He’s talking about moving to Oregon. He does this a lot. Gene’s never been there, but one of his dad’s biker friends moved to Bend last year: every time he’s back in town, he gets drunk with Gene’s dad at their kitchen table and talks about how nobody gives a shit what people do up in Oregon. Then, for the next week, without fail, these are the stories Gene relays to Jesse. “All the pussy you can eat up in Medford,” he says. “Even the Oregon cops smoke pot,” he says. “Super-clean microdot coming out of a lab in Eugene, they sell it to you in little vials, you can just drop it on your tongue and you’re flying,” he says.
He sticks his tongue out when he says this, pointing at the tip. He’s like this all the time now. It’s weird and uncomfortable to be around. Jesse doesn’t really have any other friends, so he hopes he can be a positive influence on Gene, but, at the same time, his own natural stance is a sort of half-paralyzed neutrality: his positive charge is weak. He likes how hanging out with Gene seems to make him care less about stuff that usually bothers him: moving out, for example. Jesse really wants to get out of his house and live somewhere else, by himself, and he knows he’s going to need money to do that: first and last and deposit, that’s what everybody says. But to hear Gene tell it, there’s a million ways to get first and last and deposit together.
“You just say the word, little brother,” he says now, drawing on his cigarette, still chewing. “People act like money is such a big deal, there’s a million ways to get money. Nicky comes down here with everything he needs in a brown bag and leaves town with thousands of dollars. Thousands. Sits in the kitchen talking on the phone for maybe ten minutes, some other people come by a little later, and he’s good for two months. Three. Barely has to lift a finger.” Nicky is Gene’s dad’s biker friend; because Gene’s dad’s apartment is such a shithole, Jesse wonders if Nicky the biker who lives in Oregon now is exaggerating a little to impress his friend, or if maybe Gene’s just making stuff up. It could be either, but there’s no point trying to find out, when Gene’s like this.
“There’s some new apartments over in Los Osos,” he continues, Jesse still waiting out the storm. “Not even expensive. We could talk to Nicky, get the work done, pay all the up-front on one of those, and—shit!—can you even imagine? Right out there on the fucking bay. We can totally put this together. Nicky can probably get us a stereo, too, he hooked my dad up with one. Big, loud speakers.”
The way Gene talks about his dad paints a picture of a household in which father and son get along famously, but Jesse knows that this is not the case; he doesn’t understand why Gene puts so much effort into keeping up this fiction. Gene’s father is worse than Jesse’s ever was. The magnitude of his presence in Gene’s life can hardly be measured. Once, when Jesse was over at Gene’s watching television, Gene’s dad came into the room, looked at the two teenagers sitting on the floor, and then, to his son, said: “You always gonna be a piece of shit?”
When Gene didn’t answer, his father laughed and went back down the hall to the bedroom, where a radio was turned up too loud. The living room with the television is also Gene’s bedroom; he sleeps on the couch.
“We should just tell my dad to tell Nicky to find us the biggest speakers he can get,” he says now, in the car, wiping his mouth with a handful of napkins. The tacos are gone; he’s slowing down a little. “Big honkin’ cherrywood housing like in that one magazine, remember? I can get money.”
Jesse does not remember that one magazine. There’s a part of him that thinks he should try to steer the conversation someplace else, just in case Gene’s serious one of these days: there was the time he shot at the windows of Cork ’n’ Bottle Liquors with his BB gun. Nothing ever came of it, but it had been frightening, sitting in the passenger seat watching his friend pull the trigger in the dark, the BBs bouncing impotently off the glass, leaving a bunch of little marks. But the greater part of Jesse is too numb to act. It’s how he is.
“I know exactly where I can get money,” Gene says, his gaze out in the oleander that edges the parking lot.
* * *
YOU’RE HAVING LUNCH. There are seven class periods per school day, each teacher carrying a six-class load: you’re expected to take lunch at the same time the students do, after fifth period, and to spend a floating open period either grading papers or holding office hours. Some teachers try to game their schedules to allow them to either sleep in or clock out early, but this year you’ve opted for the long lunch: fifth period’s your off period. You could drive home if you wanted, as long as you kept track of the time—you wear a wristwatch from Japan, a Seiko. Its face glints so brightly in the sun—you could use it to flag down a plane. But then, just as you’re clearing the parking lot, you think: What about fish and chips. Sam’s. Why not?
The drive along the water today is hypnotic in its beauty: the sun, the sea, the brush growing along the roadside blurring green and reddish brown at forty-five miles an hour. It was drives like this that led you to buy the convertible: other teachers tease you about it a little. It’s a Mustang with plenty of wear on it—the newer models all look cooler to the kids, and the older ones won’t be considered collectibles until long after your name’s passed into legend. You bought it used last year; it’s a little like an oversized hat on you. Kids who see you driving do a double-take: Is that Miss Crane? With the top down? You relish these reactions. They keep you feeling young.
Sam’s sits directly on the bay; they have a seal in a tank on their boardwalk, which is a little sad, but the seal himself seems happy enough, and you’d never get to see one close up otherwise. They sell raw fish you can throw to him. Sometimes he snaps it right out of the air. But today you don’t buy him any fish, because he’s lazing on the concrete that abuts the tank; you don’t want to wake him up. He looks so peaceful, as long as you don’t think about the ocean and about how he has to smell sea breeze all day without ever getting to swim in the sea.
You’ve brought the Telegram-Tribune with you, and you do the crossword while you wait for your lunch, gazing out at the bay when you’re stuck for an answer. You finish about half the puzzle waiting, and then the food comes: the breading is a little heavy, but crisp, and the chips are steaming hot. When the waiter asks if you want more water, you ask if they have 7 Up; when he says, “Sure,” you smile like a little kid who’s just learned about Christmas presents: “I’ll have that, then,” you say.
We know about this because the waiter remembered.
* * *
THE DRIVE BACK to school is even better than the drive out—the bay right there outside the driver’s-side window as you leave, the sun just beginning its descent into the western hills. The top down, the smell of the sea. People still pull up roots and move to California on a whim all the time, and days like these are why—to find light like this in the early afternoon, you’d usually have to travel to Crete, or to the South of France, but here in Morro Bay, every time the clouds clear, you feel like you’re drifting through a golden moment that might never end.