Begin with the aroma of sizzling bacon. Well, begin with a slammed front door, and then the sizzling bacon, although it should be said that the slammed door, while sufficient to awaken me, couldn’t exactly set my body in motion. The rejuvenating power of bacon, or any breakfast for that matter, is not exactly an unheralded phenomenon, but the key difference between here and most other mornings is that someone else is making it. That and the gnawing sensation in my stomach is epic, even for someone accustomed to skipping this meal.
I had stumbled in shortly following my final conversation with Benny, and was surprised to find Tom sitting in the dark living room, on the couch, chatting in muted tones with a raven haired girl I remembered spotting earlier. Was this the mighty Alicia of legend? If so, I am considering in my addled state, as Tom chuckles and I further bumble around the ground floor, this is a disappointing notion, somehow, as this young lady has entered with little fanfare. No fanfare. Whereas I envisioned the eventual reunion between Tom and his former flame kicking off with a flag corps and trumpet ceremony. And while I recall that bizarre empty front room, am relieved to stagger into it, finding the space unoccupied, the carpet thick and soft as I collapse into a corner, the visuals of this thought propel me laughing into sleep.
Now daylight strikes like a hammer to the forehead. With a hand on the wall, I elevate my creaking knees into an upright position. A night on the floor is allegedly good for the back, but I’m wondering in what way, exactly. Glancing at the multipurpose electronic device in my front pocket, it seems that the hour is now 10:30, which seems about right. And upon arriving in due time at my destination, Faraday’s kitchen, I encounter only Brad, who is busy both frying up a litany of delectables on the stove, while staring at a tiny television housed in one corner of the counter.
“Feeling ambitious?” I call out with a smirk, more to announce my presence than believing this a clever quip.
Brad spins around and replies, with businesslike calm, “actually, Tom asked me to go pick some stuff up.”
On the television over his shoulder, I can just barely make out looping footage of that madman from the night before – or whenever it had been – a news report recycling the grainy surveillance video again and again. The masked figure breezing into a gas station, firing at the clerk, before said clerk has time to register the horror of this situation. The shooter calmly drifting over to pour himself a cappuccino before exiting. Fire, pour, repeat.
“You’re kidding, right?” I challenge. “You always do his bidding?”
“Uh, well, I mean, it wasn’t like I was doing anything, anyway,” Brad shrugs, “plus, I figured, you know, everyone would pretty much want breakfast.”
Extreme grogginess pulls my attention next to the coffee maker beside him, as I observe that, while Brad apparently has all bases covered in the matter of food, my caffeine lifeline sits abandoned, neglected, weep-inducing cold and empty. With my next move now a hunt for some grounds and a filter, I glide in that direction, and am soon relieved to note that, though obscured from where I’d been standing, beyond Faraday’s coffee maker sits a single serve Keurig machine. This will help get me over the hump, then, and forces a radical course correction. I’ll make a cup of this and, once properly inspired, will then tackle the concept of brewing a full pot.
“Where is Tom, anyhow?” I ask, while rooting through a couple of cabinets before striking gold, “he still holding up?”
“Oh yeah,” Brad replies, his back to me as he flips a giant omelet in this massive cast iron pan. Turning his head in the direction of a window over the sink, he nods at it and adds, “he’s out there by the fire now with that crazy Chester guy.”
“Wha-ha-hat?” I half laugh, in disbelief, and drift to the panes for a peep.
Sure enough, Tom and the wild looking older gent are seated in lawn chairs around the still smoldering remains of a fire. But in an unexpected twist, Faraday is standing to the left of them, in a teal colored cotton bathrobe that cuts off at the knees, black dress socks and leather loafers. This Chester character is rambling at length about something which involves a whole lot of hand gestures, as the other two men laugh heartily. While they sip on their tall paper coffee cups with plastic lids and cardboard sleeves – in other words, acquired from sources elsewhere.
“Hmm, Faraday’s out there, too,” I mutter, “and just a hunch, but…did you bring these guys coffee, too?”
“Well, uh, you know,” Brad stammers, avoiding all eye contact, yet again, “I was already out running errands anyway. It was no big deal.”
“Man,” I shake my head and chuckle at this rare opportunity to school someone on the finer points of social interaction, “you’ve really gotta knock this stuff off. It’s okay to tell people no. You think people really appreciate everything, how dutiful you are, and that you’ll lose friends sticking up for yourself. But it doesn’t quite work like that. Trust me, I know from experience.”
He looks surprised by my tepid tongue lashing, and I have to admit to startling even myself. What can I say, the comments have just sort of burst forth. Being slightly hungover may have something to do with this, but really I think this entire crew, and the scene their haphazard wandering has set, it threw me off track right out of the gate, and I’ve yet to recover. And then, as if picking up my stream of consciousness via transmitted cue, the front door slams and seconds later here appears Benny, sweating profusely, the bottom of his drenched yellow tee shirt yanked up to wipe off and absorb the excess from his perspiring face. Instead of wondering what he’s been up to, however, for some reason this sight inspires another divergent thought: I really didn’t pack any fucking clothes.
“Whew! Hell yeah, bo-ah!” Benny cheers between his pants, marches over and scoops up a fistful of the bacon, chomps into them as if biting off someone’s fingers.
“What have you been doing?” I ask, in a tone of voice that I’m aware before saying it sounds like the gripe of a crotchety old man, made additionally ridiculous in that I am nearly one hundred percent confident I know the answer before the words leave my mouth. And yet I can’t refrain from spewing them nonetheless.
“Getting my early morning run on,” he mumbles, indifferent in barging toward Faraday’s kitchen table with a fully assembled plate.
Was I this maniacal in my own early twenties? Though occasionally believing – like fifteen minutes ago, for instance – that the way I’m living now is ridiculous, as a 53 year old, and though, true, a bit fuzzy on some of the details from two and a half decades prior, I find it hard to picture myself ever being this hardcore. Then again, let’s assume Benny crashed at one and awakened at eight – that’s still a seven hour stretch of sleep, plenty for most, more than enough for a physically fit college age student even after pounding cheap beer nonstop the day before.
Along a similar thread, who knows how this will shake out with Tom Bowman. It became fairly obvious early on that he would police himself with this bet, and my trust lies in the sense the whole enterprise is about challenging his own perceptions and showing off than anything to do with these nominal wagers. And given that, he’s unlikely to cheat. I reason now that if Benny can jog a couple miles while still legally intoxicated, then there’s no reason his fully sober counterpart couldn’t hold up for a couple of days at the very least, a sentiment confirmed when Tom and the professor drift in at this moment via the backdoor, having apparently dispatched Chester for the time being.
Today is all about filling in the blanks, I’ve decided. Grey areas proliferate to a disorienting extent. Then again, maybe this famished state is contributing to my disorientation. Taking a cue from Benny, I too fill up a plate with sausage, eggs, bacon and biscuits, though I’m only two bites into this loaded course – too impatient to sit, I stand at the central counter – before it occurs to me that the coffee dilemma was never resolved, leading me to curse and assemble a pot. With Faraday’s blessing, of course. And much to my relief the ever eggshell walking Brad, meanwhile, inquires as to our itinerary, even as he will likely backpedal from any involvement with it.
Faraday doesn’t so much answer as wave off my coffee question, this formality but a trifle. He is far more occupied with matters of greater significance – namely the general debate Brad’s query has inspired. It isn’t lost on me, either, that we are a mass of exclusively dudes sitting and standing around this kitchen, for the spectacle is a familiar one. As always the girls hang in there to a point, but, unless maybe boinking somebody in the crew – of which I haven’t seen any evidence, at least not with those who’ve been around – then they tend to have better things to do than stay up all night and into the following morning with endless pointless partying. Among other angles, the macho need to prove something about one’s endurance is completely lost on them.
“Naturally, naturally, whatever but ah…yes…I really need to get down there and check on that damn windshield today…” the professor replies, answering both of us with one fluid sentence.
Proof of having endured these marathons before is written all over the appearances of most present. Beyond the bathrobe and footwear, all of which I’m guessing comprises his standard early a.m. uniform, Faraday is also fortunate to possess the sort of curly, hassle free hair that will always retain its shape, regardless how bedheaded. Tumbling, tousled, steel wool hair. Kurt Vonnegut hair. And Bowman, meanwhile, clad in a black hoodie with some sort of primary blue college emblem on the chest, which may or may not belong to Greenlee State, he looks no worse for the removal of sleep. Bright eyed, even. Of course who among us hasn’t seen the sun rise a time or two on a work night, and went straight in without shuteye, reasoning that we would feel worse if attempting to grab some scant ZZZs at this juncture. The difference being, however, at least for me, that a nap in the car at lunchtime would await. Well that and the salient fact that Tom hasn’t been drinking, it goes without saying. But while he won’t be cooped up in a clinic for observation, and I personally wouldn’t know how to spot these nearly invisible microsleeps anyway, the brief naps, experts advise, that those going without will almost always lapse into, unawares, often while standing and/or with eyes wide open, I’m willing to bet he’s got at least another half day in him before hitting the first wall.
“I gotta get a shower before we do anything,” Benny states, forming the words around a mouthful of food.
“Hims has to look purty for the ladies,” Tom explains to us with a smirk, even though, minus Benny’s singular dedication to a slick hairstyle, I’m guessing he’s not much different. Whoever that girl was, delivering speeches about guys being filthy, it clearly hadn’t been aimed at these two. Or even Brad whom, though no apparent lothario, nonetheless comes off as immaculately scrubbed.
“Come on man. I can’t go out with a dirty ass. It ain’t right. Girls be gettin kinda bent outta…oh hey, that reminds me. What do we do about…?” Benny says, points up at the ceiling.
Tom purses his lips and ponders, before delivering a verdict. “Hmm, how about, then…,” he says to Faraday, “we go check on your boat. The rest of you can hold tight here maybe until Benny has hims’ precious shower, then we’ll all meet back up later.”
“Eh…,” I croak, though stuck for the words to elaborate initially, causing every head in the room to crane in my direction, “I was actually hoping to profile you today, Tom. Get some quotes, that sort of thing.”
“Profile Tom? I thought you said you wrote for a sports magazine?” Faraday bellows, combative, halfway belligerent, as if offended by the notion.
“Well yeah but see it’s really about the state of…the, uh, dark underbelly of…well, it’s kind of hard to explain right now. But it’s coming together. I just need to…flesh out…this particular thread.”
“Well, there you go!” Tom laughs, “Boating! That’s a sport, right?”
“Fuck it,” Faraday shrugs, “let’s get out there and see what shakes loose.”
We are flying along some country highway in a vague northeasterly direction, i.e. in a direction completely opposite to that of the lake and while anything’s possible, I’m fairly certain already that fleeting mentions of boat repair, assuming they were ever serious, have been forgotten already. Or wait – no, perhaps I am completely mistaken, as the road does begin bending at present if not back toward the water, then at least perpendicular to it.
But I could be forgiven, anyway, for having no clue. With Faraday at the wheel and Tom riding shotgun in this Infiniti, even on a calm morning such as this, the wind is whipping past my ears with a force to preclude all but the loudest conversation. As such I feel the time is ripe for giving this tape recorder a whirl, and extract it from the pouch of my travel bag. Shoving it into the space between those two up front should capture the audio better than my ears will, the point I rally around without possessing the nerve to ask.
“Whoa! What the fuck is that!” Tom shouts, partially rotating his upper half toward the device, toward the center.
“I can’t hear you guys. Do you mind?” I explain with a sheepish chuckle, “for authenticity’s sake.”
“Depends on the subject matter!” Tom turns fully now, facing me, smiling yet serious. To which Faraday says nothing that I am aware of, but nods in agreement.
The first order of business is connecting names to faces, and how these people know one another. In many instances I’m not even certain who I’ve met, if it’s a previously referenced soul or someone altogether new. To this end, I ask Tom how it is he knows Benny, who has seemed to me an incongruous fit for a lofty liberal arts program like Greenlee. For the record, some conversations from this point in the document forward have been reconstructed from my tapes.
“Well, believe it or not, he came here to be an actor. His parents have some money, okay, and Benny thought he might get into acting. But let’s just say he sort of lost interest when found out there was work involved – I think he thought all it would take was showing up and being handsome. Which, I mean,” Tom chuckles merrily, looks dead on at Faraday, then back at me, as if pegging us all a kindred unit, surely on board with this sentiment, “if it was that easy to make it big, who among us wouldn’t be into acting?”
Turning off of the main highway, the road bends via a couple of steep switchbacks down heavily wooden hills. Along a flat stretch between the two, a Little League ballpark sits despite, I’m willing to wager almost anything, no town, village, or for that matter densely packed neighborhood existing anywhere nearby. At the eventual crest of this road, it stops at an abrupt T, and our driver selects the shorter of these two options, what appears to be a tidy jaunt to the right which will soon conclude. Instead, a quick left is in the cards, at a corner featuring some former pet grooming establishment, now boarded up with for sale sign jabbed into its gravel cul-de-sac.
A long straight stretch now stares us in the eyes. We now enter some sort of planned neighborhood that never happened, block after block of perfectly square grids devoid of houses, even though the streets, while otherwise unblemished, perfect, have that yellowish grey color indicating many a year has passed since they were laid. Soon enough, however, without turning, we reach the end of this lengthy avenue, as it only slightly curves, bringing into view what I assume must be Lake Waccamol. Finally, at a dirt driveway cutting downhill at a sharp angle to the left, next to this silver colored tin mailbox, there sits a mud brown, wooden, two story house which must represent our destination.
The owner of this abode, whoever he is, is surely some kind of all-around fixit man, limited not to just boats. A few of those sit on trailers, sprinkled throughout the yard in no discernible order, but I’m also inventorying go karts, snowmobiles, jet skis, and for some reason a rusty red 1950s era pickup truck resting on its back two tires only, jacked up so that the front pair rests on this yard partition of sorts, a stack of railroad ties standing approximately four feet high. And every square inch of its bed is eaten up by trash bags full of random tree detritus. Speaking of trees, just a handful dot the landscape once you reach the lawn proper, but these towering behemoths are decades upon decades old, shading every inch of the front yard. I can’t even fathom what mowing this puppy must involve, though, at once too massive to tackle with a push model, but steep to the extreme that a rider would seemingly tumble down the hill regardless of direction or location.
We exit the Infiniti and make our way toward the house. When, after repeated knocks, nobody answers, we drift around to the side facing the water. Whereas the point of entry for the front had been either the ground or the second floor, owing to the tilt of the land, depending upon your point of view, back here it’s either the first or the basement. Upon receiving no response, Faraday presses his face to the glass of a couple different windows, but then gives up and spins around with a sigh. Hands on hips, he wordlessly scans the landscape below us, around the lake. Though this house and its surroundings are suffused with that preternatural midday stillness which you can somehow just tell indicates that nobody’s around, I’m wishing someone would show because otherwise, I feel, we might poke around here for hours.
“Well, let me check the fucking dock,” Faraday sighs, descends the remainder of the hill without a glance behind. When Tom makes no move to follow, I take that as my own cue to stay put.
“So…that girl on the couch last night?” I say, as much to break the awkward silence as for any journalistic reason. “Was that Alicia?”
“What?” Tom cackles, as if startled by the question, and turns to me with furrowed brows, a quizzical smirk on his lips. “No, nothing like that. It was just,” he flicks his hand, dismissively waving away the significance, “you know. Carrie Kelley. Kelley? Yeah, I think Kelley. Maybe Curry. It’s been a while.”
“Well, ah,” I eke out, and clear my throat, fumbling for the phrase to follow. Though I can often find inspiration by zoning out, when donning the interviewer’s hat, and launching into a question before self-consciousness eats me alive, on occasion reality blindsides me. Seized by the truth that I am not ordinarily all that forthright, requiring another jolt of courage to press onward. “It’s none of my business, and actually I don’t even technically really care, but at this point I’ve heard so much I feel like I have to know…”
Tom, who had been gazing absently down at Faraday’s meanderings about the water, with a lazy smirk on his face, now turns to me with the same expression, and I’m aware he’s already figured out what my next words will be before I’ve gotten around to asking him.
“So what is the deal, anyway? You and this Alicia?”
“Er, eh, yeah, uh, umm,” he says, with an exaggerated grimace, and he isn’t stalling but rather going through the motions of stalling for comedic effect. If he had a necktie on at the moment, surely he would be yanking it to and fro. “Yikes. Now might not be the best time to – ahem – address that particular, um, topic. But yeah. It was right there. Worlds collide, that sort of thing.”
He shrugs, dismissing further commentary, a gesture strengthened in that he’s already cast his attention downward, with a vague frown, to a buzzing cell phone withdrawn from his jeans. And anyway Faraday is now struggling back up the hill, nearing us, which seemingly wraps up this phase of the excursion in a tidy bow.
“Well, Christ,” the professor wheezes. He wipes at his sweating forehead with the back of an arm and surveys the scene once more. “Where the hell are these idiots?”
“Benny just texted. Says a few of them are up at Jammerz already.”
“No, no,” the professor says, a sour expression accompanying his multiple head shakes. “Well, maybe. He happen to mention who was present? Like maybe Cleveland or this douche muncher Patterson?”
Chuckling behind a tightly clamped mouth, Tom levels his gaze at me, as if seeking a sympathetic soul, and jokes, “um, no, I didn’t exactly ascertain that information.”
“I wonder if Chester’s awake?” Faraday muses, squints at the gold metal watch upon his left wrist. “Nah, I’m pretty sure it’s still passed-out-drunk-thirty. Hmm.” Standing with hands on hips, sweating and panting profusely still, he exhales sharply, an earthquake rattling his sizeable beer gut to the core. “Well, whatever. Fuck it. Let’s go get some lunch. Maybe something to eat, too.”
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