I’m finished.” She added, “Actually, first I was a music major, I played piano. I played piano for a long time. I switched at the last minute to poli-sci.”
“Poli-sci. Sounds like a disease.” She was cute, he decided. There was a softness about her—not fat really, just young, like her edges hadn’t settled yet.
“It’s short for political science,” she said. “It’s a popular degree.”
“What do you do with a degree in poli-sci?”
“Run for office. Ha.” It came out more as a burp. “I don’t know. Watch people’s kids. Cashier at Putt-Putt. Work in bars.”
Denny nodded. “Hell. I got that degree.” He felt her attention as he deposited the weed onto the paper. Sprinkled it like a taco. He rolled the joint with a few deft twists, then licked the seam to seal it. “Wanna start?”
“No, you.”
It tasted good. Like camping. Denny sighed and let it out, watched the smoke curl into blue loops and then fade away. He handed her the joint. She took it between her index and middle finger and clamped it there. Held it like a zeppelin, like it might take off. She brought it to her lips and sucked until the fire glowed. “Wow,” she said and smoke fell from her mouth.
“Hey, you didn’t inhale it.” He liked watching her. There was something Generation X-y about her mouth. It was round, maybe a little lopsided. He took the joint. “Like this. You have to suck it in, all the way, like something sudden.” He showed her. “Like a surprise. Like Lena’s coming after you,” he said, smiling.
She glanced out the window and took the joint. She did it right this time and coughed. “It hurts,” she said.
“It hurts so good.”
“Yeah.”
“That means it’s working.”
“I don’t think I’m high.”
“That means you probably are.”
“I’ve never been high before.”
He looked at her. Her nose was red from all the rubbing. “Well,” he said.
“Are we going back in?” she asked, blowing out hard.
“Relax, will you?”
The windows were fogged up now. She made a fist and pressed the side of it to the pane, then used a finger to top the shape with dots. “A baby foot,” she said and giggled. She looked at him, her finger still on the glass, the last toe spreading, getting bigger from her heat. “You have great eyes,” she said. “Newscaster eyes.”
“Thanks, but they’re contacts.” He popped one out to show her, then wet it in his mouth and put it back in. “Look natural, huh?” He turned down the vent, leaving them in silence.
“JJ,” she said finally.
“Huh?”
“You forgot my name, I think.”
“Is that so?”
“Yeah.”
“Well I didn’t,” he lied. “Denny,” he said, jutting out a hand.
She giggled. “I’ve been calling you that all night.”
“I knew you were smart.” The foot had clouded over. He took a few more hits, offered her some, though he knew she was done, and stubbed it gently in the ashtray. For a dumb moment he thought about giving it to her, like a take-home prize.
“Why do you save all these papers?” She motioned to the stack of Westwords on the floor by her feet, then bent down and grabbed one off the top, started flipping through it.
“I don’t. I just haven’t dumped them. There’s a difference.”
“Rancid Audio,” she read. “Jam session blasts Bluebird.”
He didn’t know why, actually, he still had them. He’d found his apartment a couple weeks ago. It was okay, just north of Denver, in a high-rise called Meadow Acres. Utilities included, steam room, gym. Like a permanent hotel. It was furnished, which was good, because he’d left everything. Which was only fair.
“Dear Diva, My lover fell asleep during sex again. I’m starting to take it personally.”
It felt strange, after a shift, going home to unfamiliar things. The furniture was old, plaid with wood trim. There was a lot of it, but for some reason the place still looked empty. Or maybe it just felt unreal. He hadn’t told anyone that he and Steph had split up. He hadn’t told Lena.
“This is funny. I like the Westword. I think I’ve read this one. Do you ever read the personals? Do you have a girlfriend?”
What Denny wanted was to go inside. He needed the cash. It wouldn’t be so bad, to throw back a few more, to talk stats with the regulars. He could still watch the game. Things’d calm down the second half and he’d have a little time. Even if he didn’t have time, he’d watch. And anyway, what good was it to sit here? Like a loser just sitting here. A crazyman. Denny had a flash then, of his old man, at the kitchen table by the TV, over a yellow legal pad, copying Scripture in crazyman handwriting, the a’s and o’s like little squares, nothing curving, no mistakes. If Pop ever gets a job, he’d said once to his mother, we should buy a Xerox machine. And his father had given it to him for that and it’d felt good, actually, because it got his father up and out of that chair. Because for once they weren’t all of them just sitting there, waiting.
“Single straight-laced Jewish male seeks same. Naughty schoolgirl seeks dom to fill my every hole.” JJ looked off, like she was counting.
Who cared if Lena expected it? He didn’t care. And Marna, he thought, it was possible that she would come back, that she was even around here somewhere, chewing her blue gum, holding on to those few minutes of safe, of deciding—Do I go back in? There was only power in it if you did, Denny thought. If, eventually, the answer was yes.
“I almost forgot,” JJ’s voice broke in, “where I was. You know.” She put the newspaper down. “Hey. Aren’t you curious?”
“No.”
“No, listen. I was thinking. My name.”
“You’re high.”
“What it stands for. Most people ask what it stands for. Don’t you want to know?”
He shrugged. “If you need to tell me. If you have to unload or something.”
JJ licked her lips, then touched them with a finger, like she was checking they were still there. “I can’t go back in.”
“Sure you can.”
“Sure I can.” She giggled. “But look. Are my eyes red?”
“Yeah. But who cares. So are everyone’s.”
“They’re
