Parker

Clunk.
“This car is falling apart,” I venture absently as we turn a corner, wipers on full blast, battering the snow away. The storm is in its third day now.
Merrick just stares out the passenger window, like he didn’t even hear the noise. He’s mesmerised by the off-white sky; it’s like a brightly shining darkness.
“Piece by beautiful peace,” he mocks me.
“Hey, at least mine works.” He looks over at me, his hand carefully brushing the upholstery.
“Touché.”
The blister on my arm itches, and I let go of the wheel to scratch it. That’s all it takes, just one movement, one moment. I remember this part very clearly. It’s not that having my hands on the wheel would have saved us, but I’m so focused on scratching without losing control of the car that I ignore the stop sign at the crossroads; it just fails to register.
So I keep driving and the other car, a big white Toyota SUV, hisses and snarls as the breaks fight to gain purchase on the snow. I brake and swerve, but fuck me: there’s a parked car by the curb on the other side.
“Jesus,” I mumble and in the corner of my eye Merrick flinches and suddenly


there are two separate trains of thought running through my head. One of them is thinking how strange it is that I still say Jesus even though I’m not religious and I haven’t been for years so I guess it must be a habit I picked up from someone in the family or maybe even TV or something oh holy fuck the world is tilting and a traffic sign is punching through the windscreen



everything seems to condense into a flattened tunnel of events, like walking into a bank vault and we’re bound straight for the parked car, which looks auburn under the three inches or so of snow on it and I can faintly hear Merrick say “this is a crash” as the harshness of the turn away from the SUV pushes my old Suzuki onto its two left-hand wheels, and I realise we’re about to be fucked because that SUV isn’t stopping


and it’s pretty calm now. The fierceness of the storm seems a million miles away even though the windshield is shattered, completely gone. I feel very conscious of my seatbelt as my eyes drift over the apartment buildings across the street, 70s concrete things with circular windows in columns above the entrances, but big square windows everywhere else.
My line of sight is uncomfortably broken by the post for the stop sign, which I realise is in the car with me. I keep drifting as the snowflakes spiral onto the broken glass and my eyes come upon something that gives off a tense feeling of inappropriateness: Merrick’s head.
I’m not sure I’d even have noticed it there if it hadn’t had that sense of I’m-not-supposed-to-be-here about it, kind of like how you can get away with being naked at a party, provided you’re not awkward about it, because if you are, everyone is going to be awkward.
And there it is, Merrick’s head, just lying on the dash, on its right side. Incredibly straight trails of blood lie in narrow lines leading from the neck, but the only blood still coming out of it is coming in a steady welling, like a low-powered drinking fountain.
For some reason I look to my right and, sure enough, there’s the rest of Merrick, still propped up, right hand still clutching the plastic door handle, left hand splayed unnaturally over the edge of his seat. The stop sign is in the back seat, on top of some Neil Gaiman books, an empty CD case and a McDonalds paper cup.
My eyes defocus, or try to, and I’m faintly aware of pain approaching in my shoulders. A sudden gust of wind brings cold into the car, and I start shivering, which accelerates the pain.
Movement: my eyes dart to the head. Merrick’s eyes have opened.
They’re looking at me.
They’re wide, very wide. His mouth opens, works as if he’s trying to find words. The eyes remain wide, panicked and confused. He looks over at his body and back to me, the mouth works a few more times, the eyes bore into me, then roll back into his head, and then shut.
I struggle to comprehend the meaning of all this and stare out the smashed windshield as sirens approach. I’m aware of people approaching but I want them all to fuck off, like relatives at a family birthday. One more glance at the head and the eyes are still shut, and my whole body stiffens at the pain in my shoulders.

* * *

The fractured tibia keeps me in the hospital for a week, and the storm comes and goes. I watch the snow roar silently through the amber beams of streetlights from my sixth-floor hospital ward.
My mind refuses to contemplate Merrick. My mother, his mother and his half-sister Paula come to visit me on the third day. They’d been twice before, but I was sedated the first time and asleep the second. “We didn’t want to wake you,” Merrick’s mom Lucy says, her grief barely held in check by a pinched smile and a thin layer of make-up.
“How was the funeral?” I ask, fighting the urge to touch my shoulder. Asides from my linens and three-day stubble, I don’t look much like a hospital patient; I don’t even have to have a sling for my arm, and it makes me feel uneasy, like I’m cutting class by pretending to be sick.
“Oh, fine. Your mother made lasagne for the wake,” Lucy says and pats my mom’s knee. The hospital chairs they’re sitting in look like they belong in a middle school.
I can’t look at them. I look at my nightstand, which has a Tank Girl paperback and some DVDs on it.
“That… reminds me,” Mom says, rifling through her handbag. “I was going to get some more books for you, but I forgot… if you want to, take my phone, it’s…”
“Mom, it’s okay…” I start, but don’t have the energy to continue. My eyes meet Paula’s where she stands against the ward closet looking like she’s been crying a shitload. We stare at each other, and I’m unable to hold it, but there’s an invitation in those eyes.

* * *

I fuck Paula from behind against the wall of my ward. She doesn’t gasp or moan, just inhales quickly. In the end, I’m unable to come due to the pain in my tibia, but I’m pretty sure she does. I used to be pretty good at that, knowing when they come, but I’ve gotten worse at it.
We watch the storm.
“You must think I’m pretty sick,” she says after a while.
“No, not at all… in fact, I think it’s a common reaction.”
“That’s nice. I just didn’t want you to feel like I was using you to vent emotional baggage. I mean, I care about you, is all I’m saying.”
“No, it’s all right, I get it,” and I look at her and actually put my arm round her, but we don’t feel like lovers, more like comrades, soldiers in some kind of jungle war.
“Besides, it seems like…” I trail off, knowing how offended she’ll be if I finish the thought.
“What?” she asks, predictably enough, but I realise I don’t really care, anyway, and I think she’ll understand.
“It just seems like… the last twenty or so times I’ve had sex, it seems like it’s been some fucked up emotional thing, like anger or grief or… feeling someone’s had for someone else for a while, and never said anything about it… I don’t know.”
Another silence, and the storm billows completely out of control. I watch a large branch blow through a backyard.
“Why do suppose that is? All those people finally admitting they have feelings for someone else?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s like… none of it matters anymore.”

* * *

I end up watching the news for some reason. Suicide bombings, escalating attacks with growing numbers of victims and aerial strikes that are leaving unknown numbers of civilians injured or dead all take back seats to financial meltdowns, the rate of the Dollar against the Euro and two senators who voted against their party lines and are proud to make a decision that’s right for a stronger America. The storm keeps blowing and my ex-girlfriend Sarah calls and says she’s breaking up with Rory.
“That’s like the fifth big breakup this year,” I exhale into the payphone.
“Not really. Jake and Lorna got back together Will and Morgan were already broken-up in like, October… he just didn’t move out ‘til February.”
“Uh huh.”
“So I heard you saw Paula the other day,” and there’s a want for information. Not gossip, necessarily, just wanting to know things.
“Uh, yeah, she came by, with her mom and my mom.”
“How was she?” The tone indicates disgust, but that can’t be right.
“Pretty fucked up… I mean, how’d you be?”
“Yeah, I guess…”
There is an insanely meaningful silence.
“How are you?”
I can’t help being flattered at her concern.
“Okay, I guess, you know, all things considered, I just…”
Another potent silence.
“Do you ever think about me?”
Hmf. Nothing subtle about that question, but it all seems so inevitable somehow. In keeping with this spirit of inevitability, I let myself slide, putting up no fight at all.
“Yeah, sure, of course, I mean… I never really stopped… you know?”
“Yeah.”

* * *

I don’t leave my ward for any reason, as the hallway has that awful hospital smell, the beige-brown smell of shit diluted with floor polish and starch. My blister grows worse and worse as my tibia heals, and eventually I have to be transferred to a third-floor ward to clear up an infection that forms in it. I share the third-floor ward with an old man with some sort of stomach problem. I ask my doctor what’s going to happen to the sixth-floor ward, if it’s going to be used for something else. Nothing, he says. I go there every chance I get to watch the storm. The old man farts a lot.
Eventually Sarah comes to visit, and I take her to the sixth-floor ward. She talks about the future and I feel enchanted by the thought of it, but in no way obligated to listen to her; it’s as if she’s recommending a movie I’ve already seen. She hates the snow and can’t wait for spring. She rubs her hands by the radiator, and she is indeed cold and wet when I start touching her. We fuck carefully, lavishly, relaxed and making the most of every second of it. She’s lost weight and gotten a tattoo, an infinity symbol. I’d forgotten how fast she likes it.

* * *

Old songs play in my head and fatigue is a constant. A second old man visits the one in my ward, a day before the latter dies. He comes back to the ward the next day, to stare at his friend’s empty bed.
“He wouldn’t have had to wait long,” he says, to me or himself.
“Excuse me?” He looks at me.
“Edward,” he explains, pointing to the bed. “Not much more to do, not much more to see, it’s all coming to an end soon.” I shift in my bed, sending a spear of pain through my shoulders. The old man moves closer to my bed, closer to the window where the storm keeps getting worse. He ignores or does not notice my pain.
“Surely you’ve sensed, as I have, that there cannot be much time remaining,” he says staring out the window. “Not much of a view, with these trees all around.”
“You should see my other room, on the sixth floor,” I say. The old man turns to me, enthralled.
“You have another room?”

* * *

I don’t see the old man again. I get drunk the night I’m discharged and go to Chez Victor, where I meet Jake, Rory and Morgan. Morgan asks me a lot of questions about the crash and what my favourite memory of Merrick is. I think hard before I answer.
“Uh… probably getting the drop on Lorna after she stole all that beer from the Maddox party. He said we’d turn her in to Benny, or even the cops. He made so much fun of her so much she started crying, and they still ended up fucking in Jake’s room that night.” Rory laughs a bit too hard, but Morgan seems fascinated.
“Really? But didn’t he kick your ass for telling everybody?” she asks. I chuckle and sip my beer.
“Yeah, but it was totally worth it.” Morgan plays with the tabletop and grins, biting her tongue.
I finish my beer and stand to get another round. “Morg? Rory? Jay?”
“Pale Ale,” Rory says.
“Whatever you’re getting,” Morgan says.
“I’m good,” Jake says after a pause.
The crowd is pretty intense and the watery numbness of beer in my mouth makes my teeth feel too big. “Hey man,” I call weakly to the bartender and raise a hand. I lean against the bar and spot Sarah at a table with some guys I don’t know. I smile, but she just stares.
I turn to order drinks and realise Jake is standing next to me. “You shouldn’t talk shit about Ricky. You should speak well of the dead.”
“What?”
“I said… you should only speak well of the dead.”
“Yeah… sorry, I just guess it doesn’t matter all that much anymore. There just isn’t that much left, you know?”
“I’ll drink to that,” he says, raising a whiskey the barkeep just gave him.
Morgan drinks a lot with me and we dance. The DJ puts on Radiohead’s ‘Where I End And You Begin’ and Morgan loses her shit, screaming and pulling me closer as she dances, begging the DJ to turn it up, so loud he can hear her eight feet away over the song. Jake comes over dancing with us and trying not to spill his whiskey. Morgan pulls my arm too hard and my shoulders feel like a SWAT team just kicked them in. I collapse against a speaker.
“Dude,” Jake says, but Morgan doesn’t notice. I’m in a haze and seeing sharp patterns on the floorboards, dimly aware that Will is suddenly here, arguing with Morgan as the song escalates to a maddening din.
Feral energy and the inescapable feeling that it’s now or never lift me off the ground and my fist goes flying into Will’s face, soundless, and he backs and we grapple for a second, but I run for the basement door and past the bathrooms and I don’t know where I am, but I still hear the music. I’m outside and Morgan’s with me, but I can barely walk and I think we’re in a taxi now, kissing awkwardly because I can’t move my shoulders and she’s touching me and going down on me and none of it seems real because I can’t see it… the storm bucks the car violently and I lean against the driver’s seat, breathing “Take me to St. Anne’s” even as Morgan is swallowing me…

…I’m not surprised to find the old man there as we limp into the sixth-floor ward, my blister itching worse than ever. He’s standing, watching the storm billow out of control. They’ve closed the highway perpendicular to the hospital, due to the snow and the wind. Morgan and I sit down on the bed; experience tells me I shouldn’t, but I caress her anyway, not caring if she’ll read too much into it.
“Young Mr. Parker, come back to the old ward, I see, yes.”
“It’s happening, isn’t it? The end?” I manage, deliriously out of breath.
“Not in any real sense, will the world continue.”
“Right…”
He turns to me, smiling. “After all, what more could possibly happen?”
I’m unable to answer. Morgan stands and makes her way to the window, taking the old man’s hand.
“It’s almost overwhelming,” she says, her eyes full of wonder in the window’s ghostly reflection of her.
“Just let go,” the old man says. “It’ll be like raising your head to the sky after a lifetime watching the ground.”
There is a sense of something drawing over me, like a canopy closing or I’m walking into a cave. My head tilts up and the storm encloses me.

Proyas

(the events described below take place approximately one year after Simon's disappearance)

If it isn’t dawn already, it soon will be. I open my eyes again and shift on the mattress, my muscles incapable of rest or relaxation. My digital watch stares me in the face, lying smug and cocksure in it’s place next to the mattress.
This is impossible. Insomnia. It’s never quite as romantic as one would imagine, at least not when you haven’t slept for eight days straight... nor really done anything except lie there and stare at nothing. Well, okay, not nothing... I know every crack and imperfection in the sheer white walls of the room. There’s a small spider that lives in the corner behind Simon’s magazines. How it manages to catch enough flies down there is beyond me. I’m convinced that it’s either living on dust, or sucking my blood when I’m not looking.
I finally rise to commit the mortal sin of gluttony, raiding the uncomfortably new refrigerator even though sustenance is the last thing I need. The thing is, though, that there’s just no way of knowing. I could be starving, but in all honesty, I’ve forgotten how that feels. My final decision is a compromise of sorts: I open a milk carton. Not too thrilled at the smell that greets me, I open a beer, the can’s sharp crack-hiss about as unglamorous and impotent as possible. I stare into the fridge as the door drifts lazily closed.
The kitchen is inhabited by another electronic device that taunts me mercilessly: the phone. The goddamn fucking phone. There’s a shitty weirdness to how stuff like phones and cars have become more than the sum of their parts. They’re status symbols now, affirmations of your quality of life and your rank among whichever social hierarchy you belong to.
People with lives have friends; those with friends receive calls. Am I therefore to deduct that if no-one calls me, I have no life? What about people who receive calls, but have no lives? Do they lead a better existence than those without friends? Friends often result in complications... or so I’m told.
I sip the beer. What would happen if I called the bastard? Where is he? And what about Mark? Simon would have told Mark where he was going. An uncomfortable swell of jealousy rises momentarily within me, like an underwater eruption channeled into a house’s plumbing and singeing the unfortunate soul seated on the toilet. I belch.
Wait a minute. That’s it. I’ll fucking call Mark.

***

A girl answers the phone. I freak out and hang up. After a few seconds, I pick up the phone and hit redial.
“This sucks,” I say to the dial tone. “I mean, it’s not as if Mark will have found his phone in the time it took me to do that.”
“Hallo?” says the girl’s voice. I realise she probably heard the last of my monologue. I take another swig of beer, but it goes down the wrong pipe and I cough convulsively, unable to speak.
“Hallo?” the girl says again, followed by some angry and inquisitive foreign words. The only word I manage to squeeze out of my throat is “Uhrml,” and then she hangs up.
I dial again, and again the girl answers, delivering a long string of foreign words that sound positively insulting.
“Can I speak to Mark, please?”
“Ha?”
“May I speak to Mark,” I repeat. “Dude,” I add after a pause, instantly wishing I hadn’t. “Or, you know, whatever,” I also add in the worst save in the history of man.
“Oh. Who is this?”
“This is his friend Warren.”
“Hallo?”
“Warren?” I offer tentatively.
“He’s not here,” she guesses rather than affirms.
“Um, okay. What’s your name?”
“What?”
“I’m sorry, what’s your name, please?”
“Um, Owsluygh.”
“I’m sorry, what? How’s what?”
“No, my name. Ows-luygh,” she almost yells, extremely annoyed.
“Okay. I’m Warren.” Wait, didn’t I already say that?
“Okay. Should I tell Mark you called?”
“Should you tell who what?”
She honks a honk of pretentious exacperation.
“Should I tell Mark that you called?”
“No, I want you to tell him to check if his refrigerator’s running.”
“What?”
“Of course I want you to tell him I called! You think I’m calling because I wanted to have some bullshit conversation with you? What the fuck’s the matter with you? Is everyone fucking retarded in this country?”
There is another honk, and she hangs up.
That went well.

***

When I first came here about a year ago with Simon, Dario and Vermont, I quickly realised I was going to need some serious curtains if I was going to survive. I spent my first month’s allowance on a pair of two-inch thick, wine-red wool curtains that took me four hours to put up, followed by a day trip to Dario’s girlfriend’s house to wash the second curtain after Vermont threw up on it and fell asleep in it, which was followed by Simon and Dario pissing on him (and the curtain, obviously).
I’m proud of my curtains, and they have served me well. If they hadn’t been there last fall, it would have been considerably harder to have sex with Laura while Vendredi listened to his huge Bose headphones last fall, and that date with Annelise probably wouldn’t even have happened. Man, did that girl love curtains.
Drawing my curtains gives me the same satisfaction as pet owners get from feeding their pets, or so I would imagine. I feel them glowing with pleasure as they bask in my firm, yet gentle carress, and can practically hear them purr as I pull them apart to allow some shockingly drab sunlight in. Me and My Curtains smirk conspiratorially at one another, for we both know that the sunlight is only a temporary visitor, a tenant whose rent we will suckle away from it like milk from the teat of a rural Chinese whore before evicting it mercilessly, tossing it’s earthly posessions from a second story balcony as it begs us for a second chance.
So you can imagine how close my dissappointment bordered on shock when I draw the curtains to reveal Vendredi standing outside my apartment trying to ring the doorbell. He turns and sees me, the darkness inside forcing him to squint.
We stand there for a while, not really sure how to react. Finally, Vendredi tries pushing the doorbell button one more time. He looks back at me, confused, and waves awkwardly. I sigh slightly and swallow as I start towards the door.

***

“I, uh, I think your doorbell might be, like, broken, or something.”
“I was in the bathroom. The doorbell works,” I lie.
“So, uh, what’s up.”
“Not much, really.”
The apartment I rent is decidedly spacious, but asides from my beautiful curtains, there’s not really much to speak of in it. I sit on my mattress and Vendredi on the floor accross from me.
“Yeah. Um, I was like, wondering if there’s like, uh...” Vendredi trails off in midsentence, staring into space as he talks.
“Uh-huh. Yeah. Okay, look. I was kind of on my way out, so uh... yeah.”
Vendredi suddenly looks at me. “Okay. That’s okay. I’ll just... stay here, I guess.”
Oh dear God, no! “Stay here?” I ask, straining not to raise my voice.
“Uh, yeah, ‘cause like, uh, Tanner’s like, back, and uh...”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute, what?” I blurt out in less than a second.
“Yeah, he, uh... he’s like here and, uh, I think he’s like, moving in with Biz, and uh... yeah.”
“And what?” I feel like screaming into the ultrasonic range.
“...and so I guess I like, have to leave... and stuff.”
“I’m sorry, am I missing something here? Didn’t Tanner shoot Biscuit in the foot with a harpoon when they were in New York?”
“Uh...”
My mind races. How did Tanner get back here? Didn’t he get deported? Didn’t he spend the last of his money on that stupid fucking car? And what would he be doing here anyway? I thought he hated this place.
I chew my lip nervously and glance around the room for no particular reason, and suddenly notice that Vendredi hasn’t been staring at nothing, he’s been staring at Simon’s magazines...
...what did he say?
“Wait a minute, b-back up a second. You-you’re what? Staying here? As in living here?” My brain screams at me, but my mouth stays silent.
“Uh, yeah, I guess. I mean, if it’s like... okay and stuff.”
I fall into a euphoric daze as the sheer horror of living with Vendredi capsizes my mind into a bottomless and terrifying ocean of Leviathans and Kraakens hell-bent on the consumption of my mortal soul.

to be continued

Vendredi

(the events described below take place approximately eight months after Simon's disappearance)

The room is completely dark, lit only by Biscuit’s cigarette and the beam of the streetlight shining in. I stare over at the faint ghost on the other side of the room. Biscuit hasn’t moved for hours. He just lies in bed, staring at the ceiling.
“I’m so bored I’m going crazy,” I say, hoping to elict some kind of response. I have no idea why it surprises me when there is none.
“I heard Cassie called.”
Biscuit takes a drag off his cigarette.
“She’s, uh, she’s been throwing up a lot lately.”
Biscuit looks over at me, but just for a second.
“Is she, um, is she like preagnant…”
-there is a quick glimpse in my head, the image of a young girl in her twenties keeling over as a sudden pain comes over her-
“…or something?”
Biscuit makes a low, quick, moaning sound in the back of his throat.
“Well, I’m, uh, I’m going out – like right now, yeah,” I say, and as usual, there is no response from Biscuit.

***

I’m outside, walking down the street with my hands in my pockets and thinking of home, of fishing with Warren Proyas, of lighting magazines on fire behind Mr. Botnick’s car, of chasing my sister into a deserted woodshack, of stealing pills from Simon’s grandmother’s medicine cabinet when I realize I have no idea where I am. I have become lost in the suburban maze and eventually succumb to panic when I cannot locate a street sign anywhere. I walk in a complete circle around a green dumpster sitting on the curb before sitting down on in the middle of the street.
It is very quiet in this suburb and I can faintly hear cars in the distance. I wonder if anyone in the cars knows me. I turn my head and look at the house on the other side of the street. I spot a window on the ground floor. Through it I can see a girl, slightly older than me combing her hair in front of a mirror. I study her for a long time to make sure I don’t know her and have never met her before I get out my cellphone and dial 411.
I have done this so many times that the process is automatic. Jodie Mercer is my operator tonight.
“Good evening, how can I help you?”
“Hey…ah…Jodie. What’s…what’s up?”
“God damn it, Vendredi, what do you want now?”
“I’m, um, I’m on this street…”
“You know that what you’re doing is illegal.”
“Uh…”
“It’s sexual harassment, Vendredi.”
“I just…want to know…what’s – what’s right…you know?”
“I’m sure it could even be constituted as rape.”
“Could you just…help me here, Jodie? I mean, I am, like, lost, you know.”
-the girl is clutching her stomach-
“Fine. Whatever. Where are you?”
“Well, I like, went walking, and I turned a right on Temple Fields, and I, I headed into the graves and,uh, past there…”
There is an incredibly exasperated sigh from Jodie. “You’re out by Mossy Hill? What the hell are you doing?”
“I’m just…you know, I just like, well, got here…you know?”
There is another sigh.
“Okay,” Jodie says impatiently. “If you walked straight past the upper graves you should on Brown Place, which makes sense because you’re lost and there aren’t any street signs-“
“Yes-“
“And all I need from you now is the house number.”
I walk backwards a few steps, backing into the street that the house actually faces and quickly spot the gold numbers by the front door.
“78180.”
“419-2232. Go have fun, you sick fucking freak.” Jodie hangs up.
“Yeah…yeah,” I say to the dial tone before hanging up and calling the number.

***

I wake up, not moving a muscle, and assess the situation. The girl’s sheets are clean, uncomfortably clean (not good, but not a major problem) and she has posters on her wall (good) of bands – Placebo, Sum 41, The White Stripes – and one signed Jon Spencer Blues Explosion t-shirt hanging on a nail next to the door (all good[not the bands, but the fact that she has posters]). She also has some artwork (not good), most of it on posters (not good), but some of it is in specially marked posters (bad) presumably bought at the museums the artwork was on display at (very bad). The room itself is messy (good), although I don’t quite remember if it was that way when I came in yesterday, and I seem to remember her wearing a blue shirt with a stencilled picture of a woman on it (bad).
I very carefully turn onto my side, facing the girl’s room. Her clothes are lying around on the floor. I chew on my lip as I reach deep inside me, searching for anything that might mean I care. How often has she worn that bra? How many people have dreamt about her? Who gave her that Oasis album? How often has she listened to it? What did her parents think when she got her bellybutton pierced? Do they even know?
I admit I am curious, but I don’t care. Not really. I stare at her stereo system, the No Doubt CD that was playing last night long since finished. The stereo’s LED blinks happily in the dawn light, ready to serve, eager to please. It has no doubts,no second thoughts, no need to prove anything, no need, even, to find fulfillment in it’s faithfulness, it sees no necessity in purpose. The only thing it has ever known is patient service. The emptiness in my soul threatens to swallow my mind, and I curl up carefully so as not to wake the girl and sob into my knees, all too aware of my nudity.

***

I walk through the cloudy daylight, silently wishing I had not walked quite so far last night.
I cannot see the girl’s face, but I hear her voice, at first a gentle whisper, inquisitive, curious and unsure what’s wrong, but as she slowly turns-
I fumble for my keys outside the apartment door, suppressing a shudder. I wish I hadn’t cried, but not really. I finally find my keys, closing my eyes and tilting my head back as I put them in the lock and turn them. I step through the doorway and take off my shoes, a process that I get very wrapped up in.
I gently pull the two lace-ends apart until the bow on my left shoe unfolds, and then pull the overlapping end of the remaining knot off the other end, letting it flop softly against the side of my shoe. As for the bow on my right shoe, I pull only one lace-end – the one facing toward me – and let the knot dissolve in a slightly more complicated fashion. I then sit there in silence looking at my untied shoes for eleven minutes.
I close my eyes to better suppress a sob, but fail and feel tears running down my cheeks. When I open my eyes again I notice something. There is a small, grayish chip of something resting just past the threshold of the door leading to the hallway. I reach over to touch it. It is slightly soggy, and has the texture of something that used to be very wet but is now dry and crusty. It isn’t until I smell it that I realize what it is: a piece of vomit. I flick it into the hallway and stare at the parted door at the end of it.
“Biscuit?”
There is no answer.
“Uh…Biscuit?”
Still, there is no answer, and I wonder if he heard me cry.
“Biz?”
I decide to use his real name, for no obvious reason.
“Warren? Are you home?”
Somewhere in the apartment, a throat clears.
“Yes.”
When I step into Biscuit’s room I look at everything in it but him. Anything is better than having to look at him. Not that the room looks any better. Cans and shards of glass lie everywhere, with puddles of wetness glistening in the scant daylight reflected in through the hallway. One of the shelves by the back wall has been completely smashed, and a box of vinyls in the corner has been ripped apart, with it’s contents strewn across the room. I can see the cover of The Shamen’s Axis Mutatis lying ripped apart on the bed.
“So like…what, um, what’d you do…last night?” I ask.
Biscuit sniffles in reply, and I’m suddenly aware of someone standing behind me.
“Nothing a little chewing gum and vicadin can’t fix,” says a familiar voice, and I turn my head to see Tanner standing shirtless in the doorway behind me holding a cup of coffee.
“Oh, um, hey, man,” I say. “So I guess you’re like, back now, huh.”
“Fuckin’ right I am,” Tanner says and takes a sip of his coffee. “You look like shit,” he says to Biscuit before stalking off in the direction of the bathroom. I look at biscuit, expecting to find him exasperated and annoyed, but I am mildly surprised to find the most sincere and open expression on his face, and although it takes me a while, I eventually figure out what that look is: it is Biscuit being scared. At this exact moment, Biscuit is the most deliriously terrified I have ever seen him, or anyone else.

Serenity

(the events described below occur approximately 18 months after Simon's disappearance)

I wake up to the sound of my body screaming for water. I half-turn in the bed, wondering where I am while trying to peel apart eyes glued shut by dried sweat, tears and hastily applied make-up. I vaguely remember falling asleep to the sound of a voice -his voice- singing and a slightly out-of-tune guitar softly ringing. For some reason I desperately try to remember the lyrics to whatever song he was playing.
I finally open my eyes and realize I'm looking at someone -him- and he's hunched over, sitting on the edge of the bed and I think he's crying...
I have a hard time staying awake and I try to ask him for water but my voice fails me and instead I cough and he turns around and he's about to say something but doesn't and I realize he's looking at the sheets and I realize I coughed up blood...
...I pass out.
***
It's probably hours later and I wake up. I have two glasses of water but can't keep them down, and barf clear, watery sludge mixed with random bits of food into the toilet and collapse against the bathroom wall, wiping my mouth off with my top. I close my eyes, searching my body for any signs of what might make me feel better. Where is he? Why do they always leave like that? Is it some macho guy thing? Would it kill them to ask how I feel or if I'm gonna be okay or if I want some breakfast or some shit?
I instantly regret thinking about breakfast; the very thought of food shoves me reeling back to the toilet and I dry-heave agonizingly, feeling every muscle in my torso contract reflexively to bring up the food that isn't there. I give myself a small measure of credit when I realize I held my hair back. After several moments of gathering strength I open my eyes and stare into the toilet at a bloated wad of something covered in a tattered square of tan paper: a cigarette butt. I shudder and decide not to remember what I did last night.
***
Oh well, I think to myself, at least I figured out what I want. I'm sitting outside in the remarkably uncold breeze, watching the snow reflect early afternoon sunlight with solemn, hung-over calm and smoke the best cigarette of my life. There are not many moments that I enjoy living so far away from downtown, but this is definetely one of them. I am particularly glad there is no-one around to see me in this state, or to be bothered by the Bonnie Prince Billy wafting lethargically out of the kitchen window.
I take a long drag of my cigarette and ponder what I'm going to wear to Steini's thing tonight. My orange blouse is still at Lara's house and I just can't wear that thing Vendredi got me, even though it looks pretty good with my brown skirt.
I'm sitting there, wondering if the cooling air and my bralessness are wreaking havoc upon my modesty, when I spot two figures making their way over the hill across from my apartment. Although they are far away, silhouetted against the still-rising sun and I don't have my contacts on, I have a decent idea of who they are. I take a long drag off my cigarette, listening closely to the faint rustle of smoldering tobacco, and brace myself.
They're my manhunters, my detectives, my darlings and my devils. They're the reason I'm here, strung out on my ass in the middle of nowhere, working awful shifts in awful bars, and sleeping with awful guys in awful apartments; they're the ones that found Simon.
***
"We met someone yesterday," the tall one says.
We are sitting in my apartment now. The CD has finished and the three hours or so of daylight are spent. I'm lighting another cigarette. I closed the window when I let them in, leaving the smoke to waft freely around the single large room that is my home here.
I met them when they came to Stephenville looking for someone, a guy I don't know called Warren Schreifels. They said Warren and Simon had known each other. They'd been friends.
So, they told me some stories about him. Said he'd been spending a lot of time at a local bar in their neighbourhood (hardly a coincidence, seeing as there's only one real 'neighbourhood' here), and that they'd gotten to know Simon pretty well. Anyway, they were badly in need of work and a reason to leave the country (I don't think I'd need that strong of a reason to leave this shithole), so Simon told them about this kid Warren, who was in NYU and writing a thesis on some rare disease, and they'd known a guy who had it. Simon said Warren would pay them for an interview, and they got in touch and agreed to meet while Warren was on his summer break in Stephenville.
I met them at a party. No-one had seen or heard from Simon in months. We talked. Hearing Simon's name brought tears to my eyes. I went home and cried until dawn, which is when I made up my mind: I was just going to have to go there and find the fucker. I said I'd personally pay for all our plane rides back, offer to share an apartment with them and basically offer them anything short of my body if they'd help me find him. They agreed, saying it sounded far more interesting than some disease.
I couldn't pronounce their names, but one was slightly taller than the other. They had several other differences in appearance, but height seemed the best way to diffrentiate the two.
At first I had had a little bit of a crush on the short one, but eventually, the tall one started hitting on me, and I grew to like him more, even though he often annoys the living shit out of me. I suppose the little 'thing' I had for the short one was just that, just one of those things you have on people for a while, until you realise the personality you think they have is something you made up, a false hope at the end of a collapsing tunnel of loneliness. Every once in a while though, I'll catch him watching me flirt with the tall one, and his eyes will fill with such a rabid, burning and disgusted hatred that it stays with you for days. There's something about those eyes...
"Who?" I ask while putting out my cigarette, not really in the mood for Tall's shit. I risk a glance at Short, who is standing, absently running his hand accross the wall.
"This guy, this blond dude from the states. He said he wanted to buy some cocaine from us, so we just assumed he knew Simon."
I catch Short smiling. Asshole.
Still, I admit to myself as I reach for another cigarette Tall offers me from his pack, he has a point.
"Did he say they'd met?" I ask, lighting the cigarette.
"Well, yeah, we started talking and he knew a lot of the same people. That british dude, for one."
A slight shiver runs through me. Short's looks of hatred are nothing compared to one of Remarque Holloway's cold, contemptuous stares.
"Mark," I say quietly. There is a silence and I take drag. I stare openly at Short with an I-want-you kind of look. He gives me a once-over and swallows.
"Yeah, well, if that's the british dude-" Tall begins, but I cut him off.
"Yes, that's the british dude."
"Well, he's uh, gone back to Canada, and-"
"I know."
"And so we were thinking, well..."
"He knows something," Short says suddenly, staring me straight in the eye.
"Yeah." Tall adopts an officious tone. I know from experience that he's about to ask me for money. I take drag and look down at the tabletop. "We think it's imperative to our investigation to go back to Canada, find this Mark guy and ask him some more questions."
Short seems dissapointed, somehow, and swallows again, averting his eyes from mine. I look from him to Tall.
I feign shock. "What? Why can't you just call him?"
"Well, he just didn't really strike as the type of guy who'd have, like, a solid number we could reach him with."
I place my cigarette on the ashtray lip and slip a little condescendence into my tone. "Well, considering how well your last 'interview" with him went, I can't see how another would make any difference."
"Exactly the reason why a face-to-face conversation with the dude would be so much better. The guy's not gonna say anything over the phone he wouldn't say in real life."
I surprise myself by seriously considering this for a moment, staring at the guitar someone left on the couch a week ago.
"Wait for him to come back, then we'll talk," I say without looking at either of them.
"But what if-"
"He'll come back. He always does."
I glare at Tall. "Trust me."
***
That night I started having the dreams again.
You see, it’s interesting how accurately you can remember certain moments in your life without even realising just how deep an imprint a certain image can leave in your subconscious. Simon taught me this, so it comes with the proverbial grain of salt attached.
But the imprint will be so powerful, so deep and potent that your rational mind will refuse to acknowledge it, leaving it to fester in the subconscious. This is, perhaps, due to the fact that said image has such a great effect on you that it becomes part of your personality, lost in the myriad labyrinth of the id and surfacing only in dreams.
It was such a dream that I had on that night.
Simon is sitting in Melissa’s couch next to me. He’s drinking some foul Canadian whiskey from a red and blue mug he borrowed from her kitchen. I’m slouching with my legs underneath my body, my left hand propping my head up to look at him and my right draped over my legs. This was during Melissa’s Zoot Woman phase and we’re up to the instrumental song on the album with the neon letters on the front. Everyone else is in the kitchen.
“Everything here is just such total shit. I wish there were some way to make everyone see just how much shit they’re putting up with just by living here,” Simon is saying.
“Well, maybe they just don’t want to know. Maybe they like it here and they don’t want anyone to change that,” I say and open my mouth and run my tongue over my lips, swallowing at the bitter red wine residue.
Simon surprises me yet again (I love it when boys surprise me) by turning towards me, genuinely interested. “Oh yeah, you mean like ignorance is bliss and all that?”
“Well, maybe not ignorance…maybe they just know that they’re putting up with shit, but choose to focus on the good things in life. I don’t think you give people enough credit, they’re smart.”
He encourages me to go on by nodding his head and gesturing with his free hand (he never lets go of his drink, never puts it on the table). I smile and look down as I feel my face redden. I place a stray lock of hair behind my ear before continuing.
“They…know…that, well, they’ll never get anywhere focusing on the negative things in life, so they remember what they’re working for and they work harder. I mean, all I’m saying is that people know this, people know that, well, life is short and…” I’m on the verge of breaking into a fit of laughter.
He grins. “…and…”
“…and, well, if you don’t stop to look around every once in a while, you might miss it.”
We say this last part together. God, we were idiots back then.
After a short laugh, I say, “People are just happy because they find other people to share the shit with them. We’re social creatures, Simon. You can be addicted to a person on a level no drug can reach.”
…and there it is. I was just quoting some dumb movie or book at the time, and the truth of it had yet to dawn on me. It’s the simple, clichéd pains that sting the worst; no matter how much you suffer, it doesn’t make you special.
“Really? ‘Cause I don’t see it, I really don’t. People lie to, cheat, steal from, kill and rape other people. They’re constantly striving to be better than everybody else, to be more.” I toy with his hair.
“Well I’m here talking to you because I want to get to know you and I’m attracted to you, isn’t that evidence of the fact that people like each other?”
He turns to me at this and laughs.
“Oh, no, that’s a whole ‘nother bag of shit. That’s physical attraction, that’ll play tricks on you.”
“Well, okay, so I want to fuck you, but that doesn’t stop me from wanting to get to know you.”
“Uh, you don’t want to sleep with me. My age wouldn’t look good on your C.V.”
I laugh slightly. “Okay, well, can I just get to know you then?”
He becomes slightly more serious again. “Well, you don’t want to do that either.”
“Why?”
“Because if you do, I will destroy you. I will completely gut you from the inside out. I’ve seen it happen. I’ve seen girls lose their minds and become emotionally crippled because of me. You see, first I’ll dig deep inside you and get you to tell me everything you’ve ever felt, done and thought, and then I’ll know exactly what it is that makes you function and I’ll know everything you’re going to do before you even think of doing it, and this will, eventually, annoy me so much that I will disappear from your life, but not before wishing you didn’t exist and we had never met.” I begin to inch towards him.
“You know those photos you see of all those villages in Africa or wherever the fuck, those little towns that have been completely wrecked by landslides or floods or hurricanes or whatever? That’s what you’ll be like, after getting to know me.” My face is almost touching his now.
“You know what I like best about you?” I breathe noisily into his face.
He turns to me. “What?”
“The fact that you don’t give a shit what I like best about you.”
We kiss; it’s passionate, but awkward. He sits at first, but reacts quietly, gently, but forcefully when I put my hand on his face; he’s thirsty, desperate for my touch, anywhere, or so I’d like to imagine. As the taste of whiskey and cigarettes dissolves, a taste like peaches or slightly stale black grapes enters my mouth; I miss it more than the world. Something explodes inside me as his hand grips my hip and presses me against him.
He breaks the kiss.
“This is gonna kill you,” he breathes exhaustedly.
“Good,” I breathe back, caressing his face. “’cause I’m about ready to die for it.”

***

Dying would have been easy. At least hell is supposed to be warm. I shiver cigarette smoke through my teeth, sitting, freezing cold in a bus stop, waiting for the bus to Steini’s house, periodically taking sips from a cheap bottle of wine, feeling the contents weigh down my stomach and thicken my mouth and brace myself for the worst.