Wait Until Twilight (18 page)

J
IM SWINGS BY THE SCHOOL IN HIS PICKUP TRUCK
and tosses me the keys. “You drive,” he says. He turns up the stereo on the classic rock station and stares out the window as I drive home to pick up some clothes. Then we head west. My hands are steady. It’s good to be moving, to have a focus, a purpose. Instead of going straight back to Jim’s place, he takes me on a short tour of the college, something he’s never done. He takes special care to drive me to all the buildings where his classes are. “Don’t worry. I’ll give you a campus map, clear directions, and my truck. It’ll be easy. Here, before I forget.” He hands me his student ID card. “This will get you into the gym. It’s got everything in there.”

“Is there a pool?”

“Yeah, two: one Olympic, one smaller. Don’t lose that thing.”

“I won’t.”

“I’ll show you the main student parking decks.”

We park and walk from the student parking lot to the small downtown area, which is connected to the college. It’s almost as if it’s an extension of the school. Downtown consists mostly of restaurants, shops, bars, and the like, all set in a half-mile-by-half-mile grid. It makes getting around easy by foot.

“Do you have enough cash?” he asks.

“Yeah.”

“While you’re here you should try the restaurants, especially when you’re at school—just walk up here to town and get something.” He walks me around to several inexpensive restaurants of high repute, the highest of them being a Mexican place called Taco Pichu. After having one of their black bean burritos, I know I’ll be going back there later in the week. It’s massive and costs only three dollars. I didn’t think it was possible to fill one’s stomach at a restaurant for three dollars, but I was dead wrong and glad of it.

Instead of walking back, we take a campus bus back. It’s twice as long as a normal bus and is subdivided into two sections that are connected with this accordion-like center region.

“The bus driver looks young,” I say.

“All the campus drivers are students.”

“What about the lunchroom ladies?” I’m imagining pretty young lunchroom girls. Then a ton of people get on the bus. All the seats get taken, and so the rest have to stand.

“Incoming freshmen,” Jim whispers.

Two girls are standing right beside me. It’s so packed in there one of them has to kind of lean over me, and her blond wavy locks hang over my head like vines from a tree. It keeps touching the top of my head. I look up and her face is red. For some reason I feel my spirit lifted a little, my heart beat stronger, and I realize how weak
and lost I’ve felt for the past few weeks. I feel different here. The bus goes onto the campus, where the two girls got off along with everyone else. I can see out the window they’re met by a couple of fraternity-looking guys. I find it sad and then annoying. Jim and I get off at the main parking deck. Then it’s back to the apartment to relax.

“Here,” Jim tosses me a red T-shirt with
T-MODEL
written across the front.

“Thanks,” I say, and put it on over the T-shirt I’m wearing. “Shouldn’t it say ‘Model-T’?”

“Nope.”

I lay out on the sofa watching television while Jim works on his school assignments and readings that have been piling up since he started his job. I don’t mind, though. Jim’s kind of acting like the old Jim again.

That night I make the mistake of sleeping in Carl’s bed again. I dream…

…I’M WORKING ON A
very high-tech offshore oil rig out in the Gulf of Mexico. It looks futuristic, all metal and smooth lines. Almost everything’s done by computers and robots. I head a crew of five men who make sure each sector they’re in charge of is running smoothly. Then one day the rig is taken over by an evil force. It’s those two fleshy masks from Carl’s room. They’ve used their evil to control the machines on the oil rig, which go on a rampage to destroy me and the crew. I lead the crew through a secret small corridor in the heart of the rig. Then through all these glass doors, the last of which is guarded by these gigantic robotic hands that grab one of my men. I dodge the hands and run up to the surface and into the control
room where those two masks are. This haunting violin music starts when I see them sitting there on the shelf staring at me with their evil eyes…

THEY SCARE ME AWAKE
. I take the blankets from Carl’s room and crash on the couch. That’s the last time I sleep in Carl’s bed.

T
HE NEXT MORNING I GET UP EARLY
, have a bowl of cereal, and then put on a pair of Jim’s exercise shorts and throw one of his towels in my backpack. I take the truck to the school fitness center, where a security guard who barely even glances at Jim’s ID lets me in. Past the running machines and stationary bikes where a dozen or so students are exercising I find the locker room to change. When I get to the swimming area, it’s just me and two blonde girls sitting in the corner of the pool talking. One is pretty, and the other isn’t so pretty. I get the feeling they’ve just finished training.

“Are those things allowed in here?” asks the pretty one, pointing at my exercise shorts.

“And isn’t he supposed to be wearing a swimming cap?” asks the not-so-pretty one who’s attractive regardless.

“Yeah, I think so.”

“I don’t have a swimming cap,” I say.

They both think that’s funny.

“If you help me move this table, then we won’t say anything this time,” says the not-so-pretty attractive one.

I help her move a white plastic table at the end of the smaller pool to a room in the back that’s full of chairs and other tables. They go back to sitting in the corner talking, and I start doing laps at my snail’s pace. I swim back over to where they are when the not-so-pretty one says, “You look so young. You’ve gotta be a freshman, right?” She speaks with a little accent, like she’s from another country.

“I’m just visiting my brother,” I say. “He goes to school here.”

“You from Joja, too?” she says with a faux southern accent. It sounds funny coming from a girl with an accent of her own. “I’m from Hawlland.”

“You look like real swimmers.”

They laugh. “Yah, we are, watch this.”

The girl from Holland stands up on the edge and then jumps into the water, wrapping her arms around her folded legs. Her top comes off and she grabs it when she comes up.

“That’s not good!” she says.

I want to tell her not to worry because I’ve seen boobs before, though not in real life, but still, I have seen them. Instead, I get out and jump in, too. Before long I’ve learned their names are Elise and Heidi, and I’m right, they’re both on the swim team. They’re both freshmen, and they live in the nearby dorm rooms. They have to leave but before they do, they invite me to stop by sometime, some place called the Ridgeland Girls’ Dormitory. Then I have the entire pool to myself for a while. I’m glad because I swim so slowly. It’s been a couple years since I’ve swum. But it’s fun, and I feel
stronger and better off for it. Not only because of the swimming but those girls were nice, too. Daryl seems a millions miles away at that moment. With girls like these around I feel safe from the likes of him. Not that they could beat him up or anything, but he wouldn’t come into a place like this. He wouldn’t belong there. I keep doing my laps until a middle-aged woman and an old lady show up. Then I head out.

Jim doesn’t get up until late in the afternoon. He gets a bowl of cereal and tosses me a psychology textbook. “This is for Monday.”

“What? I have to read this by Monday?” I lie back on the sofa and peruse the pages.

“Just chapter seventeen,” he says. “That class is big, but we do a lot of group work, and she’s always giving pop quizzes on the previous chapter. Otherwise, I could just skip class and get the notes from my buddies. I already told Mitch and Chang you’d be there for me. So just hook up with them. Mitch’s a short-haired Jewish guy. You know Chang.”

“Sure.”

“I can take care of school and work tomorrow myself, but I’m gonna need the truck to get around, so how about I give you a ride to campus in the afternoon? I’ll finish work and stop by before I go to school, that way you can sleep in and then hang out on campus.”

Jim gets on his computer and starts working on an English paper while I try to read the chapter in the psychology textbook. Not only is it complicated as hell, but because I haven’t read the rest of the book, I keep having to go back and look things up. I only get through half of it before I get irritated and turn to the television, which is showing a documentary on a rock star from the seventies who had everything and then lost it all. There’s even a reenactment of when he gets fired by his band, beginning with a close-up
shot of his face when he says, “You insult me and now you kick me out of the band? You ‘bleep bleep bleep’ looking down on me, you ‘bleep.’” Then the camera pans away, and you can hear him vomiting. The camera turns back and shows him promptly throwing up all over the floor. There’s a deliberate out-of-focus shot of the vomit discoloring the floor. I turn to the Food Channel.

A
N OFFICE BUDDY PICKS JIM UP FOR WORK
early Monday morning. I stay on the sofa with my eyes closed until he’s gone, then have a bowl of cereal before going back to sleep. It isn’t until ten
AM
that I get up for my first day of college. I throw on my jeans and T-shirt and head out.

After parking in the main deck I follow the map to the psychology building. I feel like a real college student trying to find my class on the first day of school. In high school the new kid always immediately gets talked about and sized up. Not here. That’s what’s so great about it. All these other college students don’t know who I am, and they don’t give a rat’s ass. I ask around and finally find the lecture hall. It’s almost like a big fancy movie theater in there, except all the seats have small foldout desktops. There’s a uniformed guard at a desk checking IDs, just like at the gym. Once I step in, I realize I’m not even sure
exactly what a Jew’s supposed to look like and I can’t find Chang in among the seats. I figure if Mitch and Chang see some guy looking around, they’ll guess it’s me, so I stand at the front looking around. Sure enough a couple of guys in the back wave. I go up the carpeted stairs where they’ve saved me a seat. Chang introduces me to Mitch. It’s no wonder I couldn’t recognize Chang, what with his long hair hanging down his back instead of tied in a ponytail like I remember it. Mitch, well, Mitch wears this stocking cap over what looks like short brown hair. If that’s what a Jew looks like, then that’s fine by me.

An older lady wearing a gray business suit comes in, and everyone gets quiet. It turns out to be true that teachers teach, and professors profess. She gets up there and starts talking off the top of her head about numerous topics that weren’t covered in the chapter I read. She even brings up Jane Park, a famous psychologist and novelist I’ve read up on. She mentions the idea of the subconscious and how it can bubble up in the forms of feelings and ideas that may seem unlike the person. Inversely, one can also go into the subconscious through various means, including therapy, meditation, or psychoactive drugs. She goes and riffs on a number of topics: primacy and action, sexuality as initiation. She keeps talking, and I keep taking notes like everyone else. Then about halfway through class she tells us to get in our groups and write a short essay about how the id, ego, and superego relate to Jane Park’s ideas of “character repugnance” and “character acceptance.” We can go at it in any way we want, she says. “Remember,” she adds, “this is going to be scaled.” Then she lets us loose for the rest of the class to write the essay.

“What does scaled mean?” I ask.

“It means all the scores are relative to each other. If everyone gets fifty and you get a sixty, you get an A. If everyone gets ninety-nine and you get a ninety, you get an F. So what that means is we’re competing with everyone,” Chang explains.

“Got it.”

“Did you get what she’s lecturing about?” asks Mitch.

“Yeah, I read some Jane Park at the school library.”

“You mean not in this textbook?”

“Yeah, I read
The Energy Exchange: People Relating to People and Yourself
. That was cool because she told these dark fairy tales to illustrate her points about transference of the inner world to the outer.”

“Dude, don’t talk so loud,” Mitch whispers. “We’ve hit the bonanza.”

“Some people think she’s a little weird,” I say. “But she’s a leading social psychologist.”

“Damn, man, let’s write this thing.”

We huddle up and write an essay that brings together most of the main ideas that I remember from her books. It’s kind of beyond the lecture, but it still contains the main points the professor seemed to be emphasizing. The question’s so open-ended, I’m really not sure what the professor wants. Mitch assures me we’ll ace it.

After we’re finished Chang leaves for another class, and Mitch and I walk across campus into town, where loud music’s blaring out from the square. There’s a banner up across the thoroughfare for the Saint Ignatius Church of Wonderment. An aging country rock singer wearing a Hawaiian shirt is up on a stage set against the steps of city hall. He takes a sip out of a red plastic cup and then gets on the microphone and says, “If you people had to pay for this, you’d have already paid a thousand dollars each!” Then he starts into a country song about the oceans of love in a girl’s heart out in the universe somewhere.

I get a Coke from a vending machine and sit down with Mitch at one of the many outdoor tables. “So, you wanna toke it up?” Mitch asks.

“What?” I ask.

“Go smoke some weed.”

“Ah, right. Sorry, I gotta take the truck back to Jim. He says he needs it.”

“Right. Carl.”

“What about Carl?” I ask.

“Jim’s always doing favors for him. Things like writing papers, picking up food for him, all kinds of crap.”

“You’re saying that’s why he needs the truck today?”

“Chang told me he thinks Jim’s helping one of Carl’s friends move.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“He thinks Carl’s his friend.” Mitch gets up and puts on his backpack. “Maybe he is. I don’t know. Have you met Carl?”

“Not yet.”

“Decide for yourself.”

I sit there awhile after Mitch leaves, wondering what the hell’s going on with Jim. I don’t know what to believe, but whatever it is, it doesn’t sound good. I go back to the parking deck and drive over to the office Jim gave me directions to. He’s waiting for me at the front. “How was class?” he asks me.

“Good. We did a writing assignment, and I already knew the topic. Mitch and Chang seemed pretty sure we’d get an A. I mean you’d get an A.”

“Easy, right?” he says. I’m wanting to ask him about what Mitch said, but I can’t do it. I’m worried it’s true, and I don’t want to embarrass him. I can’t ever remember feeling that way about Jim. It doesn’t seem right that a younger brother should do that to his older brother. So I keep my trap shut. He drives me back to the apartment before taking off. I try to distract myself with some daytime television, but there’s nothing on and I keep thinking about what Mitch said. I decide to go on an expedition. First thing I do is get on Jim’s laptop and check the Web site for the anime expo I had seen advertised in
that bar when Jason and Chang were there. Of all the things Yoshi could have missed—friends, family, or even food—it was anime he mentioned that day we busted out of lockdown. I want to see what the hell that’s all about. It’s all happening at a major mall across town, the kind with a big movie complex, so I check the local bus routes and find a connector on Leland Street three blocks up. I leave Jim a note telling him I’m going to the expo and then walk down to the bus stop. With two transfers, it’s almost an hour to get there, but I get there.

The entire mall is crawling with nerds, tons of them. A lot of them are dressed up in crazy outfits: sailor girls, robots, trolls, elves, and little monsters abound. Not all of them are nerds, though. There’re some punks, jocks, and even some good-looking girls, too. But they’re all really excited and having a blast. Those deformed babies would fit right in, I think. I pick up a flier and find a listing of anime movies showing. I decide on
Vampire Incarnation
. The movie is about a city of vampires where humans are used as cattle for their blood. But a group of humans revolt and fight back. The problem is, the only way they can fight the vampires is to become vampires themselves. It’s got to be one of the most violent movies I’ve ever seen in my life. The small group of once-human vampires essentially has to kill every vampire in that city, and they do it in the goriest of ways. Because it’s a cartoon they show everything: body parts fly off, explode, melt, get eaten. When it’s over, I walk out of the theater actually needing a drink to calm my nerves. There’s a restaurant right across from the theater, so I get a table and just order a Coke. The interior of the place is all red and full of anime fans. I’m too chicken to order a beer. I got to remember to get a fake ID. Across from me is a pretty lady in a red dress drinking with two nerds. They’re drinking some red liquid in blue glasses. I keep staring at them, and eventually the lady smiles and pushes a glass to the corner of their table as an invitation.
Hot damn
, I think. I go sit down with her two nerd minions.

“Hello,” the lady says.

“Hi,” I say back.

“Have a drink,” she says.

“All right.” I take a sip. “Is this wine?” I ask.

“No, it’s called blood sangria.”

“Blood?”

“There’s no real blood in there.”

I take another sip, and one of the nerds says, “You don’t drink it like that,” and he starts chugging his glass. The other nerds start chanting, “Chug, chug, chug!” Some of the other tables join in. “Chug, chug, chug!”

I realize then that the lady’s red dress resembles one of the characters in
Vampire Incarnation
. Others in the restaurant are dressed as some of the characters. The nerd can’t finish and ends up spitting some up on his white shirt. It really does look like blood. Some guys from the other tables dressed as vampires come to help him as he looks like he’s going to pass out. Then I start chugging. Everyone starts in again, “Chug, chug, chug!” Even the guys helping the drunken fellow stop and chant. I don’t think I can do it. But halfway through my glass it feels like I’m not even drinking, like I have my mouth open and it’s just going down. Everyone cheers and my cup is refilled. I do it one more time, and then my mind officially becomes muddied with blood sangria. It’s so damn sweet, it starts making me feel sick. That’s when Jim shows up out of nowhere looking for me.

“There you are!” he says.

“I’m drinking blood sangria!”

“C’mon, let’s get out of here.”

I thank the lady and her remaining sober nerd minion before leaving. I follow Jim out with blood sangria coursing through my veins. “I can’t believe you took the bus. No one takes the bus,” he says.

“Old people do,” I say. “And Mexicans. And me.”

We’re walking through the corridors of the mall when Jim confesses, “I need a drink.”

“You, too?” I ask.

“One for the road. I had a long day at work.” I notice that he’s not wearing the dress shirt and pants that he had on when I picked him up for work. He’s got on jeans and a T-shirt, clothes much more appropriate for moving things.

We stop by a little tavern close to the entrance of the mall, where the people look normal, more like yuppies and students. “Where are the nerds?” I ask. The people at the bar start laughing. They seem like older yuppie types.

“You’ve reached the green zone,” someone says.

“The nerds and freaks stay in that section over there! We stay on this side.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” I say. “They’re okay. They have a right to be whatever they are. They’re humans like us. Flesh and blood,” I add. They think that’s even funnier. The bartender, a pretty young blonde, checks Jim’s ID. I tell her, “I’m not drinking. Just water please. I’m full of blood sangria.”

“Whoa,” she says. “I’m impressed.”

I think she’s being sarcastic, but I can’t tell. I’m too drunk. Jim orders a beer and that’s when I ask, “How come Chang and Jason don’t like Carl?”

“Carl’s kind of abrasive. But he has a good heart.”

“But none of your friends seem to like him.”

“They just don’t know him. If they got to know him, they’d like him.”

I nod and drink my water, but he’s starting to make me sad. After he finishes his beer we go back to his apartment, where I hit the sofa.