House

I had nowhere to go when I was released from detox, so I started bumming around NA meetings and got hooked up with a room in a, co-ed halfway house near the train station. I was on-again, off-again at this point. Mostly on-again.

It was only a ten-minute walk to Central Carolina’s campus, where I met up with Bill and Haley. They’d fronted all the money. I could have ran with it, maybe I should have, but on my way over, when the sky turned purple and the dead light on the edge of town washed away the stars, I suddenly needed company. We wanted a roof and somewhere out of the way to sit and get high without judgment. I knew of the house from way back.

It’d been abandoned since before I went to jail.

Rural Route 404 took us just beyond the city limits.

Grime streaked the windshield in half crescents, but the car was nice and still smelled new. Haley sat up front with Bill. Alone in the back seat, I prodded the open window with my cigarette. When we found the house, Bill pulled right up on the lawn and parked around back. Fried grass and dandelions slumped beneath an old tire swing hanging from a single, crooked tree. We walked around a burned out fire pit full of grey charcoal and bones. The moon stood oblonged and contorted in the sky.

“I’ve heard things about this place,” Bill said.

It was a mansion, strung up with tattered yellow tape. The back porch smiled.

“No one’s gonna bother us,” I said. I pushed the tire swing and watched it spin without really seeing it. “We can go back to your dorm if you want.”

“I think it’s exciting.” Haley said, running past us both. Her faded white dress brushed a bald spot on the lawn and kicked up dust as she skipped ahead.

“I’m not going in,” Bill said.

“C’mon, sweetie,” she said, and walked backwards up the steps.

I followed her towards the door.

A light went on behind a second story window.

“You see that?” Bill pointed.

Haley and I looked up our necks exposed, almost parallel to the ground. I could barely make out a blotted figure behind the window.

“Let’s find out who it is,” Haley said.

“They probably just want to be left alone,” I said. “Maybe we’ll make some new friends.” I ducked under the yellow police tape and opened the door; Haley followed. The smell of cold sweat and fever moved past us towards Bill who steadied himself against the frame. A cloud of mothballs and rot hung in the room.

The torn carpet buoyed bottles and cans, cooked tin foil and broken glass lay tucked into corners. Music played in another room. Fucking, Bob Seger.

“We’re cool,” I said.

Haley cleaned a spot around an old table by the staircase, happily arranging three mismatched chairs, and used a ratty oven mitt to push an empty picture frame and a pile of cigarette butts into an empty case of beer.

Bill stayed by the door.

“What a spot,” Haley said.

“In or out, man,” I asked Bill.

He just stood there watching Haley rearrange the living room.

A door slammed above the ceiling, and a noise stumbled down the stairs. A face appeared, a young girl no more than 15 in a faded white dress carrying a jug of wine looking like a corpse. She stared at me as she steadied herself, and the rings below our eyes danced together while my sight adjusted. Bill ran after her when she flew past him out the door.

I spent the long night wound up in a ball of teeth chattering conversation with Haley, thinking about the ghost and what it would be like to sit in the empty space haunted by the frayed hem of her dress and all the things that would never be the same after that night.

Afternoon edged into evening when we woke up curled up under a pile of old curtains, soaked in sweat and smelling of dust. We lost a whole day’s worth of sun. Fairly certain it was a Thursday, we set out for Wild Flowers to find Bill and his car. If we were right, he’d be sitting in the back room full of TV’s and newspaper clippings with Tom, taking bets on the weekend’s high school football games. I hung out at the bar with him and Haley most days, before we went to meetings to get our slips signed.

I started using the waist strap of my backpack; I wrapped it around me in case anyone got any ideas of ripping me off. I listened to my never-ending supply of pills shake as we humped along the side of the country road. The stuff was easy enough to move; I sold a lot, but I never seemed to have any money.

“It’s so empty out here,” Haley said. Her hair was dull and stiff like straw.

“It’s nice,” I said, and it was. The evening was one of those perfect ones you get in the late summer where you’re actually glad you slept all day. It was unseasonably cool, the first bite of autumn.

I patted myself down. Keys, meeting list, pocket-sized note book, a couple grams of pot, pack of cigarettes (seven cigs and the better part of a joint), wallet (sixteen bucks, unused Durham Bulls ticket, flyer for an after-hours club, Zig Zags).

We chased the horizon west and watched the town’s modest skyline crest in front of us. “I miss my dog,” Haley said.

“Me too,” I said, even though I didn’t have a dog. We smoked the rest of the joint and watched the clouds turn pink and darken as our hands steadied and our thoughts slowed.

“You think about getting clean ever?” she asked.

“All the time,” I said.

“I don’t think Bill is coming back,” she said.

“How?” I asked.

“He’s never left me somewhere,” she said.

Haley and I didn’t touch each other last night. I had enough on my mind without pissing off Bill, plus she has track marks and kids. Her blue eyes look dark, a patch of freckles bridging her nose. She is pretty, but spaced out: Like she used to be really smart and sometimes she realizes it, and it pisses her off that she can’t put things together the way she seems to know she should. I understood.

“Who knows,” I said. A speeding pick-up followed by a cop car flew past us and turned into a cloud of dust near the bridge into town.

“This is it for me,” she said.

“What?”

“I had a friend,” she said. “We shot up in my car, and she turned blue. It’s amazing how quickly you turn blue when you stop breathing.” Haley closed her eyes for a second, and I thought she might trip over something. “I drove as fast as I could, across town to the good part of the city. I thought I left her outside of the ER, but it was an office building. It hit me when I was about halfway home. I never tried to find out what happened.”

“Jesus,” I said.

“She looked just like that fucking girl last night,” she said, “I couldn’t figure out who she reminded me of until just now.”

Her blue eyes looked tired and dark, but spoke of greater things. It’s the only time I’d ever seen someone have this kind of realization and I resented her for it. As if there was one moment up for grabs between the two of us and it slipped through my hands – like I was grabbing fucking air.

“Did she die?” I asked.

“It was a long time ago,” she said.

We walked in silence for a while, twitching at the sound of our own footsteps.

“I’m gonna go to the clinic,” she said. “Get on Methadone. I can go to technical school, or maybe study to be a vet tech. I could take care of puppies.”

“Admitting you’re powerless is the first step,” I said, but what did I know?

I waited for her to say just one more night and for me to say yes. For us to turn back and go to the house under the guise of summoning the spirit of her friend or something and then Haley would end up killing herself somehow; she’d OD, or maybe fall down the stairs and break her neck, or just walk out into traffic like she was following some vision of her daughter or her friend or dog, just fucking vanish like Billy. But she didn’t.

We got back into town just as the street-lights flickered to life. Her hair sang like fire as we passed in and out of the shadows on the sidewalk. When we stopped in front of Wild Flowers, she got on her tip-toes and kissed me on the cheek. It felt warm. She said goodbye and kept walking.