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SINISTER

6.

“You ready for another one, bro?”

“God, yes.”

I set my empty bottle by the others near my feet and Nathan Dane handed me a fresh beer. I twisted the cap off, raised it and drank half of it in a long ice cold swallow. It was glorious.

“Getting hammered,” Dane hollered and held his own beer out.

I clanked my bottle against his.

“Let’s drink ‘em down,” he said.

I slammed the rest of my beer and he guzzled some of his.

“Fuck yeah,” he said. “Oh, fuck yeah.”

Dane played drums. His kit was set up in the living room to the left of the recliner I was sitting on.

“Hey, man, I think I need another beer.”

“Fuck no, why?”

“Because you made me drink that last one all fast and now I don’t have any.”

Dane started laughing. His laugh was high pitched, like a little kid’s, and coming from his linebacker sized body it just made me giggle.

“You don’t have any left at all?”

“Not a single drop,” I said. “That’s why I say I think I need another beer.”

He laughed harder. His roommate, Braden Bomer, entered the room from the kitchen. “You getting the kid drunk again?”

“He’s not a kid,” Dane said. “He’s a senior.”

“And I’m eighteen,” I added.

“Yeah, he’s 3.2 percent legal.”

In Colorado, eighteen was old enough to buy beer in grocery stores and gas stations. It was watered down beer, only 3.2 percent alcohol instead of the 6 percent beer at the liquor store.

“So it’s not contributing to the delinquency of a minor?”

“Not since he turned eighteen,” Dane said.

“So last year it was contributing to the delinquency of a minor?”

“Yeah, but not anymore.”

“Hey,” I said. “I don’t know if I told you guys this, but I’m out of beer, as in I don’t have any right now.”

Dane look at his roomie. Bomer moved past us to his guitar. He kept his bass in a stand on the other side of the room.

“He’s gonna drink us out of house and home,” he said.

“But he’s a senior,” Dane said and laughed as if it was the most hilarious statement anyone had uttered ever. “And you have to admit, those were some amazing pork chops.”

“Yeah.” Bomers eyes got big. “Your mom is a freaking chef.”

I nodded. My face was numb. All of me, actually, was numb. I slumped further down in the recliner. Old springs creaked against my weight. The chair’s padding was thin and I was sure that some night one of those steel springs would come ripping out of the seat cushion and pierce my ass cheek. But it didn’t matter. These guys were my friends. They were musicians. And for the past year and a half they’d been trading beers for the dinners my mom left me.

“You know what’s funny about that?”

My voice sounded far away, like it was coming through small speakers placed in the corners of the room. Dane and Bomer looked at me.

“My mom has no idea that every night she goes out I eat peanut butter and jelly and get loaded with you guys.”

“Yeah, that’s hilarious.”

We laughed again, all three of us.

“How many has he had?”

“I’m right here, Bomer. You can ask me. ‘Right?”

“You’re too drunk to count.”

I yelled, “One two three four seven nineteen ten now give me one, come on. Please!”

I kicked in money, too, whenever I had my allowance. It wasn’t like I provided pork chops and casseroles only.

Bomer went to the kitchen. He came back with three beers. “That was good countin’,” he said and handed me one, “for a drunk kid, anyway.”

Neither of them was that much older than me. They were both over 21 so they could buy real alcohol in a real liquor store. I was jealous about that.

“Finally, I have a beer,” I said.

Bomer went back to his bass. “What was it you said earlier about needing one?”

“What?”

He slung it over his shoulders. “You said something perfect but I can’t remember what it was.”

“All I said was that I think I needed another beer.”

Dane stood up. They looked at each other. On an average day, they both smoked enough pot to kill a herd of buffalo and their eyes were always lined with red. I twisted the cap off my new beer as they gazed at each other with those blood soaked eyes.

“I hear it, too,” Dane said.

They sang:

I think I need another beer

Dane took over:

Because she left me sitting here

I’m so frustrated and so jaded

And I just need another beer…

Bomer said, “That’s brilliant! Somebody should write that down.”

“You write it down,” Dane said. “I made it up. You can do something around here for a change.”

“You didn’t make it up. You just took what he said and ran with it.”

“Same difference.”

“Hey,” I said. “This is a really good beer.”

We laughed again. Nobody wrote anything down. Bomer crashed on the couch, his bass on his lap. He packed a water bong with marijuana and they smoked it. They offered to share and I shook my head, content with the brown bottle in hand and my anesthetized bloodstream. Why would anyone ruin the perfect state that came from a beer buzz with weed?

“If Garren was here, he’d write it down,” I said.

Dane stared at me. “What?”

“He always has a notebook with him,” I explained. “So he could’ve jotted those lyrics down. He would’ve, too.”

“Those lyrics sucked,” he said. “I can’t even remember them, that’s how bad they sucked.”

“Then it’s good he’s not here because if he was they’d be in his book and he might put them in a novel or something.”

“He writes novels? I didn’t know he was a book-writer.”

“He’s going to be.”

“Does he do a lot of acid?”

“Not that I am aware of.”

“I mean, that’s why he’s so weird, right? He trips like every day? You know how some people wake and bake?”

“You mean like the present company I’m in? Yes.”

“Yeah, me and Bomer, we wake and bake all the time. If there’s weed in this house when we get up we burn it and smoke it.”

“What time do you wake up?”

“When the sun’s warm. So he does that, right? But it’s acid.”

“No,” I said. “He’s just a nice kid who’s… He can be really weird sometimes, that’s all. It’s not like he’s trying to be.”

“Damn, I was hoping he could score me some acid because I am really starting to like the LSD. I’m not kidding. Aleister Crowley was right about that stuff.”

Bomer stopped messing with his bass. “What does Aleister Crowley have to do with LSD?”

“He invented it.”

“No. Aleister Crowley invented black magic. Timothy Leary invented acid.”

“Oh, yeah!”

“He did it by accident. He was trying to make orange juice and in his lab and when he took a sip he tripped his ass off for days and days and days.”

“Yeah, I get those two confused.”

My own laughter was silent because I could no longer make noises with my vocal cords anymore. I felt my sides cramping as my eyes squeezed out tears. I wanted to catch my breath but it was impossible. Maybe I had a contact high from the bowl they’d smoked. I didn’t know.

“Look who’s having a stroke or something,” Bomer said.

“Don’t let him spill the beer!”

Then both of them were on me, dragging me out of the ratty recliner and making me stand up to catch my breath. I got my lungs full and crouched on the floor. I looked up at my friends. They didn’t have jobs. They played music. Dane’s cover band had a hot girl that sang all the songs. Bomer joined him sometimes, but he had his own heavy metal band and studio gigs in Denver. Both of them played music all over the state and got paid to do it. I knew that sometimes they made a thousand dollars a night, like when they gigged at one of the ski lodges up north. Their house was a shithole, but Dane kept his drum kit in the living room and that made it infinitely cooler than any mansion.

“You okay?” Dane asked.

“Yeah,” I said, “but there’s a problem.”

“What is it?”

“I think you guys are my role models.”

“That’s a problem, yeah,” he said, “big one.”

“Listen to your momma,” Bomer said, leaning down to hand me my beer. “Go to school in Boulder and get a job. Don’t be like us or you might end up being drunk and happy all the time.”

“And getting laid a lot.”

“And playing a lot of music.”

I drank the rest of my beer, every drop of it.

“You know what? That sounds perfect. And I think I need another beer.”

* * *

My mom usually called to check on me around midnight. I stumbled home, cutting through the woods to shorten the walk. Garren’s guitar was still on my bed. I’d left the case open and the sight of it made me think of an open coffin, the guitar a body on its final showing. The smashed corpse of the wasp was still on my wall. I went to the bathroom, wrapped my hand with toilet paper and came back to my room. I swiped the remains off in a fast move and hurried back to the bathroom to flush it. Then I washed my hands in hot water.

As I thought about what a good night I’d had, I remembered I hadn’t called my father. In my rush to get the pork chops over to Dane and Bomer and beer in my hand, I’d spaced it out. The phone rang and I glanced at my alarm clock – 11:50. I cleared my throat and sat down on my bed, next to Garren’s dead guitar.

“Hi, Mom,” I said, hoping I sounded more sleepy than drunk. “I’m already in bed.”

“You were tired?”

“Not really, but I was studying for finals and…” I feigned a yawn. “I guess it wore me out. How was the dinner?”

“Boring,” she said.

“How’s David?”

“Not so boring,” she said. “Did you call your father?”

“I forgot, sorry. I’ll call him tomorrow for sure.”

“Anthony.”

“Tomorrow,” I repeated. “I need to get to sleep. Okay, Mom?”

“Goodnight, my good son.”

“Night.” I hung up the phone.

My father left us in the middle of winter. He’d been there when I’d gone to bed and gone when I woke up. The fresh snow outside covered his escape. Two years passed before we heard from him. Even with that slight, my mom insisted that I have a relationship with him. I didn’t want to. I was fine with never seeing him again.

But she’d said, “Anthony, he wants to see you and that’s all you need to know.”

I’d whined, “But why do you want me to see him?”

And she’d grabbed me by both arms, hard, and asked, “What kind of woman would deny a father his son or a boy his own father? What am I, a monster?”

So we’d talked on the phone every Saturday for a long time, each conversation halting and awkward. Then, when the time came, she drove our rattletrap car out of Colorado and deep into Kansas, delivering me to the man who’d once been my father. I’d sat beside her, dutiful and silent.

In Kansas, she stayed in a Super 8 and I’d stayed with him. He showed me the lot where he sold used cars, then took me to a park to play catch. That evening we watched a movie on his square shaped television. I’d watched the movie, rather. He’d slurped beer out of silver cans and nodded off.

It hadn’t been a good weekend, but it hadn’t been a disaster either. On the long drive home I kept wondering why he hadn’t apologized? Somewhere between then and now I’d figured it out. He was a drunk and he did what drunks do.

I kicked off my shoes and stood up to undress. I dropped my shirt and jeans on the floor in my closet. I had too many Saint Michael’s uniforms, white shirts and blue pants, and not enough real clothes. I hated that. In my boxers, I turned back to the guitar to get it off my bed.

“What does he see in you?”

Some inanimate objects have a face and this guitar was one of them, its humbucker pickup a mouth and the volume knob a single black eye. It glared up at me from its coffin.

“You sure are ugly.”

I kept one hand on the lid, but touched the guitar with the other, my fingers rubbing the spider web pattern of cracks etched deep into its body beside the pick guard. A cold shudder ran down my spine.

The music erupted in me then, intense and clear, the sound of a wailing guitar. A complicated lick flooded through me and at that moment I wished the guitar had strings because I wanted to play it. I wanted to take that hooking phrase of guitar music and bring it into the world. I jerked my hand away. All went quiet.

I should ease up on the drinking, I thought. I closed the lid, snapped the locks shut – they were definitely new, no doubt about it – and hauled it off my bed. Weird day, I thought, I was having hallucinations and hearing weird music; and Garren had fallen in love. That’s what had happened in the music store, hadn’t it?

At least I’d been able to get drunk, I thought and propped the guitar against my wall. I rolled into the bed I’d slept in for the last eight years and yanked the covers up around my neck.

* * *

Hours later I woke up freezing. One moment I was disorientated and the next I was alert and sitting up. My breath made a grey cloud when I exhaled.

“What the hell…”

The room was full of moonlight shadows and, in the corner of my room, one of them was moving.

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