by Blake Nelson
• • •
On Friday I had my second date with Rachel Lehman. We went downtown, to this new gourmet pizza place Hanna kept raving about.
I could tell from the beginning something was not right with Rachel. For starters, she had sounded surprised when I called her. Had she forgotten about the party? Then she wanted to meet me at the restaurant for some reason. She didn’t want to be picked up.
I tried to stay positive. We met and got our table and ordered. When the waiter left, I asked her what else she had done over the weekend, but she wouldn’t really answer. So I told her about my weekend, driving to Seattle and assisting on the photo shoot. I made a funny story out of getting lost on the freeway.
Rachel smiled.
I asked her how she and Olivia had become friends.
She couldn’t answer because she was drinking her Diet Coke.
The pizza came. I carefully pulled a piece off the special silver tray and slid it onto her plate.
“So what’s going on with Claude these days?” she said suddenly. It was the first complete sentence she had spoken.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“He’s still with Hanna, right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Didn’t you see them at the party?”
“She seems very difficult, if you ask me,” said Rachel. “I don’t see how he puts up with it.”
I stared at her across the table.
“He deserves better,” she said, picking at her pizza with her fork. “He deserves a dignified girlfriend. Not a loudmouth drama queen. And the way she assumes everyone is just going to do whatever she wants . . .”
I said nothing. “I didn’t know you knew Hanna.”
“I don’t. Thank God. But I know Claude. We went to summer camp together. Did you know that?”
“No,” I said.
“He was the first boy I ever kissed,” she said, smiling dreamily at the memory. “He was kind of my first love.”
“Well, that explains a lot,” I said.
“Do you think he and Hanna will ever break up?”
“I’m sure they will someday,” I said. “Or they’ll get married. Or they’ll die.” I was trying to be funny, but Rachel wasn’t listening.
“It’s just such a waste is all,” she said, putting a tiny bit of pizza in her mouth.
After that Rachel retreated back into her silence. It was amazing how she didn’t talk. You could say things, ask her questions, it didn’t matter. She just didn’t speak.
Afterward I walked her back to her car. I’d planned on kissing her again. I’d been looking forward to it for a week. But it was pretty clear that wasn’t happening. She got out her keys and opened her door.
“Should I call you again?” I said.
“If you want,” she said.
• • •
When I got home, I threw my coat down, flopped on the bed, and stared at the ceiling. The good thing about Rachel Lehman was she shut you down so fast, you didn’t have time to get your hopes up.
Eventually, I dug my camera out. Not my brother’s camera, but the Canon that Richie had lent me. I had brought it to Seattle and taken some random shots with it. I’d gotten a couple good things. And I liked the camera. I thought I should buy it from Richie. He could deduct the fifty dollars he owed me for assisting from the price. I might never see that fifty dollars otherwise.
Later, I went downstairs and ate a bowl of Cheerios. I could hear the rain dripping from the gutters outside while I ate. I had forgotten about Rachel Lehman while I had been fiddling with the Canon. I resolved to continue to forget about her.
Then I heard my dad’s footsteps upstairs. I could tell when it was him and not my mother. He was heavier and he thudded more. He went to the bathroom, did something there, flushed the toilet, and then moved down the hall to his office. I could hear the big office door close.
At that moment, I had a rare feeling. I felt sorry for my dad. I didn’t have any reason to. Just his life. And now without Russell here, and working all the time, and whatever else went on in his life.
I wondered if he was actually happy. He acted so smug and self-satisfied. He definitely considered himself “a winner.” People listened to him. People did what he told them to do.
At least my brother would be back from college soon. At least he had that to look forward to.
• • •
Back upstairs I had a friend request on Facebook from someone I didn’t know. Britney Vaughn was her name. I clicked on her profile and looked at her picture. She was the girl from the Starlight Theater, whose picture I’d taken, the girl who flipped us off.
There was also a message from her. It said: Excuse me, why are you posting pictures of me on Facebook? I did not give my permission to be photographed and I did not give permission to have it posted.
I had posted it but only that one and not with Britney’s name on it. I didn’t even know her name then.
Now I did. Britney Vaughn. I looked at her profile some more. She was a street-fashion type, like Antoinette. Weird clothes, weird haircut. She had a more definite style than Antoinette, though. She was more punk, with black stockings and black Vans and way too much eye makeup.
Not knowing what else to do, I confirmed our friendship and wrote her back. Sorry. I didn’t know your name. I’ll take it down if you want.
I sent this and waited. A minute later she wrote back: You should pay people if you’re using their image for personal gain.
It’s not for personal gain, I wrote back. I just liked it.
Okay, she wrote. And then a moment later: Do you know Antoinette and Kai?
Yes, I wrote.
That changes things, she wrote.
Why does it change things?
It just does.
In what way? I wrote.
But she never answered.
• • •
“Oh, those girls hate us,” Antoinette told me at school the next day. “Thanks to Kai insulting them. And flirting with their boyfriends.”
“Wait, Kai was flirting with someone’s boyfriend?”
“She didn’t really flirt with them,” said Antoinette. “It was just this stupid thing. At this stupid party. And they made a big deal about it. They wanted to fight us.”
“Like fight you, like a real fight?”
“I guess so.”
This was another thing that happened with Kai and Antoinette. You wouldn’t see them for one weekend and then you’d hear about these crazy adventures they’d had.
“And what happened?” I asked.
“The one girl was too drunk. She could barely stand up. And then Britney claimed she couldn’t find her shoes.”
“And what party was this?”
Antoinette shrugged. “Some Agenda party.”
“What’s Agenda?”
“It’s a dance club. Downtown. For people under twenty-one.”
I had not known there were dance clubs for people under twenty-one. “Who goes to it?”
“Teenagers mostly.”
“Do you go to it?”
“Sometimes.”
“What’s it like?”
“It’s a dance thing. They play music. People dance. You know what dancing is, don’t you?”
24
Russell came home from college the week before Christmas. The three of us drove to the airport to get him: my mom, me, my dad. My brother’s flight had been delayed by a snowstorm in Minneapolis. He’d been traveling sixteen hours by the time he landed at PDX at midnight.
He looked pretty different. He wasn’t all Brooks Brothers, that’s for sure. He had a plain blue hoodie on and jeans and Nikes. His hair was messy and he had a neck beard going. His eyes looked like he hadn’t slept in days.
My dad took his shoulder bag. I rolled his suitcase. You knew right away Russell would make a huge deal about how difficult finals had been, how tough Cornell was in general. This first semester had been a great ordeal: the stress, the pressure, the competition. Hi
s first semester, he confessed to us at the baggage claim, was the hardest thing he’d ever done in his life.
My dad loved this. He wanted to hear every detail. So Russell spent the car ride home telling us about the demanding professors and the three-hour exams. He told us about finishing essays on political ideology as the sun came up. He described the “brain food” and the Red Bull and the all-night cramming sessions at the library, which stayed open twenty-four hours during finals. Last of all was the big party Russell and his hallmates tried to have after finals: making margaritas and then falling asleep before they could drink them because they were so exhausted from so much work.
My father beamed with pride. My mother looked worried for Russell’s health. I said nothing and watched out the window at the passing cars.
• • •
Two nights later, a bunch of other recent Evergreen graduates showed up at our house. These were Russell’s close friends: David Stiller, Hassad, and some others who had gone to elite colleges. They too had stories of insane workloads and impossible reading lists. How had they done it? How had they survived? Listening to them, it was like they’d climbed Mount Everest or won a war.
My dad was smack in the middle of this too. He ordered gourmet pizzas delivered and a case of expensive beer. Russell and his friends were not of legal age, but that was okay. Since they had proven themselves in the academic big leagues, they were entitled to a few adult beverages.
I hung around in the background of all this. Skeptical as I was, I could tell Russell and his friends really had been through something. They had pale, sallow faces. People had lost weight, or gained it. They had bags under their eyes. One of the girls described having to study for finals while her roommate had an anorexic meltdown. The roommate had stopped eating at Thanksgiving. They had to call an ambulance and fly her home to Denver.
In bed that night, I thought about everything I’d heard. I envied Russell and his friends the intensity of their experience. Was there something similar that I could do? With my grades and my test scores, I’d assumed I was destined for University of Oregon. If I could even get in there. If I couldn’t, possibly Portland State. But maybe I could go somewhere else. Like art school. I didn’t know anything about art schools. I wasn’t even sure I was interested in “art.” But maybe I needed to think about it.
• • •
“Art school?” said Richie, when I asked him about it at Passport Photos. He made the hand gesture of a guy masturbating. “It’s bullshit. Are you kidding me? What will you do in art school? Pay somebody thousands of dollars to tell you what looks good? You either know or you don’t.”
I was there with the Canon, trying to talk Richie into selling it to me. He wanted a lot for it. And now there was the small issue of the gas up to Seattle, which I had paid for, plus the fifty dollars he’d promised me for assisting, both of which I wanted him to take off the price of the Canon.
Eventually we worked it out. I could have sold Russell’s camera and bought ten Canons, but I had a feeling he would want it back at some point, which he did. When he asked for it, I brought it to him and he complained that I’d changed the settings, which I had. Then I had to sit down and explain how it worked, which wasn’t easy with such a complicated camera.
Eventually, he took a few pictures of Mom and Dad and himself and vowed to take the camera back to college. I tried to explain that it was too complicated for casual use, but he didn’t think so. My dad agreed. That camera cost a fortune and had all the newest technological advancements. Obviously that was the one you wanted.
After all that, Russell took the camera upstairs and locked it in his desk and forgot about it.
• • •
As Christmas approached things got pretty hectic around the house. My father had his annual office party to organize. Plus his big case was still pending. He was up late almost every night, working in his office.
My mother had her own obligations. She did volunteer work at several places, including the middle school where Russell and I had gone. There was a big Christmas play and a bake sale, which she was in charge of.
Russell, who claimed he wanted to “do nothing but sleep and watch TV,” was constantly meeting up with friends. He surprised everyone by going on several dates with a woman we’d never heard of, Carmen, who went to Dartmouth and was a friend of a friend.
We also had the Oswalds over for dinner. They were my parents’ best friends. Henry Oswald was a lawyer too, like my dad. He and my dad were their usual self-important selves. The fact that Russell had just completed his first semester at Cornell should have overshadowed any stories the Oswalds had about their own kids, but that didn’t stop Henry Oswald from telling them anyway. Little Abby Oswald was taking special music classes because she had a previously undiscovered talent for the cello. We got to hear all about this. My father was visibly pained, but put up with it, just like Mr. Oswald had to put up with him when the conversation went back to Russell’s unbelievable workload at Cornell.
• • •
Another night a different carload of Russell’s high school buddies showed up at the house. These were the friends who had not gone to elite colleges but had stayed closer to home to attend Oregon, Oregon State, or worse. They had to be dealt with diplomatically. Russell pretended to sympathize with their difficult exams and nodded along with their stories about keg parties and fraternity pranks. But Russell didn’t take these people seriously. My dad ordered only one pizza. And no beer.
In the midst of these holiday activities I got the urge to hang out with Antoinette. I’d barely seen her in recent weeks. But surrounded by the endless college talk, I felt a need to hear her snarky, sarcastic voice. What I really needed was to get out of that frickin’ house. So I called Antoinette. I asked her if she would take me to Agenda, which had been festering in my mind as something I needed to see.
25
Antoinette picked me up in her mom’s car, a silver Toyota Camry. I’d brought the Canon, which I’d stashed in my backpack.
“How was your Christmas?” I asked her.
“The usual.”
“What’s the usual?” I asked.
Antoinette sighed. “My mom trying to be cheerful. Then completely losing her shit. Then trying to be cheerful again. And then losing her shit.”
“She’s still thinking about your brother?”
“She’s always thinking about my brother. She’ll be thinking about my brother until the day she dies.”
I nodded respectfully. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Is it always on your mind?”
“Sometimes it is,” she said. She thought for a second. “And then I forget about it. And when I realize I forgot about it, I feel guilty.”
I nodded. I watched the passing houses along the road. “What happened to him exactly?”
“He impacted a hard surface at a high rate of speed.”
“You know what I mean.”
She drove for a while, thinking about it. “I don’t know what happened to him.”
“What did the doctors think?”
“The doctors? There weren’t any doctors.”
“He didn’t go to therapy or anything?”
She shook her head.
“What about the police?” I asked. “Or your family?”
“Nobody knew he was going to do that. I mean, we knew he was depressed. He was always depressed.” She changed lanes, checking her rearview mirror. “I did learn one interesting thing though.”
“What’s that?”
“My dad tried to kill himself when he was nineteen.”
“But he didn’t succeed,” I said.
“He didn’t try as hard. He took pills. And then puked them back up.”
“Well, that’s good.”
“I think my dad might be gay,” said Antoinette. “That’s the feeling I’ve got from my mom over the years.”
“Yeah?”
“Marcus might have been
too. But who knows. It’s not like anyone’s going to discuss it. Being a military family and all.”
• • •
Agenda was right downtown. We parked across the street. I got out the Canon. Antoinette watched while I slung it around my neck.
“Actually,” said Antoinette, “I don’t think they allow cameras inside.”
“It’s small,” I said. “They won’t notice.”
“I think they’ll notice.”
“No they won’t,” I said. I tucked the strap under my shirt and hid the camera beneath my coat. With my hands in my front pockets, you couldn’t tell it was there.
“They’re pretty strict,” said Antoinette.
“They won’t see it,” I said. “I’ve been working with this pro photographer guy. We just did a gig in Seattle. He knows all the tricks.”
“If you say so,” said Antoinette.
• • •
The Agenda security guy found my camera. It took him about two seconds.
We went back to Antoinette’s car.
“So who is this guy you work with?” asked Antoinette, while I untangled the Canon from around my neck.
“His name is Richie,” I said. “He works at the Passport Photos place downtown.”
“And you get paid?”
“He gets paid. And then he pays me.”
“And you call it a gig?”
“That’s what Richie calls it,” I said, returning the camera to my backpack.
“I gotta say, Gavin, ex-boyfriend of idiot Grace Anderson, that’s sorta cool.”
We went back to Agenda. They let us in this time, after another thorough search.
• • •
I don’t know what I was expecting of Agenda. I guess I thought it would be like a high school dance, awkward kids smiling bashfully at each other from across the room. It wasn’t like that. People were dressed very cool, for starters. The guys looked intense. The girls looked like they’d snap your head off if you looked at them wrong. It wasn’t what you’d call a welcoming vibe.
We sat on a bench along one wall. Eventually the music started. It was pretty hard-core electronic dance music, which I like. The beat was crisp and powerful through the large speakers. It sounded fantastic. As the music got going, people appeared from various nooks and crannies. The dance floor filled up. Then the lights went out and a ball started to turn above the dance floor. It sent laser lines, bending and twisting through the room. I turned to Antoinette to say something, but it was too loud. Instead, she grabbed my arm and pulled me onto the dance floor. And so we did that. Antoinette and I danced.
