Words I Might Have Ate

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Friday morning rolls around reluctantly, the sun peeping out lazily from behind gray clouds. The sun was weak and pitiful, an after-effect of the rain that had drizzled down upon Berkeley on and off yesterday evening and well into the night.

I open my eyes slowly, my neck announcing its stiffness immediately. I had missed the bus back to Berkeley last night after my session with David and instead of heading back to his house to ask for a ride home, I ended up walking back to the apartment. The normal thirty-minute journey by bus took me over an hour to walk. By the time I staggered home at 12:30, my feet were threatening mutiny. The two flights of steps up to Apartment C had very nearly reduced me to tears. So by the time I managed to unlock the door and limp into my room, I had collapsed on my bed and promptly passed out.

And now, ten hours later, a sudden noise in the kitchen had brought me back to consciousness. I sit up in my bed carefully, the pants I had slept in last night suddenly feeling very restrictive. I stand to my feet unsteadily, stretching up towards the sky and letting my back crack deliciously before rubbing at my bleary eyes tiredly.

The noise in the kitchen demands my attention once more and so I pad purposefully to the door, peering around the doorframe and into the tiny kitchen. Someone was bent over, rooting through the refrigerator busily, humming softly under their breath.

My mind scrambles as I try to remember who it might be. Mike was working today which only leaves one person. The person straightens up and closes the door and my suspicions are confirmed.

“Tré,” I mumble, walking out into the kitchen and throwing myself into a chair. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“I was out of food,” Tré shrugs, bits of food flying out of his mouth as he speaks. “Mike let me in as he was leaving this morning.”

I glance up at the clock. “So you’ve been here for four hours already and I’m only just now realizing this?”

“I can be quiet when I want to be,” Tré rolls his eyes as he tries unsuccessfully to open the pickle jar with one hand.

I take the jar from home and crack it open while giving him a knowing look.

He surrenders with a mischievous grin, his blue eyes twinkling merrily. “I was still drunk when I came in and so I passed out on the couch. I just woke up ten minutes ago because I had to piss like a race horse.”

“Thought it was something like that,” I laugh, getting up out of my chair and opening the cupboards. “Where did you go drinking last night?”

“Beckett’s had dollar pitchers last night, dude. I invited you and Mike to come with me but Mike couldn’t find you,” Tré stares at me like I’m crazy. “Best twenty bucks of my life. Ever.”

“I missed dollar pitchers?” I ask rhetorically, straightening up from my search of the cabinets on the floor. “Fuck my life.”

“Where were you anyway? It’s the second night in a row you’ve skived out on me and Mike,” Tré takes a particularly hearty bite of his sandwich. “You’re being awful mysterious, Beej.”

I scratch my head nervously and stare down at the counter. Someone has spilled something all over without bothering to clean it up and now it’s become sticky. “I had to pull a double, someone called off at work.”

“Are you sure?” Tré asks and without even looking at him, I know he’s narrowing his eyes at my back.

“Am I sure?” I repeat his question slowly. “Of course I’m sure, Tré. I need the money.”

He slams an open palm down onto the table suddenly, the noise reverberating throughout the room. “I think you’re lying, Billie. I think you’re planning the best birthday present for me ever and you just don’t want me finding out about it.”

“Tré,” I begin tiredly, shaking my head and smiling slightly at my best friend’s tripped out thought process. “You do realize that it’s June and you were born in December, right?”

“You’re just being thorough.”

“Right,” I laugh, turning around so I can see him again and leaning up against the counter. “I’m having stripper auditions and I want to make sure I get the perfect one just for you.”

“Oh Billie,” Tré squeals, his ham sandwich lying forgotten on the table. “You shouldn’t have. I think I’m tearing up.”

I laugh and start to walk into the living room, Tré’s antics forgotten for the moment. Zero, the stray tabby cat that Mike and I adopted when we first moved in, is sunbathing sluggishly on the windowsill with his tail curled comfortably around his body.

I throw myself down onto the sofa, kicking the crumbled pillow and blanket that Tré had used for his nap to the floor. With my hands tucked beneath my head and my feet crossed at the ankle, I stretch out and prepare for the lazy day ahead. I had nothing to do tonight until ten o’clock when we were due on stage at Gilman’s.

Tré wanders in after me, sitting down on the armchair with the stuffing leaking out on one of the armrests. “Can I light up in here, man?”

“Sure,” I answer without opening my eyes. “Just don’t light anything on fire this time.”

Tré doesn’t answer and for a few moments it is silent in the room until I hear a repeated clicking. I crack one eye open to see Tré cupping his hand around his light, pushing down on his lighter repeatedly. He tucks the lighter back into his pocket, exhaling contentedly before propping his feet up on the coffee table.

The heavy aroma soon fills the room and the familiar craving soon becomes apparent. I find myself sitting up and reaching for his blunt. Tré hands it over easily and I take my first hit expertly, the smoke burning in the back of my throat for only seconds before disappearing.

I blow the smoke out slowly, closing my eyes and enjoying the thrills that are racing through my body. I hand Tré back his goods before settling myself comfortably amongst the cushions, my hands folded over my stomach.

“I’ve missed this,” I announce suddenly, my eyes still closed. Tré makes a curious grunting noise to my right and I continue speaking. “This,” I motion with one hand. “The whole being lazy and smoking thing, just hanging out with my friends. I’ve missed it.”

“Says the working man who’s been gainfully employed for all of a week,” Tré snorts amusedly.

I flip him off and sit up straight. “I’m serious. I can’t remember the last time I just sat here with you and smoked.”

“I’m going to go with,” Tré taps his chin thoughtfully, staring up at the ceiling. “Two weeks ago when we got pants-shittingly drunk because you were having writer’s block. We used up most of our good shit ‘cause you felt it would help us write. It didn’t,” He adds unnecessarily at the end and I find myself frowning at the memory.

“Oh yeah. I remember now.” My eyes land on a black t-shirt that’s lying crumpled under the table. My mind goes off into two directions. One, who’s been slacking off on the laundry lately and two, does it smell presentable enough for me to wear tonight without offending anyone? “I’m pretty sure Mike started something that night though.”

Tré shrugs, handing the joint over to me so I can have another hit. “Maybe, I don’t know. I’m the drummer; it’s just my job to hit things. Both chicks and drums respectively, though I wouldn’t be opposed to doing both at the same time.”

The front door opens at this time and we both freeze, our eyes widening at the prospect of getting busted. My heart resumes beating when I spot the familiar lanky body trudging through the doorframe, chucking his keys onto the desk and kicking the door shut with his foot.

“Hey,” Mike says tiredly, easing himself down onto the sofa next to me and plucking the blunt from my fingertips. “I’m exhausted.”

“Why are you home so early?” I question, craning my head around to get a look at the clock. But it’s in the kitchen and I can’t see through walls so my efforts are futile.

Mike arches one eyebrow up at me and laughs a bit. “We were absolutely dead so I was allowed to go home early. No big deal.”

“But you have to work off that tab we rang up last night,” Tré interjects, his goofy voice sounding spacey and stretched out.

“You mean the tab that you rang up last night?” Mike asks, laughing a bit at our friend’s bloodshot eyes. “I paid with your cash.”

Tré laughs loudly and shakes his head, snorting a bit as he shifts himself around so he’s curled up into the chair. Mike and I exchange rather amused looks before Mike finishes the light off, flicking the dying embers into the ashtray.

“Where were you last night?” He asks suddenly, focusing in on the painfully simple task of crushing the embers. “I called your work and they said you got off at seven and that was at nine o’clock after Tré called me up, going on and on about dollar drinks.”

The overwhelming amount of guilt that I had successfully shoved away while smoking with Tré comes roaring back up over me and I sigh dejectedly, pinching the bridge of my nose rather painfully. “Something came up.”

“Something like?” Mike asks, trailing off his question so as to let me answer. But I don’t and his words just hang heavily in the air. “It’s not a girl, is it?”

“No,” I shake my head, refusing direct eye contact with my best friend. “It’s not a girl, Mike. I had to run over to David’s house for a bit.”

“That kept you out until one.” It wasn’t a question, but a statement.

“Well yeah, I missed the bus back to Berkeley and so I had to walk home from Concord.” I shrug again and stare up at the ceiling disinterestedly. “I thought you were still asleep when I came home.”

“I had just gotten in,” Mike answers, imitating my position sprawled out on the sofa perfectly. “I didn’t drink as much as Mr. Alcoholic over there because I had to work in the morning. You’re not in any sort of trouble, are you, Bill? Because you’d tell me if you were, right?”

I realize with a jolt in my stomach that Mike sounds deeply concerned. It’s not like me to keep secrets from him, especially ones of this caliber. I find my mouth struggling to form the words to tell him my secret but my body won’t obey my brain. I can’t tell him about this. My stomach flips uncomfortably as I come to the conclusion that this is something that Mike can’t be a part of because he wouldn’t understand. Mike already graduated high school.

“I’m not in any trouble, man. I’m fine.”

-X-

Two in the morning and I find myself sitting on the floor of my bedroom, a guitar in my lap and a notebook to my right with messily written phrases blotching up the page at random intervals. A cigarette dangles from between my lips, burning uselessly as I struggle to find the word I’m looking for.

I’ve always been a smoker. I started when I was only sixteen, bumming lights from older friends and sneaking hits behind parked cars during breaks at school. As time went by, I found myself spending more and more money on cartons and packs. I find myself relaxing whenever I have a familiar light in my grasp and when Green Day started to get somewhere and I started to spend more and more time on my lyrics, I would find myself more often than not at the kitchen table, lighting up. It has evolved into me locking myself into my room whenever my creative side strikes me and chain-smoking until I crank out a decent song or two.

My gaze flits spastically from the crooked lampshade to the rumpled bedcovers that I’ve pushed to the foot of my bed in my sleep and finally to the open window. The stars are shining brightly in the black sky outside and I find myself reading into their winking messages for a good ten minutes before moving on. Zero is cleaning herself meticulously in the nest that she’s made herself using my clothes, her almost silent mewling nothing more than background noise.

I finally spy the black leather jacket I had wore to David’s house draped over the back of my chair. From the pocket peeks the top of the book that I was supposed to have started two nights ago. The yellowed spine glares at me from across the room and I can barely suppress the sigh that escapes my mouth. Before I can stop myself, I’ve pushed the guitar aside carefully and gotten to my rather unsteady feet, the effects of a small detour to a party still rendering me rather clumsy and slow.

I knock the ash from my cigarette as I tug the book free from the pocket and sit down heavily on my mattress, the springs squeaking protestingly under my sudden weight. Smoke curls around my head as I stare down at the red and white cover blankly.

The horse seems to stare back at me knowingly and I blink harshly, my brain scrambling for a reasonable explanation. I had had too many beers tonight, that’s all. My examination of the paperback continues as I take in the bold yellow book title and the spidery, black J.D. Salinger at the bottom. My heart gives a sudden leap in my chest as I stumble upon the realization that there is a pole going through the horse, completely impaling it. It’s a carousel horse.

My curiosity is spiked and I find myself flipping the book over to read the short excerpt on the back. The words ‘A Literary Sensation’ jumps out at me in an unflattering shade of blue and underneath that, in tiny, black print is the synopsis.

My lips move silently as my eyes scan the small blurb. The irony of the situation isn’t lost on me and I find myself smiling as I reach the end of the paragraph. Holden Caulfield was apparently the icon for teenage rebellion and defiance—something that I had, depending on who you spoke with, mastered over the years. David had even stated that this was the perfect book for me.

Somewhere in the apartment the clock chimes thirty after the hour and in the next room, I can hear Mike turning over in his bed. Out on the street there is a loud swell of laughter and talking as someone exits one of the bars and then silence descends once again. A car rolls down the road swiftly, the headlights startling Zero from her nest temporarily.

The book weights heavily in my hand and I deliberate for a few more seconds. To read or not to read. I take one last deep drag from the cigarette, the ashes crumbling away as I’m left with nothing but the filter. I flick the butt through the open window before exhaling heavily, the smoke hitting the book directly and floating away easily. I shift backwards on the bed and prop myself up on my pillow before bending my knees and balancing the book on my stomach.

”If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.”