Althea and Oliver

by Cristina Moracho

“I don’t know about you guys,” Oliver says, “but I feel like solving a mystery or something.”

  Inside Lucky’s, someone hits a chord on an electric guitar. The sound draws the parking lot dwellers inside. It’s really Minty Fresh’s show, and as they follow him in, people wave and call out his nickname. He gets onstage to introduce the first band, dragging Valerie up with him so the crowd can fully appreciate their costumes. He holds up a broom instead of a pitchfork, and the kids all cheer as he thanks them for supporting Bread and Roses.

  “Holy shit,” Oliver shouts at Althea. “Do you realize that Minty Fresh has become, like, their leader?”

  “Right?”

  The first band is terrible but spirited. They call themselves the King Dorks. Every member is adorned with a pocket protector and a crown from Burger King, and they play for about twenty minutes. Each subsequent band is slightly more adept at their instruments, although for the most part the songs all sound the same—short, fast, deafeningly loud. There’s no emcee or announcer between bands, just hurried chaos as one band rushes offstage while the next is setting up, nervously tuning their instruments while someone tries to uncoil a cable from around their legs.

  When Minty’s own band, Tartar Control, comes onstage, he doesn’t rush through his mic check or sneak worried glances at the audience. A girl at the back of the club—definitely not Valerie, the voice is too shrill—yells “Minty Fresh!” with a buoyant whoop. He chuckles quietly without looking up from the set list he is toeing into place with his Converse, as if random girls scream out his ridiculous nickname all the time. The electric-blue Mohawk that looks so outsized bobbing down the hallways of their high school is perfectly at home onstage. The members of Tartar Control have not mastered their instruments, but their leader’s new confidence gives their raw sound just enough polish to elevate them, slightly, above the rest of the mediocre musicians onstage tonight.

  Minty doesn’t play so much as he performs—wisely, he no longer employs a British accent, but he still has a hard time looking up from his guitar, so sometimes he just lets it hang around his neck like an afterthought, grabbing the mic stand and leaning toward the audience, or pointing a finger accusingly in their direction, or gesticulating the way he does when he’s standing in front of his locker telling a story. The crowd surges toward the stage, reaching for him the way he’s reaching for them.

  It doesn’t take long for the pill and the liquor to dovetail inside Althea, unbuttoning her diffidence like a blouse and casting it aside. She dances, wig shaking, arms held over her head, ricocheting off her friends, who form a tight circle around her. Toes crushed inside her thrift store heels, her calves ache as one song bleeds into the next, and for a while, seventeen years of the cringeworthy moments that plague her incessantly—a wrong answer she gave in math freshman year, the solution so obvious the whole class snickered; a school-yard retort falling flat by the handball courts; an unduly loud laugh brayed out a second too late; the doomed kiss under the sugar maple tree; and, of course, that afternoon in Oliver’s bedroom, the awful secret she can’t quite bring herself to regret—are silenced. Pressed against him now, dressed like his wife, she knows that tonight they look not like twins but like a couple, and if any night is for pretending, it’s this one, so for a little while at least that’s what she’ll do, pretend that it’s real and that she did no wrong, and so all these miserable snippets that repeat and repeat and repeat are blessedly, briefly silenced by the throbbing of the crowd and Althea’s frenetic movements within it as Tartar Control arranges and rearranges the same three chords with a stalwart driving momentum.

  And then it’s over. Minty thanks the audience and the band starts packing up their equipment, coiling cables and breaking down the drum kit, the rattle of the cymbals a weak echo of the previous moment’s din. The throng of people loosens around Althea, making her abruptly unsteady on her feet, her forearms goose-pimpling from the sudden drop in temperature. The house lights brighten and Lucky’s starts to clear out, and somehow she has lost Oliver. Valerie brushes past, fighting against the flow of traffic, followed by a tiny girl with bleach-blonde hair and a septum ring, wearing a dress made from a faded Rainbow Brite pillowcase.

  “Come on,” Val says as she passes. “We’re going to find Minty in the back.”

  Walking away, she holds one arm out behind her, its wrist covered in black rubber bracelets. Only when the pillowcase girl reaches for Val’s hand does Althea realize it wasn’t meant for her. The girls’ fingers intertwine, tipped with matching glittery nail polish. They stay close as they maneuver through the remains of the crowd.

  “Have you seen Oliver?” she shouts after Valerie, but she’s already gone.

  Coby taps her shoulder. Holding two fingers to his lips, he nods toward the door. Hesitating, she looks around the club one more time, trying to spot the only boy here who is wearing a tie.

  As they walk toward her car, Coby lights two cigarettes and hands her one. Sweat runs in tendrils at the top of his forehead. He’s not discernibly in costume, although he is unusually spiffy, dark hair freshly washed and parted down the middle, wearing a black button-down shirt and khakis. “What are you supposed to be?” she asks. “A date rapist?”

  “I’m not supposed to be anything,” he says.

  “Shouldn’t you be chatting up one of these half-naked girls?”

  He shrugs. “I’ve already slept with half of them.”

  Althea watches the entrance, hoping to see their other friends getting ready to leave. Jason, ill-fated host, is sitting on the open tailgate of his pickup drinking a beer, surrounded by a group she vaguely recognizes from the party at his house. When Oliver finally emerges, she instinctively drops what’s left of her cigarette, coughing out a last lungful of smoke. Just as he spots Althea and Coby over by her car, the French maid grabs his arm and starts talking.

  “Who the fuck is that?” Althea says.

  Coby tsks. “She’s a pigeon.”

  “A pigeon?”

  “She’s an extra,” he says. “Etcetera.”

  “If she’s etcetera, why is Ol talking to her?” she asks.

  “Althea, you’re the First Lady. She’s the help. I wouldn’t sweat it. I’d be more worried about Jason, if I were you.”

  “What about Jason? That was ages ago. He doesn’t know who was in that bathroom.”

  “That’s not what I heard.”

  She can’t look away from Oliver and the maid, noting with some satisfaction that he is eyeing the corner of the parking lot where they are waiting. Maybe she’s deluding herself, but it seems like he’s trying to edge his way out of the conversation. “What did you hear?”

  “That it’s hard to be discreet when you’re jumping out a window. How do you think I know about it? It’s not like you ever told me.”

  “If Jason knows, he knows,” she says. “I don’t see what he can do about it now.”

  Finally Oliver breaks away and heads toward Althea’s car.

  Coby shakes his head and lights another cigarette. “It wears me out sometimes, watching you watching him. What’s going to happen if this doesn’t go your way?”

  Her entire body can feel Oliver’s approach, like he’s a magnet and she’s a collection of iron fillings that needs him to hold her together. Or maybe that’s just the pills. What she doesn’t tell Coby is that she suspects she has already lost. It’s been months since that night under the tree, months since he’s woken up, and still Althea and Oliver have never spoken of it, and—outwardly, at least—his wish for normalcy has more or less come true. They go to school. They take the SATs. They go to shows. They watch movies in her basement on rainy nights and listen to Garth’s stories. They eat pizza in Oliver’s living room with Nicky, drinking cream soda from old salsa jars and playing her records. Althea isn’t stupid. She knows about Occam’s razor. If Oliver wanted to kiss her again, he would do it. But here she is, dr
essed as Jackie O to his JFK, laying it all on the outside chance that he might sleep with her again, for real—just once would be enough—so that she might finally stop feeling like she had stolen something from him she could never give back.

  Coby is still waiting for an answer.

  “Anarchy,” she says.

  He tucks his pack of cigarettes into the pocket of her suit jacket. “Maybe you’d better hang on to these,” he says, just as Oliver arrives.

  “I think we should get going,” Oliver says. “I don’t like the look Jason was giving me over there.”

  “What about Minty and Val?” asks Althea.

  Jason separates from his friends and begins crossing the asphalt toward them.

  “Let’s just go,” Oliver says. “We can catch up with them later.”

  “I don’t know what you think he’s going to do in front of all these people,” she says, searching for her keys.

  Coby glances at Jason, walking unhurriedly in their direction. “I heard he was pissed. His dad really nailed his ass to the wall.”

  “How Dickensian.” Jabbing her key at the handle of the door, she sways on her feet.

  “Forget it, Carter. I’m driving.” Oliver relieves her of the keys.

  “But I hate the way you drive.”

  “So do I.” Reaching down to open the door, he stops. “The fuck? Al, did you see this?”

  As Jason finishes his languid stroll across the parking lot, Althea sees the key scratches down the length of her car, deep, intentional gashes in the silver paint, beginning above the front wheel well and running across both doors, trailing off under the trunk. Tracing one of the scratches with her finger, she follows the gouge to its conclusion, reeling at this deliberate act of retribution, looking up to find herself faced with the boy who doled it out.

  “Jesus. That’s so fucked up. Who would do something like that?” Jason’s hands are stuffed in the pockets of his jeans, his curly blond hair sticking out from under his John Deere trucker’s hat. He has a face as round and broad as a dinner plate.

  Clearly Jason has come to taunt her, but he’s erred in doing so. If he’s already exacted his revenge, then there’s nothing more to fear. Instead of finding Althea contrite, as he clearly hoped, he’s just made her angry. An engine revs inside her.

  “Who would come out here while you were dancing and willfully destroy your property?” Jason continues. Under his arms, sweat rings brighten an otherwise faded orange shirt. His friends are watching from the bed of his truck.

  “It’s an excellent question,” she says, taking a step toward him.

  “Althea, get in the car,” Oliver says.

  The warning is meant for Jason, but it sails over his head. She takes another step.

  Jason dangles his car keys from one finger and smiles. “Why would anybody want to key your fucking car?”

  Stepping between them, Oliver tries to keep Jason and Althea apart. Coby is standing off to the side with a weirdly focused expression on his face. Inside Althea the engine revs again, and she is so, so ready to hit the gas.

  “You already keyed her car,” Oliver says to Jason. “You’re even, so back off, okay? Don’t make it worse.”

  “What about you?” Jason counters, batting away Oliver’s outstretched hand. “I didn’t key your car.”

  “I don’t have a car, so I guess you’re shit out of luck.”

  “What, you think I’m scared of you because you’re a fucking head case?” Jason says. “You think you go psycho in one Waffle House and I’m not going to kick your ass? You were in that bathroom, too, you crazy—”

  Before Jason can finish, Althea tucks her chin and drives her head into his chest, grabbing his shoulders and hanging on as the world tilts crazily and the ground rushes up to meet them. Jason hits the asphalt and lies stunned beneath her. His keys go flying, but his hat remains atop his head, albeit at a skewed, jaunty angle. Holding his arms, Althea presses her knee into his stomach while he looks up, winded, his blue eyes circled by long, girlish blond lashes. Saliva bubbles in one corner of his mouth. “Get the fuck off me!” Jason gasps.

  “You motherfucker,” she shouts, lowering her face so it’s inches from his.

  “Fuck you, bitch.”

  Althea pulls back her arm like the sprung handle of a pinball machine, poised to set its hapless metal sphere into motion. Oliver grabs her by the wrist and pulls her up.

  “Stop it,” he whispers.

  A crowd has gathered, and Minty Fresh and Valerie are closing in from its fringes. Althea shoves Oliver aside. While Jason staggers to his feet, she finds his car keys by her back tire and dangles them in his reddened face. He reaches for them and she snatches them away. She winds up her arm again and he flinches—“like a bitch,” she’ll say when she tells the story later—but instead she pivots, hurling his keys into the same scraggly patch of woods where Coby had ditched the empty bottle. She is going for distance and she gets it, the keys arcing beautifully, their parabola disappearing amid the darkness and the trees, everyone watching so breathlessly, there is a barely audible clink when they land. It’s the only clue Jason will have in their retrieval. She flashes him a winsome smile as a parting shot and gets into her car.

  Oliver dives into the driver’s seat and peels out, leaving Coby in the lot with the rest of the onlookers, but she can see him smirking as the crowd disperses in the taillights. The inside of her chest is warm. The muscles in her legs are cramped and twitchy, like she just ran down thirty flights of stairs. She lights one of Coby’s cigarettes and exhales out her open window. Her hand trembles as she raises it to her mouth.

  “Can we, like, skip to the part where this is a hilarious anecdote?” she asks.

  “No more speed for you,” Oliver shouts. “Were you absent on the day in kindergarten when we talked about why we don’t hit?”

  “Did we also cover what to do when someone keys your car?”

  “In all fairness, you did destroy an expensive mirror and flood his bathroom.”

  “Fuck a bunch of that. Remember the Jell-O massacre at my house? I didn’t go out looking for vengeance after that, did I?” she says.

  “You didn’t have to make it worse,” he says. “I don’t want to be looking over my shoulder for that asshat every time we go to a party.”

  “Why are you defending him? Did you not hear what he said to you? I can’t wait to run into him again. I hope I’m this drunk when we do. And if I were you, I’d want as many sucker punches as I could get.”

  “I don’t want sucker punches!” he says.

  “Then what do you want? If you don’t want me to dispatch our enemies, then tell me what you do want. Tell me and I will procure it.”

  He pauses.

  “Tell me!” she shouts.

  “I told you months ago. I want things to be normal.”

  After a thoughtful moment, she tosses her cigarette out the window and rolls the window up. Without the sounds of traffic, the car is too quiet and the silence is full of tension. Althea rests her forehead against the cool glass. She can still feel herself tackling Jason, the certainty of his weight, their joint fall to the ground, and the unexpected intimacy in the moment when she was straddling him and he was looking at her, defiant but afraid, seeing into the darkness of her anger and intentions. “I don’t want to pretend like everything is the same.”

  “That’s not helpful,” Oliver replies.

  “I think you had better set a more realistic goal. You’re talking about normal and not normal, but what you really mean is then and now. You didn’t wake up in a parallel universe. It’s more like you got into a time machine and it took you into the future and you don’t like it here.”

  “Because things are fucked up and I don’t know how they got that way.”

  “Don’t do that!” she shrieks. “Don’t use it as an excuse! You’re
sick and that sucks, but don’t use it as an excuse to point a finger at me for everything.”

  Oliver pauses, long enough for her to wonder if he’s going to pretend he doesn’t know what she’s talking about. He turns onto their street and pulls into her driveway, and only after he’s killed the engine does he answer.

  “I’m sorry. I know you’re pissed. But I want things back. The way they were. I know it wasn’t fair, the way it happened. The first time we ever—you know—and for me to disappear like that after. That must have really sucked.”

  Althea pauses, choosing her next words carefully. “What exactly do you think I’m so upset about?”

  “That night,” he says. “After the party. Things ended really abruptly. I know you were disappointed. I thought you wouldn’t want to talk about it, but if it will make you feel better, we can.”

  “Make me feel better,” she repeats. The measured tone of his response infuriates her. The immediate, electrified feeling she had in the parking lot is gone, and with it the potential for infinite and lawless possibilities. The night reached its zenith when they sped away from Lucky’s, and now she is trapped in the car riding out the downward trajectory. Or it could, she realizes, just be the pills wearing off. “Did you really think I was all devastated because you denied me the honor of, like, thirteen seconds of drunken intercourse?”

  “That’s not exactly what I meant,” he says, hands still clutching the steering wheel at ten and two.

  It seems so ridiculous to be harping on the night when they didn’t have sex when all she can think about is the day that they did. “I’m not upset because of that.”

  “Then what is the fucking problem?” he shouts.

  Althea can’t have this conversation with the parking brake between them. Jumping out of the car, she runs around to the driver’s side, flings the door open, and pulls Oliver out. He stands there with his arms crossed, waiting for her answer, while she searches his face for any vestige of that boy who had been ravenous for her. “Tell me you’re faking,” she says. “Tell me you remember but you’re just embarrassed. I won’t care. Just tell me it registered.”