Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock(27)

“It rocked!” Asher kept saying. “So awesome!”

“All right, all right,” Dad said all cool, like he used to whenever he’d had a few drinks and his eyes were glassy. “All right, all right.” He’d say it fast and sort of rhythmic, putting the accent on the second ri and dropping the last t, so it sounded like “all-right, all-rye.”

Toward the end of our time together, when Dad really went off the deep end, you could say anything to him and he’d say, “All-right, all-rye.” “Dad, I failed Earth Science.” “All-right, all-rye.” “Mom’s banging this French fashion designer she used to model for.” “All-right, all-rye.” “I just lit your balls on fire, Dad.” “All-right, all-rye.” He became one of those dolls that repeat a catchphrase every time you pull its string. “All-right, all-rye.” “All-right, all-rye.” “All-right, all-rye.”

In our hotel room my dad said, “You guys can rent a movie, but stay in the room. All-right, all-rye ? I’m going back down to the floor. Feeling lucky tonight,” which was no surprise, because my dad was always leaving me alone, even when I was a kid.

Asher and I watched the clock for ten minutes after my dad left, just long enough for him to start gambling, before we began exploring the hotel.

We ran down the endless mazelike hallways, knocking on the doors we passed, emptying the ice machines and having ice-ball fights in the stairwell; took turns sitting in the maid’s cart and pushing each other into walls; tried to sneak into an after-hours dance club and got caught by the bouncer, who laughed his ass off when—with straight faces—we told him it was Asher’s twenty-first birthday. We searched the casino floor for the members of Green Day and got kicked out, scarfed down some late-night pizza, and ended up sitting on the boardwalk with our elbows on the railing and our feet dangling over the side.

“Man, this night was the shit!” Asher said. “Best birthday present ever. Hands down.”

“Yeah, you know it,” I remember saying as we listened to the waves crashing somewhere in the darkness.

“Do you think we’ll come back to this hotel when we’re adults?” Asher asked. “Do you think we’ll still be hanging out?”

If you would have put my grandfather’s Nazi P-38 handgun to my eleven-year-old head, told me to tell the truth or die, and then asked me if Asher and I would be best friends for life, I would have said yes on that night without hesitation.41

“Probably,” I said, and then we just sat dangling our feet off the boardwalk.

We really didn’t say much more than that; nothing all that extraordinary happened—just typical stupid-ass kid stuff.42

Maybe it was the type of high only kids can get and understand.

There were hundreds of adults drinking alcohol and gambling and smoking that night, but I bet none of them felt the high Asher and I did.

Maybe that’s why adults drink, gamble, and do drugs—because they can’t get naturally lit anymore.

Maybe we lose that ability as we get older.

Asher sure did.





TWENTY-ONE


One day after a long, depressing afternoon wearing my funeral suit and studying miserable adults in Philadelphia, I exited my town’s train station, and this girl43 I had never seen before stuck a piece of paper in my face. Then she said, “The way, the truth, and the light!”

“Excuse me?” I said.

“Here’s a tract. Read all about it.”

I took the piece of paper, which was like a mini–comic book. The pictures and words were all in red ink, which looked dramatic and intense. On the front cover was a picture of a smiling man. Underneath his kind face were these words: You can be the nicest guy in the world, but without Jesus in your heart, you are going to hell.

I remember laughing when I read it, because it seemed so over the top—like a joke maybe. And I wondered if this throwback-looking girl was playing some sort of game—like this was just part of her spiderweb, her trap.

“Who are you?” I said, trying to sound cool and collected and Bogie-like.

“My name is Lauren Rose. And I’m here to show you the way. Tell you the good news.”

Her name was Lauren and she was a tall blond.

Lauren.

If I were the type of person who believed in signs, I would have been a little freaked, because she actually looked very much like a youngish version of Lauren Bacall, a tall blond who was also cat-faced, and was devastatingly beautiful in her prime—irresistible. And after watching Bogie win Bacall so many times in black-and-white Hollywood land, I felt a sort of inevitability. This would be the first girl I would kiss. I declared it in my mind—set the goal, and then I locked on like a greyhound chasing a rabbit.

“What good news?” I asked, trying to sound as calm, suave, and confident as black-and-white Bogie—pretending that we were in The Big Sleep. “Because I sure could use some.”

“That Jesus Christ died for your sins.”

“Oh.”

I didn’t know how I felt about that, and her selling religion seemed to snap me out of the scene for a moment, but I had already set the goal—and I knew that Bogie always gets Bacall no matter what the odds, no matter how many bad guys are in his way. So I tried to change the subject.