Future Perfect (15 page)

Now, with all of this smoke, I start to wonder if I'm high.

Yep, I definitely think I'm high.

There's a mattress in the center of the floor, blue satin and sagging in the middle, with a dark stain that's shaped like Uzbekistan, and it's clustered around with candles to make it . . . festive, I guess? Jolene keeps flickering in between all these people, and I think she is flirting with one of the beard group. She actually has a beer in her hand, and she's waving it as she talks animatedly. I am in the corner and I have to keep reminding myself not to lean on anything. I keep reminding myself to stay here and stay quiet. It feels safe here.

Laura is chattering to the group of dudes surrounding her, a beer in her hand too. She is glowing—I am surprised not everyone is surrounding her. Omar stands there with his hands in his pockets, looking down at the dirty floor with a small smile on his face. You can't see any of his photographs. They're all leaning against the walls. The light of the candles next to each of them and the overhead bulb glares off the glass and casts shadows and no one is even bothering to lean down and squint at them. I argued about it the whole time we were unpacking his bags, but no one listened to me.

Everyone is happy. You can see how happy they are just surrounded by art or by one another or by this, all this, whatever
this
is that fills up the room and keeps me backing away from it. I wonder where Laura got her beer and Jolene got her beer and I want to ask someone where to find a beer. I really feel like I've had a few already. I reach out my hand to touch the sleeve of a small, blade-thin person. Their hair is shaved all the way up the back and wisps on the top spill down over their bare skin like a fountain. I miss but I reach out again and they turn with a jerk. They're wearing a lot of eyeliner, winged up and out in gorgeous swoops and I want to touch that too. I think about putting out my hand to touch it and I must have because they look at my outstretched hand and sneer at me. That's what it looks like to me. But then they say, “Oh, what? You want?” and hand over the joint. I am good at pretending so I inhale smoothly and hold it.

They say, “I like your necklace!” and I have to touch my neck to figure out what they're talking about. My DNA pendant.

I cough out smoke in a stream. When I can breathe again, I shout “Thanks!” I'm too loud. “My grandmother gave it to me! I'm going to be a doctor! At Harvard!” I lift the pendant and smooth it back down. She is not listening. She turns away and leaves me with the joint. The tip is still glowing red. I'm not sure what to do with it so I take another drag so my lungs are full and I wonder why I can't just enjoy this feeling of being full, my lungs inflated with smoke and the noise and the dark. I don't know how long I stand there. My eyes flicker around the room but keep getting caught on each of the bulbs of the Christmas lights. I realize, suddenly, that they're beautiful. I smile at Jolene but she doesn't notice me, so I push my way around and step on the mattress. I bounce across it in three steps and people are looking at me and I laugh as I stumble off because my knees are made of marshmallow candy. I throw my arms around Jolene and curl in a comma to put my face down on her shoulder.

“Oh, Jolene,” I say. “I love you. I think you are really the best and I will always try to take care of you because you are so fragile like a flower or a small bird.”

She pats me and rubs my shoulder.

“You should just do it,” I yell in her ear. “You should just say, ‘Fuck all the haters' and do your thing. I mean, whatever your thing is. You know I'm right. I'm always right. I got your back,
Jolene, I got you, you got this. You have to do it, you have to take the steps you need to take.” Jolene is pushing back from me and I hear the person she's talking to say, “Oh, is she yours then?”

“No,” Jolene says. “She's—”

“Yes,” I say indignantly, standing up straight, keeping my arm around her neck. “I'm hers.”

“Really?” he says. He has a beard. “I think she could do better than a land cow.” He smirks and takes a swig of his Hamm's.

“What?” I say. “What? I don't even know what that means. That makes no sense.”

He leans forward. His eyes are very black in the light. “A land cow,” he says. “A
land cow
,” he shouts in my face and I feel cold and flushed and too warm shivering cold and it's hard to breathe. I'm staring at him wide-eyed, and the smoke stings. Jolene is shouting too. I can't hear her but the guy is just laughing. “Moo,” he says, and grins a great gaping grin that looks like a hole in his beard.

I can't breathe. I say, “I have to go,” and push past Jolene. She's still trying to say something but I still can't hear her and the guy is laughing. I push my way through the crowd and stumble over the mattress and kick it, but I'm kicking candles over and I don't care because it is so satisfying, and I'm almost falling on the mattress and then I've fallen on it and it smells as awful as I thought it would and I lie there thinking,
You have got to be kidding me. This is not even real. None of my life is real. All of the shit that keeps piling on. That I can't handle. I can't handle any of
it. That can't be real. That can't happen.

And then there's the smell of fire.

Laura bounces on the mattress and her mouth is close to my ear and she says, “Hey, hey, let's get up, okay? Let's get out of here, okay?” She's helping me up, and Jolene is standing there. She gives her beer to a guy in red gym shorts and a sweater vest and takes my other hand. I stand up gracefully, and the guy says, “Hey, you okay?” and I say, “No, not really,” and Laura says, “Shit,” and I say, “There's a fire,” and we're moving down the dark corridor and back to the boarded-over door and through it, where it is not much brighter out. The sun is down and the sky is a hazy black and orange. All the lights of the Grand Liquors are bright and streaming onto the street, but the lampposts aren't illuminating much at all.

“Oh god, it's worse,” I say. The smell of pee is stronger in the dark.

“How was your night, honey?” a woman croaks, leaning against the bars over the window. She's got a crack pipe. I am pretty sure that is a crack pipe. Not that I have seen one in person. “It looks like it was pretty rough.”

“I set that place on fire,” I whisper, pointing at the door behind us.

“Be quiet, Ashley,” Jolene says. She doesn't look happy or relaxed anymore and it's all my fault.

I try to be dignified. No one can know that I am probably
high. “I don't even know what happened,” I say very carefully. “This is very unusual.”

Laura is patting my pockets and Jolene is saying, “I don't think I'm okay to drive and I don't think you are and she is a mess and we have got to go.” And Laura says, “Well fuck,” and she's dialing 911 and reporting a fire and the woman says, “You need a hit, honey?” and she's so sympathetic I want to cry. And then Omar is out here with us.

“Hey, baby,” the woman says.

His eyes are huge and he says, “Laura. Laura, practically everything is on fire. Where are you going?” He is teetering on the edge of a whine. People are pouring out of the door, and there's smoke unfurling behind them. We all back up together.

Laura swings around, still on the phone. “It's not really
on
fire,” she says. “There's just
some
fire.”

“That doesn't even make any sense!” He's shouting.

“I'm on the phone with the police,” Laura says.

“What the fuck, Laura? My show is on fire! My art!” he says, and looks back at the building like he's a helpless kitten.

“They're prints,” Laura says, covering the mouthpiece with her hand. “Aren't they just prints?”

“Just prints?”
he says. “You don't even know how this works! Just prints.” The smoke is silhouetting his wan, sallow face and his huge sad eyes. And he says, “Sure, yeah,” he says. “Sure. Okay.” He runs his hands through his hair.

“Look, just give me a second here,” she says, looking at the screen of her phone.

“Whatever,” he says, and pushes back through the crowd of people coughing in front of the gate.

Laura looks at both of us, gestures back at the door. “Is he serious? I'm trying to fix this for him!” She starts after him, but stops after a second. “Omar!” she shouts.

“You guys, I think he sucks,” I say. “And I hate his stupid art party. His art wasn't even there. It wasn't even the point. It was an afterthought almost like it didn't exist and it was just an excuse. And I hate that guy I really hate him.”

Laura rubs her eyes with her fingertips. “I can't handle this right now.”

“No, not Omar,” I say. “That other guy. ‘Moo.'” I sway a bit and catch myself on Jolene's shoulder. “Oh no I'm sorry. I don't want to hurt you.”

“Were you drinking? Were you smoking?” Laura asks me. “Are you okay?”

“We have really got to just get away from here until someone can drive, okay?” Jolene says. “Can we go?” They both propel me forward down the street away from the confused hipsters.

“What happened?” Laura says to Jolene. I'm between the two of them. I'm taller than both of them. They're smaller than both of me. Both of them are one of me. One of me is—it is too much.

“Where's the car?” Laura asks.

Jolene says, “I don't know!”

“It's behind us,” I say. “It is back there.” I wave my hand.

“This is not safe,” Laura shouts. I can't tell if she's talking about the neighborhood or about me.

“Let's find a coffee shop,” Jolene says. “Or a restaurant or something. It's still early. It's not even nine.”

“Let's just keep walking into the sea,” I say. “Just walk in and keep going until we are eaten by sharks.” I stop and try to spin around, but Jolene hauls me forward. “No, wait. Is this the way to the sea? One way is the sea and one way is the bay so you're fucked in both directions.” Everything is blurry and there are so many people on the street, traveling in packs and all interested in one another and they're shouting and there are a lot of car horns and bass goes booming by, rumbling hard in all my joints. “Oh what is wrong with people,” I mutter.

“I think if you go up you get out of the Tenderloin,” Jolene says.

“You guys,” I say. “I forgot about the map Grandmother gave me, the first time we came here. When I got my license.” I am giggling again. That was a quieter trip, with the Japanese tea garden and the new natural history museum with the stingray in the shallow pool. Dragging my fingers across the surface of the water and then she was there, unexpectedly yielding and soft under my fingertips, brushing quick and fleeting and then gone. “Grandmother gave me one of her big folding maps of the city
and she circled the museum and she circled the tea garden and she drew an arrow to Golden Gate Park like we wouldn't have noticed it and she drew a box around the Tenderloin.”

“She wanted you to visit the Tenderloin?” Jolene says.

“No,” I say, and I start to laugh. “No, she drew a big box around it and then she scribbled it all out. She scribbled out the whole Tenderloin and she said, ‘Don't go there, it's Murdertown.'”

“She didn't call it—”

“No, I guess she didn't call it Murdertown.” I sigh. “Maybe she called it Dieville.”

“Crack Village,” Laura mutters, hurrying us past a group of guys turning to watch as we pass.

“Urine Nation,” Jolene says, and we all pause for a moment and then I am helplessly laughing, collapsed between them, tears streaming down my cheeks as I giggle.

“I can't breathe,” I gasp. Laura is urging us forward. “Oh god,” I say.

“You never laugh at my jokes!” Jolene says.

“We have to go before we are murdered in Murdertown,” Laura says under her breath.

“I don't want to be a citizen of Urine Nation,” I say, and I have set myself off again. They're both prodding me down the street and I link arms with them, drag them forward. We're passing ripped up awnings and neon signs and more people with beards, spilling out from behind swinging wooden doors that bat the smell of booze
and cigarettes directly into our faces. We sprint across streets in front of cars and leap back onto the curb and we're running flat out to the end of each street, then stop short where Market and Turk meet. The mall across Market is a mass of bright lights. Cars stream down the street and a little green trolley screeches by.

Right across from us it's like the end of the earth, a big drop into a concrete courtyard at the foot of a giant marble building, four floors of Forever 21 and I think that's the cable car across from us. I've always wanted to ride the cable car, but it's so far away, across this cavern. Steps lead down into it and across from us the escalators are filled with people hopping down the stairs or trying to balance shopping carts and giant backpacks and a little guy in a suit has a busy-looking sign on a stick and someone is playing bongo drums.

I know where I am. “The BART train,” I say, looking down into the pit.

“Actually it would be the BART,” Laura says. “The T stands for
train
.”

“No, it stands for
transit
,” I say. I nudge Jolene. “Do you have any cash?” She always has cash. I am starting down the stairs, dragging my hand down the metal railings, my footsteps clattering hard and loud. “Let's go to Oakland,” I say.

“Who the hell wants to go to Oakland?” Laura says but she's right behind me and Jolene is ahead of me. I stop in front of the ticket machine.

“This is a bad idea,” Jolene says.

“Come on, Ashley,” Laura says, grabbing my elbow but I shake her off.

“Adventure, okay? I can do this. I can have an adventure. I don't want to sit in a coffee shop. I don't want to be here anymore.”