It was a lot of those little tea candles everywhere because the electric wasn’t on yet, and Libby and I did some lines. We were drinking Gato Negro—the cheapest shit you could get for money—and she was talking softly because she wasn’t sure of herself; she said she was wasting her time at community college: “But my cousin lives in California. I’m going to move there and live with her….She works for a movie studio in Hollywood….She tells me lots of inside stuff about celebrities, stuff the public doesn’t know about, like George Clooney’s actually gay….Yeah. But he doesn’t come out because it’d be bad for business….I’ll probably live with my cousin at first. She says she can get me a job.”
I said I’d miss her. She looked down into her cup. She wore lots of mascara. Her mother had died when she was in high school. I never asked how.
I said, “I don’t think it’d be possible for you to be any hotter than you are. You’re as hot as girls get. You’re as hot as it’s possible to be.”
She said, “Thank you.”
And when she was naked, she was on all fours, and I spit on her back.
She said, “Did you just spit on me?”
“Yeah.”
“You do whatever you want, don’t you?”
“Sometimes.”
“I think it’s a good thing.”
* * *
—
NEXT NIGHT we went to a Halloween party across town in Tremont. She had brought two friends with her: Gilda and Megan. Megan was the only one wearing a costume. She had dressed up as a Nazi. I’d said I wasn’t sure she’d be well received at the party if she went dressed up like that. But Gilda had said she was Jewish and Megan’s costume didn’t offend her so Megan would probably be okay. We did some lines and went to the party. Gilda met Roy there and Gilda left the party early with Roy. Then a girl named Jael got mad at Megan’s costume. She said her grandparents had been in the camps. Megan took the swastika armband off her sleeve, but she still had the jackboots and the brown shirt on and nothing to change into. So we left. We went back to my apartment and there was no more coke and Megan wasn’t feeling it. She said, “Take me home, Libby.”
“Let’s just stay a little while.”
“I want to go home,” she said. “I want to go home NOW, Libby!”
“Jeez. Okay. We’ll go. Just give me one second, will ya?”
Libby asked when she could see me again.
I said as soon as she possibly could would be best for me.
She said tomorrow.
I said tomorrow.
* * *
—
LIBBY HAD angel wings done on her back. On some places on the angel wings were names written in small script. “They’re the names of people I love,” she said.
She’d lie on her back and with her head over the side of the bed. She said she liked this. She went: lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky…
She was 19.
These girls had grown up with the Internet.
I came in her face.
Libby wiped the come off her face and licked it off her fingers; and she said, “The monkeys are eating cawwits and the wabbits are eating bananas!”
And I was depressed again.
* * *
—
I HAD money on Friday so I bought some heroin and shot it with Libby and Gilda.
Gilda said, “Oh, my. This is nice.”
Libby said, “Yeah, this is really great.”
Roy came over and shot heroin too. We all drank Gato Negro. We smoked all the cigarettes.
Gilda looked like Tinker Bell when she was wasted.
I wanted to fuck Gilda.
She spilled half a bottle of Gato Negro on the rug.
She said, “How careless of me.”
I said, “No worries, Gilda. You’ll have that.”
When we ran out of cigarettes Roy took Gilda home and Libby and I crashed but we couldn’t sleep. So we got up and we went and took a shower. That’s how I saw Libby without her makeup on. She looked so young it scared the shit out of me and I told her I loved her and she got real happy about it. She said she loved me too. This was the happiest that I would ever see her. And I already knew it would turn out bad because I was a fucking coward and my heart was rotten as shit.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Gilda was fucking Roy. She was also fucking an Israeli guy named Ricky. Ricky wore a leather jacket but he wasn’t shit. Libby told me about Ricky but I knew him from before and I knew he wasn’t shit. He was one of these ones that everything he says is a lie and he goes around telling girls he’s 27 when he’s more like 40. And he wore a leather jacket. And he wasn’t shit. One night Gilda and Roy and Libby and I went out to a bar and Ricky came around and it looked like there maybe was going to be some violence.
Ricky said to me, “Why does your boy keep looking at me like that? He needs to stop doing it. I’ll hurt him, bro. I was in the Israeli army.”
Roy was a fuck and I knew that. I’d seen him steal tramadols from a border collie with terminal cancer. But we went back a long way, and I was obliged to do whatever was necessary. There was that, plus Ricky was a bitch, and I didn’t believe that shit he said about Israel.
I said to Ricky, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’ll beat the fuck out of you.”
He said, “I’m not trying to start any shit with you, bro. I’m just saying that your boy should be more careful.”
“Nobody wants you here.”
“Fuck you, bro,” he said. “Who the fuck are you? You’re a fucking creep, bro. I know you’re getting those girls strung out on drugs. You’re scum!”
He had his mind made up that he wasn’t going anywhere. Maybe he was the chaperone. Who can know what’s in a man’s heart. Anyway the rest of us said fuck it and we went back to my apartment and we were locked out so I kicked the door in and then we shot heroin and did stuff like that. It got late and Gilda spilled wine on the rug again.
She said, “I’m so clumsy.”
I said, “Don’t worry about it, Gilda. You’re alright. But please be careful. I like this rug.”
Roy said it was the party rug.
This was the night I said to Libby I thought we ought to get married. And she agreed that we ought to get married. So we were getting married. We told Gilda and Roy. Gilda said, “How lovely! I’ll be the flower girl!”
Later I tried to fuck Libby but I couldn’t get it up because I was on too much drugs.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
I had quit my job that past summer. The job had paid eight dollars an hour. It had cost me almost that much in parking tickets. It was a lot of fucks who worked there anyway. Actually everyone who worked there was a fuck. Except Joe. Joe worked there and he was alright. The rest of them were shit. They’d tell on you to the boss. They didn’t do drugs. I think a lot of them were virgins. No one but Joe and I had ever had anything to do with murders or anything like that. The world meant something else to them than it did to me.
After he got back, Joe had had problems for a while. But he was getting better. He had stopped jumping out of moving cars every time he had a fight with his girlfriend when he was drunk and they were in a car. So that was progress. Soon he would be a decent human being again. We wouldn’t be friends much longer.
I was back in school because I needed the money for drugs. Poetry class was twice a week and I was usually in bad shape if I made it at all. The lady who taught the class was named Dr. Archer. She acted bitter as fuck for a woman as young as she was, seeing as it wasn’t like she was ugly or anything. She was real serious about poetry too. She came from England.
The class was doing “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” Dr. Archer was asking us about the end. I was pretty wasted on some fucking skag so I missed most of what she was saying. But I caught the last part: “?‘Beauty is truth,’?” she said, “?‘truth beauty,—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.’ What do you think Keats meant?”
No one tried to answer.
I thought, Fuck it. I’ll give it a shot. The line spoke to me, spoke to my heart, so how could it be that I should misunderstand it?