20. Dorien
CHAPTER TWENTY
DORIEN
The ice cream truck music wakes me. It’s tinny, warped, and playing from inside my skull. A little boy is screaming in the background. I know his name but I won’t say it, not until later today.
My hands are shaking before my eyes open.
I find the joint on my nightstand by touch, then I locate my lighter and let the flame do its magic.
The first puff tastes like burnt grass. I hold the smoke until my lungs protest, then let it out.
My fingers stop trembling somewhere around the fourth drag, or maybe they don’t and I just stop noticing.
I dress for the day like it’s a normal day: Jeans. Leather jacket. Gloves last. They always go on last.
Why can’t this be a normal day?
I skip my classes, skip everything, even breakfast. By 10 a.m., I’m at a bar six miles off campus.
The wood paneling is so warped it looks like the walls are trying to collapse inward.
I order a bourbon shot. The bartender doesn’t card me because I must look like I desperately need it.
One shot isn’t enough, so I drink two more until finally the room softens and the buzzing in my body fills my ears.
The country music from the jukebox, which I hate, feels appropriate.
A guy at the end of the bar keeps glancing over at me. He has a thick neck, a baseball cap, and his hands are wrapped around a pint glass.
I look at him until he looks back.
“Problem?” he asks.
“You look like an idiot,” I say. It’s not true because how can someone look like an idiot? I don’t know the guy. He just looks like someone who has a quick temper, based on the way he’s choking that glass and then tension in his body.
His first reaction is shock because my statement was pretty random. “Excuse me?” he asks.
“You look like a weak idiot,” I say, standing.
He stands too and we exchange more words. The bartender says, “Hey, take it outside,” a few times but we both ignore him.
I shove Baseball Cap when it seems like he might back down, and I’m rewarded with what I’m craving: a punch to the jaw. My head whips to the side as a sickening ache reverberates up into my skull. The second punch lands below my ribs and folds me over the bar top.
The bartender is shouting. Someone grabs the back of my jacket and then I’m in the alley, on my knees in a puddle that smells like beer and dumpster runoff.
They either threw Baseball Cap out another exit or didn’t blame him for the fight. Either way, I’m alone with the garbage.
I light another joint because the pains in my body aren’t enough to make me feel better.
I lie down on the concrete as the world spins and mellows at the same time. The cold presses in through my jacket, my shirt, into my spine. Quel gachis. What a waste. Of this day, of the bourbon. Of me.
The sky above the alley is a narrow strip of gray between two rooflines and I watch it until it blurs, then darkens, then disappears as I close my eyes.
I wake to a hand on my shoulder.
“Still alive?”
I crack open a single eye to find Carter hovering over me. He crouches as I sit up, his jaw set in a way that means he wants to hit me and hug me in the same breath. His eyes scan my split lip and the bruise probably on my jaw.
“How?” I ask. My voice is wrecked.
“Dude. This is what you do every year.” He pulls me up by the arm and steadies me as I stand.
“Since you’re old enough to legally drink this year, I had a hunch you’d be out today.
I hit up bars asking if a messed-up guy in a leather jacket has been causing problems. Only took three bars to find you. ”
I want to laugh. What comes out instead is a single tear down my bruised jaw. Carter pretends he doesn’t see it. He hands me water and while I drink he reaches into my jacket pocket and pulls out my remaining three joints.
He pockets them all. “You’ve had enough, man.”
I check my phone. It’s already 6:47 p.m. and the sun is long gone. “I need to get to the cemetery.”
“I’ll drive you.”
“No.”
He studies me and then nods. He orders me a rideshare and we stand in the alley until a gray sedan pulls up to the curb. He opens the door for me, then taps the roof twice, the way people do in movies, and I almost smile.
I fall asleep during the ride, so the driver wakes me by shouting my name. I stumble out of the car.
The cemetery is quiet the way only places full of the dead can be. Gravel crunches under my boots as I walk. The headstones are all in rows, each one the same basic form with different names carved into the surface. It’s a sculptor’s nightmare; all that stone and nothing original.
I find the right one. A child’s grave, because he was a child when he died.
Eli Matsuda.
I stand there and I can’t speak. My mouth opens and nothing comes. The screaming starts again inside my head, the boy calling for help. My eyes burn and my throat locks, and I let the tears come because there is no one here to see me fall apart.
It’s the one time a year I truly let myself fall apart.
Then there are footsteps on the grass behind me.
Somehow, I just know it’s her, like there’s some invisible thread connecting us.
I glance over my shoulder, not even caring how wrecked I look because I know she’ll look the same. She’s standing ten feet back, hands in her jacket pockets, face blotchy, eyes swollen. She’s already been crying, like me.
But why is she here so late? We have an understanding about this place.
She comes during the day. I come after dark.
Every year since the funeral, we’ve never let ourselves be here at the same time.
We never have to stand here together at the site of what we did, because seeing each other makes it true in a way that standing alone does not.
She doesn’t move and neither do I.
I turn back to the gravestone. She’s here and nothing’s going to change that.
I knew this day would come eventually; eventually we’d face what we’ve both been avoiding for twelve years. I just didn’t know it would come so soon. In our forties, maybe, but not now.
Not today.
I knew this anniversary would be worse.