Body Surfing

stains from a graduation party twenty-six years ago. For the first time in years Jasper noticed how the stains blurred his dad’s name on the diploma: “John Van Ars—e.”
    For a brief moment Jasper felt the weight of the future pressing down on shoulders that were still sore from turning over wet earth for four hours. He made himself the kind of promises that only a seventeen-year-old can make. That he would not end up like his dad. That he would be different. He would not be—
    There was a second clunk behind him. A second sigh.
    He would not be Jasper Van Ars—e.
    A moment later he’d slipped outside. A sickle moon hung low on the horizon. How had it gotten so late? If this was his last day on earth, he’d pretty much wasted it. Turning over soil, knocking back a few cold ones, sleeping the afternoon away. Not exactly memento mori .
    Bluish light outlined the budding branches of the two huge beeches that overhung the driveway, and the wet air smelled fecund, primordial even. Heavy, like soil, but also full of promise. Maybe the night would turn out okay. Maybe Michaela would give him a big kiss, tell him last night was her fault for holding out so long. Maybe Q. would pop in the White Stripes or D12 and they’d cruise Main Street with the bass turned up so loud the windows in the shops would rattle in their frames. Yeah, and then maybe he’d come home and instead of finding his dad passed out on the couch, the old man would be sitting at the kitchen table with Jasper’s Harvard acceptance letter, along with the notice that he’d received a full scholarship, all he had to do was show up in the fall with a suitcase and a smile…
    Yeah, right.
    He heard the car before he saw it, the engine cutting through the curves like a power saw. Q. hadn’t been kidding. He’d actually taken his dad’s Porsche. Jasper could have sworn the wheels were off the ground when it crested the hill north of the Van Arsdales’ driveway. When it landed, the car flattened itself on the roadway and shot toward Jasper.
    Jasper put his hand out as though he were thumbing a ride, then flipped his palm at the last minute and stuck up his middle finger. Brakes squealed; antilocks held the car in its track like a jetfighter landing on an aircraft carrier. Jasper half expected a Back to the Future hiss to escape the car with the rolled-down window, but all he got was a driving beat—Danger Mouse or DJ Shadow, some overproduced crap like that.
    Q.’s smile was wide, his teeth white and sharp in his light brown face. Sila sat in the passenger’s seat, Michaela in back. Both girls refused to look at him.
    “Feldspar!” Q. shouted over the bass.
    “Mohammed.”
    “What? Real names? Some body’s in a mood.”
    “Whatever.” And then, steeling himself. “Hey, Sil.”
    Sila pushed the door open. The expression on her face was tortured, embarrassed, pissed off, apologetic.
    “You want the suicide seat?”
    Jasper walked around to the passenger side. He tried to catch Michaela’s eye as he walked, but she turned her head. “Nah, I’ll, uh—” He nodded at the back. In the shadowy compartment behind Q., Michaela hid her face behind her dirty blond hair.
    “Yo, Jasper,” Q. said from the driver’s seat. “In or out, buddy. This baby wants to fly.” He stomped on the accelerator, bathing Jasper and Sila in a cloud of exhaust.
    A moment later the new antiques stores on Catskill’s Main Street were whizzing by the Porsche’s windows, Louis Quatorze fading into French country faster than you could say “guillotine.” In the minuscule backseat, Jasper could feel the engine’s throb in his prostate. His spine was curved into a capital C, his knees wedged against the back of Sila’s seat and rubbing against his cheekbones. He and Q. had been lusting over Mohammed Qusay Sr.’s 500-horsepower fiftieth-birthday present to himself for the past six months, but this was hardly the introduction he’d been hoping for.
    “Yo, Q. You didn’t tell me you needed to know yoga to get in the backseat.”
    Q. turned the radio down. “Look, everybody. The Jazz-man makes a joke. He fucks my girlfriend in a closet and then he makes a joke. Now that’s what I call a friend.”
    “We didn’t—”
    “One-oh-five! One hundred and fucking five on Main Street! Dude, this car is better than sex! Now you’ve even got a basis for comparison, Jasper. Ain’t that fortunate?”
    “Q.” Sila tried again, but this time it was Michaela who