PINTA PARADE

The next night I contact Dawn again. She is telling me about music. She says that try as she may she can’t get enough of the Singles Soundtrack, esp. Alice in Chains. She refers to their lead singer as a poet. She says that her parents and her have come to an agreement. That on school nights she is to be home at 11 pm no matter what and on weekend she can stay out as late as she likes as long as she calls before ten and lets her parents no where she is at.

“Also they told me that if I come home drunk again I am out on my own.”

 I tell her that that sounds like a pretty nifty incentive to go on the wagon. I use the word nifty. dawn says that she is thankful that her parents are talking to her like an adult and that they were able to rectify the situation.

 She uses the word rectify.

When Dawn inquires I tell her that, unlike last summer at CCT, no one calls me Harry Connick Jr or says that I look like that kid off of Blossom.

“It sounds like you feel in exiled at your institution of learning?”

I ask Dawn what? 

It sounds like you feel all alone all the time.

 

 

                                          ***

“What?” I take a double-look.

 

“We’re moving. I’ll be going to Limestone in a couple of weeks. My parents found a really cool place in Norwood. Its kind of nestled in the woods.”

 I want to tell Patrick that he can’t leave. That we are in this together. That even though my dad seems to have a sort of vendetta against Patrick because he smokes he can’t abandon me. Not now.

 "Pat man you are my best friend. I mean…."

Patrick cuts me off. He tells me that there are hotter girls at Limestone.

 “There’s more white girls. Plus there are no gangs. Plus Dad says the neighborhood ain’t just what it used to be. It’s getting more ghettoey.”

“Patrick!” I am holding my teal lunch tray.

“But I mean, we've owned West Peoria these last couple of years. What about all the afternoon we just walked around doing nothing but role-playing, riding our bikes, lounging in  the Nuclear woods. We have owned this town.”

 

Patrick tells me besides, I’ll still have Tim.

‘Tim is graduating in six months. You’ll be with Hale It’s like..."

Patrick sets his milk down hard.

“Listen My mom doesn’t like Manual She says it isn’t safe here. It was  safe a couple of years ago when Chris and Amy were going here but now things have changed. It’s dangerous. Mom doesn’t want Allan or Sarah going to a school like this.”

But don’t you like it here?"

 

“I’m teased relentlessly in every class. It’s no different than Christ Lutheran. People are cunts here.”

 

I tell Patrick not to say that word.

 

"Cunts cunts cunts. People are cunts here. Plus it seems like half the girls who are Junior plus are waddling around pregnant and the other half seem to have nothing but a maxi-pad lodged between the lobes of their ears.

 

I nod.

 

“Besides I’ll be with Hale.”

I shoot Patrick a look like great, reference my other best friend.

 

“Also don’t you have a girlfriend that goes to Limestone?”

I remind Patrick that her name is Renae.  Patrick says that he’s heard she’s a little hottie. I ask her when he saw her. He says that she sounds like a hottie from how I talk about her.

Patrick has already dumped me for algebra and now he is leaving me all alone for the remainder of high school.  Behind me I can hear trays being overturned and thumped into the garbage cans before delivered into the side window of the kitchen to me washed, utensils popping in buckets of suds like rain in spring. 

I am losing my closest friend and brother.

 

I still can’t even walk without limping and now I am losing my closet friend.

 

“Promise me one thing. “

 

“What’s that?"

 

“Before you leave we have one final farewell to Casa McReynolds. One final cheer to your Downs Circle abode. 

 

“Dude,”Patrick retorts, “Of course.”

 

 

                                                                    ***

 

Dawn Michelle doesn’t ask me too many questions but when she does it seems like she is genuinely concerned about my state of being.

 

“So do you like Manual?”

She  has never judged me for going to school in the Southside. I don’t know what to tell her. I want to tell her that I felt like a complete failure my first cross-country season. I want to tell her that my brother Patrick just announced the other day that he is transferring to Limestone until I remember that dawn and Patrick got into it at Subway last summer, Dawn, referencing  Patrick as a womanizer and a misogynist.

We talk about movie. She tells me that she saw Malcolm X and went crazy over it. She tells me that she can’t wait to see Hoffa I a couple of weeks. She says fuck Home Alone 2 and Aladdin. She says that she has seen Braham Strokers Dracula three times and that went weeks listening to only the Singes Soundtrack and Dracula Soundtrack.

 Dawn Michelle defines the movie as being an opera, although most critiques just focus on the grotesque nature of the theme.

“It’s a love story. The movie is about a timeless passion. It’s a movie where the heart is notarized and lives on forever.”

“I saw the Annie Lennox video for it the other night…”

Dawn interjects asking me isn’t it beautiful at how the end she becomes the Vampire. How her longing transforms her. How love makes her scene and changes her regardless of the folds and foibles of the flesh.

 

“It’s a beautiful." I tell her, very gently thinking about the blush and time signature of her porcelain smile.

"It is a very beautiful song indeed."