“You can always come back when you need to,” she said, offering the most discouraging of all parental send-offs.
The day after Christmas, which was celebrated in the Davis household, with his parents and younger brother, Jay, with a cheese log and a HoneyBaked ham, Gavin and Betsy bought a bottle of Cuervo and sat on the beach, wrapped in blankets, passing it between them.
“Let’s do it,” Gavin said after his final swig. “Neither of us is getting any younger.”
“And then I have to say, ‘Or any smarter,’” Betsy added, pulling the blanket up around her shoulders. “I have to.”
Five days later, she was staring at Gavin as he filled the hallway/kitchen of Ari’s place, deep in a fake argument about the Clash with Ari’s boyfriend. Gavin, for no reason other than to piss off this total stranger, was firm on his position that Mick Jones could kick Joe Strummer’s ass. And his adversary’s stuttering response made him smile wide, turn to Betsy, and wink. Betsy mimed drinking a glass of water to Gavin, hoping he’d get one for her, and then she was horrified to realize that he might not know her well enough to know what she meant.
“So Ari tells me that your best friend was murdered,” said the sullen girl with deep burgundy-lined eyes, who had been chain-smoking Parliaments on the pullout couch where she and Gavin would later sleep. She extended the pack, with two forlorn cigarettes lingering in the bottom. “Want one?”
“Uh, yeah,” Betsy answered, struggling to keep her voice from cracking in her throat, which was parched from heat, smoke, and exhaustion. She had kept her anxiety in check as they crawled up the coast, silent through a snowstorm near the Virginia border. Her muscles tensed as the population density increased and the traffic grew thicker until they were at the mouth of the Holland Tunnel, struck dumb by the icy lower Manhattan skyline. She could barely eat. Every couple of hours she’d look over at Gavin, when he was behind the wheel of the car, or last night when he was huddled with her on the pullout under a slick polyester sleeping bag, and freeze in terror. What have I done? she thought. She waved to get his attention, and motioned for him to get her a glass of water again, tipping an imaginary glass to her mouth. Ginny would have known what I meant.
“So you’re saying that Big Audio Dynamite II is your favorite band?” She heard the poor sod plead with Gavin to use reason. “And you’re totally OK with putting that information out into the world?”
“So it’s true?” the Parliament girl said to Betsy, over the Love and Rockets song Ari was playing on repeat. They’d all split the handful of ecstasy tablets Gavin had offered, stolen from his brother, and driven across many state lines in his backpack, in exchange for a few nights room and board. Ari’s kicked in first, and she was having her moment in the corner, vigorously petting her cat, listening to “No New Tale to Tell” over and over again. “Do you know who killed her?”
“Not yet. They had some guy in custody, but he was just some punk kid who beat up his mom,” Betsy said. She flashed to the mug shot in the paper, the scarred face, the hooded eyes. She was surprised how she sounded totally unfazed, as though the information didn’t sting every time she repeated it. Ginny had been dead for four months. It had already been woven into Betsy’s story. Having a dead best friend was her normal. “He didn’t do it. The police just needed to put somebody in jail to make the university happy, and that guy’s number was up.”
“That’s major.” The girl nodded dumbly, her jaw grinding her back molars to tiny nubs.
“Yeah, real major,” said Betsy. “Hey, it’s got to be close to midnight, right? Doesn’t a ball drop or something? I might go get some air.”
She made her way across the small apartment, stepping over bodies, now quiet and huddled in pairs together on the floor, to Gavin.
“So you never learned the international symbol for thirst,” she said.
“Oh God, sorry, I saw you but I totally forgot,” he said. “I was distracted by what’s-his-name having a shit-fit about the Clash. I thought for a second that he was going to jump out of the window if I kept bagging on Strummer, but then I realized it was painted shut.”
Betsy filled the one clean cup she could find, a ceramic mug picturing a cartoon porcupine holding a balloon, from the tap.
“Meanwhile, Wednesday Addams on the couch over there was asking me for Ginny’s autopsy report,” said Betsy.
“You’ve got to be kidding me. Ari can’t keep her fucking mouth shut.”
“No, it’s OK. I’m alright. I just think I should grab my coat and get some air. Some frigid, lung-seizing air. I can’t take that everyone in this room is talking about Ginny.”
“That’s not fair, Bets. Ari didn’t tell everybody. You’re just being pa—” Gavin stopped himself before he could finish.
“Oh, I’m being paranoid? Where have I heard that before?”