The Weapon of Young Gods #13: Fending Off Implosion

I could hear waves crashing against the cliff as I walked slowly along the paved lagoon path. Peter and Alex were pulling away ahead of me, trying to keep warm against the moist, chilly breeze coming off the ocean. My clothes were already collecting the air’s wet weight, and I tried weakly to catch up.

We’d been over to Peter’s car in a big dirt lot next to I.V. and above the beach, but were now almost back to the dorms. The round trip was taking longer than we’d expected, but after hotboxing my roommate’s beat-up, salt-encrusted Prelude, we were stoned enough to not care. That was fine with me; I’d been at rock bottom for four days now, ever since Nadia dumped me on the wrong side of Valentine’s Day.

Previous Episode

Soundtrack (mp3): ‘Fending Off Implosion’ by Low Tide

I’d been absolutely inert for the first two days, then melodramatically bitchy all of yesterday, but I’d forced myself to stay sober and not jump on the perfect excuse to ferment in self-pity. I steadily deflated nevertheless, blowing off class and at least one meal a day in favor of long showers, dazed stretches in the computer lab, and lots of thankfully dreamless sleep.

Peter mostly left me alone, but tonight he’d finally had enough of my infectiously bad vibes, and had shamed me into ingesting readily accessible controlled substances after I’d carelessly admitted I hadn’t been high for six months.

“Just don’t drink anything,” he’d said, moving in for the kill. “Alex and I won’t either.” He’d also anticipated my limited range of lame excuses. “Look, Roy,” he’d said, “doing uselessly stupid shit will definitely help you, because it’ll keep me from going around the bend and retaliate for your contagious wussiness.” The logic wasn’t extensive, but it persuaded me, and we took off around nine.

Half an hour later, we trudged back to the dorm, veering off the path home and continuing on toward the beach. I’d had two nice big hits back in the Prelude, and the sleepy light-headedness was beginning to supersede everything else, including the increasing saturation of my clothes. Peter offered me his own sloppily-rolled final joint as we made it to the few concrete stairs that led down to the sand. I took another healthy toke and followed he and Alex across the wide, moonlit beach.

“So, are you okay, man?” Alex asked through a thick tangle of sandy-brown afro-curls. “What happened? Pete didn’t tell me much.”

“Roy didn’t tell me much,” shrugged Peter, before I could get a word out. “Couldn’t quite piece everything together from all the incoherent mumbling from his half of the room.”

I was too tired now to answer back, but did it anyway. “Last weekend, after Valentine’s Day, Daddy’s little girl took the roses and all I got was the dirt.”

Alex chuckled sympathetically. “Yow,” he said. “Did she say why?”

“Nope,” I answered, “and I haven’t really come up with any real reason for it, either.” It was pretty dark here, away from the streetlights, but I could feel their chemically attentive stares.

“Yeah, I know,” I continued, “no idea, not even after four days’ worth of wallowing in it. We hadn’t really been talking that much for, like, a month and a half, though. I wasn’t sleeping well, it was fucking up the rest of my life, and I was just never in the mood to talk to her anymore, and she wasn’t into dealing with my shit either.”

“Really?” asked Peter. “I think I remember her calling once.”

“Yeah,” I said, “but we didn’t talk long. She wondered if I still wanted to come down to see Radiohead in L.A. next month; we’d bought tickets back in, like, November, but when she’d called, I’d actually been awake for about thirty straight hours, and was trying to fall asleep.”

“Oh yeah,” said Peter. “I remember that now.”

“Yep,” I said, “and forget about taking the train down. Five hours stuck in that thing and then two more at a show wasn’t worth it, so I told her to take R.J.; he’s into that band too. She didn’t sound too bummed about me bailing on the show.”

“Real vote of confidence, huh?” said Peter. He was teetering a little now as we made our way across the sand. I looked out over the water where the bay curved south toward Santa Barbara.

“Anyway,” I continued, “I’d sent her the damn flowers before going home last weekend, but then the first thing I hear from her is the whole ominous ‘we need to talk’ thing and so she comes over and, like, I don’t really remember how we got there, but within about twenty minutes our whole ten-month relationship unraveled completely and she left and I just sat there on the driveway for hours.”

They stayed quiet as we walked. Up the beach a little, a wooden staircase rose from the sand and zigzagged back up the cliffs.

“So… that’s it?” asked Alex. “You guys just stopped, just like that?”

“Sort of,” I said groggily. I staggered toward the stairs, and they followed.

“The next day I biked the three miles up to her house,” I continued, “and went up to the door and knocked and everything, but no one was home. I stuck around, too- dunno why- maybe I was too tired to ride back. After, like, ten minutes or so her mom drove up.”

“Huh,” grunted Peter, as we began to climb the stairs.

“Yeah,” I said, “and she came out to talk, too- Nadia’s little Russian mom. Asked me if I was okay and all; asked if I needed anything, really nice considering. Maybe she thought I was too sad to be weird or dangerous. She called me a sweet boy and told me to hang in there and then she went back inside. I didn’t want to go anywhere yet but took the hint and went home. My brother forced me back out of the house right away, though. R.J. took me to see Richard III, and watching Ian McKellen blow everything up was distractingly cathartic.”

I left out the truly cathartic part, about how R.J. and I stomped the shit out of Chris Addison’s brother Kyle, when he made the stupid mistake of picking a fight with us in the theater lobby. Pete and Alex didn’t know him, but I was pretty sure they’d agree with me about whiny brahmins always making the sweetest targets.

We reached the top quicker than I’d expected. I was floating a little as we crossed the parking lot and the road, cutting across the lawn to the dorms.

“Ah hell, Roy,” sighed Peter. “Sucks, for sure, but good to get off your chest, right?”

“Guess so,” I said. “Hey, where are you going?” Peter and Alex had kept walking, past the main entrance.

“Around the back,” said Alex. “Chicks’ wing, dude.” I took a second to realize that this was a marginally good idea before following, but when I caught up they were still waiting outside.

“You’re the only one with keys, man,” Peter reminded me. They’d both conveniently forgotten theirs. It was pretty funny earlier when Peter had to squeeze his arm through a cracked window to open his own car, but I wasn’t laughing now.

“Fine, whatever. Stand back, ladies.” Peter chuckled and gave me a fey bird as I unlocked the door and held it while they staggered in, bumping the wall and snickering like urchins. I stepped inside as they turned the corner and quickly weaved down the hall, hooting lewdly at closed doors along the way. I followed around the corner and saw Peter trip over a gash in the carpet and fall spectacularly sideways into a door on his right.

“Oh shit!” he squealed, scampering off immediately with Alex at his heels. They glanced back furtively before disappearing around another corner. A shrill “See ya, Roy!” flew back down the hall, and I was about to start after them when the door Peter had hit opened suddenly and caught my heel, jamming it into my other leg and knocking me over.

“What the hell’s going on out here?” said an authoritative, amused female voice, from somwhere high above me. I rolled out of my pathetic sprawl, feeling a headache beginning to poke through my skull’s lightly dusted haze.

“Sorry,”  I slurred. I blinked and tried to focus, and once I did, was slightly startled to gaze up at a tall, exquisitely striking girl clad in red plaid pajamas. She ran her hands through her close-cropped blonde hair and watched me with concrete-gray eyes. “Are you okay? Do you, like, even live here?”

“Oh, yeah,” I said, dangling my keychain. I was really tired of fighting for coherence by now, but figured I should at least small-talk my way out of this.

“Well, you look terrible,” she said, “but I’m guessing you won’t feel that way until tomorrow. Was that you hollering like a maniac just now?”

“Huh?” I said. “Um, no- that was my roommate and another friend of ours,” I explained. “They, um… I guess they were too ashamed of themselves to stick around, or whatever.”

“They better be,” she said, “blundering through the wrong wing and waking up poor innocent girls and all. I oughtta get the R.A. out here.”

“Good luck,” I sneered, “cause I know for a fact this wing’s R.A. spends all her free time at her boyfriend’s place on Trigo.” It was true, sort of, and my interrogator was apparently satisfied.

“Fine,” she said, crossing her arms, “why don’t you introduce yourself then, so when I report you three jokers I can use your big boy names.”

I stuck out my hand. “Billy Corgan,” I said. “Pleased to meet you.”

She exploded with laughter. “Shut the fuck up!” Another door opened across the way and an Asian girl poked her head out and gave us a sleepy evil eye before slamming her door shut.

“I’ll be honest first, then,” she said, calming down and shaking my hand. “Francesca Rossettini. Call me Frankie.”

“Okay, whatever,” I said. “Roy Reed.”

“Hello Roy Reed,” she said brightly, then, “…and goodnight, Roy Reed. Some of us need to sleep, so you finish your little retarded walk of shame and have some sweet dreams, okay?” She turned around much quicker than I expected, shutting her door in my face.

I lay there stewing in my own idiocy for a bit, watching the crack of light from underneath her door. After it flicked off I waited a little longer before standing, then tip-toed toward the small whiteboard on her door. I took the marker out of its clip and quietly scrawled “hope it was good for you too, Frankie” all over the board. It was dumb and immature, but so was I, shaking my head at my own ridiculous impulses. I decided against making any noise to erase it, and then left for my room to try and get some sleep.