Bloodroot (17 page)

The Spot had opened to great fanfare in the late eighties, a seedy rock club for those of us too broke for the Limelight and too uncool for CBGB’s. I spent many a night waiting to get in, Danny chattering at my side while he skillfully applied eyeliner, unable to decide if I was too cool or not cool enough to belong. To me, the Red Spot wasn’t much different from the coke-den dance clubs that surrounded it. It was another place to play dress-up, get served underage, and get all fucked up on cheap draft beer, bad bourbon, and shitty cocaine, only with better music.

But Danny loved the place, the dim red lights, the Day-Glo paint-splattered walls, the thundering music—they played everything from the Cure to the Cramps to the Crüe, all at ear-splitting volume. He loved standing at the bar, striking up conversations with every thin, white Nikki Sixx and Wendy O. Williams wannabe that pushed up next to us for drinks. He was fearless. He seemed, even at only seventeen, in his element. He could be anyone, anything: a singer, a painter, a fugitive, a thief, whatever got him what he wanted. More than a few of the girls lifted their vinyl skirts for him in the bathroom. He looked discreetly away while I got hand-jobs under the bar. He borrowed a lot of money from me that neither of us drank and he never paid back. It wasn’t until a couple years later, when it was far too late, that I finally admitted to myself that the Spot was where Danny learned to lean over a mirror without seeing himself. I knew the needles had come not long after.

AS KELSEY AND I
walked through the bar, heading for the courtyard, I saw that the Red Spot had aged about as well as Nikki Sixx had, or, for that matter, about as well as I had. The red lights remained but the neon explosions had faded to weak stains. Twenty years of staples from band posters scarred every wall. Hip-hop songs that even I could tell were dated pulsed from the speakers at a volume low enough to talk over. I couldn’t believe I’d once let my brother paint my fingernails black for this place.

“We have our choice of seats,” Kelsey said. She picked a table next to the fence. We sat underneath a stencil of the Ramones logo, over which someone had scrawled F.T.W. in white spray paint. Kelsey relaxed in her seat, smiling at the artwork adorning the fence. She lifted her drink. “After these, I’m gonna buy us a pitcher of the nastiest beer they got.”

“Good idea,” I said. “See if the bartender’ll put some DK’s on and we can do shots of well bourbon from plastic cups.”

“Deal,” Kelsey said. She leaned across the table. “But first, Kev, there’s something I want to ask you. You ditched it back in the office, but I need an answer. It may be a little personal, but it’s important to me.”

“Shoot.”

“Well, why do you keep teaching at Richmond if you hate it so much?”

I sat back in shock. “Who says I hate teaching, or teaching there? Did Whitestone put you up to this?”

“That creep? Are you kidding?” She sipped her cocktail, wincing at the vodka’s bite. “I’m here because I want to be. Because there’s no good reason we didn’t go out for drinks a long time ago.”

“You’re right,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“Listen, when we talk about work, you always come off like someone who’s been at it for twenty years. You sound bitter, about the kids, about admin.”

“Oh, come on,” I said. “We all complain. It’s a teacher’s prerogative. It’s just a part of the job I have a real talent for. It’s a frustrating profession. You know that. Give it some time, it’ll start happening to you.”

“That’s what I’m worried about,” Kelsey said. “Listening to you was one of the things that drove me to apply for the Ph.D.”

I crossed my arms. “I’m not sure how to take that. It’s hardly a compliment.”

“How come you’ve never moved on to something better? You were top of your class at NYU. You had your pick of doctoral programs, yet here you are years later. Still teaching at a community college. What’s that about?”

“I was sick of school,” I said. “I blew my wad on my master’s. Besides, these kids need decent teachers more than the spoiled brats at Harvard and Princeton do.”

“If you’re so dedicated,” Kelsey said, “then why are you always on the edge of getting canned?”

“I am not.”

“How was your meeting on Friday?”

“Let’s say I’m not counting on a raise,” I said.

“I heard the stories about you when I got to Richmond. Everyone thought you’d be gone in a semester, soon as you chose the fattest fellowship. Now, everyone wonders how you keep your job. You won’t get anything done on time—for the kids or for admin. You won’t show for department meetings. Whitestone hates you.”

“So I’m a loser jerk then for sticking with the job they gave me? I’m the best classroom teacher in the department, present company included. Maybe that’s why I’m still there. And Whitestone only hates me ’cause I won’t pimp for his stupid Friends of Bloodroot group.”

“I won’t, either,” Kelsey said, “but no one ever calls the office looking for me.” She edged her chair closer to mine. “What happened to your drive, your ambition? Where’d you lose it?”

“I never had any,” I said. “If I had any ambition, I’d be on Wall Street grading stocks instead of essays written by kids who think Canada’s a state.” I wanted her to laugh, but she didn’t. “And who knows? Richmond might be a better place to be soon. I’ll get my shit together and everyone will forget the past. They’re doing work all over the campus. We got that new science building. There’s the plans to go more residential with new dorms, attract more students from off the island.”

“I haven’t heard anything about the history department,” Kelsey said.

“Not yet,” I said. “But we’re probably on the list. You know Whitestone’ll make sure of that. That’s probably why he started that Bloodroot museum bullshit to begin with, to make sure he gets his cut of the state money coming in.” I shook the ice in my plastic cup. “Speaking of getting one’s due, you owe us a pitcher.”

“Don’t change the subject,” Kelsey said. “It’s bullshit that you never had any ambition. I know different. What happened?”

“That’s a good question.” I slouched in my chair. She really wanted an answer. This isn’t Whitestone breaking your balls, I thought. This is someone you like trying to care about your life.

“Right around when I had five years in,” I said, “about three years ago, I guess I started cruising. I stopped paying attention. It got so easy to keep doing the same things over and over. And then the road tipped downhill and I picked up speed.” I looked at her. “I never knew inertia could have momentum. Probably why I’m not a physicist.” I leaned forward. “You know, I never realized it, but when Danny disappeared for good, that’s about when things started going south for me. Weird.”

Kelsey blinked at me, as if trying to bring my face into better focus. I couldn’t tell if she was trying to see me, or picturing her life if she didn’t go to Chicago. But she didn’t look away and I was thankful for that. Did she see a difference in me, after only a few days with Danny back in my life? Did I feel different? Once the initial rush of the adventure and the money had worn off, I’d felt nothing but bad for the two days after the graveyard, but sitting at the Red Spot with Kelsey, I had to admit that I felt pretty good, optimistic.

Looking at her pretty face, I wished she could tell me my future. Did she see herself in it? Why would she? Kelsey had already said she was all but gone. That letter, her ticket off the island, was in her pocket as we sat there making up for lost time with cigarettes and bad booze. And what about Danny? He and I had no chance of staying together if I abandoned him to his night work, if I walked away from the important thing, our reunion, because of the crazy shit I’d seen and done Friday night. I’d vowed a thousand times that I’d do anything to get my brother back. I had to be willing to find out what “anything” really meant.

If I was going to hang on to Kelsey and Danny, I couldn’t treat them like I did my job. I had to stay focused. Be creative. I had to shake off my lame, lazy existence and take some risks. Maybe this past weekend, without me even realizing it, the process had already started.

“It’s never too late,” Kelsey said, standing, “to start paying attention again. Objects right in front of you may be closer than they appear.” She slung her purse over her shoulder. “Okay, you’re off the hook. We’re supposed to be celebrating. We’ll have fun when I get back.”

I dug into my pocket for some cash.

She waved me off. “I got this.”

I held out a twenty. “Let me get the shots. Forget the well shit, get us some decent bourbon, even if it does come in plastic shot glasses. I’m too old for the rotgut.” I pulled out another twenty. “Tip big and ask him to change the music.”

She took one twenty from me, eyebrows raised. I jammed the other back in my pocket.

“Dead Kennedys?” she asked.

“Or Black Flag. Or Social D. At least some Kiss or some Clash.”

I turned in my seat to watch Kelsey walk away. Over her shoulder, she glanced back and caught me looking at her. She stopped walking. I didn’t look away. I ran my eyes over her head-to-toe as she watched. I’d never let her see me do that before. The doorway was dim, but I saw her grin before she entered the bar.

She carried a first-rate body under those secondhand clothes. I’d known this for three years, though I’d done fuck-all about it. Kelsey knew I knew it. She was one of the least vain people I’d ever met, but she knew what she had. I got the feeling she was gonna give me a shot at
really
making up for lost time. That would be just like me, hooking up with a girl on her way out the door.

Kelsey set the shots and the pitcher down on the table. “All he’s got for music is satellite radio. I talked him into some early alternative station.”

The steady kick drum thump and ragged, shining guitar riff of the Cult’s “Rain” tumbled from the speakers over the empty courtyard. “This’ll do just fine,” I said.

We downed our shots. She poured each of us a beer while we recovered from the burn. I lit her cigarette, her cheeks flushed in the match light.

Kelsey leaned back, stretching her legs under the table. She sat so close to me now that her thigh rested against mine. I could feel the warmth of it through my jeans.

“I thought this place was the coolest,” she said. “I had a different color vinyl skirt for every day of the week.”

“I’m gonna pretend you didn’t say that.”

“Oh please,” Kelsey said. “And where did you hang out?”

“Here,” I said, laughing. “A lot. Like everyone else our age who couldn’t dance.”

“I knew it. God, I had a whole gang of virgin sluts from Sacred Heart I ran with back then,” Kelsey said. “We partied here every weekend. We’d prance around like strippers and then giggle like idiots the moment a boy tried to talk to any of us. I heard some real sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll shit went on but I never even kissed anyone here. I was such a wuss back then.”

“Most of us were like that,” I said. “There was always a lot more posing than there was danger. We all wanted to be in the glow, as long as someone else was doing the real dirty work.” Someone else, I thought. Someone like Danny. “What the fuck, right? It was fun.”

It was then I felt her hand on my cheek. She turned my face to hers and kissed me.

“There,” she said, her mouth just far enough from mine for us to speak. “I finally got my kiss at the Red Spot.”

I closed the distance and we kissed again.

“You were probably cute as shit back in the day,” Kelsey said, pressing her forehead against mine. “I wish I’d seen that, you and your badass rocker crew.”

“You probably did,” I said. “Though it was usually just me and my brother.”

“You guys really did everything together, didn’t you?” Kelsey said.

“Yeah, back then I couldn’t imagine life without him. Never even thought about it.” I leaned back in my chair. “Before the drugs came along.” And then it hit me, like a revelation, that Danny wasn’t gone anymore.

“You really miss him,” Kelsey said.

“I did. I used to.” I leaned forward, put my hands on her knees. “But listen to this. He’s back.” I couldn’t believe how good it felt to say that. Joy, excitement, relief, everything missing from telling my father, they all welled up inside me like a ten-foot wave. It was all so pure. Even the darkness of the weekend couldn’t stain it. I felt, for a few moments anyway, that the weekend was just another bad memory that Danny and I would soon forget. The last bad adventure.

Kelsey covered my hands with hers. “Kevin, that’s wonderful. Where’s he been?”

“That’s a long story,” I said. I didn’t care to tell it. It didn’t matter. “But he seems a lot better off than the last time I saw him.”

“He’s clean?”

“Looks like it,” I said. “I mean, you never know for sure or for how long, but he seems real good so far.”

“That must’ve been so great, hanging out with him again. I’m so happy for you. What did you guys do?”