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.” 

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