CHAPTER 14
Ashley comes over and spends the night and asks what happened to my hand. I lie and tell her I slammed it in the car door. She kisses it and calls me a dummy.
I call the hospital and cancel the appointment I have later that week because I don’t want the police looking for the guy who got the bench all bloody, and then they’d make me come clean it off. Ashley says she has to read a book written in the early eighteenth century, and that it’s boring the living shit out of her, but that she has to read it for class, because they’re going to have to write an eight page essay on how the book was so great and monumental, and how it changed how we look at literature, and she says even if it did change literature, that it fucking sucks now. She says that most of the books she has to read for class are exactly like that.
When she leaves, I watch The Empire Strikes Back, because she had left it over. I fall asleep about halfway through, not because I’m bored, but because I’m tired and the adrenaline rush I got yesterday beating the shit out of the guy at the hospital has still made my arms and legs weak.
I have a dream that I’m in the same restaurant that I was in with Patrick, but this time, nobody’s sitting in front of me, and it looks normal. There isn’t any carnival attire, and what have you, it just looks like a normal restaurant. Sarah comes and sits down in front of me and apologizes for being late. I want to yell at her, but I feel for my mouth and its sewn shut.
“You know, I never really liked Patrick all that much.” She’s sitting there, picking up chips off of my plate.
“He was so boring in bed. I had to fake it too many times. I mean, if a girl said she came in the first five minutes, she’s obviously faking it. But he was just too dumb to get that. You’re pretty dumb yourself there. Picking fights with people in front of hospitals. You want to end up in prison I’m guessing. It seems like a great place for you. All concrete walls, all isolation, all the time. It sounds so glamorous. I’m surprised you haven’t robbed a bank yet. But then, I guess, you could pull the parent card. “Oh, my parents died when I was ten. Poor little me.” And the judge would give you a slap on the wrist. Makes me fucking sick.” She pulls a cigarette out of a pocket of one of the passing customers.
“I mean, goddamn, how fucking retarded are you? Do you really think Ashley’s going to save you? I’d bet anything she gets bored with you in a month and leaves you for another guy. That is, if she’s not already seeing another guy. I saw about five guys in the three years that Patrick and I dated, and he never caught on. Want to look at your girlfriend with those perfect fucking eyes of yours, don’t you? You can see everyone who’s fake, or who lies, or cheats. Look at me, I’m still alive. But I’m all locked up, out of harm’s way, in a nice little room with no view. They’ve got me so medicated I’m not even there. The “suicide attempt.” Ha, what a joke.”
People around us are starting to sit down, and it’s the same crowd that was there when Patrick and I were here. But our waitress isn’t coming by, and I don’t know if I want to see her or not, but it would be better to see her than to talk to Sarah. But I can’t shut her up, and I can’t talk to tell her to shut up.
“But here we are. Both alive. I don’t love Thomas either. He was dumb as shit too. Didn’t know I was dating Patrick. You should’ve seen the look on his face when Patrick came through the door. I wish I would’ve had a camera. Then, “click” I can cherish that memory forever and ever. You got to see what I wanted to see the most though. Poor little Patrick, with the back of his skull missing. Poor little boring Patrick. I imagine he made a mess of your apartment. You know what, I got something for you. It’s a poem I wrote.” She digs into her bag and rifles through papers, all with the names of guys she’s fucked. “Oh, those are just in the last three years. I’d need a filing cabinet if I wanted to fit them all in. Here we go, tell me if you like it. Well, you can’t really tell me anything, can you? With your mouth all sewn shut like it is. Poor, poor you. If only Patrick were here to save you now. Okay, here it is.” She clears her throat and puts the cigarette in the ashtray, and I’m trying to reach across the table to strangle her, and then I pick up a knife and start stabbing at my mouth, but it’s not helping.
Boring. Boring Boredom.
Bores the boars in Africa.
Boards with nails and tennis hail
Will fall on Will in dapper wear.
His tie tied tight, straight to his neck
A noose, a dead goose, and the loose
Feelings felt when flowing booze,
Are all that we will ever get.
The getting’s got, but not the best
Are sent to rest in goose down nests
And Florida is still set for sail
Down dying waters, and the bails
Of hay, will stay, at least ‘til May
When grass of green will feed the cows
We all go up and all go down
To fly above, or bound to drown.
“How do you like it?” She picks up her cigarette out of the ashtray. ‘I like the ending. It’s about you. You’ll either go up, or go down. Right now, I bet you’re feeling pretty up, but you can’t stay that way forever. Even the strongest birds have to take a rest. Otherwise, they crash. But that’s what you’ll do, isn’t it? You’ll crash. You don’t even see it coming yet.”
The waitress with maggots pouring out of her mouth finally shows up at the table, and Sarah gets up and picks up a steak knife off the table and jabs it into her temple and the waitress’s eyes go white and she topples over.
“Jesus fucking Christ. Even when they’re dead, they don’t stop bothering you. Well, I must be going now. It was lovely chatting with you. I do hope to see you again. Maybe you can stop by the asylum. I’ll be there for a while. At least until you’re done with college, then I won’t need to care anymore.”
I wake up and my head is hot, and my stomach is turning, and I throw up in the toilet what feels like acid coming up my throat, and I can’t stop throwing up. I call Ashley and tell her to come over, quick, and bring medicine. Anything she has. Tums, Ibuprofen, anything that will make me feel better. She gets there and I’m still in the bathroom, curled around the toilet.
“Are you okay? Do you need me to take you to the hospital?” She says, as she gets down on the ground with me.
“I’m just throwing up.” She feels my forehead with the back of her hand.
“My God, you’re burning up.” She takes a thermometer out of her bag and tells me to open my mouth, and I do.
“One hundred and two point six. Jesus. We need to get you to a hospital. You were fine this morning. Where could this have of come from?” I start to think, and then I realize, I was at the hospital yesterday. I could’ve gotten it anywhere from there. But I can’t tell her, because she doesn’t know about what happened there, and she doesn’t know I’m seeing a psychiatrist.
“I don’t know. I just need water.” She runs into the kitchen and gets me a glass of water, and I sip it slowly, and then I start to feel better.
“Can you get me a wet towel too? Cold. As cold as you can possibly get it.” She gets up and gets a towel off the rack and turns the sink on and waits until the water is freezing before she runs the towel underneath it then folds it and puts it on my head.
“Can I get anything else for you?” She’s on the floor with me again.
“No, but thank you. I don’t feel like throwing up anymore.” I take another sip of the water, and then another sip, and then she takes it away from me before I drink too much of it.
“Slow sips. Do you think you can stand up?”
“Yeah, just give me a minute.” I start slouching up, and then I have my back against the tub, and then I put my arms up and the towel falls down, but she catches it, and tries to help me up, but she only weighs about a hundred pounds, and I’m dead weight. She gets me over to the couch and lies me down and puts the towel back on my forehead.
“What happened?”
“I was watching The Empire Strikes Back, then I fell asleep, and I had a terrible dream.” “What happened?”
“Sarah was at a restaurant with me. And she was mocking me, and telling me how fucked I am. Then she stabbed the waitress in the temple with a steak knife.” I leave out all of the details, but I tell her enough for her to collect a thought.
“It was just a fever dream. I used to have them when I was a kid. I’d get sick, and when my fever was over a hundred, I’d have the weirdest dreams. They were wild. Like one time, I had a dream that a pig was eating me like I was bacon. It sounds pretty dumb now, but at the time, it was scary as shit. That’s all it was though. I promise. Just a dream. The brain really likes to fuck with you, especially when you’re sick. But I’m here to take care of you now. And I’m basically immune to any sort of sickness. I haven’t thrown up in eight years. Well, eight years in October.”
Her voice is calming, and it makes me feel better just having her here to take care of me. What Sarah said in the dream was just Sarah in my mind. Not the real Sarah. I have to remember that. Otherwise, I’ll start believing what she said. Ashley came over ten minutes after I called her and told her I was sick. She’s not going to cheat on me. I’m a wreck though. I’m falling to pieces and she’s the only one there to put me back together. What would I do if she wasn’t here?
“What do you want to watch? I can run back to my place and get some movies if you want me to.”
“No, just stay and talk to me.” So she does. And she spends the night, only she sleeps on the couch after I tell her I don’t want her getting sick. She sneaks into my room when I was sleeping though and sleeps on the floor.
I have another dream that night, although this one feels more real. More vivid than the first one. I can control what I do in this dream, and I can actually speak. I am at the beach, watching the waves come in and out, and it’s almost dusk but not quite, and the clouds are grey, and they block out the sun as much as possible. I am the only one on the beach, and I was just sitting there, playing with the sand. I get up and start walking, and there were little crosses made of driftwood, buried in the dunes. None of them have names on them, or anything that distinguished them from anything else, but they are all over the place. I assume I’m at a burial site, somewhere that someone was buried, so I start backing away, and when I turn around, my parents are standing behind me. They look exactly the same they did as when I was ten, and dad is in a tux, and mom is in a bridal dress, only, the clothes, a little faded, a little torn. I run up to them, but dad puts his hand up to stop me, so I obey, and stare at them. They look so happy, and they are both smiling, and my mother’s hair looks just as pretty as it did when I was a boy, and my dad’s hair is jet black. I stare at them for at least a minute or two, before I ask what they are doing here.
“We’re just here to see our son. And we see him, right now. In front of us.” My dad says.
“And he looks just as handsome as he did when he was ten.” My mom says, and her smile gets wider than ever.
“Where are you now?”
“We’re on the other side of the ocean. Past the horizon. You can’t see it from here, but it’s beautiful. It’s the nicest place we’ve ever been to.” Dad says.
“Is Patrick there?”
“We haven’t seen him yet. But he should be there soon. I think the boss said he’d be there soon. Within the month. Then, he’ll be right along. We’ll have him over for dinner.”
“Are you happy?”
“Very.” My mom says. I turn around and the crosses start getting taller and start rising out of the sand.
“That’s our cue to go. We love you. Don’t ever forget that. Not in a million years.”
I wake up from the dream, and my stomach doesn’t hurt, and my fever feels like it has gone down. I see Ashley lying on the floor, and I don’t want to wake her up, but I lie down on the floor beside her, covered with my comforter, and fall asleep again.