7
By the time I finished painting, Prince and I were riding a heavy magnetic buzz. We locked their place up, and I pocketed the key.
“You know, when the Millers get back, I’m going to take them out to dinner or something man.”
Prince laughed. That was a thing about me, whenever I drank, I started making plans, big, magnificent plans. They very rarely played out, but how exciting and pure an experience it was to cook them up in the moment. They’d float perfect and definitive from my mouth, all clear and romantic in their drumming up, that was me drunk.
“I mean it.”
“I know you do, Cash.”
We’re in my Saturn and driving slowly, in no rush to be anywhere. Best thing about the buzz is it finally puts Prince in a place where he wants to talk. He hadn’t said a damn thing in a week or two about much of anything, so I don’t even care that when he finally opens up, it’s about Shelby again.
“Cash, I’m telling you, when I’m lying there, I’ll be sweating man, sweating in the middle of the night. And I can’t ever get it back. I can’t sleep. My mind is going loopy, ya know? You ever get into that circular kind of thought, man? Ya know what I mean? It never ends.”
It’s funny, Prince never got an “A” in his whole educational life, but if the spirit moved him, he could talk philosophy like Aristotle himself. He claims he got his quiet and brooding nature from all that time he spent alone as a kid helping his father haul wood while never saying a word.
We all had silent fathers, and in that ongoing quiet, like many of us whose only real company was ourselves, Prince was imaginative.
“If I could find a way to break the cycle then I’d be fine, but I’m telling you, I’m sweating man, and almost, man, I’m like hyperventilating and going crazy as hell. It’s never ending. I’m obsessed. Next thing you know I’m sitting out back on the porch with the mosquitoes, in that bloodsuck, and feeling fine, not giving a fuck cuz it’s cool at least and calm and, I don’t know man, more peaceful out of the house, out my mind, know what I mean?”
I just nod. Time to let Prince roll it on through. He shakes his head in dissatisfaction.
“Cash, where you wanna go?”
I pause.
“What do you mean? We’re going to Jimmy’s, yeah?”
I’m still driving and a bit light-headed, non-focused and daydreaming as our quiet town passes by. All the lamps in the windows, all the familiar crooked gutters that line the tops of the small, warm homes. All the flowers in the sidewalks, emerging like fireworks in the pavement.
“I mean, say you left for a while man, say you went off somewhere—you ever think about where you’d wanna go?”
“I don’t know. West. Arizona maybe. The desert somewhere. Out by the canyon or something.”
“Arizona? Yeah man. The canyon. Yeah. Wow. Fuckin Arizona. You know I know a few cats out there. Pops used to tell me stories about those settlers out there from way back in the day. Like his great gramps. If he ever heard me complain he’d remind me there were people in the world with real issues, ya know? Like those people. They crossed the frontier , man, the frontier. They forged forward to the West and didn’t have shit at all. It’s crazy. How can any of us complain about anything that happens today? Those people were starving and going mad and fending off thieves and dust storms and shitting themselves to death. Pops loved those Old West traveling stories, man.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah, man. I don’t know, I’ve been thinkin maybe ’bout heading West myself.”
“Heading West, huh?”
“Yeah, man. Heading West and figuring it out.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m serious.”
“Didn’t say you weren’t.”
He takes a big breath as if to reset things a bit. I haven’t heard him talk this much in a month. He’s rubbing at his chin with his thumb and goes “If I see her out tonight man, I’m gonna fuckin kill myself.”
“Man—”
“I’m not kiddin, Cash. I can’t see her out. I can’t. If I see her out with some guy, I’m gonna be prisoned.”
“She ain’t gonna go anywhere you are.”
“Yeah, well, I’m just sayin. What a fuckin nightmare man. What fuckin bullshit it is.”
Prince could be such a serious romantic sometimes though, again, he’d never confess to that. His black eyes kind of twitch in the night every time he starts talking in circles around love and his feelings. This whole Shelby thing has really sent him spinning. Sadly, I’m not sure Prince ever gave it all much thought before she went off and made him feel so inadequate in the first place. Her leaving was something of a shock, and now that she’d left, he was philosophizing and agonizing about it constantly. Tell me it ain’t ironic how it goes. My friend was feeling like he was all alone again. Like he was a boy or something small. Only weeks ago, he was a hero, smooth with a crown. How fast it can all turn to hell.
Prince, man. He was a real midwestern hot shot, the sculpted sort. Didn’t work out or nothing, not ever, but he was just one of those bastards born with the veiny biceps and the washboard gut. The girls always loved him, and I assume that will never change. So fuckin quiet and charming all the time. He’d talk in this hushed tone to make a girl work to hear him. That’s another reason why this whole recent circumstance had him so messed up, I think. I couldn’t name a single woman in his young life that had dropped him quite like this before, and so casually at that. Shit, it was good, man. It was good for him. I maintain that. It’d all be best for him in the end, he’d see that someday, but God, I don’t want the whole thing to send him out West, least not now, so I say, “don’t mean you gotta run off though.”
“Yeah, I don’t know.”
Johnston is situated right in the middle of a couple larger cities some forty miles to the east and west, but there’s nothing much in between. We’re driving through the neighborhoods of Main Street, the only road that cuts straight through the entire town. Johnston has a variety of small eclectic homes scattered across this static avenue. Some are painted white with near flat stacked rooftops only fifteen feet high, and others were built and housed long ago by the Addams Family types, gothic and sharp, tall and black and abandoned. I love the differences. I’ve always felt the polarity lends itself to mystery.
Johnston is nothing like the urbanized neighborhoods you’d catch wind of in papers these days. To think there are jokers still selling the suburbs as these sorts of utopias where all your dreams come true. I just found them boring, a straight and narrow path towards a lifeless, cookie-cutter human future. I prefer Johnston’s slanted houses and the honest families inside them who are mostly oblivious to the larger, far less desirable and convoluted picture. Truth is, none of that big city, big money way had anything to do with the lives of the people here. They’re universes apart.
I’m going twenty-five miles per hour through the crisp Johnston air, hopeful. Prince and I are making our way towards Jimmy’s Place, like we do on many nights, each just desperate enough to be inspired and drunk for adventure, filled with our visions.