Born Blue (20 page)

Paul weren't half paying attention to me 'cause his mind still were on his phone call. It took him a couple of seconds to hear me.

"Oh," he said. "That's no problem. The couch pulls out into a bed. You two can sleep together."

"No way! And how come I been sleeping on it like it just a couch if it be a bed, too?"

Paul flopped down in one of his chairs like he just too exhausted for words. He let his head fall back against
the chair and said to me, "It's more comfortable as a couch. There's a bar that runs under the mattress that's really uncomfortable." He lifted his head. "If you want, you two can pull out the mattress and set it on the floor."

"Ain't no way I gonna sleep with her. She got bad breath and BO, too."

Paul laughed. "She does not. Okay, we'll sleep out here, and you can have my bed."

I jumped up from the keyboard, where I been sitting, and said, "I'll sleep with her, then, 'cause that girl be afraid of men."

Paul shook his head. "Liar," he said.

Third thing that happened, our song come out on the radio, so real soon we was gonna go on tour!

It happened when Lisa come to town, so she were there to celebrate, and her and Paul was acting like they drunk when they ain't had nothin' but Cokes. Everybody were acting silly, and they was laughing and cheering and listening on the radio for it to come on again. The only two people who wasn't flying round drunk-happy was me and Jed. All that day I been listening to Paul and Lisa talk, and they didn't hardly say nothin' that I could join in on, 'cause it were about college stuff and books they both read and stuff going on in the Middle East. Paul kept saying the word
resonates
to her all the time, too, which were gettin' on my one nerve, 'cause what the hell were the meaning of that word? He pulled a book off his shelf and handed it to Lisa. He said the book really res
onates with him. Later, he played her a song he said really resonates, especially the chorus. Then when we was walking in this dingy city park that had more garbage than flowers, he said how he missed the mountains, and he says this long poem about the mountains to her and tells her it really resonates.

I said, "You know what, Paul, your ass really resonates," and him and Lisa looked at one another and burst out laughing, like what I said be their own private joke, and like I were the joke! I wanted to rip both their fool heads off for laughing at me, and I didn't say nothin' more to them till we got out of the garbage garden and Luckie from the band come up and said we was just on the radio on the classical music station that sometimes plays jazz and blues.

Then Jed were in a sulk 'cause it weren't him on the drums playing on the radio, and nobody could say yet if he was gonna go to New York City with us or not, and maybe just Lisa be the one going. So him and me didn't neither of us like Lisa, and weren't neither of us celebrating, even when the pizzas and beer and Cokes come.

We was all over at Luckie's place, which was a apartment over a bunch of offices. He called it a loft 'cause it were one big room he had to divide up with hanging sheets and tall bookcases. Well, that loft were real big, so I knew Paul wouldn't see when I gone up to Jed and asked him if he got anything stronger than Co-Cola and beer laying round we could dip into.

Jed grinned a big horse-faced grin at me when I asked him. Then he pulled on my arm, and we run outta there.

We started out at Jed's place, which weren't nothin' but a dirt pit, far as I could tell. I sat down on a brown-and-tan couch that coulda come straight outta Patsy and Pete's stink house, it smelled so bad. Jed run off to his bathroom, then come out again with a bottle in his hand. He shook it in my face, and I leaned away.

"What they be?" I asked him.

He said, "I stole these from the drugstore where I work They're tranquilizers." He laughed and shook the bottle again.

"You want?" he asked.

I stood up, shovin' him and his stupid pills away. "I don't want no sleep medicine," I said. "I wanna get happy. Now what you got that can get me singin' and dancin' round here?"

Jed flicked the lid off the pill bottle with his thumb and popped some of them pills into his mouth. He swallowed and said, "Don't have much here, just vodka. The rest we'll have to dig up someplace else."

"Well, vodka be fine to start with," I said, "but it ain't great. Why you bring me here when you got nothin' but nothin', anyways?"

Jed winked at me, then got the vodka bottle out from under his couch, gettin' down on his belly right near my feet to do it. Didn't know what that fool were doing till he brought out the juice, so I were trying to step outta
his way and fell over on top of him. He liked that real good. He rolled over and grabbed on to me and brung his legs round me so I couldn't stand back up again. We sat face to face like that and drank that juice hard and straight, and I could feel myself going soft and fuzzy inside. Jed tried to put the moves on me, seeing how I was woozy, but I weren't doin' nothin' with my clothes off in that stink hole, so we set out for a place near where me and Paul was living, and scored us some good junk.

Then we took it on over to Paul's clean white apartment, and I put on some frisky music and got dancing and glancing Jed's way. He were already too stoned to give me much notice, though. I could see sweat runnin' down his face. His face were real pale, too, and I said maybe he better lie down awhile 'cause he didn't look so good. He tore at his shirt like it chokin' him round the neck and said to never mind him, 'cause he be fine. Then he went to the bathroom, and I sat on the couch, feeling kind of funny myself. I looked up at the bookshelves and saw a sunrise on all them books of Paul's. There were such a beautiful sunrise come suddenly, with all the colors of the rainbow spreading out like fingers on all them books, I lay back and sung a song to the sunrise.

Later, when Paul and Lisa come in, I were laying on the counter between the kitchen and the living room, with my feet up in the air. Cain't remember what I said to them when I seen them, but whatever, it made Paul so
mad, he pulled me off the counter hard, and I fell to the floor and my legs was bruised for weeks.

I remember Paul asked where Jed be at, though, and I said in the bathroom, but Jed weren't there after all. He were layin' in Paul's bed. He were laying in there, dead.

TOO BAD IT WEREN'T
me that was dead,'cause I were the one that got in all the trouble. Were like I be the one killed him.

The ambulance took me and Jed to the hospital, and first the doctors pumped out my stomach, which were the worst kind of torture. A lady doctor then come up to me and said that Jed got hold of some bad stuff and I were probably a very lucky young lady to still be alive. Then the police come along and want to know where we got ahold of the junk and all kinds of questions about Jed I didn't know the answers to, but they kept at me like I just be lyin' to them.

Now and then I saw Paul outside the room I got put in, but he never come in or talked to me till it were at long last time to go home.

I said I were sorry, when we was in the car going home, and that it weren't my fault, and Paul said, "Shut up!" real loud and hard, so I shut up. We got to his
apartment and Lisa were there waiting for us in her pink bathrobe and slippers, like a worried little housewife.

"What happened?" she asked. "Is everything all right?"

Paul didn't want her to talk, neither, 'cause I seen how he clenched his jaw hard so the muscles showed through on his face.

He turned to me and said, "Pack your things and get out of here."

Me and Lisa spoke at the same time. Lisa said, "Paul, it's after midnight. You can't just throw her out."

I said, "Where I gonna go? I ain't got no place to go."

Paul tore at his hair, he were so angry, and I ain't never seen nobody do that before. He growled and tore at his hair. Then he turned on me and yelled in my face, "Get out! Get out! Get out!"

I got out. I didn't take nothin' with me but what I had on, but I didn't go far. I lay on the floor outside Paul's door and fell to sleep soon as my head touched the cool wood floor.

I
DIDN'T WAKE
till I heard Lisa say, "Thank God."

I opened my eyes and looked straight up and saw Paul and Lisa standing above me, in the doorway. I groaned. I felt all banged up everywhere on my body, including in my stomach. I sat up, and Paul backed up into the apartment a bit.

Lisa squatted down next to me. "Are you all right? Come on, let me help you up."

Didn't want Paul's little housewife helping me do nothin', so I pulled away from her and said, "I be fine if you could stop breathin' on me."

Lisa looked up at Paul and said, "You want me to stay?"

Paul said, "No, I can handle it."

I said, "I ain't a it."

Paul said, "Get up and get inside." His voice were his hard voice, but it sounded flat and bored, too, like he really didn't care what I did.

I groaned and stood up and got inside. Him and Lisa said their sweet good-byes, whispering to each other and kissing real quick Then Paul turned and come inside with me.

"You cannot live here with me any longer," he said. He were still in his sweatpants and undershirt, and his hair were all poky. He were scowling at me good, but with his silly hair standing up, I weren't scared.

He went to the counter to show me my stuff all packed up and waiting for me. "I put your things in here," he said, patting a backpack "I put some money in the front zipper. You can keep the pack"

I come into the room more. "Don't need your money or that pack. I can get me a job any old day. I don't have to go on your stupid-ass New York trip to make me some money. I can take care of myself."

"That's a laugh."

"I been doing fine without you for all these years, I can do fine again. Anyways, thanks for all your music lessons. They was nice." I pulled the pack off the counter and put it on my shoulder.

Paul crossed his arms over his chest and said, "Yes, it
was
nice. Why did you have to ruin it?"

"You be the one who ruined it. You the one had Lisa come over."

Paul gave a big sigh and shook his head like he didn't know what to say.

I looked at his feet. He had long knobby toes that looked like he went all the time in too tight shoes. I shrugged and said kinda quiet, "I don't know why I always ruin things. Don't know I'm ruining something till I ruin it. I don't know why it be my fault Jed be dead. I don't know why." I looked up at Paul, and he let go his arms from his chest and let them hang loose. It made his whole body sag.

"The drugs, Leshaya, the drugs! We had an agreement, remember? I thought you liked staying here. I thought you wanted to change."

"I never agreed to nothin', and I didn't make Jed take them tranquilizers he stole. He done all that on his own. You just lookin' for someone to blame 'cause you sorry he dead."

Paul exploded when I said that. His arms was flappin', and he said, "Yeah, I am! He was my oldest friend! You
killed my best friend, and you don't show an ounce of remorse!"

"I didn't kill nobody! He were
your
best friend, so why didn't you help him? Why you let him go on all his binges? Why didn't you get him to a rehab place or something if you cared so much? You was his best friend."

Paul's eyes looked wild and hot. "How was I supposed to stop him? What should I have done, tied the both of you up?"

"What were I supposed to do? How come it be my fault just 'cause I were with him? How were I supposed to know them drugstore pills don't mix good with alcohol? What if we both died? What if I took them pills, too? Then who's fault it be? Yours! We was at your place, and I were livin' with you. So goin' by the way you think, it would be your fault. It be all your fault!"

Paul held his hands up and said, "All right, let's stop this. Okay, you're right, it wasn't just your fault."

"Damn straight!"

"But the things you did, you
are
responsible for them."

I felt too tired to keep standing up, so I flopped down in one of Paul's chairs, thinking he were gonna yell at me for sitting, but he didn't. He just come over in front of me and kept talking and yelling, with his hands flinging here and there to help him make his point.

He said, "What you do doesn't just affect you! You
hurt me and the band, too. The trip to New York, remember? Do you ever think even a minute ahead?" He picked up a pillow and threw it back down on the couch. "Man!" he said. "What you do hurts anybody else who cares about you, not just you. Don't you get that?"

"Well, that list ain't long. Got nobody caring about me, so I don't got to worry 'bout who I be hurtin'."

"
Agh!
" Paul said, or something like that. "You don't let anybody care about you. You don't let anybody get close enough!"

"Yeah, it be my fault again. Funny how it always be my fault."

Paul raised up his hand. "Whose fault is it, then, if it isn't yours? Man!" He dropped hisself down on the couch. "Man!" he said again. He had his head back and were looking up at the ceiling. Then he lifted up and sat forward, looking at me again. "You know, you act like you're the only one. Like the whole world is against
just
you. Just because your life's been tough doesn't mean you're excused from being responsible. Like it or not, you
do
live in society."

"Yeah, whatever," I said, and I shrugged 'cause I didn't know what he were meaning about that living-in-society stuff. I guess he thought when I said
whatever,
that it meant I didn't care 'bout what he said, 'cause he sprung up from the couch like I just stepped on his one last nerve. He had his fists held tight on the sides of his body, like he were trying not to beat me up, and all these veins popped out his neck.

"Get out!" he shouted, raising one of his stiff-angry arms and pointing at the door. "Go on, get your things and get out!"

I knew he weren't gonna let me back in again, so I grabbed my stuff and left.

I
WALKED TO THE
Krispy Kreme doughnut shop and bought me a sack of doughnuts and coffee and sat outside in the garbage park to eat them. Were a cold day for what I had on—Paul's black jeans and his white undershirt. The sky were gray, and weren't nothin' blooming in the trees, and no birds singin'. Nobody else were in the park but me. I stuffed my last bite of doughnut in my mouth and tossed my sack and coffee cup on the ground with the rest of the garbage. I took Paul's pack and the diaper bag I come to him with, and walked along the street, and the wind blew cold at me.