something else. Acceptance, maybe?
“And Patricia.” Chase smiles. “Patricia. Christ, if that woman wasn’t married, she’d be all over that blond mop of yours in no time flat.” He puts me in a headlock and ruffles my blond hair until, for a moment, it’s standing straight up and I laugh. “So you’re feeling a little buzz, eh?” he says once he lets me go.
“Yeah, man,” I say, flattening my hair, “I’m getting there.”
“Well, we got a long way to go, Casanova. A long. Way. To. Go.” Chase enunciates each syllable as if life and death hung in the balance of my ability to exhibit some stamina, some umph, during the Striped Bass dinner. “What’d you order for dinner?” he asks.
I look up and think about it for a moment. It seems like ages ago when the waiter, white linen draped over one arm, came to our table. “Jesus, champ, are you that drunk that you can’t even remember what you ordered?”
“No, no,” I say. “I remember. I got the pistachio-crusted halibut.”
“Perfect.” Chase nods and reaches into the smallest, fifth pocket of his jeans. “Perfecto, really.” He kisses the tips of his fingers like an Italian.
“Why is that ‘perfecto’?”
“Because.” He struggles a bit pulling the contents of the pocket—a small dime bag filled halfway with fine white powder—out into the open. “Last time I checked, pistachio-crusted halibut was complemented perfectly by South America’s finest.”
“South America’s finest what?”
Chase gives a defeated sigh and looks up into the bathroom’s lights.
“South America’s finest cocaine.” This time he gives a Bolivian accent, which is spot-on.
I shake my head.
My history with illicit substances is neither exciting nor extensive. The first time I smelled marijuana—at a Bon Jovi concert in the third grade—I asked my father, who was accompanying me, who was burning cardboard. Ten years later, in high school, I occasionally smoked pot, but only on the beach and only when there was nothing else to do (which, as the years in Laguna Beach dragged on, became an increasingly frequent phenomenon). Stronger, sexier, and more dangerous concoctions—speed, meth, acid, and the like—had been, and continue to be, confined to the stuff of local news. A meth lab blows up in a trailer park here. A teenager in Oklahoma overdoses on speed there. Cocaine—blow, Colombian gold, snow—I had seen it once before, during my sophomore year of high school when I paid a visit to Princeton to see Nate over a long weekend. His girlfriend at the time—a train wreck of a specimen named Cecile, who thought she could loosen my brother up a bit—railed eight and a quarter lines in front of me during a pregame for one of their eating club’s parties. Nate promptly dumped her (which, depending on whom you ask, played a large role in her failing out of the famed university and her subsequent enrollment in Le Cirque rehabilitation clinic in Sundance, Utah) and told me we would not be attending the gathering.
“I don’t know, Chase.”
“What,” he says, shaking the bag so the contents clump at its bottom, “you’ve never done a little blow before?”
“Oh, I mean, of course I have.” I laugh nervously. “I mean, I’m from fucking Orange County. Stuff runs like water there.”
Chase eyes me suspiciously and laughs. “Right, bud. Whatever you say.”
I think back to the local news. “Freshman at Penn Dead after First Line of Cocaine”; “Mother Devastated, Father Drunk, Older Brother Disappointed”; “Escobar Weeps at Loss of Potential Client.” The possibilities, per usual, are endless.
“Buddy, can you lock the door?” Chase nods to the bathroom’s main door, which has no lock.
“There’s no lock,” I tell him, hoping that’ll stop his latest attempt at the illicit and dangerous and—yes, I’ll admit—thrilling.
“Fucking A,” he says. “It’s like these places try to pretend like this doesn’t go on, or something. I’m heading into a stall. Can you just keep watch?”
Yeah, sure, I tell him. I’ll keep watch. Whatever he needs. Just get the goddamn thing over with.
He disappears behind the stall once again and I hear the wooden door go “click” and then a fumbling of keys and various whisperings of “shit” and “goddamn bag” and “finally.”
I turn on one of the faucets lining the sink.
“What the hell are you doing?” I hear him say.
“I don’t know…I just thought that, you know…it’d, like, cover the sound or something.” I hear a loud snort, followed by a violent, almost painful, sigh.
“Yeah, whatever.” Another snort, another sigh. And then, “Get in here, champ.”
“Excuse me?”
“Your turn, bud. I’ll keep the faucet running.” Chase opens the door and hands me a set of keys and the little clear bag. “Use the silver key,” he says as he looks in the mirror and inspects the contents of his right nostril. “It scoops better than the brass ones.”
I stare at the set of keys and tick my way through them until I find the silver one that is already encrusted in white powder. And then I look at Chase wiping his nose and the glitter in his eyes and the last thought to cross my mind before I unequivocally decide to enter the stall is, What would Nathaniel think?
A dog barks loudly outside and I wake up, half-naked, in an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar room. There’s no one lying on the mattress next to me, just an indent in the white bamboo sheets of where someone used to be. Sunlight, brash and dazzling and offensive, streams through an open window to my right and I cover my face with both hands as I start to piece together the events that concluded last night. In the far corner of the room I see my loafers, scuffed and dirty, and my jeans and my shirt piled in a clumsy, hurried heap. Aside from this blotch, this smear, the room is stark and clean and empty.
I sit up slowly and I can feel the outer layers of my brain thump—pained and dehydrated—against my temples. That goddamn dog continues its desperate whining and I’d give anything in the world for it to stop, for it to just shut the fuck up so I can stop my brain from throbbing and give myself a moment to think. So I sit there for a moment, wearing only my boxers, in Juliana Grayson’s bed, and I look at my left bicep, which has a faint scratch mark on it—as if it were left by a fingernail or something—and then I look past my arm to a bedside table upon which sits John Grayson’s photo, postinauguration, and I decide that it’s time for me to leave.
Quietly and carefully, as if not to make too much noise (Does Concepción come on Saturdays? Or worse, does she live in the house?), I slip on my jeans and button up my shirt while I look into a full-length mirror that’s adjacent to the bed. My hair, which has gotten too long anyway, is a mess of blond knots and clumps and waves. I run a hand over one of my cheeks. I need to shave. And my eyes have these dark circles that drown out the blue irises that, honestly, I feel like I haven’t seen in months. Outside, the dog keeps barking, which makes my head feel like it’s absolutely going to explode, so I forgo tucking in my shirt and I slip on the loafers and carefully open the bedroom door.
After waiting and listening for a moment, I decide that, thank you, Jesus, the house is empty, so I move quickly down this short, bright hallway and then to the curved staircase and then, finally, out the big yellow door. The porch is littered with Dunhill cigarette butts that I briefly consider cleaning up before deciding that a young man picking up cigarette butts on the Graysons’ porch might appear on the side of suspicious, so I jog down the steps and turn right onto P Street instead.
The night and the rain have done nothing to offset the heat, which is becoming more unbearable and oppressive and saturated with humidity each day. Even so I walk faster and faster and faster away from that yellow door because I just want to get as far from that goddamn house as humanly possible. Once I’m two blocks away, I reach into my right pocket for my cell phone, which tells me that I have two text messages and one voice mail:
Text message one, from Chase, sent at 3:30 A.M.: “Where’d u go? Come 2 Hals. Still partying.”
Text message two, from Vanessa, sent at 9:00 A.M.: “Hope your night ended well. Sorry I left early. Give me a call today.”
Voice mail one, from Katie Mark: “Hi, Taylor, it’s me…sorry, I know you hate it when I say that. It’s, um, it’s Mom. I’m just checking in. Nathaniel said this would be the best time to call. I feel as though I haven’t talked to you in forever, and I’d like to hear all about the job when you have a chance. I have an appointment with Dr. Thompkins on Monday, and then on Wednesday Suzanne and I are going to see another concert. The Killers? Have you heard of them? In any event, my wrist is almost healed. And I promise, no more marijuana or stage diving this time.” I think I hear a wave crash. “Laguna really is beautiful right now. The weather on the beach is perfect. Jennifer stopped by with a few of your other high school friends last weekend, and they said they miss you.” An awkward pause. “And I miss you, too, Taylor. I really, really do.” She sighs into the phone. “All right. I suppose just give me a ring when you have a second. I love you. And I’m so very, very prou—” Her phone cuts out.
I close my phone and put it away and quicken my pace down P Street. I keep my head bowed and out of sight because I’m feeling like a bit of a criminal, just a little bit off, but it doesn’t do me any good because three blocks later I run directly into the seventeen-year-old blond girl from last night.
“Hi,” I say, once the initial shock of encountering her on the street, after all this, has worn off.
“Hi…we met last night, right?” Her hair is pulled back, but she’s still wearing a cocktail dress and her heels are off her feet and are in one hand and, when I look a bit more closely, it looks like her mascara has run a bit in the past few hours.
“Yeah, that’s right.” She looks down and to the side.
“You’re still wearing the same clothes from last night,” I say. She crosses her arms and fidgets and I notice a small tear on one of the spaghetti straps of her dress. She readjusts it on her shoulder. “Are you okay?”
“You’re still wearing the same clothes from last night, too, you know,” she says, getting defensive.
“I know. Rough night. Seriously, though—are you okay?”
“Yes,” she says, almost yelling now. A woman walking her dog across the street looks across at us and I can’t imagine how we appear, these two walking catastrophes screaming and fidgeting and looking—or at least one of us looking—like we’ve committed a crime. “Why do you keep asking me that? I’m fine, okay? I’m fucking fine.”
Back at the table and I’m feeling a little better, a little lighter on my feet, a little more on top of my game, so I tell Patricia that we’re sorry to have kept her waiting, that beautiful women shouldn’t have to wait. And Chase and Kip laugh, and Kip tells me that, by God, gin is my drink, and fuck: I’m just so goddamn personable and funny. Chase winks at me from across the table, and I flash him a smile.
“So Taylor, tell me,” Patricia says after the sommelier has arrived with our wine, a bottle of 1998 Châteauneuf, “what will you be studying at Penn?”
“That’s undecided, Mrs. Latham.” I lean back and allow the sommelier to fill my glass. “I’ve always enjoyed foreign languages, though. So I’m leaning toward something like comparative literature. Maybe French.”
“How romantic.”
“Oui, madame.” I see Kip give Chase a look of disapproval. “Of course, that will be paired with something more practical. Like poli-sci.” Kip nods and Patricia smiles. I’m just so goddamn quick on my feet.
“Well, it sounds like you’ve got it all figured out, son.” Kip nods his approval of the wine to the sommelier and the man proceeds to fill the rest of our glasses. Kip rests his right arm on the back of his son’s chair. “Chase’ll be studying finance. And I’ll be damned if there’s not a better place to do it than Wharton. Isn’t that right, son?” Chase rubs his nose and nods.
“That’s right, Dad.”
Kip smiles happily and Patricia flattens her napkin across her lap and looks down.
Our entrées arrive and even though my mouth is a little bit numb, I can tell that the pistachio-crusted halibut is absolutely out of this world. As a table, we power through two more bottles of Châteauneuf (“baptism by vino,” Kip says, to which Chase echoes, “in vino, veritas, eh, champ?”) and I’m feeling perfect and priceless and my shoes—those loafers—feel like they’re barely there at all.
“Have you given any thought to going Greek, Taylor?” Kip polishes off the last piece of his striped bass. “Penn’s got a great system. And it’s the best way to meet the girls, isn’t it, honey? Everyone loves a Tridelt.” Kip grips Patricia’s hand and she looks down shyly and laughs.
“Oh, Kip…”
“To be honest, I haven’t given it much thought.”
“Well, you should. You definitely, should.” His voice gets earnest. “Chase will be rushing Phi Delta Theta. I’m sure that neither of you would have problems getting bids. I can assure you of that.” He gives me a wink. “I’m very close with the house still…if you know what I mean.” He chuckles and shakes his head. “I had some great times in that house.” He looks at his son, who is looking down, and he slugs him on the shoulder again. “And you will too, son. When I was at Penn, it’s where most of the lacrosse players pledged. I’m not sure if it’s the same now. These things change, you know. But regardless, Chase, I’m sure you’ll be with some of your teammates.” He looks at me. “Have you seen this boy with a stick? It’s a thing of beauty, Taylor. A thing of beauty.”
There’s this awkward moment when the table goes silent and I start catching sectioned-off pieces of dialogue from the tables surrounding us and I remember Chase’s instructions from the cab ride to Center City so I wrap my lips around my wineglass and wait for the instant to pass.
“Actually, Dad,” Chase begins, “that’s something I wanted to discuss with you.”
Kip starts laughing and he nudges Patricia in the side.
“What, son—is ‘beauty’ not the right word?” He raises both hands. “Okay, okay…how about ‘powerful’? You’re a force to be reckoned with when you’ve got that stick.”
Chase begins fidgeting and his voice softens. “No, no, that’s not it.”
Kip laughs again. “You’re embarrassed that they’ve named the new training room after the Latham clan? C’mon, kiddo, a little family pride!”
The waiter arrives with four dessert menus and recommends the crème brûlée.
“No, that’s not it, either, Dad.” Chase runs a napkin across his mouth, and as I watch his hand I notice it’s shaking. “Thing is, Dad…thing is, I’ve decided not to play anymore.”
Patricia tells the waiter that we’ll have two crèmes brûlées and Kip tells Chase that he’d like to speak to him outside.
I unlock the door to the studio in Woodley Park and step into the apartment’s small entry, which, while only six feet long, is dark and muddled with clumps of gray dust. The curtains of the window on the far edge of the room are drawn, and I keep them drawn, in an effort to keep the room cool and dark and subdued. My head can’t handle light right now.
I lazily toss my blazer, the one I was wearing last night, onto my bed (a queen-size one that seems too garish, too immense for such a meager space), and collapse next to the blazer. And then I slowly turn my head, as if to prevent my brain from contracting and expanding more than it already is, and I see the corner of a ragged piece of paper peeking out from the jacket’s inside pocket. Upon closer inspection I see that it’s a note, written in handwriting that, at one glance, could be called feminine, but at another could be called aggressive. It reads:
Taylor,
So glad I could induct you into this gorgeous disaster. Until it happens again.
J.
The cab ride back to campus from Center City is mostly silent, with the exception of the car’s wheels dipping into and out of the potholes along Walnut Street. It’s mid-October, and the trees surrounding Rittenhouse Square have exploded into these vibrant shades of orange and red and yellow that even in this dark night manage to maintain their intensity and integrity of color.
“My halibut was amazing,” I say as the cab turns right on Thirty-second Street and heads toward the Quad, Penn’s largely freshman dormitory. “How was the salmon?”
Chase mumbles something and puts his head in his hands.
We pass Irvine Auditorium, with its giant gothic steeple and then the university and the entrance to the lower Quad and then, with a screech of rubber against asphalt, the cab halts at Thirty-seventh and Spruce, across the street from the entrance to the upper Quad. Chase reaches into his back pocket for his wallet but I tell him not to worry about it, that I’ve got it this time.
“Thanks,” he says and I hand the driver ten dollars and slam the door shut behind Chase.
“No problem.”
Inside the Quad, on the compound’s massive lawn, other freshmen have started to huddle in small groups of jackets and hoods and scarves, which will soon disperse to a myriad of fraternity parties around campus, the only locations that provide a surefire bet for underage drinking. We wind into and out of the groups—Chase’s head down the entire time—until we’re stopped by Joanna, a girl from our hall who’s holding a red Solo cup and already smells like Captain Morgan rum and Diet Coke.
“Where’ve you guys been?” she asks, tightening her Burberry scarf with a free hand. “We’ve all been pregaming in Loren’s room.”
“We were at dinner with Chase’s parents,” I say, once it becomes obvious that Chase has no intention of answering.
“Nice. Where’d you guys go?”
“Striped Bass.”
She smiles and hits Chase on the shoulder. “Verrrrrrrry nice. You guys were rolling high class tonight, huh?” She teeters on her heels.
“You know us,” I say, giving her a high five.
She takes an impressive swig of her drink, which, from the looks of it, is mostly rum.
“So what’s the plan for tonight?”
She winces through another sip. “Russell’s older brother’s fraternity—I think it’s Beta—is having that Heaven and Hell party. I think the plan is to get over there pretty early. Apparently it fills up fast.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
She tightens her scarf again. “Jesus, how’d it get cold so fast?”
“I have no idea.” I rub my hands together. “I’m rethinking this whole East Coast thing.”
“I bet you are, Laguna. Last October wasn’t even this cold in Greenwich.” Since day one of school, Laguna has become my nickname—official in some circles, unofficial in others. “And, um, P.S., Taylor. That tie totally isn’t yours. My dad has that tie. It’s Thomas Pink.”
I laugh and look at the tie. “I know, I know, it’s Chase’s. But hey—a step up from the Converse, right?” I strike a model’s pose like I’m checking my watch or some bullshit.
She takes another sip of her drink. “Indeed, indeed.” She looks at Chase, then she looks at me, and she mouths “What’s wrong” and I shrug and she shrugs. “All right, well, whatever. Come meet us in Loren’s room. I just came out here to smoke a ’rette.” She reaches into her purse for a pack of Parliament Lights and a book of matches.
“Sounds good.”
For the next three weeks I avoid Chase’s calls and texts and e-mails. At first he’s harassing; he leaves me frustrated voice mails asking me if I’ve died—or, if worse, I’ve become a Democrat. I respond to none of them and eventually their frequency subsides until all communication is limited to forwarded invitations and links to collegehumor.com. In the office, Peter becomes progressively more impressed with my research regarding the war on playground terror. Even Janice, typically prone to calling me “You” and demanding extra cheese on those repulsive nachos, tells me one afternoon that I seem to be picking up on the game plan; getting it and all.
“I didn’t say I was impressed,” she qualifies her statement. “I just said you’re starting to get it.”
Personal experience, I tell them both, is the keystone of proper investigation.
HR 273, the Johnson/Grayson bullying law, languishes in the legislative process. After Johnson introduced the bill on the House floor, it was referred to the House Committee on Education and Labor, though, really, I told Peter, it should have been given to National Security, it being such a fantastically important matter and all. This got a good laugh and he told me to keep up the solid work on the research but to stay away from the politics.
As expected, after the initial flood and barrage of phone calls and press requests post Grayson’s gaffe, the flow trickles until the only questions being asked are in regard to what type of condominiums, precisely, would the congressman like to see—square footage if possible—built along the banks of the Tigris? And then someone else, some member from Missouri, mistakenly says “segregation” when he indeed meant the opposite, and the calls from reporters, much to Kelly’s disappointment, halt completely. Regardless, Peter keeps the bullying drumbeat alive and strong, and in the moments and hours between his impassioned speeches about political messaging and reelections I realize that it’s nearly impossible to tell if his words are motivated by a sincere interest in Grayson’s legislative future or by a fear of returning to the boring and banal that had conquered his days prior to the incident at UCI.
We get inside our room and Chase slowly and deliberately takes off his sports coat and hangs it on the back of his desk chair. I open our miniature refrigerator that’s sitting on two cinder blocks and take out two Yeunglings and I give one of them to Chase. He mutters thanks and takes a massive swig from the bottle. From a room three doors down, David Bowie’s “Young Americans” echoes through the hall. Chase moves over to an open space of wall next to our television and starts lightly tapping his fist against it.
“You all right, dude?”
He nods and doesn’t say anything and just continues to tap his clenched knuckles against the white wall. I keep sipping my beer and tell myself that if this is what cocaine does to people, it’s a damn good thing Nathaniel never got his hands on any.
Five minutes later “Young Americans” has changed to the Cure’s “Six Different Ways” and I’ve changed out of the Ferragmo loafers (which started to become uncomfortable again) and back into my tattered black All Stars, and Chase is still lightly tapping on the wall.
“Chase,” I say, this time louder, “man, what’s wrong?” Again he doesn’t answer, but the tap tap tap turns into a thud thud thud and I notice his elbow pull back a bit farther each time he cocks his fist.
Down the hall, Robert Smith is crooning about the lies we tell and the six different ways we tell them.
I watch as the tap becomes a thud, which becomes a legitimate punch. He’s yelling things now, Chase, things I can’t entirely discern but are at the same time angry and violent and sad. The tenth time he punches the wall the plaster gives way and his fist goes sailing into darkness but this doesn’t stop him and he keeps punching punching punching. Around the hole, on the white space, I see flecks of red blood that have started streaming from his knuckles. I leap up from my bed, from where I’ve been sitting, and tackle him and he collapses to the ground. I pin his shoulders, even though he’s not putting up a fight. His right hand is bloody and mangled and his second knuckle is gleaming with the grayish-white of exposed bone.
Still pinned, he turns his face to look at me and his eyes are streaming with furious tears, and I look down at his hand and tell him we need to go to the hospital.
On a few occasions, after spending extended days in the yawning halls of the Capitol, I go out with the legislative aides to Tapatinis or Fin McCool’s or any number of the faceless bars on the Hill where conversation wafts directionless but is limited mostly to gossip regarding those who run the country. Off and on I’ll make feeble contributions to the dialogue. Most of the attempts are efforts to steer the banter away from subjects regarding carnal relationships existing between bosses and workers.
And then, on three separate occasions, I accompany Jack to Local 16, a bar on U Street, away from the ever-seeing eyes of G-town. Prior to our first meeting, he e-mails me a message that is cryptic and enigmatic and vaguely haunting in a way that only Jack can be: “A friend will be joining us.”
I arrive at the bar—all drenched in low red lighting—early and order a Bombay and tonic. The crowd’s different from what you’d find at Smith Point—sleeker, more urbane, but still maintaining that air of having something to prove that I’ve found to characterize this town. While the conversation at SP is thunderous and belligerent, here it’s calculated and hushed.
Ten minutes later Jack slips through the bar’s entrance wearing a pair of rigid dark jeans and a gray shirt unbuttoned to about there and black Gucci loafers, no socks. Behind him, a young man who is barely twenty-one—if that—sporting an Abercrombie and Fitch shirt and slightly baggy jeans, clings to Jack nervously. He’s good-looking, this kid, in the type of way you’d expect to see in college catalogs, advertising universities in the Midwest. Jack orders Oban on the rocks, and the kid orders a rum and Coke.
“Taylor, this is Scott.” I shake his hand. “He’s studying sociology at George Washington University.” I nod and ask Scott what year he is at GW, and he looks uneasily at Jack, who is looking toward the other end of the bar.
“Um…a senior?”
“Anyway,” Jack changes the subject and finishes half his scotch in a solitary swig. “Chase said you’ve been out of pocket lately. Where’ve you been?” I briefly consider explaining—or, at least, giving some vague explanation before I remind myself that Jack edits a gossip column for a Washington newspaper that, as its advertisers have disintegrated, has become increasingly hungry for content—both important and banal. And so I shrug.
“Working. It’s been busy. Everyone wants to get things done before recess.”
“Right.”
The conversation—self-conscious and overwrought and purposeless—decays like this for nearly twenty minutes until Scott, whose cheeks have become flush after two rum and Cokes, announces that he has to use the men’s room. We both watch him leave, and Jack turns to me.
“Cute kid.”
“I guess? Where’d you meet him?”
“Online.”
“Cool.” This is foreign territory to me.
We both sip our drinks and put our hands in our pockets and recognize that, in so many unspoken words, Jack has laid naked a facet of himself with which he’s not wholly comfortable, and which, if exposed, would likely cause earthquakes in his social sphere that he’s not fully prepared to handle.
“Do me a favor,” he says as Scott emerges from the bathroom on the second floor of the bar.
“What’s that?”
“Don’t tell Chase. Or Caitlin.”
“Jack…of course.”
Scott’s halfway to us when I ask, “Can I ask why you feel comfortable telling me?”
Jack looks down at me. “Because people who are out of their league aren’t in a position to judge.”
So over the course of the month it goes on like this twice more, and each time Jack is accompanied by a different young man, and each time he reminds me that these outings, that these exploratory jaunts, never took place. And after the third meeting, during which Jack’s date—a sophomore from Georgetown named Chris who has large triceps but that’s really about it—gets so drunk off Long Island Iced Teas that he gets sick right there at the bar, I think about what Jack said—about being out of my league—and I settle on the fact that he’s right. Because every time I leave Local 16, inertia and alcohol pull me to that big yellow door, to that gorgeous disaster, at Thirtieth and P.
The waiting room of the university hospital’s emergency room is half-occupied with a motley crew of students and local West Philadelphians. I tell Chase to take a seat and then I tell the nurse working the reception desk what the situation is and she gives Chase a look and shakes her head and tells me that he needs to fill out these three papers and sign this one and hand over his Penn Card so that she can make a copy of it. After looking over each paper I ask her how long the wait will be and she tells me that, well, sweetheart, that just depends on how quickly my friend Mike Tyson fills out his paperwork and on how many stomachs the doctors have to pump—it is Friday night, you know. I nod and tell her thank you and take a seat next to Chase, who has his hand wrapped in a St. Albans Lacrosse sweatshirt. A few seats down from us, two blond juniors are alternating between copies of People and The New Yorker and are thus intermittingly discussing articles by Hendrik Hertzberg and photos of an emaciated Nicole Richie.
“Cynthia!” one of them—the one with the People magazine—cries out, folding the publication in half, “Look!” She points to a picture of an extraterrestrial-looking Ms. Richie whose tiny face is obscured by oversize glasses. “It says ‘Miss Richie was admitted to Cedars-Sinai last week due to extreme exhaustion, says her publicist.’” The girl sighs and uncrosses her legs, which are thin and fragile and skeletal. “See? I’m not alone in this. I mean, that’s exactly why I’m here.” Cynthia flips through the “Talk of the Town” section and fails to feign even the slightest bit of sympathy.
“You’re here because your glucose levels are low. Your glucose levels are low because you subsist on a diet of mustard, lettuce, and cigarettes.” The other girl lets out a wounded huff.
“I knew I should have asked Lindsay to come with me.” Cynthia closes the magazine and irritably sets it on the table next to her.
“No. You should have had a hamburger for dinner. That’s what you should have done, Lisa. In fact, you should have had about eight of them.” Lisa gasps. “Now can you please go ask the nurse how long we’ve got to wait for the doctor to call you back there, just so he can tell you that same goddamn thing?” She looks at her watch. “Because the Oktoberfest party at St. A’s is tonight, and we’re already going to be getting there on the tail end of it, which means it’s going to be packed with fucking freshmen.” Lisa crosses her legs again.
“I can’t,” she says, picking up the copy of People again. “I’m exhausted.”
Cynthia snatches her purse off the ground. “Unfucking-believable,” she stands, flips open her cell phone, and starts heading toward the door. “Call me when they feed you something.”
I turn my gaze from Cynthia, who is now spinning through the revolving door, to Chase, who is silent and looking down and hasn’t even picked up the paperwork yet, to Lisa, who is gawking at her friend’s effrontery. A moment passes and the triage nurse calls back an elderly African-American man who has been coughing and looks faint, and Lisa, broken from her offended gaze, dials numbers on her cell phone until someone finally answers.
“Olivia?” she says. “It’s Lisa. I’m at the hospital.” She waits. “Oh, you are soooooo sweet. No, I feel like shit, and Cynthia just walked out on me.” She waits again. “I know. Such a bitch. She left me here to go to that fucking A’s party.” Waiting again. “To be honest, I think it might be an ovarian cyst.” Waiting, and a little grin. “Please, please, please don’t tell anyone.” Lisa looks over at me and she notices that I’m listening in on her conversation, which, I’ll admit, is rude and inappropriate but nearly impossible not to do. She brusquely stands up and moves to the other corner of the room.
“So why’d you pick me?” I ask Juliana one morning after the sun has once again invaded the empty space of the bedroom, which no longer seems so clean or so proper. My clothes, a chaotic pile of cotton and denim and leather, are in their designated space in the corner.
“Pardon?” she says, propping herself up on a tan elbow and covering her breasts with the white sheets.
“That day at the horse races, and then that night when I was standing outside on the porch—”
“Yes? What about them?”
“I don’t know.” I smile at her and she answers me with this hesitant bewilderment. “Why’d you come up to talk to me in the first place?”
“Your bow tie.”
I laugh, a little nervous, a little disappointed. “What about it?” And this is one of these moments—one of those instants where I recognize the inherent flaws in my question as soon as it’s asked.
She sighs and in a flare of raven hair and perfect skin, she turns her bare back to me.
It was coming undone. “As someone who isn’t from around here, either, it was obvious to me that you weren’t from around here.” The whole thing was unraveling.
I move closer to her and put a hand on her shoulder. “I told you”—I smile harder—“it was Chase’s, anyway.”
In a move that could be characterized by both anger or annoyance or maybe a little of both, she tosses her legs over the side of the bed and wraps the sheet around her and stands up, which leaves me lying there, on the bottom sheet, naked. Juliana walks over to the freestanding mirror on the opposite side of the room.
“Well,” she says, lightly touching the few lines that do exist on her face while examining her reflection, “it showed.”
I reach down under the bed to find my boxers. Once I’ve slipped them on, I swing my own legs over the edge of the bed and rest my elbows on my knees and stare at Juliana staring at herself in the mirror.
“I think it’s nice,” I finally say, quietly.
She adjusts the top sheet around her breasts and looks at me in the mirror’s reflection. “You think what’s nice?”
I begin wringing my hands and I look down and I wish I could just go back to the night before, back when there was just skin and hair and sweat and indiscretions that, frankly, the evening didn’t have time to consider. “I guess I just think it’s nice to have someone I can connect with.”
She doesn’t answer, but rather pulls the sheet up tighter around her.
“It’s just…do you remember that first night on the porch when you said that relationships were—”
“I thought we could avoid all this,” Juliana suddenly says.
“All of what?”
“All of this.” She lets out an exasperated sigh and reaches for a pack of Dunhills on the nightstand. “I went through this same horrible, god-awful catastrophe last year with Fernando. It just”—she lights a cigarette and inhales a large drag—“it just ruined the whole, how shall I put this?, the whole spirit of things.”
“Who’s Fernando?” I take my elbows off my knees and sit up on the bed as she exhales.
“That’s not the point.” She strides over to the window and throws open the curtains and I shield my eyes against the brassy light. I watch her smoke the cigarette until I stand up and she turns from the window and looks at me with that cool, glassy gaze.
“Well…” The sentence is awkward and cumbersome and unromantic at its very best. “Going back to what I was saying. Back when you said that relationships were a cost-benefit analysis.”
“What about it?”
“I see you as a benefit.”
She stops for a moment, and then she tilts her head and smiles and she puts a hand—the one holding the cigarette—on my cheek. “That’s sweet,” she says, and from behind her that picture of John Grayson, postinauguration, smiling wildly and bewilderedly, gawks back at me. “I see you as a benefit, too.” And then, as something happens behind the sad, knowing glossiness of Juliana’s eyes, as something dies, her hand, the one that’s on my cheek, falls to her side and ash tumbles from her cigarette to the bare floor. “Just one with diminishing returns.”
I turn back to Chase, who is still looking down and who still hasn’t touched the paperwork I’ve laid before him. “How you feeling, bud?” I say after watching him for a moment.
“My hand is fucking killing me.” It takes him a minute to reply.
“Yeah. I can imagine. But I bet that wall is feeling a hell of a lot worse.”
He doesn’t laugh. Behind us, the revolving door spins and two students who look like freshmen drag in one of their classmates, whose shirt is covered in vomit and whose eyes are only half-open.
“Let me see your hand.”
“Since when did you become a doctor?”
“Just let me see, it, Chase.”
He slowly unwraps the gray cotton, which has become spotted and browned with blood. It’s a mess, but not as bad as I had expected. The thin flesh on the first two knuckles has been ripped open, exposing various levels of tissue and bone. It was one of nature’s or God’s or chance’s or whomever designed us, flaws, I think: leaving so little protection over our only defenses against our attackers. Beneath the knuckles is bruised and swollen. “Pretty gnarly.”
He smiles. “Do people really say that where you’re from? Do people really say gnarly?”
“Sometimes, unfortunately.” I laugh and he laughs and that makes me feel a little bit more at ease with this whole situation.
He wraps his hand back up.
“Sorry I ruined dinner,” he says.
“You didn’t ruin dinner.”
“My dad would probably beg to differ.”
The kids behind us, the drunk ones, are laughing and kicking and poking their friend, whom they have splayed out across four chairs.
“We all get into fights with our parents and shit,” I tell him. “Honestly, it’s not that big a deal. I still had a great time.”
He shakes his head. “That’s not the point.” He continues shaking his head. “That’s not the fucking point.”
“Chase,” I start, “I get it, okay? The whole deal about expectations, and not being able to live up to them. I mean, I’ve told you about Nathaniel and how perfect he is, I get all of—”
“No,” he says, looking up for the first time. “You don’t.”
And so we sit in silence for the next thirty minutes as the drunk kid behind us is called back to get his stomach pumped and as a stabbing victim is wheeled in on a gurney and then, right after the triage nurse emerges once again through those swinging doors to call Chase’s name, he looks at me and says:
“Do you think I’ll ever be able to play lacrosse again?”
Later that evening, at home, I gather a load of laundry (whites, with some grays) and carry it in a large plastic basket to my floor’s laundry room, which is three doors down from my efficiency. I pour detergent in the machine and start adding the clothes, piece by piece, checking each shirt for stains or marks. And it’s as I do so that flashed images of the seventeen-year-old’s face, that one from a month ago—dark with mascara—and the torn strap on her dress start and these memories of Chase’s hand caked with dried blood wrapped in that goddamn sweatshirt and of Juliana’s hair fanning out like Medusa’s snakes against those bamboo sheets start defiling my mind. I close my eyes straightaway each time one of the reflections manifests and wait impatiently for it to pass. Which it does.
After I’ve loaded the laundry and paid the $1.75 that’s necessary to start the machine, I go back to my apartment and collapse on the small futon that’s set perpendicular to my bed and look at the texts I received earlier in the day—three from Vanessa, asking me where I’ve been, and that she doesn’t hear from me like she used to, and to please call her, and one from Chase—emblematically casual. I have nothing to say to Chase. Or, rather, I suppose I do, I suppose I have dissertations and accusations and terminations that all need to be proclaimed, that all need to be articulated. And as for Vanessa.
I’d wanted to call her, I’d wanted to see her—this much is true. I’ve thought about her enough, occasionally at times that I’m sure could be labeled as inappropriate; these moments that could be called wrong. But see, it’s been one of those matters of a person slipping away and another person taking his place, and truth be told, I’m not fully certain as to who this person is, or what he wants, or who this girl—really the only one who makes sense—is to him.
I look at the screen on my phone and move the device’s cursor back and forth across her name, and then expand its range to encompass those names falling between “C” and “V” in my address book. I find myself stopping somewhere in the middle.
And so. As for Vanessa.
“Nathaniel Mark.” In the background, I hear Nate typing figures and projections furiously into the spreadsheets that keep places like Goldman Sachs alive and maneuvering the world’s finances. It’s early on Saturday afternoon, so I know better than to try him at home, or even on his cell phone. Nate always works on Saturday afternoons.
“Hey…hey, Nate, it’s me.” The typing continues.
“Hey, bud. Hold on one second. I’ve just…got…to…” The typing gets faster. “There. Done.” He sighs. “Sorry. This IPO is absolutely killing me. You know how much money is at stake here?” I tell him that no, I don’t, and that actually I’m not sure I even understand what an IPO is. “We’re helping this company go public and we’ve got to advise them on—” He stops himself. “Never mind. Anyway, what’s up?”
“Nothing, really,” I say, pulling at a loose thread on my jeans. “I just wanted to call and say hi.”
Nathaniel pauses and I can hear his chair creak as he leans back in it. “Okay…well…hi.” He pauses and I keep pulling at the thread on my jeans. “How’s Washington? Hot?”
“It’s getting hot,” I say. “Pretty humid, actually.”
“I bet.”
Another awkward pause.
“How’s New York?”
“It’s good. We finally got a reservation at Babbo. Remember that place? The one that I canceled over your graduation?” I tell him yes, yes, I remember, and that I know that Babbo was a Mario Batali place and that I had heard good things.
“Chase has actually been there,” I say.
“Chase from Penn?” I tell him yes, Chase from Penn.
“I never liked that kid. You live with him for four years and you come back telling me that you’re embarrassed that you’ve never wintered in Gstad,” Nathaniel says offhandedly. “I mean, forget Gstad. You started using ‘winter’ as a verb after knowing him. I knew kids like that at Princeton, and I work with half of them now. No good, no good. How’s Annalee?”
“She’s fine.”
And then, briefly, I consider telling him the truth, and how, really, I hadn’t spoken to Chase, not properly, in a month, and how the one sane companion I had in the city, Vanessa, was slipping through my fingers and that it was likely my fault but that I had no clue how to tighten my grip; but the rate of return on eliciting advice from Nathaniel is not always high—just words, words, words.
Another awkward silence. And then:
“Taylor?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you okay?” I have to think about it for a moment.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Why?”
“I don’t know.” I hear the chair creak again. “Your voice sounds different, or something. And…and I don’t know, you never call.” And that causes me to think about why I’m calling him, because he’s right, because I don’t ever call, and because I can conceive a million reasons but no explanations as to why I’ve decided to phone my brother—at work—on this particular Saturday in May.
“What, I can’t call to say hi?” I laugh nervously.
“Of course you can. I mean, try not to call during the week, you know, because God only knows how busy I am, but of course you can call. It’s just that I wrote that e-mail to you earlier this week and I hadn’t heard back from you.”
“I didn’t know I was suppose to respond.”
He sighs. “That’s not the point.” More silence. “Anyway, did you ever call Dad?”
“I thought you said you were going to stay out of that.” I don’t even know how to dial to Belize. And does Exit Strategy have a landline?
“Don’t get defensive, Taylor.” Nathaniel’s voice takes on a parental tone—a sort of Verdiesque melody punctured with staccato inflections. He’s been perfecting it since grade school. “I’m asking you a question.”
“No. No, I didn’t call Dad.” I hear the typing start again.
“Well, you might want to do that, Taylor, because even though the man’s moved to Belize, he still was gracious enough to provide you with half of your DNA.”
“Excuse me?”
“Forget it. Did you get the check I sent you?” I put my head in my hands.
“Yes. Yesterday. Thanks.”
“Good. Deposit it right away, and let me know if you need more help with rent.”
My face feels rough, unpolished, against my palms. “Okay.”
“What about Mom? Have you spoken to her recently?”
“She’s left me a few messages over the past couple weeks. She said you told her to call.”
Type type type click click click.
“Yes, yes, that’s right. I did. I sent her an e-mail earlier this month and told her to call you. I mentioned that Saturday morning’s probably the best time to reach you because you’d likely be in bed, completely useless, nursing a hangover. Have you called her back yet?”
“No, not yet.”
“Well, fuck, Taylor, do us all a favor and call the woman back, okay? Lord knows she’s going through enough right now, and the last thing she needs is the neglect of her youngest child.”
I debate whether I should detail to Nathaniel the events of the year that I spent at home; of the crying and the notes and the movies and of Katie breaking down in front of that restaurant’s—Cleo’s—closed doors and dead lights and how he hadn’t seen any of it.
“Hello? Taylor?”
“I’m here.”
“Call her, okay?”
“Yeah, okay, Nathaniel. I’ll call her.”
“Good. Good. I mean, thank you. But good.” Type type type click click click. “Okay, I’ve got to go. I’ve got some work I need to finish before the reservation tonight. But we’ll see you in the city, soon?”
“Yeah, sure. Soon.”
“Great. Have a good weekend, Taylor. Call Mom.” I say “You, too,” but the phone’s already gone dead.
And so with this heaving sigh I again scroll down in my address book until I reach Katie’s name and, after two minutes of hesitation, I press “call.” The phone—her cell phone—rings three times, and I start to thank God for allowing me to just leave a message when she picks up.
“Hello? Hello, Taylor?”
“Hi, Mom.” I hear a crash in the background. “Jesus, what was that?”
“That was Kitana, or whatever the hell her name is. The Asian one. In purple.”
I scratch my forehead and silently curse Nathaniel for guilting me into doing this. “Mom, what are you talking about?”
“Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, Taylor. That’s what I’m talking about. Try to tap into your own generation, dear.”
“Since when are you playing Mortal Kombat?”
“Shit,” she says harshly. “That bitch just threw some fan at me. Do people do that, Taylor? Do people throw fans?”
“Can you please press pause or something?”
She sighs irritably and the crashing and the booming in the background silence. “Fine. Yes. Paused.” Then, “I’ve been playing Mortal Kombat since Suzanne bought it for me last week. Dr. Thompkins said it’d be therapeutic.”
“Good…good, I guess. How is everything else at home?”
“It’s beautiful. Just really beautiful. There was a whale out in the cove today, just out in front of the house.”
I grin. When I was younger, when we first moved into the Laguna Beach house, Katie and I would sit for hours on end scoping the sea for whales. We never saw any.
“And how’s Suzanne?”
“Oh, God,” she says with a laugh, “you know Suzanne. She keeps me up to no good. No good at all.”
“Yes,” I answer, “that’s what I’m afraid of.”
“Taylor”—her voice gets older, a little more sincere—“things are fine. They’re fine.”
“Did you ever meet with that financial adviser?”
“Once.” Her voice goes offhand again. “He was a miserable man. Horrible, actually. Told me again that I should sell the house.”
“And?”
“And I sold a Matisse instead, and I’m learning to shop at Safe-way and Costco, and I haven’t stepped foot into a Whole Foods in a month, and, like I said, I’m fine.”
I’m almost tempted to agree with her; I’m almost tempted to say that I haven’t heard her sound like this in far too long.
And then, “I heard from your father two days ago. He called from Honduras.”
My mouth runs dry and I remember that bench—that goddamn bench—in Rittenhouse Square.
“Taylor? Taylor, are you still there?”
“Yeah, I’m still here. What’d he have to say?”
“He said he missed me. He was calling from a pay phone outside of a bar.”
“And what’d you tell him?”
“I told the son of a bitch he wasted a quarter and not to call this number again.”
“Good,” I tell her, “that’s good.” And she tells me that Dr. Thompkins said the same thing, that he was proud of her, and I explain that I’m tired and have a headache and need to get some rest. She tells me that’s fine, she needs to rip Kitana apart anyway.
I set down the phone on a tiny coffee table and lay down, fully clothed, on my bed and stare at the ceiling, which is fractured with cracks. He wasted a quarter. I grin at Katie’s bold audacity. But then, then suddenly those images of Juliana pushing me against a wall, and of that gin-filled tumbler shattering in slow motion against the floor of the porch, start invading my mind. And it’s not until those visions start searing my eyes that slow tears start creeping down my own face, and I start considering whether guilt, in its many forms and iterations, is at its malicious worst when we consider the things for which we’ve wished, the things that we’ve accomplished, or the empowerment they’ve brought us.