Ten Thousand Saints (6 page)

Jude hopped down from the window seat, and Teddy followed. The fact that Tory Ventura suspected Jude might have been invited to his party, by a person named Fitzhugh, whom Jude didn’t know; that a girl who had taken a train to see him was fetching him a beer; that Lintonburg might in fact be bigger, more generous than he’d believed, gave him courage. He ran a slow finger around the bruised contour of his lips.

“Fitzhugh?” he said. “You mean the guy who gave me this?”

Jude grabbed Teddy’s elbow, and they took off running. A group of people had gathered on the steps below, trying to move past, and they dove through them, taking the stairs two at a time.

O
utside, the night was so cold it hurt to move through it. It was 9:35, and Delph and his pot weren’t anywhere. They found an unlocked LeBaron and slipped inside, Jude in the driver’s seat, Teddy in the passenger’s. They scrunched down low, even though they didn’t seem to have been followed. “Why do you always have to piss people off?” Teddy said.

He was breathing heavily from the sprint out the door. He could feel the snow in his shoes and the sweat cooling in his armpits. The car reeked of beer.

“He pissed
me
off.”

“You always want to get in a fight.”

“So?”

“So you’ll never win.”

Teddy opened up the glove box. Inside were a manual, a flashlight, and a box of condoms.

“Let me see those.” Jude grabbed the box, opened it, and let the package unfurl. The condoms they’d stolen from Shop Fart when they were thirteen were hidden, still unopened, in an empty Mötley Crüe cassette case in Teddy’s dresser drawer. Now Jude tore one off the pack, tossed the rest back into the glove box, and turned on the overhead light, which Teddy snapped off.

“You want everyone to see us in here?”

Jude pocketed the condom. “I was
reading
it.”

“You think Eliza’s going to do you just because it’s your birthday?”

“Shut up, Ted.”

“You’re so sad.”

“Shut
up,
Ted!” Jude jumped at him, mashing Teddy’s face in his hands. Teddy found Jude’s mouth and sank his frozen thumbs in deep, and Jude bit down. They’d done the blood brothers thing when they were twelve, cut open their fingertips with a paring knife and made them kiss, the hands of God and Adam, E.T. phone home, almost as faggy as last night, in Teddy’s still-bright bedroom at Queen Bea’s house, when they’d shared a mouthful of pot smoke—a
shotgun
was what it was called, a word Jude had taught him—one breathing it into the other’s mouth like a secret. Now their fluids slipped under each other’s hands again, spit, snot, sweat, the tears from Teddy’s eyeballs as Jude bored his knuckles into his sockets, Teddy trying to blink with his eyes closed, Jude snorting and gagging and elbowing the steering wheel, hitting the horn, which turned his gag into a cackle, which made Teddy laugh, too. Teddy pried Jude’s fingers off his face. Jude bent Teddy’s fingers back. Teddy screamed, “Uncle! Uncle, my contact!” Jude let go, and a cool wind flew into Teddy’s right eye.

“Don’t move,” Teddy said. “I lost my contact.” He scanned his lap, the seats, the floor, but the car was thick with darkness, and he could see out of only one eye. He took the flashlight out of the glove box. “Help me,” he said. Panting, he passed the light over the dashboard, the gearshift, their bodies. Maybe it was still in his eye. His glasses were at home, tucked safely in the drawer with the condoms, and the thought of them there, useless to him, just out of reach, made him start to cry, so that both eyes, the seeing and the unseeing, now spilled hot tears.

“It’s all right, man,” Jude said. “We’ll find it.”

And he did, plucked it off of Teddy’s own cheek, where it had affixed itself to his moist skin. Teddy took it from him, fragile as a jewel, and looked at the soggy dome on his fingertip, too tired to put it back on. He would wait until his eyes dried out. He would sit here and wait. Maybe Johnny knew where their mother was. Maybe they could find her and bring her home. Or maybe Johnny could help him find his father. He’d asked him as much in his last letter, a question he wouldn’t admit to Jude. It was as if, by asking about his father, he’d made his mother disappear.

“Jude, I got to get to New York,” he said.

Jude gripped the steering wheel. “All right,” he said to the dashboard. “If you’re going, I’m going, too. I’ll go see my dad. You know how to hotwire a car?”

“Now? What about Eliza? You don’t even know how to drive.” Delph kept saying he was going to teach them. Delph was always saying shit.

“We’ll take her with us, man. We’ll steal some keys.”

Teddy turned off the flashlight and put it back in the glove box. He looked at Jude, who had his seat belt buckled. Jude believed they were in their getaway car, their Batmobile, the DeLorean that would transport them, with a rocket-fart of fire, back to the future.

“You ready?”

Teddy’s eyes were closed now. He said he was.

“All right,” Jude said. “Let’s haul ass.”

“Let’s go.”

“All right. Let’s do it.”

But neither of them moved.

S
he’d told him her name was Annabel Lee. She didn’t remember his. That was many minutes ago, and still she stood in the bathroom doorway, trapped by his large arm, bumming cigarette after cigarette, letting him refill her plastic cup from the keg in the tub. She supposed she could have walked away. Why didn’t she walk away? He lifted the silver necklace out of the collar of her coat, bounced the charms dumbly in his hand. It was hot in here—did she want to take off her backpack? Her coat? She did not.

It was her punishment for making this trip. Instead of spending her New Year’s Eve talking to some drunk prick in New York, she would spend it talking to some drunk prick in Vermont. He could have been any of the guys from home she’d let lift her necklace out of her coat. The weekend after her bat mitzvah she’d lost her virginity to a lacrosse player named Bridge Fowler, her friend Nadia’s stepbrother, at his dad’s place in the Catskills. She’d met him there when she went over with Nadia to ride a horse named Athens, and when Eliza went back with Bridge they snorted coke—another first—off of a silver serving platter, then did it in the barn. Afterward Bridge put on his loafers, lit up a cigar, and set off on a walk to visit the horses. He never touched her again. He passed her along to his friends, one weekend after another, weekends singed with the chemical smell of cocaine and latex and new cars, the smell of having achieved something she’d had little doubt of achieving.

Now Teddy and Jude had left her to fend for herself, and she was fending. She was a girl who knew how to fend.

Well, she came, she saw. Sipping beer from her cup, the remains of her red lipstick staining the rim, she felt lost and tired, but serene. She had wanted to lay eyes on Les’s children, to be known to them, and one out of two wasn’t bad. Strange, how she felt that she knew Jude already, how she already missed him, wished it were he standing in front of her, breathing into her ear. She had known him and Teddy only a few hours longer than this guy, but they were her companions for the evening, her guardians. She imagined Jude appearing and whisking her efficiently into one of the quaint, New England bedrooms—there would be exposed beams, a quilt. There would be kissing. He’d make stupid jokes. He was eager, young. He was sort of dangerously adorable, like one of those wide-eyed donkeys that would either kick you or eat out of your hand.

Then what if he came back with her to New York. What if he moved in with his dad. Would Les laugh at her then?

And then there was Teddy—not Jude, but Teddy—saying, “There you are!”

His rash had faded a little, but his eyes were swollen, and his cheeks were flushed.

“I’ve been here the whole time.” She slipped her hand around Teddy’s back and kissed his cheek. “Missed you, baby.”

Teddy looked petrified only for a moment, then hooked an arm over her shoulder. He nodded. “Me, too. You, too.”

“This your boyfriend or something?”

“His name’s Teddy,” said Eliza.

The guy laughed bitterly and emptied the rest of his beer. “You kids have fun,” he said and made his way past them to the keg.

“Thanks,
baby,
” she whispered. “That guy was ready to maul me.” The line for the keg nudged them farther into the brightly lit bathroom. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Let’s just go.”

“You look sort of ruffled. What happened to you?”

A girl, drunk and laughing, sat on the toilet with her underwear around her knees. Behind her, three or four people bent purposefully over the bathtub, trying to extract the last frothy drops from the keg. The guy who’d been talking to Eliza announced that it was dry. The crowd, disappointed, muscled back out into the hall, pushing Eliza up against the sink. She slipped off her backpack and hopped onto the counter, Teddy jammed against her knees, until everyone slowly filed out of the room, leaving the two of them alone. On the way out, the guy turned off the light and pulled the door shut.

“We should go,” Teddy said, but he didn’t move to turn the light back on.

She said, “My train doesn’t leave till midnight,” although she wasn’t sure what time it was now. She took a swig from her cup. She was drunk, she knew, but not beyond reason. Someone tried the handle, but the door didn’t budge.

“I guess it’s locked?” she whispered.

“I can’t see, anyway,” Teddy said. “My contact fell out and I can’t get it back in.”

“Where is it?”

“Right here, in my hand.”

Eliza put down her cup. “You’re going to lose it. Let me see it.” She was still sitting on the rim of the sink, her knees grazing his hips. She felt him find her elbow through her coat and then her hand. He placed the lens in the middle of her palm. It felt like a wet breath. She popped it in her mouth as though she were swallowing a pill, and let it soak on her tongue.

“What are you doing?”

“I put it in my mouth.” Her voice slurred around the lens. “It keeps it moist.”

“Oh. I just got them. I’m still getting used to them.”

“Come here. Which eye is it?”

He led her hand to his right eyelid. His lashes were stiff with cold. Holding him by the ears, she eased his head back, then spit the salty lens onto her fingertip. She had saline solution in her backpack, but she didn’t want to turn on the light. She liked the idea of her saliva lubricating this kid’s eyeball. Gingerly she drew back his lid and fit it over his eye.

“Quit squirming.”

“Sorry.”

“Is it in?”

After a moment, Teddy said, “I think so.”

On the other side of the door, someone else jiggled the knob, then gave up. The floor was vibrating with music and a few feet away people were laughing. She was afraid Teddy was about to turn on the light. Instead he said, “You live in New York, right?”

He told her the story. He was moving there. He had a half brother named Johnny in Alphabet City. Teddy had no money; Johnny had no phone. Could she take a message to him?

Eliza was the one to turn on the light. For several seconds they blinked at each other, as though surprised that the other was made of pigment and flesh. From her backpack she withdrew a pen and a sheet of the stationery she’d taken from the inn, and he wrote down his brother’s address and Jude’s number. He told her to tell Johnny to call him there. She liked the idea of carrying a message, riding through the snowy night to deliver urgent news to a stranger. She wrote down her own phone number and tore it off, and Teddy put it in his pocket. “You’re not going to lose that, are you?” It was suddenly something that was important to her, not being lost to him. If she held on to Teddy, she could hold on to Jude. “Why don’t you just come back with me tonight? I’ll cover your ticket.”

“What about Jude?”

“We’ll bring him with us. He can live with his dad. It would be perfect!”

Teddy turned his eyes toward the empty red cups littering the bathtub. Here it was—a free ticket, dropped into his lap. He allowed himself to imagine the prospect of a solution, an adventure.

“I don’t know if Jude can come tonight,” he said. Eliza could hear him swallow. “And I don’t know if I could just take off with you. I feel bad enough we’re doing this.”

She gave his shin a gentle kick. “What are we doing?”

He laughed nervously. “Standing around like retards.”

Eliza reached for her backpack again and began rummaging around in it.

“What are you doing?”

She fished out her makeup bag and unzipped it. “I have a little something in here.” After fumbling for a moment, she produced a razor and a small plastic bag. She was glad she’d saved some.

“Jeezum Crow,” Teddy said.

Eliza laughed. “You’re so country. Haven’t you done this before?”

“Uh-uh. Only thing I ever snorted was ground-up chalk.”

She tipped the powder onto the counter and gathered it neatly with the razor’s edge. Then she took a bill out of her wallet and rolled it up. She did the first line, and then Teddy copied, expertly. After a few seconds, he staggered back and leaned against the wall. He nodded rapidly, eyes closed. Then he looked at her and grinned. He had very, very white teeth. They each did one more line, then finished Eliza’s beer.