The Bad Decisions Playlist

by Michael Rubens

  When Patrick helped us load Shane into the Rover, he said, “So, I guess you guys ain’t doing the show tonight?”

  “Yeah, you think?” said Amy.

  “I knew I shouldn’t have LEFT!” she says again now.

  Next to me, Shane manages a “Whuz goin’ on?”

  I reach out my hand and place it on Josephine’s shoulder. She doesn’t brush it away or stiffen, but she doesn’t react to it either. I give her shoulder a gentle squeeze. Hello? After a moment, she reaches up and pats my hand politely, twice, then drops her hand back to her lap. I let my own hand drop too.

  “I thought I’d come back early and give him a nice surprise,” Amy is saying. “Well, there was certainly a surprise, that’s for sure.”

  Josephine hunches forward suddenly, then leans her head out the window and dry heaves.

  When she sits back in her seat, I put my hand on her shoulder again. Amy glances at her, says, “How are you doing, sweetie?”

  “I just want to go home.”

  “Of course. Austin, once we get Shane back to the house, you have got to get this poor girl home. He’s going to get you home, okay, sweetie?”

  “Okay.”

  I lean forward.

  “Josephine, wait. Home home?”

  She just nods miserably.

  “Josephine, no. You can’t go home!” I say, just a little too loud.

  “What do you mean, no?” asks Amy. “What are you talking about? Where else is she going to stay?”

  Which leads to me spilling the beans and Amy saying, “WHAT?!” and “I knew I shouldn’t have left!”

  “Shane has been letting you stay there? Is he crazy?”

  “No, Amy, listen, he didn’t know we were there.”

  “What?!”

  “Amy . . .”

  “I cannot believe this. I knew I shouldn’t have left. I knew I should not have left.”

  “Hey, babe,” slurs Shane from the back seat. “That you?”

  “Oh, shut up, Shane.”

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  When we get to his house, Shane is conscious enough that Todd and I can flank him, his arms over our shoulders, and do the wounded-comrade stumble from the Rover to the front door and awkwardly, groaningly, up the stairs to the bedroom.

  “Put him on his side so he doesn’t choke on his own sick,” says Amy. “Although at this point, he deserves it.”

  “Hey, babe?” says Shane is that gloopy voice. “I don’ thing I’m gonna do tha’ show in New Yorg.”

  Amy shakes her head like she’s trying not to scream. Then she shoves the keys at me and says, “Get that girl home.”

  Josephine is downstairs. Todd pretends to be interested in the bookshelves while I go over to her and hug her. She doesn’t respond for a moment, just rests a hand on my hip, then suddenly puts her arms around me and pulls me close, almost desperate.

  “Hey,” I say. “Hey.”

  “Austin,” she says, “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry why?”

  “I just have to go home.”

  “I know. I know. But maybe if you stayed . . .”

  “I still love you. I love you. But I just want to go home.”

  Starting to cry now.

  “Okay. I’ll take you. I’ll take you now.”

  But even as I’m saying that there’s a horn honk from out front. I look at Josephine.

  “My mom. I texted my mom. Austin, I’m so sorry . . .”

  “Josephine, I’m really​—”

  “I just need to go. Please let me go. I love you.”

  “Please don’t. Not after everything​—”

  “I have to. I’m sorry. I have to.”

  The horn honks again. She releases me and steps back, wipes her eyes, tries to smile.

  “Song’s not over, right?” I say.

  “It’s not over.”

  “Okay,” I say.

  “Okay,” she says.

  She wipes her eyes again. “Todd,” she says, “you live on Benson, right?”

  “Yeah, Benson.”

  “You want a ride?”

  Shrug. “Yeah, sure.”

  “We’ll talk tomorrow? We’ll talk?” I say, moving with Josephine to open the door for her.

  “Of course,” she says.

  “Should I call you tomorrow?”

  “Yes.”

  “What time?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll call you.”

  “Make sure you do.”

  “I will,” she says, moving past me, then hesitating as I lean forward for another hug, the embrace awkward and stiff, the kiss brief. There’s a Cadillac idling at the curb, the dome light on, her mother visible inside, watching us, glaring at me.

  “We’ll talk tomorrow, right?” I say as Josephine walks down the path toward the car.

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t forget to call.”

  She holds a hand up over her shoulder without looking back at me. She climbs into the passenger seat, Todd gets in back, and I watch as she sits back heavily, her hands coming up to cover her face, then the dome light goes off and the car pulls away.

  Last night I dreamed I had a hole in my head /

  thirteen angels and demons dancing on the bed /

  I was six times alive / and I was seven times dead

  I wake from bad, sweaty dreams, squinting in the brightness of the room. Sunlight is blooming through the translucent fabric of the shades. There are birds chirping outside. It takes me a moment to figure out why I’m in Shane’s kitchen and why the perspective is so weird and why I’m so stiff and achy.

  After Josephine and Todd left last night, I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t go upstairs to talk with Amy, couldn’t go home, couldn’t go to the granny apartment and sleep in the bed without Josephine, so I just sat at the kitchen table and put my head down and cried and must have fallen asleep like that.

  Ding dong.

  The front doorbell. Someone is ringing the front bell. That’s what woke me up.

  Maybe it’s Josephine, I think, and raise my head, then realize that doesn’t make any sense and lay my head down again.

  The bell rings again, then again, then it just becomes an insistent string of ding-dong ding-dong ding-dong.

  I should get up and get it, but I just sit there.

  Thump thump thump as someone comes downstairs. I hear the door open and Amy say, “What on earth is​—”

  “Where is he?!”

  Oh. God.

  I’m instantly up out of the chair and out of the kitchen and into the living room, right into an ongoing firefight.

  “Who the hell are you, girly?” says the new arrival.

  “Who am I? What are you talking about! You’re the one just walked in here!”

  “Mom,” I say, “what are you doing here?!”

  “Well, well, well,” says my mom. “Of course you’re here. Of course. Hope I didn’t wake you up.”

  “Mom!”

  “What’s going on?” says Amy, still half asleep. She’s wearing pajama bottoms and one of Shane’s T-shirts.

  “You the latest girlfriend?” says my mom.

  “Mom​—”

  “’Cuz if you’re the latest girlfriend, honey, I wish you the best of luck.”

  “Amy, this is my mom.”

  “Uh . . . hi?” says Amy.

  “Hi yourself. What are you, eighteen?”

  “Mom . . .”

  “You know,” says Amy, “I don’t mean to be rude, but since you are . . .”

  “Oh, shut it. Where is he? And don’t say ‘who.’”

  “Mom, what are you doing here?”

  “You’re asking me what I’m doing here? I thought you were playing runaway at Devon’s. Where is Shane?!”

  “Shane’s upstairs sleeping,” says Amy.

  “Upstairs drunk, you mean. Get him.”

  “Austin, what is going on?” says Amy. “I’m up there dead asleep​—”

  “Amy, I’m so sorry abou
t this,” I say. “Mom​—”

  “I’m not talking to you right now,” she says. “I will deal with you later.” She jabs a finger at Amy. “Now you go get Shane, or I swear to the Lord I will take his granddaddy’s horseshoe off that front door and go upstairs and beat him to death with it.”

  “Okay, first, you don’t walk in here and order me around. Second, I don’t imagine he particularly wants to see you,” says Amy.

  “Oh, really? Is that why he keeps calling me and dropping by the house and showing up at my place of work like some goddamn clown and nearly getting me fired?”

  “You’re lying,” says Amy.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, little girl. Wake up. I was lying, I wouldn’t friggin’ be here. How you think I knew where to find him? He texted me the friggin’ address five times and invited me over!”

  “Okay, and now it’s time for you to go.”

  Instead my mom turns to me. “How was all y’all’s little show last night?” she says, holding up her hand, and I realize she’s clutching a rumpled sheet of paper. “Y’all have fun?” She crumples the paper into a ball and backhands it at me. It rebounds off my chest and I reach for it reflexively, bobbling it around before catching it.

  “Listen, lady,” Amy says.

  “Don’t you ‘listen’ me!”

  “Don’t you tell me what to​—”

  As they tell each other what not to do I uncrumple the paper. A flyer, printed in old-timey medicine show letters. YOU ARE CORDIALLY INVITED TO A BIRTHDAY PERFORMANCE FOR YOU BY SHANE TYLER AND THE CHILDREN’S CRUSADE, FEATURING THE VERY TALENTED AUSTIN METHUNE

  “Would you please leave already?” Amy is saying.

  “Shane!” shouts my mother, directing her voice upstairs, her southern coming out full. “Shane Tyler, I know you’re up there!”

  “Lady​—”

  “Shut yer yap. Shane! Shane Tyler! You get your ass down here right now!”

  Amy has her hands clapped to the sides of her head. “I cannot believe this is happening,” she says.

  “Oh, it’s happening. Shane!” bellows my mom. “Shane Tyler! Shane Tyler, you get out of bed and come down here right now, or . . .”

  Shane has appeared at the top of the stairs.

  We all watch as he descends, slowly, grimacing, holding the banister like an old man, like his whole body pains him. At the bottom of the stairs he passes Amy, resting a hand on her shoulder, and then he walks stiffly toward my mom and comes to a halt a short pace in front of her, and the two of them just stand there looking at each other, arms at their sides, not saying a word.

  I haven’t breathed since he first appeared.

  No one moves. Their faces looked carved from stone, facing each other in a silent tableau. I’m steeling myself for the inevitable, when my mom will wind up and smack him or open her mouth and start screaming.

  Instead I realize that her eyes are starting to brim with tears. So are Shane’s. They’re both fixed in place, tears starting to overflow. Then he takes a step closer to her and opens his arms and she responds, moving to him and gently embracing him, the both of them swaying and rocking, tears streaming down my mom’s cheeks from her closed eyes. Shane is the same. She wipes at her nose and her eyes with her wrist and leans her head against his shoulder.

  “Oh, Shane,” says my mom. “Shane, Shane, Shane. Why do you have to be so dumb?”

  “I don’t know,” says Shane.

  In the background Amy is watching, hugging herself, shoulders high as if she were sheltering from the cold.

  “I still love you,” says Shane. “All these years, I always loved you.”

  My mom wipes more tears. “I love you too, Shane. I loved you more than I ever loved anyone, and I always will. But, Shane, I don’t want to see you ever again. Ever.”

  “Yeah,” says Shane. “Yeah.”

  She stands on her toes to give him a kiss on the forehead, and then a final hug, and then she steps back from him. He’s watching her with helpless longing and sadness, the way you might look when someone you desperately love has died.

  My mother turns to me. “Come on,” she says.

  I don’t move.

  “Austin,” says my mom. Then again: “Austin.”

  “It was all a lie.”

  My voice sounds flat. Shane doesn’t meet my gaze, stares at the carpet.

  “All this,” I say quietly, gesturing with the flyer without raising my arm, because even that would require more energy than I can summon. “It was all for her. The show, all that, you were just using me. I was just bait.” My fingers open. The paper falls. “You never sent that track to Barry, did you.”

  Now he looks up. “Kid . . .” he says. Shaking his head in apology, or helplessness.

  I nod.

  “Let’s go,” says my mom.

  I follow her out to her car and we drive away.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  “Just give me a little more time,” says Josephine.

  “You said a week. It’s been a week.”

  “Austin, it’s been three days.”

  “It feels like a week. It feels like a month.”

  “Austin . . .”

  Dusk. I’m at a playground, the one where I broke my arm for Martha Meinke’s benefit. One hand holding the phone to my ear, the other anchoring me to the tetherball pole, my body leaning away from it as I circle around and around and around. Trampling five cigarette butts farther into the ring of dirt with each revolution. Thinking of lighting up again.

  “There’s some party tonight at Jason Goodman’s house,” I say.

  “Austin, don’t you think that’s enough parties for a bit?”

  “So come hang out. We can just hang out.”

  “I can’t. Not tonight.”

  “Fine. Tomorrow. What about tomorrow?”

  “No. I promised to help my dad out at the mall, hand out flyers.”

  “What?!”

  “Look, it’s complicated. I’m trying to play nice. Don’t judge.”

  We’re quiet.

  “It all feels like a dream,” she says.

  “Yes.”

  “I didn’t want it to end.”

  “No.”

  “Have you heard from Shane?”

  “No.”

  “You angry at him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You and your mom talking yet?”

  “No.”

  “You should try.”

  All my mom said when she retrieved me from Shane’s was “I have to go to work.” When she got home that night, she made dinner and took hers upstairs. It’s been that way since, both of us spending our evenings in our rooms, avoiding each other, my mom leaving for work before I’m up. Roommates who don’t speak the same language. Roommates whose countries are at war with each other.

  Rick was there the first night, but now he’s in Milwaukee on some important Rick business. Which, thank God. Because if I had to talk to him right now I’d say, Pardon me for a moment, and then I’d go and ingest every single household cleaner in the broom closet.

  I was irritable and itchy tonight, restless restless restless, couldn’t write a song, couldn’t watch TV, couldn’t make it past two panels of Calvin and Hobbes. I paced around the house. On my mom’s desk I saw the application to Marymount Academy, a pen resting on it. I left the house and got on my bike and ended up here, calling Josephine for the hundredth time.

  “I miss you,” I say, also for the hundredth time.

  “I miss you, too,” she says.

  “So why not come to the party?”

  “Austin, no. And you shouldn’t go either.”

  “Josephine, just say it. Just say it. Are you breaking up with me?”

  “No! It’s just that I’m scared,” she says. “I’m scared and I need time away to think, so that I can come back.”

  “But you’ll come back.”

  “Austin, what did I tell you before?”

  “What.”

  “On the
beach. I told you that I’m true. And I meant it. Remember that,” she says. “I’m true. Are you?”

  “Yes.”

  “So give me some time.”

  I stay in the park until the sun sets, smoking that sixth cigarette, and then one more for good measure. I compose another text to Shane that I know I won’t send.

  Am I angry at him? I don’t know. The whole concert, this whole magic week, what was it? Shane’s pathetic effort to get my mom to come to the show.

  She must have told him no, Josephine said, the morning of the concert.

  Which makes sense, with everything that happened that day. What was it he said before the flameout? Just stopping in to say a quick hello to KD. And goodbye.

  I should be angry. He lied to me, used me. But I guess I sort of used him, too. And there’s something else. The way he would look at me, like he cared. Like he was proud of me.

  So instead of being angry I’m . . . what? Empty. Empty and confused.

  Which is how I end up on my bike again, heading to his house. Going there to ask Shane the question Josephine put to me: Who are you?

  I park my bike at the curb. If he’s not home, I’ll wait until he is. Who are you, Shane Tyler? I follow the walkway toward his front door. Then halfway there slow nearly to a stop.

  “No.”

  Then pick up the pace again and reach the front door and stand there staring at it, like staring at it hard enough will make what’s missing reappear.

  The horseshoe. The horseshoe is gone.

  “No!”

  In its place, thumbtacked to the door, is an envelope. Austin, it says in Shane’s handwriting.

  I don’t need to peer through the window or go around back to see if the Rover is there to know. He’s gone. Gone for good.

  That’s who he is.

  Then I do feel angry.

  Blowtorch fury, rage, ambushing me like it did in the booth at the bar, and now the music in my head joins the fray, all discord and noise and jagged edges, and I stagger back and close my eyes and clutch at my head like I’m trying to hold my skull together.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Drinking hard, drinking with a destination in mind, one beer, two, pushing to the keg for my third, people saying, Austin! Good to see you! Yo, you okay? You look kinda intense . . .

  Too-loud music, shouted conversations, everything smelling beer-sour, weed-sweet, cigarette-foul. Kids making out in the corners, lines at the bathrooms, kegs out back, rumors of the act of intercourse taking place between so-and-so in the basement bathroom or in the parents’ room on the parents’ bed!