girlfriend is standing on the fuse.
“What’s up?” I shout. And she looks at me like she’s forgotten that I exist. This means she’s also forgotten to guard herself from me, so I have a moment when I see the sentences behind her eyes. I can’t do this. This is too fucking hard.
I change my question. I say, “What’s wrong?” And just like that, her sentences are shut behind a screen. But I’m curious. Yes, I’m damn curious.
“Not a fucking thing,” she says. “And I think maybe our time is up.”
“You don’t need a ride anymore?” I ask. I’m not above using my wheels to angle for some more time with a complicated girl.
“Fuck.” The song’s ended now and everyone is cheering. I barely hear her shout, “Wait right here.”
Dev and Hunter take their bows like they’re already spooning, Dev curved over Hunter’s back as they dip in unison. While the guy from Are You Randy? uses his hands to clap, Norah puts her hand on Caroline’s shoulder and leans in to shout in her ear. What follows is one of those ropeless tugs of war, measured in centimeters of pull and pull away. I can’t hear any of it until Caroline screams, “I am not trashed!” which of course means she is, because who the hell else would use such a completely wasted phrase? The guy from Are You Randy? is starting to catch on and is trying to catch up by catching hold. But his instinct totally defeats him, because his hand swerves somewhere near her breast, which isn’t really the terrain he needs to keep his ground. Norah’s yank trumps his hairy palm in this contest, and Caroline is soon stumbling in my direction.
Before I really know what’s happening, Caroline’s tilting into me and I’m catching her. Then she’s heaving down, and I’m sure she’s about to puke all over me, but instead she rises and looks at me and says, “You have really ugly shoes.”
Norah’s next to me now, saying, “Let’s go.” She leaves Caroline there for me to carry as she yells, “Get the fuck out of my way” to people, uncrowding them with her snarl. My heart understands the direction we’re going in, because it starts pounding like it’s got something really damn important to say, and by the time I’m out of my head enough to really use my eyes, there’s someone in our way, and that someone is the girl who took the key to my heart and swallowed it with a smile.
“I need your car,” she says.
And it’s like I’ve forgotten that the word for “What?” is “What?” because I just stand there and look at Tris and think she’s talking to me and somehow translate that into she’s giving me a chance.
“I need to go somewhere,” she tells me. “I promise I’ll bring it back.”
I’m reaching for the keys in my pocket. I’m thinking I’ll go with you. I’m thinking of passenger-seat conversations and making song dedications in my head. Her face lit by that nighttime driving light – two parts dashboard, one part headlight strobe from the opposite lane. I am remembering that so much.
Fuck, I loved her then. And then is blurring into now. I’m thinking why not? I’m thinking we’re still the same people. And a voice outside of me is saying, “I’m afraid the car’s already full. No room for you, Tris. Sorry.”
This Norah girl’s grinning now, all transparent sweetness and light.
“Excuse me?” Tris asks.
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t clear. Let me try again. FUCK OFF.”
“I think turning off to fucking is your department, Norah. Now why don’t you take Drunkzilla here and go find some nice Weezer fans to rock-tease. I’m talking to Nick, not you.”
And I’m thinking: She’s fighting over me. Tris is fighting over me.
But for some reason it’s Norah who’s putting her arm around me and putting her hand in my back pocket.
I’m about to shudder her off, but then Tris says, “Come on, Nick – we’re really late and need the car. I’ll pay you back for the gas.” And I know right away that I’m not a part of her “we.” I’ve been fucking exiled from her “we.”
“I’m going to find Randy,” Caroline decides.
“Hell, no, you’re not,” Norah says, taking her arm from my shoulder and linking it around Caroline’s elbow. Which leaves us in this weird we’re off to see the Wizard pose, with Tris blocking us like the Wicked Witch of the Past.
She could have me so easily. But instead she snorts and says, “You can take him. I only wanted his car.”
And with that, Tris leaves me for good. Every time I see her, from now until I die, she will leave me for good. Over and over and over again.
Norah takes her hand out of my back pocket and steadies Caroline with her full body. It’s my turn to lead now, and I can barely do it. It’s not that I’m drunk or stoned or spiraling high. It’s just that I’m defeated. And that’s impairing all of my senses.
There’s only one hopeful chord in this cacophony, and it’s this girl I’m following. I know I could tell her to get a cab – I have a feeling she can more than afford it – but I like the idea of leaving with her and staying with her. She says good-bye to the club manager as we reach the door and are released onto the street. The sidewalk is full of smokers, talking or posing their way to ash. I get the nod from a couple of people I vaguely know. Ordinarily if I left with two hot girls, there’d also be some looks of admiration. Maybe it’s because of the clear anger between Norah and Caroline, or maybe it’s because they all think I’m gay – whatever the case, I get no more congratulations than a cabdriver does for picking up a fare.
I know I should offer to help Norah propel Caroline forward, but the truth is that I don’t feel like I can carry anyone but myself right now. The streets are empty. I am empty. Or, no – I am full of pain. It’s my life that’s empty.
I stumble for my keys. Tris will not be waiting for me inside the car. Tris will not be waiting for me ever again.
I shouldn’t have come here. I shouldn’t have been anywhere that she could find.
We’re at my car.
“What the fuck is that ?” Norah asks.
I shrug and say, “It’s a Yugo.”
So this is what my promising life has been reduced to. The Jewish princess from Englewood Cliffs, fucking valedictorian who chose a Catholic girls’ high school to accompany her best friend through the experience, who chose to turn down Brown, the girl whose possibilities now that she’s about to be let loose upon the world should supposedly be infinite, is sitting through the middle of an April night in the passenger side of a Yugo that smells like Tris’s patchouli aromatherapy oil. Perhaps it’s only the vehicle that won’t start, but it feels like it’s my life that won’t start. Yes, this Yugo with the passenger-side seat metal coming through the torn seat fabric, scratching against the back of my thigh, this Cold War relic
