Джонатан Троппер - This Is Where I Leave You

Phillip pats my back and messes up my hair. “Emotional growth hurts. It’s nothing a few more shots won’t fix.”

He disappears into the crowd at the bar. I am left alone at the table to lick the bottom of my shot glasses and assimilate the new information. You think you have all the time in the world, and then your father dies. You think you’re happily married, and then your wife fucks your boss. You think your brother is an asshole, and then you discover that it’s been you all along. If nothing else, it’s been educational.

PHILLIP RETURNS WITH eight shot glasses jammed between every finger of both hands, another of his worthless skills. Somehow we do them all. The night takes on a kind of kaleidoscopic translucence, and I lose my sense of time and, occasionally, balance. When I come back from a trip to the bathroom, we’ve been joined by Phillip’s old girlfriend, Chelsea. “Look who I bumped into,” Phillip says. Chelsea is dressed for the hunt in a short denim skirt and a tank top that grants a generous view of her lightly freckled cleavage as she leans forward to kiss my cheek. “Fancy running into you guys here,” she says, in case I haven’t properly registered the complete randomness of this encounter from Phillip’s remark. Chelsea’s fingers dance up Phillip’s arms like he’s an instrument she’s playing. I try to catch his eye, but he looks away every time. I want to tell him that he can’t behave like this on my watch, but the shots have warmed my blood and toasted my veins, and someone has turned up the music, and to be heard I’d have to put my mouth close to his ear, like Chelsea is doing right now.

On my next bathroom trip, I see Horry making out with a skinny girl in the little nook between the men’s room and the kitchen. She’s a sloppy kisser, her tongue sliding out of her mouth to lick his lips when they separate, but he doesn’t seem to mind. Good for you, Horry, I think. I am drunk and lost and would very much like to be making out with someone of no consequence right now, mashing tequila tongues, sliding my fingertips over smooth, booze-warmed skin. Instead, I urinate for a half hour, reading the stall graffiti, still smelling Chelsea’s shampoo from when she kissed me hello.

When I get back to the table, Chelsea and Phillip are gone. The jukebox is playing goddamned “Sweet Home Alabama” again, and I think I’m going to be sick. The bathroom has a line, so I stumble out to the parking lot and puke behind one of the Dumpsters. I feel a little better after that, halfway to sober. The rain has finally stopped, or not really stopped, but dwindled to a fine, foggy mist that cools my burning skin. I wonder how I’m going to get home.

Ican’t recall if I settled the tab or not, but no one’s come running out after me, and just the thought of going back inside starts my stomach acid frothing, so I’ll just assume it’s all good. I decide to take a walk. The neon lights of Route 120 spread out ahead of me like the Vegas Strip. P.F. Chang’s, the Cheesecake Factory, the Pitch & Putt, Sushi Palace, Apple-bee’s, Rock & Bowl, Szechuan Gardens, and the digital marquee of the AMC multiplex, all flashing and blinking, burning pink and red streaks into my eyelids when I close them. Generations of broken glass twinkle like glitter in the pavement. Teenagers rove in loud packs that form and disperse as they move down the sidewalk. Cell phones ring, obscenities fly. Blow jobs are administered in throbbing cars in the darkest corners of abandoned parking lots. They’ve been laying pipe beneath the blacktop forever now, and they don’t bother taking down the barricades on the weekends anymore, so every few stoplights, traffic slows to a crawl, cars ejaculated out of the bottlenecks one by one, burning rubber just to make a point, since there’s really nowhere here worth rushing to. They whiz by like missiles, these cars crammed with kids exactly like the one I used to be. Once in a while you can make out their laughter above the hollow din of tires scorching the blacktop like fighter jets on a runway.

There’s a fountain in front of Sushi Palace, spraying a high illuminated geyser that changes colors every few seconds. Red, yellow, green, and violet. I stop to watch it for a little bit. A couple of kids sit on the edge of the fountain, kissing with such unabashed fervor that I have to look away.

As I walk, a silver car passes me and then quickly brakes, causing the cars behind it to swerve left and honk angrily. You don’t see many Maseratis in Elmsbrook. The car pulls onto the shoulder and Wade climbs out. He’s wearing the same suit he wore earlier and has a bandage across the bridge of his nose, a smear of purple bruising spreading out from under it. He frowns as he approaches me, picking up speed as he goes.

“What are you doing?” I say.

His punch arrives well before my worthless block can get there, landing squarely on my chin and lower lip, and down I go. There is a version of this fight in which a crowd of pedestrians grows around us as we grapple and trade punches, until I tackle Wade and we fall over into the sushi fountain, where I pummel him into submission, standing over him in victorious disgust, casually spitting some blood into the fountain. But I’m too drunk and tired to fight, so I curl up and close my eyes, prepared to absorb the kicks that will follow. After a few seconds I look up to see Wade standing above me, combing his hair with his fingers. “That was for my car,” he says.

I get up on one knee and taste the salt and copper of blood on my lips. “Fair enough.” I wipe my mouth with my sleeve and get to my feet.

“You’re drunk.”

“And you’re an asshole. Are we going to just stand here stating the obvious?”

He shakes his head and smiles fondly at me. “You never could hold your liquor.”

He reaches through the shattered passenger window to his glove compartment and comes out with a white towel, which he tosses to me. We lean against the car and I press the towel against my lips. It comes away bloody.

Rowdy, hopped-up college kids pass us in an endless, noisy blur like they’re being mass produced or squeezed out of a tube—guys skulking in their T-shirts and cargo shorts, girls in low-slung jeans and flip-flops, pimples and breasts and tattoos and lipstick and legs and bra straps, and cigarettes; a colorful, sexy mélange. I feel old and tired and I just want to be them again, want to be young and stupid, filled with angst and attitude and unbridled lust. Can I have a do-over, please? I swear to God I’ll make a real go of it this time.

“You were right, what you said about me,” Wade says.

“What do you mean?”

He shakes his head and looks over his shoulder. “I’m not a decent guy. Not really.” He pulls out a cigarette and lights it. “I think I always just told myself I was, that at some point I’d grow up and start behaving.” He rubs the back of his neck as he blows smoke into the mist. “I always figured I could stop anytime I wanted to.”

“What do you want, Wade?”

He peers down his nose at the glowing ember of his cigarette. “I don’t know. Nothing, really. I just saw you as I was driving past, and I realized that I never actually apologized to you.”

“So you hit me.”

“Yeah. I didn’t actually know I was going to do that until I did it.”

“Got it.”

“I know it won’t change anything, but I just figured it was better said than not.” He looks across the parking lot. “You want your job back?”

“Fuck you.”

“I just thought I’d ask.” He tosses the cigarette into a puddle and nods at me. “I’m really very sorry for everything. You were my only real friend, and it sucks that we’re not friends anymore. I deserve it, but it still sucks. And whether you believe it or not, I really hope you guys will be able to put things back together, man. Sincerely.”