by Lauren Jayne
“You were a frat boy?” I asked.
“Fuck no, we were at a party at a normal house on frat row. So we’re driving down 45th and right in front of the Blue Moon a car full of guys cuts me off. So I honked, flipped them off, and got onto I-5 North.”
“Ohh, that’s crazy,” I said sarcastically, wondering how Mr. Law School could possibly have an interesting story.
“They followed us and jumped out of their car as we pulled up to my buddy John’s house. John and his boys ran down the steps with golf clubs and baseball bats and John pulled out a gun and shot it into the sky just as I was ready to clock this guy in the jaw. We all froze. John walked up to each of them with the gun in his hand sideways, finger on the trigger, ears still ringing from his shot; he put the gun right here.” He took his finger and pointed to the spot where your nose meets your upper lip. “John was screaming, ‘I’m gonna kill you, I’m gonna kill you, I’m gonna kill you,’ as he walked around the circle, jamming the gun in each of their faces. The guys ran so fast they fell on the grass as they jumped into their car, and as they sped off, John fired another shot at their car.”
“Did the cops come?” I asked, with raised eyebrows.
“Yeah, we were still in the yard laughing about what a crazy mother fucker John was when they pulled up, lights rolling. They came out and asked if we’d heard gunshots. John says, ‘you know, officer, we were out here looking for some kids that were lighting off an M80. It’s late, and well, I don’t see them, but I’m glad to see you,’ with a completely straight face. When they pulled away, and we walked up to the house, John had his three-barrel scale out. The house was peppered with more booze, guns, and drugs than a mob movie, and this was just a Friday.” Taking a breath, he said, “Let’s go smoke.”
The maître d brought our wine out as we sat on the corner and looked down at the Sound and smoked, my Marlboro Lights in a box and his Camel Lights in a box.
“You know the craziest thing – I was working as an intern at the King County prosecutor’s office at the time. If those cops had come into John’s, who knows? I may not be in law school anymore.”
“Why law school?” I asked, as I took a drag and stared down at a ferry heading out on the Sound.
“I was in pre-med, knee deep in chemistry and calculus and, even with a tutor, I couldn’t get the straight A’s I needed. Trying to learn Calc from an Asian kid with a thick French accent killed me. Anyway, I switched to law, figuring I’ve gotta do something helpful while I’m here.” He crushed out his smoke, and we walked back inside.
The next day, Ted called and asked if he could take me out again.
“I guess,” I said, “but we’re friends, and we will only be friends, so don’t keep taking me out and not listening to me and then in three days be pissed that I won’t kiss you. Because I’m not going to kiss you or sleep with you ever, OK? So, let’s not go out. It’s stupid.”
“I’ll pick you up at eight.”
When Ted picked me up, he looked more like the guy I’d met at Cassie’s.
“What was the deal with your other outfit, with the Mr. Huxtable sweater and Capezio’s?” I asked.
“I was looking through my closet for the nicest thing I could find to take you out in, and found that sweater my mom had bought me a few Christmases ago.”
“Well, you look like yourself again. That was kind of weird,” I said, laughing and happy to give him shit about anything.
“You look hot – and you’ve got a dope onion,” he said, making a weird noise and shaking his head like he’d just taken the best bite of chocolate cake.
“What in the fuck is a dope onion? I’ve never heard anyone say that in my life,” I said, laughing at Ted.
“I’ve never seen an ass like yours in Levi’s,” he said.
“Remember what I said – never kissing – and I’m so serious.”
“I know, you’re a cool chick, and you’re hysterical, and so fucking hot I can’t stand to look at you. But I know, so don’t worry,” he said.
“Where are we going?” I asked, changing the subject.
“Don’t worry about it.” Then he turned up Pearl Jam, and we raced across the lake in his oh-so-clean Fox.
At the highest spot on the bridge, he said, “I’ve dreamed of this moment.”
“What moment?”
“This exact moment, being with a hot-ass chick that loves Pearl Jam the way I do, and…yea.”
Then he turned up the music, lit a smoke, and we drove into Chandler’s Cove.
“This is a trip. I worked right there for two years,” I said.
“I bet I worked here before you,” he said, always a smart ass.
“What are you, four years old?” He loved it when I gave it back to him.
After we parked and went in, every guy in the Cove came out to talk to Ted.
“Hey, we didn’t see you last night at Kelly’s party.”
“Ted, sit at the bar.”
“We’re going outside,” he said.
For the first twenty minutes, people paraded around our table telling me Ted stories.
Another guy comes up and tells me, “You should see him on the football field. He may be scrappy, but he’ll fucking kill someone before he’ll let them take down one of his guys.”
In his self-deprecating way, he chimed in, “I haven’t played a real game since I hurt my back at Blanchet. I don’t think a law school game against a bunch of dentists in the graduate football league at UW counts for shit. OK, I think she’s good with the stories.”
“You’ve gotta fucking love this guy,” The bartender said as he walked away laughing.
“So, you live at home?” I asked.
“Yea, I couldn’t afford to pay for law school and a place, so I moved in. But I’m never there,” he said unapologetically.
“I pretty much live at home, too.”
“What do you mean?” he said as he lit a smoke, took a pull from his beer, and listened.
“The pink house – my house – I live with Mrs. Miller. She’s kind of been my mom since I was little.”
“I thought you lived with Carmen?”
“I do. She lives downstairs,” I said.
“What’s the deal with Mrs. Miller?”
“She’s an angel that saved my life,” I said.
Ted crushed out his cigarette in the little glass ashtray on the table and said, “Let’s go.”
Heading down Fairview Ave, past the Space Needle into Pioneer Square, Ted parked and walked down the backside steps of the club, shielding me from the traffic and the drunks. He knocked on the black door in the alley.
“What’s your name?” a big guy with a clipboard asked.
The bouncer pushed the door open with his back and let us in. Ted grabbed my hand as we walked downstairs, pushing through the mobs of people. Every square inch of the Phoenix Underground was packed, smoke so thick you could barely see through it. We stood as people shoved, drank, and danced to the band, Inflatable Soule. At one point I heard the guy at the mic say “Teddy” in his lyrics.
I screamed into Ted’s ear, “Did he just say your name?”
Ted shrugged his shoulders like it was no big deal and looked up at the band. Then I heard it again as the guy at the mic leaned down and pointed to Ted. When the song was over the lead singer left the stage and two beautiful girls with voices of angels started singing. As I was listening to them, Ted tapped my shoulder and I followed him backstage.
“Hey, you guys sound good tonight,” he said as he side-hugged the guy who had been singing on stage a few minutes earlier.
“Thanks man, thanks for coming down,” the singer said.
“Is Chris here?” Ted asked.
“No, they’re on tour, but when he gets back, he wants a re-match on the field.” He and Ted both laughed.
“The sisters sound great. They doing OK?” Ted asked as he nodded his head up to the stage.
“They’re doing great. All in the family,” he said, smiling
up at the girls. “I gotta head back. Thanks for coming down, man.”
Navigating our way through the crowd and out the side door past the guy with the clipboard, Ted reached into his black and gray flannel shirt for a Camel Light.
“Can you stay out or do you have to get up early to bake?” he asked.
“No, I’m good. Who was that?” I asked.
“That’s Peter,” and he kept walking to the car.
“Peter who?” I asked.
“It’s Peter Cornell. He and Chris went to Blanchet a few years before me, and I worked with him four nights a week at Dukes. The girls, those are their sisters. I still kind of think of them as little girls,” Ted said.
It hit me that Peter’s brother was Chris Cornell, lead singer of Soundgarden. Ted acted like he was just another guy he hung with, instead of the Grammy-winning, cover of Rolling Stone, Godfather of Grunge. He might as well have been playing football with the Beatles, but totally blew it off in his self-deprecating, nonchalant way. The fact that Ted didn’t try to impress me impressed me.
Driving up the huge hills through the city, Ted worked his stick and smoked without thinking. Carmen still helped me with the e-brake when I’d get stuck on a hill with some asshole an inch from my bumper.
We parked at the Camlin and headed up the elevator. We walked through the bar and out onto the patio, looking out at the Sound and over our city.
Ted said, “Can you believe we grew up here? Could you even imagine not having the mountains and the water? I’d fucking hate it.”
Standing by the pot of violets, I picked a yellow one and walked over to Ted, who was resting with his back against the railing, watching me.
“Close your eyes,” I said.
He took a pull from his beer and closed his eyes.
I took the flower and gently traced it over his fingers and along his jaw line; then, with the petal barely touching his skin, over his full bottom lip.
Then I said, “I have to go.”
On our way across the bridge with the fresh night air whispering through the car, I said, “I think you’re thinking about kissing me, and no matter what, it’s not going to happen. So if we shouldn’t keep doing this, let’s not. But I’m telling you, don’t even think about kissing me.” Then I turned up The End, and he dropped me off.
When I walked up to my room, there was a note on my bed. “You’re mine tomorrow night – I taped Melrose for you. Love you! Car.”
At ten o’clock the next night, Carmen and I headed across the bridge.
“So what’s going on with that guy? I thought you were done with boys?”
“I am. We’re friends – just friends.”
“No one will ever love you like me, or as much as I do,” she said, as she lit a smoke and handed it over to me.
“I know. Love you.”
We parked at the bottom of the hill under the viaduct and walked the block up to Belltown Billiards for dinner. The new chef loved testing things on us, and we loved that we couldn’t pay for anything in Seattle. Course after course, the chef brought out cambozola flat bread, bruschetta with fresh basil, wood-fired artichokes, and bottle after bottle of wine. When the place filled in and the lights got dim, we headed down to the Pink Door. Sitting on their patio for a few hours catching up with Carmen, it always felt like we were the only two in the room. We wove our way through the packed bar and dining room up the stairs to the alley and headed to the car. Walking past Brick Street, about five guys rushed to open the door.
“Carmen? It’s Jeff – come have a drink with us,” said one of them, holding the glass door open.
“We’re on our way home. We’re being good girls,” she said, and I realized that for Carmen, working in Belltown was like a fat kid working in a candy store.
He walked up and grabbed her hand. “One drink. It’s summer, where do you have to be?” he said.
“Lor, you OK? We’ll run in and out. We’ll be in our jammies in under an hour,” she said, with one hand up and giving me her sweetest smile.
“I’m OK if you are. Let’s go,” I said, walking in the door with Jeff.
Music blared in the tiny, smoky bar. When we walked in, the bartender saw Carmen, and she ran over to hug him. He hugged her and pulled her up and over the bar.
“Hey, this is Lauren, my best friend.”
“What are you drinking, best friend?”
“She’ll have a shot with me,” Carmen said.
“Carmen, I’ll barf!”
“You’ve done a shot of tequila before with Jon and I. Remember?”
“Yea, but he made it with a lime and salt and…”
The bartender handed me a lime, Carmen grabbed my hand, licked it, and put it in front of the bartender. He poured a little salt over it and handed me a shot.
“On three, lick the salt off, do the shot, and put the lime in your mouth, OK?” she said.
“One, two, three!” she screamed over the music.
In unison we licked, tipped and sucked. My face scrunched, and the tequila burned my throat as it went down. In one second I felt hot inside.
Carmen clapped, screamed, grabbed my hand, and led me through the tiny bar to behind the pool table, dancing around me. Feeling like the only two people in the place, we danced in the back corner.
Carmen grabbed my hands, and we spun around in the back corner of Brick Street like we were at Studio 54 in its heyday, me dressed in a black pull-up skirt, white button down, strappy black cami, knee-high socks, and Doc Martin boots. Jeff and his buddies were leaning up against the pool table, just watching us.
As Smells Like Teen Spirit ripped through the sound system, Carmen and I held hands and jumped up and down like kids on a bed. When Eddie’s voice filled the Brick Street, “Her legs spread out before me as her body holds still,” Carmen walked up to me, untied my shirt, letting it fall off my shoulders and tied it around my waist. My eyes closed, she danced me to the wall behind us and moved her hands from my face down to my feet. She ran her hands through my hair and licked my neck as the song played in the background. I opened my eyes and looked at her.
“I’m just fucking around – Joel and his friends are dying – let’s fuck with them,” she whispered in my ear.
Dancing around me and pulling my cami off my shoulder, she brought her face to mine, and with my head on the brick wall behind me, she touched my cheek and brought her lips to mine. Eyes closed, nothing but smoke and boys and Eddie’s voice and darkness surrounding us, we kissed. Carmen’s tongue in my mouth, her strawberry lip gloss with our tequila mixing like cake batter, the guys screaming as she put her hands over every inch of my body, lifting my skirt up to my black undies. When the song ended, I pulled away, grabbed Carmen’s hand, and we ran out of the Brick Street and down the hill to my car, laughing until we cried.
The next morning at noon Ted called to see if I wanted to go to breakfast.
“Hold on, let me run down and see if Carmen’s up. We’re supposed to do something today.”
Hearing her music behind the closed door, I tapped. “Do you want to go to breakfast with Ted and me?”
“Call down when he gets here,” she said in her morning voice.
Thirty minutes later Ted rolled up, and Carmen and I rolled out in our jammie pants and t-shirts.
Sitting in the Atrium at Hectors as the Seahawks were about to play their first game, Carmen said, while spooning peanut butter from the little plastic container into her mouth, “Did Lauren tell you about our little make-out party last night?”
“She did, this morning. Sounds like you girls made some guys very happy,” as he put some cream and sugar in his coffee.
I could see the shock in Carmen’s eyes that I had told Ted and that he was so cool with it.
“I told you, he’s cool. And anyway, we aren’t dating – he’s my buddy,” I said.
When we pulled up to our pink house, Ted said he’d walk me to the door.
As he walked in past me, I said, “There are no boys al
lowed in our pink house. Girls only, I’m serious.”
“Is Mrs. Miller home?” he asked.
“No, but you can’t come in.”
“I want to see your room,” and he walked up the squishy, foam-green carpeted stairs, down the photo-lined hall, and into my room.
“OK, there’s my room. Now you have to go.”
He walked over to my bed, put his nose right in the center of it and breathed in as deeply as he could while I stood at the door and watched.
“Doesn’t smell like you,” he said with a surprised look on his face.
“It’s new, and you’re crazy. Now go.”
A few weeks later, while having dinner at Serafina’s with Ted, I got a 911 page from Carmen and asked the hostess if I could use the phone.
“Hi, are you OK?”
“Are you busy, Lauren?”
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“My car got towed, and I have no idea where it is, and…”
“Where are you? We’ll be right over.”
We drove around town in search of her car, Carmen’s head poking between Ted and me from the back seat. The third lot was a charm. Ted walked out with Carmen’s keys and handed them back to her.
“Thanks Ted, how much was it?”
“Don’t worry about it. Are you coming out with us or am I dropping you girls off?” he asked.
That Ted knew his place between Carmen and I made her almost giddy.
“Let’s do something,” she said, taking one of his Camels and lighting it.
Ted drove up to Queen Anne Ave into Kerry Park. The three of us got out and sat looking over the entire city, our feet dangling off the short cement wall. Passing cigarettes while Carmen and Ted shared a six-pack, we stared at the city in silence. Carmen grabbed my hand, and we lay down on the little grass slope like Ted wasn’t even there, my head resting in her lap.
“I get why you like him, Lor.”
“Who, Ted?”
“Yeah,” as she played with my hair.
“He’s the best guy I’ve ever met, in the realest, coolest way. He just is.”
“And he’s kinda hot, too,” Carmen said.
“And that doesn’t hurt.”
When we stood up, the three of us in a row, Ted said, “Best fucking city in the world.”
