Tim talks to Jessica at the surfer party
The party raged all around Tim, while he stood alone like the eye of the hurricane, kept company only by his own thoughts. He felt that it was wrong, that his life had evolved to the point where things like this didn’t happen any more, but there he was. He looked around the crowd, but no opening presented itself–Helen and Todd were talking to John Wray and a thin blond girl that Tim guessed was John’s girlfriend. Near to them, next to the entrance to the kitchen, Jessica was talking to Ellery, a friendly looking guy about Tim’s height with hair so blond it appeared almost white.
Despite his rise in status, his achievement after long struggle and failure of a group of friends, there were still times he found himself alone, no one wanting his company. He had not yet risen to the level of Jake or Helen, who were never alone and always in demand. Too much for Helen, it seemed, by some of the things she said. There had been times the previous year when she seemed to take refuge with him, like that night they had written their philosophy papers together at his apartment.
During those times, it had seemed to Tim that all they needed was each other, and that was the way it was supposed to be, They never lasted, though. The afternoon or evening alone with Helen would pass, and the next time he saw her would be at a big party or gathering, where he would have to share her with Jessica, Roxy, Todd Fox, Jake, and all their other friends.
Everybody wanted her, and Tim told himself he was a fool for thinking he could ever possess or own her. He should just be thankful she deigned to spend time with him at all. No girl so beautiful as she ever had before, had ever offered friendship. Melissa had never hung out with him by choice. Helen did choose. She had chosen him. It was a gift, and he must never refuse it.
As if drinking a toast to that ,Tim took a swig of beer, his desire to further his buzz at war with his awareness of how Old Milwaukee tasted when it wasn’t cold. Just as he had lowered his beer, someone bumped into him from behind, causing him to spill some beer on his hand. Tim whipped his head around and saw two surfers tussling. Tim thought a fight was breaking out, but after hearing the laughing taunts, realized they were just playing. No one seemed to notice that Tim had been jostled.
Tim quickly licked the beer off his hand as he moved away. He retreated to the outer wall, next to the window, where it was quieter but he could still observe Helen and Todd. As he let his gaze wander around the party, it seemed to him that everyone their had some kind of romantic agenda–Willoughby and the high school girls, Helen and Todd, Roxy and Torrance, Jessica and Ellery. Willoughby’s party wasn’t like one of their parties freshman year, when freedom and friendship had been enough. For most of the people there, the party was just an excuse to pursue some other purpose, not an end to be enjoyed for itself.
Yet, for all their efforts, the people in relationships or in pursuit of them didn’t seem that happy–not as happy as Tim remembered them being freshman year. Helen certainly didn’t. Even now, Tim saw them, standing next to each other while talking to Roxy and Torrance. Without hearing what Helen and Todd were saying, Tim could tell both were trying to appear happier than they really were–neither speaking nor looking at the other, but smiling and laughing with the others.
If people spent all of their time trying to find love, but once they had it, still weren’t happy, what then was the point of it all? To live was to die. Once you understood that, what then? Drink beer, smoke weed, get laid? Get up and do it again? If you knew you were going to die, but not when, did that mean you should do something important and worthy with your life, or should you just take whatever pleasure you could in the hours, days or years before?
Tim didn’t know. He could make very convincing arguments to himself on both sides of the question. If you took life seriously, sacrificed pleasure in the pursuit of some goal, you might never achieve it–through bad luck, you might lose it all, or die before your work was done. On the other hand, if you just lived for the moment, caring about nothing but pleasure, you might look back at the moment of your death and see that it had been empty, that you had wasted it. If neither approach offered an answer, was there anything that could offer solace? Could anything give life meaning? There had to be another way out.
If you were lucky, you never thought about these questions, and just did what you wanted, whatever came to you in the moment, like Willoughby, who had just entered the living room, carrying a beer in one hand and a two foot tall green bong in the other, accompanied by the two girls Tim had seen at the keg earlier. They were giggling, looking up at Willoughby with their eyes dark with mascara.
Tim wished he could be like that, but now that he had realized those questions, he couldn’t go back. You couldn't undo those questions once they'd infected your mind and your happiness had been shaken apart. But there were circumstances when even someone like Tim could annihilate his restless mind, and return to that innocent, un-fallen state. Sometimes late at night when he was drunk, and danced with his friends, he felt it, or during a really good movie or book. He imagined that sex was the apotheosis of complete surrender to the moment, to the unmediated ecstasy of experience.
Just like that, the Metallica song ended in the middle of another furious guitar solo. Tim looked at John Wray and his friend at the stereo, poking through the CDs piled on top of the receiver. Tim hoped they would put something good on, maybe something danceable. After a few seconds of silence from the stereo, Tim heard the fade-up of clapping, cheering and whistles, followed by Bob Marley’s cry of “Jah Rastafari”. Live reggae-the default music of Santa Zita. Ever present, ever played, ever burnt.
Tim glanced back at where Todd and Helen had been talking to Roxy and Torrance. Helen was gone, as was Roxy. After a few glances around the room, he found Roxy talking to Jessica and the Handler College guys, but Helen was nowhere to be found. He found his eyes drawn back to Willoughby and the girls. Willoughby opened a small baggie, sniffed it and smiled to himself. He extracted a few buds with this thumb and forefinger and packed a bowl for himself and the girls. As he watched Willoughby, Tim wondered which girl he would end up with at the end of the night–or would Willoughby try and get them both in bed? Such things were not unheard of in Santa Zita.
Tim studied the brunette, trying to determine if she was really that attractive beneath her iridescent eye shadow and thick mascara, her wide-eyed appreciation of Willoughby’s every move as he packed the bowl. She glanced forwards and caught him. He hastily dropped his eyes and pretended something fascinating had landed in the bottom of his beer cup. When he looked back up, he saw Jessica heading towards him. Although he told himself he didn't mind being alone, he was pleased to see her coming over.
"Hey," Jessica said.
"Hey. Who are those guys?" Tim asked, indicating with an inclination of his beer cup the group still hanging out by the doorway.
"Ellery's friends from Handler College. You remember Ellery?"
"Vaguely. If I remember correctly, he should be doing time as your boyfriend."
Jessica's eyes flashed at him, but she smiled as well.
"Who told you?"
"Helen, of course. So, what's up?"
"Nothing. We're just hanging out."
Tim saw Jessica glance back at the group. He resisted the urge to probe further. Jessica was private about her love life. They were close, talked about everything, but still never mentioned to each other what was happening romantically. He had to rely on Helen to get the scoop–and, he assumed, Jessica did the same, not that there was ever anything in Tim’s life to gossip about.
"You're not really interested in that high school girl, are you?" Jessica asked in a more serious tone.
"No, no," Tim said. " I was just stirring things up. Trying to distract Helen."
“Does it bother you when Helen talks about stuff like that?”
“No,” Tim said. “I’m used to it. Plus I deserve it.”
He did deserve it. If he wanted to stop being teased about it, he would have to go out and get a girl. That would shut everyone up and give them something to think about.
“She’s just teasing,” Jessica said. “You know how much she loves you.”
Tim knew she did, that Helen needed him, as confidante, companion and helper. Unfortunately, there were many forms of love, and most didn’t lead to sex.
“In a purely platonic way, of course,” Tim said. “But anyway, that girl from the movie theater... she’s too young. I know that.”
"Good," Jessica said. "I'd hate to think you were as sleazy as some of my other guy friends."
"No, I'm not. Maybe I should be, but I'm not."
"Why should you be?" Jessica said, her small brown eyes focused on him.
Tim opened his mouth, closed it again, looked around the party. Willoughby’s lips were clamped to the edge of the bong tube’s top edge as he lit the carb, the two girls hanging on either side of him, waiting their turn, gulping their beers as the smoke swirled up through the tube into Willoughby's mouth. One girl started feeling Willoughby's yellow and brown streaked hair that fell to his shoulders, and Tim wondered if he had given the girls some X.
"Because maybe it's just fear. Not a moral choice, just taking the easy way out."
"Sometimes fear is good," Jessica said. Tim saw sadness on her face, and Tim remembered that she had been dumped by the guy she had lost her virginity to. Other than Tim, she had been the last in their group. She had been afraid, Helen said, but once she had done it, it had been rad. She had seemingly been rewarded for her courage and her faith, but had her heart broken two weeks later.
"But fear can stop you from doing all the things that you'd like to," Tim said, and smiled so Jessica knew he knew how absurd it was to be quoting Morrissey. She smiled back at him.
"There's a balance, Tim," Jessica said, holding her arms in front of her, cupping her elbow with her palm, while she tapped her other arm with her empty beer cup.
"I like extremes. Sometimes the world has to be thrown out of balance, so something new can emerge. I'm kind of hoping that this summer, I feel no fear. I need experience, Jessica. I'm too innocent."
"But I like that about you,” Jessica said, touching him lightly on the arm.
Tim knew that she did. But it had gone on long enough, and something had to give. He never again wanted to feel the way he had at Holly Street, hearing Helen and Todd together. He had to redeem himself, and his life.
"Maybe what you like about me isn't who I truly am".
"Tim!" she said, taking a step back and folding her arm. "Now you're just full of shit." She shook her head and sipped her beer.
He was. But he was also speaking the truth. That was the paradox, and there was wisdom in contradiction. He wished he could make Jessica understand, but he didn’t think she would be able to, so he said nothing more. To avoid Jessica's eyes, Tim looked down into his beer cup. Just a small trickle of beer remained. He raised it to Jessica. Behind her, Willoughby's arm was around the blond girl's waist while the brunette took a bong hit. Had Willoughby also made his choice?
"Time for more?" Jessica asked, tapping his beer cup with hers.
“But of course,” Tim said. He waited for her to thread a way through the knot of people between them and the hallway that led to the bathroom.
The keg had no line since the party was dying down. Most of the people still at the party were more focused on getting stoned than drinking. When they returned to the living room, Tim saw Willoughby and his two new friends were still gathered around the coffee table, now joined by John Wray and Todd Fox. Helen stood behind Todd, with her arms folded.
After a pause, Jessica asked if he wanted to hang out the next day, but Tim had to say no. He was taking the bus to Alta Lara, he told Jessica, to have dinner with his father, his step-mother Priscilla and his two half-brothers–his last trip, he hoped, on the Greyhound bus that ran between Santa Zita and San Francisco. He was going home to claim possession of his father and Priscilla’s Volvo station wagon, which they were loaning to him for the summer.
“It’s awesome you’re going to have a car,” Jessica said. “You'll have wheels. You can drive us up to Napa!”
Their friend Sophie had invited them all up to her parents’ place in Galena to celebrate her birthday on the last weekend of July. Their place was supposed to be epic–a small winery with views of the entire Napa Valley. Jake, Peter, and a few others had gone up the year before. Tim hadn’t gone, but hadn’t been that bummed since Helen hadn’t either, and they’d hung out the whole weekend.
“I can,” Tim said. “I will. It's going to be a big change. Huge.”
“Well, drive safely. Have you ever driven 27?”
Tim’s stomach roiled as he saw himself behind the wheel as the Volvo sped around the curves. Route 27 always made the list of the highways with the most fatalities, a certified blood alley. Freshman year, there had been a heinous accident when a boat trailer had de-coupled from a pickup truck and crossed into the opposite lanes of traffic. The cars speeding around the curve at sixty miles per hour hadn’t had a chance to swerve or slow down before hitting it. When it was all over, seven people had been killed and several more crippled for life. Wreckage had been strewn for a quarter mile, closing the highway for eight hours and preventing Tim from going home for the weekend. He had stayed in Santa Zita, and had his big rapprochement with Helen.
“No,” Tim said. “I've been over it with Helen.”
Jessica grinned. Helen's driving could be erratic.
“Helen really isn't that bad a driver,” Tim said. “She just gets nervous when Jake and Dave Stone are in the car. I don't make her nervous. Though sometimes I wish I did. “
Jessica didn’t reply, but pursed her lips and looked at Tim for a few seconds. He knew Jessica didn’t like it when he talked like that. His love for Helen was one of those secrets that everybody knew but nobody spoke of. He plainly did not have the effect on women that a guy like Jake or David did. He was comfortable and safe.
All of these thoughts passed in a flash while Jessica remained silent. If it had still been the school year, Tim would have equivocated, undone his statement with a “but I don’t really believe that”. Instead, he gazed at the Jane’s Addiction poster, at the twin pairs of perfectly shaped breasts. Nothing was shocking any more, except that everything was in Santa Zita. There were so many things he could say to Jessica right now that might be the truth but would also shock, disgust and anger her.
Tim glanced back at the couch. Willoughby now had his arms around both girls, with his eyes closed and his lips pressed together, corners upturned, looking like a cat napping after a large meal. As Tim watched, Willoughby opened his lips and puffed out a grey-blue cloud of smoke that dissipated into the hazy air of the apartment, after which he broadcast a big, shit-eating grin to the entire room. John Wray raised his hand and Willoughby slapped it hard, jostling the brunette girl on the way. She seemed too stoned to notice.
“Willoughby is slimy,” Tim said. “But he seems happy. Possibly happier than we are.”
“He’s wasted, that’s all,” Jessica said.
“He is,” Tim replied. “He is. And maybe we should be, too. Maybe there’s no other purpose to life.”
“Oh, Tim. You know you don’t really believe that.”
“I do know. At least I hope so. Hope I know, or hope it’s true.”
Tim reached back, felt the strands of hair that has escaped his ponytail in the course of the evening.
“Too many deep thoughts for one night,” Jessica said. “I think it’s time for bed.” Jessica looked across the room, and Tim saw her mouthing words to Helen, and gesturing at the front door. “Helen wants to go,” Jessica said. “ So do I. Do you?”
Even before Jessica had finished speaking, Tim had already started for the door, drinking what was left of his beer on the way.
Despite his rise in status, his achievement after long struggle and failure of a group of friends, there were still times he found himself alone, no one wanting his company. He had not yet risen to the level of Jake or Helen, who were never alone and always in demand. Too much for Helen, it seemed, by some of the things she said. There had been times the previous year when she seemed to take refuge with him, like that night they had written their philosophy papers together at his apartment.
During those times, it had seemed to Tim that all they needed was each other, and that was the way it was supposed to be, They never lasted, though. The afternoon or evening alone with Helen would pass, and the next time he saw her would be at a big party or gathering, where he would have to share her with Jessica, Roxy, Todd Fox, Jake, and all their other friends.
Everybody wanted her, and Tim told himself he was a fool for thinking he could ever possess or own her. He should just be thankful she deigned to spend time with him at all. No girl so beautiful as she ever had before, had ever offered friendship. Melissa had never hung out with him by choice. Helen did choose. She had chosen him. It was a gift, and he must never refuse it.
As if drinking a toast to that ,Tim took a swig of beer, his desire to further his buzz at war with his awareness of how Old Milwaukee tasted when it wasn’t cold. Just as he had lowered his beer, someone bumped into him from behind, causing him to spill some beer on his hand. Tim whipped his head around and saw two surfers tussling. Tim thought a fight was breaking out, but after hearing the laughing taunts, realized they were just playing. No one seemed to notice that Tim had been jostled.
Tim quickly licked the beer off his hand as he moved away. He retreated to the outer wall, next to the window, where it was quieter but he could still observe Helen and Todd. As he let his gaze wander around the party, it seemed to him that everyone their had some kind of romantic agenda–Willoughby and the high school girls, Helen and Todd, Roxy and Torrance, Jessica and Ellery. Willoughby’s party wasn’t like one of their parties freshman year, when freedom and friendship had been enough. For most of the people there, the party was just an excuse to pursue some other purpose, not an end to be enjoyed for itself.
Yet, for all their efforts, the people in relationships or in pursuit of them didn’t seem that happy–not as happy as Tim remembered them being freshman year. Helen certainly didn’t. Even now, Tim saw them, standing next to each other while talking to Roxy and Torrance. Without hearing what Helen and Todd were saying, Tim could tell both were trying to appear happier than they really were–neither speaking nor looking at the other, but smiling and laughing with the others.
If people spent all of their time trying to find love, but once they had it, still weren’t happy, what then was the point of it all? To live was to die. Once you understood that, what then? Drink beer, smoke weed, get laid? Get up and do it again? If you knew you were going to die, but not when, did that mean you should do something important and worthy with your life, or should you just take whatever pleasure you could in the hours, days or years before?
Tim didn’t know. He could make very convincing arguments to himself on both sides of the question. If you took life seriously, sacrificed pleasure in the pursuit of some goal, you might never achieve it–through bad luck, you might lose it all, or die before your work was done. On the other hand, if you just lived for the moment, caring about nothing but pleasure, you might look back at the moment of your death and see that it had been empty, that you had wasted it. If neither approach offered an answer, was there anything that could offer solace? Could anything give life meaning? There had to be another way out.
If you were lucky, you never thought about these questions, and just did what you wanted, whatever came to you in the moment, like Willoughby, who had just entered the living room, carrying a beer in one hand and a two foot tall green bong in the other, accompanied by the two girls Tim had seen at the keg earlier. They were giggling, looking up at Willoughby with their eyes dark with mascara.
Tim wished he could be like that, but now that he had realized those questions, he couldn’t go back. You couldn't undo those questions once they'd infected your mind and your happiness had been shaken apart. But there were circumstances when even someone like Tim could annihilate his restless mind, and return to that innocent, un-fallen state. Sometimes late at night when he was drunk, and danced with his friends, he felt it, or during a really good movie or book. He imagined that sex was the apotheosis of complete surrender to the moment, to the unmediated ecstasy of experience.
Just like that, the Metallica song ended in the middle of another furious guitar solo. Tim looked at John Wray and his friend at the stereo, poking through the CDs piled on top of the receiver. Tim hoped they would put something good on, maybe something danceable. After a few seconds of silence from the stereo, Tim heard the fade-up of clapping, cheering and whistles, followed by Bob Marley’s cry of “Jah Rastafari”. Live reggae-the default music of Santa Zita. Ever present, ever played, ever burnt.
Tim glanced back at where Todd and Helen had been talking to Roxy and Torrance. Helen was gone, as was Roxy. After a few glances around the room, he found Roxy talking to Jessica and the Handler College guys, but Helen was nowhere to be found. He found his eyes drawn back to Willoughby and the girls. Willoughby opened a small baggie, sniffed it and smiled to himself. He extracted a few buds with this thumb and forefinger and packed a bowl for himself and the girls. As he watched Willoughby, Tim wondered which girl he would end up with at the end of the night–or would Willoughby try and get them both in bed? Such things were not unheard of in Santa Zita.
Tim studied the brunette, trying to determine if she was really that attractive beneath her iridescent eye shadow and thick mascara, her wide-eyed appreciation of Willoughby’s every move as he packed the bowl. She glanced forwards and caught him. He hastily dropped his eyes and pretended something fascinating had landed in the bottom of his beer cup. When he looked back up, he saw Jessica heading towards him. Although he told himself he didn't mind being alone, he was pleased to see her coming over.
"Hey," Jessica said.
"Hey. Who are those guys?" Tim asked, indicating with an inclination of his beer cup the group still hanging out by the doorway.
"Ellery's friends from Handler College. You remember Ellery?"
"Vaguely. If I remember correctly, he should be doing time as your boyfriend."
Jessica's eyes flashed at him, but she smiled as well.
"Who told you?"
"Helen, of course. So, what's up?"
"Nothing. We're just hanging out."
Tim saw Jessica glance back at the group. He resisted the urge to probe further. Jessica was private about her love life. They were close, talked about everything, but still never mentioned to each other what was happening romantically. He had to rely on Helen to get the scoop–and, he assumed, Jessica did the same, not that there was ever anything in Tim’s life to gossip about.
"You're not really interested in that high school girl, are you?" Jessica asked in a more serious tone.
"No, no," Tim said. " I was just stirring things up. Trying to distract Helen."
“Does it bother you when Helen talks about stuff like that?”
“No,” Tim said. “I’m used to it. Plus I deserve it.”
He did deserve it. If he wanted to stop being teased about it, he would have to go out and get a girl. That would shut everyone up and give them something to think about.
“She’s just teasing,” Jessica said. “You know how much she loves you.”
Tim knew she did, that Helen needed him, as confidante, companion and helper. Unfortunately, there were many forms of love, and most didn’t lead to sex.
“In a purely platonic way, of course,” Tim said. “But anyway, that girl from the movie theater... she’s too young. I know that.”
"Good," Jessica said. "I'd hate to think you were as sleazy as some of my other guy friends."
"No, I'm not. Maybe I should be, but I'm not."
"Why should you be?" Jessica said, her small brown eyes focused on him.
Tim opened his mouth, closed it again, looked around the party. Willoughby’s lips were clamped to the edge of the bong tube’s top edge as he lit the carb, the two girls hanging on either side of him, waiting their turn, gulping their beers as the smoke swirled up through the tube into Willoughby's mouth. One girl started feeling Willoughby's yellow and brown streaked hair that fell to his shoulders, and Tim wondered if he had given the girls some X.
"Because maybe it's just fear. Not a moral choice, just taking the easy way out."
"Sometimes fear is good," Jessica said. Tim saw sadness on her face, and Tim remembered that she had been dumped by the guy she had lost her virginity to. Other than Tim, she had been the last in their group. She had been afraid, Helen said, but once she had done it, it had been rad. She had seemingly been rewarded for her courage and her faith, but had her heart broken two weeks later.
"But fear can stop you from doing all the things that you'd like to," Tim said, and smiled so Jessica knew he knew how absurd it was to be quoting Morrissey. She smiled back at him.
"There's a balance, Tim," Jessica said, holding her arms in front of her, cupping her elbow with her palm, while she tapped her other arm with her empty beer cup.
"I like extremes. Sometimes the world has to be thrown out of balance, so something new can emerge. I'm kind of hoping that this summer, I feel no fear. I need experience, Jessica. I'm too innocent."
"But I like that about you,” Jessica said, touching him lightly on the arm.
Tim knew that she did. But it had gone on long enough, and something had to give. He never again wanted to feel the way he had at Holly Street, hearing Helen and Todd together. He had to redeem himself, and his life.
"Maybe what you like about me isn't who I truly am".
"Tim!" she said, taking a step back and folding her arm. "Now you're just full of shit." She shook her head and sipped her beer.
He was. But he was also speaking the truth. That was the paradox, and there was wisdom in contradiction. He wished he could make Jessica understand, but he didn’t think she would be able to, so he said nothing more. To avoid Jessica's eyes, Tim looked down into his beer cup. Just a small trickle of beer remained. He raised it to Jessica. Behind her, Willoughby's arm was around the blond girl's waist while the brunette took a bong hit. Had Willoughby also made his choice?
"Time for more?" Jessica asked, tapping his beer cup with hers.
“But of course,” Tim said. He waited for her to thread a way through the knot of people between them and the hallway that led to the bathroom.
The keg had no line since the party was dying down. Most of the people still at the party were more focused on getting stoned than drinking. When they returned to the living room, Tim saw Willoughby and his two new friends were still gathered around the coffee table, now joined by John Wray and Todd Fox. Helen stood behind Todd, with her arms folded.
After a pause, Jessica asked if he wanted to hang out the next day, but Tim had to say no. He was taking the bus to Alta Lara, he told Jessica, to have dinner with his father, his step-mother Priscilla and his two half-brothers–his last trip, he hoped, on the Greyhound bus that ran between Santa Zita and San Francisco. He was going home to claim possession of his father and Priscilla’s Volvo station wagon, which they were loaning to him for the summer.
“It’s awesome you’re going to have a car,” Jessica said. “You'll have wheels. You can drive us up to Napa!”
Their friend Sophie had invited them all up to her parents’ place in Galena to celebrate her birthday on the last weekend of July. Their place was supposed to be epic–a small winery with views of the entire Napa Valley. Jake, Peter, and a few others had gone up the year before. Tim hadn’t gone, but hadn’t been that bummed since Helen hadn’t either, and they’d hung out the whole weekend.
“I can,” Tim said. “I will. It's going to be a big change. Huge.”
“Well, drive safely. Have you ever driven 27?”
Tim’s stomach roiled as he saw himself behind the wheel as the Volvo sped around the curves. Route 27 always made the list of the highways with the most fatalities, a certified blood alley. Freshman year, there had been a heinous accident when a boat trailer had de-coupled from a pickup truck and crossed into the opposite lanes of traffic. The cars speeding around the curve at sixty miles per hour hadn’t had a chance to swerve or slow down before hitting it. When it was all over, seven people had been killed and several more crippled for life. Wreckage had been strewn for a quarter mile, closing the highway for eight hours and preventing Tim from going home for the weekend. He had stayed in Santa Zita, and had his big rapprochement with Helen.
“No,” Tim said. “I've been over it with Helen.”
Jessica grinned. Helen's driving could be erratic.
“Helen really isn't that bad a driver,” Tim said. “She just gets nervous when Jake and Dave Stone are in the car. I don't make her nervous. Though sometimes I wish I did. “
Jessica didn’t reply, but pursed her lips and looked at Tim for a few seconds. He knew Jessica didn’t like it when he talked like that. His love for Helen was one of those secrets that everybody knew but nobody spoke of. He plainly did not have the effect on women that a guy like Jake or David did. He was comfortable and safe.
All of these thoughts passed in a flash while Jessica remained silent. If it had still been the school year, Tim would have equivocated, undone his statement with a “but I don’t really believe that”. Instead, he gazed at the Jane’s Addiction poster, at the twin pairs of perfectly shaped breasts. Nothing was shocking any more, except that everything was in Santa Zita. There were so many things he could say to Jessica right now that might be the truth but would also shock, disgust and anger her.
Tim glanced back at the couch. Willoughby now had his arms around both girls, with his eyes closed and his lips pressed together, corners upturned, looking like a cat napping after a large meal. As Tim watched, Willoughby opened his lips and puffed out a grey-blue cloud of smoke that dissipated into the hazy air of the apartment, after which he broadcast a big, shit-eating grin to the entire room. John Wray raised his hand and Willoughby slapped it hard, jostling the brunette girl on the way. She seemed too stoned to notice.
“Willoughby is slimy,” Tim said. “But he seems happy. Possibly happier than we are.”
“He’s wasted, that’s all,” Jessica said.
“He is,” Tim replied. “He is. And maybe we should be, too. Maybe there’s no other purpose to life.”
“Oh, Tim. You know you don’t really believe that.”
“I do know. At least I hope so. Hope I know, or hope it’s true.”
Tim reached back, felt the strands of hair that has escaped his ponytail in the course of the evening.
“Too many deep thoughts for one night,” Jessica said. “I think it’s time for bed.” Jessica looked across the room, and Tim saw her mouthing words to Helen, and gesturing at the front door. “Helen wants to go,” Jessica said. “ So do I. Do you?”
Even before Jessica had finished speaking, Tim had already started for the door, drinking what was left of his beer on the way.
Works
Recent Writing
- 1989 A Novel: Tim rides the Greyhound bus over route 27
- 1989 A Novel: Tim talks to Jessica at the surfer party
- 1989 A Novel: Tim, Helen and Jessica go to a surfer party
- 1989 A Novel: Tim shows Helen his new apartment, and realizes he has no bed
- 1989 A Novel: Helen drives Tim to his new apartment