Everything Changes

throat as she stared at me, tasting the bile of her own resentment, her eyes daring me to cry.

Chapter 10
    When we were kids, Matt had this cherubic face, spaghetti-straight blond hair, plump pink cheeks, and our mother’s soft blue eyes. I would stand by his crib for long stretches of time, watching him sleep, relishing his baby smells, infatuated by the sheer perfection of his composition. Now his head is shaved, his arms heavily tattooed, his face gaunt and violated at various junctions with metal knobs and bands, and he storms angrily across the stage in torn cargo pants and a ratty Sex Pistols T-shirt, singing songs about masturbation and suicide pacts. I sit in the back at a merchandise table loaded with CDs and T-shirts, watching my little brother stomp like God as his band, Worried About the WENUS, plays through their scorching set at Kenny’s Castaways.
    Jed was sitting with me until about twenty minutes ago, at which point he selected one of the young, barely dressed women dancing nearby, seemingly at random, bought her a few drinks, and eventually disappeared with her into the bathroom. He considers groupie sex a perk of his devoted service to the band. Worried About the WENUS plays mostly to college crowds, touring up and down the East Coast in search of a record deal, and Jed is a passionate fan of college girls. Or, at least, he used to be. Ever since Rael’s death, the whole thing seems to have become a joyless affair for him. He still comes, still hooks up with these girls, but I get the feeling he’s no longer fully inhabiting himself at these times, watching himself like he watches the television, waiting for something, the music or one of these young girls, to ignite something within him. You don’t think of loud, shameless nihilism as a positive attribute, but since he abandoned it, Jed seems only half-alive, as if he’s only coming here and getting laid out of force of habit, or nostalgia for when he gave a shit. Somehow, when we’re in the apartment, his stupor is somewhat less obvious, or else I’ve just gotten too used to it to notice it, but when we go out to the WENUS gigs, and I see him charming and seducing these young girls from a mile away, sleepwalking through the motions, I have to fight the urge to grab him by the shoulders and scream at him to wake the hell up.
    Instead, I sit at my little concession table, watching the crowd and getting hammered on free drinks—the other, less glamorous benefit of being with the band. Before Hope, I did hook up on occasion, but my success rate paled in comparison to Jed’s, and I usually had to wait until he had already chosen his partner for the evening, since no one would give me a second glance while he was still there. Looks are a function of circumstance, and I become much better looking when Jed’s not around.
    Sure enough, within a few minutes, a girl with almond eyes and a dancer’s body walks over and sits down in Jed’s empty seat. Her straight shoulder-length hair is standard-issue blond, darker at the roots and parted in the middle. Her body is its own selling point, and her posture and the clinging halter top she wears indicate that she knows it. It’s pathetic, really, but that’s all it takes: nice eyes and lively breasts on a thin frame. Everything else is just icing on the cake. She’s hot and flushed from dancing. “Hey,” she says. “T-shirt man.”
    This is apparently a salutation, so I respond in kind. “Hey, sweaty girl.” She throws back her head and laughs. I picture her in her dorm room, looking in the mirror as she rehearses this gesture, possibly picked up from a Sandra Bullock movie. “I know,” she says. “I get a little carried away with the dancing. This is my third WENUS show this year.” Her skin glows pink in the spotlighting of the club. She’s pretty in an unsophisticated way, like a Midwestern farm girl, and you can see the wide-open prairies behind her, the blue-skied meadows in her eyes. As far as one-night stands go, I could do a lot worse. I know this because I have. “Can I ask you a question?” she says.
    “Sure.” We’re both shouting to be heard above Matt, who has just launched into a thrashing cover of “Believe It or Not,” the
Greatest American Hero
theme. I suggested it to him about a year ago, and it never fails as a crowd-pleaser. It occurs to me that the girl now sitting with me probably was in diapers during that show’s brief run, and I feel ridiculously