Please Ignore Vera Dietz(20)
Author: A.S. King

“I have to take pills now.”

“Last thing I knew, your mom thought you shit too much,” I said. “Did that turn out okay?”

Charlie got visibly agitated. His muscles twitched under his skin. “Yeah, well, it’s none of her goddamned business. I know what I’m doing. It’s not illegal.”

“What’s not?”

He turned to me and crouched into the green vinyl seat.

“Charlie? Is everything okay?”

“Can you keep a secret?”

“Of course.” I rolled my eyes.

“Are you sure?”

“We’ve only been best friends since we could walk.”

“I know a way you can make thirty bucks a week.”

I squinted at him. “How?”

The bus pulled up to the curb outside school and Charlie told me how. He told me he was selling his used underwear to some rich guy who lived down in Mount Pitts. “I get five bucks for each pair. Double if I toss in my socks.”

Before I could scrape my jaw off my lap, he was walking down the center aisle of the bus, laughing his ass off.

A BRIEF WORD FROM THE PAGODA

I know that guy. He drives up here all the time in his dirty white New Yorker and peeks into the steamed-up make-out cars. It wasn’t always this way, you know—a sleazy spot to get laid. Back when things were still civilized, the rich folks from town used to come up and stay their weekends in grand hotels, and ride on the gravity railroad. Ladies in long skirts, with parasols, and strong men in striped three-piece suits with gold pocket watches. When I was built, I was supposed to be a top-of-the-line resort, but the owners never secured a liquor license, so I became an instant disappointment. A shame. I would never be a temple, or a resort, or a hotel. I didn’t have a ballroom or billiards or a back room to gamble money away. I had no other use but to sit here and look pretty. I was almost demolished during World War II on account of my seeming Japanese. I was a restaurant for a while, but went bankrupt. I nearly burned down in 1969. But they keep saving me because they know I stand for something. They’re just not sure what yet.

NEW YEAR’S DAY—AFTER WORK

“You want anything?”

We’re outside Fred’s Bar and James is asking me this. I can feel myself split in two. Part of me, the part who knows what’s good for me, wants to ask him for a ginger ale. The other part of me, the one who’s been thinking of another drink since I woke up this morning, answers.

“Some of those vodka coolers. The black ones.”

James raises his eyebrows and disappears past the green door with the three diamond-shaped windows. As I sit waiting, the creepy vibes from Fred’s pinball room ooze out and surround me. I realize this is the first time I’ve been in a boy’s—uh—man’s car and been out of control of a situation. I guess, technically, this is the first time I’ve been on a real date, too. If that’s what this is.

I wonder what might happen to me and give myself a good dose of the date rape heebie-jeebies before I stop and remember that James is a nice guy. I’ve known him from the very first day I started at Pagoda Pizza last summer.

I was still seventeen and wasn’t allowed to do delivery yet, so I answered phones, mostly, and made pizzas. James worked the day shift full-time. In at ten, out at four, seven days a week, so on weekdays I’d only see him when he was leaving. Even then, he treated me like an equal and not some kid.

Now, here I am, in his car, and we’re going to make out at the pagoda. (But I’m equally excited by the vodka.)

He bursts out the door with a brown paper bag and a grin. He puts the booze in the trunk and hops into the driver’s seat. As we pass the lake and twist around the S curves that lead up the mountain, I push thoughts of Charlie out of my mind. Of course, this is impossible. Every square inch of this road, of that lake, of these woods, is Charlie. I ask James to go the long way to avoid Overlook Road. It takes us past the old tower and the view of the city.

“Did you ever see what the lights spell?” James asks.

“I grew up here, remember?”

“Oh, yeah.”

If you stop at the tower lookout spot at night, the lights of the city unintentionally spell ZERO.

But as we pass by tonight, we see a cop car parked behind the little electric company shed, so instead of stopping to read the lights, James drives on and we act like innocent kids on their way to make out—which is easy, because we are.

An hour later—around one o’clock—James and I are making out after a few drinks and I’m in Vera Heaven. I’m starting to think I love James. Already. I know this makes me stupid, but I don’t care. Every song he puts on is perfect. Everything he says is clever. Every place he touches me feels awesome. Not creepy. Not pushy. He does not try to touch any warning spots, and, as if we are all born rebels, because he is not touching them, I want him to. This makes no sense to me, because I have never gone this far with a guy before, so I really don’t know why my brain is telling me to want him to go further. But it is.

After my third vodka cooler, I straddle his lap and drape my arms around his strong neck and whisper things in his ear that I shouldn’t be whispering. I say things I shouldn’t be saying. He puts his seat back and we make out some more. The windows are steamed, Led Zeppelin is in the stereo, and when I lift my head up to fling my hair away from my face, I open one eye and gasp.

They are in the car—all thousand of them, stacked like paper. They are curved into the backseat, pressed up against the back window. Pressed against my back, my sides—staring at me. Today they’re wearing Charlie’s favorite blue-and-white-checked flannel shirt—the one with the tattered cuffs. His red bandanna—the one he wouldn’t take off during our last summer together. They have his combat hiking shorts on.

James doesn’t know what’s happening and holds me at my waist, his eyes still closed. I struggle to breathe and can’t inhale at all, so I reach for the door handle.

He opens his eyes when he feels me panicking. “Veer? You okay?”

They are squeezing him from every angle, but he can’t see them. They are not sucking the air out of his lungs.

I open the door and stumble out onto the gravel. In front of me is the red neon pagoda—a reminder of what happens when we act and don’t think. I breathe deeply and James arrives behind me, and wraps his arms around my shoulders.

“Veer?”

“I’m okay,” I say. I look back at the car. A thousand Charlies are drawing something in the steam on the window. They are drawing pictures. They are spelling something.