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. 

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