Lost Echoes

17

Harry sat down and wrote:

Tad, I’m not drinking.

Right now.

I didn’t drink last night either.

And already good things have come to me.

For one thing, when I woke up this morning I didn’t have a headache and feel like forty miles of bad road.

I know you haven’t been sitting up nights, between drunks, thinking about me, worrying if I was drinking, but there was no one else I could tell but you.

No one else I could turn to.

Well, there are others. I could tell Joey, but he’s a dick and wouldn’t get it. And my mom, but she’s got enough worries. And there’s a special reason I’m writing you.

I want to stop drinking.

No, that’s not true. I like drinking. I need to stop drinking. That’s different.

You see, I don’t really think I drink to forget, like you. I drink to numb, so I won’t have, you know, the experiences.

Okay. I drink to forget as well. I’ve seen some bad business, stuff to do with the ghosts in the noise.

But I’ve told you that.

Let me put it like this: You haven’t always been as fucked-up as you are now. Me, I’ve been pretty much like I am always: insecure, worried, and confused since I was a kid.

My parents didn’t do it.

The sounds did.

I’m not going to tell you what I already told you, and I’m not going to try to convince you I’m not a fruitcake (I’m not, by the way), but I am going to say it again.

You haven’t always been so fucked-up.

Me, I have. For a long time.

You once had a center.

Before the mumps, as a little kid, maybe I was centered. I don’t know for sure.

Maybe when my mom and I used to watch cartoons out the windows, watch them at the drive-in theater across the way. I might have had a center then.

Shit. I don’t remember if I told you about all that. The drive-in and stuff. But it’s unimportant. It’s not the point.

What I’m saying is this.

I want to find my center.

You know how to do that.

Maybe we can help each other. You can relocate yours, and I can find mine.

And there’s a real special reason I want to do this. Something wonderful happened to me today, Tad. Something fucking extraordinary. I haven’t felt this way since I was a teenager and Kayla, my neighbor, gave me a kiss, and I thought, at least for a moment, I was Emperor of the Universe.

With a gearshift.

Think on that one.

But this feeling, I’m crazy with it. I’m consumed with it. I’m on fire with it. I’m covered up in it and eaten up by it.

I’m talking about love here, Tad.

The arrow through the heart, my man. Cupid’s straight shot.

It’s what I’ve always wanted.

And you know what? She might even like me.

Here’s what happened.

Dig this. Because of construction, I have to walk around my usual path. For me, this is a BIG FUCKING DEAL. No shit. A big deal. I’m like Superman doing this, taking a different route, because the world—again, for me—is full of all kinds of uncomfortable surprises.

It’s like a world filled with dog doo and I’ve got to thread my way around it blindfolded. Only the dog doo, it’s not just messy, it explodes, and I see—

Again, been over all that.

But this construction thing, this holdup, this snag, this snafu…Guess what? I gird my loins, and—

I do it.

I go around the construction that’s messing up my path, and nothing happens. I didn’t really expect anything, but you never know. Stuff is out there lurking.

So I’m moving along, you know, preoccupied, and as I go, guess what happens?

I get knocked down.

That’s right. I’m going into the building, to my class, running up the steps, almost to the top, head down, and the door blows open, and bam, I’m knocked on my ass.

Fortunately, no one has taken a beating there before, so my rolling over the steps doesn’t excite anything in the stone, and I wonder if, in that sudden moment of surprise, or fear of falling, if my own thoughts are registering there, and would I be able to read them, wondering all that while I’m falling, see, and I’m pissed too, because all I was trying to do was go to class, and someone has thoughtlessly and carelessly knocked me on my ass, and then—

You know what, Tad? All of a sudden, I’m not wondering about any of that stuff at all.

Because, what they say about there being angels, and how they show up in times of need, at least for some people, it’s all true.

An angel was looking down at me.

I’m at the bottom of the steps, on my back, legs almost over my head, my pack has slipped off, and the books have come out, and there’s a paper of mine twisting in the wind over my face, and as it floats down past me, it’s replaced with the face of that angel I was telling you about.

A really good-looking angel, but with features that are, well, a little devilish. A really fine mouth, thick lips, and you know what some anthropologists say—the reason women with full lips are attractive is that the lips, they remind us of those other lips, down there; and man, maybe that’s true. And her hair, it was black, black, black, and long, long, long, the eyes, big doe eyes, and she’s leaning over me, and she’s just absolutely fucking gorgeous. And I’m trying not to look down her shirt, which is hard, because she’s right there bending over me, and she looks so frightened, and those breasts are banging together like two wrecking balls.

She says, “Oh, shit. Are you all right?”

“Sure,” I say, and I’m witty, Tad, get this, I really said this, said: “The concrete broke my fall.”

She grinned.

Let me tell you. She has the most beautiful teeth you have ever seen. A brand-new piano doesn’t have ivory like that.

Nice teeth.

She puts out a hand, and I take it, and she helps pull me up (strong girl), and I grin at her, and she says, “Really, you okay?”

I tell her, “Yeah, I’m fine. You ought to see how I look when I jump out of a plane without a parachute.”

Okay, I was reaching. But it wasn’t bad, and she laughed a little, and she started helping me pick up my books and recover my papers, put them in my backpack.

Then she sees the papers.

She says, “You got old man Timpson for Psychology.”

“Oh, yeah,” I say.

“Well, I’ll tell you a little something: He talks stuff in class, but if you take notes, it doesn’t do you that much good.”

“I’m finding that out.”

“Yeah, he gives tests on the book. You can forget his lectures. Read the book from cover to cover, and that’s the test.”

“Really?”

“Oh, yeah.”

Now I’m really looking at her, Tad, and she’s got on some really tight jeans, and there are no bulges. She looks like a model. A movie star. A goddess.

“Well,” she says, and she’s really smiling at me all the time she’s saying this, “I’d take you out for coffee, to make up for the fall, but I don’t want to keep you from class.”

And you know what, Tad? I’m thinking, she kind of likes me. Maybe I’m not too ugly after all. You know, maybe I’m all right. And I think, what the hell, and say, “I’ve been known to miss a class now and then. Especially since I know now the tests come from the book.”

So now get this. I go over with her to the student lounge, not even thinking about places that might hide bad memories, bad moments, and she buys me coffee. Two creams, no sugar, Sweet’n Low. We take our coffee just alike.

I know. It’s a little thing. But it’s a start. I’m beginning to get a sense of things here. I’m feeling comfortable.

And we talk.

We’ve got a lot in common, Tad.

The coffee business. It was a good sign.

We talked until I missed all of that class, and then the next, and she looks up, glances at her watch, shrieks. She’s missed a class too. She had one during the next hour. So I’ve missed two and she’s missed one, and she says, “Well, we’re screwed now. Why don’t we just go to lunch?”

I’m thinking, you know, we’d go there, on campus, but we walk out to her car—and here’s a big flash: I’m not even thinking about the bad places. Not even once. I’m thinking about her. Hanging on her every word.

And she’s smart, Tad. Did I say that? Smart. I can tell by the way she talks. She’s not some airhead.

But we get in her car, which is some cool ride, by the way, brand-new, and we go to lunch at Cecil’s. You know the place. Kind of nice. Nothing fancy, but the food’s good, and when we finish I’m worried about the money, see, but I’ve got just enough to pay for us both, but she says, “No. I still owe you for that fall. You get the next.”

And she pays, Tad.

Well, there’s not much to tell after that.

She dropped me off at my car, said, “See you,” but it wasn’t a dismissive kind of “see you,” ’cause I got her name and phone number, and let me tell you her name. It’s Talia McGuire. Isn’t that just the coolest name?

Talia.

I like saying it and I like writing it. Talia.

So I don’t want to be a drunk like you.

I don’t want you to be a drunk anymore like me.

I want us both to quit. I want you to teach me how to find my center while you find yours.

P.S. I hope this letter doesn’t embarrass you too much. I know looking it over, I feel a little queasy.

Help.