Ten Thousand Saints - Eleanor Henderson [19]
Days seemed to have passed, whole, eventless weeks, since the girl had knocked on the driver’s-side window. She had a wall of blond hair and a low-cut top that Jude stared down as she leaned over, cleavage that went and went. Could they move their car, please? They were blocking her way. And hey, actually, was this their car? Um, not really. It was their friend’s. They’d go get him.
On a wicker love seat on the back porch, Hippie was passed out in a Santa hat, his glasses knocked askance. He’d graduated the year before, but he still hung out with the high school set, cruised his bike around the school parking lot each afternoon. The story was that in exchange for pot, Hippie was under Tory’s protection, which meant that instead of being robbed by Tory, Hippie chose to supply him. Leaning over, Jude nudged his shoulder, and Hippie sat straight up, palming the leather fanny pack at his waist.
Jude said, “Hey, you got anything left?”
Hippie squinted at him. An icy wind blew through the porch screen. “Who are you again?”
“Jude. Jude Keffy-Horn.”
Hippie adjusted his glasses. “Your mom’s the Glass Lady?”
“How do you know my mom?” It wasn’t until Jude had asked the question that the answer became obvious. He’d never wondered where his mom got her pot since his dad left town.
Hippie said, “We’ve traded services a few times.”
Jude did not like the sound of that. He tried to banish the image of his mother engaged in a business exchange with Hippie. “How about a dime for some of my mom’s glass? That’s a good deal.”
“Hippie’s not doing any trading tonight,” said Hippie.
“Or how about this?” Jude reached into the inside pocket of his coat and revealed two round, white pills, fuzzy with lint. “A little vitamin R. I’ll toss them in.”
“Hippie takes cash.”
“Come on, man. Be a friend.”
“Sorry, brother. Can’t help you out.” Hippie leaned his head back against the love seat. From the pool table behind him, Jude took a pool stick and thrust it like a javelin through the porch screen, startling himself and Hippie, who leapt up from the couch. The wind whistled through the hole in the screen.
“Screw you,” Jude said. “You’re lucky I don’t steal that fag bag off you.”
He kicked open the screen door, trundled through the snow, and pissed into a dark corner of the backyard, leaning a hand on the cold, slickly painted fence, drilling a steaming hole in the snow. As a kid he had done this with his father many times, stood beside him in the outdoors and pissed with pleasure into snow or gravel or grass, the sun or the moon on their faces.
It was just after his ninth birthday that his dad had left. This day was always the same. The false jubilation, the snow.
“You making pee pee, Maybelline?”
Jude zipped up. When he turned around, Tory Ventura was a black silhouette against the distant floodlight on the porch. Behind him were five or six more silhouettes. What remained of Jude’s earlier bravado quickly sank.
“That’s him,” said Hippie’s voice.
“That’s him,” said a girl, the girl who had discovered Jude and Teddy in the car.
Tory stepped closer. Jude could see only his outline, his moon-limned shoulders and knuckles. “You been vandalizing my house, Maybelline? You been messing with my car?”
The bonfire shivered at the far end of the yard, crackling with the smoky voices of the figures standing around it.
“It was unlocked,” Jude said, ignoring the first question. “We were just trying to stay warm.” How the fuck hadn’t he known that Tory Ventura drove a LeBaron?
Tory stepped to Jude’s left, and Jude stepped to the right, doing a little do-si-do. The light now fell flat on Tory, revealing his face to Jude, all but his deep-set eyes, darkened with circles below, as though with permanent paint, and Jude whiffed a swift air-gun shot of the beer on Tory’s breath. “You come to my party without an invitation,” Tory said, “and then you destroy my property?”
“I didn’t mean to,