Purple Hearts(14)

He caught sight of me, and paused.

Go back inside, I silently commanded. Jake’s gaze turned to Johnno through the open window, then to Kaz. His face hardened. I knew what he was thinking. We were double-parked in the middle of his peaceful street. It would look the same way if we were pulling some other shit. If we were high. He turned away to shuffle JJ back inside.

This wasn’t the plan. The plan was to say sorry, to show him I’d changed. Now it looked like I had lied to his face. It looked like I was the same fucking idiot I’d always been.





Cassie


I was sweating through my Kinks shirt, biting a hangnail off my thumb, pacing up and down a block in West Lake Hills next to the Gopney Playground. After Nora had left, I’d brooded all last night, scheming, and drove over an hour early so I wouldn’t miss him. I’d had to turn back once because I’d forgotten my phone at home, then I’d gotten in and out of my car three times, and almost made it down the block before turning around and parking again. Frankie and I used to dangle off the monkey bars here, kick in sync on the swings, play TV tag, freeze tag, bridge tag. Inside the little plastic cabin near the sandbox, we used to set up a house. Then we’d run around the borders and pretend we were fighting aliens, protecting our progeny. While my mother cleaned his house, Frankie was my day care.

I stood on the curb, waiting for him, the pads of my fingers sore, just like they used to be from playing piano. But now my fingers hurt because I had pricked them with a glucose meter. Now I waited for Frankie ready to play a different kind of game. Now, in my head, I was proposing to him.

Frankie, please fake-marry me.

Frankie, we both love snacks, and we are both from Texas. I think this could work.

Frankie, remember that time that you stepped on an ant and cried? I do. Who else knows you better than I do?

Before we lost touch, Frankie and I were best friends. He had started hanging out with the football players, and though he ignored me in the hallways, here on the Gopney benches he’d told me that I was better than all the guys I had crushes on, congratulated me when I’d made our high school’s jazz ensemble on the keys as a first-year, listened to every story I exaggerated, affirmed every vague, ecclesiastical notion I had about music.

For a time, at least.

Can I come over and see ya? I had texted him.

Yeah!!! Eating lunch with parents but will be done at 1ish, he’d replied.

Here’s what I figured: According to the army website, if Frankie and I got married, he’d get two thousand dollars more a month, for a housing allowance and subsistence benefits.

We would each get one thousand dollars a month, I’d get on his health plan, and I’d up my hours in bartending. This would still cover my student loans and copays and blood sugar checks. Frankie could do whatever he wanted with his share of the money. And in the meantime, I wouldn’t have to get another day job. I could spend my days writing an album.

And most important, if something went wrong, if my blood sugar got too high or low, that one-thousand-dollar ambulance ride that isn’t covered by insurance, and all the other bills—the hospital visit, and overnight stay—wouldn’t be sending Mom or me into poverty.

Then there’s the other part of it, the whole faking-a-wedding endeavor. No problem. Frankie and I would go to the courthouse, claiming we’d loved each other since childhood. It wasn’t far from the truth, and hell, I know how to be in love. I’d done it a few times.

Frankie had been first, probably, but so innocent. A kiss on the cheek or the lips before the streetlights turned on. Next came Andy, the upright-bass player in the jazz ensemble. We spent Saturday nights in the backseat while Charles Mingus played in the CD player, convincing ourselves that our hands down each other’s pants while listening to the best upright-bass player of all time was somehow different than regular hands down regular pants. I mean, how do you not fall in love with the first person who wants to touch you that way? I thought we were magic. Two jazz prodigies, entwined.

But we weren’t prodigies. We were kids. Me, especially. Once, I’d flown three hundred miles to watch Andy’s college showcase. Instead of surprising him after the concert, I witnessed him making out with a willowy, freckled flute player in the wings.

It was past one thirty, and Frankie still hadn’t texted, which was weird, because he used to call back within seconds. Then again, that was years ago.

I started swinging to pass the time. The hard rubber dug into my hips. This was a terrible idea.

After Andy, I’d stopped playing piano altogether. I’d confined myself to antimusic, listening to No Wave, Kraftwerk, BauHaus, Joy Division. I was alone, and I liked being alone.

That’s why I thought James had been perfect. James didn’t believe in love, and neither did I. James believed in rational hedonism. I believed in secular humanism. We “fucked like animals,” as he would put it, and ingested every drug available on campus until we burned out, fought, and made up again. We enrolled in the same seminars so we could spend our nights comparing notes, editing each other’s papers, pushing against each other’s viewpoints so hard that we would have to rip our clothes off in the private study room on the fourth floor of the library. We didn’t think it was love, but of course it was.

I dragged my feet on the ground to slow the swing. I checked my phone. No word.

After I graduated from Pomona, I was surprised I didn’t run into Frankie again. I moved back in with my mother, applied to paralegal jobs. I started riding my bike. I started baking. I started wearing colors. I spent hours plunking out ragtime versions of Katy Perry and Rihanna. In my headphones, I pumped Elton John, Billy Joel, the Carpenters.