Clinking his glass back down onto the table, Myles turned to me and said, “Come closer! They don’t bite.”
We were sitting at Jack’s kitchen table; or the others were, at least. Myles’s friends stared at me, sitting far back from the table, and I realized they might think I was afraid of them, which I wasn’t. I apologized hurriedly. “Sorry–I didn’t want to butt in, you know–”
“David’s manners are over the top,” Myles said. “His dad’s in the army. Runs a tight ship.”
“That’s more the navy,” I said, moving my chair. Aidan and Ilan made room for me at the table, and Jack leaned across and moved the bottle of Fireball out of my way. I sat down again and looked out the window. “Jeez, that’s some rain. I thought this was California.”
Myles laughed. “Just because it’s California doesn’t mean it’s sunny every day, idiot.”
“Are you from New York originally?” Aidan asked.
“I’m from all over,” I said. “But I was born in Chicago. This would be good weather back there.”
“In New York too, I guess,” Ilan said. “Where are the girls?”
“They told me they were coming a little while ago,” Jack said. “Kate is probably jumping around in the puddles somewhere. You sure you don’t want a drink, David?”
“David doesn’t drink,” Myles said. “He’s too neurotic.”
“I drink sometimes,” I protested. “Every Friday night, you know.”
“Shabbat wine doesn’t count.”
“Ah, a member of the tribe,” Ilan said. “I felt it when you walked in the door.”
“I don’t think I look that Jewish,” I said.
“It’s more of a vibe. Jew ne sais quoi,” Ilan said, and the other three laughed uproariously.
The doorbell rang and Jack jumped out of his chair. I heard the door creak and the sound of the rain outside and girls’ voices from the front room, and in a moment Jack came into the kitchen with the girls behind him. The short-haired one threw off her raincoat and no sooner had she sent it flying across the room than she leapt onto Myles as he was getting out of his chair and bear-hugged him near enough to break his back. Myles squeaked out, “God I missed you, Kate Borthwick…”
“God,” Kate said, hugging Aidan and then Jack, “How do I live without you people? And who’s that one?”
Myles spoke for me. “This is David Sharett, friend of mine from NYU. David, this is Kate and Emma.”
Emma, who came into the room without a sound, shook my hand and breathed a quiet, “Good to meet you.” She was pale as a ghost and silent as one, and in Myles’s stories she was the moral compass who everyone inevitably ignored.
“Don’t worry about her,” Kate said. “I do enough talking for the both of us. NYU, huh. What are you doing out here?”
“I was visiting LA with my parents,” I said. “Escaping the winter out east. I said it’d be a waste not to pop down here and visit Myles and meet everyone, since I’ve heard so much about all of you.”
“Myles does good PR for us, I hope.”
“Oh, you have no idea. You couldn’t ask for a better hype man.”
“Too much talking, not enough drinking,” Ilan said, sinking back into his chair.
“Right.” Kate looked at the empty glasses on the table. “You fuckers got a head start, didn’t you? Come on, pour me some.” Aidan did as he was told, and Kate took a sip from the glass and instantly spit it back out. “This is disgusting. What’s wrong with you people? Get us something else.”
Jack looked around in the liquor cabinet and brought out a bottle of Jose Cuervo. “My parents won’t miss this one,” he said, and the bottle went around the table and skipped only Emma and I.
“Emma’s a church mouse,” Kate said, “and besides she’s driving me home.”
“It seems hard, drinking in California,” I said. “It’s not fair that you have to drive everywhere.”
“There’s something transcendent about being drunk on the subway,” said Myles. “It’s like you’ve hit rock bottom and you know that you can’t get any worse. There’s something very comforting in that. Riding uptown to the Village at four in the morning, no inhibitions, dancing with the crackheads…”
“It’s terrible here,” Kate said. “You either booze cruise or pass out on a couch. I’ve passed out here more times than I could count. That’s what friendship is, you know. If I haven’t blacked out on your couch, we don’t know each other. Everyone here is my friend by that standard–except you, NYU man.”
“Well, you’d have to fly a long way for us to be friends, then.”
“I like him. He’s funny.” She downed her glass and poured herself another. “You guys will never guess who I saw today, at Cafe del Mar.”
“The only people I know who go to the Cafe del Mar are you and Holly,” Aidan said. Ilan looked in his glass and realized it was empty. He filled it again and downed it in one go.
“I do see Holly, sometimes,” Kate said. “But I went there today and ran into Justin, of all people.”
“Justin? Santangelo? He’s still alive?”
“Yeah, I thought he dropped clear off the face of the earth. Apparently he’s in a frat at Merced. He’s gotten really into blow. He says he has a girlfriend but he wouldn’t show me a picture of her. He told me he’s sorry for not keeping in touch. I don’t believe him, though. ”
“Some people like to start over,” Myles said. “Clean break.”
“Those people are stupid and disloyal and generally joyless,” Kate said. “They don’t know what they’re missing.”
“The last time I saw Justin was right here,” Aidan said. “It was Jack’s going-away party, summer after senior year. He took acid and tried to swing from the gazebo like a monkey.”
“He hasn’t changed. We haven’t either, I think.”
“God knows,” Aidan said. Ilan knocked back another glass of tequila suddenly, sharply. Kate looked at him and then looked away.
“Is the Jack Wall still up?” she asked.
“It is,” Jack said, “and it looks the same as the last time you saw it.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Kate said. “I’m going to look at it again. Come on.”
They all got up at once, except Ilan, mumbling, “I’ve already seen your wall.” I followed them out. One side of the hallway was taken up by glossy framed photos of Jack from infancy up until his high school graduation. “He looked like that when I met him,” Kate said, pointing to the 4th grade portrait. “Look at that round-faced little fucker, like a… what are they called… a cherub.”
“That was when you were in your tomboy phase,” said Jack. “Dirt in your hair, boy’s cargo shorts, you knew all the best swear words–”
“I taught you everything you know,” Kate said. “I have my own photo wall, back at Williams. It’s like a museum. Anyone who comes into the dorm asks me ‘what’s that, who’s that…’” She pulled out her phone and showed us a picture of pictures, little polaroids hung from strings with rope lights coursing between them. “Look at that one. That’s from when we snuck into Prom freshman year. That’s Aidan in the rat mask, chasing the girls. That’s us at Jack’s grad party, that’s us shooting off fireworks on the Polo Fields, that’s us cheesing Brody’s car, that’s Myles after he stole Cynthia’s toilet out of her bathroom. When I tell those stories people look at me like I’m crazy. But they know I’m not lying, because I have the pictures.”
“David always tells me, ‘Your life is a movie,’” Myles said, “and I always tell him that it was better than that. We have a right to be arrogant, don’t we?”
I excused myself to get a glass of water. As I stood at the sink waiting for the glass to fill I felt a kind of strange swelling second-hand happiness, and I said to Ilan, still sitting at the kitchen table, “You guys are so lucky.”
He brought his head up. “Are we?”
I went over and set the water down on the table. “To have people you’ve known for so long, and all those stories.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty good.”
“I never had that, really. I was an army brat. It was never going to happen for me. But it’s nice to see other people have it, you know.”
“Yeah, it is.”
“Sorry if that’s a weird thing to say.”
“It isn’t.”
“Where’s the good shit?” Myles cried, loping into the kitchen. He got on his hands and knees and went rifling through the cabinets.
“What are you looking for?”
“I’m bored of the tequila. I need some Jamieson… urgently… Jack always has that…” He opened the last cabinet in the row and found only pots and pans. A look of disgust spread across his face, and his arm gave way and he flopped down onto the floor.
“That can’t be comfortable,” I said.
“Fuck you,” Myles groaned. “I feel great.”
Ilan reached for the tequila again and then thought better of it. I sat down at the table with him. “Have you ever heard of a guy called Julius Evola?” he asked.
“I haven’t. Was he another high school character?”
“Italian fascist philosopher. Mussolini’s number-one fan. He called himself a ‘superfascist.’ I’ve been reading his book recently.”
“I didn’t think Jews were into fascism, generally.”
“Oh, I’m not. I’m basically a Marxist. But I think it’s important to know what the other team thinks, you know.”
“Right.”
“And there was this one time that I thought he actually made a good point. The book is called Ride the Tiger, you know, which makes fascism sound like more fun than it is. But at some point he said that… you know, under feudalism, there was very little free will. In the old days you did what your lord told you, what the church told you, what God told you. But then modernity came along, you know. Suddenly the lords and the priests and God are all gone, and what’s left? Only us. Now some people will tell you that it’s a good thing we have less and less constraints on us, that more and more freedom is a good thing–but what I say, what if it’s not? Isn’t it terrifying? That your life is what you make of it and there’s no one to guide it but you? I tell you, David, free will was wasted on me.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Myles groaned, lifting his head from the floor.
“Nothing. Nevermind.”
Kate and Emma came back into the kitchen, and Jack and Aidan followed carrying stacks of board games. Emma looked at Myles sprawled at her feet. “Gosh, Myles, are you alright?”
“Of course. I feel fine.”
Aidan put the board games on the counter and grabbed Myles by the armpits and lifted him off the floor. “Fuck you, man,” Myles grunted. “It was nice down there.”
“Come on and sit at the table like a civilized human person,” Aidan said.
“I’m not a civilized person. I’m an ape, a gorilla, some kind of vile chimpanzee motherfucker flinging shit everywhere, fuck yourself…”
“Pretend he’s not saying anything,” Jack said. “What are we playing?”
“Jumanji…” Myles gurgled. “Jumanji…”
“We’re not fucking playing Jumanji,” Kate said. Myles slid down onto the floor again. “How about Monopoly? I call being the little car thing.”
“I’m the thimble,” Emma said.
“I thought it was a trash can,” Aidan said.
“Are you brain damaged?” Ilan said. “Why would they let you play as a garbage can?”
Jack spread the game out on the kitchen table. At the last moment Myles picked himself off the floor and came to join us. The dies rolled and the little car and thimble and shoe and ship went around and around the board and the money changed hands and piled up. I played in silence. Monopoly was a deadly serious business in my house, and God help the bastard who talked unnecessarily when the game was on, but then we never had tequila when we played at home. The bottle had drained more every time I looked up from the board, like there was a small hole in the bottom, and their voices got louder and came three or four at once. “I have nothing against Chloe,” Jack was saying.
“What do you mean you have nothing against her?” Kate exclaimed. “She tried to kill you.”
“Well…”
“With her mom van. In front of me and Emma.”
“She lowkey tried to turn you into roadkill,” Emma said.
“She was troubled,” Jack said. “I hope she finds inner peace. For the sake of everyone else, at least.”
“She’s out of our hair, anyway,” said Myles. “No one’s tried to kill you in Ithaca, have they?”
“Not yet. And I hope they don’t, because I don’t want to be caught dead in Ithaca.”
“Speaking of which,” Kate said, “Whatever happened to your Berkely love interest, Ilan?”
Ilan sat up. “Which?”
“There were multiple?”
“No, I–I forgot there was one, for a second.”
“The one from your sociology class, the one who texted you all the time with all those emojis, who wanted to study with you.”
“Oh, yeah… it didn’t work out.”
“Why not? Why let a thing like that go to waste?”
“She was a nice girl, you know, but… I wasn’t into it.”
“Why?”
“My life isn’t that interesting,” Ilan said. “I’m not going to go into all the boring details.”
“Why don’t you go into a few of the boring details?” Aidan said.
“God dammit, leave me alone.”
“No need to get pissy about it,” Kate said.
“Maybe I do, if you guys won’t let it go.”
“Fine,” Kate said, “but I thought we were honest with each other.”
“I’ve been honest with you already. You act like you forget.”
Kate leaned back in her chair. “Oh God. It’s still Holly, isn’t it?”
“I’ve felt like this since the sixth grade, Kate, I can’t exactly stop now.”
Kate ran her hands through her hair. “Come on, man…”
“It’s none of your business, anyway. It’s my life. I can do what I want.”
“That doesn’t mean we have to agree with it. How long are you going to wait, Ilan? You can’t piss away the best years of your life, ruining everything that comes your way, pining after Holly Jones–”
“Free will, Kate; I have free will. If I want to piss it away–”
“Have you gone nuts?” Aidan said, rising from his chair. Myles finally lifted his head from the table and looked, blinking, between Aidan and Ilan standing on opposite sides of the table. “We’re sophomores in college and high school isn’t coming back anytime soon. It’s not going to happen, Ilan. You’re in Berkeley and she’s in Virginia, and when you’re both back home you’re not even brave enough to call her–”
Ilan’s jaw hardened. He said, quietly, “You know a thing or two about not calling her, don’t you?”
Aidan swallowed. “That’s a little different.”
“Different! Hah!” The quietness had all gone from his voice. He turned to me. “I’ll explain it for the benefit of our new friend here. Aidan has a taste for virgins, probably because they’re too inexperienced to know what he’s going to do. Holly was one of his conquests. Gave her a whole song and dance about how no girl had ever made him feel like that before and how he needed her so badly, and after he got what he wanted from her, he never talked to her again. Stopped going to hang out with her at the Cafe del Mar, stopped helping her sister with her chem homework, stopped going to her book club–not a phone call, not even a text–”
“That was three years ago, man–I don’t know why you’re so hung up on it–”
“So that makes it fine? There’s some kind of statute of limitations on being the biggest bastard imaginable?”
“Let’s talk about something else,” Emma said in a soft strained voice.
“Look, man, I understand that you have these feelings. But you don’t have to get pissed off at me just because I had something with her–”
Ilan snorted. “Had something with her–that’s funny. You’re still pretending you cared about her?”
“Of course I cared about her. It’s just that–she was getting too attached, you know, and in times like that it’s usually best to show where you stand, make a clean break, so there’s no misunderstandings–”
“Do you think we’re all stupid, buddy? I’m not a five year old, Aidan; I can see patterns. You were how many girls’ first? Five, six? And you want us to believe that it’s just a coincidence that the same thing happens every time, that once you’ve found a girl who’s too good to see through you and once you’ve used her for all that she’s worth to you–as soon as she might figure out what you really are–it’s just a coincidence that you disappear every time, that you run like a rat–”
“Do not call me a rat–”
“Which rodent would you prefer?”
“I’d rather be a rat than a virgin loser who’s still obsessed with a girl who doesn’t remember his name.”
Ilan lunged across the table, screaming “You fucker! I’ll kill you!” and Myles dove out of his chair and took cover on the floor. Ilan grabbed Aidan by the shirt and dragged him over the table, knocking over the half-drunk glasses and splashing tequila on their clothes and the table and the floor. In a moment Ilan’s arm was around Aidan’s neck, was choking him, and Aidan’s eyes bugged out of his head as he lifted his hands and pulled uselessly at the arm wrapped tightly around his throat, and when I saw those eyes I jumped out of my chair without meaning to and grabbed Ilan’s arm and tried to pry it away. Jack was up too, trying to wrench them apart and saying “Ilan, stop it–right now–” and I heard myself pleading with him, too, ridiculously, “This isn’t going to fix anything–it’s not going to fix anything–” and finally we felt Ilan’s grip slacken and Aidan slid through and fell onto the floor. He gasped and wheezed on the cold tile.
“He had that coming for a long time,” Ilan said, shrill-voiced, panting.
The room was silent. Emma’s hand lingered over her mouth and her face was paler than it had been before. Kate looked away, at the rain falling outside. Finally Aidan croaked, “You can do that again, if you want. It won’t change anything.”
Ilan took a running start and kicked Aidan between the legs. Aidan yelped and curled up like a baby in the womb and bit down hard on his lip, and by the time I turned around Ilan was gone from the kitchen. I heard the hard angry footsteps crossing the front hall and the door swinging open and the sound of the rain coming down. When I went out into the front hall the door was still hanging there and the rain was falling into the light of the front step lamp, and Ilan was long gone.
Later, when Kate and Emma had left and Jack had dragged Aidan up onto the living room couch with an ice pack between his legs, Myles and I sat on the kitchen floor and Myles finished the last of the tequila bottle. “We’re not usually like this,” he said.
“I believe you.”
“Bad day, and all drunk… Normally it’s all fine, you know. Never like this. All the stories I told you are true.” He lifted the tequila bottle and saw that it was empty. “We’re not usually like this. But why should you believe me? You’ve only seen them once.”
“Who was this Holly girl?” I asked.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does, clearly.”
“I guess. She and Ilan were childhood friends. Sweetest girl I ever met in my whole life, tied with Emma, maybe. Ilan hid it really well, you know. Until he told me… God, what was that, junior year? I never would’ve known. He said, ‘I’m in love with Holly,’ like he was talking about the weather. I thought they were just old friends, you know. I don’t think she ever knew. He never told her.”
I sat up. The cabinets were beginning to dig into my back. There wasn’t a sound in the other room, except Jack pacing around the couch where Aidan was lying. Myles picked up the bottle again and remembered it was empty. “But I thought he was over it, you know. It was three years ago, David, why should it matter now?”
“That’s life,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Should we?” He looked around the empty room. We could still hear Jack’s footsteps, regular and constant like the ticking of a clock. “Ah, fuck it. I guess we should.”
“Can you stand?”
“Only one way to find out.” I rose and offered Myles a hand, and I pulled him up. He leaned on me with his arm around my shoulder.
“You good?”
“Yeah, I feel fine.”
We walked slowly to the door. Outside the rain was still falling, and we went out into it.
