When I walked up to the apartment, Tim and Georgia were sitting out front in Georgia's car. I could see the back seat was loaded with suitcases.

"Eloping?" I asked, walking up to the driver's side window.

"Hey." Tim said, his eyes wide, all enthusiasm. Georgia got out of the car and we walked a bit away from it.

"Does that kid ever blink?"

"Stop."
"I'm serious. He'll dry out his eye balls." I said looking past Georgia and watching Tim as he played with the radio in the car.

"We're taking a road trip up to Berkeley for dead week. See some friends, maybe check out their grad programs." Georgia said. "We'll be back in time for the party." She teased.

"Great."

"I didn't come by just to say goodbye, as much as I know you'll miss me. I want you to keep an eye on John. Cindy says that he hasn't been sleeping at his apartment and he hasn't been staying at her place."

"Do you think it's an affair? Should we call a detective? What will this do to their children?"

"Don't be an asshole. He's your friend too, you know. Just, I don't know, take him out to lunch or for a drink or whatever you do when you're not making snide comments."

"Have fun with 'it's not that serious' in Berkeley." I said. She glanced back at the car to make sure Tim couldn't hear us.

"What is it that you don't like? Because I respect your opinion but you've never even given him a chance."

"Georgia, do you like him?"

"Why don't you like him?"

"Do you like him?"

"Yeah. I think I do."

"Then it doesn't matter what I think. Have fun in Berkeley."

"Thanks."

I'd been spending more and more time at Lynn's. Ryan had adopted a sort of single-minded focus towards throwing his party that's usually reserved for visionaries and serial killers. Pages and pages of legal paper covered every available surface. Some of them were price quotes, some sketches of our backyard. The last time I was home he'd run extension cords out under the deck. I didn't stick around long enough to ask why.

It was the night before Monday of finals week. Neither of us had a final that day so we gave ourselves a break and went to a late movie just to get out of the apartment, sneaking in a flask of whiskey that we poured into our cokes. When we got back it was almost two and we were drunk and tired and fell asleep immediately.

Somewhere in the dark my phone was ringing. I lay blinking in the darkness trying to clear the sleep out of my eyes.

"Hello?" I tried to keep my voice down so I wouldn't wake Lynn. I could hear what sounded like Marie on the phone but her voice was shaking and I couldn't make out what she was trying to say. It took me a moment before I realized that she was crying and that she was holding it together, but barely.

"What's wrong? What happened?" I asked. She took a few deep breaths and in that space I found myself wishing I hadn't picked up the phone.

Stacey had fought with her boyfriend or they'd broken up. Marie wasn't sure. But Stacey had started drinking and taken too many of her happy pills. She either blacked out or had a seizure and smashed her head into the coffee table. Marie was in her room and heard the crash. She'd come out to find her roommate on the floor, foaming at the mouth with blood pouring out of her head. The doctors kept asking Marie if Stacey had ever tried to hurt herself in the past, if she was depressed or having problems in school. I briefly wondered how many happy pills were too many for someone like Stacey.

"Can you come down to the hospital?" She asked me "I can't be alone here. I'm shaking and the doctor gave me a valium but it's not doing anything. I don't want to be here." The words were broken, pathetic. I could see her sitting there in the waiting room. Cold neon lights shining down on last months Vanity Fair and Home and Garden. People with hollow eyes wandering past her to the vending machines, sucking down Cokes mindlessly because it was better than doing nothing. They'd grip a fist full of sweaty change, small and hard in their hands like it was hope. I knew I should go. I could hear how much it hurt her to have to ask and the fear causing her breath to hitch in her throat.

I hated hospitals, hated that fear. One night after my dad had driven my mom home from chemo she'd gone right upstairs saying she felt tired. A few hours later, after I'd gone to sleep she'd gotten sick. I heard them moving around in their room, my dad asking if she was alright, then telling her he was taking her to the hospital. I started to get out of bed when my dad yelled at me to get up and get the goddamn car started. I watched him carry her from the bedroom to the garage, the whole time she was throwing this bloody foam up onto the carpets. She couldn't stop. She tried, holding bathroom towel over her mouth, crying because of the pain. Sitting in the back seat the whole car smelled like copper.

They took her right away. My dad filled out the forms while I tried to sleep on two chairs pushed together in the waiting room. They told us to go home, come back in the morning but my dad didn't hear them and I didn't want to be in that house alone.

We sat there all night, unable to sleep. The antiseptic smell of the hospital all around us and the nurses at their station laughing quietly at whatever got them through their shift.

About four thirty in the morning this guy rushed in through the automatic doors, a bloody towel wrapped around his hand. He yelled at the nurses to get him a doctor and when they didn't he dropped the towel, blood pouring from where two of his fingers used to be. There was a pool of it on the floor. Later, the janitor came out and mopped it up like it was nothing, just another mess. It was easy for him. Just some soapy water and in half an hour there was nothing left but the wet floor signs.

But for days I couldn't get away from blood. The doctors kept my mom for observation and we had to drive home in that car, the floorboards covered in it. We shampooed the carpets in the house and bought seat covers and new floor mats for the car. We never got rid of those stains though. Shortly after my mom died, my dad and I spent the weekend ripping all the carpets out of the house. There were these beautiful hardwood floors under the carpet that we sanded down and stained. Then we sold the house and moved across town. We traded the car in for a truck.

Lynn rolled over and half opened her eyes. She smiled in a sleepy kind of way when she saw I was awake and mouthed "Who is it?" I just shook my head. She reached out and rubbed my arm under the covers. I could smell her perfume. Marie heard the pause in my voice and I know she could feel my hesitation over the line.

"Please," she said "I don't have anyone else I can call."

"I'm sorry, I can't." I heard myself say as I watched Lynn close her eyes again. As I folded the phone shut I could hear Marie call me an asshole through her tears. I dropped the phone onto the rug next to the bed. I pulled Lynn close to me and held her as she slept.

---

Chapter 17 | Suicide and Keg Stands Index | Chapter 19

Posted by Ben Corman at 4:07 PM

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