la faccia della luna i

Thanksgiving break.   We have this extended weekend.   Four days.

Most people go home and hook up with girls from their high school, whom have suddenly become attractive and easy.  

Most people go home to their families.  

I have no home to go to.   God knows, I am not about to have dinner in that big, empty house where my mother lives, watching her drown her sorrows in expensive wine.  

I refuse to put myself through another holiday like that.   None of our other relatives will return her calls, especially on my father’s side.   An outsider.   A traitor.  I’m sure none of them went back to the house after the wake like she wanted.  They all see mommy-dearest as the one who abandoned her family, instead of my father abandoning us.   They may have a point.  

Most people go home and celebrate the things they are thankful for, but fuck it, who am I kidding?   People go home to have their wallets refilled with cash and score some decent food for a change.   Most people, like me, have nothing to be thankful for.   Tons we’re greedy for.

     I’ve already been home for my grandmother’s whole death thing and I think that’s enough.   If I go home for Thanksgiving, people might start thinking that I like my family or something.

     No one needs to think that.

     So I don’t go home.   I can’t stay on campus.   School cuts everyone loose for the holiday.  Closes the dorms.   I debate hiding and trying to stay, but there are all those creepy notes I keep getting.  They totally bug me out.   So I make plans to split, escape.  

I end up going with Andy to his house for a party.   His parents are cruising in the Bahamas for a week.   He plans to and invite some people we went to high school with.   I’m not completely looking forward to the last part.   I hated high school.  

     Andy lives in one of those ridiculously extravagant houses, the kind that my father would have sold.   He might have.  He has a flowing foyer with ¾get this¾ a working fountain.   As soon as I walk in the door, I know I am far out of my element.  

     “Where’s Ben going to be this weekend?” I ask when I remember the incident that occurred between brothers not long ago.   I really don’t feel like playing the peacekeeper for the next three days.  

     “Don’t worry,” Andy smiles confidently at me.   “He went home with that slut of a girlfriend of his.”

     “Oh yeah, what’s her name again?” I ask, examining some fancy vase on a table.

     “Whore,” Andy states plainly.   “Her name is Whore.”

     “I see.” 

Ben had stolen Whore away from Andy, three weeks into the semester.   I laugh to myself while Andy puts my one bag somewhere.

Ben is a vulture.   He picks off girls from struggling, unhappy relationships with other guys.  The girls are unhappy.  Ben is an excuse.  He’s a predator. 

What goes, comes.

Andy tells me, “Plus there’s that Kathy girl.” 

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“You know her?” 

“Yes.” 

“They hooked up.”  

“Who did?” I press for information.

“Kathy and Ben,” Andy tells me.

“Shit,” I say. 

“And he’s still fucking around with Slut, Whore, whoever?”   

“I know,” Andy says. “He’s a bastard.”  

“A total man-whore,” I say.  

We laugh.  

“Poor girl.”

     Andy leaves and comes back with martini glasses between his fingers and a tumbler full of liquor in the other hand.   He sets the two glasses on the table and fills them.  

     “To the conquest,” He raises his glass and toasts.

     “So last time I heard,” he’s saying, swirling a glass, “Jamal, Heather, Mike, Dee-Dee, Chuck, Brian, Kelly, and Allan were all on for attending our little shin-dig tonight.  These are just the formal invites.”

     I raise an eyebrow.   “Our?”

     Andy is all chuckles, “Well I couldn’t take all the credit.”   He hands me a drink.   “Plus your name is the one with all that star power.   People are coming to see you, man.”

     “Great.”  

I’m starting to want no part of this.   Nothing good can come from this, I remind myself.   Nothing at all.

     “Oh and Matthew, my dealer, said he would swing by with some party favors.”   When Andy says this, the whole night looks salvageable.  

It’s just what I need in order to face people from high school.   I don’t know if this is me beginning to sound like an addict, but whatever.  

Am I?

“Don’t worry,” Andy is promising as he downs his drink, “tonight will kick ass.”

     “It just better not suck,” I correct him.

     Andy takes me on a tour of his McMansion.   The house has two floors with vaulted ceilings and skylights.   It’s got expensive furniture no one ever sits on and trendy art no one really understands.   We move to an atrium with a marble, spiraling staircase, which makes me dizzy for some reason.

This place is a hotel lobby. 

At the top of the steps, a portrait stretches along an otherwise bare wall like a mural.   It’s Andy’s family portrait.   Men in suits, ties.  Women who look like Hillary Clinton.   It’s all very distinguished.   As we walk past it and he starts to show me his room and then mine, I find my gaze persistently drawn to the painting.  

There’s something strangely unsettling about the faces, staring back.   They look happy, but not really.  Practiced.  The eyes seem sad, that’s what it is.   They all have these vacant, soulless eyes.   It’s creepy.   A gilded family.

Andy sets me up in the room I’ll be staying in and then leaves me there, so he can tend to more pressing concerns.   I wonder what he means by that.

I take a Xanax because it helps me sleep.   Scored a few from Becky after a piss-poor hand job, the other day. 

I need a nap and lately, it’s getting harder and harder for my body to rest.   The sack in my chest cannot slow down.  It’s weird but understandable.   I’m probably dying.   Big deal.