Inexcusable

by Chris Lynch

  Once more downstairs. Once more in this room and that. Once more—no, twelve times more.

  And in every room I found what I didn’t want. I didn’t want any food and I didn’t want any drink, and I didn’t want any party.

  I wanted other people. Not any other people, but my people. I don’t know where or how I had lost my ability to really enjoy hanging around with the general population, but I had well and truly lost it. It was like I couldn’t bear to be very long with people other than the people I loved, and the people I loved were a very compact list and all the rest just made me tense and awkward and angry after the first twenty minutes.

  I wanted to go.

  The party had become one of those parties. Only more. It seemed perfectly okay with everybody that I just bee- lined out as arbitrarily as I had come in.

  I found Rollo asleep, or intensely reading the paper draped over his face. I didn’t even bother to wake him as I slipped back into my private spot in the backseat, thinking about what to do, what not to do.

  A whole huge part of me wanted just to go home. I could do that, just go back to the house, go quietly to my room, put on music and whack myself to oblivion. That would be good. That would work. It always did, always made me feel mellow and harmless and right.

  CRAZY

  * * *

  What I am afraid of now, deeply worried about now, is that Gigi Boudakian is going truly crazy. She is not acting right. She is not acting any way I recognize as normal.

  “I’m worried,” I say to her after one alarming half hour of silence.

  “You better be.”

  “Gigi, why are you taking this out on me? It’s Carl who didn’t come. It’s Carl who’s responsible, for getting you all upset and making you cry and making you crazy. I was the one who was here for you. Why can’t you understand that? I was the one who was here, Carl was the one who didn’t come.”

  “Well he’s coming now. Today Carl is coming, Keir. And so is my father. So is everybody, coming for you, Keir Sarafian.”

  This was just crazy. It was all gone so crazy, I couldn’t believe it.

  MELLOW, HARMLESS, AND RIGHT

  * * *

  I wasn’t even aware how long I was sitting there, staring out the window like a zombie. Rollo was still sleeping, though.

  Gigi emerged from the house and marched straight across the lawn, straight toward the limo, very much like something in a dream. If I were sleeping like Rollo, this would be exactly the dream I’d be having.

  There she was at the window. I even tried to preserve her there. Just for a few seconds, a few seconds with her lovely soft sad face framed in the window, mine to keep. She pressed her face to the glass, cupped her hands around her eyes, trying to see in through the smoke.

  “Keir,” she called loudly, knocking on the window. “Keir, are you in there?”

  She must have disturbed Rollo’s sleep, because suddenly my electric window was opening, and he was growling, “For god’s sake, you don’t keep a quality girl waiting.”

  “Hi,” said Gigi Boudakian, who looked like she had tired and sad panda eyes now, reddish and watery, black drippy makeup pooling and overflowing from shallow hollows above her cheekbones. It was like when the window opened it revealed what was real, dark and unlovely, and I for one was anxious to not see it.

  “Hi,” I said, and it sounded like a long, slo-mo sentence as it slurped out of me. “You were looking for me?” My stomach did a sudden leap as I said the words, and heard them.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Excellent. What for?”

  She paused, smiled shyly. “I don’t know, actually.”

  “Good enough for me,” I said brightly.

  “Stop that,” she said, laughing, smacking my arm.

  I reached out then, pulling the sleeve of my jacket down over my hand, and dabbed at both of her black, streaky pools to clean them up some.

  “You okay?” I asked, squinting for the response.

  Gigi Boudakian lowered her determinedly lovely chocolate eyes. “Not really,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  She nodded graciously. “Buy you a drink?”

  I shook my head graciously. “But I could buy you one.” I motioned at my mobile bar.

  Gigi blinked twice, nodded, and climbed in.

  We drank a drink, and then another, and Rollo drove us around, looking for the middle of nowhere. And that suited us just fine.

  At least it suited me. I was into Gigi Boudakian. Everything else had become background, bordering on interference. She talked to me, about people we knew, I think, about music, about college, I think, and maybe about families, definitely, about families, about Sarafians and Boudakians and all and I think, yes, I know, she talked about her boyfriend Carl in the air force and his fateful and nasty and stupid decision not to come home for her graduation. I never enjoyed talking with a pretty girl about her boyfriend more than I was enjoying it right there.

  I watched, I listened, I smiled. Gigi Boudakian drank, and Gigi Boudakian was not really a drinker, but sometimes there are just those times.

  Then she nearly ruined everything by asking to borrow my new phone.

  “I have to try,” she said, before stepping just outside the car. “A person has to try, Keir, that’s what I think. So I have to try at least one more time.”

  “I guess,” I said, not believing at the moment that a person did, necessarily.

  While I waited in the ether of the presence of Gigi Boudakian, I thought it might be a good time for a charm- bravery-confidence booster. I reached a hand into my pocket, fished around, took out a couple of pills. There were a couple of triangles left, and the others, and I thought I would be conservative for now and stick with the tried and true. I gagged one, washed it down, stood there numb and waiting and hoping like hell that my old friend Carl was going to continue to be the most foolish young man in our entire armed services and not come to Gigi Boudakian on her graduation day.

  Until, just minutes later, I set eyes again on Gigi’s eyes, on her so sad red drippy eyes, and right there I repented, reversed, and wished so badly that whatever bad wishing I had done did not contribute to making this so. Because I would even rather have seen him come swooping down out of the sky with a chest full of medals and sweep her away from me than see what I was seeing.

  “I’m sorry, Gigi,” I said as she sat back in the car, sniffing, wiping with a messy sweep of her elegant hand, then sniffing some more.

  “He’s not even there now,” she said, voice quavering with rage and sadness. “He said he had to stay right there on base, and now he’s not even there.”

  She leaned right up to me, right up close, close enough so I could feel heat coming off her skin, off her flushed face.

  “My sisters didn’t come either,” I said.

  “Yes, I know. You told me.”

  “Did I?” I said.

  She giggled. She was sad and sad-faced, but she could giggle too. She could do it all, Gigi Boudakian.

  “You are a good guy, aren’t you, Keir?”

  I examined the statement for any hidden message. Didn’t find any.

  “I am. I am a good guy, Gigi.”

  “Why do guys find it so hard to be good guys?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t. Only sometimes.”

  She giggled sadly again.

  I took her hand, and she let me do it. It was wet. I did not care at all. Even better, in fact. Even nicer. There was more Gigi Boudakian in a wet hand than a dry one and more Gigi was an indisputably good thing.

  One tear escaped, then another, running down that beautiful face, spoiling it, ruining everything. I took my free hand—the free hand because the other hand was not letting go, not on your life—and I daubed her high glorious cheekbones with the heel of the sleeve of my jacket once more. And then I reached into my back pocket for my wallet.

  “Want to see my mom?” I asked Gigi Boudakian.

  I had never before said that, or
anything like that, in my life. Not once to anyone.

  “I would like that very much,” she said, a smile coming through like sunshine burning away a fog.

  I handed over the photo I carried, an inferior copy of Ray’s piano-top picture.

  “Also, that’s what my sister Fran looks like. Pretty much. She was supposed to be here too, Fran was. And Mary, too. They were supposed to come.”

  “I know. You said.”

  “People are like that, though,” I said. “People are just like that. What are you going to do? You ready for another drink?”

  “I’m okay for now,” she said.

  “Don’t you hate it when people you love let you down?” I said.

  “Yes, I do,” she said.

  “I hate it when people I love let me down. It’s like, the worst thing there is.”

  “It is.”

  It is.

  HEAVEN ON WHEELS

  * * *

  Heaven on wheels. I may have thought Rollo’s car and all that went with it was the ultimate before, but I had no idea what heaven was then. When Gigi Boudakian heard my idea and didn’t so much as blink, when she shouted “Why the hell not!” I told the driver to drive and he said, “Yessir,” then I knew heaven and heaven knew me.

  Even Rollo couldn’t believe it, and Rollo had seen everything.

  “What?” he said. “Where?”

  “Take us to Norfolk, my good man.”

  “Norfolk,” he repeated. “As in, the college.”

  “Yup,” I said. “Me and my lady friend here are on a mission. To show my sad sisters just a little bit of what they missed.”

  “You are serious.”

  “I am serious.”

  “Young lady, that’s okay with you?”

  “That is okay with me,” Gigi Boudakian said in a singsong to melt even Rollo’s cold, cold heart.

  I knew, okay. I knew, what we had here was Gigi’s anger at somebody else more than it was her affection for me. But I also knew that I didn’t care, and that whatever her level of affection for me I was grateful for it and wouldn’t be letting go until it was pried out of my hands. Gigi Boudakian liked me and trusted me enough to make this possible, and right now I was the only guy in the world who could say that. Which, by my definition, made me the finest and luckiest guy in the world for at least some small time.

  “Okay,” Rollo said, “but you know this is three hours—”

  “And one state line,” I added.

  “I know,” Gigi said, and nestled down deep in the upholstery. “I don’t have any other plans or obligations. And a nice ride through the country, with my very nice gentleman friend, sounds like a better idea than any other right now.”

  She was doing it again, mixing sweetness and sadness in the same foggy dew.

  “We have loads of drinks and snacks,” I said hopefully. “You want a drink and a snack?”

  She patted my leg. “Maybe later, thanks.” She scootched up closer to me, wedged herself against me, and let all her weight rest on me. She didn’t object when I raised my arm up and draped it down over her shoulders.

  Heaven on wheels. Nirvana, Valhalla, whatever, this was as close to it as I was ever going to get.

  Until bleep-bleep-bleep went the rotten little electronic birdcall of a cell phone. Shot through me like electroshock when Gigi bounced up in her seat, pulled my phone out of her bag where she’d forgotten it, and started staring at it.

  “What?” I said.

  He had returned her call, sort of. She showed me the text message from Carl, HEARD YOU CALLED, WHAT UP?

  “He doesn’t even have the guts to phone me properly,” she said. Then she growled and turned the phone off with that exaggerated aggressive maneuver that doesn’t really shut the thing off more thoroughly, but does bend your thumb painfully backward.

  “Grrr,” she growled again, and I was getting to really like that sound. Then she popped right up, went to the refrigerator, and stuffed the phone inside before slamming the door shut again.

  It was my new gift phone she was abusing, but I had no interest in objecting.

  “Who needs ’em,” I said triumphantly as I grabbed a beer and waved at the phone.

  “Who needs ’em,” she said lowly, slowly, and sadly.

  She leaned up and against and into me once more. I draped my arm over her once more. I tipped my head to one side, onto Gigi’s head like a pillow, and I breathed her in. Carl, I thought, was a person who made no sense to me whatsoever.

  * * *

  Gigi fell asleep almost as soon as we left town, and she snoozed off and on for much of the ride. Me, I was right there, awake, alive, alert, but held in place between Gigi Boudakian on the one hand and a beer in the other. I was frozen there, and could not have been more content to be that way. I didn’t even open the beer for the first hour, as I alternated between staring out the window at the scenery and staring to see that Gigi was still actually under my arm and I was still actually on this earth.

  It seemed like no time and no space had passed when Rollo maneuvered the limo through the twisting roadways of the campus to finally stop in front of the girls’ dormitory building. It was an ugly thing, very square and made up of red and white stone blocks and lots of windows that should have made things brighter but made them somehow danker—but the sight of it filled me with a kind of Christmas morning light.

  “Gigi,” I said to her as Rollo came around to open our door. “Gigi, wake up, we’re here.”

  She stirred slowly, raised herself up slowly, and it was then that I realized how completely numb and dead my arm had gone. I hadn’t moved it from that spot around and behind her for three hours. And it would have taken a gunfight for anybody but Gigi to get me to move it still.

  As it was, I couldn’t exactly move it anyway. I let it sort of fall off the back of the seat and hauled it up out of the car behind me.

  “Wow,” Gigi said, stepping out into the moonlit evening. “This is a beautiful campus.”

  She spun around to check it out, and true enough, there wasn’t a bad angle on the place. It was a great rolling landscape, laid out with a lot of attention to space. Every building, practically, was set atop its own little hillock, which made for fine views from each one of them, even if it meant a lot of walking for students. The air was so thick with pine you’d be checking your teeth for needles.

  “Nice, huh?” I said, puffing up as if I’d built the place myself. “I’m coming here in the fall, you know.”

  “I know,” she said, still gazing off. “I am so jealous.”

  She was going to a community college in town, so she could still work in the family business.

  “You could come and visit me,” I chirped. “Like, every weekend.”

  She poked me in the ribs, which I loved, and I was thinking again, this was the best time and place ever to be. It made me think how much this was like prom night, which was the previous best time and place ever.

  “So kids,” Rollo said. “What’s the plan? Bearing in mind it’s another three-hour haul back.”

  “Well, maybe we won’t go back,” I said, thinking as soon as I said it what a magnificent and thoughtful thought that was.

  “Yes, maybe we just won’t,” Gigi said, but in a much more frivolous way. She had yet to understand the magnificence of my thought.

  “Seriously, though,” Rollo said. “I think two hours should be enough for you to visit with your sisters, to interrupt their studies, and to get back home in reasonable time. I got friends in the area, I can go visit and cool my heels and be right back here to meet you. Two hours. Fair?”

  “Aren’t you coming in, Rollo? Just to say hello?”

  Rollo stared at me hard, twisting his head sideways. “What are you talking about? You know your sisters can’t stand the sight of me.”

  “Oh, that is not—”

  “Two hours, Keir,” Rollo said, ignoring me and walking around to his door. “Have fun, kids.”

  * * *


  “This is going to be so cool,” I said, standing in the hallway about to knock on the door. “This is going to blow their minds. They never in a million years would have expected me to do this, and they are just going to go mental.”

  “What kind of mental?” Gigi Boudakian said apprehensively.

  “Oh no,” I said, “the best kind of mental. Only the best kind.” I knocked, seven times. We always did that in our family, the seven-times knock.

  We waited. I knocked seven more times.

  “All right, I’m coming,” came an unfamiliar voice.

  The door was opened by a wiry thin girl a couple of years older than me. She was wearing thick red socks for slippers and a pink velour robe. “Can I help you?” she said.

  “Ah, I’m looking for my sisters. I’m Keir.”

  She looked at me blankly.

  “Keir. Sarafian. Fran and Mary are my sisters.”

  “Oh,” she said politely, “sorry, I didn’t know. I’m Grace. I room with your sisters.” She held out her hand and I shook it. So did Gigi.

  “I’m Gigi,” Gigi said.

  “Are the girls here?” I asked, peering kind of impolitely around Grace. I couldn’t help it, I was anxious.

  “Um,” Grace said. “No.”

  “No?”

  “No. Well, not right now. They’ll be back, though. Anyway, Fran will, in about an hour. She’s out with this really nice Mormon guy, and he always has her back right on time.”

  I would not have been surprised if you could hear the air escaping from my inflated hopes. Or steam, more like it. Hisss.

  “And Mary?”

  “Mary won’t be back until late tomorrow sometime. She went to Baltimore for a couple of days with a few of the other girls. Kind of celebrating the end of exams. Some people finished up on Friday, the lucky ones, so they took off.”

  As fast as Grace could talk, no, faster than Grace could talk, my body filled with deadness. Starting at my toes and sifting upward, bit by bit, I could feel nothing, until I was simply floating there in the hall outside the door where Mary and Fran were not studying.