This was back when the Greek was still sleeping in his car. The War was in its second or third surge. No one could keep track anymore; we just knew we weren’t going to lose.
We’d been out of high school for about a year, some of us fast becoming townies. One of us had gone down to college in Austin. We called him Spray Can because it seemed like all he had shaking around in his head was one marble. It was more of an ironic nickname because he had to be the smartest one among us, which wasn’t saying much. He was also—not uncoincidentally—the only virgin.
The Greek would also move to Austin later that year. And this was just before Sam moved up to Portland to follow his brother and another friend, part of the early noughties mass exodus in search of rain because none of it was falling where we were. Each summer, the droughts were getting longer. The temperatures kept rising. The Greek would wake up in his drenched seat and go take a shower at one of our houses and heat up some leftovers. All our parents liked him even if they thought he was a burnout. Instead of looking for a job during the day, he played guitar under the basketball court bleachers near the interstate. Once a week he had a gig playing Greek songs at an Italian restaurant because the regulars didn’t seem to mind. Other nights he busked in parking lots around the courthouse square.
Walking down Fry St. with him, he seemed to know everybody, and always had a big smile. He could’ve been a lawyer like his father who disowned him because he wanted to be a musician instead. His best chance for a bed was to find a girl, and if she was satisfied, then he might get a few more nights of good sleep.
The reason we met up this time had to be because Spray Can came back home early from college. He got a scorpion sting on his foot while he was sleeping. It could’ve also been a spider bite, the doctor said. We guessed it was a scorpion because the droughts were so bad that year there was an infestation of them all around the state. Either way, his foot wasn’t healing up the way it should, so he had to get skin from his ass grafted onto it. Or at least that’s what we heard.
He showed up at the café where we all used to meet looking about the same except for maybe a mild limp. He always had a peculiar way of walking (arms slouched, dragging his feet), so it was hard to tell if anything was different. We sat under the painting of Medusa so she couldn’t look at us. Her eyes were directed across the room at the torn leather couch where there always seemed to be a guy about ten or fifteen years older anxiously smoking.
That night, the guy sitting there happened to be someone the Greek knew. He introduced us. His name was Ed. He was eating a melted piece of chocolate cake. Ed’s family was from Mongolia, but he grew up in California. He told us he didn’t have to work because he found “a loophole in the system.” We didn’t get why he would come to our crappy town unless he was on the run and wanted to hide out. Still, there had to be better places to go.
It wasn’t just that Ed was rich, he was also dying. He talked openly about it. He probably had less than a year left. Maybe because of his prognosis he was feeling more generous and offered to buy us all more coffee or whatever we wanted. “Don’t hold back,” he said. The Greek was the first to accept. Then the rest of us followed. Next thing we know we’re having steak at a nice restaurant.
Then we stop at a liquor store. We kept saying yes, waiting for some catch along the way. The Greek said the guy was just being nice. He’d slept on his couch before, ate on his dime a few times, and nothing ever happened.
We drove to a creek and drank beer and vodka. If we were dying, we probably wouldn’t be that generous. Maybe we’d withdraw from everyone, horde all we owned and bury it with us. “What else do you guys wanna do? Where are the girls at?”
Don’t hold back, he said. It’s true, except for the Greek, we were all having our own prolonged drought with women. And then there was Spray Can, who was on his knees under a dogwood, vomiting.
Ed had money to burn, and what better place to do it than at a strip club. What else were we going to do? Watch some guy get his face smashed through a car window after the bars close on McCormick? Scrounge for weed from cupholders, listening to the Greek serenade a parking lot? We hurried to Dallas before Ed changed his mind. He said we were too young to be so uptight: “You don’t want to be my age before you realize how much time you wasted.” It was easy for him to say—he had money. Without money, being young would only buy us more frustration. Because of money we could change the night, disappear in that dim palace where more drinks flowed, where shyness was a blessing to behold, not a shameful thing.
The only one of us who didn’t want to go was Spray Can. At the bar he was already saying he had to get home and study math. The Greek was getting a lap dance in the wings. It was Tuesday, so it was emptier than usual, according to Ed. He knew a better place across the highway, more popular with the weekday set and out-of-towners, but it was empty too. There the carpet was stained and stuck to your shoes, and it was darker so you could barely see the dancers on stage. Ed gave us a stack of bills, saying, “Get you guys a private one, what are you doin’ up front?” He felt sorry for us. He might’ve been the one dying, but for him, we were worse off.
The Greek was headed for the backroom with a dancer whose body was glowing. We pushed Spray Can to the stage and told him to use some of the money spilling out of his pockets. Already we sounded like Ed, doing to our friend what he did to us, telling him not to hold back.
Our friend sunk into the cushions while a dancer straddled him, saying something in his ear. Ed wanted to know if he was happy, he was worried about him, he said. He’d never seen Spray Can smile. We didn’t tell him about his foot and the scorpion sting because it didn’t seem serious compared to his diagnosis. “I want him to be happy tonight,” he said. “I want all of you to be, are you?”
We said we were. What else were we going to say? He slapped our shoulders and stumbled off with a dancer, crushed into her silicone, holding his martini in the air. For a guy close to dying, he sure acted healthy enough. We wondered if he was lying about it. But then again, none of us saw him after that night. If he died, though, someone would’ve heard something. Unless he left town first.
We could also picture him living out the rest of his days in that club, chatting with the owner (“I like the new sign out front, Mr. Daoud, you’re a magician!”), gliding across the forest of shag to hide again and peek from his dark chair along the wall while more dancers lured another helpless soul to the backroom, someone like Spray Can, who had Ed’s money and drifted helplessly, his slight limp tamed, his arms around her, speaking in her ear, turning back to us, smiling. Before, the highest pleasure our friend ever had was solving a complex math formula; now it was delivering himself to the dancer.
Mr. Daoud was still talking to Ed, telling him about a club he was opening up next year. He asked if he wanted to be an investor, said he could make him a judge in one of the competitions: “We’ll give you a crown to wear and everything!”
The stage was in between shows. All we could do was listen to them. What were we going say about investments and property values? Most of us lacked any shred of ambition and were proud of it. We didn’t know you needed at least a little of it to survive. Maybe we still had time to save ourselves. That’s all we really had.
A little later Ed ordered another round. A dancer took the stage. Off to the side, we saw the backdoors swing open, and another dancer, the one Spray Can was with, ran out without her heels, her wig crooked. Mr. Daoud stood up, and so did Ed. Then a bouncer was dragging Spray Can to the bar and held him in front of the owner by the back of his neck. No one could find out what happened. The dancers, Ed, the bouncer, everyone was talking except for Spray Can.
“Can you lay off the kid?” Ed was taking our side. Mr. Daoud, not wanting to lose a possible investor, told the bouncer to let him go. Driving back, no one could get the truth out of him. Based on the way she looked, he must’ve done something to scare her.
Once we got into town, Ed asked us to drop him off. He was tired, he said. His generosity must’ve dried up. Spray Can wanted us to drop him off too. He asked the Greek for a cigarette and leaned against the window. It was hard to tell in the streetlights, but it almost looked like he was smiling, the same smile he had when he went off into the backroom with the dancer, like he was proud of himself for what he’d done. He got out and walked down Sycamore, hiding the stain in his pants with one hand.
We didn’t know what it was exactly, but something had changed with him after he got stung by that scorpion. Not just the limp. Maybe he lost all his ambition, like the rest of us. He became meaner too, started getting into fights, got arrested a few times. This meek guy who never even raised his voice, who did math equations for fun. Last we heard, he got sick of the heat and moved up to Alaska.
The Greek didn’t want us to drop him off at his car.
It was going to get light soon and hotter. We went to an apartment complex across town and climbed over the fence so we could swim in the pool there and finish our vodka. We didn’t talk about Spray Can and what he did at the club. The Greek sat with his feet in the water, strumming this music we’d never heard him play before, what he called his grandparent’s music, what he played at the restaurant for regulars.
Later, a security guy showed up and said he called the cops, so we got our clothes and ran to the car. Sam had to start his morning shift at K-mart and wanted us to drop him off. The Greek told him to call in sick. It was already morning, he said. We weren’t going to sleep. We could get pancakes and coffee, drive around all day, go to the creek and serenade the dogwoods. We counted the money Ed gave us that night. We knew one thing. He wouldn’t want us to stop.
