Crazy Horse's Girlfriend (9781940430447) (9 page)

A dude came up looking for weed and we exchanged money for baggie in a quick, intricate handshake. I looked back down at my book. I knew I should be doing homework, but I was reading the book Mike gave me. It was weird but I liked it. It was about loneliness. A few minutes later, I saw Mike making his way up the cement stairway. I smiled. Patted the cement next to me.

“Step into my office.”

“I thought I might find you out here.” He sat next to me, put his hand on my leg. He saw what I was reading and picked the book up. “You know, I can't get on an airplane without a copy of this.”

“It sounds like you and this book are getting pretty serious.”

“Oh, yes. It's been on and off again for years. But I think we're stuck together.”

“Isn't that always the way.”

“Hey, so, I heard about what happened after I left. What happened to Jake,” Mike said sympathetically. “I'm sorry.”

I sighed. “Thanks. I suppose we should have known better. But he's been in there before. And he'll get out.”

Mike looked at me kindly and brushed my arm with his hand. I took it and squeezed it. He smiled.

“So, what's the plan for this weekend?” Mike asked, rubbing my leg. “I think maybe you need a distraction. I think perhaps you and I should do something together.”

“This could be arranged.”

“Yeah?”

“Well, since my parents aren't exactly happy about my leaving the premises, I have to have a plan. Then again, they're never really happy about my leaving the premises, and I often have a plan. Or, variations on the same basic plans.”

“Ah. Clever,” Mike said.

“Often, I just climb out my window. But this is risky. And time sensitive. So my other plan is to tell my mom that I'm studying with Julia. My mom loves Julia, because she makes straight As. So I figured she might suspend my grounding if I told her I was going to hang with Julia. If that fails, I can always just climb out the window.”

“I'm what?” It was Julia, walking down the stairs behind me.

“Hey,” I said, and she sat down. “Where's Treena?”

“Oh, rubbing her belly at some poor, unsuspecting victim.”

“Ah. Well, can I tell my mom that I'm coming over to your place this weekend? Mike and me want to hang out, and well, you know I'm grounded, but she might let me out of jail if she thinks I'm coming over to your place.”

Julia looked at Mike, his hand on my leg.

“I don't know Margaritte, I really don't want to get in trouble. I mean, what if your mom calls?”

I looked at her incredulously. “Julia! You were always fine with this before. Besides, if my mom calls, your foster mother never comes to the phone. One of her billion foster kids always answers, and half the time they just hang up.”

“Let me think about it. I mean… ”

“Look. You don't even have to be involved. If my mom calls, you don't have to talk to her. And you can just tell her you don't know where I am.”

“Let me think about it,” she said. “And there's a party. I thought you… two might want to come.”

“So, you'll let me use you as an excuse for a party, but—”

“Fine! Whatever. Really, Margaritte, you should study.”

“OK, Mom.”

“I should go. I need to look something up in the library before history. See you at track, Mike?”

“Yeah, sure,” he said, and we watched her walk down the steps, her long, slender, athletic legs taking the stairs slowly, elegantly. I didn't know what had gotten into her. Though she was used to getting the attention of any dudes she wanted, she had a ton of them, so I really didn't know why she was being so weird about Mike.

“Huh,” I said.

“What?”

“Well, Julia.”

“Yeah,” he said. “She's alright. How long have you known her?”

“Since junior high. She lives in a foster home. She'd come in from another, a really bad situation. She's good to me though. Always tries to help me with homework, and I admire her.”

“Why?”

“She has a lot less going for her than I do, but she works hard. I don't know what my problem is,” I said, picking at the beige dust on the edges of the stairs.

Mike laughed. “I have it better than you. But I have the same problem. I hate school. It's just like a job. Like my dad's job, which he hates. It's do what they want, hit the pellet, get the reward. Repeat. It's repugnant. I don't want to ever do what people tell me to do. In fact, most of the time, I'll do whatever the opposite is.”

I made a mental note to look repugnant up in my mom's old dictionary. “Yeah. I see that. I don't know. Maybe Julia has it right though. She says she wants to be a lawyer. To help people.”

“She won't.”

“Why do you say that?”

“She's just saying that to herself. She wants money. I'll bet that she ends up a corporate lawyer. Screwing people over.”

“I hope you're wrong.”

Mike looked over at me. “You're too good to people. You know Margaritte, she's asked me out. Well, she's asked if I wanted to hang out a couple of times.”

I felt my heart race. “Yeah?”

“I said no.”

“Oh,” I said, and he reached over and kissed me.

He rubbed my leg and got up. “See you very soon.”

“OK.”

A few minutes later the bell rang and I sighed, picked my things up and went to class. Instead of reading Stephen King under my desk, I was reading Mike's book. The teacher didn't catch me.

That weekend, I was practically peeing myself. Mom had looked at me suspiciously, my most faux-sincere expression on my face when I'd asked her if I could spend the night at Julia's, and said yes. I'd also told Julia that I'd come to the party, though it sounded awful. It was at George's house. He was this crazy fucker who lived way up on Fall River Road. His parents were never home.

Mike had called me and given me directions to his house. He lived up on Highway 103, in between Evergreen and Idaho Springs. I took the twists and turns on narrow mountain roads to the sound of Biggie and almost drove past Mike's house because I was so busy nervously jamming.

I pulled to a stop when I realized I'd missed the turn and threw my car into reverse, my tires kicking up dirt and rocks as I drove backwards until I saw what I was looking for, a long, grassy driveway with a sign that said
The Walkers
. I drove up slowly. As his house came into view, I could see that it was huge, much larger than most of the houses in town. It was a log house and it looked like the kind of house that a Californian would think was really authentically Colorado. I parked behind his SUV and got out, pulling my backpack out of the passenger seat. I walked up the stone steps to his front door and hit the doorbell and the sound of some kind of classical tune echoed distantly into the house. I could see him inside, walking towards me through the large glass windows that surrounded the door.

“Hey. Come on in.” He stepped back and gestured with his hand and I walked inside. The living room was covered in sculptures made of wood or stone, in the shapes of animals and trees and other stuff that was nature-themed. The couches were white leather and expensive looking.

“Have a seat,” he said, hugging me. I hugged him back and walked over to one of the giant couches and plopped down, putting my arms wide. “Nice digs,” I said, and he laughed.

“Want something to drink?”

“Sure.”

“Gin and tonic OK?”

“Hell yah. Or as they would say where you come from, hells ya.”

He cocked his head and smiled sarcastically. “Thanks for appreciating my culture. That's super culturally sensitive of you,” he said, disappearing around the corner. I looked around again, staring at the gigantic TV, even though it was off.

“I'm really sensitive. Culturally so,” I said, and I could hear the faint sound of his laughter in the kitchen and then, “Good to know, Margaritte.”

There was a ridiculously large, technologically impenetrable-looking cable box on top of the TV. I had loads of friends with fancy cable, even the ones who lived in tinderbox trailers. I shook my head. I thought about Treena's place, where they had so many channels that I could never flip through all of them in one sitting. The kids just sat in front of the TV at her house, eating corn chips and staring. A few minutes later Mike returned with two glasses and handed one to me. I drank and asked him about the nature-themed shit all over the place. He told me his parents were really into it, that they'd gone to a ton of galleries when they'd first gotten there and bought a load of it.

“It's kind of funny, because you know, well. Nature's all around you.”

“I know. Whatever. That's their thing right now.”

“Where's the bathroom?” I asked, and he pointed me in the right direction. I went down a hallway, with pictures of Mike and his parents and professional looking prints and pictures of more nature scenes covering the walls. I opened the door and walked in. The bathroom was all white. Not mostly white, like the living room, but
white
: from the walls to the curtains to the soap. “Christ,” I whispered to myself, closing the door softly. It felt like me just being in there would somehow taint it.

When I returned to the living room, Mike was looking out the window. He turned around and smiled. “In the interest of all things natural, let's get high,” he said.

“Sure,” I said, pulling a baggie and a pipe out of my bag. “Should we do it in the nature?”

“That sounds exciting,” he said and I laughed. We walked outside and sat down on some incredibly expensive-looking beige patio furniture.

I stuffed the pipe and handed it to him, after I'd dug a lighter out of the pocket of my jeans. He took it, and hit it, hard. He held the smoke in for a while, and then let out a long stream of it from in-between his lips.

“You make this shit look refined,” I said, and he handed the pipe back to me, shaking his head gently.

“By the way, the weed, good stuff.”

“Only the best for you.”

We took a few more hits and then he picked our glasses off of the table and went back into the house. I could see through the windows that he was walking over to a large stereo system. He pulled a CD out of a standing CD rack and slid it in. Strange music I didn't recognize at all started playing, and he disappeared into the kitchen. He walked back, handed me my glass and sat back down. We were both silent for a few minutes and I listened to the music. Most of what I listened to was rap. This music was different, it moved through the air in the most disjointed, painful way. There was something angry about it that was completely different from the violence that came out of rap. Something beautiful, but kind of rotten, underground, like it was coming from a distance. I couldn't find the origin of the pain inside of it.

I downed my drink in one swallow, threw my thumb in the air and said, “One, two, three, four, let's have a thumb war!” I was feeling good, the booze and the weed beginning to dance through my blood in a violent ballet.

Mike looked at me, put his glass down and we locked hands.

Our thumbs struggled and he stood up. “Cheater!” I said, and he wrestled my thumb down.

“OK, since you cheated, we have to go again.”

We locked hands and wrestled, and this time I stood up and wrestled his thumb down.

“Now who's the cheater?” He asked, and threw his thumb out again.

“Me,” I said. I was feeling nervous though, because my hands were sweaty. I wiped them on my jeans, smiled, and threw my thumb up. He threw his up and we locked hands, both of us standing up and laughing. He won.

“Now you're the cheater and the winner,” I said. We sat down. Mike looked at me.

“What?”

“You're a silly girl.”

“Yes, yes I am.”

“How's home?” He asked, brushing my arm lightly, tenderly with his hand.

“It's what it is. Yeah, it really does blow that Jake's in juvie for a month.”

“What is juvie exactly?”

“Jail for kids. It's probably better, though. His parents weren't exactly wanting him to come home.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

Mike sat back, shook his head. “That's terrible. Pretty much no matter what I do, I know my parents will always let me come home,” he said, touching the rim of the glass thoughtfully. “And I've really put them through it.”

I thought about asking him about this. What he'd put them through, but before I could he asked if I wanted to take a walk.

We went down his driveway and onto the side street I'd turned in on and started down the road. “Ha,” I said, pointing to the street sign. “That always kills me.”