Summer Sons

by Lee Mandelo

  He crammed the notes in the drawer, forced it shut, and dialed the unknown number. The line rang three times before a rough drawl answered: “Is it working? Am I riding your nerves hard enough yet to get you to show up?”

  “Did you sell Eddie coke?”

  Halse snorted and said, “Of course, when he asked for it. I’m here to help.”

  Andrew throttled his urge to shout. Help was a dangerous choice of words given the context. Eddie hadn’t needed help pursuing all sorts of things he should’ve let be. He responded tightly, “Right, sure. Yeah, let’s meet, let’s—I’ll come out.”

  Off the line but audible, Riley said, “Is that Andrew?”

  “Yeah, he’s giving in to my charms,” Halse said.

  “Tell me where,” Andrew said.

  “The boys won’t be around until—”

  “Now. Where,” he repeated.

  “Hold your horses.” To his cousin, Sam called out, “You good to go now? Your roommate is in a hurry.” Andrew missed the response, but then: “The gas station from the other night. That’s your game tonight, I’m assuming? You wanna drive?”

  Andrew said, “I’ll be there in fifteen.”

  “We’ll be there after that.”

  The line went dead.

  A struck match, blazing. The blended tangle of self-control and apathy that had been smothering him caught fire in an instant, charred to ash. Fifteen minutes earlier a haunt-remnant of his best friend had fished around in his guts, and four minutes back he’d still thought Eddie had only been hiding one shitty thing from him. Impending night lurked with lush warning, creeping shadows reverberating under his stalking feet as he crossed the front lawn to the Challenger, recalling Halse’s provocation a few nights past about it being on the prowl again. Drunk enough to stop giving a shit and flayed to the bone, Andrew was as free as he’d ever been in his life. For once there was no firm hand holding his leash, ready to snap the lead choke-taut if he got too stupid on anger.

  The familiar, roaring whine of the engine made him shake as he rolled the windows down, jerked a hand through his hair, and took off. Outdoor lights at the gas station buzzed halogen-blue in the gloom. He kept his hands on the wheel as he waited, counting to threes to restrain his breathing. The gunmetal gleam of Halse’s car approached from the opposite direction an indeterminate amount of time later, bumping over the entrance curb and coasting to the space next to him.

  Riley leaned out the passenger window and said, “Hey,” with an eager edge.

  Halse lounged in the driver’s seat, his wrist on the steering wheel and his head lolled to the side to smirk past Riley. Andrew imagined him doing who knew what all with Eddie, while Andrew sat alone in his boxed-up apartment, none the wiser. Those teeth would split his knuckles if he put his fist through them.

  “What’s with that face, man?” Halse asked.

  “Get fucked,” Andrew said.

  “Oh, well then,” Halse responded with raised brows.

  “Come on, guys,” Riley cut in, flicking his fingers to draw Andrew’s attention. “Aren’t we gonna have a good time, let off some tension?”

  “I don’t think that’s what the little prince wants,” Halse said and stepped on the gas. The bark of the engine made all three men twitch. Halse laughed. “Follow the leader.”

  He reversed from the lot and Andrew followed, tunnel-visioned with the remaining dizziness of the shots he’d pulled. Halse took a handful of turns that led them out of town, coasting through the red glow of suburban traffic lights to the lesser authority of stop signs. Houses dropped off beyond secluded drives with gates across them, blockaded by foliage. Sam’s blinking right turn signal pulled them onto a rural highway, two lanes twisting to mount a low hill, banked with old trees and overgrown culverts. The whole expanse was empty as far as Andrew strained to see. Halse drifted into the oncoming lane and stopped. Andrew braked alongside.

  “On three-two-one-go,” Halse shouted to him. Andrew rolled up his passenger window and toggled the engine setting to sport mode. Riley braced one hand on the roof of the WRX, the other lifted with three fingers up. Andrew braced his foot on the clutch, the other easing the gas to force the revs to climb with a grudging roar. Pressure boiled beneath his heel, threatening and seductive. Halse had provoked him into this; he might as well give it his strongest effort, from the seat that Eddie occupied before and better than Andrew. His chest cavity ached in time with the vibration of the car.

  Riley ticked down one finger, then another, then the last—

  He flagged his hand with a shouted, “Go!”

  With Riley’s cackling laugh and the Challenger roaring in his ears Andrew plowed off the line, the shrieking force smashing his body into the firm grip of the seat. The needle tapped six as the WRX nosed ahead and he shifted to second gear, tach rebounding as the Hellcat’s MPH leapt, fractions of a second between shifts. The smell of searing tire rubber and hot clutch plate flogged him into third gear the moment the needle crossed redline, driving reckless to match the aftermarket liquid lightning of the WRX, Halse pacing him measure for measure. Elastic tension lashed their cars together across space, alone on the road, nothing in his head but grief and freedom.

  Four seconds, four-point-five, five. Andrew slid through his bucking gearbox as he rode Eddie’s big unruly beast toward triple-digit speed. It chewed the asphalt, heavier, louder, angrier than his own Supra. Andrew missed the bite point for fifth gear by a portion of a portion of a second and shouted an obscenity that disappeared into thin air under the raw noise of the engine, Halse’s quarterpanel edging into the corner of his vision. Andrew smashed pedal to frame, devouring ground, letting the tach climb past the glowing digital six for longer than he’d usually risk. He hit the final gear and exploded into a screaming peak of acceleration that overtook Halse again; his eyes stung from remaining peeled wide open.

  The rising grade of the road dragged them alongside, nose to nose, and he downshifted once out of necessity. Burning stench and euphoric, brittle anger poured through him. Factory standards capped the max speed just above 150, and he was willing to tap that edge, unsure of Sam’s capabilities—

  Oncoming headlights flashed at the crest of the hill. Instinct knocked his glance sidelong and it sparked against Halse’s. Riley’s mouth peeled wide with shock, sound swallowed in the bare yard between them. The moment hung like shivering glass about to shatter.

  Halse tapped the brakes as hard as he dared without risking losing traction, leaving Andrew to maintain breakneck speed as he ducked across to the proper lane, grill terrifyingly close to kissing bumper. The offending stranger’s car passed with an extended, accusatory honk. Halse downshifted as Andrew, too, let the speedometer slip, his pulse galloping with the cold premonition of a near-fatal collision. Of the hundred potential endings he’d almost written for himself over the last ten seconds—impact at triple digits, lost traction, crunched frames and windshield glass—none had come to pass.

  Relief dumped over his nerves like ice-water. Andrew pumped his brakes to signal Halse into passing him, at last dipping below double the speed limit, to guide them farther from town. He led a circuitous and soothing chase that Andrew followed without thought, whipping around the curves of the hillsides with hints of understeer. With each dying burst of adrenaline, the debilitating furor that had driven him out of the house banked to a more manageable anger. Barely visible, Riley knelt up in his seat to drape his arms around it, flashing white teeth at Andrew. He made for an iconic, hungry gleam in the settling dark beneath tree shadows and open sky, more animal than boy. It was dumb, deliciously reckless, and that compelling energy struck Andrew with the force of a punch.

  Halse hadn’t flinched, either.

  If he’d been a half-second slower—

  But he hadn’t flinched. Riley had, his cousin hadn’t. Death clipping straight past him hadn’t broken through Halse’s steady control; what else was he capable of doing without hesitation? Andrew slammed on his brakes and spun out
into a sloppy, tire-smoking U-turn. What the fuck were you doing, Eddie. The WRX drove on in his rearview until the maw of the woods swallowed it. In the course of hours he’d learned that Sam Halse had cocaine and a fast car and apparently a goddamn death wish—inviting scabs on his knuckles, plus a mouth that could peel paint off a wall. The appeal was obvious. Eddie might have been fond of Riley, talked gothic bullshit with him and got drunk on cheap beer, but now Andrew understood where the hook had sunk in because it pierced straight through the meat of his cheek, too. He wanted to race Halse again, and that was a strange sensation: want. He also wanted to break his knuckles on Halse’s jaw.

  There were a hundred impulsive, destructive things Eddie might have chosen to do in the face of such heady provocation, without his other half riding shotgun. Andrew’s heart maintained its hectic beat until he parked in the empty space behind the house on Capitol. For a moment, he’d seen a glimpse of a path that might get him answers, in a dead-cold stare and oncoming headlights.

  7

  No stranger to the post-bender sweating hot flash that woke him, Andrew scrambled from bed for the bathroom, seconds to spare before his stomach turned on itself. Vomiting before his brain had a chance to shift from asleep to awake made him shake like a kicked dog, acid burning his already-sore throat. He was setting a pattern for his mornings at Capitol Street. He spat a mouthful of drool into the toilet bowl with a disgusted groan before flushing and slumping to rest his overheated cheek on the cold tile floor. He’d passed out the second he got home and fell face-first onto the mattress; he didn’t think Riley had bothered to return, which was a minor blessing.

  Funhouse-mirror memories of bright headlights, flashing teeth, and crouching terrified in Eddie’s closet clung in a scummy film to his brain. He wasn’t ready to begin working through all that with his throbbing headache; he was in desperate need of some automatic tasks to ease his zombie-dull psyche back to full function. With the house to himself, he sat at the kitchen table to log into his school accounts, which seemed to occupy a separate universe from his recent tribulations. Troth had sent him three messages, two before their meeting and one after. The prior two dated back to the morning after the funeral—a brief set of condolences with an inquiry about his interest in deferral, same as he’d heard across the board, and following that, a request for a first advisor’s meeting as soon as possible. The last one, timed to moments after he’d hightailed it from her office, read: I apologize for upsetting you, Andrew. I was attempting to be politic about an ugly and painful situation, and I understand that it was perhaps too much to spring on you at once. I would still like to discuss your path forward, and offer you the chance to continue Edward’s work with me if you would like to pick up his legacy. I feel that it might be a powerful way to remember him—by completing his project.

  Andrew closed the email without responding. Something to remember him by, sure, but the gruesome research Eddie was bound to have been digging up was the one part of him he’d rather forget. No matter how scholarly Eddie’s interest might’ve seemed, Andrew had spent the better part of his life in the shit with him. The kind of haunts that dogged their heels weren’t neat or clean or well-contained as a campfire story. Troth had no clue the kind of trouble she’d been stirring.

  He checked the clock, found it was four minutes past the time he should’ve left for his early afternoon class, and paused to consider if he cared. The answer was no. Once he let the window of opportunity close for even a late start to head to campus, he picked up his keys and two trash bags full of clothes, then stepped onto the back deck. The house’s strange design meant that he had to enter the basement through a separate door at the end of a set of sunken concrete steps under the porch. He wondered if it had been rented as an apartment before. The solid metal door creaked inward at his shove, catching on a floor mat and dragging it across bare concrete. He pulled the string of a naked bulb dangling overhead. Harsh light cast shadows across the cracked and sealed floor, the dirt-edged drain and sump pump at the far end, and a somewhat battered washer and dryer. He kicked the floor mat aside and shut the door behind him.

  Hair rose on the nape of his neck. He didn’t like basements—even though he didn’t think they were any more or less fucked up than the rest of an old house, there was something about the tricks of light, the coolness, the entombment. Made him remember wandering down the basement steps in Columbus at three-oh-five in the goddamn morning to find Eddie crouched in a pitch-dark corner, smiling an unwelcome smile at a smoky hovering wrongness that scoured Andrew’s eyes. He’d yelped and froze, but then Eddie had said, don’t you want to stay and chat, man? Andrew had barreled up the steps, slid on the kitchen linoleum, and slammed his hip into the cabinet when he fell—hard enough to stun him momentarily blind. Their parents hadn’t woken up. He’d limped for four days, bruised ass to knee, and Eddie had laughed it off like nothing.

  The reminder of past sins tickled his aching head as he dumped his stale clothes in the washing machine and added detergent. And then, no surprise, a whisper on the air—wispy, ignorable. He bit his tongue and dropped the lid of the washer shut with a clang, staring at the options on the dial. He selected a timed wash. Wind tickled around his ankles from no particular source. He pulled the knob and water began to pour into the drum with a low roar. Something plucked at the hem of his shirt, and his hands twitched. He walked, sedate except for the wild flare of his nostrils as he managed his breathing, up the staircase and into the afternoon light.

  The otherwise innocuous house loomed as he stood in the grass barefoot, sun prickling fresh sweat onto his brow to replace the cold sheen that lingered from his bourbon-sickness. Spent and exhausted but unable to secure a minute to himself without the shade dogging him, Andrew thought he might cry out of pure frustration. Acknowledging a revenant made it stronger. Despite knowing he should ignore the thing, he kept slipping—and the more attention he paid it, the more it would demand. Instead he chafed his hands over his arms, straightened his posture, and went back inside to stuff his laptop in his backpack for a strategic retreat.

  * * *

  Tucked into a corner booth at the coffee shop, sweating bullets onto the tabletop, Andrew nursed his continuing, ferocious headache and an iced Americano. His laptop and phone lay in front of him, each open to a different social platform. While Andrew had his own text threads and saved snaps—the ones he increasingly had to acknowledge Eddie had curated for him with a particular narrative in mind—Eddie’s public feeds might tell a separate story of where he’d been, what he’d done there, and who with. After the prior night, he wanted to marshal his resources, confirm Eddie’s movements, before he faced either of the cousins in a repeat performance.

  Unasked for, the remembered sensation of a skeletal hand diving through the bones and cartilage of his throat rose up to gag him. The vent above his head kicked on; cool air wafted the smell of burnt-rubber smoke from his own hair to his nostrils. The remembered feeling of traction tearing off asphalt vibrated across his nerves. When he got home from the café, maybe he’d throw out the coke. Wash it down the sink. What was forty bucks to him? A cheap price to erase the evidence of Eddie’s slipping further from him.

  On the laptop he pulled up Eddie’s derelict Facebook; on his phone, Instagram. Each digital record told a separate story. One narrated his home purchase, his birthday, his admission to Vanderbilt, while the other contained little text but constant bleeding splashes of photographic color. No posts across his social media in the two weeks leading up to his death—which in hindsight was unusual, a fact to consider further. Eddie thrived on attention.

  The most recent and final photo was a shot of Eddie from behind, lounging on his front lawn. Someone else had taken it. He sat shirtless in jeans and Gucci slides, one knee cocked to rest his forearm across it, while the distant setting sun cast him in red and gold, streaking finger-width shadows across the flexed muscles of his shoulders and arms. Filter effects emphasized the depth of his summer tan, the pucke
r of his waistband gap revealing the top band of his briefs. Andrew let out a long breath, scrolling the comments—more emoji than words—but saw nothing out of the ordinary. Had Riley been his photographer? The picture had a vibe that made Andrew’s skin itch, too intimate by far. Another swipe led him past more artful shots: the Challenger on top of a parking garage at night with the full moon high overhead; a lit firecracker in Eddie’s hand; a bonfire circled by smeared, blurry bodies.

  Andrew wracked his brain for the date of the bonfire and realized it had been the end of the spring term, or thereabouts. Eddie had mentioned a party. Another swipe led him to a throwback photo of himself in a headlock, glowering at the camera with squinting, irritable eyes in counterpoint to Eddie’s huge grin, both of them washed in sunlight and sweat. Dampness burned across his eyes. His breath froze and expanded in his chest, fit to break him. He smacked the phone onto the table facedown.

  The girl at the table across from him glanced up, frowned, and turned her attention back to her laptop. The whine of the barista’s steamer cut through the haze. Andrew scrubbed the heel of his hand over his eyes and reclaimed another lungful of coffee-scented air. Nothing to find; Eddie’s public feeds were even less detailed than his own, a performance of edgy charm and masculine competence. Dissembling, same as Eddie. If he wanted to find out what he’d got himself into, late-night lines or rough company, that meant looking into his private shit. His grim mood sank further as he thought of Eddie’s laptop sitting on the desk at home, unopened and dusted-over.

  * * *

  Party tomorrow night at my place. Celebrate the school kids coming back, get the crew together