The Haters (25 page)

The best artist is the best thief, he said.

What?

You're the boy who thinks the best artist is the best thief.

ShaeAnne gasped and ducked back under the water.

Yeah, I said.

Tell me what makes a good thief.

A good thief, uh, doesn't get caught.

And what's a way not to get caught.

Be super sneaky about it I guess.

You'll never get caught if nobody knows you stole.

Ohhh.

He kept staring at me with his squid eyes.

The water clumsily burped up ShaeAnne's sleek, wet, narrow head. Her hair was plastered to her face. You could see it was dull blond at the roots.

Now would you like to know the irreducible fact of the universe, Big Pritch asked me.

Pa, what you telling him, Cookie called over to us.

Sure, I said to Big Pritch.

The irreducible fact of the universe is:
scale
.

Scale.

Yes.

Can you tell me what that means.

No.

Oh.

Heh. Heh.

Ha ha.

ShaeAnne plunged back under.

Can't nobody tell you what it means but here's what it
is
. No matter who you are. What you are. Where when or how you are. There's always something bigger than you and always something smaller than you. Always something faster than you. And always something slower than you. Always something older newer lighter heavier brighter darker. Anything.

You mean not just people but anything.

He leaned in close. His eyes were eight inches from mine and his breath was burnt leaves.

If it all gets too big for you, he told me, if it feels like it's too much.
Zoom out
. And if it all feels too small. Too far away and meaningless.

He pulled back away from me.

Zoom in, I said.

He turreted his head away from me and got his cigarette back.

I looked around the pool. Ash's eyes met mine finally. I looked away from her. I looked up at the house. I tried zooming in. I zoomed in on each window. It was hard to see inside. I went floor by floor. I heard ShaeAnne bubble up again somewhere behind my head. One attic window had the screen pushed up. It opened out onto the roof.

I looked at it for a long time.

28.
THEN I HOISTED MYSELF OUT OF THE HOT TUB AND WALKED INTO THE HOUSE DRIPPING WET IN MY UNDERWEAR AND NO ONE EVEN BATTED AN EYE

By the time I got up to the attic, I had mostly dried off.

I had collected little melodies in my head from passing through all the zones of music in the rest of the house. They were all overlaid in my head echo space like kids talking in the halls between class. The loudest was a recorder melody that was two or three notes away from being the theme song to
Barney & Friends
.

I don't know how I knew it was him who had opened the window, because you couldn't see him from the deck, but I stuck my head out of the screenless attic window and sure enough, there was Corey, sitting over at one end of the roof with his legs dangling over the side. He was scooping his hand into a jar and then messily eating whatever was in there off of his hand like an animal.

“What are you eating,” I called.

He wordlessly held up a jar of peanut butter.

“Oh shit,” I said.

He put another pawful in his mouth.

“Shit shit shit,” I said, and I climbed out of the window and hustled over to him as quickly as I could. The roof was a very smooth expensive-seeming tile. I was sort of crouch-running. He didn't look back at me.

I mean, obviously I was panicking and thinking the whole time,
this is my fault. This is because I said that shit to him in the studio. I was so shitty to him that he is trying to kill himself
. Because that's what this had to be. He didn't have his EpiPen, and he had put himself where no one could find him if he started having an allergic attack. And where he would probably fall off the roof. And the terrible Weses were starting back up in my head, but I was doing my best to drown them out.

When I reached him he wasn't swelling up or seizing up or breaking out in hives. But he wouldn't look at me, either. He was just staring down into the garden at the side of the house.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I said.

But he didn't respond.

“Corey, I'm sorry I said that shit in the studio,” I said. “Fuck.”

But he didn't even seem to hear me.

“Are you not having a reaction,” I asked.

“I'm not allergic,” he said finally, and his voice was strained and high and thick.

“What?” I said.

“I always thought I wasn't allergic, so I tested it.”

“Oh,” I said. I didn't know what to say. “Well, thank God.”

“Thanks, God,” he said.

And still not looking at me, he took another pawful of peanut butter and ate it, kind of trembling.

“I've been out here for a while,” he kind of mumbled.

I was trying to figure out what else to say. Because now, actually, I was realizing I was furious at him.

I was completely goddamned ripshit. Because what the fuck
was he doing. I wanted to headbutt him in the face because what the fuck was he trying to do.

“You fucking idiot,” I almost said, but then he turned and I saw that his eyes were all screwed up. They were wobbly and bloodshot and big-pupilled and scared.

So instead I just said, “Did you get super high or something.”

He nodded.

The way he was looking at me kind of changed everything.

“Well, let's get you inside,” I said.

He jumped to his feet. But he did it way too fast, in a way that was clearly not about going back inside. It was instead about being an insane and possibly suicidal maniac. He had to throw his hands out to catch his balance.

“Jesus, Corey,” I yelled. I wasn't sure if I should grab him.

“Is it fucked up that I'm out here,” he said, breathing hard.

“Yeah,” I yelled. “Yeah. It's a little fucked up. Let's get you inside, man.”

“I'm doing a fucked-up thing right now,” he asked, or announced, and flung the jar of peanut butter down into the garden.

“Yeah,” I said, trying not to panic. “But it's all good, man. Let's get you inside.”

“No,” he said, now kind of bending over and really staring at the garden, like he was trying to read something written in the plants, “no, no no no, because, I mean, I mean does that mean, I mean, because, does that mean, I mean does that mean that
I'm
fucked up?”

“No, man,” I said. “No. You're not fucked up.”

He shook his head, though.

“You're acting like you know that,” he said, trying harder to read the plants. “But you don't.”

“Yeah, I do.”

“You don't know I'm not fucked up.”

“I do. I promise I do.”

“How could you know.”

I didn't reply right away.

“How could
you
know,” he said again, and he looked up and looked at me, and I realized I was smiling at him.

It wasn't because of anything he'd done. He was still a psychotic maniac who I didn't recognize. There was nothing for me to be happy or relieved about.

But something took over my face and my brain and I felt happy and relieved anyway, and I was smiling at him in this small, relaxed, calm way, because my face knew that it would help him, because it was something that I could use to douse his crazy panic.

I mean, in that moment I just kind of became someone different, who could see into the future and who saw myself helping Corey back in through the window, and I knew it was going to happen.

“I know you're not fucked up because I know you,” I said. “I know you better than I know anyone. You're my friend. You're not fucked up.”

He just stared at me.

“You're like anyone,” I said. “You're like me. You do fucked-up things sometimes. But you're not fucked up.”

He stared at me a little more, and I saw him just starting to come back to normal, but he was starting to breathe really hard, and shake, and heave, and he was starting to lose his balance, so I did something else. It really seems like it shouldn't have worked. But it did.

“Give me your hand,” I said to him. And I reached out to him.

And he put his sweaty sticky peanut buttery hand in my hand, and I squeezed it, and I started walking and leading him back to the window, and he followed me, and we made it all the way across the roof. And I went inside, and he came in after me, and I said, “All right.”

And I gave him a hug, and then he started crying and couldn't stop.

It was a truly epic amount of crying. We stood there in the attic and he put me in kind of a headlock and got peanut butter in my hair and just wept uncontrollably. For the first minute or two I was choked up and sort of sniffling along with him.

But his crying went a lot longer than mine.

COREY: HRN     , RN N    RRRNNNN, , NK

WES: it's all good, man

COREY: OORRRRNNN , N , NT    NTK K    , ,    ,
ohhjjh

WES: get it all out

COREY: jjjjjh , jjhhh , h      h u u uRRrRRNNN    U   UUuurrnnt

WES: just get it out

COREY: ooOHhhh god , oh, , g god ,     jjjJJJJJHHHH

WES: alllllllll good

I was hoping he was just crying and being sad with as few thoughts as possible. Because the more thoughts he was having about why he was out there, the wronger those thoughts were going to be. I knew that for a fact. I just knew what was going on in his head. I knew that he wasn't going to be able to realize that he was just fucked up on drugs and loneliness and a bad hookup and none of it was permanent.

Finally he calmed down and lay down on his back on the floor, and I got him some Gatorade, and I found an iPad and a Bose speaker, and I asked him if there was anything he wanted to hear, and he said
Chutes Too Narrow
, so I put on the first track, and we sat there and listened to James Mercer strum and casually sing his way into that big second A section.

COREY,
eventually
: damn.

WES: you were just way too high, man

COREY: yeah

[
james mercer hits that high note on “told” that is the one time in his entire singing career that he sounds not completely in control
]

COREY: yeah it's probably it's uh

WES:

COREY: it's uh probably good not to get too deep into uh into coming up with reasons i was out there, right

WES: the reason you were out there is you were on drugs

COREY: yeah.

[
james mercer does that jungle-gym melisma on “behind” that sounds a million times easier than it is
]

COREY: look, i just want you to know, i wasn't out there because of shit with you

WES: thanks man

COREY: you're a good friend and you basically just saved my life and i'm not mad at you for making me a hater

WES: well you're a good fr

COREY:

WES: wait you're not mad at me for what

COREY: for turning me into a hater

WES:

COREY:

WES: what

COREY: you're a hater, you've made me into a hater, but i'm not mad

I was almost too baffled to say anything.

WES: when did i make you a hater

COREY: i mean right from the start. like one of the first times we even talked to each other. i played you this exact album. remember?

[
james mercer gets to that low register part where he sings in his talking voice like he's putting his kids to sleep
]

WES:

COREY: i was super psyched about it, because i was super
psyched about the shins. i thought they were our beatles. so i was like, hey check this band out, and we listened to it and you just had this look on your face of completely refusing to like it

WES:

COREY: and then after a loooong time you were like, this is the band from that movie garden state? and i was like yeah. and you were like, the band where natalie portman says this band will change your life? and i was like yeah. and you didn't say anything more than that. but that was all you needed to say. because we sat there and kept listening to it and it was like, well, yeah. this band isn't changing anyone's life

WES:

COREY: and all i could think was, holy shit i'm glad i didn't tell you the shins were our beatles

WES:

COREY: and that was it. i couldn't love the shins anymore. i couldn't love anything. i had to hate on everything. like you

That did happen. I remembered it. I did say, This is the band from
Garden State
? The band that will change your life? And I did mean it like, this band isn't changing my life.

But I didn't remember it as me hating on Corey's favorite band, the Shins. I remembered it as me and Corey finding a way to hate on the Shins together. Because that was what we did. Because Corey had already made
me
a hater.

Honestly, I really kind of liked the Shins, but I hadn't thought Corey was putting them on for us to like.

WES: yeah but corey that was only after you showed me how to be a hater by hating on kool & the gang

[
two james mercers sing that harmony on “confrontation” where it always sounds to me like the levels are completely fucked and it's sort of hilarious but maybe only i hear it
]

COREY: what? no. the shins was first

WES: no man. kool & the gang was first

COREY: no because you hating on the shins was the whole reason
why
i hated on kool & the gang

WES: no, you hated on kool & the gang, and then together we listened to the shins, and i wanted to show you that i could hate on stuff too, because i thought that was the thing that
you
liked to do, so

COREY: dude. no. come on. shins were first

WES: no. it was definitely kool & the gang

COREY: shins