Miriam Toews - The Flying Troutmans

I was kidding, I said.

Can we not talk? he said.

Yep, deal, I said. Do you want to stay here while I go get Thebes?

He said yeah.

I noticed that he had silver and gold glitter on his face and in his hair. Were you guys doing crafts in there? I asked.

He looked away, towards Saturn, or farther up, maybe towards some satellite that only he could see. I liked the silver and gold specks. They softened him up. He looked like a sweet, kind of gay, raver alien waiting for his crew to take him back to space, to some benevolent planet that partied hard but happily. I left him to pine and sparkle in the moonlight.

Thebes and the Ferris wheel operator were sitting cross-legged on the grass, talking. When she saw me coming she jumped up and said, What? No Logan? What fresh hell is this? She told me that was Dorothy Parker, yo, props to her.

Yeah, I know, I said. It was Min’s favourite combination of words. She said it all the time. I imagined she was still saying it.

I found him, I said, let’s go, he’s in the van.

What was he doing in the van? said Thebes.

Making out with a girl, I said.

We found a cheap motel and unloaded our paltry crap into the room. There was no pool, no free breakfast and no phones. Well, what do you have? I asked.

Beds, said the guy.

Who would just sit there and let someone suck on your throat for four hours or whatever it takes to create an entire hickey necklace? Thebes asked Logan. He was ignoring her, watching TV, and she was sitting next to his head and peering at his neck. That’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen in my life, said Thebes. Would you have let Gandhi do that to your neck, Hattie? she asked.

I shook my head and held my finger to my lips. I was studying the map on the other bed, trying to figure out how to get to Twentynine Palms.

You’re lucky she didn’t give you an aneurism, said Thebes. She could have sucked your jugular vein right out of you through your skin and you would have bled to death all over my art supplies.

Logan turned the volume up on the TV.

Thebes, I said, just leave him alone, okay? Why don’t you see if you can find me some beer in the lobby or something. Or go get some ice. Get both.

Like, technically, said Thebes, that could be considered an assault. Look at these bruises! She moved her fingers gently over Logan’s throat. You were attacked by a girl. Are you traumatized? She started humming “No Woman No Cry.” She stopped humming. You were violated in there, she said, and now you’re all calm watching TV and—

Logan whipped the pillow out from under his head and hit Thebes hard in the face. She screamed and fell off the bed. Logan got up and left the room and Thebes ran to the door and put the chain on and then went into the bathroom and locked that door too, until I finally talked her out and calmed her down and tried to explain some stuff about Logan to her.

She asked me if I thought he was depressed. I said no. He needs to know he’s loved and safe and that he’ll be able to eat when he’s hungry and shoot hoops when he has to bust out and be attractive to girls and have friends to hang out with sometimes. Other than that, I said, there’s not much to do but wait it out. He’s fifteen. I compared Logan to a guy coming home to his apartment (our van/hotel room) to roommates he’s ambivalent about (us) and just wanting to chill out and not be quizzed about anything. I said if he could replace us with a giant-screen TV right now he probably would.

Do you think he thinks a lot about Cherkis? she asked.

He might, I said. He might a lot, or maybe hardly at all. We can’t really know. Maybe in five years he’ll talk about it all to a girlfriend or his buddies or a therapist or a stranger in a bar, who knows. Maybe he’ll blame Min, maybe Cherkis, maybe himself, maybe me. Maybe nobody. Maybe everybody. Maybe it’ll be this thing he carries like a fucking cross all through his life, his eternal destiny, or maybe it won’t really be a big deal at all.

You should have a talk with him, said Thebes.

I don’t know what to say, I said.

Well, she said, you could just start out with talking about how you felt when you were fifteen.

There was a soft knock. Thebes catapulted over to the door and flung it open and threw her arms around her brother. He stood there for a minute and let her hug him, and then he patted her back a couple of times and looked at me for help. He still had a few sparkles on his face, under his eye and on his nose. For one second he looked just like Min when she was younger. Maybe it was the glitter. Maybe it was that expression on his face that said, rescue me. I remembered Min coming home from a party, wasted and pale and skinny but really alive-looking, glowing, at the same time. It was her Bowie period. I said something like oh, it’s the thin white dude, and she’d said duke, Hattie, duke. Okay? Try to remember. She’d sounded so tired but she’d been sweet about it, patient, and had stayed up for a few minutes telling me about her party, about all the crazy things that had happened and how life was such a gas, a mustard gas.

So Thebes agreed to watch TV with the volume up high while Logan and I talked privately in the bathroom. She was watching the movie Run Lola Run and had decided to run with Lola, on the spot, in the gap between the beds, and see if she could keep up with her. Logan sat on the counter in the bathroom and played with the taps while I sat on the edge of the tub. I remembered Thebes’s advice.

I felt pretty fucked up when I was fifteen, I said. I had a lot of secrets, you know, not secrets but things I couldn’t tell anyone.

Yeah? said Logan.

And if you need to talk to someone, I’m here, you know, I’ll listen to you, I said.

Yeah, he said.

I love you, I said, and Thebes loves you, and so does Min. Like crazy. You know that, right? I thought about saying something like we’ve got to stick together, through good times and bad, blood is thicker than water, something, anything to convince him that he wasn’t alone in the world, but I knew he wouldn’t buy it.

Yeah, he said.

I said we all acted like jerks sometimes when we were overwhelmed. Logan said he wasn’t overwhelmed. I said, Okay, good, but we can see each other through stuff like that. Or even if we can’t, it’s just nice to know we want to, right?

Yeah, he said.

I told him he didn’t have to put on an act for anybody, though, he didn’t have to pretend he was in a great mood. Just that it might be good to talk about stuff sometimes.

Mmm-hmm, said Logan.

Hey, you know, I said, when I was fifteen I’d stay in my room for hours and hours at a time playing “A Whiter Shade of Pale” on my guitar and feeling completely misunderstood and unloved and stupid and ugly and fucked up and lonely. So phenomenally lonely. You know? I felt like the Little Prince. Totally, abjectly, alone on the planet. I mean, seriously, other people? Talking to them was like talking to a vapour or something. You know? I mean, there was no connection. There was…like, I was Robinson Freaking Crusoe. The Little Prince was totally alone on some planet, wasn’t he?

You played what? asked Logan.

“A Whiter Shade of Pale,” I said.

I think he had a flower, said Logan.

We were quiet for a while. Logan turned the taps on and off a few times. I checked out the ugly design on the shower curtain. Together we took big breaths.

And you know, I said, I’m probably the very last person in the world with the authority to talk about this stuff, but like, with girls and drugs and stuff like that? You’ll be careful, right? Like, you’ll be smart about that stuff, right?

Logan examined the ceiling tiles.