by Ron Koertge
It’s funny how different that sounds when Colleen says it; it’s not so much a name as a fact. Or maybe coming from her, it isn’t like the brickbat people usually hurl at me.
I turn sideways, fall back into the seat, and haul my gimpy leg in as Colleen walks around to her side. The tiny skeletons hanging from both ears dance.
She turns the engine over and glances at me. “You okay?”
I reach for the ratty-looking seat belt. “Yeah.”
“I was going to suggest we rob a bank, but you’re not exactly up for the quick getaway.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Cool hair, by the way.”
“My grandma hates it.”
“Isn’t that the point?”
We park on San Pasqual Avenue, walk half a block or so, then turn into the campus. The first girl we pass has broccoli-green hair and a T-shirt with Black Uhuru on it.
“I know her,” Colleen says. “I sold her some dope.” Then she puts her hand on my arm. “Speaking of dope, is anybody around?”
“Not really. Why?”
Her right hand dives into her purse and comes up with what is almost for sure the dead end of a joint.
“You’re not going to smoke that, are you?”
“I thought I might.”
“Somebody might see.”
“That’s why I asked you if there was anybody around!” She leads me to a bench, fires up her yellow Bic, takes a hit, then offers the joint to me.
“Are you kidding?”
“Don’t tell me you never wanted to.”
I glance around warily. “I don’t even know how to smoke a regular cigarette.”
“Sip at it. And let some air in to, like, water it down.”
I take the joint from her. “If I cough, don’t laugh at me.”
“I can’t believe you’re such a lightweight.”
“I’ve led a sheltered life.”
I inhale just a little.
“Hold it in,” Colleen advises. “And don’t talk for a minute.”
I settle back, or try to settle back. When I saw Reefer Madness, half the people in the audience were stoned and except for a big concession stand run on Hershey’s Kisses, they seemed none the worse for it. So I am pretty sure I’m not going to climb the bell tower just to get closer to the planets that are sending me coded messages. Still, this isn’t like me. I study, I go to the movies, I play cards with my grandma.
When Colleen nods, I exhale.
“Well?” she says.
“Wow.”
“Ed always has really good shit.”
I lean toward her. “Should we do it again?”
“If you don’t mind being late to the movie.”
When she holds out her hand to help me up, I take it. While we walk, she links her arm through mine. My good one.
“Are we strolling, do you think?”
She laughs. “What?”
“I don’t feel so clumsy. And I’ve always wanted to stroll. Man, why didn’t my physical therapist tell me about this stuff?” All of a sudden, I stop. “Listen to that?”
“What, the air conditioning?”
“Dad used to say it was the sound of people thinking.” I point. “There’s the library where he worked. Did I tell you I think he killed himself?”
“I heard he drove off Angeles Crest.”
“Maybe on purpose. He was really unhappy.”
“After your mom split.”
“And before. When they’d argue, I’d hear stuff.”
“Like what?”
“Like Mom would say, ‘I can’t live like this. I try. I even want to, but I can’t.’”
“What couldn’t she live like?”
That’s a good question.
“Who knows? Maybe Grandma’s right and Mom was just unstable, because sometimes she was really fun. Other times she would just, like, go to her room. It was always Grandma who drove me to therapy and pretty much took care of me.”
By this time we’re right beside Kennedy Hall. Marcie’s classroom is on the first floor, but before we go in, I stop Colleen.
“That stuff we smoked is great. Why is it illegal? I feel fantastic.”
Inside, maybe twenty-five people chat or flip through their textbooks. The teacher is a guy with a big Walt Whitman beard. He shuffles through a dozen video cassettes.
When Marcie sees us, she waves and heads our way.
“Ben! You made it, and you brought your new hair. Where’s Grandma?”
“Fundraising. For AIDS, remember?” I tug at Colleen. “Oh, say hi to Colleen. She’s got a boyfriend, so we’re just pals. Barely friends. In fact, it’s some sort of deviation in the time-space continuum that we’re even in the same room together.”
Colleen holds out her hand. “Hi. Don’t pay any attention to him.”
“Sit in the back. I’m second, so you can slither out after mine if you want.”
We settle into the chairs, me with my good side next to Colleen. The teacher gives a little speech, thanks his former students for letting him use their videos, then slips in the first one, which is a Claymation-style film called Kiss Me Till I Melt.
It opens with two clay figures face to face; then the filmmaker irises in to show us some time has passed. Scene two shows them lying on top of each other. More irising in. In scene three, you can’t tell who’s who anymore. There’s just a big lump of clay.
Nervous laughter. Lights up. Applause, applause.
Then Marcie’s movie starts. A lady sits in a lawn chair outside one of those giant motor homes. She wears a kind of white coverall, sunglasses, and a baseball cap with NASCAR on it.
“We were on our way from Michigan to Texas Motor Speedway when Bobby just up and died on me. I was driving and he was supposed to be taking a nap. We just happened to be going through St. Louis when he came up behind me and said, ‘Sweetheart, I don’t feel too good.’ And those are the last words I heard him say.”
She reaches for a tall glass of iced tea. “Hell, we just liked to follow the stock cars: Little E, Dale Jarrett, Mark Martin, and those boys. But the fella who got Bobby’s heart likes to read books and grow vegetables. Don’t you think that’d be like going to sleep in the middle of Speed Week at Daytona and wakin’ up in Leisure World?”
Even Colleen laughs and sits up a little straighter. I scoot forward in my seat because I like this little movie. Also, I feel really good.
Marcie uses an establishing shot next: the Altadena sign at the city limits, then a street named Poplar, then a little living room with big furniture and a tiny woman dressed all in green like an elf.
“I don’t have much to say. Mark was playing football in the street when a car hit him. The boy who got his heart was also named Mark. For a while I heard from him real regular. Then not so often. Then only at Christmas. And lately not at all.” She rubs the edge of the coffee table. “He’s just a boy. Mark is. The live one. Boys get distracted easily. I know that for a fact.”
That’s when Marcie splices in some stock operating room footage: the chest cracks and opens, some doctor’s gloved hands probe, a big bloody sponge balances on the sternum.
“Oh, gross!” Colleen buries her face in my shoulder.
I’ve seen this a hundred times. Not the stuff on the screen, but a girl hiding her eyes, her hair against some boy’s neck the way Colleen’s is against mine. His comforting arm around her shoulders, the way mine is.
“Is it over?” Her warm breath seeps through my Brooks Brothers shirt and into my skin.
“Uh-huh.”
Marcie opens with a slow pan across a McDonald’s menu, goes close on a bin of French fries, then across some Big Macs all wrapped up in their swaddling clothes. The camera settles on a big guy in a white T-shirt tearing into a Quarter Pounder. He never stops eating while he says, “I went to the interview with the transplant people right after my doctor found what he found, but when I heard, ‘Trade death for a lifetime of medical management,’ I said the hell with i
t. I’m not going through all that heartache just to eat tofu and rabbit food and have somebody stick me with a needle nine times a week.” Then he cocks his head. “Did I say heartache? I meant hassle.”
This time Marcie splices in footage from some monster movie, the scene in the inevitable laboratory where a heart lies throbbing under a bell jar while mine, when Colleen leans into me and closes her eyes, races like mad.
When the movie is over, everybody applauds, this time like they mean it. While the teacher is switching cassettes, Marcie signals for us to meet her outside.
“What happened to those old guys?” I ask. “The ones you told me about at brunch, the ones in the hospital who were afraid their hearts were going to make them gay or Chinese?”
Marcie shrugs. “They were just garden-variety racists. On camera, they were way too polite to be interesting.”
“The totally cool thing,” I say, “is that you made that all by yourself.”
“Pretty much. I picked up the iMovie program for my Mac, but that was about it. I’m probably not going to use it again.”
“Why not?”
Marcie shrugs. “I start things and then don’t finish them.”
“You finished your movie.”
“I guess. But I don’t feel like doing another one. If you’re interested, I could show you, though. Why don’t you both come over sometime?”
I glance at Colleen, who says, “I don’t think that’d be a real good idea.”
Just like that I’m not as happy as I was. And maybe that’s what weed does: lifts you up, then drops you like a careless parent.
“Well, it’s a standing offer.” She squints at the bright lights in the dingy corridor. “You are made for black-and-white, Colleen. She looks like Helena Bonham Carter. Doesn’t she, Ben?”
“In Fight Club.”
“Exactly.”
When Marcie says goodbye and goes back to watch the rest of her classmates’ movies, I take a deep breath. “Man, I loved that.”
“Who’s Helena Bon Bon Carter or whatever her name is?”
“A British actress. In a lot of Merchant/ Ivory movies.”
“Is she pretty?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Was she pretty in Fight Club?”
I push open the double doors and we step out into the evening. “For sure, in a kind of edgy, ruined way.”
“Cool.” All of a sudden Colleen stops. I can feel her sharp, black nails through my shirt.
“What?”
“Those cops.”
I glance at two campus policemen in khaki uniforms strolling our way. “What about ’em?”
“They’re going to hassle us.”
“Are you kidding? They’re just a couple of guys making eight fifty an hour.”
Colleen shoots me a glance of pitiless scorn.
“Evening, folks,” says the taller cop.
I read their name tags: Ketchum and Chu. It sounds like some horrible restaurant.
Colleen advises me not to say anything. “You don’t have to. This is public property. They’ve got no probable cause.”
Officer Chu smiles. “Maybe a little less of the Law & Order marathon and a little more sleep?”
Colleen crosses her arms.
Officer Ketchum’s lapel radio crackles. A static-riddled voice says something about Dormitory C.
As they turn away, Officer Chu touches the brim of his cap in a lazy salute. “Have a pleasant evening.”
“We were, till you showed up.”
Ketchum says something to his partner, and they both laugh.
Colleen watches them disappear around the corner of a tall, ivy-covered building.
“What was that all about?”
Colleen sighs. “Come over here.” She leads me to a bench, half-hidden by a drooping eucalyptus tree. She sits down, rummages through her purse, then lights another joint. Which she holds out to me.
“Just this once,” I say, trying to keep things light. But I also want to feel like I did an hour ago.
“I’ve got this thing about cops, okay?”
“Because of Ed?”
“That and Mom had a boyfriend who was a cop, and he was a total creep.”
I hand her the cigarette. I like the way the lamppost all of a sudden looks like a dandelion.
“This is in North Dakota, okay?”
“You and your mom and this cop?”
“Yeah. I was ten. And Ralph lived with us. Big son of a bitch. Worked out all the time. Then one night he comes into my bedroom, okay? And starts rubbing my back. How am I? How was school?
“I had this little light with, like, angel cut-outs and it spun, you know? When the bulb got hot? So there’s these angels’ shadows on my pajamas while I’m telling him about my math test, and all of a sudden he starts rubbing my legs.” She sucked on the joint. “I’m fucking terrified. He’s huge. His hands are, like, giant. So I get up and go in the bathroom and I stay there until I hear him walk past, and then I go back to bed and lay there all night afraid to go to sleep.”
When she holds out the smoke, I shake my head and reach for her hand instead, but she pulls it away.
“Next morning, I tell my mom. She freaks.”
“She should.”
“But not about Ralph. About me. I’m imagining things. He was just trying to be nice. I just don’t want her to be happy. And I think to myself: I’m on my own. I’m fucking ten years old, and I’m on my own.”
Colleen dives into her purse again, this time surfacing with a little amber-colored vial. Using a silver spoon so tiny it could’ve come from a dollhouse, she snorts what has to be cocaine. Now I’m getting nervous.
“So what did you do?”
“Split.”
“You ran away from home?”
“Not very far, just up the street to my girlfriend’s house.”
“But he was there the next night, right?”
“I didn’t go home then, either. There was always someplace to stay, you know? Somebody’s parents are always gone. This one girl lived in her parents’ garage, and I crashed with her for like a week.”
“Your mom didn’t care?”
Colleen shrugs. “I called home. I said I was sleeping over.” She taps on the little glass bottle with the spoon.
“So what finally happened?”
“Ralph took off. My mom’s boyfriends always take off.”
She reaches into her purse, lights up, and inhales like she’s a diver about to go as deep as she can for as long as she can.
“Do you think you’re the way you are,” I ask, “because of stuff like that?”
“Meaning what?”
“Colleen. You’re a drug addict.”
“Bite me. I smoke a little. I snort a little coke. Big deal. You should watch who you’re calling names. You’re this fucking loser who limps.”
I look down, appropriately enough, at my shoes. One’s fine, the other’s worn down on one side and all scuffed up.
I try not to let my voice shake. “I didn’t mean just you. I meant me, too. Am I a loser because my mom left and my dad died? My therapist used to say that people spend their whole lives getting over stuff their parents do, even nice parents.”
Colleen stands up. “That’s bullshit.”
She’s so loud that a couple of guys walking by stop and stare. I tug at her ice-cold wrist.
She sits down again but pulls her hand away and hisses, “That’s bullshit. Maybe I’m a stoner, but the devil doesn’t make me do it and my mommy and daddy didn’t make me do it.”
When she fills the little spoon another time, I scoot to the left so I’m more between her and people on the sidewalk. “Take it easy, okay? My dad used to work here.”
“Where were you when I needed a non sequitur for Mrs. Hamilton’s class? What’s your dad got to do with anything?”
“I used to know people. They might recognize me.”
“That was years ago.”
“I still limp.”
“You’re sitting down, for Christ’s sake.”
I struggle to my feet, never a pretty sight. “Let’s talk about this tomorrow, okay?”
“You started it. You want to blame your mom and dad because you’re a snob, go ahead. But it’s bullshit.”
“A minute ago I was just a loser. Now I’m a snob, too?”
“Well, what do you call a guy who never talks to anybody?”
“Hey, nobody talks to me.”
“And that’s somebody else’s fault?”
“I’m a spaz, in case you haven’t noticed.”
Colleen holds out her hand and lifts a finger for every name: “Don Secoli is in a wheelchair, and he’s Mr. High School. Karen Radley’s practically deaf, and she still plays drums in some garage band. Doris Schumacher’s blind, but all you have to do is say one word to her and she knows who you are. Get over yourself, okay?”
I lean in. “Will you not rant, please? People are looking at us.”
“Oh, who cares.”
“I care. You’ve got a purse full of drugs.”
“Ed will bail us out. All you’ll get is probation for a first offense.”
I tug at her, draw her deeper into the shadows. “I don’t want Ed to bail me out; I don’t want probation; I don’t want to go to jail, period.” Then I watch her light another joint. Her purse is like something from a fairy tale, one of those magic sacks that’s never empty. “Aren’t you high enough?”
She takes a gargantuan hit, then offers it to me. I wave it away as she says, “I never get high enough.”
With each word, out comes a little puff of smoke like those ominous signals the settlers saw when they crossed into Indian territory.
When I hear people behind us whispering and snickering, I turn on them. “What are you looking at?” I demand. “There’s nothing to see, okay?” Then I lean against the nearest tree.
Colleen fiddles with the joint she’s just lit, stares at it, inhales a little smoke by passing it under her nose like some plutocrat with a Havana cigar. Then she flicks off the lit end and drops the rest back into her purse. “I’d better lie down,” she says, sinking onto the lawn. “I’ve kind of got the whirlies.”
I go and stand over her, half-mad and half-worried. “Are you sick?”
“Maybe sit by me for a minute. I’ll be okay.”
I lower myself onto the damp grass, which takes a little doing. “I can call a cab if you want. You shouldn’t drive.”
