This Is Where I Leave You

Good for you, Horry, I think. I am drunk and lost and would very much like to be making out with someone of no consequence right now, mashing tequila tongues, sliding my fingertips over smooth, booze-warmed skin. Instead, I urinate for a half hour, reading the stall graffiti, still smelling Chelsea’s shampoo from when she kissed me hello.
    When I get back to the table, Chelsea and Phillip are gone. The jukebox is playing goddamned “Sweet Home Alabama” again, and I think I’m going to be sick. The bathroom has a line, so I stumble out to the parking lot and puke behind one of the Dumpsters. I feel a little better after that, halfway to sober. The rain has finally stopped, or not really stopped, but dwindled to a fine, foggy mist that cools my burning skin. I wo nder how I’m going to get home.

Chapter 41
    11:15 p.m.
    I can’t recall if I settled the tab or not, but no one’s come running out after me, and just the thought of going back inside starts my stomach acid frothing, so I’ll just assume it’s all good. I decide to take a walk. The neon lights of Route 120 spread out ahead of me like the Vegas Strip. P.F. Chang’s, the Cheesecake Factory, the Pitch Putt, Sushi Palace, Applebee’s, Rock Bowl, Szechuan Gardens, and the digital marquee of the AMC multiplex, all flashing and blinking, burning pink and red streaks into my eyelids when I close them. Generations of broken glass twinkle like glitter in the pavement. Teenagers rove in loud packs that form and disperse as they move down the sidewalk. Cell phones ring, obscenities fly. Blow jobs are administered in throbbing cars in the darkest corners of abandoned parking lots. They’ve been laying pipe beneath the blacktop forever now, and they don’t bother taking down the barricades on the weekends anymore, so every few stoplights, traffic slows to a crawl, cars ejaculated out of the bottlenecks one by one, burning rubber just to make a point, since there’s really nowhere here worth rushing to. They whiz by like missiles, these cars crammed with kids exactly like the one I used to be. Once in a while you can make out their laughter above the hollow din of tires scorching the blacktop like fighter jets on a runway. There’s a fountain in front of Sushi Palace, spraying a high illuminated geyser that changes colors every few seconds. Red, yellow, green, and violet. I stop to watch it for a little bit. A couple of kids sit on the edge of the fountain, kissing with such unabashed fervor that I have to look away.
    As I walk, a silver car passes me and then quickly brakes, causing the cars behind it to swerve left and honk angrily. You don’t see many Maseratis in Elmsbrook. The car pulls onto the shoulder and Wade climbs out. He’s wearing the same suit he wore earlier and has a bandage across the bridge of his nose, a smear of purple bruising spreading out from under it. He frowns as he approaches me, picking up speed as he goes.
    “What are you doing?” I say.
    His punch arrives well before my worthless block can get there, landing squarely on my chin and lower lip, and down I go. There is a version of this fight in which a crowd of pedestrians grows around us as we grapple and trade punches, until I tackle Wade and we fall over into the sushi fountain, where I pummel him into submission, standing over him in victorious disgust, casually spitting some blood into the fountain. But I’m too drunk and tired to fight, so I curl up and close my eyes, prepared to absorb the kicks that will follow. After a few seconds I look up to see Wade standing above me, combing his hair with his fingers.
    “That was for my car,” he says.
    I get up on one knee and taste the salt and copper of blood on my lips. “Fair enough.” I wipe my mouth with my sleeve and get to my feet.
    “You’re drunk.”
    “And you’re an asshole. Are we going to just stand here stating the obvious?”
    He shakes his head and smiles fondly at me. “You never could hold your liquor.”
    He reaches through the shattered passenger window to his glove 282compartment and comes out with a white towel, which he tosses to me. We lean against the car and I press the towel against my lips. It comes away bloody.
    Rowdy, hopped-up college kids pass us in an endless, noisy blur like they’re being mass produced or squeezed out of a tube - guys skulking in their T-shirts and cargo shorts, girls in low-slung jeans and flip-flops, pimples and breasts and tattoos and lipstick and legs and bra