Crazy Horse's Girlfriend (9781940430447) (6 page)

 

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Around 11:30 I climbed out the window. I drove over to Will's, making sure to keep the headlights off until I was a few minutes away from the house. It was a short drive and a few minutes later, I was parking in the lot outside of the complex Will and Megan called home. I walked up the steps that led to their apartment and I could see Jake outside, smoking, sitting on the balcony of the complex. I sat down next to him. He handed me a smoke.

“How was the old guy tonight?”

“Drunk.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Will's still gone. Megan's asleep.”

“God, Will's such a fuck up,” I said.

“I know.”

“Man, I don't want to go to school Monday, I really don't,” I said. Jake had been drinking a beer and I picked it up and took a long swallow.

“Tell me about it.”

I did pretty bad in school, but Jake, he was failing. The whole thing felt like a setup half the time. Most of the kids who went to school in Idaho Springs went on to the Army, or straight into working at Walmart, or waiting tables at the Derby or some career in dental assistantship or some shit like that. And those things were fine, I guess. But it really blew my mind how few went on to much else. I looked into the distance, the lights of the houses dotting the mountainside across from us.

“Fuck it. That's not for a few days,” I said, picking Jake's beer up again and drinking the rest of it in one hard swallow that made the back of my throat burn. We smoked for another minute or two, threw the butts over the side and got up, ready to head over to the abandoned complex. Jake went back inside to throw the beer can away and came back out, closing the door softly. We walked down the stairs and at the bottom, Jake stopped. He turned to me and smiled, pulling a bunch of bottles of cheap liquor out of his bag.

“Yeah,” I said, and he placed them back in the bag. Jake stole shit from the liquor stores all the time. He was smooth. He knew how to manipulate people into feeling guilty for staring at him. And when they'd look away, he was quick. His hands were nimble, delicate, like when he was drawing his black and whites.

We walked for a few blocks, and when we reached the abandoned complex, we could see that there was faint light inside and noise.

“I guess the party's started without us,” I said.

We walked to the side of the building facing the highway, where a window had been propped open with an old plank of wood. Jake stared up at the building thoughtfully, most of the windows and all of the doors boarded up except for the one that had been cleared, the one that was propped open. The windows looked like cartoons with violent Xs for eyes and the entrance had a sign stating,
No Trespassing. By order of the Police.

“Fuck those guys,” Jake muttered, standing straight as an arrow. It wasn't far from a couple of old houses that looked as if they too should've been abandoned years and years ago. They weren't. I knew, because I went to school with kids who lived in them. In fact, I'd been best friends with a girl who lived in one, in junior high. Her house was filled with faded candy bar and fast food wrappers, commodity food cans, toys and children who were either running around wild or completely ignoring each other. We had sat in her room playing with Barbies from another era, one of them with a button on her back that once depressed, made her faded eye wink. Something about that always made me sad, but it was her favorite, and she used to make it wink, over and over at her Ken doll who was missing a leg.

Jake climbed inside first and then helped me in. There were about fifteen people standing around the living room laughing and drinking. They had lit candles, which gave the place a strange, eerie glow. The walls were covered in old, yellowing wallpaper that was peeling off in large sheets, exposing rotting walls underneath sticky with beige glue. Kids had spray painted everywhere: gang shit, random shit, Betty loves Bob kind of shit. It was as if Idaho Springs had some sort of collective poetry, and it was all over the walls of this abandoned complex. There was a rotting, orange chair in one of the corners of the room, and a couch, and toys and other random objects scattered around. Jake went over to the counter and pulled the bottles of booze out and set them down. He had even brought plastic cups.

“Someone's prepared,” I said.

“That's me,” he said, pouring vodka into two cups. He handed me one and we clinked our plastic together and drank.

I looked down at the booze and up at Jake. “Tell me I'm not like my dad.”

Jake rolled his eyes. “You're not like your dad.”

I nodded. We joined a group of guys Jake and me knew from dealing and talked for a while. I got another drink after the first.

I felt a tap at my shoulder and turned around. It was Julia, with Treena and Mike behind her. I smiled at him and he smiled back.

“Hey girl,” Julia said. “We were walking over here and ran into this guy,” she said, pointing at Mike.

He walked up to me. “Well, I was in my car and saw them walking. So, I stopped and picked them up.”

“Drink?” I asked, and we made our way into the kitchen. I poured.

“This place smells like a million bums took a giant fucking dump,” Treena said.

“So your gift is subtlety,” Mike said, and I laughed.

“What you call me?” Treena said.

“I said you have a way with words.”

Treena was silent after that, though I was sure that if I could see her face, it would carry her usual grumpy fucking expression. I wasn't sure if I'd ever seen her smile, though I couldn't blame her. She shared a trailer with her mom, and about four more kids. And it was a small trailer. And she took care of the kids while her mom worked at the gas station down the street.

We left the kitchen and went into the living room.

“What about the rest of this place?” Mike asked.

“I'm sure it's as tastefully decorated as the living room,” I said.

“Let's check it out,” Mike said and I nodded. I picked up a candle that was sitting in an old cup, and we walked into a bedroom, Julia and Treena following. The only thing left was part of an old wooden bed frame. Something was drawn on the wall above it, some really interesting graffiti. It was intricate, it had dimension. I couldn't quite make out what it was. At first it looked like it was a fancy rendering of a gang name, but there was more to it, I could tell. I walked closer.

“What is this?” I asked. I looked at it for a while, but I couldn't make it out. “I'm getting Jake. He draws,” I said, and walked into the living room. He was passing a joint around. “Come and take a look at this.”

“OK,” he said, and followed me into the bedroom. I pointed to the wall.

“Huh,” he said, looking at it as closely as he could.

“It's a couple. A couple having sex… in space,” Mike said. I started. I'd been so absorbed in trying to figure out what it was that I hadn't realized that he had walked behind me. I looked again. “Really?”

“Yeah. Well, look—here's her face, here's his. And that's where they're joined,” he said, laughing a little sophisticated laugh and putting his hand up to my back in the dark. I shivered. “Ah.”

Julia and Treena came over to see.

“Shiiiiit,” Treena said, “goddamn, they're fucking.”

“Like I said, way with words,” Mike said.

“Why waste all this?” Julia asked.

“What do you mean?” Mike said.

“Well, who the hell else is going to see this, besides us and a couple of bums and maybe a few drunken partygoers?”

“No joke,” Jake said. “I love to draw, and I'm fucking good at it. But I'd be goddamned if I'd waste my talent on this shithole.”

“Don't you get it?” Mike asked, and I could hear him shaking his head, the swish of his neck on his puffy North Face jacket.

“What don't we get?” Treena said.

“They did it for the love of it.”

We all stared for a while, and then Jake suggested we sit down and smoke some weed.

“I'll do that for the love of it,” Julia said, and Mike and Jake laughed.

I went into the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of vodka and we sat in a circle in the bedroom and passed the joint around and talked, and there was something about all of us sitting there that just seemed temporary, weird. Transitory. That was another word I'd just learned. Yes, transitory. That was how it felt. But I couldn't figure it out. Why I felt that way. The candle was in the middle of our circle, pointing up at the weathered, cracked ceiling and creating all kinds of creepy shadows and I wondered about the people who'd lived there. The lives they'd lived in these terrible, rotting apartments. Their children. Where they were now. It didn't matter. The joint came around to me, and I took a hit, and held it in, and blew the smoke out into the cold air, not knowing where the smoke ended and my breath began.

“So Mike, what do you think about our all-star track team?” Julia asked.

“It's not bad.”

Julia looked at him thoughtfully and Treena began rubbing her stomach. “Not bad for a hick little mountain town,” Julia said.

“Well, it's harder to run when you're pregnant,” I said, and Mike laughed.

“Yes, especially when it comes to the hurdles. Even getting one person over them is a challenge. When you're jumping for two, well, that's a real challenge.”

“Maybe they should have a special category for that.”

“Oh, totally,” I said, the bottle of vodka coming around. “It could give new meaning to the term endurance.”

“What are you two fucking even talking about?” Treena said, mid-rub. “Who's pregnant?”

Mike and I looked at each other and laughed. “No one Treena,” Julia said. “Have some vodka.” Treena looked at Mike and then at Julia and then pulled the bottle out of Julia's hand roughly, and took a long swig, staring at Mike the whole time.

“It's something to do here,” Julia said. “Track, I mean—not getting pregnant. Although that's something to do here too.”

“Well, I want a baby,” Treena said. “Not that I'm pregnant right now or anything.”

“Not drinking for two?” I asked her.

“Fuck you Margaritte. You think you're so funny,” she said.

“Sorry,” I said, not meaning it.

“Why aren't you in track?” Mike asked me.

“I'm not exactly the sporty type.”

“Well, but it keeps you in shape,” Julia said, looking at me and rubbing her lean, muscular leg. “And it's not like it's football, Margaritte. I don't consider myself a jock of any sort. It's a totally different thing. It's more like tennis, or skiing. But it's just your body. And time. And well, I can afford it, because it is just your body, there really isn't much in the way of equipment to buy.”

“Yeah,” Mike said. It was my turn to swig moodily at the bottle of vodka as they talked about running, and how fucking awesome it was. I looked over at Jake and he was rolling his eyes.

“Julia, where's your boyfriend?” I asked.

“I don't know. Probably hanging with all of his football buddies,” she said, drinking from the bottle. I'd met her boyfriend a few times at different parties. He was a football player, and a real moron in my opinion. But that meant that it was easier for Julia to screw around on the side. The poor meaty fucker seemed to adore her.

One of Jake's friends came in and asked what we were doing in there and Jake told him about the drawing. A handful of people came in to look at it, and we cleared out.

I noticed that the party had gotten bigger, much bigger.

“Hey,” Mike said, catching my hand.

“Yeah?”

“Want to take a bottle of something and a candle and check out more of the rooms?” He asked, smiling.

“Sure.” I walked into the kitchen, grabbed a half-empty bottle of vodka and went back over to Mike. As we walked away, I looked over at Julia. She had joined a group of people after we'd left the bedroom. She was watching us. I smiled uneasily at her. She smiled back.

We walked into the second bedroom, but there was nothing in there. No old furniture or toys, so we walked out again and into the living room, where things were thundering.

“Let's try another apartment,” Mike said.

“OK,” I answered and we walked through the growing throng of people and out the door. In the hallway, we could see that the door to the apartment beside the one where we were partying was wide open. I shrugged and Mike took my hand, leading me inside. There was an old couch in there, by a window. We walked over to it; putting our jackets down onto the couch, dust billowing up and into the air as we sat. I looked around. The windows in this apartment were all broken out, pieces of glass on the floor everywhere, including the window above us. Cold air was rushing in and I shivered.

“Don't these kinds of places make you feel lonely?” Mike asked.

“Yeah,” I said, taking a swig from the bottle we'd brought and grimacing. I handed it to Mike and he did the same and then set the bottle down on the floor.