IF you’re going to have a party, life begins at 7-Eleven, the front line of civilization, the glass doors to convenience, the place most likely to accept my fake ID. Tracy bounced into the parking lot and nearly made a hood ornament out of a pair of skaters jumping over empty beer cans. She swayed to the right and parked beside the Dumpster, as far away as possible from the front door. David handed me a twenty. “Think quantity, not quality,” he said, leaning up to let me out of the backseat.
The skaters were dressed like scarecrows: big baggy pants, baby dread hair, and golf caps turned around backward. Their boom box was blasting the new Beastie Boys record. A pair of waifish tomboy groupies stood next to the yellow plastic garbage can with hands planted deep in their front pockets. They looked like a couple of totem poles. A red sign in the window said WE DON’T SERVE SKATERS.
The tallest one jumped off the parking curb, did a curlicue pattern on his board, and followed me up to the door. His hair was dyed Gatorade green, his skin already pockmarked by years of french fries and Pepsi. His eyes had a crazy intensity that made him if not sexy at least alluring.
“Say a … miss, can you do me a favor?” He rolled closer, waved a five spot with his right hand. “I lost my ID and my dog just got run over by a car and my dad, he’s got Alzheimer’s disease ’cause he swears I’m not his son, and well, my friends and I, we’ve come across a wave of hostility from the management of this corporate money-laundering facility.” He pointed at the sign in the window. “Would you mind picking up a few quarts for me and my brothers,” he said, nodding back toward his crew. They looked as gangly and dysfunctional as their leader, rocking out to the skanky noise booming from their blaster.
“You can keep the change,” he said, as if to jelly my toasting decision.
I took his five dollars, opened the glass door and headed for the beer cooler, grabbed a twelve-pack of Old Style for us and two quarts of Schlitz Malt Liquor for satan’s children, then dragged it all up to the counter. The cashier was some aging hottie.
“Weren’t you in my math class?” I tried flirting to avoid the ID mess altogether. His face scrunched up, and I saw him paging his memory bank, trying to come up with a matching face from his glorious past. It usually works. He gave me a second look while ringing up the beer.
“That’s sixteen thirty-seven,” he said. “You got an ID?” I handed him a twenty tucked around my card. He looked at the name, sifted his registry, passed it back. “You must be thinking of someone else.” He sorta puffed up his chest, as if that other guy I was thinking about was Arnold Schwarzenegger or something. He looked marinated in gloom, as if he was just biding time, waiting for the big tornado to put an end to his misery.
“I hated math.” He dipped his fingers into the till, dished out my change.
“Me too.” I stared at the purple stain on his orange smock, grabbed the bag, and walked out the door. The skaters circled me like a bunch of blood-hungry vampires.
“Don’t try and rip us off, lady,” my romeo skatepunk said, whirling toward me.
I set their beers beside the garbage can. “Here ya go, sweetie.” I smiled. “Call me when you get a bigger chariot.” The beer rats jumped on the bag. I scooted out of the way, stepped off the ledge. My brother opened the car door, lifted his seat. He was curled over the dashboard with his ear pinned to the car speaker, trying to tune in some obscure Fox River pirate radio. I squeezed into the backseat. Tracy backed out and spun around the corner, mission accomplished.
For some reason Tracy was being unusually quiet, as if she were trying to emulate my brother’s lack of communication with the outside world, like maybe he would notice her if she too were invisible, someone who made no effort to scrape his fragile surroundings. She obviously saw the DO NOT DISTURB billboard pasted to his pimple-scarred forehead.
“Earth to David,” I said. “Come in David.”
He didn’t respond, fixated with the control knob of the radio, listening for a faint signal in the white noise.
“Yo, dj!” I slapped him on the back of the head.
“What?” he asked, still working the radio dial.
“Why do you take drugs?”
“To distract me from my boredom.”
“Are you bored now?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“What can we do to make your life more interesting?”
“Take drugs.”
“I see. Are you suicidal?”
“Maybe.”
“I can’t believe anyone would kill themselves over a concept.”
“It’s a condition.”
“So turn on the air conditioner.”
“There’s a gadget for every weakness, isn’t there?” he asked.
“You’re the one controlling the dial.”
“What are you two talking about?” Tracy asked.
My brother leaned toward Tracy. “The airwaves are full of static,” he said.
Tracy nodded, as if she understood what he meant.
David turned and looked at me. “Can I get off the couch now?” he asked.
“Sorry,” I said. “I just wanted to poke around the fire a bit.”
“And your conclusion, Doctor?”
“There’s plenty of kindling.”