Chapter 9 The Art of Effective Stalking
NINE
The Art of Effective Stalking
My portfolio arrives later that same afternoon from Seattle. Jayne is gone, Connor hasn’t come home, so I’m alone, which I’m doing my best to get used to.
I’m on my third pot of coffee, because I need something to put my whiskey in. Drinking it straight seems too depressing while it’s still light outside—and it’s not like I’m depressed.
I figure the coffee will help me be more productive. The theory is sound enough, but the reality is I get drunker and drunker and not even a little wired.
I put a 90s alt-rock playlist on shuffle, set my drink on the floor next to my portfolio, and flip through the huge pages.
I come across an oil on canvas of West’s face that I painted just after moving to Seattle.
It’s colorful and fierce, glowering at me with all my own self-imposed rage.
It stops my hand. I’m actually surprised how good it is.
How raw and fresh. It captures today’s West in a way photographs couldn’t.
Turns out bridges can be burnt more than once. Given the small size of the world, you sometimes have multiple opportunities. The stronger ones don’t burn so easy.
I think it’s fate that the portfolio arrives the day after I totally fucked up what was left of my relationship with the person I once called my best friend. As I've said, West and I are like this. He’s where all roads in my life eventually intersect.
Staring at the painting, I text him a brief question: Are you home?
He responds: Y
Does he mean Why? Or does he mean Yes?
Either way, any response would have been good enough for me. He lives nearby, but it’s hot as fuck and too far to walk, so I get a ride share to his house. I have to knock twice because he’s really milking this for all it’s worth. Understandably.
He opens the door. That’s all he does. Then, without speaking, he turns around and disappears inside.
I follow the sounds of baseball and find him on the couch in what I guess is the den.
He’s wearing cut-off sweats and a black tank.
A sweating bottle of beer sits next to the ashtray on the coffee table.
He picks up the burning butt of a cigarette, sucks down what’s left of it, and stubs it out.
He glances up at me as I take a seat in the adjacent chair.
“What can I help you with?” he asks.
I pick up the remote and mute the TV. Now that I have at least sixty percent of his attention, I break my more than six-year silence. When sex isn’t on the table, being drunk makes me feel like talking.
“You’re right. I am a fucking coward. With you and me—after Salisbury—it didn’t feel right with us.
It felt like—between you and your mom—I was some charity case, and if I had no future, I didn’t want you to have to watch me screw up the rest of my life.
Because I really thought I would. I didn’t trust myself to be your friend anymore. ”
“Okay. That’s all bullshit, but okay. Why’d you come back?”
“For Connor. But I think he wishes I’d stayed gone.”
“Probably too soon to say.”
“Maybe…” I tug at a loose thread on the hem of my old shorts.
I really do need to buy some new clothes.
It’s not like I can ever wear my favorite t-shirt again after this morning.
“You know…my mom was worse than anything I ever told you. I’ve read stories about other kids who grew up with mothers like her, and they are not fucking okay, brother. Not even close.”
“You think you’re not?” he asks.
“I read those stories, and I think about how weak those kids were. Like how sad it is they never thought they could stop it, because I was able to, you know? But does that make me better? Or does it make me a dick for thinking I’m better than them?”
“Is this about our fight at Salisbury?” he asks, his voice incredulous.
I guess it sort of is. “I changed a lot after that.”
“I know you did.”
I swallow hard. “For better or worse?”
“Much better,” he says.
“Thanks.”
He sighs heavily. “But then you left, and you were a real asshole yesterday. So, I guess I don’t know.”
I glance away, over to the TV. What’s freaking me out is that same old thing. Attachment, and the danger that comes with it. The inevitable heartache. “I just got back, and now you gotta go to prison.”
Admitting that I’ll miss him is almost too humiliating. It must be the alcohol allowing the thought into my head. I close my eyes and hope he doesn’t see the shame on my face.
“Serves you right, motherfucker.”
I laugh because he means for me to.
“There’s other people I could have asked for money, Arch. I just…wanted it to be you.”
“Why?” I ask. Because now, I don’t feel like I deserve to be the one who helps him through this.
He gives me a long look, and somewhere inside it, I see the guy I used to know. The baseball star. The sun I orbited.
“Fishbowl,” I say.
“Fishbowl,” he agrees.
I guess I talked about that hypothesis with him at some point.
“You want me to buy the bar?”
“Only if you’ll sign something guaranteeing me a job there when I get out.”
“I can guarantee you an interview.”
He grins. “I’ll take it.”
I gesture at the TV. “What about this place?”
He picks up his beer and leans hard into the cushions of the leather couch. “I’m putting it on the market.”
“Do you like it?”
He looks around, so I do, too. So much of his personality is infused into the brick and the bookshelves.
The house itself suits him. Humble but warm, filled with simple luxuries like worn leather and a sick flatscreen.
He always loved this neighborhood with its older homes tucked in the hills of central Austin.
“Don’t sell it,” I say. “Let me handle it.”
He takes a deep breath, like he’s trying to absorb yet another hit to his pride, and I get it, but he’s not a charity case.
Not to me. He doesn’t need me to swoop in and save him.
He could sell his business, sell the house, get the money he needs.
But I do owe him more than I’ll ever be able to repay.
Money is nothing. Time is nothing, not compared to what he and his mom gave me.
“Whatever you need, you can have,” I say. “I’m here. I won’t take off again.”
“I know what this is,” he says. “I know I’ll owe you.”
“No. You won’t. First, I hate this money. Second, I’m being selfish. And a coward maybe. You like your lawyer?”
He stares hard at me for a long moment. “Do you want a beer?”
I accept his olive branch. He gets us some cold beers, and we talk about his lawyer. He does like him but doesn’t immediately dismiss my idea to put together a team that might keep him out of prison, or at least get his sentence reduced.
Once we start agreeing more than we’re disagreeing, the Rangers win, and we go to Strange Days, holing up in his office to make a plan for protecting his assets if Plan A doesn’t work out.
The odds are he’ll serve time, but it’s impossible to know how much.
He’s planning to plead guilty if he gets a good enough offer from the prosecutors, but in terms of the actual sentence, the judge will have the final say, and there’s no court date yet.
“What happened after I left?” I finally ask him.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean—college. The DUI? Baseball?”
He inhales deeply and settles back in his chair. “I tore my rotator cuff freshman year. Then I got hooked on pain meds. It escalated. I had to go to rehab, so that blew my shot at baseball, and honestly, I took it kinda hard.”
“Jesus.”
He shrugs. “I’m four years off drugs. Still working on alcohol. Obviously.”
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“You know, at first I did blame you. Because I knew if you’d been around, you wouldn’t have let it happen to me. You’d have seen it and called me on it, and I would have quit just to shut you the fuck up. But that was just an excuse. One of many.”
I swallow hard, not wanting to add to the pile of things I feel guilty about, but metaphorically picking up the shovel to do it anyway. “How much does forgiveness cost?”
“Hey, brother.” He leans forward and makes sure he’s looking me in the eye. “We’re gonna move on now, okay? Because I want to, and fuck knows you need to.”
“How?”
“We’ll figure it out,” he says. “Now tell me something. Have you seen Jayne Beck again?”
Out of the frying pan… “She spent the night last night.” The memory has become a regrettable one.
“Nice.” West drops his head back, smoke streaming from his mouth to the ceiling, billowing out like a mushroom cloud. “What's she like?”
“Well, it wasn't her first time.”
“You can stop there. I'll let my imagination do the rest. How is she to talk to?”
“You talked to her,” I remind him.
“I wasn't paying attention.” He pours us each another whatever.
I laugh. “And that doesn't answer your question?”
“She's not cool?”
“No, she’s all right. She talks a lot actually.”
“What about?” he asks.
“Her friends…” My thought process breaks off there. It derails at the thought of Tristan. No whiskey in the world is strong enough to make me forget his face this morning. “But there’s someone else…” I stop talking. I swallow hard. Even I can hear how weird my voice sounds.
He lays a heavy gaze on me, which I feel more than see. I squirm in my seat. “What?” I ask. If he were a sniper there would be a red dot on my forehead. All these years, and he can still nail me to the wall after one vague hesitation.
“You sound different,” he says.
“Than what?”
“Than before.”
“Before six years ago or before two minutes ago?”
“Before, ever.”
I shrug him off. “I'm drunk. So are you, by the way. What are we even talking about?”
“Who’s the other girl?”
“It’s not—nobody. Just a friend of my brother’s.” As close as we used to be, I’ve never come out and told West I’m bisexual, and even now, I’m not sure I want to get into that with him.
“She have a name?” he asks.
“West, who gives a shit?”
“I just asked what her name was.”
“It’s Tristan.”
“Tristan what?”
“Why?” I ask, annoyed that he’s closing in on it.
“What's she like?”
“Like my brother’s best friend.”