I hadn’t considered Jenny’s weight and split her off an equal dose. She receded into herself, pupils swallowing up the deep blue of her irises, body limp, eyes out the window. Breathing deeply but vacant, the wave had come for me but I wondered what it was for her.
When she came back around, I saw that getting high with Jenny was different than it was with J. Where the speed had made J quiet and more self-involved, it made Jenny talk without end, skipping from topic to topic sometimes without even a breath between, from snippets of songs to conspiracy theories to elaborate practical jokes. I sat on the floor, staring at the shifting shadows on the wall, while Jenny lay on my bed talking, her words materializing before me.
“We should write up a letter and sign it with Jim Morrison’s name, then stuff it in a bottle and toss it in the Spirit,” she said. “It would float until someone found it and then they would think he was still alive. Just to fuck with people, you know?”
I made a noise that could’ve been taken as a laugh, the familiar pressure of the drugs in my body holding back my words. I found my notebooks and gave one to Jenny and we went at them with pencils. Jenny doodled while she talked and I wrote about her doing that, transcribing as much as I could of what she said. The shadows shifted as the day rolled on.
“I’ve spent all this time angry,” she said.
I didn’t look up from my notebook.
“But I should be thankful to my father. I should be glad that he made me an aware and thoughtful person. And your mother has done the same by leaving you. You should thank her.”
“What?”
“I know you know what I mean,” she said. “I’ll find her for you. I’ll find her.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve looked everywhere.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Let’s get out of here.”
She launched off the bed, walked over to the window, peeked outside. Hours had passed. Night had fallen uneventfully.
“Come with?”
Down the creaky stairs and out on the sidewalk, we saw the streets were empty except for a couple cars parked in a circle down at the laundromat. We ran out across Center, cut around the bank and past Taco John’s and behind the More-4-You. She led me over to the loading dock and kicked at a couple wooden shipping pallets before she grabbed one and struggled to get it out of the stack. I took the other end and we walked it out toward the train tracks, angling it between the trees, and dropped it next to a train car where we leaned it against the side like it was a ladder.
Jenny told me to wait and she walked off into the darkness, the crunching of the rocks beneath her feet echoing off the back of the strip mall so that each step sounded like two, then disappeared for a moment into a copse of trees on the far side of the yard. She came back with a large backpack, hauled it over by the train cars, dropped it onto the rocks, and took out a can of paint.
“Go keep lookout.”
At the end of the string of cars, I saw a set of headlights pull up the hill where the tracks met Center, slow for the crossing, roll on, and then the night was quiet and peaceful, the clicking of the mixer ball and the slow fizz of the paint taking turns with the crickets, the stars out strong and bright above us.
The shadows fell into a silent stillness, so I turned back to Jenny and watched her climb up and down the slats to reach the different high points of her piece, dancing back and forth between them while she painted. After a few finishing touches, she stepped down and dug in her backpack, took out a flashlight, and lit up her work. It appeared to be two women facing each other, each reaching with one hand, HOPE spelled between them in a flowing cursive, but then when I saw that one of the ladies was wearing jeans and a flannel I knew she had painted a picture of us. The shiny metallic blue she had used for our eyes gave us both a haunting glare.
“Beautiful,” I said, “just like all the others. I can’t believe that you are HOPE. I’ve been checking out all your pieces since I got here.”
I couldn’t help myself, so high and so proud, I walked over and gave her the strongest hug I had ever given anyone.
“Of course it’s you,” I said. “Who else could it be?”
“I usually do this when I’m sad,” she said into my neck.
I didn’t say that I had seen hundreds of these tags since I had moved to town, didn’t want to bring up how sad she was, how sad she had to be to have painted them all.
“But I’m happy today,” she said. “Thanks, Shane, I really feel good.”
Had I known what was coming, I might have poisoned Svenson when I had the chance. I could have sprinkled floor cleaner on his pancakes instead of powdered sugar.
He came into the Aurora one morning and I watched him through the service window as he waited for Leon near the host stand. He stood tall and straight, so much the son of a soldier that I was surprised I hadn’t noticed it earlier. He called Leon sir and was very polite with the waitress.
It had been a slow morning at the restaurant so when their order came in I had nothing else to do. Leon got a BLT like he always did—I had never met anyone who ate as much bacon as Leon—and Svenson had two over-easy eggs with hash browns and a side of chocolate chip pancakes. Considering Svenson’s plates, I saw that he and I were more alike than I wanted to admit. Svenson ate slowly and thoughtfully as Leon talked, pacing himself so that he and Leon would finish at the same time. He sat tall in his seat and responded to questions with a “yes sir” or a “no sir.” He knew how to act in public but gave very few people the respect he gave Leon.
The waitress gave me orders for two more tables and, when I got a chance to check on Svenson and Leon again, I saw that their plates had been cleared and now Svenson was talking over the two cups of coffee between them while Leon nodded, his mullet waving back and forth over his shoulders. I wondered what Svenson would think of that long hair if Leon hadn’t been his dad’s best friend. Would he chase him down on his motorcycle and beat his ass? Would he at least call names after him?
They finished up and, as they stood, Svenson held his hand out to be shaken but Leon gave him a look of disbelief and spread his arms wide. Svenson resisted briefly but gave Leon the hug he wanted and then, scanning the restaurant to see who had seen it, he locked eyes with me through the window. I don’t think he recognized me, as I stuffed all my hair up into my hat while I was cooking, but he was embarrassed. I grabbed an empty plate and set it in the service window and then turned away to make it seem like I hadn’t been watching.
“This portion is a little light,” Leon said, taking the plate in his hand as he passed by the window on his way to the back.
He walked onto the cook’s line and I took the plate from him, put it back where it belonged.
“Against sound advice,” Leon said, “it appears that the South will rise again. And also, they’re all set over at the other location—no more caterers needed. They are getting rid of someone but he found someone else. I’m glad. I need you over here anyways.”
Jenny and I got caught smoking right in front of the Arlington. On our way to my room Jenny had wanted to take one last hit for the stairs.
“To make it interesting,” she said. “I hate climbing stairs, you know.”
She was setting the flame to her foot-long pipe when lights popped, a siren sang, and the HOLM COUNTY SHERIFF car rolled up over the curb. Jenny threw the pipe to the ground.
“Illegal,” the sheriff shouted through his window, pointing. He opened the door, stepped over to us, bent to pick up the pipe. “Care to explain this?”
Jenny rocked from foot to foot, stuttering, and the sheriff let her suffer.
“It’s mine,” I said. “I was smoking it when you pulled up so I threw it on the ground.”
“Is that so, Shane Stephenson?” The sheriff looked me up and down. “You’re a goddamn liar, but you’re a stand-up guy taking the blame for your friend like that. Lord knows, Jennifer here needs a good friend, isn’t that right, Ms. Freya? If more people were as loyal as all that we wouldn’t need laws in the first place. And though I know that if I had shown up ten seconds later I’d’ve caught you with the pipe in your hands, that’s not what happened, is it?”
“No, sir,” I said.
“And polite too,” the sheriff said. “Where’d you find this one, Jennifer? Now turn around and put your hands behind your back.”
She did as he asked and he snapped handcuffs on her wrists.
“Really?” she said as she turned back toward us.
“You bet,” the sheriff said. “Now I want you to tell me where you got these drugs.”
“We were at a concert.”
“Yeah right, everyone in this town gets their drugs at concerts. Not a single drug dealer for miles around.”
“This was the other week—Shane was there. Some dude with dreadlocks fell asleep and I took it out of his pocket.”
“You know that’s bullshit.” He pulled out his ticket book. “But I think you’ll remember. Or maybe you’ll find someone else for me. Who knows?”
The reds and blues of the sheriff’s car washed over us for a time, then Jenny said something that shocked me.
“Maybe you should take me home and tell my mother.”
The sheriff’s face sunk but then he snapped into action. Without a word, he slipped the pipe into his back pocket, then took Jenny by the shoulders and spun her around. After fiddling with his keys for a moment the handcuffs were off and Jenny and I watched the sheriff pull his car down off the curb and back onto the road.
“What just happened?” I asked.
“I’ll tell you what happened,” she said, rubbing one wrist and then the other. “He took my pipe but he forgot to empty my pockets. You got any papers upstairs?”
I unlocked the door and let her in, followed her up the stairs, and we found my room awash in evening light. Jenny got right down to business at my desk as I looked for some rolling papers, then I took a seat on my bed after I gave them to her. Outside the window, the clouds to the west looked like neat rows of purple and pink muffins as they faded to gray.
“He’s in love with my mother,” Jenny said when she rose from the desk, “or he was at one point. I rode home in the back of his car once a week for a while and you can tell he’s fucking moony. I wish they would get back together. Everything would be fine if he would come back.”
I was no stranger to thoughts like these, and though I knew it couldn’t be true, that whatever went on between the sheriff and Jenny’s mother was far more complicated than what Jenny thought of it, I also knew there was no talking her out of it. There had been no talking me out of it when I had the same ideas about my parents.
Jenny sat on the windowsill, the sun setting behind her, flicked her lighter, then blew the smoke through the screen. When Jenny got high you could see her thinking—others, not so much. So many people stare off at nothing, thinking nothing—you could see the animal deadness in their eyes—but Jenny’s mind never shut down. It must have been hell. I’d take a hit off a joint and float off into abstract thoughts about how clouds form or whatever, but she, well, you could tell she had something in there that she was trying to forget and it didn’t seem to be working.
“I used to get in a lot of trouble,” she said.
“No,” I said with a smile. “That can’t be true.”