The Salvation Shark, Chapter 27

Jesse

Pete calls me up around seven to go to a party. I don’t really want to, but I say yes anyway. It’s my night off, I should be going out and having fun, getting wasted, right? I’ve been eating smoking pot since I got up around noon, and I’m so absolutely wasted that I don’t even want to be around myself at this point. My head is throbbing and cloudy. I still feel dirty after taking a shower. At this point, the only sensible thing to do is put on a Doors CD and vegetate on the couch until Pete arrives.

There is an empty bottle of JD on the end table, taunting me to no end. The whiskey would clear away the dope-haze, give me a charge, get me ready to party. Unfortunately, I was out of coffee when I got up, so I drank the whiskey instead.

Pete just walks in, the way he always does. I’m kind of irritated by this, and at certain points I have even considered locking the door, but I always forget. I’d probably just get stoned and lose my key somewhere.

“Come on, Jesse, let me light your fire,” he says, producing a baggie from his coat pocket. I groan at the sight of it. He sniffs the air and says, “Smells like you’ve been lighting enough of it on your own.” He grabs my bright green glass bong off the floor by my feet and packs it. “You really should open a window or something, man. You’re going to get a permanent smell in here. You’re going to discolor the walls.” He lights the hitter, sucks in deep and throws his head back, holding his breath for ten seconds before exhaling a bluish cloud that drifts around his head a few seconds and dissipates. Pete never coughs. He holds the bong out to me. When I wordlessly wave it away, he shrugs and says, “Oh well, more for me,” and hits it again.

I stare at him for about five or ten minutes or so while he smokes, not saying a word, not moving, hardly even blinking. Finally, when he is content that it’s dead and puts it on the table, I ask, “So where is the party at?”

“Out in the middle of nowhere,” he says. “This chick named Eva. I only know her a little bit, she bought from me before. Mike told me about it. He says there’s a couple kegs.”

“Out in the boonies? She has her own house?”

“Naw, it’s her parents’s place,” he says, getting out of the chair and fumbling in his pocket for his keys.

“No way,” I say. “I’m not going off to be hanging out with some little kid at her parent’s house, not if there’s any booze involved. I can drink all I want at the bar for free and not get in any trouble for it.” Mike is also twenty-four and has a knack for hooking up with chicks way younger. More than once he's duped one of us into bringing liquor to parties with kids under 18. Once I nearly got nailed when the cops showed ten minutes after I left. Some kid gave them my name, but Mike convinced him to change his story and say he stole the liquor from my apartment when Mike brought him over. His parents came to my door, yelling about how it was inappropriate for me to be having these kids over, even though he was never at my place, but that was at least better than jail-time.

“No, she’s cool,” Pete says. “I know her, she’s our age. She just finished school this year, and doesn’t have a job yet. She just hasn’t moved out of her parents’ house yet, that’s all.”

I stick my finger in his face. “If this girl is a day under twenty-one...”

“Then you can nail a younger girl!” He grabs my hand and pulls me roughly off the couch. I stumble behind him into the hall. When we pause for a minute, he says, “Aren’t you going to lock it?” I shrug and we exit the building onto the empty city streets. It’s usually bustling at this hour, even for a small city, but the temperature is almost zero, and expected to drop lower. It isn’t snowing yet, but it’s coming in the next couple days. Pete’s black Mustang is parked at the curb in front of my building. Usually the parking is really bad here, and he has to park in the garage around the corner. He unlocks the passenger’s door and I get in while he circles the car.

When Pete gets in, I’m already demanding, “Hurry up, turn on the fucking car, I’m freezing!”

“Calm down!” he says, turning on the car. He lets it warm up a few seconds and pulls out into the road. We go to this shitty little diner on the edge of town that has been a local hangout spot for the kids long before we started going there in high school. There are mostly old people there now. Pete gets a huge meal, but even though I’m pretty stoned, I just get a coffee. I don’t say a whole lot, mostly just single-syllable grunts in response to what he says. I just stare out the window and watch cars passing idly by. We are there nearly an hour as Pete keeps getting more and more coffee, and having long one-sided conversations with me that I don’t even hear. I really want to go to this party, just so he will shut up. Finally, he pulls his wallet out, drops a twenty on the table, and says, “Let’s bust.”

I drop a dollar on the table and follow him back out to the car, which has gotten cold again. We set out, and I’m starting to think we are never going to get there. We are probably about fifteen minutes out into the sticks, which starts pretty much right outside city limits, when he finally pulls up to a white, raised-ranch house set way back on a huge chunk of land.

“This chick must be loaded,” I mutter as Pete turns up the 100-yard driveway that is lined with cars on either side.

“Her dad’s a doctor, or something, I think her mother is too,” Pete says, pulling the Mustang up behind the last car in line. “There’s a ton of people here, I hope the kegs aren’t kicked.”

As we get out, I say, “What time does the party start?”

Pete shrugs and we start walking. “Party time.”

I nod in concession. “Who is supposed to be here?” I ask, kicking a rock under a rust-marked Honda Civic.

“Mike said he was coming, so I figure the whole crew is going to be here.”

I’m not recognizing any cars, but most of my friends don’t drive. “How do you know this girl?”

“She’s a friend of my cousin. Look, he’s here,” he says, pointing to Luke’s beat-to-hell station wagon that he got for free from his parents. “You’ll at least know someone.”

Luke is one of the most obnoxious bastards I’ve ever met. The sonofabitch loves to argue. Not to me or any of his friends, but he's willing to lay into anyone he doesn't know. It doesn’t matter if he’s right or wrong, or even if it’s something totally ridiculous that he made up off the top of his head, he will go on for hours if he’s allowed, usually until the other person gets frustrated and walks away. I love Luke, I wish I got to see him more.

When we get to the front steps, there are a guy and two girls standing outside, smoking. All three of them are clutching yellow plastic cups. Both girls look suitably drunk for the picking, so I smile at them and follow Pete inside. We take off our coats and hang them on the hooks over the slate-floor entryway and go upstairs. The house is so packed that we can hardly pick our way through. Everyone is holding a beer glass. I’m really getting worried here, I don't want to be caught raiding liquor cabinets because the beer is gone.

“Pete! Jesse!” Luke yells from across the room. I see his bright red hair and hands waving through everyone as he makes his way to us. “Glad to see you could make it,” he says, getting between us and putting his arms around our shoulders. “I was starting to worry.”

“When did the party start?” I shout over the mingled voices and thumping Eighties music.

“We’ve been going since this evening,” Luke says. “You’re just in time for the second keg.” I think Luke is the only person here without a beer glass. He rarely drinks. He says he doesn’t like the way it dulls his edge.

Me, on the other hand, drink as much as I possibly can. “Where is the keg?”

“Back porch,” he says, pointing through the kitchen. “Glasses are on the counter. Some guy was taking money earlier, but it turns out he wasn't even invited.”

All the better. Pete is right behind me as we push and shove our way into the kitchen, me deftly grabbing two blue plastic cups off the counter as Pete pulls the steamy sliding glass door open and ushers me through. I separate the two glasses and hand him one and that’s when I first meet Eva. She's bent over the keg filling her glass.

“Oh, hi, there you are,” Pete says to her.

She is drop-dead gorgeous. All I can do is stare at her, with her long, thick brown hair, slightly curled, sexy as hell. Her face is slender and unblemished, and those big, green eyes are twinkling in the flood lamp, brighter than any star in the heavens above us. She is wearing only jeans and a sweater, and is shivering uncontrollably.

“Hey, Pete,” she says with a drunken giggle. “I haven’t seen you in quite a while.”

“No,” he says, pumping the keg and pouring my glass and then his. “Not since you were here between semesters. How are you?”

“Well,” she says, slurring it so slightly. “A ton of people showed up tonight, so I guess I’m doing pretty well.”

“That’s awesome. This is my friend, Jesse Black. I went to high school with him.” I extend my free hand.

“Well, hello, Jesse Black,” she says, shaking it exaggeratedly. “It is a pleasure to meet you.” Before I can respond and tell her she is the most beautiful creature in the Heaven and Earth, there is a large crash inside. Her eyes get wide and she says, “I’d better check on that!” and runs inside.

I turn to Pete, who is pouring himself a beer. I sip mine and say, “Dude, she’s a babe.”

Pete nods and sips his beer. “I don’t think she has a boyfriend, why don’t you get on that shit?” He takes a big gulp and says, “I hear she’s pretty easy too. As drunk as she is, you could probably be in.”

"Me and Courtney have been hooking up again," I say.

"And you would have stopped next week anyway," Pete says. I suspect he's hooked up with Courtney more than once while she and I were together. "Go talk to Eva."

"Come on, let's go find Luke," I say. Of the many powers I've been blessed with, self-confidence was never one of them.

Go to Chapter 28