They were sitting around filling the bedroom with grey cigarette smoke, and Addison finally said, “Mase, what the fuck are we watching?”
“Duh,” Mason threw his hands up from his work and pointed to the cartoon people singing in Italian. “It’s Operavox. Animation meets opera. The best of Welsh television. I thought we agreed this would be an awesome idea.”
“Actually, you agreed with yourself when we were at the library, and I just said all right check it out. This shit is weird.”
“I know!” Mason was delighted.
Addison stubbed out his cigarette.
“Pass me one, mate?” Mason demanded in a flawless Cockney accent.
Addison stuck a cigarette between his friend’s lips and lit while Mason was on the edge of the bed, sculpting on a TV tray.
“Thanks for being a friend.”
“I gotta hand it to you, Mason,” Addison told his friend who was exhaling around the lit cigarette stuck in his mouth, “You find things for us to do that most people have to get high for.”
“Drugs are greatly overrated.”
“I always feel high when I’m with you.”
Mason cocked his head in the midst of his work and bent back to flick his cigarette in the communal ashtray.
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“You should.”
“Behold,” he lifted the sculpture. “I have made the solution to everyone’s problems.”
“Oh, my God! It’s a... What the hell is that?”
On the television, the opera blared on.
“It’s a giant man eating worm with a mouthful of razor sharp teeth.”
“That’s what I thought,” Addison said, eyes narrowed as the cigarette smoke trailed from his Maverick.
“You know what? I think you’re right? That’s exactly what everyone needs.”
“Are you going to take our order, or just stand there looking foolish?” Balliol said.
The pimply waiter, blinked at him, and Balliol said: “Well?”
The boy looked as if he were trying to figure out what reply to make, when Sully added:
“It’s just we’ve been waiting for about ten minutes.”
“While you were just standing around chatting with—” Balliol began.
The waiter said, “Well, do you know what you want?”
“What’s good?”
“I like the grilled cheese,” the boy told Sully.
“Well, then I’ll have that.”
“Sullivan, you can make grilled cheese at home.”
“Well, what do you see?” Sully said.
“I like the steak sandwich. And water,” Balliol said, then asked the boy, “Do you charge for water?”
The boy blinked at him.
“You never know,” Balliol said. “Some people do these days.”
“We don’t,” the boy said.
“I’ll take water then.”
When the waiter had left Sully shook his head.
“What’s that?”
“What’s what?” Sully said.
“The look on your face.”
“It’s nothing,” Sully muttered.
Balliol raised his eyebrows and gave a theatrical smile.
“It’s this,” Sully said, turning over the dessert menu. “You didn’t have to snap at him like that. You snap at everyone, Bailey. Everyone’s your enemy.”
“No,” Balliol corrected him. “Stupid people are my enemy.”
“But you think everyone’s stupid.”
“Well, look around you,” he made a circular sweep over the restaurant. “Everyone is!”
“You’re unbelievable!”
Sully thanked the waiter when he came back with their drinks, but Balliol only gave a curt nod.
“Has it occurred to you that except for me you don’t have any real friends,” Sully said.
“I can’t really see that many people I want to be friends with.”
“That’s why!” Sully said. “You turn everyone off. That’s why you’ve only got me.”
Balliol cocked his head and gave Sully a crooked smile. That was always dangerous.
“I have no friends because I don’t want any. You want to be everyone’s friend, though. Don’t you, Sullivan? Well, then tell me why you don’t have anybody either?”
That hurt. Balliol knew it did. Sully’s eyes went so wide that Balliol almost wanted to take back what he said. But there was no taking it back, anyway.
“That’s not true!” Sully said.
“Oh?” Balliol raised his eyebrow. “Who’s your other friend? Jesus? He loves everybody. Or maybe you mean... Chris Powers?”
Sully just stared at him, genuinely angry.
“Oh,” Balliol murmured. “That’s exactly what you meant.”
With a self satisfied little smile Balliol, eyes downcast, lifted his water glass, and took a sip.
JOEL MCKENNA SLOUCHED, SELF-SATISFIED, into the kitchen chair in his loose trousers taking a cigarette out from one of his breast pockets.
“Shelley’s coming to dinner on Saturday night.”
“And then you’ll get some?”
“Sidney!” Joel said in a voice that was actually wounded, “I don’t even know her.”
“Yes,” Mark agreed. “It’s called morals.”
“I don’t have anything against morals, but morals have had the old boy sleeping alone since his divorce.”
Sid shrugged and came to the table.
“I just think that Joel deserves a little happiness.”
“Straight he does,” Mark said. He never said “Darn straight,” and certainly not “Damned straight.”
“Actually,” Sidney said before Joel could protest all the well wishing. “He deserves lots and lots of happiness. As much as he can get. Which leads me to—” Sidney gestured with an egg roll, “my going out of town to the art convention. Keisha’ll be there.”
“So it’s you who will be,” Joel arched his fingers in quote marks, “who will be… ‘getting some’.”
“She’s still my wife. Technically. And that means I’m paying for it. And when you’re paying for it, it’s not getting some.”
“You still get each other hot,” Joel said frankly.
“She doesn’t look at other men. I don’t look at other women. I can’t shake the bitch—”
“The mother of your child…” Mark reminded him.
“I can’t shake the bitch,” Sidney continued, “And that’s the problem.” Sidney said.
“Did you ever…” Mark turned to Joel. “You know? Get hot for… your ex?”
“After I found her in bed with my brother? No.”
“We can stand each other for two days and that’s about it. And unless you haven’t noticed,” Sidney added. “She doesn’t have much of a mothering instinct. Artists should never get together. It’s a bad idea. Bad idea.”
“What?” Mason said as he led Addison and Tommy into the house. “whose a bad idea.”
“Artists marrying other artists.”
“You talking about mom again?”
The three men looked at him baffled. Mason shrugged as he opened the refrigerator and assessed:
“She’s a good artist,” Mason allowed. “Just... kind of lacking in the nurture department.”
“That’s why you’re here with me.”
Mason nodded, heading to his room:
“That and the restraining order you put on her three years ago.”
Sidney pressed his fingertips together and remarked, “Some people actually call getting full custody winning.”
Obsessive me
Obsessing about you
The object I can’t let go of
Don’t know of anything less sane than me
Than how I feel at this moment
Looking at you
Long for you
Touching you
Thinking about you
When I’m not talking about you
And you
You are the root of it all
I fall
Every time I look at you
And you are the balm
The melody
For the malady
Inside of me
While obsessing
Undressing
Caressing
Myself over you
“All right that last part was a little nasty—” Sully interrupted himself.
“Sully, no,” Chris put his hand up. “That last part was…” Chris whistled. “The whole thing was…”
Sully turned white and then red.
“Sullivan if I could do what you do with words…” he shook his head.
“And that’s you? That’s all you?”
“Yup,” Sully nodded, sitting at Chris’s desk, across from him where he sat on the bed.
“Well that was really nice, Sully.”
“And completely unfair. I don’t have any way to mutually embarrass you.”
“I could run around and show you a few football passes.”
“That’s not embarrassing. That’s what’s going to win us the championship.”
“And that,” Chris tapped on Sully’s notebooks, “is what’s going to win you a Pulitzer. Besides, let me assure you, if I did some field moves right here, in this room, you’d laugh your ass off. No, watch.”
Eyes and mouth wide open in exaggeration Chris danced on his tip toes and moved backwards then forward jogging backward in the room and then turning around catching an imaginary ball, he jogged backward again careening to the right and to the left. Sully’s mouth was wide open in laughter already when Chris suddenly tripped on his sneakers and crashed on the bed.
Sully buried his face in the covers, laughing, and Chris said, “Ouch.”
“Are you all right?”
“All right enough,” said Chris. “Just what I get for being stupid.”
Chris himself was chuckling as he pushed himself up.
“I never knew you were funny,” Sully said.
Chris kept chuckling, shrugged, and said, “Neither did I.”
“You know what?” Chris said.
“What?”
“I didn’t know you knew how to laugh. You don’t laugh.”
“I do too,” Sully said.
“No,” Chris corrected him, “you do this.” Chris smirked from the side of his mouth and made a little noise. “You smirk. It’s like you’re afraid to laugh. And then...”
“And then what?”
“Forget it.”
“You can’t say ‘forget it’ after you’ve brought it up.”
“It’s just sometimes you look sad. Like you want to be... I don’t know.”
“Balliol, the other day—”
“Oh, God, not Balliol! Go on,” Chris said. “What did he tell you?”
“He just said that I didn’t have any friends. But him.”
Chris stared at him. What did he look like? Upset? Angry.
“You’re an idiot, Sully,” he told him.
“What?”
“I’m your friend,” he told him.
“OKAY, IT’S TIME TO READ this key ring,” Mason said, flipping it over.
“You’ve never read it?”
“Actually, no.”
“What is it?” Addison took it from Mason. “Oh, this.”
“Don’t say, oh this,” Tommy told him.
“It was neutral,”
‘No, it wasn’t . It was like oh this,” Tommy gave a sullen imitation. “Oh, this stupid stuff. You’re always making fun of my faith.”
“Because it’s funny—”
“Enough,” Mason told Addison, flipping over the key chain.
“It’s the Prayer of Jabez,” Tommy said. “The one where—”
“I know what the Prayer of Jabez is,” Mason said.
“Yeah, it’s what all the hillbilly Christians are running around getting books on.”
Mason and Tommy both ignored Addison. Having read it, Mason frowned and muttered: “That’s it? Add, get my Bible.”
Addison got up and, raising his eyebrows at the bookshelf said, “which one.”
“Any of ‘em. Except the Satanic one.”
Tommy looked over at the bookshelf and said, “Oh, Mason!”
“Oh, Tommy,” Mason parroted and took the Good News Bible out of Addison’s hand flipping to the passage. “It’s gotta be more than that.” he said.
He cleared his throat and said, “Okay, here it is:
There was a man named Jabez, who was the most respected member of his family. His mother has given him the name Jabez because his birth had been very painful. But Jabez prayed to the God of Israel, “Bless me, God, and give me much land. Be with me and keep me from anything evil that might cause me pain.” And God gave him what he prayed for.”
“That’s it?” Addison said.
Mason nodded.
“God,” Addison said. “That Jabez was one selfish motherfucker.”
Mason burst out laughing, and Tommy made an offended noise before stating: “That’s not the point of it.”
“So that’s why the Republican neo-conservative Christians like it so much,” Addison said. “Reminds me of,” he burst out in his Janis Joplin impersonation
Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz
my friends all have Porches
I must make amends
worked hard all my life
can’t remember the other lines
cause my Janis Joplin’s
a little rusty—
so Lord, won’t you buy me
a Mercedes—”
“That’s enough,” Tommy hopped up and snatched his school bag.
“That’s enough. I’m sick of you!”
Addison had actually started laughing harder before he saw how genuinely angry Tommy was. He was out the door and marching through the living room. The men and Savannah saw him from the kitchen, but they didn’t stop to ask questions. Mason came after him to the stoop outside on the front lawn.
“Tommy!”
“Don’t Tommy me. I’m sick of him making fun of me. I’m sick of Addison always having something smart to say, always trying to call me an idiot. I’m not an idiot.”
“No one said you were.”
“Addison did. All he does is rag on me—”
“Tommy—”
“And all you do is let him!”
Mason released Tommy’s shoulder, and his eyes widened.
“That is not fair,” he said.
“Isn’t it?” Tommy said.
“If you were a real friend, you wouldn’t just sit there and laugh every time Addison said something mean.”
Tommy wheeled away and was headed down the lawn, strapping his book bag on. At the edge of the lawn he looked back and shouted, unnecessarily, “Goodbye!”
And then he was walking down Owens Street, past all the other ranch houses.