The Debt

by Tyler King

  I exhaled a disgruntled breath, not bothering to offer my eyes to the front of the room.

  “Or are we distracting you from something more important?”

  Dr. Richardson was a pretentious asshole. He dressed like Steve Jobs, with rimless glasses, a short gray crew cut, and that I-think-I’m-still-twenty-five stubble around his chin. A fortysomething never-was stuck lecturing elective courses while granted one entry-level classical composition course. I was—or had been at one time—everything he would never accomplish.

  He hated me, and I was fine with that.

  “I do have a thought,” I answered. “Do you think the planet is getting lighter or heavier? I mean, a few years ago there were only six billion people on Earth; now there’s more than seven. But the planet is a closed system, right? We can’t create more matter, only transform it. So all the burning forests and cremated people and rotting whale carcasses on the ocean floor become something else. We’re all made of stardust and whatnot. So it doesn’t matter how many people are born; they’re just made up of other stuff that used to be. So that sort of cancels itself out. But I think the planet is actually getting lighter.”

  “I’m not sure how that—”

  “Follow me here. Thanks to space travel, we’ve poked a hole in the closed system of our planet. Every year we shoot all sorts of stuff into space, much of which never returns. So that trims a few tons. Then there’s atmospheric escape of gasses. Hydrogen and helium heating up and traveling out into space. I think I read that somewhere. Like ninety-something tons of gas leaving our atmosphere every year. So the Earth must be getting lighter.”

  “Mr. MacKay—”

  “I know what you’re going to say: ‘What about meteorites and random space debris falling to Earth?’ Well, apparently that’s only like fifty-something tons a year. So you eat a hamburger and run over a squirrel on your way home, and that becomes a baby in Cambodia. But with all the stuff we send into space and the gas we produce, I’m going with lighter. Either way, kind of blows the mind, huh?”

  “And how do your less than cogent points apply to the resurgence of activism in popular music during the Bush administration?” Dr. Richardson asked.

  “They don’t. You didn’t ask for a relevant opinion, only that I give one.”

  The room shifted in his direction, waiting to see if he’d stoop to my level. Instead, he fired a shot across my bow.

  “Friday evening. There will be a mandatory seminar for all Composition and Performance majors. The department chair has invited a special guest lecturer who will talk about the landscape of modern classical music and the evolving genre. There will be a talkback followed by a special performance. Pianist Alexei Annikov will perform a selection from his current international tour, including compositions from Igor Stravinsky.”

  Fuck me running. I suddenly felt an infectious disease coming on. Perhaps I could catch pneumonia by Friday.

  “Oh, and, MacKay?” The satisfied smile was plain in his voice. “Your distinguished presence has been requested by the dean. He is hosting a reception following the event. I’m sure you look forward to catching up with your old friend.”

  Brilliant. What were the odds that a new Cold War could break out in the next five days? How hard would it be to get a certain Russian put on a no-fly list?

  Alexei Annikov was the Stravinsky to my Schoenberg. I had no great respect for his musical ability. He had the finesse of an untrained chimp—saying otherwise would be an insult to trained chimps everywhere—and as much creativity as a paint-by-numbers illustration. Worse, he was a self-righteous prick who propped himself up on the fame of his grandfather, a national treasure of the Russian cultural sphere who by thirty-two had composed two instant ballet classics that still toured the world to sold-out crowds and rave reviews.

  We’d met several times during my years on the circuit. When I began touring Europe, Alexei would bust a nut to find a rag willing to quote him in an article where he could wax philosophical about how Americans did not have the cultural competency for classical music. Turnip-eating dipshit.

  * * *

  Again I stood waiting outside of Hadley’s last class as her professor presided over a PowerPoint presentation while his students waited to be released. He was already four minutes over. I had a mind to walk in there and spring Punky from her loquacious instructor but figured she’d yell at me for being impatient.

  “Hey.” Asha, dressed up like she’d just come from a funeral for My Chemical Romance, loped up the hall and peeked inside the little window in the door to Hadley’s class. “Waiting for Hadley?”

  “Obviously.”

  “What’s with you?” Asha stood with her hands on her belted and studded hips, her feet in first position.

  I wondered if she’d been forced into ballet as a child, having since rebelled against the stringent regimen but still unable to break from certain natural habits so ingrained in her consciousness. My head was full of useless shit. Anyway, my mind was wandering. I didn’t understand the question, so I shrugged and looked back through the window.

  “Granted, you’re usually a surly shit, but I detect a particular bug has crawled up your ass.”

  “Why? Is it crowding your living quarters in my rectum?”

  “See? This right here”—she waved her judgmental fingers over me—“is why you two don’t communicate.”

  “Who two? Hadley? We communicate.” Sometimes. When we felt like it. And why the hell did I have to justify myself to her?

  “Right.” Asha picked at the black nail polish on her thumb. “I heard you two spent the night together.”

  I wouldn’t give Asha the satisfaction. Frankly, her fascination with my life was beyond obnoxious. Whatever kind of diplomatic mission she was on, she’d struck my last fucking nerve today.

  “Look, I know you think you married into the family or some shit, but dating Trey doesn’t buy you the right to leech off me and interfere in my life. Get a fucking hobby.”

  “Josh—”

  “Tell Hadley I’ll meet her at the car,” I said, leaving her behind.

  I took the long way back to the parking lot, circling the commons a couple times to cool off.

  My outburst had more to do with misplaced anger than anything. Asha didn’t deserve it, but she was the nearest target, so she took the brunt of the force. I had sort of always been this way. The older I got, the more vicious my temper. It wasn’t a good look on me, but today it seemed I’d hit my limit of keeping the pressure contained. I was bleeding anger, bubbling over. Something had to give.

  “Josh!”

  I turned to see Scott rushing toward me from across the lawn. Just in the time I’d seen him last, he must have lost ten pounds. Shadows framed his face. His wrinkled T-shirt and dirty jeans dangled off his skeletal frame. He really didn’t want to pick another fight with me today.

  “I don’t owe you—”

  “Stay the fuck away from my sister,” he said, damn near standing on my toes. His breath stunk of tooth decay.

  “I haven’t—”

  “Uh-uh,” he said, shoving my shoulder. “I know you were with her, and I saw what you did.”

  “Hey, I don’t know what—”

  “Stephanie still has bruises on—”

  “Hold on.” I pushed him away. “I had sex with her, weeks ago, but I didn’t—”

  “You’re lucky you’re still breathing.” He poked a needle-sharp finger at my chest, eyes red and wild.

  “Have you even talked to her about it?” Stephanie was clingy, but I didn’t believe she’d accuse me of hurting her. Given Scott’s current state, it was more likely he’d conflated the whole thing in his head. Then I thought about the night she’d gotten kicked out of the bar for arguing with her date. “I’m not the only guy she’s been with lately.”

  “Fuck you. What would you do if someone did that to Hadley, huh?”

  “Listen, asshole.” Rage turned my skin numb. That hot rush of adrenaline. I’d have l
aid his ass out if not for the certainty that this time he’d press charges. “I don’t know what she told you, but I didn’t hurt Stephanie. I don’t beat up on women. You threaten Hadley, I will end your fucking life.”

  Scott looked around, seeing that we’d drawn an audience of gawkers waiting with their phones out and ready to capture a brawl.

  “Next time I see you...” He stalked off, his threat an open possibility.

  * * *

  Asha sat barefoot on the trunk of my car when I got to the parking lot, her knee-high black boots on the pavement.

  “Where’s Punky?”

  Asha looked up from her phone. “Who?”

  “Hadley.” Who the fuck else?

  “Why do you call her that?” Asha tucked her phone into her pocket and held out her hand. “A little help.”

  I bent and picked up her boots. “Where is she?”

  Asha slid her foot inside and tightened the laces up to her knee. “Went to meet Andre. She was going to text you, but I told her I’d pass the word along.”

  “Fine. How’s she getting home?”

  “Said she’d catch a ride with him.”

  “Then what are you still doing here?”

  “And miss the chance at an hour alone together?” She hopped down from the trunk and smiled with a look of sadistic intent. “Nope. You and I are going to get some quality time.”

  * * *

  Asha’s idea of quality time felt more like waterboarding. As I drove, words kept coming out of her mouth as if she’d forgotten how to close it.

  “I don’t get you,” she said. “I mean you and Corey make sense. And Trey and Corey, I can kind of see. But how did you and Trey become friends. You’re so...”

  “I could say the same about you.”

  “We have more in common than you think. You two are so similar in ways. You’re both serious. But he’s quiet, reserved. You’re just cranky.”

  “Why don’t you just ask him?”

  “I could, but then what would we have to talk about? Unless you want to tell me all about how you ended up in bed with Hadley last night.”

  Fucking hell. Anything to shut her up.

  “In ninth grade we were both the new kids. I was homeschooled until then. He had just moved to the area. We shared a couple classes and kept getting paired up for projects, science labs, that kind of thing. We got used to each other. Then he said he played bass, so we formed a band with Corey and Scott.”

  I didn’t recall a day when either of us had made the decision to become friends. I didn’t hate Trey on the spot, and throughout the year of classes and partner assignments he hadn’t given me a reason to. Spending time together, seeing each other every day and occasionally after school, became a habit. Actually, it was probably Punky’s doing that Trey got absorbed into our collective. I didn’t know how to make friends, so she started inviting him out with us and made the connection for me.

  “Why do you have so many tattoos?” she asked. “Do you have any other things pierced?”

  “Because,” I grunted. “And yes.”

  “Where?”

  “None of your business.”

  “Why not? Why get the ink and the hardware if not for people to look at it?”

  “It isn’t for attention.”

  I hated that assumption. Just because some asshole got a dumbass tribal band around his bicep or a naïve girl was convinced that those Chinese letters said “Happy” or “Dragonfly” rather than “Stupid American,” it didn’t mean that my tattoos were intended for public consumption.

  “It’s for me. Period.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s a long story.” I ran one hand through my hair, my tongue piercing flicking between my teeth.

  The laws of physics were finite things that I could not bend by will to make the distance home any shorter.

  “I’ve got time,” she said.

  “Yeah. I’m trying to do something about that.” I hit the clutch and shifted, hitting eighty-five. I kept my eyes out for highway patrol.

  “You know, you might just like me if you didn’t try so hard not to.”

  I expelled air through my nose, resting my head back against the seat. Her curiosity wasn’t invasive. I suppose it fell into the category of getting to know someone. One way or another, I was stuck with this chick for a while. Hadley and Asha had hit it off, and Trey wasn’t tired of her yet. Maybe the tiny terror had earned a little reciprocation.

  “My body is my own, so I made myself over to fit my own desire, not for anyone else.”

  “To take ownership,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “Because someone took that away from you once.”

  “More than once.”

  “I understand.”

  “No.” My hands tightened on the wheel, twisting. “I don’t think you can.”

  “But you’re sort of like Guy Pearce in Memento. He got tattoos to remember. Like the one on your arm.” She nodded at the concerto wrapping around my right forearm. “That one is for your mom.”

  “Okay. That’s enough sharing.”

  For a while, Asha seemed satisfied. I, on the other hand, was edgy as the long drive seemed to drag out the closer we got to my house. Eventually, my passenger exhausted her supply of polite silence.

  “Andre seems nice,” she said.

  Punkyfucker.

  Shit. All I could see was his hands on her practically naked body at the beach. The way he manhandled her. The way she laughed and squirmed. Me sitting yards away on the water watching it happen. If that son of a bitch fucked her, I’d break his neck. First, I had to try not to drive off a cliff on the way home.

  “Wow,” she said. “That was something.”

  “What was?”

  “If looks could decapitate...”

  I turned up the volume on the stereo and silenced Tim Burton’s nightmare sitting next to me.

  It wasn’t that I begrudged Hadley finding someone else. Maybe Andre was good for her. She deserved to be happy. I just couldn’t help my jealousy. There was a big part of me that wanted to keep her locked up in our house, all to myself, if only to protect her from other assholes like me. More often than not, that instinct got me in trouble.

  Freshman year of college, I’d taken that jealousy and ridden right over a cliff.

  Chapter 13

  Two years ago...

  Following rehearsal with the band one night, I followed Corey and Trey inside from the garage. Trey headed for the living room while Corey started foraging in the kitchen.

  “You guys hungry?” I grabbed a bottle of water, glancing between the two rooms from the foyer at the foot of the stairs. “We could order a pizza.”

  “Two pizzas,” Corey said with his head in the refrigerator. “Large.”

  Trey propped his feet up on the coffee table and turned on the TV. “Is Hadley home yet?”

  “I think so.” I wiped my face with my shirt, pulling it off when I got a good whiff of myself. “I’m going to clean up and see if she’s upstairs.”

  “Three pizzas,” Corey said. He took out a Tupperware of Punky’s lasagna from last night and popped it in the microwave.

  It was an appetizer where he was concerned.

  In my bathroom, I splashed some water on my face and hair, grabbing the washcloth to wipe down my chest and neck. I heard voices coming from the other side of the wall, Hadley’s room, and figured she was watching TV. Out of habit, I knocked on the wall.

  “We’re ordering pizza,” I shouted.

  When we were kids, Hadley would often spend the night at my house when Tom was on the road. After we bargained to stay up just one hour, thirty minutes, and then ten minutes longer, my parents would shove us in our rooms and order us to bed. For hours following the designated bedtime, Punky and I would sit on either side of the wall between our rooms and talk. I’d play music for her, we’d play Battleship, and sometimes we’d fall asleep on the floor with our ears pressed to the drywall.


  For that reason, I knew she’d heard me when I shouted to get her attention. I could still hear voices. She was either ignoring me or maybe had her earbuds in.

  Her door was closed, but I didn’t bother knocking. I learned a valuable lesson that night. And so did the Punkyfucker I found naked on top of the girl I’d fucked once and run out on.

  “Josh!”

  “Who’s—” He didn’t get to finish that sentence.

  Hadley shoved him off of her. She scurried up the bed with a look of horror on her face.

  I had the Punkyfucker in a headlock and in the hallway by the time I ripped my eyes from her tits. Holding him upright enough to make it to the bottom of the stairs—I should have just tossed him down the flight, but hindsight is 20/20 and all that—I walked him in front of me. Trey and Corey came running into the foyer from either side as I escorted the naked asshat out of my house.

  “Who the fuck is this guy?”

  “Josh, what are—”

  “Josh! You son of a bitch. Let him go!”

  Two flights of stairs was apparently how long it took Hadley to throw some clothes on and come after me. I ignored her. And since neither Corey nor Trey was in a big rush to wrestle a naked dude away from me, they parted to clear my path to the front door. I threw the guy on the porch. He stumbled on scrawny legs down the front steps.

  “Memorize my face,” I growled at him. “The next time you see it or her, run the other way.”

  He stood cupping his junk at the bottom of the stairs, his feet unsteady on the loose dirt and gravel of the driveway. I slammed the door before he could speak. Hadley was right behind me, dressed in a pair of shorts and a T-shirt.

  “You’re out of your fucking mind!” she screamed at me.

  “Are those his clothes?” I nodded at her hand holding a wadded mess of denim and white cotton. I grabbed them, opened the door without looking past the threshold, and tossed them out. “There,” I snapped at her. “Better?”

  “No, shithead! I can’t believe you’d—”

  “Would and did.” I leaned against the door, crossing my arms over my chest. “I have witnesses. Go, spread the word, and let it be known throughout the land—”