The Book of Joe

strictly for medicinal purposes.”
    “Whatever floats your boat, man.” Jared leans back and closes his eyes.
    I take a long drag, coughing slightly at the acrid dryness of the weed, and then take another, this time pulling the herb down deeply into my lungs. I pass it back to Jared as I exhale, my smoke all but invisible in the darkness of the car. We pass the chubby joint back and forth a few more times and then lean back in our automatically reclining seats, turning down the roof so we can stare up at the stars. “I lost my virginity here,” I say, apropos of nothing.
    “No shit,” Jared says. “Me too.”
    We enjoy a primitive male moment, high-fiving over our shared sexual triumph. I have a brief, vivid flash of Carly’s milky white thighs as she pulled her skirt down her legs, smiling affectionately at my clumsy, sophomoric excitement. “Are you sure?” I asked as she pulled urgently at the waistband of my underwear. “I want this,” she said. “I want it with you.”
    “I loved her very much,” I announce to the universe swirling above us like a studio backdrop, vast and intimate, my sudden, piercing sadness amplified by the weed.
    “That’s nice,” Jared says. “I just wanted to get laid already.”
    I open my eyes a short while later to discover that during my brief nap, our location has changed. We are now parked outside a large brick colonial set back on an impressive front lawn. “Where are we?” I ask.
    “I just wanted to see something,” Jared says, peering intently out his window.
    I lean across the seat and look out over his shoulder.
    “What are we looking at?”
    “Her.” Jared points to a lit window on the second floor. A girl periodically passes in and out of the window frame as she moves around her room, getting ready for bed.
    “Who’s that?”
    “Kate Portnoy.”
    “And she is ... ?”
    “Perfect,” Jared says reverently.
    “What about that girl from the house? Candi?”
    “Sheri. She’s just a friend.”
    “Some friend,” I say wistfully. “I need some friends like that.”
    Jared smirks without taking his eyes off the upstairs window. “We have an understanding.”
    “Ah,” I say. “And Kate doesn’t know about Sheri?”
    Jared sits back in his seat and looks at me, positively bereft.
    “Kate doesn’t know about me.”
    I nod sympathetically, thinking I’d give anything to have the broken heart of an e ighteen-year-old. “I’m hungry,” I say.
    We pull into the 7-Eleven and walk through the aisles, sipping at Big Gulps as we shop for munchies. “I never realized how many different kinds of potato chips there are,” I say, stupidly overwhelmed. “How are you supposed to make up your mind?”
    “You,” Jared says with a grin, “are stoned.”
    “Could be. What time is it?”
    “Eleven forty-two.”
    “Wow.” It seems like it should be much later than that. I grab some Sour Cream Onion Pringles, and Jared selects Funyuns. The cashier, a goth girl wearing pale makeup and too much black lipstick, rings us up indifferently. “Thanks, Delia,” I say, reading her name tag. She has to call us back from the door to give us our change. “Sorry,” I say. “We’re a little stoned.”
    “How very clever of you,” she says, munching on a Kit Kat.
    She seems so wise and sad to me at that moment that I want to sit down and ask her questions, learn her entire story.
    We sit in the parking lot on the hood of the Mercedes, our backs against the windshield, washing down our chips with long, thirsty sips from our Big Gulps. When we’re done, I hop off the car and let out a wail of pain when my right foot hits the ground. I pull up my torn pants and gingerly pull at the bloodstained remnants of my sock. My ankle is swollen and caked with too much dried blood to afford me a good look at the laceration. Jared lets out a low, sympathetic whistle. “You think we should go to the emergency room?”
    “Nah, we’ll sit there all night,” I say. “It seems to have stopped bleeding. I’ll just go home and clean it up.”
    On the way, though, I change my mind and instruct Jared to drive me to Overlook Road. “What for?” he says.
    “You showed me yours; now I’ll show you mine.”
    Carly’s house is dark, which in my drug-addled condition seems to incriminate me. “I was supposed to call her tonight.”
    “It’s past midnight,” Jared says. “Call her tomorrow.”
    Some part of me knows this would be the wiser course of action, but another