Home > The Disenchantments(16)

The Disenchantments(16)
Author: Nina LaCour

Eventually they will remember where they are and to whom they are talking, and they’ll sip their drink and say, So anyway. . . . I know this will happen, but I don’t wait around to see it, because I keep looking at that guy looking at Bev like he’s expecting her to take her clothes off for him later. And even though I know Bev wouldn’t do that, just the thought of it is too much for me to take.

So I take my Guinness and walk outside to find that night has fallen and fallen hard. I can’t see more than a few feet in front of me but I head away from the house anyway. The flimsy back door slams and swings open and shuts again. As soon as I get to the front they sound distant, like people I don’t even know. “You look so pretty, you look so pretty, like I cut you from a magazine,” Bev shouts.

I cross the street and listen: nothing.

When Bev and I were kids we would sing my dad’s old songs together. We listened to his cassettes until the tape thinned and broke and we had to pull the unraveled, tangled mess out of the tape deck and ask for another copy. He had an endless supply in a box in his closet. He pretended to be upset about the broken tapes, but it was no secret he was flattered. The band was long forgotten by then, but we memorized all the lyrics and learned the harmonies that he and Uncle Pete had arranged. We were a two-person cover band devoted to music that only my dad and my mom and her brother remembered.

I’ve walked several blocks now, away from Walt’s house, toward the water. Soon I’m on the path we walked earlier, heading back to Glass Beach. A car idles where I parked the bus this afternoon and a bunch of vagrant kids gather around it, their huge, worn packs cast aside on the street.

“Hey, man,” one of them says.

I tip my beer can at them. They raise brown bags in return. I keep walking, wondering what it would be like to be one of them, traveling around with no specific destination, just moving for the sake of it.

The moon is out over the rocks, bright enough that I can climb down to the water. In the darkness, the beach glass is colorless, unremarkable. Waves crash against the land and drown out the sound of my footsteps. I keep thinking about those recordings Bev and I used to make. There was one song we sang more often than all the others.

I hum the melody; the words come back to me.

Soon you’ll be leaving, I sing.

I sound good. I sound older. More like my dad in the original than the kid-me in the recordings.

I sing the whole verse louder. I really belt it out.

Soon you’ll be leaving

And I don’t know what I’ll do

You pull on my heartstrings

Till I’m tied up in you

Dad and Uncle Pete must have spent days on these songs, getting the words just right, all sweet and simple like they wanted them. They didn’t even have girlfriends. All the heartbreak was hypothetical. For some reason I start thinking about Walt living in that house with his dad all his life. PBR was right—it is pathetic. Which makes the thought of going home after this trip terrible. I can see it: me, Dad, and Uncle Pete. Drinking coffee together every morning. Taking day trips in Melinda. Listening to records and getting high on special occasions. Once in a while my mother will call from Paris and we’ll huddle around the phone to listen to the news of this one woman, the most important woman in all of our lives.

As I turn back I decide, No. I don’t know what I’m going to do now, but I promise myself that it won’t be that.

The post-show scene at Walt’s house is less than beautiful. Bev and the guy from earlier huddle outside, smoking cigarettes. I pretend not to notice them as I walk past, and Bev doesn’t say anything to me, either. Empty cans and bottles cover the basement floor, rendering the room demarcations irrelevant. Most of the people have already left, and those still here look drunk and tired and a little bit sad. PBR rests on the bed, a passed-out girl slumped against his shoulder. Across the room, Walt is stationed at a flimsy table, playing cards with Meg and two other guys.

I take a seat next to Alexa on the sofa, next to the card table. I’m feeling better after having had some time away. A little more like myself. She has the insert from a cassette tape unfolded, spread across her lap.

“What are you doing?”

“Reading along with the lyrics.”

Classic rock crackles from a corner of the basement where Walt has set a boom box on top of a pile of laundry. It looks like it could tumble over at any moment. Women with strong voices sing over a muted electric guitar and synthesized keyboard.

“It’s so eighties,” I say. “Who is this?”

“Heart,” Alexa says. She extends her hand, painted with the blue peace sign, and points to Walt’s poster that I noticed earlier. I take a longer look at it now as a song fades out, and Walt crosses the room to turn the volume up. Two girls with heavy eyeliner and blue eye shadow stare at the camera. They’re wearing black lace around their necks. One brunette, one blond; one expectant, one wistful. Skinny, some cle**age.

“Listen,” Walt tells Alexa. “This one’s very special.”

He returns to his seat at the card table but keeps an eye on Alexa to watch her reaction. A keyboard or piano starts—I can’t tell which—and soon one of the women starts singing about lying awake at night, wondering about the guy she loves. Then the drums and harmonies kick in, and she sings with this powerful classic rock voice about how she used to be independent and carefree, and now she’s consumed by desire. Apparently this was the night she was going to confess her love, but he hasn’t answered the phone or shown up to see her, so she lets out this kind of screaming wail and belts out the chorus again. I glance at Alexa, ready to say something smartass, but she blinks back a tear. Crying over these pathetic lyrics and synths? It knocks me speechless. I can’t even tease her.

   
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