Blazed (32 page)

My father stops. He looks awful right now. The wind is blowing right through his hair, and he's rubbing his face over and over with his hand. He looks sick and worn out.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

“Huh?”

“Is everything all right?”

“Yeah,” he says. “I'm sorry. Your mother's favorite movie—”

“Is
Vertigo
,” I say.

“Exactly.”

“What about it?”

“This is the first place your mother and I came to after we checked into the hotel.”

“Why?”

“Because this is the place where they filmed that famous scene of Scottie saving Madeleine from her suicide attempt.”

“Oh, man. It is. Now I see it. Wow. But wasn't most of the movie filmed in San Francisco?”

My father nods.

“So why did you come here first?” I ask. “It's kind of morbid, right?”

“It's not,” he says. “Scottie thinks he saves her from killing herself. It was beautiful to him. When someone saves someone else, especially someone they're falling in love with, it means so much more than the literal of what actually happened. It's so much deeper than anything else there is. That bond that forms in the aftermath. The immense trust that blossoms up overnight. That understanding that the two of you survived that, the worst moment of your lives together, and nothing can destroy you now and neither of you will ever let anything bad happen to the other.”

“What are you talking about right now?”

“Nothing,” he goes. “I just wanted to tell about the trip.”

“The trip?”

“Yes, son. The trip your mother and I took to San Francisco before you were born. It really was a happy trip. It was the last trip we would ever take together too. I'm not sure I've ever seen her smile as much as she did when she was in San Francisco. My father, who was my hero, you never met him because he died before you were born, he was out here too when we were.”

“Did he live here?”

“No,” my father says. “But he had a lot of friends here, and he flew out a week earlier so we were able to spend some time with him. He got diagnosed with lung cancer about a month after the trip and passed away three weeks before you were born. Your mother adored him, so it was nice he was out here. And he really adored your mother, too. They were very close. It was good for them, I thought. He could make her laugh like no one else could, not even me. It was something else. He really cared for her and she really cared for him. I wish you'd gotten the chance to meet him.”

“Okay,” I say. “What is this all about, Dad?”

“Thank you,” he says.

“For what?”

“For addressing me as Dad twice in a row.”

“Did I?”

He nods. “You did.”

“I didn't even notice it.”

“Still,” he says. “Thank you.”

He turns away from me now and slides his hands into his pockets and shakes his head.

I haven't seen him like this yet. Broken. Sad. Remorseful about something, even though I'm not sure what.

I have no clue, actually.

“Hey,” I tell him. “Dad.”

He turns around. “Yeah.”

“We should go. I'm meeting Dominique for lunch in an hour.”

“Okay. Just give me another minute or two.”

“What is going on with you?” I ask.

He doesn't say anything.

“Hey,” I say. “Justin.”

“Jaime,” he says. “I just want you to know that your mother loves you and she's done everything for you since she left our apartment that morning.”

“I know.”

“And we were very happy together once. And we were so excited that you were coming into our lives. I loved her so much. There was a time when the two of us were happy with the life we were making.”

“I got it.”

“Remember it,” he says. “Remember it and understand that your mother is a wonderful woman who loves you very much. Remember it,” he says one more time before turning back to the water and leaning against the rail.

“DO YOU THINK YOU'LL ACTUALLY
ever get a Tattoo?” I ask Dominique. Me and her, we're eating sandwiches from the Haight Street Market and drinking coconut water in the Panhandle, which is this park that stretches about six blocks just two blocks off Haight.

Both of us are lying down, wearing sunglasses, and barefoot. She's got an hour before she has to be at work, and she's really excited to go stand outside the Great American Music Hall with me tomorrow and listen to Youth Lagoon's set.

“Just to hear him live is totally enough for me,” she said while we were waiting for our sandwiches at the market, holding hands, one earphone in her ear, one in mine, listening to this song “Black Hills” by this band Gardens & Villa. “I love this idea,” she continued. “When
Year of Hibernation
came out, I'm pretty sure I spent the next three months listening to only that and getting really angry that what I was writing was nothing close to anything he was doing on that album.”

Back to the park now and the tattoos.

“Yeah,” she says. “I'm sure I'll have at least one. This is tattoo city, ya know. But I'll prolly end up with a lot of them,
actually. Malcolm's got, like, six already. I went with him when he got his last one and it didn't seem all that bad. What about you?”

“I don't know,” I say.

“Why did you ask me that?” she goes.

“I saw this picture today in my father's office of him and my grandfather. See, my grandfather had all these tattoos from the war. He was totally sleeved. Beautiful, stunning, elaborate ink. My mother's told me about them so many times, it was like she was obsessed with them or something. She's shown me pictures too. Just amazing. So anyway, in the picture, my father is young, like seven or eight probably, and he's wearing this white T-shirt and jean shorts, and one of his arms is covered in tattoos drawn with some colored markers. It's like a whole sleeve of tattoos just like my grandfather's but in marker, and my grandfather's holding the marker in one hand and a Budweiser in the other.”

Dominique laughs.

And I say, “They're both smiling and look so happy and it looks really fun, like they were having the best time ever.”

“That's really cool,” Dominique says.

I don't say anything.

“You okay?” she asks.

After a few more seconds of nothing, I finally sigh and then go, “I just wonder what happened is all. My father adored that man. My grandfather was his hero, but my mother told me that my father cut my grandfather off
a couple of weeks before he died. He didn't attend the funeral, wouldn't talk about him to anyone, and that was his hero up until what, a few weeks before the man dies from lung cancer.”

“Death freaks some people out. They can't handle it, and sometimes they get angry at the person who's dying.”

“Maybe,” I say. “Maybe something else, though.”

“Like what?”

“I don't know, and I actually don't care. My father seems to be on some almost, like, God-ordained mission to open up as little as possible while I'm here and that's fine. He's a dick.”

“Hey,” she goes.

“Sorry,” I say. “I'm sorry.”

“It's okay.”

“I just wonder sometimes.”

“About what?”

“I wonder how you can be that happy during one moment in your life with one person, throughout an entire day with them, like they obviously were in that picture, and end up having nothing to do with them in the end. Nothing at all. Like, where did that one moment go? Where did that one day go? How did it all slip away? The happiness, the smiles, the fucking joy of it all. What happens to people?”

Dominique shakes her head and whispers, “I don't know. But it does go away with so many people. Quickly,” she says. “And then it's just gone for good.”

“I know. And it's just so damn sad. Like, do people just forget how happy they once were? Do they forget that they once made each other so fucking happy and that things were gorgeous and beautiful and every day it was a fucking privilege to have each other and to know each other and love each other and how awesome it must have felt at one point to have that?”

“They do forget. Obviously. They do.”

“But why?”

“I can't answer that.”

Pause.

“I know,” I whisper.

And then Dominique, she goes, “I have an idea.”

“What's that?”

She pulls out a Sharpie from her backpack and says, “Draw on me.”

I smirk. “You're crazy. You have to go to work soon.”

“So what? I'll go all marker-tatted up. Come on, it'll be fun. You say you're good at drawing, prove it.”

“You sure?”

“One hundred percent in.”

I sit up now and take the Sharpie.

We kiss first, and then I ask her what she wants.

“Surprise me.”

“Sure.”

I grab her hand and think for a minute before putting the tip of the Sharpie against her skin and move it slowly.

It's easier than I thought it would be.

I draw for the next fifteen minutes at a pretty furious-like pace. I draw a dragon and an eagle and two snakes and connect them with ropes and hands and wings and crosses.

Like, twenty minutes after I started, Dominique looks at it and then looks at me and then looks at her arm again.

She kisses me and tells me it's really good and then takes her phone and holds it up over us.

“Smile, babe.”

I do.

“Lovely,” she says, then lays her head on my shoulder and takes the picture.

“There,” she says, holding it so we can both see it. “It's real history now. Pictures are forever. So let's not lose this moment. Let's never lose what we have and what we mean to each other. Let's always stay happy, let's never end up like them,” she finishes, before kissing my neck and telling me she loves me.

“I love you, too.”

“Forever,” she goes.

“Right, love. Forever,” I go back, hardly able to stomach the words now.

ME AND MY FATHER AND
Leslie are eating chinese food in the kitchen, and New Order is playing on the record player.

Since we went to the Cigar Bar & Grill on Saturday night, this is the first time I've eaten with both of them. It happens, I guess. Lots of fucking things happen, I'm finding out.

“I can't believe you two saw the final LCD Soundsystem show,” I say. “I'm so jealous.”

“Oh, that was so much fun,” Leslie goes. “Great show, crazy trip.”

“How did you guys end up hanging out with James Murphy?” I ask.

“You don't know?” my father says.

“What would I know?”

“I guess you don't. I thought your mother would've told you.”

“Told me what?”

“We knew James when we lived in New York before LCD. And your mother and Nancy, their keyboard player, were close when she first moved there.”

“No,” I say. “No way.”

“It's true. Nancy even asked about her a couple of times after the show backstage and at the after-show party.”

I'm so floored right now. So fucking floored. Who are these people? It's insane to me who they know and who they're friends with and who they hang with.

“Maybe she didn't want to talk about that time,” my father says.

“Oh no,” I say. “She talks about it.”

My father rolls his eyes and Leslie laughs.

“Why are you laughing?”

“Just the way he said that,” she goes. “It was funny.”

“No, it wasn't,” my father snorts right as the back door opens so hard that it slams against the wall, shattering the window in it.

“What the fuck?” my father yells.

The three of us jump out of our seats and run over there only to see Kristen stumble in and fall onto the floor crying—no, bawling her eyes out, and curling up in a fetal position.

My heart is breaking right now.

It's so sad. She's so sad.

“Kristen,” Leslie says, dropping straight to her knees next to her. She throws her arms around her daughter. She's crying too, and goes, “Baby, what's wrong? Tell me. Please.”

Kristen looks up at Leslie with a face full of tears and hate and says, “Fucking Tyler is what's wrong! That asshole! He's cheating on me!”

“Scumbag,” I rip. “Government scumbag! Ahhhh!”

“What are you talking about?” my father asks as he stands there so very casual and cool with his hands in his pockets like a jerk. “I don't understand.”

“He's cheating on me,” she shrieks. “What don't you understand about that?”

“Do you know this for sure?” my father says.

“Really, dude?” I snap. “Really?”

And Kristen screams, “Yes! I'm sure! He hasn't been returning my calls for the last few days, so I followed him this afternoon and I caught him kissing Rachael by her car.”

“That fucking creep!” I yell.

“What'd you do?” my father says. “Did you do something dumb?”

“No,” Kristen goes. “What the hell do you think I did?”

“What?” my father snaps.

“I jumped out of my car and confronted them. I went nuts. I kicked him in the balls and fucking dumped his ass right there.”

“Oh, baby,” Leslie says, trying to squeeze her daughter now. “Come here.”

Kristen pushes her away.

And my father goes, “So just like that, huh, you broke up with him? Did you even talk to him first?”

“What the hell was there to talk about?” she screams. “I saw them kissing.”

“You should've karate-chopped him in the throat and stabbed his dick with a switchblade.”

“Jaime, stop,” my father snaps. “Be reasonable, guy. Be mature.”

“What?” both me and Kristen say at the same time.