The Weapon of Young Gods #4: Vanishing Points

(a good read! – promoted by pfiore8)

I step into the elevator of Lisa’s dorm, which happens to be the tallest building in California north of Sacramento, and float down the six floors to solid ground. Outside, the already-stifling heat of the longest morning-after in my life hits me like a garbage truck. I walk the few blocks to the station, but there are no trains til around noon. I need to get the fuck out of here now, though, so I settle for the Chico-to-Sacramento bus that’s an hour away and tell myself that I’ll figure out where to go from the end of that line. I collapse into a sweaty heap on a bench, and open up my bag to dig around for the Walkman. I find it and push play and immediately the Jesus and Mary Chain assault my fragile early-morning ears, so I flip over the tape to their acoustic album and close my eyes.

Fuck with me and I’ll fuck with you/Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do?

Previous Episode

I don’t know how much of the hour I’ve killed when, over the music, I hear Lisa calling my name. I try to pull myself out of a semi-sleepy stupor and I almost succeed by the time she sits down beside me. We lock eyes briefly and then I look away and I think she does too. We don’t say anything for a while.

“Don’t leave yet. Stick around for a few hours, Derek.”

“No. No, I’m done. This wasn’t a good idea, Lisa. I don’t know what I came up here for, but it sure wasn’t to chaperone a nympho dope fiend.”

She lets that one sit there for a beat or two before snickering softly. “Good thing you don’t know any then, isn’t it?”

I shrug. “What do you really want from me, anyway?”

She looks out at the tracks, first head-on and then swivels her head to gaze at the path they beat north to Redding. “Just a mellow day. Just to walk around town in the sun and let the craziness melt away.”

I smirk. “That’ll probably take longer than a day.”

“Oh shit, Derek. I’m sorry, okay? I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with me. I’ve been in the worst, worst place for months now. I really need to chill out and just not think about anything that I don’t need to.”

“Well, I don’t see why you need me around to do that.”

Now she shrugs. “Yeah, I know what you mean. You’re not a very empathetic little bastard, are you? No, you’re not, but you don’t fly off the handle about anything, either. Heavy shit just rolls off your back like it’s trivial and worthless, and believe it or not, that’s not uncomfortable to have around, you know? I mean, sometimes I get a hint of how meaningless any melodrama in my life can really be, and that sometimes is usually when I tell you about it and it has no effect on you at all.”

I try to concentrate on the feeling of unaffected meaninglessness she exudes, but it evaporates too quickly, and I can’t bring myself to care enough. Well, she’s not stupid, this one. She nailed me to the fucking wall.

Lisa laughs. “See? You just did it again. Some people might think that’s callous or cruel, but I don’t. I like it. I like you.”

“You don’t like me. You just like the idea of me.”

“Huh?”

“You heard me. You like the idea of me. You like the idea that I’ll always be the grimy little spitoon for all your nastiest spew, that I’ll just take it. It doesn’t even have to be me- it could be some other guy, it could be your roommate, your T.A., whomever. You just need a pristine bowl to shit in, and you don’t care who it is. Well, I’m backing out. I’ve got my own problems to slog through too, you know?”

For a split second Lisa looks like I just snapped a puppy’s spine in front of her face, but the mask of cool quickly descends again and she gets up.

“Come on,” she says briskly. “Let’s go get some breakfast, Derek. I’ll put you on that noon train, okay?” She turns her back on me and starts walking back toward the dorm. I try to remember everything I’ve read about the inexorable pull of black holes, but nothing comes, so all I do is shrug again and rise wearily in the muggy soup to follow her. I can hear her pace slow once she senses me behind her, and I feel like a sucker. Soon Lisa is scarfing some scrambled eggs and I’m drinking shitty coffee in some diner on a pathetic, tourist-trappy block in downtown Chico.  She mumbles something with her mouth full.

“What?”

“I’m gonna fucking ream Justin about those shrooms, man. I crashed hard.”

“Who?”

“My cousin. From OC. He’s my hookup. Justin Addison.”

“Would I know him?”

“Probably not. He’s like, three years older than us and went to high school in Fullerton.”

“Oh.” We finish breakfast and leave a skimpy tip, and walk back outside, through the mushy atmosphere toward a movie theater. Lisa keeps babbling on about her cousins, like she really misses them or something. It would be touching if they weren’t sending her shit that makes her problems worse. I realize for the thousandth time that this girl is practically begging to be saved, but I sure as hell don’t want to be the dumbfuck who does it.

Lisa looks up as we pass underneath the theater’s marquee. “Ooooh, ‘Up Close and Personal.’ Let’s see when it’s showing!”

“What? No, no- Lisa, it’s like seven a.m.- there won’t be any shows for, what, four hours?”

She concedes defeat, but we end up wandering all over the place for those four hours, playing in a fountain, watching people get an outdoor stage ready, passing by a church.

“I peed on those steps once,” Lisa giggles, pointing at a spot I can’t discern. “I was, like, completely trashed, and all these lacrosse players…” Her voice trails off again and I sort of go on autopilot for a while, drifting through the greenhouse-wilderness of Chico in April with a willowy, gabby wraith at my side.

I come to, much later, on the fifth row of some bleachers, in front of the university’s baseball field, where the home team is mercilessly crushing University of the Pacific. Lisa is still by my side, animatedly talking to a girl on her other side whom I recognize as her roommate. I remember her name now- Kara- and on Kara’s other side are two more bubbly little coeds who hang on every word spilling out of Lisa’s mouth. I try to listen in and pretend like I know what the fuck is going on, but it’s no use- I’m too tired, and I let their chattering drift away without a second thought as I watch the game for a few minutes, getting lost in something these girls don’t understand. I quietly slip my headphones on again, and the Reid brothers resume their ragged soothing of my soul.

I’ve been swimming in the dirty water/I’ve been swimming where the fish don’t go

The game rhythm seeps back into me. Full count, runners go. Routine-fly-I’ve-got-it. Three up, three down. Old patterns make sense again, old synapses fire, and I soon distract myself by dredging up memories of Little League from deep storage. Dad coaching at third, whispering at me to steal home. Smacking a double down the line off my best friend’s bad curve ball. Watching Dad teach my sister to keep score as I wait for fly balls in left field. Waiting until the last minute to slide into second; exert the most terror on the spindly-legged shortstop. Exploding in rage when I’m benched after only a half-inning of play during the Pony-League All-Star Game, replaced by a dipshit primadonna who’d been to exactly one practice. Dad chewing me out behind the dugout for my ridiculous behavior.

I can see the train station from here, far beyond the center field chain-link fence, away across the dry, brown expanse of the practice field. I stare at it for a while, then glance at Lisa, who is still obliviously blathering away to Kara and one of the baseball players’ girlfriends. I turn back to the parched vista in front of me and see only salvation and escape when the noon train slowly arrives, limping in from a dawn departure from Seattle. It only takes me thirty seconds of gloriously fluid motion to zip up my bag, jump off the bleachers, hit the ground with feline grace, and begin sprinting toward the train. I love it. Life courses through me and the weight of my bag, of my problems, of the universe, is not even a factor.

I don’t look back. I don’t need to say goodbye to her.