An email from Maya.
I clicked it open, my heart already pounding, imagining the long, detailed replies she could have sent to my million messages, my two-word ones, and the ones that went forever, all my endless questions finally answered, and found: one small line, and one small link.
Hey Matt here’s some music you might like.
The link took me to a cloud storage site and downloaded a folder full of songs.
“Really?” I muttered, miserable.
While I watched the songs download, I typed and then deleted a dozen angry sentences. I cursed her out, called her selfish, demanded she return, begged her to explain what (or who) had driven her away. But of course I couldn’t send any of it.
The songs were punk-rock classics, old stuff from the Clash and the Dead Kennedys, and if there were secrets and clues buried inside of them they’d been dug in too deep for me to find. Only the last track mattered: “Black Coffee” by Destroy All Monsters!, Maya’s band.
And the song was good. Her voice was harsh and unyielding, the melody line intricate, the drums punishing. The production professional but raw, attesting to at least some level of actual studio activity. So maybe that much wasn’t a complete and utter lie. The chorus: chilling, chanted and then screamed, accusatory, and overwhelming.
The truth burns
Like black coffee
Bitter strong and cheap
“God damn,” I said to the empty room. “My sister’s gonna be a rock star.”
It wasn’t much. But it was something. Her anger fed me, filled me up. Gave weight and heft to my own.
My doorbell rang on my fiftieth listen. Mom was at work already.
Jehovah’s Witnesses, I thought, since they’re pretty much the only folks who ever knock on our door outside of election season, and I leaped down the hall excited about the possibilities for Messing With Them.
Do you guys like Jews?
What is your church’s stance on homosexuality?
Would it be a good place for me to meet a man?
You may have noticed by now that I was getting a little cocky.
Alas, no earnest shepherds waited on my doorstep to usher me into their flock. Just Tariq, looking a little nervous.
“Hey,” I said, opening the door.
The day was cold. I wanted to invite him in. The friendly thing to do would have been to invite him in. But then he would see the place, its tiny size and its clutter, smell its scorched-dinner stink.
“Hey, Matt.”
“Why aren’t you in school?” I asked. “I’m suspended, but what’s your excuse?”
“Decided to play hooky today,” he said. “Can you believe I’ve never done that before?”
“I don’t believe it, actually,” I said. “Aren’t you the senior class bad boy?”
“People only say that because I’m not white,” he said.
“And the nose piercing. And the general attitude of Screw your rules, society!”
He chuckled. “All of the above. So what do you want to do with this day of hard-earned freedom?” Tariq asked. “Whatever you want, we’ll do it. When’s your birthday?”
“February,” I said.
“Then consider this a belated birthday present from me,” he said.
“Coffee,” I said. “I want to start with coffee.”
Dunkin’ Donuts; Tariq ordered us two large black coffees, each with two shots of espresso added.
Espresso, it turns out, should be strictly regulated by the government, because that shit is the very definition of a mind-altering substance.
“Now where to?” Tariq said, leaning back in the driver’s seat. He needed a shave. Stubble caught the sunlight, made him radiant. “We could break windows in the old zipper factory, go to Albany and get some records from Last Vestige . . .”
I stared down the road in both directions, imagined all the adventures that awaited us either way. It had been so long since I’d had someone to go and do things with. And it felt good. And it made me angry that it felt good, because my friend was also my enemy. All that road, all the people who lived and worked and suffered and played and died just past my field of vision. All the paths we could take. I felt like a sieve, a funnel that all the joy and suffering in the world passed through. I wanted to cry.
In the long silence of my distraction, Tariq reached across and took something out of the glove compartment.
“Check this out,” he said, and read to me, “‘All I wanted to do was sneak out into the night and disappear somewhere, and go and find out what everybody was doing all over the country.’ Do you ever feel like that?”
He held up the cover of On the Road, and I thought of my dad, who snuck out into the night, and disappeared somewhere, and found out what everybody was doing all over the country. . . .
“I’m not Kerouac. I don’t want to see any people. I want to go to your Christmas tree farm,” I said. “I want to disappear in a forest of Jesus trees.”
“The Jew and the Muslim in Christmas Land,” he said.
I nodded, so we drove.
“So you like Jack Kerouac?” I asked.
“Love him. Like, how he writes is how I feel. How he sees the world. How much beauty there is, and sadness, and how much other people hold us back from experiencing what life really has to offer. You know?”
I did know. But I didn’t say anything.
Tariq’s Serious-Driver face broke into a brief smile at something remembered or imagined. I shut my eyes and breathed deep, trying to smell or hear his thoughts, but got almost nothing. He had so many walls up. A secret stood between us, something that scared him so bad that it overpowered everything else.
I came close to killing him in New York City. I didn’t, though, and now I know the reason why. I needed him to confess what he did. I needed the details, no matter how ugly they turned out to be, no matter how much it hurt, so I could help Maya heal.
Staying silent was tough, with two espressos hiding inside a large coffee inside my belly, but I managed. I could feel his discomfort, his confusion. We pulled off the road, down a dirt drive, came to a stop in an empty parking lot. “Jesus Tree Land,” he said.
We got out of the truck.
Below us a hill sloped down into a wide shallow valley, where pine trees grew in straight lines like marching soldiers. Before my eyes they grew from tiny saplings to mighty trees. Like a flipbook of the tree-maturation process. I stood there, in awe, my hunger-addled brain forgetting everything other than this simple moment. I shut my eyes, and I was a deer, a wolf, a bear standing in a forest, feeling winter come, feeling the earth beneath my feet, knowing I was part of everything that lives and dies.
“For every one we cut down in winter, we plant another in spring,” Tariq said. “Those tiny ones, we just planted them this year. Those down there—they’re older than us. Some of them are older than my dad. It’s kinda beautiful.”
“It is,” I said.
“Cigarette?”
“Yes, please.”
He lit mine for me after I fumbled several attempts with his Zippo.