The Spectacular Now

by Tim Tharp

  Truth is—if I have any skill at all—it’s that I’m a magnificent driver under the influence. My record’s completely clean, not counting a couple of parking lot scrapes and a light pole. That thing with the dump truck was in my mom’s car and I didn’t have a license then. The cops didn’t even get involved. I mean, it’s not like I’m driving around with a four-year-old lodged in my grill. So that dude can just fuck off with his horn blowing. He has a lot worse things to worry about than me.

  Finally, when we’re back on the interstate north of the city, Aimee starts trying to make me feel better, going on about how she actually likes the old man and how it’s too bad that Mrs. Gates turned out like she did. “I don’t understand how she could get so mad about your dad having affairs when she’s obviously cheating on her own husband.”

  I’m just like, “I guess it’s because people suck.”

  I’m not in the mood for feel-good bullshit. This is an abnormally dark stage in the life of the buzz. Darker than dark, like God has forsaken his very own drunken boy.

  “Not all people suck,” Aimee says. “You don’t.”

  “Are you sure? You saw what kind of guy my dad is—a big fat liar and cheater. The kind of dude that sheds his family like a snake sheds its skin. Are you sure I won’t slither down that same rut? They say the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree. Do you really want to move off to St. Louis with a snake-apple bastard like that?”

  “You’re not a snake or an apple. And you’re not your dad. I think it’s a good thing you found out the truth. You can learn from what he did wrong. If you don’t want to be like that you don’t have to. We all have free choice.”

  “Free to choose what? Some kind of spectacular new future for myself? You heard my dad. Mom wanted a future and he didn’t have one to give her. Well, I don’t have one to give you either. It’s like a birth defect, you know? The boy born without a future.”

  “That’s not true, Sutter. You have so many options.”

  “No, I don’t. I saw it in a dream. The same dream over and over. It’s me and Ricky playing this game we used to play in junior high with a neighborhood dog, a big black Doberman. Only in the dream, we don’t make friends with him the way we did in junior high. Not hardly. No, he opens his huge slobbering maw and swallows Ricky in one bite, and then it’s just me with the dog growling and snapping, chasing me down the drainage ditch until I run into this concrete wall. There’s no escape. And then I wake up. It’s too brutal for my subconscious to face. It’s the season of the dog, all right, only this time it’s a mean season. But that’s how life is. Just like that. You’re just running and running with a wall in front of you and a big black dog snapping at your ass.”

  She lays her hand on my thigh. “It just seems that way right now. You have to remember to have hope.”

  “Hope? Are you kidding? That’s one thing I’ve learned for sure—hope is absolutely unnecessary. What there is instead of it, I haven’t found out yet. Until then, this drinking will just have to do.”

  I take a swallow of whisky and Seven but it goes down stale. Nothing helps. I’m a black spot on the chest X-ray of the universe.

  Aimee’s like, “You know, your dad probably just got hung up having to do something for Mrs. Gates. She seemed like she had some kind of mental problems. I’m sure he really wanted to come back and hang out with us. If it wasn’t for her, we’d probably be spending the night with him.”

  “Yeah, right. And if he hadn’t cheated on my mom and run out on me and Holly, then we’d still be a family, and everything would be cozy, and I’d be president of my Sunday school class, and you and I’d ride silver stallions to Pluto.”

  She’s quiet for a moment. Maybe I should feel bad for going all sarcastic on her, but there’s no room inside for feeling any worse.

  Finally, she’s like, “I know it looks bad right now, but parents are just people. They don’t always know what to do. That doesn’t mean they don’t love you.”

  “I don’t need any psychoanalysis from you, Dr. Freud, Jr.”

  That doesn’t faze her. “And even if they didn’t, that doesn’t mean you just give up. You know? It’s like you have to make love work where you can. Like with me, because I do love you. You don’t even have to question that. I do.”

  “Come on, Aimee, you sound like a soap opera. You don’t love me. You may want to tell yourself that, but this isn’t love. It’s more like you’re all drunk and feeling grateful. You’re just happy someone came along and showed some interest in you as more than a sex doll for a night.”

  She leans away and crosses her arms. “Don’t say that, Sutter. Don’t try to mess us up by saying mean things.”

  But I’m on a roll. “Haven’t you figured it out yet? There aren’t any Commander Amanda Gallicos. There aren’t any Bright Planets out there. No one’s coming with the inner prosperity. All we have is the great Holy Trinity of the atomic vampires—the sex god, the money god, and the power god. The god of the beautiful soul starved to death a long time ago.”

  She uncrosses her arms. “But we can change that.”

  I shake my head. “It’s too big to change. It’s too heavy and all sharp-cornered and shit.”

  “No, it’s not. It just seems that way right now because you’re afraid, but everyone’s afraid.”

  I stare at her, hard. “Afraid? Afraid of what? I’m not afraid of a damn thing. I’m the guy that jumped off a thousand-foot-tall bridge.”

  “You know what I mean. You’re—hey, watch out!”

  “Huh?”

  “You’re swerving into the other lane!”

  Chapter 62

  Again, a horn blares over my shoulder, only this time it’s the pissed-off blast from a tractor-trailer rig. I crank the wheel back to the right, but the road’s slick from all the rain, and we hydroplane hard. The Mitsubishi fishtails crazily down the highway, first one way, then the other. The truck rumbles next to us—a gas tanker—so close that it looks like for sure we’ll lurch back and slide right under the belly of it. With no seat belt on, Aimee’s busy struggling to squeeze into the floorboard, and a newspaper headline flashes through my mind: DUMBASS KILLS SELF IN FIERY AUTO CRASH; ROBS GIRLFRIEND OF SHINING FUTURE.

  The tank looks like it’s about two inches away. We’re just about to slam into its ribs when the car fishtails back the other way. Now it’s only concrete abutments we have to worry about. There’s one just ahead to the right, but we only scrape it before I finally regain control and wrestle us to a stop in the high soggy grass.

  Aimee peers up from the floorboard, her eyes wide, her bottom lip quivering.

  All I can get out is, “Jesus Christ!”

  “It’s okay,” she says. “Are you all right?”

  I can’t believe it. The girl should be slapping me in the face. “No, I’m not all right,” I tell her. “Can’t you see that? I’m far from all right. I’m a one hundred percent flaming screwup!”

  She crawls up from the floorboard and throws her arms around me. “I’m just so glad no one was hurt.”

  “Are you kidding?” I peel her arms away. “I nearly killed you and you want to hug me? You need to get as far away from me as you can.”

  “No, I don’t,” she says, crying. “I just want to hold onto you and make sure you’re okay.”

  “Well, holy crap, then, I’ll get away from you.” I sling the door open and stomp down the shoulder of the highway, rain pelting me like nails. “Drive the car back yourself,” I yell over my shoulder. “You’ll be safer that way.”

  But, of course, she doesn’t do that. Instead, she stumbles onto the shoulder of the road and hollers for me to come back. I just keep walking as fast as I can. It’s like if I move fast enough I can even get away from myself.

  “Sutter,” she yells. “Stop. I’m sorry!”

  Unbelievable. She’s sorry? For what? I turn to tell her to just get back in the car and let me go, but I don’t get the chance. A pair of headlights zoom in right behind her. Al
l I can get out is, “Aimee!” before she staggers left onto the highway. For a second the lights blind me, then there’s an awful thump, and the next thing I know she’s rolling across the shoulder into the high grass.

  My skin feels like it’s on fire as I run to her. The rain nearly blinds me. My stomach feels like a crazed animal that’s trying to scramble up through my chest and out of my mouth. I’m like, “What have I done? What have I done?” I don’t even know if I’m saying it out loud or not. She’s lying in the grass, her hair soaked, mud slashed across her cheek. Or is it blood? I kneel beside her. “Aimee, God, Aimee, I’m such a fucking idiot, Aimee.”

  “Sutter.” She doesn’t open her eyes. “I think I got hit by a car.”

  “I know, sweetheart, I know.” Somewhere I heard that you’re not supposed to move a person who’s been in a car accident, something about not damaging the spine, so I just kneel there next to her, afraid to even touch her face.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll get some help,” I tell her, but I’m such an idiot I’ve lost my cell phone and don’t have any way to call for an ambulance.

  She opens her eyes and tries to sit up.

  “Hold on,” I say, “I don’t think you should move.”

  “It’s okay.” She leans her head into my chest. “I think I’m all right. It just clipped my arm.”

  Looking closer, I can see that it is only mud on her cheek, and I gently smudge it away.

  “Can you help me get back to the car?” she says. “We’re getting soaked out here.”

  “Sure, I can, baby, sure I can.” I cradle my hand beneath her arm to help her up, but she winces and tells me to stop.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s my arm. I think it might be broken.”

  “Does it hurt bad?”

  From behind us, a voice calls, “My God, is she all right?”

  It’s a guy and a girl, a couple of years older than us, college students from the look of them.

  The guy goes, “She just kind of like stumbled out in front of us. There wasn’t anything I could do.”

  “It was only the side mirror that hit her,” says the girl. She’s holding an open magazine over her head to keep her hair dry, but it’s not helping much. “The whole mirror’s ruined. I mean, she was just walking in the road.”

  “I’m sorry,” Aimee says.

  The guy’s like, “No, don’t worry about it. I just hope you’re all right.”

  “I’m fine,” she says, but I’m like, “I think her arm’s broken.”

  “She’s lucky it’s not worse,” says the girl. “What were y’all doing out here?”

  I start to tell her it’s none of her business, but Aimee goes, “We were looking for something. Something fell off our car.”

  The guy wants to know if we need them to drive us to the hospital, but I tell him that we’re all right, we’ll handle it ourselves. He seems relieved, and his girlfriend’s like, “Y’all really need to be more careful.”

  I help Aimee up and everything seems to be in working order except for her left arm, but there’s no bone sticking out or anything. The guy follows us to the car and opens the passenger-side door for Aimee. His girlfriend’s already heading back to their car.

  “You sure you’re going to be all right to drive?” he says, once we have Aimee tucked safely inside.

  “We’ll be all right,” I tell him. “I don’t care if I have to drive ten miles an hour. I’m not going to let anything else happen to her.”

  As I slide in behind the steering wheel, I tell Aimee I’m driving her to the emergency room, but she refuses. She’s afraid they’ll call the police on me and her parents on her. “I can wait till tomorrow and go to the doctor then. I’ll make up something to tell my mom.”

  “But doesn’t it hurt?”

  “Kind of.”

  “That’s it. I’m taking you to the emergency room.”

  “No, Sutter, you’re not.” She’s sitting there holding her arm, but there’s determination in her eyes instead of pain. “I told you. I’ll go tomorrow. I don’t want anything to get in the way of us going to St. Louis.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  She’s drenched and bedraggled, but I’ve never loved anyone as much as I love her right now. That’s how I know I’ll have to give her up.

  Chapter 63

  Ricky’s stuffing T-shirts into a backpack, getting ready to go on vacation to Galveston with Bethany and her folks. He’s planning on trying out some surfing and, of course, the obligatory girlfriend boat ride around the Gulf of Mexico.

  “So,” he says, folding another shirt. “Sounds like your dad’s hooked up with a semi-crazy woman.”

  “I don’t think there’s any semi about it.”

  “Well, I guess that’s about what you can expect when you’re still out there looking for a girlfriend at forty-something years old.”

  I figure that comment is aimed at me and my track record with girls, but that’s all right—I deserve it.

  He stuffs the T-shirt into the backpack. “But what I can’t believe is that you had me swallowing that whole my-dad’s-a-hotshot-executive-in-the-Chase-building story. I mean, you kept that thing going for years.”

  “It’s not my fault you’re gullible. I mean, didn’t you even wonder why you never saw him?”

  “Hey, I don’t know any hotshot executives. I just figured he was always wheeling and dealing.”

  “Yeah. It was a stupid story. But once you get started with something like that, you’re stuck with it.”

  “I guess.”

  I can tell he’s pretty disappointed in me, and I don’t blame him. But when you’re a guy you don’t come right out and apologize. You think of some other way to make up for it, so I’m like, “You know, this whole situation with my dad, and with what happened with Aimee and all, has me thinking—you might be right.”

  “Dude, I’m always right. You know that.”

  “I mean, about the cutting back on drinking thing. It might be more fun if I just do it on the weekends.”

  “If you can.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing. I just wonder who has more control over the situation, you or the whisky.”

  “Dude, I’m always in control. You know me, I’m the virtuoso musician. Whisky’s just my million-dollar violin.”

  “Right.” He zips up the backpack. “Look, I have to head over to Bethany’s. If I don’t see you before we head out, look for a postcard from me. Or maybe I’ll e-mail you a picture of me riding some wild waves.”

  And that’s it—he goes his way, and I go mine. Used to, we would’ve broken down that whole story about my dad until we found the very truth of the truth of it, but now it’s just, “So long, I’ll see you later.”

  That’s all right, though. I have to get over to Aimee’s pretty soon anyway. We’re going to Marvin’s for dinner this evening. I’ve been postponing it, but there’s no more waiting. Time for the Big Talk.

  As it is right now, I’ve been transformed from a semi-villain into a real hero around the Finecky household. Seems Aimee told her mom we had a flat tire on the highway in the rain, and while she was helping me change it, a car swerved off the road and would’ve killed her if I hadn’t risked my life to pull her out of the way. It was just the passenger-side mirror that clipped her, she explained, and she didn’t even think her arm was broken until she woke up in so much pain the next morning.

  So it’s weird going over to her house and having everyone, even Randy-the-Walrus, beaming at me like I’m James Bond or somebody. In actuality, I feel like a double agent infiltrating their ranks under false pretenses. Not only because of the hero thing, but because of what I have to tell Aimee.

  At Marvin’s nothing has changed—the lights are still dim, the clientele still sparse, and Dean Martin still available on the jukebox. I guess the only thing that’s different is no whisky in the 7UP. Maybe Ricky doesn’t have much faith, b
ut I haven’t had a drink since the trip to Fort Worth, five whole days.

  Aimee’s having a great time, even with her arm in this elaborate cast that makes you wonder how she’s even able to put a shirt on. Luckily, she’s right-handed, so at least wielding a fork isn’t too difficult. She just has to make sure not to order anything that requires using a knife.

  The first time I saw that cast, I wondered if she’d even be able to move to St. Louis, but she said nothing was going to get in her way now. I asked her if she could still start work at the bookstore, and she said of course she could. All she’d have to do is run the cash register and help customers find what they’re looking for. “Think about it,” she said. “It’ll be a lot easier doing that than trying to fold newspapers.”

  “I guess you’re right about that,” I said.

  “You bet I am.” She grinned. “I’m spectacularly right.”

  Anyway, for Aimee, our trip to Marvin’s makes a nice little ceremony, a good way to say goodbye to our lives in Oklahoma. And it is a ceremony, all right, but for a different kind of goodbye.

  That’s not something you jump right into, though. You have to go slow, so I start out with the answer to the question Aimee’s too tactful to ask—has my father called yet to explain what happened?

  “He hasn’t called as far as I know. But if he did and got my mom, then I’m sure she wouldn’t even tell me.”

  “Maybe he’s embarrassed or feels guilty or something. You could call him.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Did you ever tell your mom or your sister that you went down there?”

  “No. Mom would probably shit a Cadillac if she found out I went down there. Holly called me about it, but I told her I had to postpone the trip. I don’t want to hear them say I told you so. It’s bad enough the old man turned out like that. I don’t need to see them gloat about it. I’m sure they already think I’ve got the screwed-up Keely male gene. I just don’t want them to know I know it. Anyway, that’s enough about my so-called family. They’re too depressing.”