The first time I talked with Bill Weston was during the second semester of my Senior year, right after I had started smoking. It was March, just beginning to turn nice, and I was at this place I'd found behind the gym, where no one could see me. Bill was a senior also, but it was his first year at St. Francis. Everyone had known him from the beginning as the kid who'd gotten kicked out of Audubon; I was surprised when he saw me in my hiding spot and waved, headed over. I guess that was the end of high school, when nothing really mattered quite so much, anymore.
"Hey Matt. Can I get a cigarette?"
I handed him the pack; he took two, put one behind his ear, and handed them back.
"Thanks."
"Light?"
He shook his head and pulled a lighter out of his backpack.
"Can I ask you something?"
"What's up?" I said.
"I was wondering: what do you think, I mean, what would it take, to make someone beautiful? Not someone really ugly, but just someone normal-what would it take?"
I thought about it.
"I don't know if you could."
"But imagine you could change anything about them; like, say their nose was too big, bam," and he clapped his hands together, "it's the right size now."
"I don't know," I said. "I think people are born beautiful."
"Everyone?"
"I'm not allowed to say yes?"
"Take Charlotte Harris. Isn't she more beautiful than any girl at this school?"
"Why would I want to answer that?"
"Why not?" He smiled.
"I guess I'm just saying that I'm fucked either way I answer, right?" I stubbed out my cigarette. "Either she is or she isn't, and me saying it is only going to make someone sad."
"Is it bad to think she's beautiful?"
"I guess not." I shrugged.
"Thanks for the cigarettes." And he walked off.
After that first odd conversation, we talked a couple times every week; after a couple of weeks we had what I would have called a friendship. It wasn't much, but when I'd be out there, he'd come by, bum a cigarette. It was funny that he smoked mine so often; I guess as a runner he couldn't afford to get caught with his own. But when you're that kind of kid, I mean, you do what you want-I always gave him shit about how the state champion was going to get lung cancer before he graduated high school, but he pretty much made a career out of ignoring me.
"You're too rational about everything," he'd say. "You think my lungs bring oxygen to my blood and my heart pumps my blood to my legs, and that's how it works, right?"
"But?"
"But if you think about it like that, then of course smoking'll to make you slower."
"So what's your answer?"
"You've got to think historically. I'm running in circles down that track because that's what I'm here for. It's my fucking destiny or some shit like that-I can't do anything else, can't even figure out what it is I'm doing. How do I run? How the fuck would I know? I'm just running because that's what I'm made to do. There's a fucking saber-tooth tiger behind me," he'd gesture, " and if I run, I live. If I walk I die."
"So what are you saying?"
"I'm saying that there's nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so, right?"
"Our own little Hamlet," I'd say. "Cute."
It's crazy-I still see him sometimes, when there are a bunch of teenagers hanging out together on the street, and there's one in the middle of the circle, the tanned, thin boy with hair sticking up all over the place. He's yelling at the top of his lungs or sulking, moody and unpredictable, but he's the one everyone's looking at, with that little grace, an echo of Bill. I shouldn't have been surprised that Charlotte liked him.
"What do you think about the end of high school?" she asked me one lazy afternoon sitting upstairs in her room eating cheese doodles.
"Why is everyone always asking me stuff like that?"
"Because we want to hear what you think," she said sweetly. "Who else is bothering you with big questions?"
"Oh, I don't know, Bill Weston-"
"When's the last time you talked to Bill Weston?"
"The other day, I don't know. But you know what the best thing is going to be about the end of high school?"
"What," she said, looking at me kind of cockeyed, so I laughed.
"The best thing is going to be that we're going to be done with all of this bullshit."
"What do you mean?" I appreciated the fact that she didn't say anything about my swearing.
"I guess I just mean I'm tired of everything. I'm finished with all of the people and all of the games and everything." I didn't mean it to sound mean. I was just kind of fed up, and her jumping at the mention of Bill's name didn't really help anything.
"Will we still be friends after high school?" she asked.
"I don't know," I said. "Will we?"
"You were supposed to say 'yes,'" she corrected me. "You were supposed to say 'but you're like a sister to me, Charlotte.'" She smiled.
"So now I'm your brother?"
"You're such a grouch."
"OK," I said, finally giving in. "Of course, Charlotte. You know I can't live without you."
High school. When you could say what you meant in an ironic tone of voice and no one would ever suspect it was true.
Some time the next week Bill came and bummed a cigarette from me like usual; afterwards, since it was a half day, we went and got lunch together. It was probably the only time we hung out together outside school. We ate at the Subway near St. Francis-I sat down at the plastic tables outside and he came out what must of been ten minutes later. I think his technique was to ask for extra everything and then just stand there bothering everybody until they gave it to him, but he got what he wanted: he could barely carry his sandwich out to the table.
"I've been thinking about what you were saying," I said.
"About what?"
"About beauty."
"And?"
"And I think you can't do it," I said.
"Now we're getting somewhere," he said, and took a big bite of his sandwich. Then, talking with his mouth full: "Explain."
"Well look. I think people are beautiful or they aren't. I don't think fixing someone's nose or setting their ears on straight is going change that much. More attractive, sure. But beautiful?"
"Fantastic." He tipped his chair back and looked at me. "Now we're ready to talk about Charlotte."
He had the disconcerting habit of always making it personal. "What about her?"
"About how she's more beautiful than anyone else."
"OK. She's beautiful," I said.
"But she's not more beautiful than everyone else? I think she is."
We're back here again? I thought. "Look, you're just saying that because you know it gets on my nerves."
"What's your problem?" he said, grinning that fiendish Bill grin.
"I just think you're full of shit."
"So what?" he said, and finished his sandwich. "I'm going to get Charlotte Harris."
"I'm sure she wants that," I said sarcastically, although I imagined that in fact she might.
"She does," he said. "You can't see it?"
"What am I supposed to see? What does that even mean, that you're going to get her?"
"What I mean is that I'm going to be getting with her. She's going to be my girlfriend."
"How can you just say that, without thinking twice about it, just be like 'sure, she's mine.' I could never say that."
"And that's why you won't ever get with Charlotte Harris."
"Wait a second-" I said.
"Matt," he said, in a patronizing voice. "I thought we were being honest."
"Look, I don't see what this has to do with me."
"You don't understand," he said. "I'm that guy, Matt. I'm the one you've got to worry about, you know? Because when you say you'd never say that, you know you'd think it. And I'm the guy who will come along and say it for you, take her away, and make you feel silly because you didn't say what was on your mind."
"Bullshit."
"Bullshit yourself."
"She doesn't like me, but she certainly doesn't like you."
"You asked her about me? Fucking forget it. Either way, I have her. You asked her because you know she likes me, or she asked you, because she does."
"You're such an asshole, Bill."
And he smiled and changed the subject.
A year or so ago, I was in a museum and saw this sketch by Goya. I've forgotten how the caption goes, but anyway it's a picture of a monk on his donkey. The donkey's getting mounted by a horse, and the monk is trapped in between. I know I'm making Bill out to be a bad guy here-horse to my monk-but I think I'm just trying to get at the surprise and inevitability I felt, trapped between them. It wasn't even a question of size or weight, but more of instinct. The horse was just doing what he wanted regardless of the poor Brother in between.
That weekend, I think it was the last weekend in March, Mike Atner had a party at his summer house in Mississippi. I normally wasn't invited to that kind of thing, but he and I had gotten to be kind of friendly when we were on the soccer team together. It took forever to get out there, but the house was huge and it was in the middle of nowhere, no one to complain if we turned the music up, no cops to come by and check on everything. I got there around eight or something, dark already; I knew that it was a bad idea to have driven there alone, especially if I wanted to drink. But I figured that Mike wouldn't mind if I stayed the night.
When I arrived, Bill and Charlotte were already inside, talking-surprising for Charlotte to be at a party at all. I waved and wandered into the kitchen, started chatting with a group of kids sitting on the counters, grabbed a beer from the fridge, then another. For a second, I almost felt as though I belonged, almost. It's high school, so there isn't going to be anyone you don't know, but there were at least some people I didn't expect, and that was fun. After a little while Bill came over and said hello.
"I didn't think you came to parties like this," he said.
"Sometimes I surprise myself," I said.
"Couldn't be predictable, now, could we?"
"I love how you make fun of other people for things you're scared you do yourself," Charlotte said, coming up behind him.
We chatted a little bit more and then Bill got grabbed by Ali, this girl who hung out with the track boys a lot. Pretty soon they wandered off to see who had arrived.
"I think he's glad you're here," Charlotte said.
"What are you, his wife?"
"Stop it. You know I'm glad you came, too," and she patted me on the shoulder, lightly.
"I hate feeling like you're patronizing me," I said, but felt better almost immediately. We wandered around the party for a little bit, talking to people. It was amazingly civilized for one of those house parties; not that many people ended up making the drive out.
After I'd been there for a couple of hours, at eleven or twelve, a bunch of us-Charlotte, Bill, Ali, Mike, and a couple of other girls-are all sitting around the den, all a little drunk. We're laughing about something or other, Mike finishes telling his story, and someone says we should go out and look at the stars. I'm feeling a little buzzy, though, so I stay in, and Bill says he's going to stay inside with me.
We sit there for a little while, not saying anything, on the couch in the den of Mike's summer house. It's quiet, out on the porch Ali and all have stopped talking for a second, and people are laughing in the other side of the house. A few kids are out on the other porch, smoking up, and there are one or two couples in the bedrooms. The CD has ended and we can hear almost everything in the house, blended and muffled, coming to us as we sit and listen. Ali's high laugh breaks the silence and they start to talk again out on the porch. Bill looks at me slowly, a little bit drunk, I can tell.
"Matt," he says, "do you like Charlotte?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, seriously. Seriously, do you like her. Do you want her?"
"I don't know." He nods at me. "Seriously, I don't know," I say.
"I was just wondering."
"You do, right?" I ask.
"If you don't know, I don't know either," he says, and smiles that crooked Bill smile.
"What?" I say.
He pauses a second. "What do you think of this party?"
"It's ok."
"Seriously? Are you having fun? Seriously?"
"Yeah, I'm having fun."
"No, I mean, really."
"I said yes. It's an ok party." I'm not sure what he's looking for.
"What makes it ok?" He asks.
"Hell, I don't know. Mike's place is nice..."
"Do you like soccer?"
"Yeah, sure. What are you saying?" By now I'm completely confused.
He leans in and continues. "Because I hate running."
"I guess I know what you mean."
"No, seriously, I hate it."
"Even when you win?"
"I'll tell you a secret, Matt." A little closer. "I hate winning most of all."
And completing the slow-motion arc he's been making since we started to talk, he leans all the way over and puts his lips to mine, kisses me. His lips are warm, soft, and then, as I open my mouth a little, salty and bitter with beer. It's the only time I ever kissed a guy, I mean, it didn't feel too different from kissing a girl, smooth and cautious, but moving, his face pressing against mine, his head turning a little so that my open eyes see his nose pressed up against mine. We'd already been holding the kiss for a few seconds or so before it kind of percolated up into my brain that I was kissing Bill. And maybe that's when I opened my mouth a little bit.
The moment only lasted a few seconds before Charlotte and Mike and everyone came walking back in. They stopped dead in the doorway; I could see the motion out of the corner of my eye. But before I even understood what happened, Bill opened his eyes and pulled away from me, violently. Then, I finally saw that they were looking at us, and at the same moment, Bill pushed me away, hard, palms against my shoulders.
As I fell backwards off the side of the couch, I yelled, "shit!" and too drunk to think, somehow I started to yell, "shit, Bill, I'm sorry. I mean, I didn't mean it-it's just that I've had too much to drink, god, I'm really sorry, I mean, god. I know you're not like that. I'm so sorry."
Ali looked at me, full of contempt.
"Jesus Christ, Matt. I didn't know that about you."
Mike said something under his breath about fags, and Charlotte looked pretty shocked too. Bill stood up and sort of shook himself off. He looked back at me, lying half on the couch half on the floor, stunned, then moved over to put a hand on Charlotte, but she stepped back and away, knocking into one of the other drunk girls.
Then, I guess he still hadn't gotten himself back together, because he turned back to me and looked me square in the eye, and that's the last thing that I remember really clearly. I remember him saying something to me, but I can't remember if I'm putting things back together that didn't happen. I can remember getting into the car slow and clumsy, but I can remember doing that a million times, the same way. I can't tell you what really happened, and I haven't asked any of them about it.
But listen: the question that Bill Weston never asked was how beautiful do you have to be. How beautiful until someone will give up everything for you-how beautiful until you are truly beautiful. If someone asked me to take a bullet for Picasso's Guernica, I would. I swear. There are some things that need to be preserved. I could die to save the last copy of Don Quixote, I'd do it in a second. But we're not talking about art nor books and so the trade is unfair-I thought I was giving away my worthless high school social life to let Bill remain untarnished. And I ended up just humiliating myself and incidentally, almost dying in the process.
I'm telling you this way because telling people about car accidents is always an anticlimax. Yes, of course, I'm alive, we're talking. No, I don't really remember what happened. Yes, I'll be fine. No, the car's finished. The same story. Of course I feel lucky not to have killed myself; it's incredible that I'm still alive, considering the blood alcohol I had when the found me. Hell, I was halfway back to Memphis, and I have no idea at all how that happened.
Charlotte was the only one who came and visited in the hospital. I was just sitting there in the bed feeling sorry for myself, the same way I had been since I woke up after my first night there.
"How are you feeling?"
"Could be worse."
She smiled. "You can say that about everything. I'm glad you're ok."
"Me too."
"How much longer are you going to be here for?"
"One or two more days-they want to make sure that my insides are really all right-aside from that, I just keep my arm trussed up for a month or so, and I get to walk away unscathed."
"I'm glad you've got such a healthy attitude," she said, and we both laughed.
She stopped and looked at me for a second, still smiling, but a little sad.
"Look, this is all over really soon."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"I mean what you were saying a couple of weeks ago. High school, everything."
"A great consolation."
"But it should be." She stopped. "I mean, you of all people should be the one remembering that none of this matters."
I know she meant well, but there was something that bugged me about what she was saying. Maybe it was the implication that I had somehow fucked up, that I had made some kind of mistake. We basically ended up talking about books for a little bit until she said she had to leave. We didn't talk for a while after that. She thought she was giving me my space, I think, and I was just in such a generally bad mood that she wouldn't have wanted to talk to me anyway.
I was home after only a few days in the hospital, but I stayed out of school for a full two weeks. Most of the time I spent in bed reading or just moping around and by the end, I was deliberately keeping myself home just because I wanted to put off seeing everybody again. My parents knew that I was really shaken up by the whole incident, and accepted at face value that I didn't remember why I left the party. They knew that this kind of thing wasn't what I did.
And of course it was that time of year when applications come back, and so in the middle of all this I found out I was going to Yale in the fall. It was little consolation, and it made me want even less to go back to school and have to tell people, have them whisper to each other that the faggot was going to Yale. For my parents, though, it reaffirmed that I really wasn't a bad kid, which was probably something they needed to hear.
There was some official fallout at school about my accident. Not a lot, because the school didn't tell people that I was drunk, only that I was in a car accident. But people who where there at Mike's all knew, so it became one of those things that people say: oh, he was in an accident-and I think he might have been drunk. But no one wants to joke about drunk driving too much, I think. I heard that at the sports banquet someone gave a big end of season speech about living right, about doing the right thing; though I missed it, I'm pretty sure it was, at least in part, about me.
My first day back was the worst-nobody said anything, but I couldn't keep from thinking about what they wanted to say. Walking through the hallway with all our lockers was the worst. Everyone spread out there just like normal, and I come walking in with this cast on my arm. I just walked on through, up the steps. No one even stopped talking-no one even noticed. I was too scared to talk to anyone in class, and by the time I'd gotten over that fear, I realized that everyone knew I was afraid. They thought I was ashamed of what I'd done-and that was why I wasn't talking to anyone.
I looked for Charlotte all day-I still hadn't seen her since the hospital-but we didn't have any classes together. Then I saw her out there in the parking lot with Bill and a bunch of others sitting on and by his car. I don't know what made me so angry about seeing her there; maybe it was just that I'd always thought that she was above that kind of thing. Whatever that meant. I called her that night, but Bill was over. She promised to call me back when he left. The phone surprised me, ringing only fifteen minutes later.
"That was quick," I said.
"I wanted to talk to you."
"What about?"
"I saw you today at school," she said. "I waved."
"Yeah. I guess I didn't want to come over."
"That makes sense." She paused. I knew she wanted to know where I was going to college, which put her at a disadvantage. Everyone knew she was staying in Memphis with her family though she could have gone anywhere she wanted . Too good to the end. I told her that I was going to the Northeast in the fall, and she was happy for me. It was nice to get to brag to someone-she was almost the first and last person I told, aside from a few teachers.
The next time we talked was a couple of days later. We hadn't seen each other in between except for a couple of little, awkward encounters in the halls or parking lots that were still the most real contact I'd had with anyone at school since the accident.
"Matt, I want us to be friends," she started out.
"I do too," I said.
There was a silence on the phone. She sighed. "It's going to be hard next year, isn't it."
Next year? I thought, but said, "Yeah. I see what you mean."
"I'm scared about all of this. You're going to be very far away."
"I know." I thought about it. "But I'll still be home for vacations."
"It's a lot of time to not see each other," she said.
"What's Bill doing for college?" I asked.
She ignored my question. "We should try to get together some time soon," she said.
"Yeah," I said.
We didn't talk too much after that conversation I mean, she tried, and I did as well, a couple of times. But we'd get on the phone and not have that much to talk about. I'd ask her what she was doing and she'd say something about Bill-something fun they'd done together or somewhere they'd gone. I didn't mean to be as defensive as I probably was, or act as hurt. But in a lot of ways I really couldn't help it: as much as I could tell myself that I had made some sort of noble sacrifice, I still didn't know why it was I had done it. Every time I started to explain it to myself, I ended up just going in circles.
Some time in May, I went back to my old smoking spot. I don't know what I expected; there was no one there. The first couple of times I went, I didn't even smoke. I just sat there for a bit, then, feeling stupid for sitting and doing nothing, took out a book and read a little, went home. The third time, I came out there and lit a cigarette, on purpose. I took a drag, and started rooting around in my backpack to find a book or something when out of the corner of my eye I saw someone running. For a second, I thought it was Bill-wearing black Umbro running shorts and a tee shirt, sprinting across the parking lot and then behind the gym. When he came back around, it was someone else, and I knew I'd been mistaken. There were only a few weeks left in school, and anyway I didn't go there much after that. It was lonely without Bill or Charlotte in my life.
The last time I saw Bill was in the park across from my house, right after graduation. It was twilight and the greens were starting to lose their color as the sky got darker. The air had just begun to get a little cool, but the sweet, warm grass smell stayed, and if you stood still, you could imagine for a second that it was warm. I saw Bill as he crossed the street from my house-he must have spotted me before knocking on the door-and he yelled.
I waved, and he walked fast across the street, hopping over the short fence and gliding across the field with a long, faint shadow. When he was about ten feet away, he slowed down, dry grass under his running shoes. I stood up, and he put out his hand. Not knowing what to do, I took it, and we shook hands briefly, hard.
"Matt."
"How are you?"
"I should probably be asking you that, right?" He grimaced a little bit.
"You know I'm fine."
"Yeah." He paused. "Charlotte said I should go find you."
"How is that going for you?" I asked.
"It's great."
I stopped for a second. Not that I was angry, not then. I just didn't know what to say. Bill looked at me, and cocked his head to one side.
"Matt," he said.
"Yeah?"
"I'm sorry."
"I know."
"Listen, Matt." He paused again. "I just wanted to come out and see you before you left, just to say that."
"Don't worry about it. Really."
He looked at me again.
"You know I mean that," I said. "Right?"
"Yeah."
"Don't worry about it." I repeated.
"Thanks."
He stepped forward and grabbed me fast in a hard hug, like a tackle. As I hugged him back he was already breaking away. He turned around and broke into a jog, headed towards the parking lot, then back towards his house.
The last of the light had faded as we talked, and the fireflies had begun to come out. I sat down again and took out a cigarette, lit it. I could feel the smoke in my lungs, but I couldn't see it as I exhaled and pretty soon the whole park was full of fireflies. The coal of my cigarette burned its way down as I watched them blink. When the cigarette was finished, I stubbed it out carefully in the grass, got up, and began to walk home.