His eyes snapped to her face. Rick still asleep?
Yeah. She looked at him now. You boys can’t hold your liquor.
I don’t think it was the liquor.
Same thing.
You look like you’re feeling all right.
Like I said, you boys can’t hold your liquor. She was opening cabinets now, one after another. Don’t you have any coffee?
I don’t think so. Percolator doesn’t work anyway. Rick melted the cord.
No instant or anything?
Sorry.
She looked for a moment like she did not know what to do next, hand lingering on the faucet. Bum a smoke? she said at last.
He handed her the pack and she took one and he turned the burner on and she leaned in to light the cigarette, her head below him, hair a tangled nest where it had rested in sleep.
She came up drawing on the cigarette and then exhaled, the first puff swirling inside itself like a tiny whirlpool. Thanks, she said. She settled on one of the barstools at the Formica counter and sat staring around the room.
What do you do here all day? she said into the silence.
Me?
Who else?
He shrugged. Watch TV. Play Atari.
You got any weed?
I wish.
You need to go shopping. No OJ. No coffee. No weed. I’m going back to bed.
When she turned off the stool he said, Hey, where were you yesterday anyhow?
Yesterday when?
When we were gonna go pick up Rick. I waited for you but you didn’t show up.
Just got busy. That’s all. Probably just missed you.
He stood looking at her there, her eyes ringed with shadow, the cigarette in her hand. The T-shirt she wore had been purchased as a souvenir when he and Rick drove out to Reno from Battle Mountain for the Rush show at the Coliseum. A man leaning away from a five-pointed star. The band’s name in rainbow colors above it. Rick had been obsessed with the band’s then-new album, Moving Pictures, blasting it from a portable boom box that lay upon his lap as Nat drove them around Battle Mountain in the Datsun, often rewinding to play the cassette’s first song, “Tom Sawyer,” over and over again, the guitars and drums distorting from the tiny speakers. The show had been the first full-blown concert either of them had ever seen and it felt as if it had permanently altered something in both of them, not the music or the show but the whole of it: the drive to Reno, just the two of them, feeling as if they had burst through into some dream of the adult world that Nat, at least, had never even imagined could be real. With it came the understanding that there were places outside that ring of bare treeless hills so that when they returned from that first trip he could feel the constant tug of the long strip of highway that fled west through Winnemucca and on to the city. Even now every time he heard that song, a thin whip of anticipation cracked through him. Modern-day warrior. Mean mean pride.
Now here was the T-shirt on Susan, her nipples poking the fabric at the edges of the star.
All right, he said at last. Just wondered what happened.
She continued to stand there, not speaking, watching him.
What? he said.
That thing, she said. That’s still just between us, right? I mean, you’re not thinking of telling anyone about it.
I’m not. I wouldn’t.
Good, she said. There was no humor or friendliness in her voice now, just a cold clarity, and before he could think of anything to say in response she turned and he was left to watch her recede down the hall, the shirt’s black fabric pulling against her bare pale skin.
RICK FINALLY appeared two hours later, materializing from the bathroom with hair dark and wet from the shower, dressed in a T-shirt and black jeans, his eyes bruised with exhaustion. Susan was gone by then, had been gone for nearly an hour. She had said nothing to Nat as she passed through the room and out the door, did not even acknowledge that he was there at all.
Back from the dead, Nat said from the sofa.
I’m not sure about that yet.
Feelin’ it?
Shit, I haven’t even had a beer in thirteen months. You?
Like a truck ran me over.
You see Susan leave?
Yeah. Like an hour ago.
Shit, I must have really been asleep, Rick said. Hey, thanks for letting us use your bedroom.
No problem.
You’re gonna have to wash the sheets.
Kinda figured.
Rick smiled briefly, an expression that became a yawn. What’s for breakfast? he said, slumping onto the stool by the kitchen counter.
There’s no food.
Why not?
Ran out.
Shit, Rick said. No cereal or anything?
Nope.
You got any cash? I’ve been dreaming of Landrum’s for thirteen months.
Probably a little, Nat said. He had been watching a Channel 5 documentary on the lions of the Serengeti Plain. The big yellow cats had come down to a muddy watering hole in an increasingly bare and cracked desert wasteland. A small herd of water buffalo stood warily in the pool, their tails twitching like the tails of cattle, white birds riding on their smooth black backs. He turned the volume knob until it clicked and the animals became a bright white star and then were gone altogether.
Your mom called, he said.
How’d she sound?
Tired.
I need to call her, Rick said. Nat thought he might have a cigarette first but he settled onto a stool at the kitchen counter and lifted the handset and dialed the number. A moment later he said, Hey Mom. Yeah I’m out. Feels great. How are you doing? There was a softness in his voice now, a quiet care.