Downers Grove (15 page)

The stoners piled out of the car like their seats were on fire. I was feeling a little uneasy, wondering where Bobby was, where Tracy was, and where I was, for that matter. Asha's car pulled into the lot and parked beside us. I trailed the stoner boys inside, pausing in the doorway to scan the room. There was an empty seat at the near end of the bar and it seemed like
every guy in the place watched me find it. I stood out like a Corvette in a used-car lot. Asha and her committee entered behind me. The bartender came over and asked for my ID. I flashed my fake one.

“Are you a cop?” he asked me point-blank.

“No.” I shook my head.

“Arthur!” Asha screamed over the music. The bartender turned around. “She's with me!” Asha pointed at me. He threw the ID on the bar.

“Okay, Shirley Temple, what do you want?” he asked.

“Rum and Coke,” I shouted out.

“I should have guessed.” He filled a glass with ice, poured the rum, and then spritzed it with the spray gun. He plopped in a couple maraschino cherries and dropped the glass in front of me, then went off to take care of Asha's crowd. I turned and glanced around the bar.

Two women were onstage wearing bits and pieces of cheap lingerie, strutting to some
Saturday Night Fever
song. The room was full of rednecks nodding along to disco, one of them swinging around like some perverted farmer doing the jig for his pigs. His jeans were drooping as he danced around in front of the stage, flashing the crack of his rear. Finally he spun around one time too often and did a corkscrew into a table. When he crashed onto the floor the room erupted with laughter, even the girls onstage were laughing.

The door swung open, and I leaned toward it anticipating Bobby, but it was just another pack of ex-convicts, hot and horny after twenty years in the pen. The last one wore an eyepatch like a pirate. They crossed the room, paused at the far end of the bar to order a pitcher of Old Style, then proceeded
to take over the pool table. Asha came toward me, stirring her drink with a red swizzle stick. She parked in the chair beside me and admired herself in the mirror behind the bar. Her perfume just about made me gag.

“So what do you think?” she asked.

“Fun place.” I tried to smile.

“A girl like you could make a lot of money in a club like this.” She popped open her black vinyl pocketbook, fished out a glass cigarette case, offered me one. I accepted.

“What are you saying?”

“Aren't you looking for a job?” She looked puzzled, flicked her lighter.

I dipped my cigarette into the fire.

She tucked the lighter back into her purse. The shifting contents revealed a tiny silver pistol tucked in the red jaws of her bag.

“I don't think I have a big enough ego.” I glanced at the door, looking for a miracle.

Asha leaned against the bar, drawing a hit from her mile-long cigarette. She had a cool calculated delivery, as if everything was rehearsed or had been said a million times before. “It's easy money,” she said, blowing smoke rings toward the rafters.

“Not easy enough,” I said. “I don't like getting naked in front of myself, let alone the entire criminal population of Will County.”

“What about your friend? She could be a headliner.” Asha sipped her drink, letting it all soak in.

“I'll ask her next time I see her.” I turned and watched the next girl drop her skirt to the floor, swinging her hips like some
superwhore at senior prom. Prancing back and forth in black high heels, acting as coy as a child in an ice cream parlor, her metallic underwear refracted thin white beams of light that bounced around the smoky room.

“Where's Bobby?” I asked.

“He's probably somewhere he shouldn't be, or worse.” She stared at my breasts, as if I were flat and self-conscious or something. She of course was flawless, if you have a fetish for forty-year-old vampire babes who smell like cats. Asha set her glass on the bar, dropped her cigarette onto the floor, and crushed it with her toe.

“Let me know when you're ready for your audition.” She turned and disappeared through a red door in the back of the room. I crushed my cigarette in the ashtray, swirled in my seat, took inventory of the memorabilia ornamenting the back of the bar.

Tacked to the wall was an old poster from when the speedway first opened. The car in the center was nice and blurry to accentuate the thrill of speed. Over the mirror hung a string of miniature plastic tiki lights, the heads of Easter Island in red, green, and yellow. At the base of the mirror was a line of sticky bottles, all the usual suspects. There was a cash register in the center, surrounded by cyanamide strips, glowing green and orange like radioactive IVs. A couple of Polaroids of girls holding their shirts up were taped to its side. The bartender avoided me, working the opposite end of the room, chatting up the pirate and his gang.

I was starting to have some serious doubts about the mechanic showing up anytime soon. Stuck like bait in an alligator cage, my chair was starting to feel a little wobbly. I couldn't
figure out whether Asha was his past or present girlfriend. She obviously had some history, even if there wasn't any future.

I watched the dancers in the mirror, wondered if they lived nearby, if they shopped at SaveMart with a handful of coupons and flipped through the rags while waiting their turn at the checkout line, whether they had a social life outside the club, a place to wind down after dressing up like sluts and whipping the town drunks into a rousing state of frenzied horniness.

The room was scattered with some of the biggest losers this side of 1-55. I didn't dare look up, because the last time I did, that sweaty pirate-looking creature was focused on me like a cat about to snatch a bird. He gave me the creeps, and I suddenly felt the need to be rescued. It was time to gather up my marbles and get the hell out of here. The door swung open and I looked up, hoping it was Bobby, but it was the boys I had crushed with the car battery. I had a heart attack. My valentine was wearing a neck brace. I buried my face in my cocktail and watched them in the mirror as they entered the room. I started sweating big-time. I slid off the edge of my seat, leaned down, and pretended to tie my shoe. They stopped in front of the stage and stood stonefaced, staring at the naked girls onstage. Nobody seemed to notice me, so I decided to take a chance, grabbbed my bag, and ducked out into the parking lot.

I wasn't sure what to do. Neither Tracy's nor Bobby's car was in the lot, and the only person I knew inside was the vampire madam from hell. Mosquitoes swarmed around my forehead, buzzing in and out of my ears. The roar of sixteen-wheelers shifting gears echoed from the highway, the carnival lights of their trailers whipped through the trees. Music was
thumping against the door when all of a sudden it burst open. I looked over my shoulder and saw Mr. Neckbrace limping toward me. I pressed my back against a car and slowly back-pedaled away from him.

“Well, well, well, look what we have here. I thought that was you. Remember me?” he asked, casually sinister, like someone who just crawled out of the swamps of Cape Fear. I shook my head, watched his hands.

“No. Why should I?”

“Don't play dumb with me sister.” He kept taking baby steps toward me. “Your locker was just the beginning. Let's just hope there isn't an accident before graduation.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The curse.” He laughed. “We got big plans for you.”

A white car swung into the lot, and its headlights swept the front of the building. I turned and ran toward the car and then straight past it until I was out of the parking lot.

“It won't be long now!” he called out.

I kept running. I didn't dare turn around. My heart was racing and I couldn't think clearly because I was cluttered with panic. Thick patches of weeds made both sides of the road impenetrable. The stop sign at the corner was punctured by a dozen bullet holes. Suddenly I was the girl in a horror movie. My eyes puckered with tears. I was really really scared.

I couldn't hear his feet, but I had a constant sinking feeling they were right behind me. Whenever I turned around, however, there was only a halo of streetlight glaring down at the pavement. Nothing was moving along the road, and the silence only frightened me more. I hurried under the Interstate bridge and started up Lemont Road, keeping a steady pace. Whenever
headlights jumped over the horizon, I dipped into the shadow of trees. I didn't want to give him a second chance.

Dark clouds had buried the stars. Tree branches above started to rock back and forth, bending with the force of an invisible wind. That's when I felt the first drop of rain slap the end of my nose. At the next streetlight I started feeling drops all over my arms and legs, and by the time I reached the one after that, I was soaking head to toe.

Rain fell like the rivers of heaven had crested, on and on with increasing intensity. Puddles quickly became channels of gushing water alongside the road. Lightning sliced across the sky, thunder crept closer, each time with slightly more intensity, until the storm seemed to be right on top of me. I started worrying about getting electrocuted under the tall trees lining the road, so I cut across the street and followed the edge of the cornfield.

My mind stayed busy racing through the serial killer trading cards, as if Neckbrace didn't get me, somebody else would. As the streetlight up ahead grew brighter, my fears would diminish, but as soon as I passed it and walked deeper into darkness, all that fear came racing back. And then a sheet of lightning reached out of the sky and sucked all the electricity out of Downers Grove. The streetlights failed and it got real dark, so dark I couldn't even see myself. Standing completely still, waiting for my eyes to adjust, I felt like a ghost, like I wasn't even alive. Everything seemed so unreal. Headlights and taillights became the only beacons that shredded the night, and I followed them, cautiously.

By the time I made it home I was so exhausted I felt like I might die anyway. The power was still out and the whole
neighborhood seemed haunted. It was so unbelievably black. Lightning occasionally took a picture, but the snapshots seemed vacant and dreamlike.

The door was open to our house. I went inside and felt my way toward the kitchen. I heard some voices giggling, turned, and saw a warm glow emanating from the basement. There were enough candles along the staircase to make Anne Rice drool. Water was lapping against the bottom stair. It looked like a cave.

“What's going on down there?” I started down the stairs and found David floating on a Styrofoam cooler, like some Hollywood surfer. His friend Dylan was sitting on a table with a large red bong glued to his face. My brother's beer can collection floated around them.

“Ahoy,” my brother said, paddling with one hand while holding a can of beer in the other. “Grab a life preserver. The house is sinking.”

“Where are the buckets?” I asked.

David looked around him. “Where is my boom box?”

Dylan held the bong toward me. “Want one?” he asked.

“No thanks,” I said. “What happened?”

“We were playing cards when all of a sudden the electricity went out. The sump pump quit, and seconds later the water started coming up through the drain. We rounded up some candles and flashlights, and then tried to bail for a while, but it was pointless, so we just saved what we could. Where the hell have you been?” he asked.

“Out with Tracy.”

“Mom had a shit fit when you pulled that disappearing act. She thinks you ran off with Speed Racer.” He paddled toward
me. “She said if you ever did show up you'd be grounded for life.”

“I don't have a life, remember?”

“Hey, don't get harsh on me, I'm just the messenger.”

“Where is she now?”

“Dan came by, I guess he's gonna lend her a car.”

Dylan nodded his head, as though that's how he remembered it too.

“Did they patch things up?” I asked.

“I didn't know it was broken,” he said.

I felt light-headed, like a piece of butter melting into warm toast. My stomach felt queasy, and then my head frosted over like the inside of a fluorescent bulb. Everything swirled into a soft blur. I swayed from one side to the other, then the whole world faded to black.

I told you, that party looked as permanent as a trailer park,” Tracy said. “How did I know everyone was going to split? I took the white angel on a cigarette run, and when I came back the only people left were Bobby and his friend.”

“What friend?” I asked.

“It was a guy,” she said, as if reading my mind. “They had a flat tire. I would've killed myself if anything had happened to you.” She squeezed my hand.

“Yeah, right.” I pulled my hand away.

Fainting is so dramatic, but actually, I don't remember much of it. My brother said he could relate because he can't remember a lot of things too. He must have been a little freaked to see me more petrified than him. Mom was beside herself with anger and relief, in other words, she wanted to kill me but was glad I wasn't dead.

“I thought you were gonna be the senior curse,” Tracy said.

“Well, I almost was. Asha lured me over to her nightclub and guess who showed up—the boys who kissed the car battery. Chuckie had a neckbrace. He followed me out into the parking lot and said the locker fire was just the beginning, that I was an accident waiting to happen.”

“He's just trying to frighten you.”

“Well, it worked. I had to walk all the way home in the biggest rainstorm of the century. I thought the world was ending. I was so scared. I cried and prayed all the way home.”

“You didn't cry or pray,” she said.

“How would you know? You were busy getting felt up by Stranger Danger.”

“First of all, we only went to get cigarettes. Second of all, if I go away I always come back. You're the one who ditched me. Nobody said the party was going to be transient.”