One Saturday morning (another day-after) Sammi came over with a friend. Marc, lately, hadn’t been arguing with her on the phone. It’s not like he’d been speaking nicely to her; in fact I hadn’t seen him on the phone with her at all.
Sammi, as somewhat covered in the previous chapter, had beautiful light-blue eyes, petite lips, a tall build yet still thin, long sandy brown hair and a girl next-door smile. She looked like a child who had suddenly grown up, reluctantly. Done combing her doll's hair, now she had Marc's soul to nourish. Meanwhile, her friend was tall like Sammi, and lankier, but hardly as attractive.
Sammi Henderson and Karen Gibbs sat and watched TV with us. We were hungover: Marc, Sean and I. Ed were there too, sans the having-been-lit-the-night-before consequence.
Sean knew Sammi already. He must’ve met her hanging with Marc one of the times I wasn’t with them. And Ed was funny that morning. With the girls there I sat quiet, thinking. I’d always be thinking. Marc seemed like he’d be thinking too, but with him it was more plotting. To Dusk being social was chewing gum, but only when it’s a flavor he liked. Myself: I’d think a lot. Too much. Maybe on the outside, from somebody looking at me, I might’ve seemed shy or disassociated. I didn’t mind that. But Ed was funny that morning. Around the girls he didn’t say a word. And unlike myself he looked as if he wasn’t saying a word. He didn’t look like he had nothing to say, but that he wasn’t saying a word.
“So,” Sammi said with irony, “this is what you guys do all day!”
Karen, I’d noticed, was a little like Ed, quiet and unassuming.
“Turn the channel,” Sammi complained. Some film was on the television.
“This is a classic. It’s just kind of slow, that’s all,” Dusk replied.
“Well I like fast movies then,” she said quickly.
I looked over at Marc. He was being a little too quiet. He was lying along the Ed-couch, the girls close on the small couch, Ed and Sean on chairs behind that couch, and myself on a bar stool along the counter.
Marc seemed a little sick or something. I think he was, out of all of us, the most hungover. But there was a sleepy grin beneath his dreary eyes. He was enjoying hearing Dusk conversing with Sammi.
“Some movies have a lot of talking, and you have to listen - otherwise, it’ll bore the hell out of you,” Sean said in his usual lecture voice, but this time it seemed a bit forced – he had never tried this hard to explain his film-watching techniques. There was a tone to his voice like he was sticking to his guns but that he’d give in at any minute too. With us it came natural, like he was talking to himself out loud. But with Sammi he sounded like Marc sometimes sounded around us.
“Well it’s working then,” Sammi said to Dusk. “It’s boring the hell out of me.”
Sean laughed, patted his leg. Then he replied:
“Turn the channel, Ed. The ladies are restless.”
Ed surfed the channels; nothing was on; not really. During the defaults - channels with no picture or sound - there came a very familiar noise from the Ed-couch:
Marc was snoring.
“Oh man,” Sean grinned. He then laughed loud enough and Marc awoke. He seemed like he’d heard a firecracker go off in his ear. We all laughed. Marc had sprung up from his sleep like a mummy from a tomb.
“See,” Sammi said to Marc, kind of motherly, kind of caustically, “that’s what you get for staying out all night, little boy.”
Marc turned, faced Sammi, and shot her a deeply narrow, personal glare. Then, like an erupting volcano, he shouted:
“Shut the fuck up, you fat fucking bitch!!!”
“I’m not fat,” she said, riled and still, somewhat hurt.
“She’s not fat,” Karen added.
“Shut up you two,” Marc said, having turned around, facing the TV again.
Karen was no longer smiling; Sammi had tears welled up in her eyes…
Outside by the slide in the backyard, a few nights later, David and Ed are in the house, as I’m listening to Marc and Sean talking through their cigarettes:
“My brother’s a badass,” Marc said.
“I never had a brother.”
“Robert used to be in a gang.”
“A gang around here? What – ‘Our Gang?’”
“He used to be in a punk gang.”
“Around where you live? Most of this area’s pretty nice, isn’t it?”
“It’s not nice everywhere.”
Marc had emphasized EVERYWHERE.
“But it’s the suburbs still,” Dusk replied. “You can walk miles in any direction at midnight and not be harmed unless some teenager has schizophrenia or something and didn’t take the right medication.
“My brother was a badass,” Marc repeated.
“Was he ever at Cues when we were there?”
“C’mon. If he was you’d have met him.”
“That’s true.”
“But you’ve probably met all his friends by now.”
“Where is he?”
“He doesn’t hang around with those guys too much.”
“Why not?”
“He got tired of that scene.”
“Is he still in a gang?”
“No. That was back in high school. I was a kid, pretty much. He was pretty insane. When I was five he pissed in my mouth.”
“What?!”
“Swear to God. I was taking a bath, and he came in and told me to open my mouth, and he pissed in it.”
“Oh my God!”
“But only for a second. I started spitting it into the tub right after my mouth was full of it.”
“Man Marc. That’s horrible but, it’s kind of funny, in a way.”
“How so?”
“Just by you having mentioned it.”
“It is now, I guess, thinking back,” Marc sighed. “But I got revenge, because after the bath, I went downstairs and pissed all over the couch.”
“Sounds more like you got your mom back,” Sean replied. “Since it’s her couch.”
“But he was on it. And believe, hardly any got on the couch.”
“You must have great aim.”
“Sure do.”
“Did you kill you or what?”
“I’m here, ain’t I?”
“Was he pissed off?”
Both of them laughed heartily.
“No,” Marc said, after lighting another smoke. “But really though, my brother Robert was a real badass at one time.”
Sean, after lighting his, said: “I wish I had a big brother. I only had a sister.”
“Younger?”
“No, older. I wish I had a younger sister. Imagine that. Imagine all her girlfriends looking up to me.”
“How many years older is she?”
“Two years.”
“Can I meet her?”
“Dude, she’s married.”
“Can I meet her?”
They laughed.
“My brother’s eight years older than me,” Marc said dazedly. “I never had a sister, and never really wanted one.”
“Well,” Sean said. “Siblings aren’t asked for. Sisters to brothers especially…
“You know,” he said. “I was talking to David the other day at his house. Did you know he has three older sisters?”
“You were at his dad’s house?” Marc asked.
“Yeah.”
“The beach house?”
“Yeah. Where his dad lives.”
“You were there?”
“Shit, dude. Yeah. I was THERE!”
“When?”
“The other day. I think it was Tuesday.”
“Oh…”
There was a deep silence. Marc took a big drag off the smoke, exhaled up into the night, looked back at Sean and with a sort of dejected expression, said warily:
“I’ve never been to David’s house before…”
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