The Spectacular Now

by Tim Tharp

  Kevin’s the golden boy where she’s concerned. He can do no wrong. In a way, she probably feels responsible for the fact that Holly spelunked up a fifty-carat rock like him in the first place. After all, Mom did pretty much the same thing with Geech. She started out as his secretary, and I guess the picture of herself in his big, two-story house got the best of her, so the next thing you know, Geech is getting a divorce and Mom’s riding around with him in his green Cadillac.

  But even with all his money, Geech is still just a handful of rhinestones next to an upscale northsider with a sixty-dollar haircut like Kevin. You should see Mom sitting out by their pool with her shiny gold sandals. It’s like she thinks she’s royalty. She won’t even stick her perfectly manicured big toe in that little pool Geech had built in our backyard anymore.

  Being born eight years apart, Holly and I never were very close. She used to tell me that she was the reason our folks got married and I was the reason they got divorced. She said if they only had one kid, they never would’ve had all those money problems to battle over. Whatever. She was just trying to get back at me for always making fun of her little, walnut-size boobs. That was before the augmentation thing, of course.

  So, what I’m saying is I suspect she has some kind of ulterior motive for getting me over tonight. She’s like Mom. They both want me to have connections, see. “It’s all in who you know,” Holly likes to tell me. What she means by “it” she never does say and I don’t ask. You might think she just wants to help me get ahead, but my theory is that she really wants to make me into a sort of accessory to her lifestyle. A golden little brother to show off to her golden friends.

  The only car I recognize in front of her house is a little red sports car. It belongs to Kevin’s buddy Jeff something who owns Boomer Imports down in Norman about a mile away from the University of Oklahoma. Everything’s clear now. They want me to go to Kevin’s alma mater while selling red convertibles to middle-aged divorced men who have delusions of becoming playboys.

  Inside, my sister gives me an air kiss like I guess she thinks upper-crust types are supposed to do and leads me into the living room, where everyone else is already sitting around with their drinks in their hands. Of course, she doesn’t offer me any booze, but that’s why I hauled along the big 7UP.

  Besides Jeff and his wife, there are five people I haven’t met before, and I forget their names as soon as my sister introduces them to me. Except for this girl—Jeff’s daughter as it turns out—who looks like she’s about my age and has the most gorgeous red hair you’d ever want to see. Her name’s Hannah and her sugar-cookie skin electrocharges my bloodstream on first sight.

  Is it possible, I ask myself, that Holly’s thinking about fixing me up with more than just a job?

  If it hadn’t been for Hannah, I would’ve been tempted to just wave at everybody and take a seat in the corner, but as it is, I work the whole assembly line, shaking hands till I get to her at the end of the couch. I hold on to her hand a little longer than the others.

  “Where have I been all your life?” I say, flashing my irresistible space-between-my-two-front-teeth grin.

  She doesn’t say anything back. She only looks down shyly and then up again, and the green of her eyes just about cuts me in two.

  Chapter 14

  In a situation like this, you have to play it cool. You can’t just squeeze yourself into a place on the couch and start drooling all over the girl. So, first, I go round up some of the fancy cheese Holly laid out and take a seat across the room on a stool at the bar. Maybe I take a quick glance or two at Hannah, but mainly I pretend to be interested in the conversation.

  For the men, the talk is something like, “How was the golf out in Tahoe?”

  “It was fantastic!”

  And for the women it’s “Have you checked out that new little antique shop on Havenhurst and Hursthaven?”

  “No, how is it?”

  “It’s fantastic!”

  I swear to myself on the spot that I will never have a party like this no matter how old I get. Is this what’s supposed to pass for friendship when you get out of college? I don’t see how you can hardly even call these people friends, at least not according to the definition of that word as I lived it growing up.

  I guess it’s different once you get out in the world and you don’t have the same experiences every day like you do in school, but these folks don’t have any inside jokes or old stories or theories about how the universe works or anything. There’s no deep connection. They barely seem to know each other.

  For a while, I test my psychic powers by trying to will Hannah over to the fancy cheese table so I can start a conversation with her, but I must not have been blessed in that department—she just continues sitting there, straight as a nail, with hands folded in her lap and her lips frozen into a polite smile. Now, with the way my mind works, I don’t get bored too easily, but at this point in the party, I’m starting to feel like if something entertaining doesn’t happen pretty soon I might just topple sideways off my bar stool and splat on the floor. Then I remember the blaze Ricky gave me this afternoon. That ought to spice things up a little bit.

  The upstairs bathroom—the one connected to Holly and Kevin’s bedroom—seems like the perfect place to fire it up, but what happens when I get up there? Right on this huge chest of drawers of theirs, I spy a tall bottle of thirty-year-old Macallan scotch. Thirty years old! That’s Kevin for you. As much as he loves to impress people with swank brand names, he’s not about to share his three-hundred-dollar bottle of scotch at a nothing little party like this. His boss isn’t even here.

  Me, I never was much of a scotch fan, but my big 7UP is starting to taste a little thin, and besides, how many chances am I going to get to slug down something like this? I mean, I read an article online about a sixty-year-old bottle of Macallan going for thirty-eight thousand dollars! And so what if it’s not open yet? It’s not like I’m going to drink half the bottle or something.

  But I would prefer to open it somehow so that Kevin won’t be able to tell. That’s going to be a problem. Even if I crack the seal as carefully as possible, I’ll have a hard time replacing it. I inspect it from every angle, chip at it a little with my thumbnail, and twist back and forth, but no luck.

  Finally, I decide to go ahead and light up my smoke, thinking maybe a little weed might help me figure something out. After taking a couple of drags and holding them in nice and deep each time, my mind starts to expand, and sure enough an idea hits me—I could break the neck of the bottle against the nightstand and start chugging away, gulping down liquor and glass both. And then when I threw up, it’d come out in perfect little airline bottles of scotch!

  This is why I don’t smoke pot as much as Ricky—my imagination is way too wired-up to handle more than a puff or two.

  Anyway, the mental picture cracks me up, and I can hardly stifle my giggle when another picture pops into my head—Kevin stalking into the room and me waving the shattered bottle at him like a bar fighter in some old movie. I can’t help but laugh out loud at that one.

  Then the stairway creaks. Somebody’s coming. Probably Kevin, worried about me getting into his three-hundred-dollar bottle of scotch. Talk about paranoid. You’d think he’d trust his wife’s own brother.

  “Sutter?” It’s Kevin, all right. “Hey, are you up here? Why don’t you come down and chat with Hannah for a while?”

  He’s heading my way. At the time—being all high and everything—I figure the natural thing to do is duck into the closet until he passes by. Anyone would do the same thing, I tell myself. Standing in there with all the suits and sport coats, I can see him through the crack between the sliding door and the door jamb, searching for me like I’m some kind of longtime cat burglar, and he just knows I must be up to my old tricks again.

  He looks at the chest of drawers. Shit, I think, why didn’t I put the scotch bottle back before running for cover?

  “Sutter?” he calls, looking around. Did
I mention that his hair looks like a toupee? It’s not a toupee, but it sure looks like one. He starts toward the bathroom. “Have you seen my bottle of Macallan?”

  I have to shake my head over that. Does he really think I’m in here burglarizing his scotch? I have a good mind to sneak downstairs, slip out the back door, and never come back to their fucking house again.

  There’s one problem with that, though—the blaze Ricky gave me is still burning between my fingers. And what happens? It gets a little too close to the dry cleaner plastic on one of Kevin’s thousand-dollar suits, and the whole thing bursts into flame right next to me. It’s just like a ball of fire out of War of the Worlds or something. There’s nothing for me to do but crash out of the closet and roll around on the carpet in case I’m on fire. That’s what they tell you to do in grade school fire drills.

  Now if you think Kevin cares whether I’m burning up, then you have no idea what he’s like. No, all he can think about is putting out the fire on his precious suit by beating it with a pillow. Goddamn. That’s Kevin for you, more worried about a pile of stitched-together cloth than a live human being.

  It’s only really the one suit that’s altogether ruined. The others will probably smell a little funny, but a trip to the cleaner will fix that easy enough. He throws a complete fit all over me, though. And of course, when Holly comes in, she takes his side too. It’s one of the worst things I’ve ever seen, the way he loses his temper and then her crying her head off like we’re in some kind of cable movie on the women’s channel. The whole episode’s uglier than the time my mom and Geech overreacted about that dump truck thing when I snuck their car out without a license.

  “Sutter, why do you have to act like that!” Holly bellows. “Why can’t you be like normal people! Why don’t you wake up!”

  So much for their polite dinner party and all their high-class etiquette bullshit.

  “Look,” I say. “Did it ever cross either one of your minds that I came an inch away from burning to a crisp? I mean, I was almost the marshmallow in the middle of a tailor-made s’more.”

  “And whose fault is that?” says Holly, mascara tears tracking down her cheeks.

  “Is that my bottle of Macallan you’ve got in your hand?” adds Kevin.

  “Yeah,” I say, handing it over. “Don’t worry, I didn’t open it. I was just looking at it.”

  He and Holly start in on me again, but I’m just like, “Hey, I’m sorry. That’s all I can say. It was an accident. Why don’t I just leave so you don’t have to waste your lung power on having to bawl me out for the rest of the evening?”

  On that, I’m out of there with them still jabbering behind me. Downstairs, everyone in the other room cranes their necks to catch a look at me passing by. For a second, I stop and stare at Hannah, trying to telepathically persuade her to leave with me, but she just gazes back, horrified, like I’m the Wolf Man or Leatherface or somebody.

  “Good night, everyone,” I say, tossing a jaunty salute Hannah’s way. “Due to unforeseen circumstances, it is time for me to depart and get drunk off my ass.”

  Chapter 15

  “Why don’t nobody love me!” I scream out the window as I speed down the street. “I got a nice car. I got a big dick. Why don’t nobody love me?”

  Now, in case you’re thinking that’s pretty pathetic, let me explain that I’m being sarcastic. It’s actually a quote from this dude I worked with one summer on the loading dock at Geech’s plumbing supply business. His name was Darrel. We’re sitting there on the dock, sweating in the sun, and little Darrel’s wife has just dumped him, and that’s what he says—“Why don’t nobody love me? I got a nice car. I got a big dick. Why don’t nobody love me?”

  He was completely serious. It broke my heart and made me want to laugh at the same time. You ought to try yelling it sometime, though. It feels pretty good.

  I’m no more than a couple blocks away when I realize the Chase building is staring me right in the face. I could get there in two minutes, but what’s the use? Instead I pull over in a parking lot and sit there staring out the windshield at those black windows. After taking a slug of whisky, I say, “What’s up, Dad? You making a killing up there? You making a million? You gonna show Mom how wrong she was? Make her beg you to come back after all these years?”

  I take another slug. “Come on down, Dad!” I yell into the windshield. “Come the fuck on back down to earth!”

  But there’s no use dwelling on that. It’s ridiculous to go around getting all sloppy and morose. It’s Friday. I’m magnificently free and wild. The whole night’s stretching out in front of me. Forget my sister and Kevin’s flame-broiled suit and Hannah’s green eyes. Forget Cassidy and Mr. Leon’s and algebra and tomorrow. I’m going to grab hold of this night and crack it open, eat the fruit right out of the middle, and throw away the rind.

  Down in Bricktown, I park in the tower by the ballpark and then carouse around up and down the sidewalks with what’s left in my flask, giving the eye to all the pretty girls. For a while, I stop and talk to this dude who always plays this weird Chinese guitar on the corner. I try to drum up some extra business by challenging passersby to throw out some extra coins. I’ve got a pretty good spiel too, like what they use along the midway at the state fair, but the dude doesn’t seem to appreciate it much, so I move on.

  I try the bars, getting turned away from one after the other till finally I find one where there’s no bouncer at the door. The place is packed with young up-and-comer types, so I squeeze into the back to size up my next move. It’s great. I can’t wait till I turn twenty-one. I’ll be out at the bars every night.

  At a table next to the wall, there’s a group of girls, probably college students, two blondes and three brunettes, all pretty but in different ways, like a variety pack of your favorite kinds of cookies. Yes, God is taking care of me, I tell myself. God will not let me sink.

  At first, the girls are suspicious of me, but I grin and launch right into the story of falling off of Cassidy’s roof. They laugh and invite me to sit down. We trade names and they say they’re all students at OU. I could try to lie and say I’m in college too, but I’m too free in myself to lie, and besides they couldn’t be more delighted to find out I’m a high school boy out at the bars by myself in the wake of getting dumped by my girlfriend.

  They let me in on their beer and giggle at all my stories. Their eyes dance and their hair shakes. I’m in love with every one of them simultaneously. Two of them kiss me on the cheeks at the same time and one runs her fingers through my hair. For a second I entertain the idea that I’ll go back to their sorority house with them, and we’ll get naked and frolic together on a round bed with red silk sheets. It’ll be like a Girls Gone Wild video, only with me right in the middle.

  That doesn’t happen, of course. They have other bars to hit tonight, and I’m not invited to go along. One by one, they hug me goodbye. They pinch my cheeks and even my ass, but it’s just done in that big-sister-little-brotherly kind of way. This, I realize, must be how Ricky always felt with girls before I hooked him up with Bethany.

  My night’s not over, though. I wander down by the canal and then over to the cineplex to see who might be hanging around outside. Nothing much is going on, so I head back to the parking garage but can’t remember what level I left my car on. I don’t really care—it just gives me a chance to meet more people while searching, and I know God will lead me to my car eventually because I am God’s own drunk. The only problem is my flask is starting to get a little light.

  Sure enough, God has not forsaken me. Miraculously, my car appears, and just five minutes to the east, right next to the interstate, stretches a string of convenience stores and truck stops fully stocked with 3.2 beer. All I have to do is find one that doesn’t care too much about checking IDs or else persuade someone to go in and buy the beer for me.

  At the second truck stop I go to, a girl in a microscopically short denim skirt is hanging around outside. She gives me the eye and a
flirty smile. She’s probably about twenty-five or so and kind of pretty except her teeth are bad. It dawns on me she’s a meth-head hooker.

  That’s okay with me. I don’t look down on anyone, except maybe for the pretentious, and you can even feel sorry for them if you think about it. We joke around a little bit, and she’s got a good, quick wit. Her name turns out to be Aqua—at least that’s the name she gives me—and although she wants to “party-party” with me, she’s not too let down to make ten bucks just for going in and buying a twelve-pack.

  “You come back sometime, Sutter,” she says as she hands over the beer. “I’ll give you my special discount.”

  I kiss the tips of my fingers and touch them to her cheek. “You let me know when you want to go on a real date, and I’ll be at your door in a second.”

  So, maybe it’s a little late to start on a twelve-pack, but I’m in no hurry to get anywhere—especially home. No doubt Holly’s already called to tell Mom what an enormous screwup I am. But I’ll worry about that tomorrow. Right now, there are new sights to see and loud music to listen to.

  Who knows how long I’ve been cruising around, but the next thing I know I’m in the middle of some neighborhood I don’t recognize, side windows down, the cool wind flapping in my clothes. At first the houses aren’t bad, but then they get scuzzier and scuzzier, until I’m surrounded by these little lopsided houses that look like they’re made out of shingles. Swaybacked roofs, stark concrete porches, scabby trees, bald lawns. Here and there, tricycles or something like a faded plastic pony with wheels leaning sideways in weedy, flowerless flowerbeds. There are families pinched into these flimsy boxes—just like me and my family used to be back in the day.

  These are people I understand. These are people I love.

  “You are beautiful!” I holler into the wind. “You are holy!”

  Suddenly, I’m moved to jump the curb and drive across the barren lawns. “Down with the king!” I scream. “Down with the motherfucking king!”