Blazed (34 page)

“What are you doing?”

“I can't do this.”

“No. You can. Just fuck me. I want you to. I've wanted you to.”

“No,” I say, as she tries to pull me back down to her. “We're not doing this. I'm with Dominique. I can't do that to her.”

Covering her face with her hands now, Kristen goes, “That's right. You are.”

I slide off the bed and stand up. “I'm sorry.”

“No,” she goes. “Don't be. You're right. We can't do this. Not to her. Never to her.”

“Yeah.”

Kristen pulls her sweater back over herself.

“It woulda been nice, though,” I say.

She smiles. “It woulda been amazing.”

“Totally.”

Pause.

“I'm gonna go to bed.”

“All right. But Jaime.”

“What's up?”

“Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For being one of the good ones.”

“I'm not sure I am.”

“Yes, you are,” she says. “You are definitely one of the good ones, boo.”

“ABOUT A MONTH BEFORE YOU
were born, your mother and I were doing really good. We were still living in that tiny apartment, but I'd just gotten this really nice promotion that I knew was going to lead to a lot more money for us over the next year. Still, though, we didn't have much and we needed to get your room ready, so I decided to make everything myself. Your crib, the shelves, the dresser and bookcase, the closet door. Just everything. I'd done a lot of carpentry to get by when I first moved to New York, and a good friend of mine had a studio that he let me borrow so I could build those things after I got off work.”

My father is standing in my room. I'm sitting at my desk. I was writing the lyrics for this new song, “Sticking to My Guns,” after finishing this new poem.

Last night, before I went to bed, I grabbed the box with all the letters in it and put it in front of his and Leslie's bedroom door with a note that said,
If you can't talk to me, then I can't read these.

My father is wearing a pair of black dress pants and a white V-neck T-shirt with a pair of shades hanging from the V.

“It was hard on us,” he continues. “I was putting in twelve hours a day at the office and then another three or four after that at the studio. Your mother didn't want to use what I was making. She wanted some store-bought stuff. She was angry that I was spending time at the studio, but I always begged her to come there with me and be with me, but she refused and she iced me out. We barely spoke for those two or three weeks. Everything I made was good, though. It was quality. Way better than anything we could've bought, Jaime. The day after I brought everything to the apartment and set your room up, I came home after work and she'd smashed the shelves with a hammer and kicked in the side of the crib. The day after that we went to the store and bought all new stuff, which she hated the second after we set it up.”

“She was pregnant, man. Like, cut her some slack.”

“I did,” he says. “I never said anything about what she'd done. Not a word. I loved her with every ounce of my being. She was my dream, my angel. I loved that lady to death.”

“Why are you telling me this? If this was in one of the letters, I guess I'd rather read it now.”

“Man,” he goes. “You can be just as cold as she was when you want to, ya know that. So damn cold and cruel.”

“Listen,” I say. “What I know of what happened, what you did, that's as fucking cold as it gets, man. What you did. So she complained about some furniture . . . who fucking cares? You hit her and pushed her to the ground. Don't even say it's the same. They're not even in the same universe.”

My father takes a deep breath and squeezes his forehead.

“What?” I snap.

“Remember, your mother loves you, Jaime, and deep down, she is a wonderful person.”

“What are you talking about when you say that shit to me? What?”

“I went back to Ohio to visit my father the day after they admitted him to the hospital for the last time. Your mother was about to burst and didn't want me to go. She begged me not to go, but that man was my hero and he was going to die within weeks. I wanted to see him while he could still talk and carry on a conversation. I knew he'd be a vegetable soon before he finally passed, and I wanted to just talk to him and tell him how much I loved him.”

“All right.”

My father takes a deep, deep breath and wipes the tears from his eyes.

“Man,” he says. “It's been awhile since I took myself back to that hospital room. Man . . .”

“What?”

“My father was a very handsome man, Jaime. Very handsome and very charming.”

“Great. That's awesome.”

“During my first visit to see him that last trip, probably twenty or thirty minutes after we started talking, he looks me dead in the eyes and goes, ‘I can't die with this on my chest, son.' I
told him he could tell me anything, anything at all. And that's when he told me about him and your mother, him and my wife.”

My world, it flips upside down and the blood drains from me. Everything is fuzzy. My hands and fingers are numb. Heart is broken, it's gone.

“Jaime,” he says.

“What'd he say?” I mutter.

“He told me about their affair. They'd been sleeping together for three years. They were in love. That's why he had been in San Francisco. He was there to try and convince her to leave me and marry him so he could leave everything he had to her and you, since I didn't have anything.”

Falling forward, my head drops against my arms on the desk.

“I was devastated, Jaime. In one cruel swipe, I'd lost my hero and the love of my life. The two people I loved the most, who I trusted the most, trusted with my life, had been betraying me for years, plotting and planning, even having a conversation about running out on me and getting married.”

Lifting my head back up, I snap, “Just shut up! Okay? Just shut the fuck up!”

“Jaime,” my father starts.

But I say, “Stop it! Please!”

“It's the truth, Jaime. I'm not lying. I'm—”

“I don't think you're lying!” I yell. “I don't, but just stop it. Fuck, man. Just stop talking about it and leave me alone.”

“I'm sorry, Jaime. But you deserve to know.”

“Shut the fuck up!” I scream again. “Please . . . okay? Just please stop talking about it . . . Dad.”

YOUTH LAGOON OPENS WITH “DROPLA”
off their
Wondrous Bughouse
album. Dominique, she seems pretty upset with me too. For a lot of reasons, I'm thinking, even though she tells me she's fine, which is bullshit cos she's not.

I was half an hour late meeting her at this taquería on Eighteenth and Valencia. I'm really wasted, too—at least four blues deep, like, six or seven beers, some dope I got a hit off of while I was walking through the Haight trying to wrap my head around what my father told me and if it was true or not (I declined my mother's phone call from the hospital today) and what it means and who the fuck do I know and really have in my life who isn't a monster, who isn't the most selfish person ever, who doesn't lie.

Also, she could easily be pissed about me not telling her I was sorry for making her wait. Or maybe it was the rant I went on about all women being cunts and whores at their core. All of them. No exceptions or anything. Cos they are. And it's evil and they think they can just get away with it. They think they can destroy you before they mow you down and that it's fine and that they can just walk away from the damage they've done and leave you to live in the ruins like it's no big deal.

Cunts.

And whores.

All of them.

We're standing outside Great American Music Hall, on the edge of the Tenderloin, like, twenty feet from the entrance of a strip club, and it's the worst day and night ever in my life, but then Youth Lagoon begins playing and everything changes. It really does.

For the first time since me and her rolled up, like, twenty minutes ago, she smiles and says something.

She goes, “Yay. My favorite on this album.”

It's a start at least, and I say, “Mine too.”

“I remember when Keisha texted me that he was going to be on NPR playing songs off this, I freaked out. I cleared my entire day. At first, when I heard it, I didn't know what to think.”

“Me either.”

“It was really good, but it wasn't what I expected.
Year of Hibernation
cut me so deep and left such a fucking mark on me that it's all I wanted. Like, I refused this album for a week even though it was great, because it wasn't
Year
.”

I'm laughing because I did pretty much the same thing, except my denial of the record lasted a month.

“Then the band was driving to Santa Barbara to play this small festival and Mark put it on and it became an addiction. A different one, though, and it's all I listened to for the next month. Now I'm here. Listening to it live, and it's even better than I imagined.”

Me looking at her right now, her leaning against the wall next to the box office, looking gorgeous and happy, it dissolves the hate I've been holding in me all day—poor girl doesn't even know about my father telling me that stuff—and all the ice melts away.

“It's so rad to just watch you talk about music you love,” I tell her. “To see your physical reaction to go along with the thrill in your voice, there's nothing I'd rather watch. Nothing, Dominique. Like, what's that Frank O'Hara line?”

She shrugs.

“ ‘I look at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world.' ”

Her face lights up even more. “That's fucking beautiful,” she says.

“I feel that way every time I look at you,” I say, as that song “Raspberry Cane” ends and the song “Posters” begins.

“Jaime,” she says, blushing. “Come here.”

We kiss finally. It's great to feel those lips against mine again. Her tongue whipping against the walls of my mouth.

“What has been going on with you tonight?” she asks.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” I tell her, as I start dancing around like a weirdo on the sidewalk. “No idea. Everything is perfect. I'm so good right now.”

Dominique grins and shakes her head. She starts dancing around with me and here we are again, another magical fucking night, the two of us on a sidewalk somewhere in San
Francisco, listening to one of our favorite bands in the world play some of our favorite songs ever.

Thank god for Youth Lagoon.

Once again, arriving in my life and saving me, for a while at least.

• • •

James walks outside holding a record, signed by Trevor, and a T-shirt. He tries to hand them to me but I go, “It's for her. This is Dominique, man. Dominique, this is James Morgan.”

“Whoa,” she goes, looking stunned. “Nice to meet you. How do you two—”

“We're old-school homies,” says James, winking at me. “Jaime's, like, my best friend now.”

“Jesus,” I go, laughing.

“You two kids have fun now. I'm gonna go back in. See you at Savannah's show tomorrow night, homie.”

“Thanks again, dude.”

“You're fucking incredible, ya know,” Dominique says. “How in the hell . . .”

“I'll never tell,” I say. “Never.”

“I love you,” she goes. “Even if you think I'm a cunt.”

“The biggest one for sure.”

She laughs as Youth Lagoon begins playing “July.”

Both of us jump up and down and she grabs me and we twirl around in circles, singing together.

When the song is over, this younger-looking black kid walks past us and goes, “Roxys, bud, coke.”

“What's that?” I ask. “You got blues?”

“Yeah. Follow me.”

I look back at Dominique. “I'll be right back.”

“Where are you going?”

“Nowhere. I'll be back in a second, though.”

“Jaime,” she goes. “No.”

“You coming or not?” the dude says.

“Yeah.”

We walk around the corner and cut into this alley.

“How many for eight?” I go.

“This many,” he says, and whips out a knife.

“Whoa, man. Whoa. What are you doing?”

“Give me all your money.”

“What are you doing?”

Dude grabs the back of my neck and pushes me into the wall.

“All your money, bitch. Now.”

“Fine,” I say. “Fine.”

He lets go of me. Slowly, I turn around, see the knife again.

“It's cool,” I say, then I push him and try to run, but he grabs onto me again and tackles me.

“Dude,” I yell.

“Give me your fucking money.”

I kick him and get to my feet, then—

POP!

Dude just drills me in the stomach.

BAM!

He hits me in the face, and I stumble back and fall down.

I'm totally helpless as he opens my wallet and pulls out all the money. All thousand dollars.

“Fucking faggot!” he yells next. “Just listen to me next time.”

“Fuck you,” I say. “Fucking worthless piece of shit. Fucking pussy.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Fuck you.”

BAM!

BAM!

BAM!

He kicks me three more times.

BAM
!

He punishes me in the face with this last kick.

“Jaime,” I hear. It's Dominique.

The guy who robbed me takes off like a punk, the pussy he is, and she drops down next to me.

“Are you okay?”

“I'm fine.” I sit up.

“You're bleeding,” she says. “Come here.”