Inexcusable

by Chris Lynch

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Hey,” Dad said.

  “Ray,” Rollo said. “You going to get all weepy here? You haven’t been getting all weepy like you do, spoiling the kid’s day, have you?”

  “Nah, he hasn’t,” I said.

  “Yes, I have,” Ray said, all solemn and repentant like a schoolboy.

  “Well, cut it out. This is a joyous occasion, one of the finest times in a boy’s life, maybe the best time he’ll ever have what with everything that’s waiting for him out there in the world, and you shouldn’t be raining on his damn parade. So grow up, ya big fat baby.”

  “All right, all right,” Ray said.

  I turned to face him, to shake his hand before leaving. “Rain if you want, Ray,” I said, then, pulling him close and hugging his soap-smelling neck, added, “but I do wish you wouldn’t.”

  He hugged me back, then pushed me away. “Got a minute?” he asked.

  “Meter’s running,” Rollo said, and we all knew he meant it.

  “Shut up, Rollo,” Dad said, and shut the door, leaving him standing on the step.

  He went to the hall closet and brought out a box, neatly wrapped in luminous green foil paper. His packages were always wrapped perfectly, in the nicest papers, like he had taken some wrapping course someplace.

  “What is this, Ray?” I said, looking it over as if I could tell anything from the paper.

  “It’s your present,” he said.

  “What are you doing? Rollo is my present, remember? And he’s not a cheap present either.”

  “I know,” he said, motioning for me to shut up and open it.

  I tore it open like I always did, carefully, so he could reuse the paper. He had a wrapping-paper graveyard in a corner of the basement for reusables that he nurtured like a bonsai garden. Though I never saw him reuse any.

  “It’s a phone,” Ray said, in case I couldn’t tell.

  It was a good present. I had been planning to get a new cell. Mine was a bit old, out of date, simple and large, but I hadn’t replaced it because I found I hadn’t been using it. This one was very nice.

  “It’s very nice, Dad,” I said.

  “It’s more than nice,” he emphasized. “It’s prepaid. Forever. And it’ll work anywhere. You go to Saturn, this’ll work. You can call and tell me how Saturn is, if it’s hot, or whatever.”

  I felt a big smile crossing my face. “Funny, I was thinking I’d be visiting Saturn . . . maybe today.”

  “Anytime, anywhere, forever, Keir. Understand? You get it? You—”

  I shoved him out of my way as I headed up to my room.

  “I get it, ya big dope.”

  I ran to my room, ran back down.

  “Here,” I said, shoving my terribly wrapped long box of a gift into his hands.

  He looked at it. “You’re a terrible wrapper,” he said.

  “Is that important?”

  “Did I teach you to wrap like that? I don’t think so.”

  “Open it.”

  “Why are you giving—”

  “Seemed appropriate. Just open the damn thing.”

  Rollo’s horn blew. “Jumpin’ Jack Flash.”

  Ray opened his package to find a bottle of his favorite Scotch whiskey, Laphroaig.

  “I know, not much of a surprise,” I said.

  “It’s the thought,” Ray said. “And a tasty thought it was.”

  He ripped it right open, took a long pull. Grimaced. Sighed. Passed the bottle to me, and I followed suit, replacing the sigh with a wheezy groan.

  “Love ya, Ray.”

  “Love ya, Keir.”

  And I was off. I had my new anytime anywhere gift tucked securely under my arm. Ray had his likewise.

  BESIDE MYSELF

  * * *

  Rollo’s limo was all the best of life, on wheels. There were two televisions inside, and a stereo with enough wattage to shoot me through the back window if I cranked the volume up all the way. There were two couches, burgundy velour, running up alongside either side of the backseat. And there was a bar, a full wet bar, complete with fridge and sink and ice and little wedges of lime, and onions and olives and a mini blender and cans of crushed fruit and a basket of uncrushed fresh fruit for mauling in the blender to make any kind of exotic drink you wanted.

  It was all the best of life, on wheels.

  And it was my plan to make the best of the best of life while I had it. I was going to be silly and drive through the drive-through just for a snack. I was going to drive up and down the main streets and the quiet streets just showing off. I was even going to make Rollo go down Byner Street, which is a dead end and too narrow, just to make him have to U-turn and have all the neighbors gawk that much longer. All the while I was going to keep the smoked windows up, the air-conditioning humming, the music honking, and the bar open.

  I was going to do all that. But I didn’t.

  I did something else.

  “You know where I’ve always wanted to visit, that I have always heard about but never got to visit?” I shouted to Rollo.

  He rolled down the glass partition between us. “Say the word,” he said.

  “The middle of nowhere. You know how people are always saying they were in the middle of nowhere? Well it sounds cool to me, and I would really like to have a look.”

  Rollo said nothing for a few seconds, just kept driving straight up the main road out of town. Then, “Don’t think I could locate it, Keir.”

  “Then we could get lost on the way to the middle of nowhere. Nobody’s ever done that before.”

  Again he paused. “Ah, yeah,” he said. “Any other ideas?”

  Look at me there. Look at me. Conditions could not have been better. I had the damn world on a plate. I had paradise on wheels on this, my high school graduation day. No limits, no curfews, no cares about where or when or how to get my jollies or how much it was going to cost or who was going to tell me no, because nobody was. Ray wasn’t going to, and Rollo wasn’t going to, and the only people who might even raise an eyebrow were my sisters, and as we all knew my sisters weren’t coming, goddamn it. So no girls, nobody says no.

  And Rollo wanted to know if I had any ideas.

  I was in the very top of conditions at the top of the world on the top day of top days, of course I had ideas.

  And I wished they would go away.

  That feeling that I had when I told Ray I didn’t want a party, that feeling was growing like a tumor in my head now. You know that feeling you have when you are doing something you don’t really know how to do, like skiing or sailing or speaking French, and you are panicky about the next move, the next breath? Even, or especially, if it is a thing you have done loads of times, but now you are a stranger to it? Even if you are sort of an expert at whatever it is, and now you are a stranger to it so it scares you even more? That was how I felt, on my graduation day, inside Rollo’s ride, pinned between the bar and the couches and the sound system inside, and the whole world on the outside.

  I was paralyzed. Certain that whatever move I made was going to be the wrong one. So afraid. How stupid was that? I was so afraid, even though there was nothing to be afraid of, and everything to play for.

  I’m lying. I said I wouldn’t do that to you, but I am. I knew well what I was afraid of, why I was paralyzed. It was because I didn’t know, under the pressure of the day, which part of me was going to show up. The way I didn’t know on that night whether I was a football player or a soccer player. Like when I couldn’t even tell, watching the tape afterward, whether I was looking at me or not. Like it was a full-blown contest, a game of Risk, for the territory inside me.

  So that was the truth of it there, but the truth was frankly a stupid truth. A guy needs not to be afraid of himself. A guy needs to be certain of himself, and sometimes a guy just needs to snap the hell out of it.

  I wished one of the linemen from the football team was there to smack me straight.

  But they weren’t, so I’d have to d
o it myself. I pulled a diet Sprite out of the fridge.

  In my pocket was a lonely blue pill. Couldn’t remember where I got it or even how long I’d had it, but I was well aware of it now, and I was well aware what it was supposed to do for me. I fingered the little triangle of enthusiasm in my pocket for a minute, then without much enthusiasm I popped it and chased it with the Sprite. I chose. You can’t not choose. Out on the field, right or wrong, you have to choose.

  I never even answered Rollo.

  “Okay, then,” he said, hitting one of the last rotaries out of town and circling back in. “I’ll work it out.”

  And so he did.

  He knew the town, knew the score, better than me even, better than probably anybody in town. I didn’t have to tell Rollo anything to get him to arrive at the only graduation party that really mattered.

  When we pulled up to the curb in front of Quarterback Ken’s house, the place was rocking, almost visibly. The whole of the A and B list of the school’s social classes were either already inside, or on their way in, or on their way out. I sat there behind the smoked glass, watching, while no one could watch me. They could see my car, see my power, see my cool, while I could stay in shadow. Sweet. I watched the windows of the big white colonial house, watched people filing in and out—mostly in—and I felt the vibration of the full might of the Quarterback Ken sound system rumbling under my feet and rattling the crystal glasses of my own private party bar.

  Which I wasn’t touching.

  In a way, what I was doing here was just right. Because if I wanted to show off for everybody, this was as show-offy as I could get. Outside the town’s best party, inside the town’s best ride. I was welcome to join everyone who was anyone. I was choosing not to. How cool was that?

  Not. At. All. I wasn’t choosing jack. I was frozen to my plush seat, with my hands frozen in my sad little lap.

  You can’t not choose.

  There was nothing at that party to be afraid of. The only thing that party was missing was me. There was absolutely nothing at that party to be afraid of. The only only thing that party was missing was me.

  I sat there staring like a numbskull, like a pervert, until I was shocked right out of the seat and onto my knees by the foreign bleeping sound in my pocket. It was my new phone. It was set way too loud, and the ring tone was “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

  “Jesus,” I said into the phone.

  “No. It’s me.” Ray.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Huh? Nothing.”

  “Are you drunk, Ray?”

  He didn’t answer. Then, “Quasi. How ’bout you?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Too busy, are you?”

  “No, actually, Ray . . . Dad . . . Actually, I don’t know what to do with myself. I’m kind of scared, Dad. All of a sudden. Like a panic. And I don’t know why.”

  It took Ray a long silent while to get his head around that. At the same time I realized I was still down on my knees talking to him.

  “Maybe you’re just emotional,” he said finally. “Maybe it’s just all catching up with you now. About graduating, and moving on, and about all you’re leaving behind. Maybe that’s it.”

  He was no shrink, my dad. Nobody would tell you that. But I felt better. A little tiny bit better, just from talking to him and listening to his quasi-drunk view of me. I got off my knees and onto the seat and flopped back.

  “Think so?” I asked.

  “Sure,” he said. I could hear him swig from his Laphroaig.

  “You drinking out of the bottle, old man?”

  “You stop worrying about me and go have yourself a good time.”

  “I don’t know—” I started, but was interrupted by a knocking at the window. “Dad,” I said, “I have to go. There’s somebody here for me.”

  “Somebody there for you. A girl somebody?”

  “Ya, Dad. I gotta go. Thanks. I love ya. Drink out of a glass.”

  “Have the time of your life, son. I love ya. I’ll drink any damn way I please.”

  I could feel my mood instantly elevate as the electric window descended. “Hiya, Gigi,” I said.

  “Happy graduation,” Gigi Boudakian said, leaning in the window. And she kissed me.

  It was a wonderful thing, a soft, heather honey kiss, just here enough so it felt like it wasn’t charity, and like I wasn’t her brother, but just there enough so I didn’t think it was more than it was. Amazing skill, that kind of communication, and I didn’t imagine a guy could ever manage it.

  “Same to you,” I said. Followed too quickly by, “Did your boyfriend come home for the graduation?”

  She laughed in a friendly way. “No,” she said.

  My whole head heated up with the sparks of all the wrong romantic ideas.

  “He’ll be here tonight, though,” she said, poking me in the arm.

  “Oh, good,” I lied. “Would you like to come in for a drink? We have those little bottles of champagne that girls like.”

  “In the spirit of the day, I will ignore the remark and accept the offer.”

  And she accepted the little champagne. I accepted my own offer of a tumbler full of ice and Jack Daniels.

  “So what were you going to do,” Gigi Boudakian asked over quietly thumping background music, “just sit outside and watch like a chauffeur-driven stalker?”

  “No,” I said, looking down at the rug between my feet, blushing. “No, of course not.” I wasn’t completely sure if she was wrong. I wasn’t sure if the watching I was doing and the watching a stalker would be doing were entirely different things, but I was prepared to give myself the benefit of the doubt. “I was going to come in. I was just talking to my dad for a minute.”

  I showed her my phone. “He gave me this,” I said anxiously. “For my graduation, my dad gave me this. Prepaid, like, for life. Nice, huh? Nice phone. I thought I should call him on it, try it out. He’s home, all by himself. Then he went and called me first. So I was talking to him. He misses me, I think.”

  Gigi Boudakian’s face broke out in such a megasmile, I couldn’t help but smile some myself. That’s what a smile from her does to you.

  She kissed me again, on the cheek. Just missed my ear.

  “You’re no killer at all,” she said. “You are a big cream puff.”

  “That’s what my dad says,” I said.

  Gigi had a second mini champagne, and by the time she finished it I had poured my third Jack Daniels, still relying on the remnants of the original ice.

  “I think it’s time,” she said brightly, sort of waving away my glass as she said it.

  I drank my shot down very fast.

  Gigi Boudakian touched my hand. All senses returned to full power, and shocks like I was grabbing the terminals of a car battery ran up my arms and into my chest. I looked at her. Gigi Boudakian’s slender hands there, were the most beautiful, the softest, the warmest. Gigi Boudakian’s eyes there, were the softest, warmest, brownest, the feeling spread, my chest filling, overfilling, overflowing, the mad electrical sense rising up into my throat, sinking down into my stomach, down, down, Gigi Boudakian, doing nothing more than touching my hand with her hand. . . .

  “You want to go now?” she asked me.

  “I want to go now?” I asked me.

  She took this for an answer and pulled me from my seat as she opened the car door with her other hand.

  Pretty much everyone I had ever known was inside Quarterback Ken’s house when we got there. The music was ten thousand times louder than it was in the limo, and more confused, since there were different monster sound systems punching away from at least three different locations in the house.

  “Killer!” somebody called out.

  “Killeeer,” somebody amended.

  I waved, kept walking, happy to follow along behind Gigi Boudakian. I wove through throngs, crowds, churning, slapping masses of dancers, slack-limbed roomfuls of rabble, and as we entered each doorway and exited out the other si
de, I found myself farther and farther away from Gigi, chasing after her vapor trail as she meeted and greeted and veered off into a crowd of lady friends. Then, lost and alone, I stopped.

  I was in a room surrounded by food. I did not want any food. The music was good, though. It was the same music I didn’t like before. It was great music now. I hated dancing, always did. I liked dancing now. Started, in fact, dancing in place.

  Where were the girls? Everywhere, actually. There were girls, as well as guys, everywhere you looked. Everybody said hi.

  “Hi.”

  “Hi.”

  Everybody was great. Everybody was really great today. Why were there so many people here? There were not this many people in the school. There could not be this many people graduating. Why were so many of these people strangers to me?

  “Hi.”

  “Hi.”

  But lovely strangers they were. I could dance with any of them.

  I started dancing with this tall red-headed girl I had never seen before. Not that I was much of a judge, but I thought she was a great dancer.

  “You’re a great dancer,” I said. Screamed, really.

  “No, I’m not,” she said, going faster, faster, shooting her impossibly long arms into the air. Everybody in the crowd, as if attached to her by strings like marionettes, stuck their hands in the air.

  Wow. These girls were great.

  I didn’t want these girls, though. They were okay, of course . . . but I wanted . . . other girls. Where was Gigi Boudakian?

  And where were my girls? My Mary, my Fran. They would love this.

  Where were they? I suddenly blued up.

  They should have been here. They should have. Why weren’t they? Did they not care? What was so important about tests? All right, I knew tests were important, but the tests were tomorrow and this was today, and today was supposed to be my day. They needed to see me having my day. How could me and my day even really be happening if they weren’t there to see it?

  The tall red-headed girl was not dancing with me now. She had drifted. She was still in my region, but she seemed more in the orbit of another guy. A real football player, not a kicker. A bastard running back.