Planes of Sunday - Chapter 50

50.
“There will be time, there will be time
to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create.”
-T.S. Eliot

“Hey, I need some security over here,” said Jenkins, beckoning her to him with a jerk of his head. “You snuck away,” he said more softly to her as she drew nearer.
Christina ran over to Christopher and pushed him.

“I’ve seen my fucking mom more recently than I’ve seen you, and she lives in Europe. You didn’t write me one single letter. Heather was in rehab the same time as you and she told me you acted like you didn’t know her. It’s like you don’t even care about me.”

“How many times do I have to tell you, Christina, I don’t. Okay? Fuck it, I’m starving. Can we just get some food?”

By the time they left the pizza place, Marcus, Joey and Def had disappeared with a large, loud group of boys and girls their own age, who had been sitting at the next table. They were at a party in some kids’ parents house, and who knows if they extracted glory from the kids there by being escaped sex offenders from juvenile hall, or if they just pretended they went to some high school, and were best friends there, raising benign mischief for some made up geometry teacher. Jenkins and Christina had shot up in the women’s room together. Christopher had gotten Christina to buy him a piece of pizza, but then had clandestinely wrapped it up in napkins and put it in his coat pocket, following the habit he’d had since childhood of saving up a special treat for the perfect solitary moment to savor it, like the caramel apples he saved from Halloween that Shirley finally threw away rotting, and forgotten, every mid-November. He let them walk ahead of him and stepped into an alley to throw the now-cold, smashed piece of food away in a dumpster. Even though they were all walking to the subway station, he knew this night could not end like this. Some excuse would have to materialize in the rose light of dawn to prevent the end of this odyssey through wine-dark seas of affection and disappointment, and the noise of trucks and the sudden threat of relapse and the time-travel scents that clung to his clothing of Pammy, Christina, of me, Terence, of George’s cat and George’s store and George, of the girl with the gray tooth and her suicidal room mate.

“Okay, it’s your turn now.” Oh thank God, there was more to come, after all. Christina stood beside him with the syringe in her hand like a math teacher’s favorite chewed-up pencil.

“Fuck you, Christina. I’m not stupid like you are. I’m clean.” He looked down the street at Pammy, who would be deaf in that far distance to any of the thoughtful, hard things he might say now to deny Christina’s gift to him.

“You’re so stupid, Christopher. You’re so fucking dumb and proud I almost feel sorry for you. I do feel sorry for your mom. She’s probably falling asleep in front of the TV with MASH reruns on, crying herself to sleep because she can’t get a boyfriend and the only man she gets attention from, her son, has stayed out late again, his first night out of rehab. One of many more rehab visits to come, no doubt. She probably has an unopened bottle of Vodka she’s kept on the coffee table in front of her all night, and has spent the whole night telling herself over and over not to drink any of it. You think you can escape turning out lonely like her without doing something to keep yourself from turning out that way? You think that you can just walk around being normal like everyone else and that because you were a good boy and said no to drugs, it will make you special and protect you from boredom? No, you think you don’t need drugs because you’ve got a new girlfriend. And what happens when you get tired of her, Christopher, the way you get tired of everyone and everything? You’ll find something new to get tired of? Maybe next time, someone will get tired of you for a change.

I’m so sick of it, Chris. I’m so sick and tired of doing the same things over and over again and watching you do the same things and having to be conscious through every sad detail of the whole thing. Now give me your arm.”

Christina was a whole different kind of girlfriend. The romantic fantasy she peddled was the promise of an escape from all girlfriends. He gave her his arm.