“Why lie to me?” Nick asked me.
“I never have.”
“There are lies of omission, you know. If you act one way but are really another way, you’re lying.”
“Okay,” I said. “I lied. I’m sorry!”
“So you’re going to leave it at that?”
“This isn’t the last chance we’ll ever have to talk, is it?”
“What are you mad at?” he said. “I’m the one who should be mad! My sister comes home and springs this thing on me. You don’t return my calls. The next thing I know I see you kissing this nearly naked girl out in the hall! Really going at it! Was that an act for my benefit?”
One of the guitarists with The Failures came banging through the door.
I said, “It wasn’t an act.”
“I didn’t think so.”
“I mean, it wasn’t for your benefit.”
I knew I wasn’t making sense.
The guitarist stared at his reflection in the mirror and said, “Here sucks!”
He had baggy clothes on a skinny frame, Lyle Lovett hair, and a purple dragon tattooed around his biceps.
Nick said to him, “Hey, you’re Lennie Allen!”
“Am I?” was his spacey answer. He was wearing a black Failures T-shirt, splashed with a huge white circle and the word zero underneath it.
Nick laughed hard and said, “You’re great, man, just great!”
I left.
I couldn’t find her.
Then I saw the three of them sitting out on the deck, under a beach umbrella, in the rain. Cog Wheeler, Nevada, and Huguette.
Some little girl with raccoon eyes and breadstick legs cornered me.
She asked me what my instrument was, what my sign was, what song of The Failures was my favorite.
She asked me who was out on the porch I kept staring at.
TWENTY-THREE
WE WERE THE LAST ones left.
The Failures had roared away in their cars, as had Nick, Kevin McCaffery, and the rest. My mother had left with Franklin. Nevada was upstairs in bed.
Huguette sat beside me on a green-and-yellow sofa, holding a glass of champagne. “My third” she said, “so am I a little tipsy?”
“Are you?”
“But I want you to hear ‘Paint Over It.’ I turned off all the speakers but this one. It’ll play next.”
“Heart in My Mouth” was playing softly. I remembered the day Brittany had sat up so straight down on the beach and sung the words.
I was trying not to think about Nick. He’d left without saying good night.
“Did you like your party?” Huguette asked me.
“Yes. Thanks again.”
“Cog calls you Cloud. He says when you walk into a room, you look like a sudden dark cloud on a good beach day.”
“Cog could use some Clearasil.”
“What’s that?”
“Pimple lotion. For his neck.”
Huguette threw her head back and laughed. “You have a vendetta for him, hmmm?”
“He thinks he can have any girl he wants. They all do, those rockers. There’s stuff out in your refrigerator that lasts longer than their relationships.”
“How long do yours last?” she said.
I shrugged.
“Do you have one?”
I didn’t answer.
This was the time to tell her the truth, but the truth was like some porch light on a windy, foggy night: Now you see it shining, now you don’t see it at all.
“Hey, here it is now. Listen, Lang. This is Cali.”
She had this soft, breathy voice with a sweet ache in it, not bad, not good.
Paint over it.
Paint over it will
Never look like new again
Will never get you through again,
But you can still get use from it,
You can just get used to it,
Pick a darker color, too,
So nothing of the old comes through
Paint over it.
Paint over it.
Nothing of the old comes through,
Pick a darker color, too,
Paint over it.
“She’s not great,” said Huguette.
“I like the song, though.”
We were sitting there with the huge portrait of Nevada glaring down at us, the lights low in the enormous room, the ocean roaring outside, and the rain riddling the windows.
She put her hand on my knee. “I wanted you to hear it. When I’m gone back to Aniane, and you have your car keys”—she giggled—“without having a car”—and then looked into my eyes very gently—“you’ll remember sitting here on this kind of wet night out, hearing it for the first time.”
“I’ll remember this night, anyway.”
“So will I, Lang. We’ve become good friends.”
“Maybe more.”
“More than friends?”
“Something besides just friends.”
She shook her head. “Friends is enough.”
I said, “Are you going to see Cog again?”
“Of course I will.”
“You will?”
“Of course, because Uncle Ben is giving the party tomorrow.”
“I thought that was just a ruse to get me here.”
“And besides, I really like Cog.”
We sat there silently a moment.
She said, “You don’t really care about that, do you?”
“Honestly? I think I do.”
She said, “If you’re speaking honestly, I don’t think you do. Not that way. Not a jealous way. Back in the hall when I kissed you? I was putting on an act for your friends…. You knew that.”
She took my hand.
I could feel my heart beat faster. I could feel a way I’d never felt with any girl.
She said, “If we’re true friends, you don’t have to pretend feelings with me just to flatter me.”
“I’m not pretending.”
“I think you are, Lang.”
“I wouldn’t lie to you.”
She let out a hoot. “You wouldn’t lie? Oh, Lang. From the very first hello you’ve lied.” She let go of my hand. “I told you everything about Martin. And I was waiting for you to tell me about you and Alex.”
I couldn’t look her in the eye. I couldn’t think of anything to say. Plato had come downstairs, and he was standing in the doorway staring at us, wagging his tail.
She said, “Uncle Ben told me all about it, Lang. He said you’d tell me yourself sometime, and I waited.”
And punctuating that, with perfect timing, Nevada’s voice came from the staircase around the corner. “Penner? Your birthday was over an hour ago! Go home! Plato! Get back up here!”
Huguette stood up. “Yes, go home now, Lang.”
I went.
TWENTY-FOUR
FOURTH OF JULY MORNING, Franklin’s voice came
