The Dark Lake (14 page)

"Sure, let me get them
; they're in my trunk. Here, I'll pull over next to your car."

"What's your name again?” I asked.

"Laura."

"I hope Angela went home already. I don't want to have to fight her out here."

"Oh, don't worry. She's a coward for all her talk."

Laura pulled her car up. It was strange; there was no one else around. How could they have all gone home already? Was I in the bathroom that long?

We both lifted our hoods, and she hooked up the cables. I got in the car and waited for her to start.

Nothing.

"It's dead,” I said. "Must be something else."

"Sounds like your starter."

"It does?"

"Yea
h. You need a ride?” she asked.

"You bet I do. I don't want to be stuck out here in the cold at night. And it doesn't even look to me like the building's open anymore."

"It ain't. Get in."

Here we go.

She squealed her tires and we peeled out of that parking lot at 90 mph at least. I braced, hands suddenly against the dash to keep from falling sideways, and looked over at her in shock, but she didn't see me. She had cranked up the car radio.

"Hey, grab that bag behind you. I got party stuff,” she yelled over the radio.

It had been snowing and the roads were slick. I looked around, unsure of which direction she was going.

"I live that way,” I pointed, and grabbed a duffel bag from the back seat mess. "Is this it?"

"Uh huh, open the zipper and get me a beer."

Oh, great this is just what I need.

"You want one?” she shouted.

"No thanks. You need to turn right here!"

"What?"

"You need to turn right here!” I screamed.

She skidded a right turn, barely slowing down, and nearly tipped the car over.

"Oh my God
, could you slow down? Here, let's turn this down.” I reached over and turned the radio down.

"Hey that's a great song!” She turned it right back on. Some rap music. I h
ated it. God, what a nightmare.

"
Left now, but slow down first!”

"Give me another one of those beers!” She rolled down her window and threw her can out. "I got some weed in there too
; why don't you get it out and roll us a joint?"

"I can't, I need to get home."

"For me then, for me."

I handed her another beer.

"How can you drink these; they must be frozen?"

"Don't need to be warm to give me a buzz
.” She laughed.

We were finally nearing my area of town. For a while I thought she was never going to stop going to the west end. We were on High
Street, Ziggy's street. She had to laugh at the sign, like we all had to I suppose. Then she pulled over and insisted upon smoking a joint in honor of the name and rolled it herself, since I refused. I sat staring out at the old stomping grounds with a mixture of annoyance and nostalgia, but more annoyance. We were about two miles from Lake Winnebago. I didn't even like looking out there it was so bleak. And I imagined how I was going to feel when I had to get out of the car.

"Brrr. Turn up the heat would
ya? How did it get this cold?”

"It's Wisconsin,” she laughed, looking up briefly from her tiny
, red tray of deseeded pot.

"What's that a picture of under the dope?"

"Oh, it's a picture of a lady, an old-fashioned ad for Coca-Cola. Cool huh. I like to snort coke off of it, when I have it."

"Do you often have it?" I asked.

"When I can afford it." She lit the joint and passed it to me.

"No thanks, really
.” I waved my hand.

She took a hit, blew it out slow
, and then started moving again, on down High Street toward Menomonee Park, and the lake. It was snowing hard now.

"Is it below freezing out there? Doesn't it seem like it's too early in the winter to be this cold?"

"No. I don't think so. It's almost December." She shrugged.

"Yea
h, I guess it has been that long hasn't it,” I said.

"That long? That long since when?"

"Oh, I had a job interview and they said they might call. But it's been a month now,” I said.

We drove through the park, lit white by the snow in the night. I thought of how beautiful the park looked in the summer, so green and hilly out there, with a few trees dotting here and there. Now the trees and hills presented amorphous shapes in the snowy night.

"Holy shit, there's a cop behind me,” she said.

I looked back.

"He hasn't got his lights on. Just don't worry about it. Drive slow."

"I got a bunch of drugs and beer and wine in the car, opened. And I'm majorly fucked up. Holy shit, he's just following right behind me."

"Just go the speed limit."

"Are we not supposed to be in this park after a certain time?"

"No, I don't think there's a curfew."

He followed us all through the drive that wound around toward the parking lot closest to the sandy beach, if you could call it a beach
—more of a bank of sandy dirt. I played in there as a kid, and tried so hard to imagine that the waves were as high as the ocean and that I could surf.

"God I hate it when those pigs follow you like that,” she screamed.

"They just do it to intimidate you. Don't do anything wrong and you'll be fine,” I said. Meanwhile my heart was pounding inside my chest.

"I'll pull over."

"No, no don't do that."

"Well, if he pulls me over I'm screwed. I don't have a driver's license."

"Are you kidding?”

"No. My license got taken away for a bunch of DUI
s last year. Plus I'm wasted, plus we have drugs in the car."

The red swirling lights went off, twirling around and around, reflecting in the mirror, and even on the glass. The siren started, whoop.

"Okay, look, just be cool, maybe we can switch—"

"Th
at ain't gonna work,” she said.

She took off full speed.

"What are you doing?” I screamed.

"I ain't getting pulled over. They can't chase you on the ice. It's against the law, or against police policy or something like that. They can't chase you there."

"The ice isn't frozen yet!”

"Sure it is, it's freezing out there, you said so yourself,” she screamed, turning down the radio to concentrate.

We went over some very high bumps on the way out of the parking lot and onto the sheet of ice that was Lake Winnebago. It was indeed frozen over, but it was never frozen all the way through.

"I'm getting out
." I opened the door. She was driving super-fast, though, and I was afraid to jump. But if I didn't jump I would go through…

You know if you go under the ice
, what happens next is you lose where the opening of the ice is, so you can't get back out again, and you just swim around under there looking up into the thick, unrevealing, opaque glass, feeling with your hands.

The police car did not follow out on
to the ice, just like she said.

"Wooo hooo," she ho
wled, and began doing wheelies.

"Let's get back to the shore, come on, maybe we can cross over there to that side and drive on."

"
Sie mochten nicht sterben
?"

I looked over and sure
enough, Krishna was smiling at me, and she did something even more frightening than that before I woke up. She pulled the steering wheel off the dashboard and handed it to me.

"Here, you drive,” and with that she shrieked with laughter.

***

"Your problem, Jane, is you just take things too seriously," Krishna says, and then she leans over the coffee table and lights her cigarette on the red candle. It makes a crackling sound. She wears one of her
low-cut-cleavage silks. She blows the smoke out in rings. "And my problem is I don't care about anything."

"But you work hard in school, I mean, you do your work. And those are hard subjects, chemistry, and physics. And you get all A
s."

She shrugs and says, "That's just because I don't care enough not to."

She never talks about the future, or where her money will come from.

"I think I know
what happened,” I told Miriam.

"What?"

"I think … it had something to do with one of her pissed-off boyfriends."

“Which one?”

“Well, let’s see, there was Adam, he gave us the coke…”

***

"Three hundred dollars’ worth,” Krishna had said, dazed.

"It's just a cloud now,” Gay marveled.

All of us—Adam, Krishna's former boyfriend included—just sat for a few moments with our mouths open.

"No, it can't be. That's not all of it,” I said.

All three of them stared at me with eyes that said, “You just don't get it yet.”

"Maybe we can scoop it all up. It will fall back on the mirror."

I held the mirror in the middle of the cloud, which still hovered there, at least in my mind's eye.

They stared to see if maybe this would work after all.

"Goddamn it, Jane," Krishna said, interrupted by Gay with, "What in the fuck did you do that for?"

"What, all I did was sneeze! What? It's a bodily function."

"Bodily functions can be controlled."

"Unless you're stupid
, you don't sneeze into the pile of coke on the mirror!” Adam yelled.

"Well
." I think it was me, but it might have been any one of us who said, "We've got to find more."

"But how
, I don't have any more money."

"I know I don't," Krishna said.

"I spent all the rest I had. Which wasn't much,” Gay said.

"Well what are we gonna do?” We all three looked at Adam.

"Don't look at me! I haven't got anymore, and I don't have any more money either."

"But you know the dealer,” I said.

"Yeah, and I know he wants cash up front. This shit ain't cheap. That's why you don't sneeze into it!"

"Well, what are we gonna do?” I turned to the two of them. We would be on our own now, until we could come up with the cash, and then we'd go to Adam.

"Why don't we try your dad,” they said at once.

"Yea
h, I guess that is a possibility."

We drove to my house in my little blue Chevette. We pulled up into the driveway. It was around 3:00 in the afternoon and stormy. In we walked through the New Orleans kitchen, past my mom at the sink. Forget her, wouldn't dare ask her for the money. Up the stairs, and back down, I asked my mom, "Is Dad here?"

"No," she replied.

"You seen him?"

"Not all day."

"Oh
." We walked outside.

"Can I borrow some money?" I asked my mom, my head just inside the door.

"Are you kidding me?" she said.

"No, ok
ay I guess that's a no,” and we went back out and sat in the car, and stared straight ahead at the netless basketball rim that was nailed to the old, white garage.

We started the car and pulled out of the dr
iveway to head who knows where.

The car never had an empty tank, but I never filled it. It was filled with gas, we had all concluded one night, by mysterious elves.

"Okay, so now what,” driving down Bowen.

"I don't know, we maxed out your savings,” Krishna said.

We drove in sad silence for a while up toward High street.

"Maybe Ziggy will have an idea,” Krishna said
. "Let's go see him."

All the houses on High Street had a certain neglected look. Ziggy's blue house was badly in need of a paint job, which Ziggy later performed for his parents on his summer off from Harvard at a fee of ten dollars per hour. We all had weed all that summer…

"Cocaine? No way. I don't want any."

"Why not."

"It'll be too good."

"Well then
, can you just buy us some?" We all pleaded with Siegfried. "Or think of a way for us to get some?"

He looked at us for a moment, arms folded, long
, white sleeves never buttoned. Hair long, brown, curly, and never combed. His eyes always looked like they were squinting even when they weren't, but they were squinting now for sure, and he smiled as he squinted at us.

"What's going on
, you guys?"

"We just want some more," I whined.