Lightning People (19 page)

“I look like shit,” he said. “I guess everyone out there was too polite to tell me.”

“You look fine,” Joseph said with a smile. William stared at Joseph's reflection in the mirror—sober and clean with those brilliant white teeth that landed commercial jobs. It was the smile of someone purposely lying to him when the truth covered his face. William couldn't place exactly why he felt a sudden rage tearing through him at the reflection of his friend over his shoulder. It must have started in the hallway with Del, who now leaned against the bedroom window rolling a cigarette like she was waiting for the right moment to leave. Sudden bouts of anger had always been a hazard of drinking and drugs for William, and so too was the irrepressible feeling that he had been slighted, wronged, treated for less than he was. William could usually keep that anger in check, but here Joseph was smiling
at him in the mirror, and the disparity between their faces had the neutralizing effect of gasoline.

“No, I don't look fine,” William yelled. “You don't have to lie to me. I look terrible.” He looked down at the pile of money on the vanity table and that fact embarrassed him too.

“Maybe you should lay off,” Del said.

“Lay off what?”

“Whatever it is you're on.”

“Are you going to let her talk to me that way?” William swerved around. Joseph sat quietly on the bed with his legs crossed and his eyebrows furrowed in a cheap show of concern.

“We just want to make sure you're okay,” Joseph replied, trying to smooth the hostility. Those words, however, carried a condescending undertone that brought William to take a step back in defense. Then Joseph tried to change the subject. “How much money did you make?”

“I made enough,” he replied. “But that really wasn't the point of the party tonight.” He wished he hadn't waved the money around a minute ago. “The point was to bring friends together—the people who
love
me—to say good-bye. It might be the last time you see me before I rent a car and pack all my stuff in. I could fly but I thought it might be nice to drive across and see the country.” William felt a need to sound reflective, but he also knew he could steer the conversation into a faint attack on Joseph. He took a sip from the champagne bottle. The spillover leaked down his wrist. “Maybe on the way I can even crash at your folks' place. Ohio's right on the way, isn't it?”

Joseph's smile tightened. His teeth disappeared.

“I'm afraid my mom's not much for visitors. And you wouldn't find Ohio exciting enough, anyway.”

William laughed, slamming his left hand down on Joseph's shoulder.

“That's too bad,” he said, squeezing his collarbone roughly. “I was hoping to see what kind of family produced you. I feel like I should thank them.”

“I haven't even met his mother,” Del said quietly. She was staring
out the window, blowing a small cloud of smoke against the glass. “So I doubt that's going to happen.”

“You haven't brought Del home to Ohio?” William faked shock. “My god, they must be dying to meet your wife. Del, you must at least have talked to his mother on the phone.”

She turned and shook her head without any trace of resentment, but her eyes were focused on her husband. Joseph placed his hand over William's knuckles to pry them loose and gazed up at him.

“You know I don't talk to my family,” he said, increasing the severity in his eyes. “You know that.”

“It's none of my business. But, come on, they must be so proud of you. We all are. Aren't we?” He turned to Del for confirmation, nearly tripping as his foot dragged on the floor. “So successful, this guy. You know, I used to hang out with Joseph all the time before you two got together. We used to be really close. Well, as close as you can be to someone who never really says anything. Now I never see him. It's like he disintegrated and there's just a faint trace left. Something called Joseph that you can't really locate but know is still there. Congratulations, Del. You must be making him so happy.”

Del inhaled on the cigarette and, uninterested in corroborating William's insinuation, bent her head forward to let her hair fall over her cheeks.

“But at least, Joseph, you must have met
her
family. No?” William shook his head in disappointment. “You don't talk about families? Is that off limits? I mean, I always knew the topic of Joseph's family was barred for me, but certainly not for you, Del? You
are
married, aren't you?”

“You were right before,” Del said in the shadows of her hair. “It's none of your business.”

“We're here for you,” Joseph said with a strained voice. “Why are you acting like this?”

“Well, I'm not acting much these days at all, am I?” William couldn't stop himself now. He had already sped past the warning flags and he was headed straight for the detonation. What difference did it make? He was leaving town. He could be honest with Joseph, and who cared if it was the last time they would ever share a room
together? He didn't need to hold on to him anymore, and the pity that filled Joseph's face as he looked up at him increased the magnitude of every old grudge and quiet offense swallowed down with backslaps and beers. The music in the outer room was vibrating the bedroom walls, and that potent seed of jealousy deep inside of him, which too many drinks nurtured, began to vibrate as if looking to erupt. William was mistaking his rage for self-dignity, some part of him knew this, but adrenaline was racing through his blood. He wanted to get the deceitful nature of their friendship out on the table, so at least they both knew where they stood. “I want to know what jobs you're getting. Then you and your wife can leave.”

“Let's go,” Joseph said as he rose from the bed. For a second they stood facing each other, the cold spray of Joseph's breath blowing on his skin. Their lips were a few inches from touching, their eyes so close that the vision of each other blurred from lack of distance. William bunched his fists, but he considered throwing a punch for too long to reclaim the spontaneous courage it required. “Call me tomorrow when you sober up,” Joseph said. “You should go back to your party.”

“You know what the problem with you is? You lack character.” William nodded his head to rev the thought, to sail it right through Joseph's dignified departure when he was just getting started on the duplicitous nature of friendship. “You're so sweet and quiet and, just look at you, helpful. My god, is there even a man inside that body?” He tried to grab Joseph's ear, but his friend's head whipped back and in another minute he had gathered Del's hand and they were walking toward the door. “I'm sorry to tell you that,” he screamed after them. “But you make it too difficult to like you. You don't try, and that's not fair to the rest of us.”

William found himself yelling at a slammed door.

In the emptiness of his bedroom, his head spun, and the first flutter of guilt was extinguishing the anger that had caused him to destroy all of the promise of the night. Already an apology was forming on his lips. His balance knocked sideways as he tried to run for the door and he fell backward into the dressing room, crashing through the hangers and into the empty arms of blouses and coats and whatever else Jennifer had decided not to wear into her new
life. He pulled himself up, bringing half of her wardrobe down as he climbed the clothes, and sprinted out of his bedroom to catch up to them. He hurried through the hallway, preparing his first words for forgiveness, but when he reached the front door, Joseph and Del were already gone.

 

AN HOUR LATER, after a failed attempt to reclaim his earlier triumph on the dance floor, William squatted against the cold tiles of the shower while Diggs shoveled coke up his nose. Sweat poured down his cheeks, and his eyelids were creating film dissolves. Someone started kicking the door, as if at any second, those feet would be replaced with fire axes.

William staggered into the kitchen and filled a glass with water. He listened to a rant about American politics between two British guys he didn't recognize while bringing the glass to his lips. William could feel hives swelling around his Adam's apple and resisted the urge to scratch. A chill ran through him, and the glass dropped in the sink where it cracked against the faucet. He wobbled back into the party. It had grown smaller in the last half hour, subtracting into couples that leaned against the walls. He wanted to kick everyone out, but it was already late and the end would come soon. The music was blasting in and out like someone was toying with the knob. Jesse punched him in the shoulder and said good-bye.

“Stay, just for a bit longer,” William pleaded with his eyes shut. He steadied himself against Jesse's arm. “I don't feel well. Something's not right. Something hasn't been right for a while.”

“You're wasted. It's two thirty. Roll with it. We're all assholes after a certain hour. The trick is to think about something else. Think of a story, the first thing that comes in your head.”

William tried to erase the shame he felt for the fight with Joseph. Tomorrow he would call him and apologize. He would beg forgiveness, he would send Del flowers—not because there was no truth in what he had said, but because there was no reason to leave a bruised memory of himself behind. He focused his thoughts on the first image that came into his brain, a sunken family room with a television set blaring through the Illinois sunlight.

“Okay. A story.”

“That's right. Tell me.” Jesse coaxed. “I'm listening. Don't worry about anything else.”

“Did I ever tell you when I was a kid, all I did one summer was watch HBO?” He could hear people pushing around him quietly and knew they must think him far too gone to bother with a good-bye. He didn't care. “I'd sit in our dark basement on the warmest days while every other kid was outside, enjoying the weather, making guns out of the lawn sprinklers, and throwing rocks at the cheapest cars. I'd be ten inches from the TV screen shivering in central air and watching any movie that came on. Really, the shittiest teen flicks and romantic comedies. They'd eventually repeat, and I'd sit there, memorizing the dialogue of all the parts until I got them perfect, and then, when my parents called me up for dinner, I'd try to use those lines on them.” William didn't open his eyes. He was afraid his vision would scramble. He wanted to be the man he was three hours earlier.

“That's it,” Jesse encouraged kindly, holding on to his shoulders. “How did your parents react?”

“I didn't really care what my parents were talking about. I'd put in a ‘I don't think love is going to save you from getting out of this amusement park alive' or ‘How can you watch every man walk out on you and not wonder if maybe you're the problem?' The weird thing was, my parents would just nod and go quiet for a minute over their plates, like they were really considering what I said, weighing it for some insight to their failed paving company or the neighbor's escalating divorce battle. Once I told my mother, ‘If you don't see that the whole town wants you dead and try to do something about it, tomorrow you'll wake up next to a vampire who only wants to rip your heart out.'” Telling the story was helping him. It was keeping him from passing out. It was cutting through the clouded thoughts.

“How did she take that?”

“She began to cry.” Spit burst from his lips. He started laughing hard, involuntarily snorting, even though he didn't find what he was saying to be the least bit funny. His knees buckled, and suddenly the pressure of the lights stopped beating against his eyelids. The music
skidded to a silence. William opened his eyes, and the living room was black. A long collective “ahhh” passed through the mouths of the few guests that remained.

“We blew a fuse,” Jesse said, lifting William's chin. But already he could hear other voices saying “brownout,” then “no, look out the window. The whole city's gone.”

William took Jesse's hand and kept going with the story. He wanted to get out an apology before he lost consciousness. Electrical failures would have to wait. Manhattan would have to remain in the dark until he uttered one proper apology—one honest appeal for forgiveness that would stand in for all of the others.

“Okay, story time's over,” Jesse replied with a nervous voice. “We have an emergency. Seriously, man, get it together. Where are the stairs?”

Matches and lighters began to crack the blackness. Bodies fumbled over chairs to locate jackets and purses, and the windows were opened to let in sirens and screams coming from the street.

“Sometimes I think about calling them and saying that none of what I said was meant for them. It had nothing to do with their lives. They were headed to divorce court no matter what. I mean, my poor mother. Did she start thinking all of Breeze Falls, Illinois, really wanted her dead? Even her own husband?” His laughing returned in harder waves, exploding up his windpipe from his stomach and out through his nostrils, and he bent over, wheezing out laughter uncontrollably, gasping for air as his entire body shook with painful joy. He clenched his hands around his stomach like he might throw up. “Wait. It gets worse.”

No one had seen her enter the apartment, and if they had, most would not have been able to identify her. They would have taken her for a late arrival stuck on the twelfth floor of a party in its death throes. She wore a silver charm bracelet that caught the match light and dirty canvas sneakers that tracked beer across the rug. She held the receipt from the cab that had dropped her off in front of the building. She did not need to grope through the dark. She knew the layout of the apartment. Her hand slid along an empty shelf of missing curios as she passed.