Another of the big mills, now student housing for the university that, being adjacent to campus but not under the school’s administration, a zoo, a party destination, one having key appeal like the Old Market—walking distance.
Only the Arcadia village had survived unchanged: the workers, now living elsewhere, but in 1990 the mill still operated. Owned by an upstate conglomerate, the last chugging old lady of a dying breed, not long for this world. The one in Edgewater County had shut down when Devin, Roy Earl and Dobbs had still been freshmen in high school. Their future lay elsewhere.
Libby, happy and productive all semester, taking her Mass Comm courses and trying to figure out the third act of Facing College Street, her epic feature-length screenplay. Her writing guru Max De Lisle, seeing her work as strong and commercial, wanted her coming out of his class with a full-length script to serve as a calling card, a writing sample, or perhaps if the stars aligned for Libby, a contest finalist or winner; signing with an agent; an actual sale. Nothing impossible, as he tried to teach his students. If he had come from South Carolina to make it in Hollywood, anyone could. That de Lisle had had an uncle working in production for RKO in the 1930s and 40s to open the door for him didn’t seem to factor into his calculations of possible success.
Libby, thankful Billy dropped the advanced writing class after the first meeting earlier in the semester; seeing him around campus bad enough. Billy, not coming around anymore to the dorm-suite. The Dead show had changed the dynamic among them forever. Her fondest wish, she said, for him to bail on the class.
Devin, explaining to the roommates and friends that they’d suffered a falling out, him and Billy, over who had paid for what on the night of the Dead—the tickets, the beer, the drugs; a disputed accounting. That Billy, holding a grudge over it despite already being a rich fuck. Libby, helping Devin concoct the story. Wanting the details as embarrassing for Steeple as could be.
Roy Earl, oblivious to the other dramas of the concert night, reported how he had had his mind blown, couldn’t believe to save his life they would let a dispute over money tarnish the memory of what, for him, had been a transformational experience. So much so that Roy ordered tickets to go see the Dead on the next tour coming through the region, as well as talking about getting LSD and trying it again—this time, though, not going to a concert, but maybe another intense but comfortable and familiar set and setting—like, say, a Redtails football game. Devin, thinking, yeah, I’ll take a big Pasadena on that action.
The dreams of the man in the pool, leaving him alone for now. Devin, considering the apparition’s prognostications about early demises and cruel unavoidable fates nothing more than childish, hyper-imaginative poppycock. Devin, now fallen from a roof and nothing much coming of the event; his fixation on mortality, mitigated. So what if, one fine summer’s morn five years ago—ages; an epoch—he’d found a dead motherscratcher in a pool? So what if he’d been fascinated with rock stars who died young? Didn’t mean squat.
So: Devin, more serious about his coursework. Considering journalism like Dobbs; considering a future: with Libby.
Alive.
Not-dead. Not anytime soon, anyway.
A voice said, This may be what growing up feels like. The lovers kept packing the Mustang.
Dobbs, watching them load the Mustang from his bedroom window on the second floor, held his nose to keep from breathing in the pollen.
“You can’t leave me here with these rednecks, Ruck.”
“Maybe you could move in with us.” Devin nudged Libby. “We only need one bedroom.”
Libby, brighter-eyed, fresher and prettier than Devin had heretofore understood beauty to look, had her dark, wiry hair pulled back from her face by a wide white band, rubbed a long finger under her prominent nose. Like Dobbs, she suffered allergies. Through a nasal voice: “I’d be in heaven having both my favorite men there with me.”
“Forget it. I’ve had enough of this bonehead.”
“You don’t speak for Miss Libby, Ruck.”
Devin, flipping a casual middle finger; Dobbs’s rejoinder, a nasty wet raspberry.
“But seriously: let’s think about that for fall semester,” Devin said. “No need for any of us to come back to this dump.”
“Yay.” Libby, an airborne split like a cheerleader. “Sure would save us money.”
Dobbs, nodding with vigor. “I’ll do it.”
Devin and Libby, together doing a ridiculous, high-kicking jig; she finished with a handstand as Devin’s feet got tangled up and he fell, laughing, to the grass of the small yard outside the two-story building of flats and suites, colorful tapestries and flags of other countries in view—many international students lived in the complex, giving it a cosmopolitan flavor. But time to go.
The blossoms floating down.
The bright sun shining in Libby’s hair.
From somewhere nearby, a kitten meowed.
“Hey,” she called out. “Is that my baby I hear?”
Dobbs bent down and reappeared with a gray tabby six week-old cat. “She’s hungry again, mommy.”
“I’m on it.”
Devin, untroubled for the first time in his life, or so it felt. His mother’s affair, dead dudes in pools, Billy Steeple’s mad attempt to rape Libby. It receded into fiction, almost, in the face of Libby reaching down to help him up from the grass, then bounding into the apartment on strong legs gamine and coltish, still, like the young girl she was, to feed the kitten she’d found and that they had agreed to adopt.
Only what lay ahead matter. And what was at hand.
His hand.
Closing the trunk.
“I ain’t gonna miss this dump,” he yelled up to Dobbs, who stood cooing and kissing the top of the kitten’s head.
“Me, neither. And neither is little punk-punk, here. Too noisy.”
Libby asked Devin: “Shall we go? You and I? While we can?”
“It’s a plan.”
Over the months following the Dead show, Billy, on a number of chance occasions, had run into one or both of them. Each time, Steeple had made a mad fool of himself making heartfelt pleas to have an audience, and about talk therapy and a way forward to understand what’d happened; furthermore, the undeniable fact remaining that they’d all been in a drugged stupor, that Billy, in ‘real life’ as he kept terming it, wouldn’t have hurt Libby in a thousand millennia. That he’d never touch LSD again, not on his life. Never again drink so much as a beer in anyone’s presence. If only. If only. He could be given. A chance.
Oh, but in the heat of the moment after the incident, Devin, not so magnanimous. Witnessing his lover’s assault by someone he thought a friend more than enraged him.
The heroic, injured, half-drunk, tripping Devin, his mind blown and ears ringing from the concert and the hard but cushioned fall onto the grass, had lurched limp-footed into the apartment, exploding through the front door they’d left open in time to see Libby, bounding down the stairs screaming his name.
Billy, following close behind and tucking in the black T-shirt he’d worn to the show, his eyes blown out and simmering dark with unnatural dilation; the drug had rendered him a dancing, jabbering idiot all night.
“Ruck, you all right?” he called out way too loud. Devin could see his dick, a monster, still bulging against taut denim. “What happened, bro?”
Libby threw her arms around Devin’s neck, a death grip, making them both off-balance, almost tumbling over onto the coffee table filled with beer cans, overflowing ashtrays and a filthy bong stinking of weed resin. Wincing in pain the next day, Devin didn’t know later if it’d been the fall from the roof or Libby’s embrace leaving him more sore.
“Get him away from me!”
“Steeple, you are a dead man.” The shoulder, throbbing. Tripping—but sobered up, too. Grounded, literally. “I ought to call the campus heat.”
Libby shrieked. “You—you rapist.”
“Libby, no, I—” Billy, ashen and gaping, blinking stupidly li
ke a suffocating, caught fish. “Confused. I misunderstood. It was an accident.”
“Misunderstood.” Hiding her face against Devin’s shoulder. “That’s rich.”
“Please—this is all fucked up.”
Libby, having had enough. Pushing away from Devin. The acid, going bad—her face, an evolving mask of fear and anger. Devin, trying to hold her back, calm her down. She grabbed at half-full beer cans and pitched them at Billy’s head. The coffee table tipped over after all, a huge crash and mess.
“You motherfucker. Get out.”
Billy, collapsing onto his knees, let loose a torrent of wet grief on the scale like Devin’s mother would pull, howling and crying uncontrollably, mewling apologies, rolling in the trash on the living room carpet. Eyes rolling back in his head, Adam’s apple bobbing as he spoke in silent tongues, his lips moving but nothing coming out. His erection, gone.
Mostly.
“You need help, beau. Look at ya.”
“Just get out, get out.” Libby, cursing and kicking at him.
Billy got onto his knees and put his head down on the filthy carpet like a Muslim facing Mecca. Sudden and spastic, he sprang to his feet and grabbed for her. For them both, to be fair. Begging.
Devin, tossing Libby aside onto the couch with a yelp, launched himself at Steeple. A furious struggle, punches thrown—weak—and awkward grappling; Devin, outweighed by fifty pounds.
But Devin, more in control than Billy. Pulling a knee up into the Steeple hip-bone, beating him with his fists as hard as he could, feinting and faking. Ducking a Billy right-hook and landing his own hard and memorable blow into Billy’s tight stomach. Beer cans crunching underfoot. Libby, screaming.
Doubling over from the gut-punch, Devin now swung a left, swift and true, smack into Steeple’s drooling mouth.
Shoving Devin back, Billy knocked him onto the couch. His lip, busted and bleeding, began swelling.
Libby, now charging in and smacking Billy’s red face with a roundhouse slap and a kick to the nuts that sent him reeling backward. He clutched himself, crashing over the chair in which he’d once sat watching movies and drinking brews with the boys.
Down for the count. “Enough,” he wept. “Please. I’ll go.”
Devin, on his feet. Unsteady, but a fighter’s stance. “You better, pardner. I know what death looks like.”
Billy, wild-eyed and nursing his lip, hurried outside, the screen door banging shut in his wake.
A curious buzzing silence. Humid and misty inside the apartment as without, the damp night leaching into the building. Devin and Libby, looking at one another. Tripping.
“Babygirl—what just happened?”
Libby, holding her arms out, helpless and childlike, hands all twitchy and spastic and fumbling around on her body like she itched all over. “I want this acid to stop. I want it to quit. I loved it before. Not now.”
Devin and Libby, up to his room. Libby, staring at the mussed bed in disbelief, barking another of her strange acid-laughs.
“Well, okay. That happened.”
“Should we go?”
“No. I’m taking back this place from him.”
“I guess we don’t really know the guy, after all.”
“No—whose friend was he, originally? Mike’s?”
“Hell, I don’t know. Billy just started hanging out.”
“Not anymore.”
“Train has left station.”
Taking their shoes and damp clothes off and crawling into his single bed together, spoons, both trying to calm down, hours seemed to pass. Talking, soft; ignoring the sounds of the party coming back to the apartment, finally, and the shrieks of dismay at the condition of the living room.
By now it was after four in the morning. But they both still lay awake.
“I don’t think I’ll ever sleep again. This is stupid. I thought the concert was wild, but this is going on too long.”
Devin, stroking the swell of her hip, trembling, feeling as though an epic arc of events now winding down: “This doesn’t feel like me. Or you.”
“Yeah; no. I get it.”
“Let’s just be us from now on. Be ourselves again.”
Libby, quiet.
“Does that make sense?”
Shrugging, demure, hiding her face. “I suppose it has to.”
Kissing, gentle. Libby, tentative at first, but melting into his affection, grabbing at him, hands all over. Wiggling out of underwear and into position. Making love, slow, careful. Libby at last rolling Devin over, grinding him, yanking his shaggy hair.
Devin, staring into her dilated eyes. Unable to ejaculate, it went on for what seemed like an hour until they both gave out, gave up.
Finally slipping out, holding her. “It’s good. I’m good.”
“Now what,” Libby asked.
“Maybe we should drink a few beers.”
“That’s a good idea.”
“Oh, shit—listen.”
“What?”
“The birds are singing. The sun’s about to come up.”
“Shit.”
They pulled on sweats and crept downstairs, finding Roy Earl sitting up by himself clutching a smoldering bong and watching Five Easy Pieces, his favorite movie for some strange reason, but with the sound turned off. Devin scared the shit out of him at first, but then Roy seemed glad to see them—as he put it, relieved.
Until sunrise came they sat sipping cold beers and tripping and talking about the Dead show, how it looked as though sleep wasn’t going to be possible, and how all would have to shine it on through classes.
Roy, saying they needed to get a tape of the show from one of the people making recordings down in the crowd. “Hey—what happened to Billy? And where’s Dobbs?”
Libby, irritated. “Oh my god—I have class in one hour. I knew this is what would happen.”
“Only one thing to do,” Devin said. “Have another beer.”
After Devin and Roy successfully talked Libby out of class, the still-sleepless lovers went back upstairs to shower together and fool around some more, then up the hill for breakfast at the North Tower cafeteria; both exhausted, both still tweaked, but now famished and a little drunk, food became all.
Taking their Southeastern-burgundy plastic trays outside to the patio and setting up camp on a damp wooden picnic table, they unwrapped breakfast burritos and ate in silence.
Devin’s comment, finally: “So, you and Roy Earl had an amazing show, it sounded like.”
“Unbelievable, so so strange. You left right as it started getting good.”
“Story of my life.”
“They played this song ‘Dark Star,’ and everyone erupted like it was the second coming.”
Libby, explaining that a Deadhead told them on the way out of the arena that ‘Dark Star’ was special because it had been away for a long time and had recently come back.
“You just gave me chicken skin.”
“It really was as though a presence had descended.”
“Freaky.”
Libby, tired as all get-out, purple smudges under her eyes, hair style courtesy Devin’s pillow—anyone seeing them would know these two had spent the night together. Devin, looking at his extra-crispy, disheveled girlfriend and thinking himself a lucky young man indeed.
The rest of the fall semester: Devin, a new clarity to this thinking. Drinking less, going to class. Trying to finish out the term with dignity and enthusiasm. His own acid trip seemed to have flushed dark clutter from his mind.
Libby, a new hobby: trying to avoid Billy’s gaze as they passed on the street.
Devin, finally running into Billy one day not far from the arena, with its classroom level containing the Mass Comm college. Billy insisted on grabbing a beer together. To give him a chance.
Something in his eyes like sincerity. Devin, agreeing.
A dump down near the State House called the Rainbow. Devin, Billy, a pitcher of draught, in a booth, tucked away; MTV on the projection screen in t
he corner, a video for one of Robert Plant’s solo tunes.
Billy offered rambling, sorrowful analysis bordering on confession. “Feelings, along with the foolishness. That’s my point.”
Devin, sipping his plastic foamy cup, touched by the display, nodding. “Feelings.”
“Look, I can’t describe it any other way. I was confused. Libby, she—”
“Libby what?”
“I misunderstood.”
“You’re fucking delusional, is what.”
“I was screwed up, man.”
“What if I hadn’t been there?”
Shame, cheeks rubicund and shiny, running his hand over the stubble growing out on his scalp, Billy looked sick. “Hell—I would’ve stopped before anything happened, Ruck.”
“Yeah.”
An announcement: requiring Libby’s forgiveness as well. Seeking facilitation. Billy had never looked more imploring, which was at this point was saying something.
Devin, unable to offer hope. “I can’t help you with Libby. This is guy stuff we’re working through.”
“‘Guy stuff’?”
Nodding. “Women, they have their crap, dude. We have ours.” Devin took a long draw on his beer. Belched. “Be glad it’s not the kind of crap where I kick your ass again.”
Billy, killing his cup of beer, turned chilly. “So it’s settled between us.”
Devin, saying sure. “But Libby, you should leave her alone, bro. All’s I’m saying.”
“As you wish.”
Devin, seeing the worst fake smile in history on the boy. He would keep an eye out for this crazy fuck. His dad had guns at home. He’d drive up to Edgewater County and get one, if necessary.
Mansion of High Ghosts Page 30
