His youthful expression strains as he reassembles his hair and looks cruelly at the stars in the sky of his backyard. He turns away from the painting of ink and diamond, and with less than care in his black eyes, he answers the cell phone in his pocket.
He presses his lips to the receiver. "What's up?"
Tilting his head, he expose the soft and high structure of his cheek and the unknowing night glows on his skin to expose, if nothing else, his shapely jaw and the extent of his expression. The frustration forms and then erases all bad under the contour of his sloping neck and the shadow of sun.
He carefully steps along the grass outside his bedroom and whispers with a mock of ease, letting a cool voice offset the cross knit brow over his dark flameless eyes.
"Hey Victor, are you outside my house?” He says softly to the receiver, dancing with silence and the darkness. He knew he was not supposed to leave his home. Pine leaves shudder down his spine, he passes his mother’s bedroom window. She had brought home another man that night. That man's car keys chime as he twists them around his middle finger.
“No, not yet,“ Victor says, “we still have to drive out to Stop Six.”
Mason nods and grimaces. He could hear his mother moan from outside as he steps through the crying air of cold fog and late summer steam. He opens his gate angrily and grazes through wild grass and weed to the sidewalk.
The street lights were lit well enough to see through the thick air and dark night. Mayson looks down the street and watches for his friend. The mile of concrete was somber and gray, and stretched out until sightless, so he sits under the light of the flickering lamp post and waits.
He notices the black car parked beside his house. He says not a word to Victor about the car in front of him or the keys that dance in his hand.
Mayson asks with amusement, “What road are you on ?”
He steps easily alongside the black and unmarked car, whistling with a smile.
On the other line, Victor was still at his house. Trying to overhear Mason through noise of a party downstairs. It was his parent's night to have guests. “Well, that’s the big problem,” Victor says finally.
“What problem?” Grayson takes his keys to the car paint.
He closes his fist until his knuckles turn white, driving and digging the silver further into the metal as it screams. He takes the keys down the entire side of the car, until he arrives at the back bumper.
With an empty and emotionless expression, he takes his foot to the car, slamming the back of his heel against the damn thing. A loud crack and a deep moan of plastic breaks and through the silence. Mason waits, but there is no response. The night did not care and no one would, not even in silence.
He smiles acridly at the shallow dent he made. He thrusts his foot down again, once more, this time painfully. The bumper breaks in this deep blow. The phone drops to his left side and Mason pauses, delighted.
He takes back the phone and is a bit out of breath now. “Huh? One more time?”
Victor was still on the phone, angry enough to shield his mouth from his downstairs guests. “What the hell was that? What are you doing you asshole?”
Mayson turns away from the black car and the light of his mothers window. He walks to the end of the street, sitting down beside a stop sign.
“What do you think I’m doing? I’m trying to figure out how I can get the fuck out of here tonight.” He sparks a cigarette.
“Look, we’ve got to pick up Erin tonight. She says that she cannot drive tonight. Her grandmother borrowed her car, or some shit like that.”
“You are kidding?” he complains. “Did you tell Stephen? I mean, who can we call?”
“I don’t know, I am working on it. But Erin lives way over in Davis."
"Doesn't matter where the fuck she stays if we don't have a ride," he says and looks further down his street.
Victor groans.“I mean Mason, do you know how to get a hold of a ride?” He tired of his own thoughts and anxieties.
He waited to answer Victor and paid no mind, smiling guiltless at his night, looking up into his sky. The black car was still outside his house, and the keys were still in his pocket. He puts out his cigarette on the concrete.
“You are useless Victor,” he laughs, pulling up his black slacks by his chained wallet.
Victor hears him and also the glass of wine that fell to the floor down stairs.
“Oh, but that was our wedding china!” his mother gushes in a dizzy voice. His father laughs. Victor looks down the rolling staircase of cherry wood and red carpet. He could almost taste the wine that soured on the bottom floor. He shudders, before pushing himself back into his room.
“Shut up. I haven’t heard any ideas from you,” he says into the receiver.
Victor closes his blue eyes and presses his head against his bedroom door, jamming the lock in place. The small window in his room let in a light from the sky that was haze and fog, making his head hurt and reminding him of the dirty ash tray his mother left in the front yard.
Meanwhile Mayson walks back home under the starry and scathed sky of black, endless black. He thinks about Stephen while brushing his hair back from his eye. He lets the thought go with the breaking breeze, holding his phone to the ear.
He was irritated with Victor already, and they both knew why. The situation was becoming unnecessarily complicated.
“Look, I don’ give a damn what you and Stephen do when I’m not there. Okay?” Mayson says finally, to soothe the irritable conversation, and then Victor opens back up his eyes.
"I am glad you said that." The grey light was still there. He turns on the black light so that everything turned purple and blue.
He sits on his wide bed. “But I don't know what you are talking about.” He looks at the fish tank. The colors of the fish dance in the light.
“You know what I’m talking about. But never mind,” Grayson retreats into silence once more. The air seemed thicker.
He arrives at the black car, now damaged but still shining with polish under a gleaming and cruel storm of moonlight. “I would call Rachel,” he begins.
“Why didn’t you again? This would be so much easier. I want to meet her too,” Victor says, and turns away from the fish. A Playboy poster stares down on him from the ceiling.
Grayson feels his chest lighten. “She is grounded, just like Stephen. I asked her to just sneak out.”
“What she get grounded for?”
“I was over at her house last week and her parents thought something was up. I accidentally dropped a needle, but they didn’t find it. All they found was the needle wrapper.”
“Surprised they knew what a needle wrapper looked like.”
“So was I. Turns out, her dad is diabetic. So I mean, damn." He grins a bit, "I was still putting my shirt on while they ushered me out the door.”
“Ha ha, busted. How hilarious.”
“Real fucking funny. Anyway, she won’t sneak out tonight.” Mayson continues.
“Why not?” Victor asks, holding the receiver close. "Thought you said she was okay with us?"
He shrugs off the question.
“Anyway, Rachel said she’d wait it out for the weekend, and just smoke pot at home. She’s just being lame."
Victor looks down at his clothes, his polished shoes and the wrinkled sheets of his bed. He was dressed to leave. “So how are we going to do this again?” he asks.
“I think I got a car for the night,” Mayson says with a devilish smile and without a thought to hesitate him, he takes the keys and unlocks the door.
“What? How did you pull that off?” Victor asks, excited now and sitting right side up on his bed.
"I just found a car I could borrow. Why do you care?" he glares.
"No big deal, I just am surprised. Who let you borrow their car?" Victor asks.
"Don't worry about it." Without waiting for a return, Mayson hangs up.
He slides into the passenger side seat of the car, pushing paper work from the seat and crawls into the driver side. His long legs cram at the pedal and he pushes the seat back. A small note was on the center console, and he reads the handwriting.
Remember the wine, he reads the scribbled memo in blue ink. He crumbles it and throws the note back, turning the key into the ignition and feeling the sensation of panic sink and then rise inside.
“Well, can’t drink and drive,” he says and looks back at his home and with enmity. He scans the neighborhood once more, looking into his rear view mirror and then back at the house, a light of a window still on. There this man was making himself a home for the night.
The tires tread softly on the pavement and the engine hums. Mayson takes out a Marlboro red and lights up, letting the amber cherry burn the cigarette out in four swift drags.
He puts his side swept hair behind a shade of dark glasses he found on the floor board. Maybe I will keep them, he thinks with a bitter smile framing his frowning jaw. While he waits for the night to whisper her plans to him, his silent sorrow pouts over his lips. He would not admit to a word of sadness.
His shadow eyes cast a dark reflection. He throws the cigarette butt out into the street and turns down the avenue. And like the people whom he had burned years before, the cigarette dies as the wind gathers it along the street gutter, now a small rolling flame on the cracking concrete where his car spins its wheels and forgets.
Marveling at his strange paranoia, he flicks on the headlights as he passes his neighborhood, and quietly coasts towards the highway.
If you just turn back now, you know that there is something wrong tonight, he tells himself. He ignores himself once more. He changes lanes without signaling, and turns left under the highway. The station is playing a new song and he listens to that instead of himself.
“Got the money?” Mayson asks through the window before unlocking he car door. Victor stands and brushes dirt of his jeans, caught in the car headlights parked beside his estate.
Mayson watches Victor reach into those deep pockets, outside the busy home.
“What’s up with all the cars? Parent’s party?” he asks.
Victor walks to the back passenger door. “Yeah, so many people. Mom didn’t even notice,” he breathes. He unfolds his money in the back seat of the car as Mayson pulls away from the house. Victor is a bit nervous, but wary to let his eyes reflect it.
He has blonde hair that is too thin for someone who isn’t balding. His face is always a pallid white so that the heavy skin under his eyes were gray and with-drawing. His cheeks are so pale that not even the sting of wind, nor the fondness of an unsuspected touch, could bring blood flushing to his cheek.
The first thing he complains about is the cigarette smoke. There was plenty of it, and it was forming thick clouds in the car as the tufts of carcinogen crush in stagnation.
“Roll down the window then,” Mayson responds.
Victor resents that. He frowns angrily, and straightens his shirt collar. “Just to remind you, I am allergic to cigarette smoke. It makes me sick to my stomach.”
His words had no affect. Mayson says nothing, so he continues. “When I get real sick I start coughing, and it will hurt. When it hurts real bad, then I start vomiting.”
The words roll from his tongue and he stares dully out the window, as if he were dull with his own request.
That piteous tone was wary to Mayson, even the way he lifted his nose with distaste had lost his affection. The mock grimace he gave while unrolling the window for fresh air was not loveable.
“Yeah, take that up with someone who gives a fuck.” He lets out a cruel and sterile laugh, but not loud enough to be shared. His right foot leaden and pushing the gas pedal, he lets the engine rev before he quickens through the street, tearing down the block and swaggering his left turn onto the route.
From the bottom lip, under the hand of his cigarette he says dully, “We got better things to do. Where’s the house at?”
Lawson Scene Cont'd- Very Raw 1st Draft
They drive towards North Richland Hills through the interstate.
“Hey man, can you turn that fucking music down?” Victor says finally, pushing through the backseat and pressing mute on the stereo.
“What is your problem tonight? Got something worse than anyone else to complain about? Huh?” Mayson shouts in the deep of his throat.
Victor says nothing at first. He hears the wine glass drop again, from the top of the stairs. He shudders.
“Shut up you idiot. Listen, I am about to tell you the fucking exit. Stop being such a prick for once, okay?”
Mayson settles down. “Fine.” He waits. “Okay, where do I exit?”
“You take 820 down to Davis, alright. Then go right.” Victor instructs, easing back into his seat. His heart was racing now. He knew they were almost there.
They turn down the lanes, passing the clubs and pool halls that they were too young to hang out at. Twisting through a winding exit, the black car spills onto Davis Boulevard. The rain was beginning to fall again.
“Great,” Victor says. His chest was heavy and his heart was thumping in small but fast way. He could nearly feel the warm sensation, something to take away the cold.
“Call her Mayson. She likes you more. Here, I got her number.”
He passes the phone and Mayson smiles. “Hey, is this Erin?”
There is a phone in her hand. “Yeah, who are you?” her thick lips answer in a sumptuous and womanly way.
The girl is sitting in her room with ashen blonde hair, wearing a black tank top. Her thin arms were pale enough to show the track marks of her obsession.
“I’m surprised to hear from you. Are you one of Stephen's friends?”
She has a few posters on her wall, but she was older than the two boys so she spent less time at home. She had spent the day with a cough, and could not go to work at the Strip Club. She was a bit pissed about losing the money.
Erin had been fixing a needle, clicking it with her finger to clear the air bubbles.
“This is Mayson. You remember me. We all hung out two weekends ago. Remember?” He smiles and his voice reflects it.
“Oh wow! Hey Mayson, what are you doing cutie? Are you two on your way over?” she asks, putting down the rig. It was only wash left over, anyway.
“Yeah, we’re on Davis right now. Can you tell me how to get to your house. We’ll come save you tonight. Okay?” he laughs.
She laughs as well, and puts on her black jacket. “Okay, sweetheart. But to get to my house, this is where you need to go.”
She tells them directions as they pass cars on the boulevard, and the two boys arrive after ten minutes.
“Okay now, boys. You two need to park three houses back, and cut your headlights. Okay? Give me five minutes and I’ll be out the back and at your car.”
“Okay, cut the lights Mayson and turn down the damn music! Death by stereo? Take a tip from the band. You will get us busted.”
He agrees and kind of laughs, the first smile since he woke that morning. He could feel his need grow, close as they were to getting their drugs.
From the dark and misty rain, and the eerie willows that sway down the parked street, a small and pale frame emerges. Her blonde hair is back in a hair tie, the pale skin and the shallow breast bone that breathes timidly in the air exhales in sickness. She coughs, but tries to stifle it.
“She is so hot,” Victor says. Their car is parked in the shade under a cottonwood tree, a few yards away. “Too bad her and Stephen didn’t work out.” He looks at Mayson who returns the sentiment.
“Yeah, that’s just too bad.” He smiles.
Her small and fragile face smiles at the car parked three doors down. She can see them in the car whispering like the young boys they were. It made her smile. Everything was new to them. Even she felt new to the world, looking at these highschool boys.
Erin coughs again though, and her aching limbs are stiff in the cold. She wasn’t at work that day because of her cough, and although she was a tiny framed girl, her topless dancing pays well. The guys at the club were already sending her texts about how they missed her. Andy, her stout and red faced manager was telling her they were already losing money and she needed to take it easy with the partying. He said it in a flirty way, but she knew she couldn't go on much longer like this.
Her methadone clinic would still accept her, and she was going to kick this weekend. She knew she had to. Her paycheck and the tips she lost would make her short on her bills that week, and so she sighs and zips up the black jacket.
“Hey man, can you turn that fucking music down?” Victor says finally, pushing through the backseat and pressing mute on the stereo.
“What is your problem tonight? Got something worse than anyone else to complain about? Huh?” Mayson shouts in the deep of his throat.
Victor says nothing at first. He hears the wine glass drop again, from the top of the stairs. He shudders.
“Shut up you idiot. Listen, I am about to tell you the fucking exit. Stop being such a prick for once, okay?”
Mayson settles down. “Fine.” He waits. “Okay, where do I exit?”
“You take 820 down to Davis, alright. Then go right.” Victor instructs, easing back into his seat. His heart was racing now. He knew they were almost there.
They turn down the lanes, passing the clubs and pool halls that they were too young to hang out at. Twisting through a winding exit, the black car spills onto Davis Boulevard. The rain was beginning to fall again.
“Great,” Victor says. His chest was heavy and his heart was thumping in small but fast way. He could nearly feel the warm sensation, something to take away the cold.
“Call her Mayson. She likes you more. Here, I got her number.”
He passes the phone and Mayson smiles. “Hey, is this Erin?”
There is a phone in her hand. “Yeah, who are you?” her thick lips answer in a sumptuous and womanly way.
The girl is sitting in her room with ashen blonde hair, wearing a black tank top. Her thin arms were pale enough to show the track marks of her obsession.
“I’m surprised to hear from you. Are you one of Stephen's friends?”
She has a few posters on her wall, but she was older than the two boys so she spent less time at home. She had spent the day with a cough, and could not go to work at the Strip Club. She was a bit pissed about losing the money.
Erin had been fixing a needle, clicking it with her finger to clear the air bubbles.
“This is Mayson. You remember me. We all hung out two weekends ago. Remember?” He smiles and his voice reflects it.
“Oh wow! Hey Mayson, what are you doing cutie? Are you two on your way over?” she asks, putting down the rig. It was only wash left over, anyway.
“Yeah, we’re on Davis right now. Can you tell me how to get to your house. We’ll come save you tonight. Okay?” he laughs.
She laughs as well, and puts on her black jacket. “Okay, sweetheart. But to get to my house, this is where you need to go.”
She tells them directions as they pass cars on the boulevard, and the two boys arrive after ten minutes.
“Okay now, boys. You two need to park three houses back, and cut your headlights. Okay? Give me five minutes and I’ll be out the back and at your car.”
“Okay, cut the lights Mayson and turn down the damn music! Death by stereo? Take a tip from the band. You will get us busted.”
He agrees and kind of laughs, the first smile since he woke that morning. He could feel his need grow, close as they were to getting their drugs.
From the dark and misty rain, and the eerie willows that sway down the parked street, a small and pale frame emerges. Her blonde hair is back in a hair tie, the pale skin and the shallow breast bone that breathes timidly in the air exhales in sickness. She coughs, but tries to stifle it.
“She is so hot,” Victor says. Their car is parked in the shade under a cottonwood tree, a few yards away. “Too bad her and Stephen didn’t work out.” He looks at Mayson who returns the sentiment.
“Yeah, that’s just too bad.” He smiles.
Her small and fragile face smiles at the car parked three doors down. She can see them in the car whispering like the young boys they were. It made her smile. Everything was new to them. Even she felt new to the world, looking at these highschool boys.
Erin coughs again though, and her aching limbs are stiff in the cold. She wasn’t at work that day because of her cough, and although she was a tiny framed girl, her topless dancing pays well. The guys at the club were already sending her texts about how they missed her. Andy, her stout and red faced manager was telling her they were already losing money and she needed to take it easy with the partying. He said it in a flirty way, but she knew she couldn't go on much longer like this.
Her methadone clinic would still accept her, and she was going to kick this weekend. She knew she had to. Her paycheck and the tips she lost would make her short on her bills that week, and so she sighs and zips up the black jacket.
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