Stoner & Spaz (12 page)

“Did you just call up and talk to somebody?”

She shakes her head. “You can do that, but it’s all online.”

“Oh, well. I’m not on the net. My grandma’s afraid I’ll watch porn.”

“Oh, you’ve got to get hooked up. Then we could e-mail each other. I know about a thousand people who are totally into movies.” She finds a piece of paper in her slacks, plucks the pen out of my chambray shirt, writes something, and hands it to me.

“For when you get e-mail.” Then she backs away. “Okay? Don’t forget!”

I glance around. For the first time, I’ve got a secret, something I don’t want Colleen to see or to know about. In a way, I love it. In another way, it makes me feel weirdly unfaithful.

I scan the room for her, then make my way outside. The crowd has spilled onto the sidewalk, and I look for her among the smokers.

On a hunch, I limp down toward Melrose and peek into the first alley. There she stands, up to her neck in shadows, talking to a tall guy in leather pants that creak when he moves.

“Hey, Ben. Come here, baby.” She holds out the splif, but I shake my head. “Say hi to . . .”

He helps her out. “Nick.”

I nod. “We’re kind of going.”

“Okay.” She waves bye-bye to him in that woozy way people do. When we get out to the street she says, “Don’t get mad, okay?”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Like you had to.”

“I just worry about you, that’s all.”

“That was one of the nice things about Ed. He never worried about me.”

That stops me. “What a weird thing to say.”

“Is it? Makes perfect sense to me, but then I’m a drug addict.”

“Look, let’s just go eat, okay? That was the plan.”

She runs one hand across my cheek. “I can’t. Marcie’s okay, but your grandma makes me want to OD.”

She leans precariously, and I hold her up. “What’s going on, anyway?”

“Oh, I just . . . I don’t know exactly. Partly it’s those fucking meetings. All those burnouts do is play Can You Top This. One guy says he got so wasted he woke up in Tijuana, so the next guy says he got so wasted he woke up on Mars.

“And now my mom is talking about us going shopping together. She wants to get matching outfits so people will think we’re sisters. And I don’t sleep worth a shit anymore, so I’m taking her Halcion.”

“I thought you weren’t supposed to use any kind of drugs.”

“And then there’s that.”

“What?”

“You don’t trust me.”

“Colleen, you’re loaded now.”

“Sweetie, I’ve got a little buzz on. There’s a difference.” She takes a deep breath, coughs, and rubs her chest. “So that’s the long version of what’s going on. The short version is this: I’m not having any fun.”

“Is that what you were having that day out in the parking lot — fun? You could hardly walk. You spent three days in the hospital with an IV in your arm.”

She nods. “I’m not going to smoke that much anymore.” She makes a big curving motion with one hand. “Just enough to smooth out the edges.” Then she turns, seizes me, and puts her forehead against mine. She links her hands behind my neck. All I can do is look down and see her tiny skirt and precarious shoes. “That’s the deal, by the way,” she whispers. “We can still, you know, call each other and fool around and go to movies and stuff. But I’m going to be a little buzzed sometimes.” She steps back abruptly. “And I’m a little buzzed now, so I’m going dancing.” She holds out her hand. “You can come. It’ll be, well, fun.”

“You know I can’t.” I point toward the gallery. “Marcie helped with all this. And we have to take Grandma home.”

“I’ll be at the Aorta. You know where that is.”

I try to put my arm around her. “We’ll give you a ride. We’ll drop you off.” God, I sound desperate.

“No, no, no. That’s okay. I’ll go with . . .”

“Nick.”

“They’re all named Nick, aren’t they? Ever notice that?”

I watch her sway toward the Pontiac Firebird at the curb. The inevitable Nick leans on it, smoking. When she gets closer, he pushes away and opens the door.

And then I wish I had a camera, because a really beautiful shot composes itself: the palm tree on the left leans just like Nick. On the right hangs an enormous moon, the kind in old prints of sleigh rides.

I see Colleen’s high heels disappear into the car, catch a glimpse of her long, white legs. Then the driver folds himself into his side of the car and they speed away.

“Benjamin!”

I make myself turn around. There stands my grandmother in her pashmina shawl.

“Benjamin, we’re ready.”

I feel for the slip of paper Amy gave me. I look at my picture taped to the gallery window.

“Okay,” I say. “I’ll be right there.”

Figuring out his own heart may be the biggest challenge Ben “Spaz” Bancroft has ever faced
.

Beautiful but troubled Colleen Minou is the only girl who ever looked at Ben Bancroft as more than that kid with cerebral palsy. Yet the more time Ben spends with her, the more glaring their differences appear. Is what Ben feels for Colleen actual affection, or more like gratitude? Then there’s Amy (aka A.J.), who is everything Colleen isn’t, and everything Ben’s grandma wants for him. But does A.J. see the person behind Ben’s twisted body? In this darkly humorous follow-up to
Stoner & Spaz,
Ben tries to come to terms with his confused feelings toward A.J. and his inimitable connection to Colleen, who is sometimes out of it, sometimes into him, and always exhilarating.

I DON’T EVEN GET OUT OF BED before I light my first cigarette of the day. Light oozes through the lowered windows. Mexican light. It’s already hot. A faucet squeaks in the bathroom. The woman I was sent to find is in the shower. Water like silver moonlight pouring off her body. Well, I found her all right. I found her and I’m not taking her back to the United States or the Divided States or any other states. I’m taking her somewhere nobody can find us, ever
.

“Benjamin?”

“What, Grandma?”

“Are you awake?”

I can hear her right outside my door now.

“I’m going to yoga,” she says. “Will you be all right?”

“You go five times a week, and when you come back, I’m always right here in one badly assembled piece.”

I listen to her pad away. I’ve perfected getting out of bed, but it’s still not easy. Thanks to cerebral palsy (aka C.P.), I’m pretty much half a kid. The right side is fine, the left not so good. I saw a tree once that’d been struck by lightning. Part of it was all shriveled up. The limbs were naked and gnarled. The other part was green and good to go. I’m that tree. Struck by lightning.

No wonder I want to be Robert Mitchum: big, strong, super-cool, with those Freon eyes of his. That’s who I was pretending to be a minute ago — Robert Mitchum in
Out of the Past
.

But this is the present, where it takes me forever to get cleaned up, partly because I can’t stand to look at my naked self. That’s why I keep the TV on pretty much constantly. About a dozen physical therapists have told me to make friends with my body, but I just can’t.

Waiting for me in the kitchen is green tea and All-Bran. Grandma thinks there’d be world peace if everybody had regular bowel movements. Colleen and I cracked each other up once talking about the global power brokers meeting in their pajamas and passing the high-fiber cereal around while they chatted amicably.
The West Bank? It’s yours. Just make sure there’s an ATM. Pass the prunes, okay?

Colleen. Somebody I can’t think about. So once I’ve choked down the last bite of bran, I cross the street to my friend Marcie’s. It’s early and the neighborhood is quiet except for a gardener or two. One of them is sweeping with a big push broom because there’s a city ordinance about mowers or leaf blowers before eight a.m. South Pasadena is like that.

I’d be glad to push a broom if I could have two arms and two legs that worked. That’s what I tell Marcie right after she answers the door.

“Really?” she says, stepping back so I can get past.

“Absolutely. I’d have a pickup truck and a bunch of clients. I’d mow and rake all day, then go home and watch DVDs.”

“You should talk to them. Make another documentary.”

“About gardeners?”

“Why not? Your movie about high school killed the other night.” She points to the coffeepot. “Want some?”

I shake my head. “Grandma says I’m not old enough yet. And, anyway, it makes me jumpy.”

Marcie sits down beside me. The caftan she’s wearing this morning is blue, with gold birds on the sleeves. Her face is all angles but not hard-looking. Her life seems pretty sweet—nice house, enough money, time to do whatever she wants. But she’s had heart bypass surgery, a couple of divorces, and she goes to AA meetings.

“So you’re a bona fide storyteller now,” she says. “Part of a community of storytellers. What’s your next story? I think you ought to have a plan.” She stands up before I can argue.

Marcie takes batter out of her refrigerator and starts pouring perfect little circles on the griddle.

I get down a couple of plates, the ones she made when she was a potter and had a kiln of her own and a husband. On the bottom of each plate is a line from a poem, hers for all I know. The one I’m holding says,
Pleasure is permitted me
.

“What happened to Colleen, anyway?” she asks. “She sure disappeared in a hurry.”

I sit down heavily. Like there’s any other way for me. “With Nick.”

Marcie turns away from the stove and points a spatula at rue. “And this Nick is . . . ?”

“Just a guy with a couple of joints and a Pontiac Firebird. Can we not talk about it?”

“I thought she was going to twelve-step meetings.”

“She said she wasn’t having any fun. I said, ‘How much fun was it flat on your back in the hospital with IVs in your arm?’ And she said, ‘It’s just a little weed this time.’ How could she do that? Drive down there with us and then go home with somebody else?”

Marcie puts pancakes on my plate, then nudges the maple syrup my way.

“Besides being a card-carrying stoner, do you think she was jealous? People loved
High School Confidential
. So there you are with everybody shaking your hand, and there she is with a pin in her nose.”

“Everybody didn’t shake my hand, and she doesn’t actually have a pin in her nose.”

“I know you like her, Ben. And I’m not going to tell you girls are like buses and there’ll be a new one along in a minute. But you’re a talented filmmaker. You proved that at the Centrist Gallery. Concentrate on that.”

I take a bite of pancake. Colleen eats at McDonald’s. I’ve sat with her. I’ve paid for her coffee and McSkillet Burrito, first when she was groggy and wasted and couldn’t remember the night before, and then in rehab when she couldn’t shut up.

Never again, man. I’m not doing that ever again.

Marcie points her fork at me. “I’ve been thinking — for your next project, you need a camera of your own. You’re welcome to use mine again, but it’s from the Dark Ages. I’ll look around online.”

“Who’s going to pay for it?”

“Your grandma.”

I just look at her. “Grandma wants me to major in business, not film.”

“You can major in business and still make movies. You don’t have to be one thing; you can be a lot of things. Right now you’re in high school, so you’re really majoring in Getting Out with Your Frontal Lobe Intact. Anyway, all you really need is a nice little Flip Mino HD. Couple hundred bucks. Peanuts to somebody like Mrs. B.”

“I don’t know, Marcie.”

“Tell her you’ll never see Colleen again.”

“Colleen’s already history.”

“Maybe. But your grandmother doesn’t know that. And don’t say, ‘Oh, she was was at the gallery the other night, so she knows,’ because, yes, she was there, but she wasn’t thinking about Colleen.” Marcie narrows her eyes. “Negotiate, Benjamin. No Colleen, all As, and merit badges in Archery and Lifesaving.”

“Interesting sequence, given my skill with the bow and arrow.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I do. I’ll ask her. I will. At the gallery, she said she was proud of me.”

Marcie takes a sip of coffee. “For what it’s worth, I’m not so sure Colleen’s an ex-girlfriend. She likes you. I can see it when you guys are together.”

“Well, she’s sure got a funny way of showing it.”

Marcie picks up the small remote and aims it at the little flat-screen Sony. “Let’s see what’s on the movie channel.”

I take the bus to school. Not a regular school bus, not even the little bus, but a city bus, with real people going to real jobs. Or coming from real jobs, maybe, because about a third of my fellow passengers are crashed against the window or each other. If I had a little digital camera, I could take pictures of people sleeping. All kinds of people. Work up some kind of montage.

I look out the window. I look with intent. Kids walking to school, hoping they’re finally wearing the right outfit; people in their cars, putting on makeup, talking on their cells and eating bagels.

As we make the turn onto Glenarm, somebody’s lawn sprinklers are all out of whack. A big old geyser waters the concrete, and rich guys in their BMWs and Mercedes-Benzes weave around the downpour.