Adios, Nirvana

by Conrad Wesselhoeft

  Oh, yeah. The West Seattle Herald ad I was supposed to write. Forgot about that.

  Because I’m still in the zone, I grab a sheet of paper from Mimi’s printer. Mess with a few ideas. The C&H kicks in, and I write:

  “Believe in Love Again.”

  The Chapel of the Highest Happiness

  Where Dream Weddings Come True

  Opening June 1

  in the Heart of West Seattle’s

  Historic Delridge Neighborhood

  Rev. Miriam Jones officiating

  My phone burps. Nick.

  “Get your ass over here, dude!” I say.

  “Aye, aye, captain,” Nick says.

  It’s primer day. Armed with extra-wide brushes and iPods, Nick and I paint a coat of white on two sides of the house. Dismantling and rebuilding the scaffolding.

  At about three p.m., Javon shows up in new shoes—Zoom LeBron VIs. “Hell no, I’m not paintin’ nothin’,” he says. But I’m paying, so he borrows a pair of my splattered Dunk Lows.

  We attack the remaining two sides of the house. Swap iPods to keep it fresh. All agree, Jason Mraz sucks to paint by, but Afroman makes the scaffold bounce. I’m introducing my thicks to taurine, and today we have the strength of charging bulls. We are constantly refreshed and stimulated. Maximally efficient.

  We’re high up on the scaffolding, slapping away, when Mimi comes out to inspect. Naturally, she’s forgotten to button the top half of her blouse, so the inspection works both ways. But I don’t care. Today, as long as my team is happy, they can do anything they want.

  “Hey,” she shouts, “where’s my ad?”

  I reach into my pocket, fold the sheet of paper into an airplane, and fling it. It nosedives onto the grass.

  Mimi bends over, torques, picks up the little plane. She flattens the wings, ponders the words.

  Bursts into a smile.

  She digs into her tits and finds some cash, shouts: “You’ve earned this, baby!”

  She anchors the bills under a paintbrush handle.

  Then she thrusts a fist at the sky. “Go, boys!”

  We go and go till the light is gone at ten p.m. By then, we’re done. The house is fully primed. We’ve even slapped the first coat of purple on the south side. Nick, Javon, and I stand on the sidewalk and bask in the glory of our work.

  Javon is so greasy, he doesn’t want to touch his spotless Zoom LeBron VIs. He hooks a hanger onto the heels and drops them delicately into a grocery bag. Then he and Nick cash out—I’m a generous boss—and slouch into the dark.

  Day is done. Gone the sun. Come the muse.

  Time to start writing again.

  Chapter 31

  I’m in the mystical trough. A valley where demons and angels dance. A place of writing frenzy. Think Jack Kerouac, man of roads and wine. Think Charles Bukowski, man of apartments and wine.

  Think me, man of taurine and NoDoz.

  We are writers of the mystical trough—most alive in the after-midnight hours.

  Those writers who no longer feel the pain went to bed a long time ago. They find relief in sleep.

  I find relief in the mystical trough. My fingers fly across the keyboard.

  Click, click, click, click.

  In telling the story of David Cosgrove, everything is darkened by the fate of those men under water, trapped in the sunken USS Gabriel Trask off Kerama Retto in April 1945.

  When I write about David’s ice hockey days or the death of his dog, Gil, or his first “unofficial girlfriend,” Blue Feather Chang, I’m thinking about those men under water.

  I see their shadowy images in all aspects of David’s life. They seem very much at home in my own head, too. My mind is a fertile place for shadows to grow.

  My phone has been burping half the night, but I’ve ignored it. Then one prolonged brrraacckkk breaks my spell. I reach over to check the number, pretty sure it’s just one of my insomniacal thicks.

  I see the name “Katie” on my screen.

  Jerk thumb. Catch the call.

  “Were you asleep?”

  “I never sleep.”

  “Jonathan, David died.”

  The first bus uptown leaves at 4:55 a.m., and I’m on it. So is a baker’s dozen of early risers and all nighters. They are like the light in the sky—scales of night and day, weary and fresh, beer and soap.

  An old woman with a big suitcase and terrible dermatitis on her hands climbs on. I pray she won’t sit beside me. She does, of course. Her suitcase takes up half the aisle. She tries to make small talk with me. Fails.

  At the West Seattle Junction, she gets up, struggles with her suitcase. It pains her to lift it. I grab the handle and carry the suitcase off the bus. Plant it beside her. “Thank you, dear,” she says. “Whatever’s troubling you, don’t give up.”

  Jeezus, is it that obvious?

  I transfer to the 128. The rest of the way up California Avenue, I’m zoned out. The world blurs by.

  When I glance across the aisle, Telly is sitting there. Long blond hair. Yellow T-shirt. Gazing ahead. Unaware of me.

  It’s like Abe Lincoln has swung his ax and cut a gash in the sun. The golden morning bleeds sadness.

  Partly, my thoughts are the culmination of everything, made raw all over again. And partly they’re because the taurine and NoDoz are wearing off. I’m starting to see halos.

  Walking the last blocks to the Delphi, I stop on the bridge over Schmitz Park. It’s a long ways down to the creek, still sleeping in the morning shadows. Down there where a handful of Telly lives, mingling with memories of Grandpa. I could easily climb onto the guardrail. It’s very tempting.

  I keep walking.

  At the Delphi, the early risers sit in the TV lounge watching the early bird news. Flat Ass, at the reception desk, catches my eye. Gestures for me to sit and wait.

  So I sit in the TV lounge, alone in the corner. Point my body away from the news. Grab a magazine, Wise Traveler. Flip though it. Barely looking. Just riffling.

  My eye trips on an ad, a little rectangle of blue. It shows a tanned lady in a white bikini standing knee-deep in the ocean. Behind her the sea tapers away and melts into the sky.

  In coconut-brown letters just above her golden left shoulder are these words:

  Adios, Nirvana!

  I see all this in a blink—in the tenth of a second it takes to riffle a page.

  As I keep riffling, something begins to gnaw at me. A revelation can be like that—a rat gnawing an electric wire. The rat keeps gnawing till finally it chomps through and . . .

  ZAP!

  YE-EOWWW!

  Finally, here are the words.

  All my feelings sardine-packed into six syllables, and they aren’t even English:

  A-di-os, Nir-va-na.

  Goodbye to . . . bliss . . . and happiness.

  Because that’s what Nirvana is, I think.

  And love and beauty and hope.

  Stuff I’m always searching for when I write my poems.

  Or play Ruby.

  Yeah! I think. Somebody gets it—somebody finally gets it.

  But when I flip back to the lady in the white bikini, practically sweating with excitement, I’m shocked again. My eyes—my careless, dyslexic eyes—have tricked me.

  The little blue rectangle that seemed to say everything now says nothing.

  The actual words are these:

  Adios, Havana!

  Goodbye, capital city of Cuba.

  Goodbye, salsa and tortillas.

  Goodbye, Fidel and Raul Castro.

  Then I realize that my eyes—my visionary eyes—have stumbled onto a phrase all my own. And not just any phrase—a code, a password, a philosophy for life.

  All rolled into one fat cigar.

  One two-word poem that says everything.

  The ultimate poem.

  I stand and face all the early risers sitting in the TV lounge. Those hooked to oxygen tanks. Those in wheelchairs. The blank. The bald. The bland. The dying. The denying.


  And I shout:

  “ADIOS, NIRVANA!”

  Flat Ass rushes over and grabs my arm. She walks me to David’s room. Knocks. Katie answers. She’s wearing no wig today. Bald as a Ping-Pong ball.

  Gary Death is here, too. Pink faced. Smelling of cigarettes. “Just about done,” he says.

  He’s brought his metal suitcase. Unfolded it into a gurney. Zipped David into a gray bag.

  “Would you like to see him?”

  “Yeah.”

  Gary unzips the bag. Now I can see David’s face.

  There are many kinds of stillness. One is the stillness of sleep, and one is the stillness of death. The inside of David’s mouth is black.

  Katie wraps her arms around me. Hugs me tightly.

  I feel the warmth of her body through my coat.

  I feel her thinness. Her disease. Her breasts. Her strength.

  I close my eyes and see David swimming toward that shimmer. See him bursting through the surface of the ocean and drinking all that sky.

  Katie is shaking. Or maybe it’s me. I can’t tell.

  “Shh,” she says.

  “Hey, can somebody get the door?” Gary asks.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I say, jumping to the door.

  I hold it open, and Gary rolls out, pushing the gurney with David all zipped up.

  As we wheel down the corridor into the lobby, David is king. Respected by all. Not with trumpets and bows, but with straightened posture, a universal twitching awareness of our mortality.

  Everybody’s wondering, how can I arrange the daisies and dandelions of my life into a better bouquet?

  The answer is, you can’t.

  Life is random.

  Life is absurd.

  Life is deadly.

  The bouquet arranges itself.

  And it doesn’t always bloom or smell good.

  Katie and I follow the gurney out the side entrance into the parking lot. Gary opens the back door of the van and rams the gurney into the fender. Bang—presto! The gurney is now folded neatly into a metal suitcase again. David is resting peacefully on a platform in back.

  Gary starts to shut the door.

  “Wait!”

  I reach into my coat pocket and pull out an invitation to the Taft graduation ceremony on June 1.

  I unzip the bag a few inches and slip the envelope inside. Zip it up.

  “Hope you can make it, dude,” I say.

  “And you, too,” I say, handing an invitation to Katie. “And this one’s for Agnes.”

  I hand another invitation to Gary Death.

  He reads it. “‘Crossing the River Styx’—whew!”

  Katie blows a kiss. “Bye-bye, David.”

  And I whisper, “Adios.”

  Chapter 32

  It’s days later. My room is jammed with thicks. Kyle, Javon, Nick, Jordan. Ryan Lee is here, too.

  They sprawl on my floor. Sit at my desk. Mess on my laptop. Flip the channels on my TV. What’s mine is theirs. And vice versa. It’s the law of thickness.

  My only rule—treat Ruby with respect. And they do. She sits among us, royal in her rocking chair, the best chair in the room.

  Used to be, I shared this chaos with Telly, and everyone wandered back and forth across the hall, between our rooms. But now, of course, Telly’s door is shut. Sealed. His room a shrine.

  They steal glances in that direction. Though he may be gone, his soul is still there. We all feel it.

  Jordan goes down to the kitchen, returns with platefuls of microwaved burritos and tater tots, a bottle of ketchup tucked under his arm. The plates go around. Even though the tots were supposed to be baked, not microwaved, they are spongily, saltily delicious. Gone in thirty seconds. Basically inhaled.

  The burritos last about forty-five seconds.

  Now Kyle goes down to the kitchen, returns with a giant plastic bag filled with Mimi’s frozen grapes.

  “Aha!” Ryan Lee says.

  “Dudes,” Kyle says, “I think we all need some one hundred-proof antioxidants. You know, to fight daily stress and delay the aging process. These grapes were personally hand selected and injected by the finest MILF in West Seattle.”

  “Respect!” Nick says.

  But Kyle can’t shut up.

  “. . . who I personally asked out on a date tonight, but wouldn’t you know it, some greasy, broken-down dick-face beat me to it. She could’ve had ME!”

  I pitch a frozen grape at Kyle. It bounces off his head.

  Suddenly, the air is filled with frozen grapes and open orifices. We follow Kyle and Javon out into the hallway, where they demonstrate their finesse. Javon pitches to Kyle—fastball grapes, knuckle ball grapes, curve ball grapes. Kyle anticipates every pitch, catches nearly every one in his mouth.

  When the grapes are all gone—packed safely in our bellies, where they begin to ferment—we tumble back into my room.

  “Shut up, dudes,” Kyle says. “Now that we’ve had our feast, and our fun, it’s time to get down to business.”

  Everybody slides or slouches or rolls till a ragged circle is formed. I sit on my bed, above and a little apart.

  “Dogs of West Seattle,” Kyle says, “lend me your ears. This time tomorrow, we will have made history at Taft High School.”

  He frames an imaginary neon marquee: “Starring Jonathan and the Velcro Kong!”

  Everybody grins.

  I say, “This time tomorrow, we will be history.”

  “Dudes,” Kyle says, “prepare yourselves, cuz we’re gonna be celebrities. Everybody—parents, teachers, siblings, even grandmothers—will be talking about us. They will tune in to the six o’clock news, but the real news will be the Velcro Kong and Jonathan. And, of course, me and Javon, in a slightly more intellectual way, as theater artists. But actually all of us, cuz after all, we are one, are we not? Thick, are we not?”

  “Thick as a brick at the end of a stick,” Jordan says.

  “Been together since preschool, have we not?” Kyle says.

  “Not me,” Ryan says. “I didn’t know any of you dudes till eighth grade.”

  “Be humble,” Kyle says, ignoring Ryan. “That’s our motto. We fly the flag of dude humility.”

  “Dude humility!” we chant.

  Kyle crunches his fist and farts. It’s a form of both punctuation and exclamation.

  “Phew, man!” Jordan says, fanning the air. “Too much grease.”

  “And don’t forget,” Kyle says. “We’re here because of, and for, our man Jonathan.”

  They all turn. The soul of Telly has entered the room. They look at me, but they see Telly.

  “Yeah, don’t forget that,” I say. “And remember to be humble.”

  “Yep, yep,” Kyle says. “Tomorrow at this time, our man Jonathan will be free and clear with Gupti. He will have paid his debt to society with a simple song by a band called . . . What’s that name, again?”

  “Pinky Toe,” Nick says.

  Javon says, “Hey, you got that song all worked out?”

  I shrug.

  “You wanna practice it for us?” he asks.

  “Hell, no,” I say.

  “Man,” Javon says, “to be both honest and humble, you look like shit.”

  I say, “And you look like a pit bull with your grandmother’s face transplanted onto it.”

  “Dudes!” Kyle says. “Peace.”

  I reach for a can of taurine.

  Kyle catches my wrist. “No, no, no,” he says. “Tonight, you’re gonna sleep the sleep of a baby. Pampered and powdered. And to make sure of it . . .”

  He fishes a bottle of pills from his pocket.

  “Say hello to your new nighttime friends,” he says. “They are gentle, fast-acting, and extremely potent.”

  He shakes out a pill. Holds it between his thumb and forefinger. “This here is Angelina Jolie whispering love songs into Jonathan’s left ear. And this”—he holds up another pill—“is whoever Jonathan wants it to be, Carrie Underwood or Pamela Anderson or—”


  “Or all the Pussycat Dolls mud wrestling,” Ryan says.

  Nick shakes his head. “Nah. For Jonathan, it’s gotta be, like, the elf queen in Lord of the Rings. Or some Celtic poetess.”

  Kyle nods. “Yeah, yeah, this one’s a Celtic poetess whispering in Jonathan’s right ear.”

  “And she shops at Victoria’s Secret,” Jordan says.

  “Dudes!” I say. “You do know me.”

  Nick grabs Ruby from the rocking chair, flops beside me. Lets me see the worry in his eyes.

  “Know what I want?” Nick says.

  “No idea, man.”

  He slips Ruby into my arms. “To get loud again.”

  There’s a chorus of yeahs.

  Well, hell, I’m not exactly in a musical mood, but Ruby’s part of me and my hands feel good on her neck and shapely body. And the grapes make it easier.

  “Hey, why not.”

  I tune on five. The strings are getting black. If I were a better friend to Ruby, I’d invest in some new strings, maybe even splurge on Martin Extended Lifes. But I like the way she sounds on old strings. More like a sexy mom than a sexy daughter. Old strings give Ruby a far-from-virgin tonality. A quiet, sensual maturity.

  While I’m tuning and chiming, Nick leaves the room. I expect to hear the bathroom door open and him pissing, but instead I hear the old familiar creak of Telly’s door opening. I stop tuning. Stand. Peer into the hall. The light is on in Telly’s room. Nick comes out carrying two of Telly’s guitars.

  “What’re you doin’, man?” I say.

  Nick hands Telly’s Fender electric to Jordan and his Thunderbird bass to Kyle.

  “Hey,” I say. “Didn’t you hear me?”

  Nick pivots and goes back into Telly’s room.

  “Guess not,” Kyle says.

  Now Nick comes out with Telly’s Harmony acoustic and a set of drumsticks.

  He hands the drumsticks to Ryan and the acoustic to Javon.

  A quiet descends on us. In my mind, I’m angry, but I don’t feel angry. What Nick’s doing is a violation, but it doesn’t feel wrong. We watch him the way you watch a minister breaking bread at church. Under a spell.

  Now he’s back with Telly’s two amplifiers and a distortion pedal. Everybody’s untangling cables, heaving my books and dirty shirts aside, plugging in.