Good morning.

Uh, good hangover, more like it.

Coffee?

Absolutely? Like you read my mind. (Takes a sip.) Thanks for letting me stay the night.

Well, no way you were driving home.

Jesus. You know it’s like a twelve-hour drive, right?

Stay another day if you like.

Nah, I should take off after lunch. Get back to the hearth and home.

Too bad Emma couldn’t make it.

Work, you know. Fucks everything up.

Been ages since I’ve seen her.

Well, you guys could come down once in a while.

Maybe when the girls are a little older. It’s a long drive for a couple preschoolers.

Yeah, I guess so.

Or — tell you what: I’ll come down for the wedding.

Not fucking likely.

I don’t know, man. Don’t let this one get away.

It’s not that. I don’t know whether it’s a matter of principle, or if we just don’t want to admit how fucking conventional we’ve become. Either way, nether of us want to.

Fair enough.

Besides, can you imagine my mother?

Eh. I’d rather not.

Exactly. (Drinks coffee, looks at ceiling.) I’m surprised Eric didn’t stop by.

Shit, man. Have you talked to him lately?

About a year ago.

You know he got married.

Yeah, a lot of that going around.

Baby on the way, too. And he got a new job. Some IT firm. Making a lot of money.

Well–

And he went back to Rockville.

(laughs)

No, man — literally.

Wait, what?

Yeah. He commutes like, an hour each way. Works forty, sixty hours a week. Has a two-story house with a two-car garage. Gated community, the whole deal.

Okay, I’m trying hard not to be too judgmental here.

Why?

Why try, or why judge?

I guess either. Some people, it’s just in their genes. They hit 35 or 40 and they turn into their parents. It’s like salmon swimming upstream to spawn.

Well, you’re feeling pretty philosophical about it.

This has been coming for a while. He’s been, I don’t know, pulled toward something else for a long time.

I’m still surprised he didn’t make the party. It’s not that far.

Yeah, well, last time we talked — I guess I wasn’t feeling so philosophical then.

You fight?

More like I told him to go fuck himself.

What’d he say?

He said he needs to move on.

Move on from what?

You know — late nights, no money. Making music no one likes, or even listens to. The art scene. The whole deal. Me.

Fuck. I suddenly feel like the universe is out of balance.

Tell me about it. It feels like we got fucking divorced. Twenty-five years — since middle-school — and he and I have always been working on something together. Usually music, sometimes art. Even building bikes. But something. Now it’s just me out here in the garage with a bass and some paint and a motorcycle in a hundred fucking pieces.

With a wife upstairs and two little munchkins.

(Chopping his forearm, like David Byrne): Well — how did I get here?

I think this is what you were aiming for.

Yeah, more or less. Didn’t know I’d lose all my friends on the way, though.

Not quite all.

No. Not quite all.

Besides, that band was fucking terrible.

Well, if the rest of you lazy sacks would ever fucking practice —

Whatever happened to the other two — Rye and Ian?

Well Rye moved out west and turned gay.

Took him long enough.

Yeah, he was definitely the last to know. But in the end, it was either face who he was or drink himself to death.

Christ. Glad he made the right choice.

I heard he found God, too, but that could just be a malicious rumor.

Or a euphemism.

Aside from that, I don’t really know. I got a picture here somewhere, of him at Burning Man. Last time I heard from him.

Pretty happy ending, actually.

It is, isn’t it? Ian — Did I tell you he came by?

No.

Yeah, he’s still in town. You know he got married.

Yeah, years ago.

Divorced now.

Well, that’s either good or bad, depending.

Hard to say. I think he married too young and feels like he wasted his life. So it’s like, he thought back to the last time he was really happy and tried to return to that time. He asked me if I wanted to get the band back together.

Really? He didn’t even fucking like that band. He’s the reason we broke up.

Yeah, well, he came by, and he was dead fucking set on it. It’s like he was trying to hit the rewind button on his life. Seriously. He moved back into that puker apartment complex. Job as a delivery driver. When he came by, he was wearing all black, eyeliner, studded collar. It’s like he was dressing up as his college self.

Jesus.

Anyway, I told him I wasn’t interested. Which was kind of hard. I mean, Eric had just left town and everything. It’s not like I don’t want to do music. But really it was just him. He just seemed — off. Desperate. Pathetic. He got kind of pissy about it, too. Like he didn’t just fucking vanish for a dozen years and then show up unannounced demanding a second chance.

You think he was on something?

I dunno, maybe. Not the guy we used to know, but now? Can’t say. He did get a band together though, him and a couple college brats. I went to see one of their gigs, and only stayed for, like, three songs. It was just too depressing.

That bad?

Actually, it wasn’t bad at all. But it’s not 1995 and he isn’t 20 years old. It all kind of had this creepy classic rock cover band feel to it.

Uh, God. So is this how we look, from the outside?

What do you mean?

Like, I don’t know, like — like you’re Eric, all sold out and respectable; and I’m Ian, clutching desperately at some worn-out dream.

Nah, I think we’re like Rye.

Gay and God-fearing? Dancing naked in the desert, tripping?

Like we found our own way.

Fuck, I hope so. Feels to me like I’m still looking.

Maybe that’s what I mean, actually. I guess I feel like, Eric just gave up. He took all his brilliance, and all this creativity, and just said, “Fuck it; I’d rather be boring.”

It seems like that’s just going to make him miserable. I mean, he always needed the chaos.

Needed it, but didn’t always like it. I think he still needs it, he’s just hiding.

At least Ian is trying.

Yeah, Ian’s trying, but Ian’s trying to relive his past. Like he’s trying to be an earlier version of himself. You can’t just do the same shit over and over and pretend like it’s new.

You think they’re happy?

Who cares if they’re fucking happy? If they’re happy, it’s only ’cause they’re fooling themselves.

Guess they’re not really happy, then.

I guess not.

Did I ever tell you about going to visit Alicia?

I don’t think so, why?

Well, you remember her, right?

You had a big thing for her.

I had a huge thing for her, ever since high school. And we stayed in touch after, and even tried to make a go of it just after college.

Didn’t work out?

Nah, but it ended well.

And you went to see her?

Last year, when I was back visiting my folks. I gave her a call. It was strange talking to her after so many years, and something sounded weird about her voice. Like the intonation or something. It was after I got off the phone that I realized she had the mommy voice.

The mommy voice?

Like she was used to talking baby talk. Like she was kind of artificially cheerful and over-emphasizing her words.

Right.

I drove over to her place. Hadn’t been there before, and as I followed the directions, I felt like they just had to be wrong. They took me to this sterile subdivision just like the one we grew up in. The end of a cul de sac. Two-story white colonial house, two-car garage, basketball hoop. Inside, it was wall-to-wall carpet and a wide-screen t.v., framed family pictures on the walls. I met her husband, briefly, but he was leaving as I arrived. And they had this baby girl — maybe a year old, I don’t know — rolling around and playing on the floor.

Not the cute little goth chick anymore, huh?

Sitting there, talking with her, looking around her house — I kept having to remind myself that it was her house, not her parents’. Because really, it looks just like her parents’ house.

I think, a lot of people, it’s like they’re not really living a real life unless it looks like what they grew up in.

Man, I’m like 100 percent, 180 degrees, the opposite of that.

Yeah, well, some people go that way, too.

But at some point, she asked me to help get the kid ready for bed. And so we went upstairs, and put her in the bath. And Alicia dried her off, and handed her to me, all wrapped up in a towel, as she went to get her pajamas. And holding this tiny little girl, suddenly I could see this whole situation, like, from the outside. I was standing there, holding this child, in the town I grew up in, and with this woman who, at one time, I was totally in love with. And for a moment, I got this glimpse into this other world, where I’d done things differently and that was my life. It was terrifying, and kind of beautiful.

You regret it, not going that way?

I never wanted any of that. Not really. It was nice to see it, though, just for a moment.

Yeah.

And I realized, just then — I saw how happy Alicia was, the happiest I’ve ever seen her. And I realized that, after all this time, I still love her. I love her enough to be happy for her. I love her enough that I want her to have what she wants, and not what I would want for her. Does that make sense?

Yeah. Yeah, it does. (Gets up, pours more coffee. Starts back, then pauses and opens a cabinet. Sets a bottle of whiskey on the table.) Hey man, I appreciate you coming all this way, just for my birthday.

(Adding whiskey.) Hey, you only turn forty once. I wouldn’t miss it.

(Takes a drink from the bottle.) Let’s get the band back together.

Fuck off.

—

Kristian Williams‘ fiction has been appeared in Shots Magazine and the anthology Red Blood, Black Sky.