Townie_ A Memoir - Andre Dubus [82]
I went back inside. Pop and Louisa had finally come out of the bathroom, and he looked happy to see me and gave me a big hug and soon enough he and I and students I didn’t know started in on a bottle of Cuervo in the kitchen, licking the salt off the skin between our thumb and forefinger, throwing back the tequila, biting into a wedge of lemon because we could find no limes.
The disco finally ended and became something much better, some kind of African music with a lot of drums and horns. The night sky outside began to lighten, and Pop had gotten into a conversation in the corner with the tall girl from Bombay. One by one the polyester boys drifted away and the music had been off a long time and I was sweetly drunk, Marjan walking down the stairs from above. She was smiling at me. I went over and put out my hand and shook hers. It was small and cool. I told her my name. She glanced from me to my father in the corner, then back at me. She looked confused.
“Same name. I’m his son.”
She nodded and let go of my hand and walked past me. Parvine followed, and I began to follow, too, but Pop was up out of the corner, his hand on my shoulder. “Shit, sun’s coming up. We got to get home before Lorraine’s out of bed. C’mon.”
I didn’t want to go to his house, but I had my mother’s Toyota I shouldn’t be driving now anyway, and it was a Sunday so she wouldn’t need it, and Pop and I were hurrying over the shoveled walkway, the snow on both sides of us a shade of blue in the false dawn, our breath in front of us.
When we got to his front door, Pop was giggling. He whispered. “You can crash in the spare room, okay, man?”
I nodded. I hadn’t slept in the same house as him since I was a boy. He gripped the knob but it wouldn’t turn.
“Shit, she locked me out.”
“You don’t have a key?”
He shook his head and smiled widely, though his eyes seemed to be looking ahead in time to the trouble he was in.
Maybe it was his idea, maybe it was mine, but eight feet to the left of his door was the window to the spare room, and we pressed our hands against it and were able to slide it open. We pushed in the screen and I squatted and gave Pop ten fingers and he put his boot in my hands and pushed off and scrambled loudly through the window and down into the darkness. I grabbed the windowsill and pulled myself up and halfway in, my legs still hanging outside, kicking at air, and there was Lorraine leaning against the jamb of the doorway to the spare room, the hallway light on behind her. She wore a white nightgown and I could see the outline of her small body, her arms crossed over her breasts, and I fell in headfirst and stopped my fall with my hands, my boots hooking for a second in the window frame before I rolled all the way into her house.
Pop stood up. “Why’d you lock the door?”
“Andre.”
I thought she was talking to him, but she was looking at me. “I’d like you to leave, please.”
“No, he can sleep here.”
“No, he can leave.”
“It’s okay, Pop. I’ve got a place to stay.” I apologized to Lorraine and thought briefly of leaving the way I came in. She stepped to the side and I stepped past her and out the front door. I thought I could probably drive after all, but in my walk through the snow I saw the kitchen light still on in the international house and I knocked softly on the door and walked in.
Upstairs Marjan and the Indian girl were making breakfast. They looked neither happy nor unhappy to see me. Marjan said, “These eggs were frozen. We wanted to cook them before they were rooned.” She smiled at me. “Would you like some?”
“Yes, thank you.” I sat down at the small table. When Pop and I had left, it’d been covered with empty beer and wine bottles, the spent Cuervo, two full ashtrays