Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever Read online

  When I enter the bedroom she’s on her side, facing away from the door, covers up under her armpit, and, as I can see from how she’s breathing, still awake. I take off my shoes and slip my watch and wallet into them. I take my jeans off. I approach her side of the bed instead of my own. I take her hand and pull at her. She slides her legs from beneath the bedclothes, lets me stand her up and turn her toward me so we are face-to-face. She is wearing only an old pair of white underwear, faded from a thousand washings and thin. Her pubic hair presses against the fabric; it looks like a topographic map, perhaps a map of us, if we, this, could be less a thing than a place. I touch her speckled shoulders, graze my fingers down her fleshy upper arms, the light hairs of her forearms, the backs of her hands, until our fingers touch: tips to tips. I lean in to kiss her. We kiss.

  I get to Danny’s in the early afternoon, later than he said to come, but it was a rough morning. We went out to breakfast, didn’t talk much, then Sara dropped me off at McCarren’s so I could get my car.

  “I’ll call you,” I said.

  “No you won’t,” she said. “You’ll just show up here.”

  I let myself into the house. Buckles is sprawled, asleep, on an arm chair, the cut on his nose scabbed over, taking in the full afternoon light that sets the fringes of his fur aglow, as if haloed already. He stirs when I take him up into my arms but does not try to get away. I hold him close, as I saw Amanda do, flip the push lock on the sliding glass door, and stand fixed a moment, appreciating the stillness of the yard, a ghost of breeze barely troubling the surface of the lake and the blue, blue pool. I step toward the edge of the water and kneel down, the stippled aggregate pressing into my knees through my jeans. I can feel the little red marks it is imprinting. I slide one hand as gently as I can around the cat’s neck and start to strangle him at the same time that I plunge him under.

  It takes maybe a minute. I hold him down another minute to be sure, and then I am sure. As a final act of either defiance or submission, he has pissed in my uncle Danny’s pool. I watch the yellowish cloud dissipate, consider pulling the chlorine bobber over the spot, then think to myself, enough already.

  I bring Buckles back inside and lay him down in the guest bathroom shower. I wonder if his being locked in here most of yesterday was even why he was so docile—poor, fucked animal; exhausted, ready. I decide I should check around for any final piles of vomit, to really do this right, and find one in the living room, which I clean up with a tissue and toss out in the kitchen garbage. When I’m done, I’ll put the cat in there too, put in a fresh bag, and take the full one with me, bring it to the dump or something. I check the kitchen, the dining room, the hall. The door to Amanda and Danny’s room is closed, but Vicky’s is open.

  I examine Vicky’s windowsills and look under her bed. Nothing. I open her closet to see if she still has that tee shirt I got her. It’s all black jeans and old kiddie clothes and a couple of fancy dresses, Christmas and wedding things. Probably she keeps her tee shirts in her bureau, but in the top drawer I find only socks and underwear, most of which is plain. But a few pieces are surprising, and I am glad the garments are all just stuffed in. If everything had been folded and neat she might notice that someone had been in here, though she probably would figure it was only her parents, spot-checking for weed.

  There are a few lacy pieces, blacks and one red, not very risqué, really, just hard to imagine on Vicky. This thong with the leopard-print front, say, is almost unbearably cheesy, but if she were standing in front of a boy, as Sara stood in front of me last night, he would fall to his knees in worship—how could he not?—and maybe Vicky will not miss just a single pair, if it is a black lacy and not the leopard print, of which there is only the one. I bring them to my nose—of course they only smell clean—then put them in my pocket and shut the drawer, thinking it is time to finish cleaning up and get going.

  I turn around and there’s Amanda, standing in Vicky’s doorway.

  I guess she took the whole afternoon off work, came home after her appointment. I wonder what the results were, and how long she has been here. Was she here this whole time, maybe taking a nap? She has been watching me, silently, and is still silent, though she seems about to speak right now.

  It is next Wednesday and my mother is saying, “Why aren’t you over at Danny’s?” and I’m telling her anything, or else I’m walking in to McCarren’s, taking a seat at the far end, and Sara’s ignoring me at first but then coming over, rolling her eyes, bringing a foaming beer for me, saying, “You’re here early for a change,” and I’m giving her that same old smile, the one that barely makes rent, the one that coasts into the station on fumes.

  It is not next Wednesday. It is still this moment and that will be true of every moment that follows, assuming this moment ever ends, which, if I am lucky, it won’t. Amanda filling the doorway, silent, us facing each other like friends or like family or like lovers: an eternity of silence and afternoon light. And she doesn’t even know about the cat yet. I will never escape this town.

  ESTRELLAS Y RASCACIELOS

  The anarchists were drinking victory shots and making toasts because even though they’d never met with success before they surely knew it when they saw it or it found them. Snapcase, his beard effulgent with spilled drink, was sure that school was out forever. He’d tossed Jessica’s survey of art history, his own Norton Shakespeare, and somebody’s copy of Derrida’s The Gift of Death into the fire pit they had dug in the backyard. The shallow hole was surrounded by salvaged chairs and shaded by a blue canvas canopy they’d stolen from some resort because property was always already theft anyway, and plus they had really wanted that canopy. The books were doused with whiskey from a bottle of Ancient Age. Snapcase lit a hand-rolled cigarette and then tossed his still-burning match into the shallow pit. It went out in the air, so he lit another and placed it gingerly in a little pool of whiskey. It snuffed there. Someone said something about lighting three matches in a row. Somebody else said no, the expression was no three on a match. And how that expression had come from World War I, because if you lit three cigarettes off one match in your foxhole or trench the enemy in his foxhole or trench had three pins of light to triangulate your location and then he blew up everything or maybe just shot you and your two buddies.

  Knock off the history book shit, Snapcase said. Where were the history books anyway? His fire was still unlit. The other anarchists who’d been watching were disappointed. I have to be at work in an hour, one said. Snapcase went back into the house for the history books. He ran into David in the living room.

  But I like Nietzsche, David said, grabbing back his dog-eared copy of The Antichrist, which Snapcase had just taken from the bookshelf. Though no less certain in his convictions, David was not prepared to burn his Dictionary of Critical Theory and the books to which that book was a kind of skeleton key.

  Yeah but if, Snapcase said.

  Hey, why do you call yourself Snapcase? someone said.

  Dude, someone else said, it’s a band. Don’t you know anything about hardcore?

  David handed over his copy of The Prophet Armed because Trotsky had ordered the Russian anarchists shot down like partridges. Burn it, he said, and Snapcase went back outside. David eyed Estrella. She was finishing a rum and soda, going to pour herself some more rum, discovering there was no more rum, cursing. The label was ridged with silver like pirate booty. The Captain leaned on his sword. The TV was on. With the left rabbit ear twisted down so it touched the thick steel strings of their red electric bass, they were able to get one local station. Not having cable wasn’t a statement. Maybe the statement was being made by the people who paid out a monthly portion of their slave wages for endless infomercials and Wolf Blitzer. Anyway it didn’t matter because there was only one piece of news today. A single clip had been looping for hours. It was a bottle of light rum that was empty. Hakim Bey and Pirate Utopias notwithstanding, none of them had much stomach for dark.

  Estrella was the loudest anarc
hist of them all. Her band had a song that went We’ll tear down fucking everything / Till stars are the reigning light / Estrellas y Rascacielos / Burning in the ungoverned night. The bassist wrote the lyrics and she sang them. He loved it when she sang the line he wrote with her name in it. She loved singing her own name. The bassist always said he wrote the line in homage to the great Spanish anarchists, such as whoever. Actually it was because he loved her. When she sang her own name as part of his lyric it was like she had let him name her. She could sing so fucking loud. The band was a hardcore band. Her guitar roared like a certain kind of sermon. His bass rattled the windows and doors. The big gigs were coming soon; he just knew it. He was passed out under the kitchen table. The TV screen filled again.

  David asked to see Estrella’s new tattoo. She lifted her black hoodie from the waist. A circled A nested between her breasts, which were too small to hang but would have hung if they’d been bigger. Estrella knew that bras were just more bullshit, though sometimes she would put on a sports bra if she guessed they were probably going to be running away from something before their night was over.

  I thought it would be cool to get it on my nipple, she said, but the guy said if I did that I might never be able to breastfeed.

  What? David said.

  Snapcase gathered dead leaves and put them into the pit and then lit those, and finally the books caught fire.

  It’s gonna rain, someone said.

  It’s gonna pour, someone else said, and that person was correct. It had been raining earlier but that had been a mere warm-up compared to what would come; that is, with what came.

  I like it, David said to Estrella, but it’s too bad.

  He meant about her breasts, and not being able to get the nipples tattooed, or pierced even. He thought of the phrase female troubles. The silver ring centered in her lower lip gave her a pouty look, or rather accented the pout of her dark eyes and dark hair and the donned hood of the hoodie and the fact that she was frequently pouting. Her dreadlocks were wild and attractive. When she did push the hood back, as she had done, the dreadlocks made her seem more dangerous or unpredictable, but less severe. David wondered if her kiss had a metallic aftertaste, or if the salt and wet of her would overwhelm everything else.

  They drank whiskey and watched the fire burn in the shallow pit until the downpour drowned the flames. Then everyone went back inside to watch the TV. Someone said for smokers to use the front porch and someone else said we should be able to smoke inside on account of the rain and the occasion.

  We’re out of rum and I don’t want any more whiskey, Estrella said.

  The liquor store was closing up when I bought the rum, David said.

  This is only the first blow against the empire, someone said, and someone else said, Yeah but what a blow I mean boy you know?

  There was a line at the gas station when I walked past it, David said. It went around the block. Everyone was filling their tanks and buying up the canned food. I walked in and stole two big bottles of Coke and nobody noticed.

  It’s on tape though, someone said. It’s in the files. Someone else said that Coca-Cola had sponsored death squads in South America and that person was correct. Coca-Cola was also responsible for the following: environmental devastation in India, union-busting, wage-slavery, rotting the gums of children and adults, inventing the modern image of Santa Claus as part of a plot to commoditize Christmas (actually, the modern Santa Claus evolved from a series of Thomas Nast illustrations that appeared in Harper’s Weekly between 1863 and 1865; the Coke Santa was done by the Swedish illustrator Haddon Sundblom in the 1930s, long after the archetype was standardized), partnering with McDonald’s, sponsoring various execrable campaigns, here and abroad, those death squads, and much more. So that person was really right for the most part when he or she said those things about the soda they were all drinking but at least had stolen.

  I bet that one store’s open, Snapcase said, and we could go get beer. But I don’t want to go.

  I’m really leaving now, said Roger, who sometimes went by Dagger but couldn’t commit to the alias. He fashioned a rain hat from a plastic bag in which some Chinese food had been delivered. He was the one who’d said earlier that he had to go to work.

  Lots of people were milling around, watching the TV and deciding what they thought or already knowing or thinking they already knew. Nobody knew Estrella’s real name was Anne. Even the ones who had been with her didn’t know. She was that good. Sometimes she almost forgot she had a real name—she was that good. The rain beat harder on the windows. The shallow pit overflowed. David said he’d go to the store and Estrella said she’d go with him. She went to look for her boots. The anarchists pooled their money.

  Angel, Snapcase, this guy they didn’t really know but who’d been crashing at their place, and Jessica were looking out the back window at the fire pit. I guess it’s a book drowning, Angel said, and the guy they didn’t really know mentioned Prospero and then someone put a Fifteen record on and turned it up real loud. Everybody knows authority is just abuse anyway / Everybody knows it ain’t no use anyway / Kill your elected official today / We will win… Estrella couldn’t find her boots so David took his boots off in solidarity.

  Muddy street dirt squished between David’s toes. He told Estrella they needed to go faster, and she ran so far ahead that he almost lost her in the shifting sweeping curtains of water. The storm was a North Florida special. They hurtled through it like airplanes. The water in his eyes blurred his vision. She’d pulled her hood tight but her dreadlocks were soaked anyway. She stepped on a little shard of glass, landed badly, and twisted her ankle. David caught up to her.

  Ow, she said, I mean fuck. She shut her eyes tight because it hurt and because she didn’t realize that with all the water running down her face he couldn’t tell she was crying so she was safe.

  She shifted to her good foot and hopped. She landed, wobbled, steadied herself, hopped again. David slid a hand under her arm, his other behind her knees. He lifted her and carried her through the rain like a husband with a wife or a monster with a cherished victim. He carried her to the nearest house that had an overhang. The sudden freedom from the rain was cold and thrilling. He helped her sit, then knelt before her. He took her wounded foot into his hands. She was sitting in a puddle but there was nothing they could do about that. The whole world was a river that day, rising: taking and bringing things. He cleaned her foot as best he could in the puddle, wiping away the shiny trickle of blood that flowed from the cut on her sole. He suckled. The blood was metallic; his mouth did not even fill with it. It wasn’t a bad cut, really.

  I think it’s out, she said. You didn’t swallow it?

  I don’t know, he said. It was really small.

  Is that okay? I mean will something happen to you?

  I didn’t think about that, he said.

  His selflessness touched her. She considered what that might mean. This tender moment was ending but they’d always have it.

  They stepped back out into the rain. Estrella hobbled, David walked. The day had been good and it was still cresting. They had shared a victory and lived by their principles, especially those of solidarity and mutual aid. The store was open. The beer was cold. There would be time later for regret and whatever the bassist thought, but right then they were still free. A pair of real anarchists, they drank on the street as they strolled home even though it was broad daylight and still raining.

  THE NEW LIFE

  I turned twelve on August 9, 1995, a few weeks before the start of the new school year and the same day that Jerry Garcia was dying in California, not that I knew it then. My parents had decided to have my party at the house, in our backyard: Slip ’n Slide, water balloons, the garden hose. I remember being worried it was too babyish but actually we had a pretty good time. Fun in the sun, you know? A real South Florida birthday. A Winn-Dixie sheet cake with a sports theme. I remember all of this so vividly, and can see myself living it, as if then-me is somebody el
se and now-me is a camera capturing him. Thirteen candles are lit (one to grow on) and I’m leaning in over the cake, waiting for the song to wrap up so I can blow them out. My best friend Kenny Beckstein and my dad are on either side of me, and the rest of the kids are clustered loosely around us, like apostles. My dad’s smile is not forced, exactly, but you can see it’s strained. He and Mom had been arguing about something earlier. Kenny’s face is an altogether different story. He’s got this look of pure adoration, ecstasy really, like he’s never loved anything so much as he loves me right then.

  I met Kenny in first grade. He was fat and I was a runt, a quick crier. We traded being last one picked for whatever the game of the day was, unless it was dodge ball, because I was so hard to hit. He and his big sister Angela were Irish twins—eleven months between them, and I was six months older than Kenny, so really it was like we were all the same age, but because of how the school calendar fell she was a grade ahead of us, and had gone off to the middle school last year. But now we would be middle schoolers too. Sixth grade.

  But middle school wasn’t good to Kenny, who still brought a dweeby plastic thermos of grape juice with his lunch instead of a soda can. He got knocked around in the locker room. Cheeks flushed, eyes glistening, relaxed-fit jeans held up out of reach in that jock asshole Zak Sargent’s raised fist. Zak was in Angela’s grade. He was a golden boy, a terrorist. I tried to teach Kenny to hold his own, but the truth was that what I knew how to do was be invisible, and this made me angry—at myself because it was all I could do, at Kenny because it was the one thing he couldn’t. I lashed out at him, picked fights over anything stupid, said I was coming over and then didn’t come. By winter break I’d stopped talking to him altogether.