Sitting vacantly on the couch, watching TV, he seemed bored. He’d get bored sometimes and would want to drown the boredom. That was usually. But now he was bored and wallowing in it.
I didn’t say much to Marc. I checked the fridge. Dusk had, the night before, brought over a case of beer. I grabbed one out, and offered one to Marc. He declined. I went over and sat down, and then heard the front door open.
Cudd’s voice sounded in the living room, and then his words trailed off, down the hallway some. Gale and David entered the family room. I looked back at them and nodded.
“Hey Shane,” David said in a cheery voice.
Gale Trask wore a gapping grin. He was an odd looking guy, resembling a piece of lumpy clay that’d pass for somewhat attractive if the world was made of clay. Yet girls saw him as handsome, since he could easily maniupulate and shape them.
His mouth was triangular shaped, his bottom lip extended out and two large front teeth shone proudly with his usual, carefree smile. His hair was thin, limp and blondish yellow, the color of fishing line, dried out yet still keeping a wet, dull appearance. I heard he used to be a fat kid, and now he was thinner – but thinner like a flat tire is to an inflated one.
Gale and David came in and stood behind the couch, both smiling, their glad eyes borrowing the TV from us. Gale said something to David that I didn’t hear and David nodded.
And Marc looked downright awful on the Ed couch – Ed, by the way, was at work.
I turned back facing Gale and David. “What’re you guys up to?” I asked them.
“We’re going surfing,” David grinned.
“If there’s room out there,” Gale added.
David smiled a new smile and said: “I know. The waves are always too crowded nowadays. It sure ain’t like it used to be.”
Poor Marc. He hadn’t turned around, not once. He sat, eyes forward. He looked like a child who had lost his favorite balloon to the sky: who had just looked up and noticed that even the dot of what was left had vanished into the greedy, sorrowful heavens – probably never to return…
Cudd ambled in. He didn’t make it far, though. Gale and David both began heading out, and then Cudd turned and followed.
“See you guys later,” David said.
Soon all three of them were out the door.
Marc didn’t say anything for a while; that is, until Dusk arrived...
Sean came in, about ten minutes after the boys left; Marc turned and nodded at him. Dusk grabbed three beers out of the fridge and walked over, handed me one and then stretched over, placing one on the couch next to Marc.
“I think you’ll enjoy this more now that you’re breathing – or seem to be.”
Marc grinned hazily like a speck of sunshine breaking out of clouds. He opened the beer and said:
“So it was you last night.”
“You didn’t know that?” said Dusk, sitting down on the couch next to me.
“I wasn’t sure.”
Marc all of a sudden seemed down again. There was a second and a half of silence, and then Sean said:
“Well – now you know. And that’s that. The world is completed. The seven days are done…”
Marc was silent.
“What’s wrong with this guy?” Sean asked me – somewhat facetiously – actually speaking to the both of us.
Marc cracked the beer and took a woeful drink. He rubbed his eyes and yawned.
“It’s Gale,” he said. “The guy really bugs me.”
“I’ve met him a few times,” Dusk replied. He took a drink. “Where did he come from? I mean, who did he know around here to be so comfortable so quickly? He seems like the door-to-door type who not only puts his foot in the door, but leaves a shoe when he’s gone.”
Marc sighed. “He’s a friend of David’s.” Marc said friend of David, not Cudd. Originally Gale was a friend of Cudd, not David. “They just went surfing, I guess.” He emphasized JUST.
“Gale surfs?” I asked.
“That what he says,” Marc sighed.
“That’s strange – I’d always thought sea lions sat on rocks.”
That was Dusk. His joke didn’t get a roar from us, but Marc, eyes widened, looked right at him.
“He does look like a sea lion,” he said. “I never thought of that.”
Sean smiled. “You’re right. You never thought of that. I did. I just thought it up for you.” He took a good long drink from the bottle, and replied, looking at me: “These are a long seven days.”
Then Marc and I, along with Sean, all (silently) drank to Gale resembling a sea lion.
“Don’t sweat it,” said Dusk. We faced the television – our own personal Baal. “He gets on my nerves too. Don’t feel so… lonely about it. Two dogs can scratch the same flea – even at the same time, if the flea’s big enough. Shit happens, you know what I mean?”
We all drank again. Then Sean, who needn’t an answer, went out for a cigarette. It was early in the night.
Sean Dusk, it seemed, didn’t smoke too much, probably about the same as Marc and I – only after a few beers.
He stood out by the slide. When he had opened the door it seemed very loud, like it had a while back, during hockey season when Marc went out there.
Now Marc, seeming as if he were made of led, glanced outside. He had not yet alleviated his private burden concerning Gale and David. He’d get a certain sad look when something bugged him, trance-like. But as he glanced out at Sean he seemed torn between a trance and semi nervous elation. There was a battle of expression on his face, which I couldn’t exactly read. It may’ve been Yorktown or it may’ve been Waterloo, all depending on the point of view I guess. It was tuff to read on Marc, but therein a battle remained – though at that particular time it seemed in a haunted standstill... had the last shot been fired or what, I couldn’t tell exactly?
All I knew is I wanted a cigarette. The house was suffocating me. (Or maybe it wasn’t the house.) But I didn’t want to go outside without Marc. So I waited…
It didn’t take long.
Marc stood up, grabbed his pack of smokes off the table – and I followed suit and both of us belatedly followed Sean’s lead to the backyard.
Soon we all stood smoking by the pool…
“Something about that house,” said Dusk – speaking to Marc. “It gets boring in there.”
Marc was staring into the calm water of the pool. “It can be a drag,” he said in a plain sorrowful tone.
I could hear a chorus of crickets loudly in the nearby bushes. I got an urge to yawn aloud; but then I noticed as Sean’s expression suddenly lit up.
“Hey,” he said animatedly. “Let’s trip around outside, out front – through the neighborhood. Go somewhere. See what we can see. How’s that sound?”
I’d never in my life heard a better suggestion…
“Where would we go?” Marc asked in a hollow voice.
I felt like leaving, like “tripping around” too, but I wanted Marc along. I knew it wouldn’t be the same without him…
Marc had been on the “outside”. One of the pros of hanging out with a has-been is that they’ve been already, been all around in fact. He’d seen a lot of the neighborhood. He’d not only seen it, but he had lived it. It was just a suburban town, I admit – not a metropolis, by any means – but Marc knew of places.
(At this point I didn’t know first hand of his experience but I had a feeling, and I’d heard him talk about the past and the neighborhood and it seemed quite genuine, and with a guy like Marc I could always tell when he was being genuine, because he wasn’t that great a bullshitter – at least not in my eyes.)
Only it seemed, for as long as I’d known Marc, that he was pretty content at the Cavern. Safe. But I think he was the only one of us who stayed inside by choice. The rest of us, quite honestly – even Dusk, I could tell – didn’t have anywhere else to go.
I prayed silently right then that Marc would want to join Sean – because if he didn’t, there probably wouldn’t be anything to join at all. I don’t know to whom I prayed to right then but I prayed. I might’ve prayed to God or I might’ve prayed to Buddha or I might’ve been to Sissy or even Grape for that matter, but I prayed really hard…
I was standing back, somewhat in the shadows, smoking, waiting.
It didn’t take very long for Marc’s answer…
“Sure,” he said. “Sounds good to me…”
And thus my soul was smiling…
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