The Bad Decisions Playlist

by Michael Rubens

  “How about New York? Josephine’s gonna be in New York.”

  “Sure, New York! Bushwick, Greenpoint, some place like that . . .”

  I can see it​—​touring with Shane, coming into town now and then to visit Josephine, and then when she goes to school in New York, we can live together!

  “Shane, that would be so awesome . . .”

  “Will be so awesome. Will be. We’re doing it!”

  A train is coming, and as it rumbles by and blows its horn Shane clambers to his feet and whoops along with it: “WOOOOOO!” and I jump up and join him, “WOOOOO!!”, both of us raising our fists to the sky.

  Back in the car, jabbering on excitedly, Shane telling me about what it’s like to play in Austin, how the crowds are in New Orleans, how Tucson is better than you think it would be. It’s only then that I glance up and realize we’re in downtown Edina, near my house, near where my mom​—​

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa, why are we stopping here?” I ask Shane. We’re pulling up to the curb right outside the nail salon.

  “Just stopping in to say a quick hello to KD,” says Shane, putting the Range Rover in park. “And goodbye.”

  “Shane, wait​—​are you sure?”

  “Yeah, c’mon, it’s just a quick visit. Want to come?”

  “Shane, no.”

  There she is, my mother, seated at a small table across from some rich Edina lady, concentrating hard on her nails. Shane is already opening his door and climbing out. My stomach knots and double-knots, all that joy and optimism vanishing.

  “Shane, I don’t know that this is such a great idea . . .”

  “Nonsense. Come say hi.”

  “No, Shane, please, don’t do this.”

  “What are you so upset about?”

  “Shane . . .”

  He’s looking at himself in the sideview mirror, pretends to fix his eyebrows, gives me a wink, then strides toward the entrance.

  “Shane, no, don’t​—”

  Then he stops, turns on his heels, and comes back to the car.

  “Goddammit, Shane, I thought you were serious,” I say as he approaches.

  “Just forgot this,” he says, and opens the rear passenger door and pulls out the guitar.

  “Shane, c’mon,” I say. “Shane. Shane!”

  I’m talking to his back, which is receding rapidly. He gets to the door of the salon, and I slump down in my seat, unable to watch​—​Oh, God . . .​—​and then I can’t bear it and I straighten up just enough to peek over the edge of the car window.

  He’s inside. He’s talking animatedly to the woman at the reception desk, who has a confused, cautious smile on her face, and he’s indicating my mom, who just now is looking up and noticing him. I can’t hear anything, but I clearly see her saying, “Shane!” Then she tilts her head back toward the ceiling and slumps her shoulders forward and I see her say, “Auugh!” and then she straightens and says, “What the hell are you doing here?!”

  He’s in profile to me, so I can see the smile on his face, and he’s holding out a hand to placate her​—​Hold on, hold on, he’s saying, and I can see her saying, Shane, no. NO. Get out of here, but instead he starts strumming the guitar and singing to her, and I’m flashing back to a day on Cedar Lake when I got brained with a mandolin.

  The people in the salon are giggling or confused or stunned, and my mom is apologizing to the woman in front of her and standing up to deal with Shane, who by now is down on one knee singing with enthusiastic abandon.

  Now everyone is giggling, even the rich Edina lady​—​isn’t this adorable?! It is sort of funny, it’s so completely stupid and outrageous, and I’m half laughing while also gritting my teeth and clawing at the side of my head with my fingernails. It’s total absurd RomCom, Shane on one knee giving it his all, the other women enjoying the entertainment, except in this particular RomCom the girl is clenching what appear to be cuticle scissors in her hand, and if I know my mom, there’s a good chance she’s going to stab Shane in the throat with them.

  I should get out of the car. I should get out of the car and get the hell in the salon now, this instant, pull Shane out of there, get between the two of them before something truly awful happens. I sit up more, hand on the door handle, hesitating​—​what do I do what do I do—​slump down again. Shane is still going. My mom is frozen in front of him, fists clenched at her sides. This is the woman who would have clubbed you to death with a piece of firewood! I want to shout at him, but the time for that was when we pulled up to the curb.

  I want to flee, let whatever dreadful doom that’s about to ensue do so without me. But I don’t. I’m glued to my seat, then​—​crap, no—​my mom is on the move, striding toward Shane, accelerating with each step, she’s on top of him​—​and then she has passed him, marching right past the reception desk and straight-arming the door open.

  When she steps out onto the sidewalk, I see that she’s starting to cry but fighting it, jaw fixed, lips a compressed line. She’s not ten feet from me. I sit up, hand automatically coming up in a semiwave, and I want to call out to her, but just at that instant her eyes fall on me and I see the moment when she recognizes me. Then she turns and stalks away down the sidewalk.

  I’ve told all of my secrets to you /

  help me figure out which ones are true

  “Well, that worked,” says Shane when he gets back in the car, and he starts to laugh. I don’t say anything or even look at him. I don’t know what to do. For the first time, I’m afraid around him, and I’m not sure if I’m afraid for him or of him.

  “What’s wrong with you?” he asks.

  “Nothing.”

  “Okay.”

  He’s still unnaturally happy as he drives, overamped, singing, drumming on the steering wheel. I don’t want to think about why he’s so happy, I can’t, I can’t, terrified that he’s on coke or meth​—​or, worse, that he’s not, this is just him, and my anxiety is so sharp that it’s a fight not to start hyperventilating, and suddenly there are bursts and pops of music in my head, jagged stabs of guitar and feedback, and I press my temple hard against the frame of the truck so the vibration will drown it out.

  As we’re driving Shane’s mood starts to ebb, the glow fading like a tube in an old-fashioned amplifier. By the time we arrive back at his place he’s quiet and tired, down from whatever high he’d been riding. When I climb out of the truck, he’s still sitting at the wheel.

  “I’ll see you at rehearsal later,” he says.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Of course he doesn’t show up for rehearsal.

  It’s just Todd and Josephine and me, waiting, pacing, checking the time on our phones. I’ve texted him a few times and gotten nothing. I can feel Josephine watching me. I didn’t tell her anything about what happened, barely said a word to her when I snuck back into the granny apartment and we left together on the bike.

  “Are you all right?” she says to me now, probably the fifth time.

  “I’m fine.”

  Todd says, “Screw this. It’s nearly showtime. Maybe he’s at the venue.”

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Of course he’s not at the venue.

  I see some people I recognize from the party and ask them all if they’ve seen Shane. We find the bar manager. He hasn’t seen him. “I mean, c’mon, he’s supposed to go on in ten minutes,” he adds, miffed.

  Go outside, wait. Go back inside, look around, the way you rummage in your pocket for the fifth time for the key that you already know isn’t there. Reconvene with Todd and Josephine, Josephine saying, “No one has seen him.”

  Then: “Austin!”

  It’s Amy. A rushed greeting, hugs, Amy telling me she came back a day early to surprise Shane, both of us saying at the same time, “Have you seen him?”

  A quick hug to Josephine, an intro to Todd.

  “I’ve been calling and emailing and texting, but he’s totally off the grid,” says Amy. While we’re in a tight huddle, Amy asking whet
her we should call the police or check the emergency rooms, I hear a familiar voice.

  “Yo, dude, wassup?!”

  Patrick, sauntering over, arms open for hugs from everyone.

  “Patrick,” says Amy, “have you seen Shane?”

  “He ain’t here?”

  “No.”

  “Oh. Uh-oh.” The face of a kid who knows that something valuable got broken.

  “Patrick, what?” says Amy.

  “No, I was just thinking . . .”

  Amy grabs him by the wrist and marches him away from us, and we watch the two of them converse, Patrick still looking like a guilty, defensive kid, Amy getting more and more agitated and doing a face palm.

  “This can’t be good,” says Josephine.

  Amy marches back to us. “I’m going to get Shane,” she says.

  “What’s going on?” I say to Amy. “Everything okay?”

  “No. I don’t know. Shane went to some party,” she says.

  “He did? Why’d he do that? Is that bad?” One look at her and I can see the answer. “It’s bad, isn’t it.”

  “It’s all fine. I just have to go.”

  “Okay, pretty obvious that it’s not all fine. I’m going with you.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “Yes I am.”

  “Yo, let’s get a move on,” says Patrick, standing near the exit.

  “If you’re going, so am I,” says Josephine.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  There’s more arguing about whether or not we’re coming along, but we all end up in Patrick’s beat-up Camry, Amy in the passenger seat, Josephine and me crammed in the back along with Todd. He had followed us out of the bar.

  “You’re coming?” I said, and he kind of nodded and shrugged at the same time.

  Patrick is thinking out loud as he drives. “I think it’s this way.”

  “You think it is, or it is?” says Amy.

  “C’mon now, I’m trying to be helpful.”

  “Yeah, you sure helped Shane.”

  “He asked me, I told him about the party. I didn’t make him go,” says Patrick.

  Josephine leans close against me in the back seat, and we hold hands tightly.

  Patrick takes us to some neighborhood in North Minneapolis, the kind that scares you when you drive through it, old houses with collapsing decks and peeling paint and bars or plywood on the doors and windows. We get lost, every decaying block more or less identical​—​“It’s here. No, wait, that ain’t it . . .”​—​until we get to a street that has cars parked along the curb and we slow, inching along until Amy says, “There. There’s the Rover.”

  Patrick points out one of the crumbling houses, the first-floor lights on. “That’s it, I think.”

  We park at the foot of the drive.

  “All right, I’m going in,” says Amy, the music emanating from the house growing louder as she opens the car door. “Patrick, you going to help out here?”

  “Yyyyeah,” says Patrick. “So here’s the thing. I kind of have this beef? With some folks at this party . . . ?”

  “Christ. Fine. Stay here,” says Amy. “You too!” she says, leaning in to point at all of us in the back seat.

  As soon as she’s through the front door, I say, “I’m going in.”

  “Austin . . .” says Josephine.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll be right back.”

  I climb out of the car and start walking toward the house, my sense of foreboding growing as I near the battered screen door. Behind me, I hear a car door open and close.

  “Austin, wait.”

  When Josephine catches up to me, I say, “I don’t think you should go in there.”

  “I don’t think either of us should go in there.”

  I reach out for her hand. She grabs mine and we walk the rest of the way to the entrance.

  The front door delivers us right into what I think is supposed to be the living room. It’s packed with people, no furniture on the ratty carpet, the air smoky. The Rolling Stones cranked way up loud. I once went to a frat party that felt a little like this​—​like there were no actual grownups maintaining the house, that it was just a rotting shell to hide bad activities from prying eyes. But this is that times ten. We pause just inside, Josephine scrunching up her nose. “You okay?” I say.

  “I’m okay. Let’s find Shane.”

  I spot Amy up ahead and we squeeze through, Josephine following close behind me, not letting go of my hand. “I’m a little scared of these people,” she whispers to me, and I don’t want to admit it, but so am I. I find myself picking people out of the crowd who look normal and trying to take comfort in that. See? That guy over there looks okay, that woman there looks like she could teach school. Doesn’t he sort of look like the guy who manages the grocery store? But there are also people who look hard, like they’ve maybe seen prison bars from the wrong side.

  Amy is finishing a conversation with a guy who looks like a stoned Rastafarian Viking, dreads in his blond hair, his scraggly beard bound into braids by little rubber bands.

  “Dunno, man, try downstairs,” he’s saying, raising his eyebrows when he spots Josephine.

  “I told you​—” starts Amy when she sees me.

  “Let’s just find Shane,” I say.

  We file down the narrow, unlit stairway, picking our way past people leaning against the drywall. The basement is dim and smells like mold and cigarette smoke and weed. Josephine is coughing.

  As my eyes adjust to the low light I start to discern shadowy figures standing in the center of the room, then a sofa with three people slouched in it against the wall. There’s a flare of light, someone lighting a cigarette or a joint or something, and Amy says, “There he is.”

  He’s slumped in a chair in the corner, head lolled backwards. Amy goes to him first. I can hear her saying, “Shane. Shane. Shane!” as I move toward her, Josephine close behind me. Amy is shaking him. “Shane!” she repeats, but he doesn’t respond.

  “He’s drunk,” I say, hoping he’s just drunk, not something worse.

  “Oh, God,” says Josephine.

  Another light flares and she whispers to me, “What are those people smoking over there?”

  “Smoking?” says Amy, straightening up, furious. “They’re not smoking. They’re cooking heroin.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” I hear myself say.

  Amy swears, shaking her head. “He promised,” she says. “He promised.”

  “Hey, pretty lady, you need something?”

  Some man with stringy long hair and a goatee approaching, talking at Amy, a smile that’s really a threat. I feel the adrenaline start, the weak-kneed prefight sick feel, Josephine squeezing my upper arm, hard. Everything is so awful right now, and it’s about to get so much worse. I step forward to put myself between Stringy Hair and our group, but then someone pushes me roughly aside, and it’s Todd, moving in front of me, fists ready. “We don’t want nothing from you,” he says. “We gonna have a problem, buddy?”

  “Whoa, easy now,” says stringy hair, still smiling, like he’s amused, but he backs away, hands up, and suddenly I’m deeply appreciative of Todd and his pit-bull jock aggression.

  “We’ve got to get Shane out of here,” Josephine whispers to me, just as Todd says in a low voice, “Methune, what the hell is this?!”

  “Shane,” says Amy, shaking him, but he doesn’t respond. She leans close and half shouts, “Shane! Wake up! Wake! Up!”

  Shane groans and makes a noise like, MMmmmrrrr.

  Amy winds up and slaps him across the face, hard, Josephine taking in a quick startled breath. “Shane, wake the hell up!”

  Beyond Todd, I can see Stringy Hair talking to another guy who has a shaved head and looks mean, Stringy Hair gesturing toward us.

  “Todd,” I say, “we have to get him out of here.”

  “Yeah, no kidding.”

  “Wake up, Shane!” Amy again. Choked-up angry tears in her voice.

  Shane groans again. I c
an see Stringy Hair and Shaved Head sniggering.

  “Screw this,” says Todd. “Methune, help me get him up.”

  “What’s your plan?”

  “Plan? I’m gonna friggin’ carry him.”

  In the end it takes all of us yanking on Shane’s arms to get him upright enough for Todd to squat down and hoist him up into a fireman’s carry.

  As Todd starts staggering toward the stairs, Stringy Hair moves into his path, once again displaying his hyena grin. Shaved Head is behind him. Josephine’s nails are digging into my upper arm.

  “Get out of my way,” says Todd quietly, teeth gritted.

  “What’s your rush?” says Stringy. “Whyn’t you leave the girls?”

  “Buddy,” says Todd, the same quiet tone but an even harder edge, “I have to put this guy down, it’s gonna be a rough friggin’ night for you.”

  Delivering it not to Stringy but to Shaved Head, the real danger. He and Todd are staring each other down. Shaved Head massive, growing larger with every moment, looks like he could eat Todd as a snack. But if Todd feels any fear, I can’t detect it, just the violence inside him barely kept in check.

  An eternity of them staring at each other, of my heart pounding. Then Shaved Head just shrugs, bored, and turns away, pulling Stringy along with him.

  Todd staggers and grunts and wheezes his way up the stairs, the three of us following, our hands out toward him like we’re spotting a gymnast, me twisting to make sure that Baldy and Stringy aren’t coming up behind us.

  When we reach the ground floor, Todd pushes his way through to the front door, gasping, “Get the hell out the way!” to the people in his path. As soon as he’s outside he drops Shane on the patchy grass, none too gently, and sits, knees up, gulping air. Amy goes to kneel next to Shane, holding his hand and stroking his face. Josephine starts retching in the bushes.

  “Awesome!” says Patrick, who is standing on the lawn by the curb. “You found him!”

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  “I knew I shouldn’t have left. I knew I shouldn’t have left.”

  Amy, driving the car, smacking the steering wheel each time she says knew. Shane between me and Todd in the back seat, occasionally moaning. Josephine directly in front of me in the passenger seat, her face greenish white, the window rolled down in case she has to retch again.