Chapter 33

“There looms, within abjection, one of those violent, dark re-volts of being, directed against a threat that seems to emanate from an exorbitant outside or inside, ejected beyond the scope of the possible, the tolerable, the thinkable.” —Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror

The party was at the same apartment where Sinder had first met Rona.

The DMT apartment?  I don’t want to go to a DMT apartment.

Of course he wanted to talk to Rona and everything, to hear why she was dropping out of school, maybe even try to talk her out of it. But not if it was going to be in some kind of freaky hippy house with drums and aloe plants everywhere. He hated that crap.

Rona Gomez.  Why can’t you ever do anything normal?

“No, it’s not like that,” Sinder had said.  “It’ll just be a regular party.  Don’t worry, you’ll have fun.”

But the apartment was in fact like that. It was exactly like that.  To start, the guy who answered the door was barefoot and wearing a kaftan.

“Hey, Sinder, right?”

“Yeah.” Sinder looked over at Gavin like fuck, sorry.  “Um, this is Gavin.”

“Gavin.”  A warm smile, lights in his baby-blue eyes.  He was blond and had those ropey yoga-muscles. You could see a lot of his skin.  “I’m Dean. Welcome.”

This party sucked.

Actually it wasn’t even a party, just six people sitting around in the living room, smoking pot out of a vaporizer. Or vaporizing it or whatever.  No one seemed to be drinking, which was okay.  Sinder had declared a juice fast since Wednesday afternoon, after he woke up with tequila-vomit all over his bed, and Gavin had joined him in solidarity.  Well, he wasn’t doing the fasting part, but he was drinking the juice at least.

Rona was lying on the floor, her elbow propped on an embroidered pillow.  She was wearing her usual miniskirt, but no tights now that the weather was warm. Her legs looked good, kind of pale but not in the really blinding way white people’s legs got during Indiana winters.

“Oh, hey, you’re here!”  She sat up, smiled.  Her eyes were a little red and sleepy, but she sounded pretty normal.  Sinder sat down next to her, cross-legged.  Gavin stood for a moment, hesitating on purpose so that she would know how awkward this whole thing was, before he sat down, too.

This isn’t a party, he wanted to tell her.

“I didn’t know it was going to be this small,” she said. “Last time there were a ton of people.  Right?”

Sinder nodded.  “Well, like twenty.”  He looked at Gavin and mouthed the words: He was dressed normal.

The people up on the couch were passing the vaporizer again.  It looked like if you made a bong out of a clock radio.  Dean was sitting between two girls in tank tops and no bras, under a poster of—a fractal?  DNA though an electron microscope? Those patterns oil makes on water?

“Do you want to talk?” she asked. “We could go in Dean’s room.”

Going in Dean’s room was pretty much the last thing Gavin wanted.  But they couldn’t have a conversation out here, not with all this bohemianism five feet in front of their faces.  Whatever vapor was supposed to be, it smelled pretty much like smoke, and it was starting to give him a headache. That and the music, which was like two different songs playing at the same time.

“It’s cool,” she said.  “He won’t mind.”

Fine.  They all stood up at once, all three of them, which was probably weird but no one on the couch seemed to notice, and went into a bedroom in the back of the apartment.  It had a futon mattress on the floor and a batik tapestry pinned over the ceiling lamp, so the room looked all purple.  There was one small bookshelf with wood carvings all over the top. A small plant, not an aloe but some kind of ivy that crept all down the side of the shelf, just as bad.  A set of bongos against the wall.  Drums, check. Oh yeah, and in the corner, a fucking honest to god didgeridoo.  

Gavin hated this guy so much.

They sat in a triangle on the mattress, which felt creepy but there was no place else to sit.  It was covered in a brown wool blanket, maybe army surplus.

“So yeah.”  Rona arranged herself so you couldn’t see up her skirt.  “I have really great news. I’ve been accepted into an arts program in New York.  I’m going to leave in a couple weeks.”

“Hey, awesome news,” Sinder said.  Okay, that’s what Gavin would have said, too, but he wouldn’t have sounded so goddamn pleased about it.

“I’ll be working on my tree politics project.”  She was smiling, glowing.  Pushing her hair back, shy to be so happy.  Scratching her leg where it was pressing on the blanket. “They’re going to give me a scholarship.”

“Congratulations.”  Gavin looked down, watched her shin turn red under her tattered fingernails. “That sounds like a great opportunity for you.”

“It is.”  

Her hand touched his knee.  Jesus.  Electricity shot through his thigh, groin, stomach.  He looked up, faced that blissful smile, I-love-you smile that he didn’t want to see, because even though it was pointing at him, it wasn’t really for him.  It was for leaving.

“I wanted to make sure I told you personally.”  She turned, faced Sinder, made it clear she was talking to both of them.  “You guys are pretty much my favorite people in New Buffalo.”

“We are?” Gavin asked. Okay,  not smooth, but really.  Was she putting them on?  “I mean.  Why?”  

“Why?”  She looked like it was a weird question, which it probably was.  Sinder was giving him this look like what is your problem?  “Well.”  Fuck, what if she couldn’t come up with an answer?  

She grabbed one of Dean’s pillows, propped it under her, lay down on her side like she had been doing in the living room. Her hips looked how they had looked in her roommate’s bed, rolling hills, like you wanted to skim your hand over them.

“Because you care about ideas.  You care about them so much, you dedicated your whole lives to studying them.  You’re the kind of people I thought I was supposed to meet in college.”

She sat back up, cross-legged, and for a fraction of a second he could see red underwear. Then she hugged the pillow against her so it blocked the view.

“I thought college was going to be all about thinking.  Like I’d be having these deep discussions about books all the time. I know, that’s kind of unrealistic.  But yeah, it’s pretty much like high school.  Find the quote, write an essay.  I mean, no offense.”  She looked at Gavin, guilty.  “Your class was my favorite.”

Was.  That kind of hurt.

Then he realized: this was the last time he would see Rona Gomez.  

Fuck.  That was horrible.  A tornado destroyed your house, your entire family was dead.   Horrible. 

“I was thinking about moving to New York,” Sinder said.

“You were?” Gavin asked. 

Sinder gave him an annoyed look, shut up.  Okay, right, shut up.  But he wondered if Sinder had really been thinking about it before now.  It kind of made sense. Sinder was from New Jersey, but his parents lived in Texas now.  He could drop out of school, leave New Buffalo, but there wasn’t anyplace for him to go back to. 

“You should come with me!”  Rona let go of the pillow with one hand, reached out, actually grabbed Sinder’s hand in hers.   “I’m taking a train.  It would be fun to go together.  And I need roommates.”  She turned to Gavin.  “You should come, too!”

“What, like move to New York?”  Was she serious? You didn’t just decide to move to New York in two weeks. Anyway, he couldn’t leave.  “I’m still teaching.”

“Yeah, but only for like three more weeks.  You could drive out and meet us.”

Us. 

Gavin shook his head.

“Why not? You’re done with your PhD, right?  Did you end up getting a job somewhere?”

“In Kansas,” Sinder said, like that was just further evidence for their argument.  They were both looking at him, their hands still clasped in solidarity: Say yes. Join us.

He was flattered and everything, and he really didn’t want to ruin the mood, but it wasn’t like you could make decisions that way.  Sure, move to New York in three weeks.  Throw away your entire career, the degree you spent the last seven years of your life on, the job already offered, the stepping stone.  He knew it was good to be spontaneous, adventurous, and he could try.  But this wasn’t some weekend trip to Bloomington, some day of wandering around drunk in the woods instead of going to his office hour. This was his life.

He looked over at the bookshelf, like maybe there’d be an answer over there, some book title about being a free spirit or staying true to your dream or something. All he could see was a bunch of accounting textbooks.

“Hey, guys.”  Dean was in the doorway.  Whatever he’d been doing on the couch had gotten his kaftan a little crooked. It was falling seductively off his left shoulder, showing the blond fuzz covering his left pec.  One hand was braced on the doorway, the other holding a small glass pipe.

“Everyone left.” He shrugged, no big deal, used his free hand to straighten the kaftan back out.  “Do you want to do some DMT?”

“Gavin’s not into that,” Rona said, fast and firm, like she had been worried he might offer. 

“Oh, sorry, man, that's cool.” He hid the pipe behind his back.  “It’s not everyone’s thing.”

“No, it’s my thing,” Gavin said. 

Okay, wrong. Try again.

He leaned back on the bed, put on his best attitude of nonchalance, channeled Braden.

“I mean, you guys know me.”  Confident, relaxed, stupid.  Pure protein explosion.   “I’m down for whatever.” 

<Chapter 32

Chapter 34>

Chapter 32

“This is going to sound really fucking stupid.”

Sinder took another gulp from the tequila bottle, held it out towards Gavin.  

“Have some.”

It wasn’t far to reach. They were sitting against adjacent walls of the tree house, knees bent, feet almost touching.

“Water,” Gavin said.

Sinder shook his head, slow, right, left, right. 

“Tequila then water.”

Fine. Gavin took the bottle, drank, felt the alcohol stinging his dry esophagus, probably giving him cancer.

“Okay, here.”  Sinder looked around in the backpack, found the second water bottle, the one that still had water in it.  It was red with a big dent on the side. He traded it to Gavin for the tequila. 

Gavin’s hand was unsteady opening the bottle.  Should have brought more water.  And that leftover pizza.  Sinder had said they were going for a walk, not some kind of epic nature adventure.  He was hungry, thirsty, scratched and a little bloody.  Tired and drunk.  He drank half the water,  stopped, thought about making Sinder drink some.  Then he drank the rest. 

He leaned harder into the wall, tilted his head and looked up.  No ceiling: just a kaleidoscope of leaves and branches going up, up, so high you couldn’t see where it ended.  He breathed deep through his nose, used his sleeve to wipe sweat from his forehead.  Closed his eyes against a flash of midday sun through the leaves.  

“I’m terrified of the abyss,” Sinder said.

Gavin opened his eyes again, looked at Sinder, all bony bent knees and drunken clamminess.

“You’re terrified of the abyss.”

“The abyss.  Falling off the edge.”

Well, sure.  The abyss.  Gavin was scared of that, too.  How all your daily activities and routines and plans and whatever were basically a fragile scaffold poised above the bottomless void of meaninglessness.  But the worst thing was to think about that kind of stuff.  Everybody knew that, right? It was like those chocolate donuts.  Don’t contemplate that chemical taste behind the oiliness. Just eat it.  Chew, swallow, be nourished.

His stomach growled.

“Can I have a donut?”

Sinder passed the chocolate box.  Gavin unstuck one—they were really a mess now, all melted and squished—pulled it out, shoved the whole thing in his mouth.  Washed it down with some of the tequila, since there was no water left. 

“Did you always want to be a Stump scholar?” Sinder asked.

A Stump scholar?  Gavin shook his head. No one, not even Grover Maloney, always wanted to be a Stump scholar.  That was the kind of thing you didn’t discover until your junior year of college.  Right around the time your professor called you aside after class, said, You seem to have an unusual facility for Modernist literary analysis.  Have you considered a Ph.D?

“I wanted to be a philosopher since I was maybe nine or ten,” Sinder said. “Ever since I learned what a philosopher was.  It was so fucking cool, you know: a philosopher.  Like Socrates. My parents were like.” His accent turned sing-song, less of an imitation and more like he became his Indian father for a second. “Son, that is very cute but you’re not going to be a philosopher because that is not even a real job.”  

Something was waving around in Gavin’s vision. He put his hand in front of his face.  A little spider, hanging on a thread. It started crawling up his arm. Usually he’d squash it, in the apartment, anyway.  But now he was in the spider’s apartment, so it seemed kind of unfair.  He used his left thumb against his index finger to flick it off.

“Everything I’m studying is about making choices,” Sinder said. “But I haven’t been making any choices at all.  I’ve just been staying here, writing stupid papers about ethics, being a philosophy student because that’s what I said I was going to do.  It’s just, if I stop.  You know.”  

The sunlight landed on one of his eyes.  He blocked it with a skinny brown hand, looked upwards, squinted.  Gavin looked up, too.  Up, up, up.  How tall was this tree?  It seemed to stretch at least as high as the English department building, maybe taller.  He wondered how many years it had been alive. You were supposed to be able to tell by counting the rings, but only after you cut it down.

“What?” Gavin asked. 

“I won’t have anything.  I’ll have. Just.” He picked up the tequila bottle, started to unscrew the lid.  Looked at it like How did this get here?  Set it down, tilted on its edge.  It started to fall, but he steadied it.

Gavin picked up a dry leaf from near his foot, held it in his palm. This tree must be older than the university.  Maybe even older than the town of New Buffalo.  He wondered if it would still be there after the university and the town were gone.  He would be dead, and Sinder would be dead, everyone he had ever met would be dead, and this tree would still be here.

“You have to leave school,” Gavin said. 

“I know.”  Sinder picked up the tequila again, opened it, sniffed it.  Put it back down, uncapped.  He picked up his own leaf off the floor, dry and heart-shaped, closed his hand around it.  Then he opened his hand, looked at the crumpled leaf, flattened it back out.

“So like, you and Rona,” he said.  “I mean, you fucked her, right?”

He looked really sorry right after he said it.  He passed over the tequila like an apology.

“Yeah.” Gavin took the bottle, held it up next to his leaf, making a little still life in the air.  “Um, did you?”

“No, I told you I wouldn’t.” He burped, put his hand across his mouth.  “But we sort of made out once.”

Gavin rolled his leaf into a cylinder, shoved it down the neck of the bottle with his finger.  It fell to the surface of the liquid and bobbed around.

“That’s good,” Sinder said.  “I probably shouldn’t drink anymore, anyway.”  He lay down on his back, his legs up the wall.  Stared upwards, squinted, covered his face with his arm. “This tree is way too tall.”

Oh, shit.   

Gavin could smell the barf even before it came out of Sinder’s mouth.  Sugar and stomach acid and tequila, like a moldy margarita.  He thought about not cleaning it up, but it seemed like an asshole move to leave vomit in what was probably some kid’s clubhouse. He ended up shoving all the donuts into one box, using the other box to scrape up the pile. He even buried the box in the mud next to the pond, once he managed to get Sinder out of the tree, which basically entailed Gavin standing on the ground and letting Sinder slide down his body like a fire pole.

The walk home seemed like it took at least a year, but according to Gavin’s phone it was only an hour and fifteen minutes.  At four forty-five, Gavin remembered his office hours.  He tried to call the department secretary to cancel them, but his phone wasn’t getting any signal.

Back at home, Gavin sat Sinder on the couch, made him drink two glasses of water and take Advil and eat two slices of cold pizza. He brought him a wet facecloth to clean up a little, helped him pull his dirty clothes off, tucked him into bed with a bucket next to him just in case.  Watched him for a moment, moaning and half-asleep, but still sweet like a baby with his eyes closed, before pressing the door quietly shut. 

He kind of wanted to change out of his own dirty clothes but he was too tired.  He sat on the couch with the last two pizza slices and a pint glass full of water.  He was still starving after he ate them.  That was okay; the awesome thing about pizza was that you could always order more. He found his phone—it had gotten into Sinder’s backpack at some point, next to the box of smashed cinnamon and chocolate donuts and the tequila with the leaf floating in it.

The screen said that he had missed two calls.  Crap.  That meant a student had complained about him not being at office hours.  He dialed the number for voicemail, put the phone on speaker, set it on the arm of the couch. 

Um, Gavin, hi.

The voice booming out of his tinny phone speaker was not the English department secretary.  It was Talbot De Kesel from Santa Clarita University.

Listen, sorry to leave this on your voicemail.  I really wanted to get you in person, but I need to call all the candidates today and I wanted to make sure you got the message.  We’re suspending the job search. It’s not you guys, we had a great crop of candidates, it’s just this crappy budget.  H.R. finally just gave us the definitive answer that there won't be funding for the position. I know you know how these things go.  I’m really sorry, and if the position becomes available again sometime in the future, we’d be happy to have you apply.  Though of course I’d understand completely if you didn’t want to.

Well, fuck.

Gavin got up, sniffed his shirt.  Dust, sweat, tequila vomit, fake chocolate.  Perfect.  He put his hands to his face, felt the dirt, the sap in his hair.  Now he was going to get in his car, drive to the Drunken Buffalo, sit in the corner by himself.  Drink beer and eat cheeseburgers  and chicken wings until he was sick.

He put his wallet and his keys in his jeans pocket.  His phone was still on the arm of the couch, the screen lit up, connected to voicemail. Just looking at it made him angry and nauseous.  He left it there.  Hopefully Sinder wouldn’t die in his sleep while he was out, because Gavin was going to be unreachable. 

<Chapter 31

Chapter 33>