Out of Place

            by Joshua Caraco

 

I took a deep breath of the fresh park air; cold penetrated my body and I shivered.  I walked across a grass lawn and down into the cover of trees where I could see the glow of fire.  Across a rough stone bridge and down a little path, sitting at picnic tables and warming themselves, were my friends.  The fire pit we use is actually not a pit but a fireplace with a big rock chimney coming out of it; it’s great for partying because cops can’t see it from the street.

            “Kat! Hurry up bitch we got beer,” Terry screamed.  Terry spends most of his time in the park; he’s loud and generally nice but pretty much a drunk-with that spacey glazed over look in his eyes.  Bill looks like Bob Marley, wants to be Jimmy Hendrix, has a construction job and is 28, which is closest to my 22.  Vicky is 33 and has a crappy convenient-store job, which barely pays the rent for her and Terry’s tiny apartment.  

            “I’ll be there in a sec,” I yelled back in my raspy voice.  “I just got off work, it took a little while to get up here.”  As I got down the path and near the warmth Bill tossed me a can, glowing orange in the light of the fire.  I snapped it open and began to drink.  It’s great how even cheap beer can both warm you up when you’re cold and cool you off when you’re warm.

            “So how is work anyway?” Bill questioned, though I couldn’t discern from his voice how interested he really was.

            “It’s work, I mean it’s wicked hard to be on time and my boss bitches at me, but she’s actually really cool in general, she says I might get a promotion if I shape up a little.  I’d rather be at work than my house,” I took a big sip of my beer.  “The place is called the Music House and none of my fucking roommates ever wanna play. They’re always watchin’ TV or some shit when I get home.”

            “Yeah, I feel you.  It’s good to get out ‘n get some drinkin’ in,” Bill held up his beer and I smashed mine against it tentatively, wondering if he had even heard what I had said.  I finished the last sip of that beer and asked Bill where the case was.  He told me it was at the end of the line of tables.  I walked over, sliding my hand on the tabletops.  At the end I wiped the dirt from the table onto my jeans.  I took two beers out of the pack of Nati-Ice; one I put in my pocket and the other I opened.  I am only about five-foot-two, so three beers can get me pretty drunk, four or five and things start spinning.  My hands were feeling very cold so I turned and headed back towards the glow of the fire.  This was when I noticed that Terry and Vicky were gone.

            “Ey Bill, where’d they go?” I called.

            “I don’t know, probably havin’ sex on the other side of the park, uhh.”

            “Huh, yeah,” I laughed.  “Ey, what are we doin’ now?”

            “I dunno.  You remember my friend Jill?  She’s supposed to be around in a little bit with some people.”

            “Oh, aight cool.”  I was then back next to the chimney.  I warmed my hands and pensively regarded the cracking stones and bizarre design.  It turned out we were alone for less time than we imagined we would be because some kids showed up before Jill.  I actually don’t even remember if Jill showed up, but being in a college town I figured these kids weren’t so odd.

            A whole group of them came down the path, holding bottles of alcohol.  One in particular stood out to me.  She had long brown hair and large breasts and she smiled at me.  I haven’t had a good relationship in a while and even this little smile gave me a little warm feeling inside, although I was sitting next to a large fire and had just engulfed several beers, but I thought it was the smile.  The girl came over and sat right next to me on the table, where I was looking at the odd stones in the chimney.  She seemed a little drunk; my mind wasn’t exactly solid either.

            “Hey I’m Veronica, what’s your name?”  Her nose was tiny and her ears a little big and she had some acne on her forehead.  Her body, however, was stunning.

            “I’m Kat, nice to meet you,” I extended my hand.

            “Is that short for something?” she asked, taking the hand.

            “Katherine Anne, actually, if you can believe that.  I still have a grudge against my parents for giving me a two name, name,” we chuckled a little together.  “I’m gonna go get another beer, you want one?” I offered.

            “Sure,” she said.  I stumbled a little as I got up and she smiled at me.  I smiled back and walked down the end of the tables, running my fingers across the tops confidently.

            When I got back we sat and drank for a while next to the fire.  People around us fumbled, making all kinds of noise as they got drunker.  The fire glowed, everything was orange and every once in a while someone would burn themselves, trying to lean against the wrong part of the chimney.

            “Hey, you want to get out of here?” I asked Veronica.

            “Why not?” she said and proceeded to drag me behind a large redwood and kiss me.  She kissed, like many drunk people do, with too much tongue, though it didn’t bother me at the time.  She then took her shirt off and I remember her breasts, black and gray in the moonlight, with orange beads of sweat from the fire.  We must have been pretty drunk.

            When we were done, we stumbled back to the tables.  She tucked her shirt in on the way and I buttoned up mine.  Some people were singing “Happy Birthday” to a friend of Veronica’s so I joined in.  I then offered the boy a birthday lap-dance.  It was innocent, though, I just shook my butt in his face a little.  While doing so I asked him how old he was.

            “Seventeen.”

            Seven…seventeen.  I stopped shaking my ass.  I started stumbling around.  Bill was laughing, the bouncing of his dark dreads accentuated by firelight and drunkenness.  Terry and Vicky were pointing and laughing obnoxiously.  My head was spinning.  I looked up at the sky and the stars were falling; it might just have been me who was falling.  I tried to look at Veronica.  “How old are you?”

            “Sixteen,” she said nonchalantly.

            Sixteen!

 

            I woke up the next morning on the hard, wood floor of my apartment.  One of my roommates was nudging me with her foot and asking for the remote.  I wanted to go off on her about how much TV she watches.  I felt the imprint of buttons on my face.  I grumbled and handed the remote to her.  I then climbed to my feet and went straight to our pathetic excuse for a kitchen and took four Advil. 

I spent most of that day answering the question “what the hell happened last night?”  I was wondering how I became the person who I am.  I went back to the park to get away from my roommates, and it was raining.  The grass was extra green and the cement shone, from wetness.  The cold water felt good against my hungover forehead.  I walked around the chimney, picking up beer cans, a little out of guilt but mostly for lack of anything else to do.

A boy walked by me with a dog.  The dog wagged its tail.  The boy looked at the chimney and said, “It seems kinda outta place doesn’t it?”

            “I don’t know,” I said, not really thinking about it.  “Ey, how old are you?” I asked.

            “Eighteen.”  I thought about the kids from last night; College kids don’t often hang out in parks late at night with vagrants, high school kids on the other hand.  The boy then said he had to go and walked off.

My phone vibrated and I looked at the screen: Veronica.  I didn’t remember programming the number.  I didn’t answer the phone.  Sixteen is only six years younger than me.   No, six years is quite a bit, especially at that age.  I clicked through my list of contacts and erased the number.

My phone vibrated again and it was Bill.  “What’s up Kat?”

“Not much, just walkin’ through the park.”

“Cool.  Well, we’re about to have another bonfire tonight.  No sixteen year olds, if you’re up to it,” he joked.

“Don’t fuck with me, you could have told me that those were high schoolers.”

“Yeah, I thought you had figured that one out and didn’t care.  So you up for tonight or what?”

“Why wouldn’t I care?”

“It happens to the best of us, it isn’t really that big a deal.  You up for tonight or what?”

“Who’s coming?”

“Terry, Vicky, Jill might actually show up this time.”

I thought for a moment.  It happens to the best of us?  I thought Bill would know better.  I thought about my other friends.  Terry is 32 (ten years older than me), has no job and spends most of his time in the park drinking.  I don’t have a car and my roller-blades broke, is starting to get old as an excuse for being late to work.  I looked at the out of place chimney before making my decision. 

“I’m gonna stay home for a while.”