Farewell (Pt. 2)
Night had completely fallen by the time we reached Iggy’s house in West Albuquerque, right where the city began to turn to open desert sprawl and if you went any further, you’d be on the road to Arizona.
Iggy lived in a small 3 bedroom house with his family: Himself in one bedroom, his sister in another, his mom and dad in the master bedroom, and an uncle that occasionally lived in the sunroom on the back porch with a beer can collection on the windowsill. In total, the house was about 800 square feet resembling a dark blue pine box, and it had a front lawn made of sand, like the rest of Albuquerque. Tommy and Iggy go far enough back that Tommy was viewed as another member of the family and had sporadically spent a fair bit of time living on their couch due to Tommy’s familial and economic issues.
I pulled up against the curb as Martin pulled into Iggy’s driveway. We all got out of our cars and approached the front door and tried stepping inside only for it to quickly get crowded. Iggy and Martin slipped into his room to grab the Switch as Iggy’s mom, dad, and sister joined Tommy and I in the front yard.
Iggy’s dad spoke rather loose English, but it was efficient. In comparison, his mom spoke very little English and while the sister spoke fluently, she was rather introverted and didn’t talk much.
Iggy’s dad grabbed Tommy’s hand and shook ferociously. “Tomas! Hello! How are you?”
“Good, good.”
“Excellent!”
Iggy’s mom came up and hugged Tommy. “¡Ha sido tan largo! ¿Cómo te va en Jersey?”
Tommy laughed. “I still don’t speak Spanish, Mrs. Moreno.”
Mrs. Moreno was undeterred and kept talking at him in Spanish anyway.
Within a few minutes, Iggy and Martin had retrieved the Switch and joined us in the front yard. Iggy’s parents also knew Martin (whose Spanish was much better than Tommy’s) and they caught up for a bit. I strolled over to Iggy’s sister standing nearby.
“So. You like Green Day?”
“Not really.”
“Cool, that’s cool… You want a TicTac?”
“No thank you.”
“Cool, cool.” I looked over to Tommy. “Do YOU want a TicTac?” Tommy burst out laughing.
*****
Tommy and I followed Martin down a winding road through the desert on the fringe of Rio Rancho up to a gated community. I was about to call Martin and ask if we’d taken a wrong turn before I saw his hand reach out, punch in a code, and the gate swung open for him. Martin drove through the gates and I followed suit, winding behind him through the endless suburban development full of brand new two story houses, white picket fences, two car garages, two car driveways, and he’s only 20. Christ, I’M only 20...
Martin turned left into one of the spacious driveways and into a two-car garage that opened on command for him as if it were waiting for his arrival. I pulled up against the curb out front and stepped out, staring incredulously. It was a tall two-story house with four bedrooms, three on the top floor with his twin sister Abby living in one of them and one bedroom on the bottom floor by the front entrance that Martin lived in; a two-car driveway leading into a two-car garage housed in contemporary architecture and, surprisingly, a lawn.
Martin saw me gawking and with a smirk and a wave motioning towards the house asked me “what do you think?”
I was thinking about the fact that I was still living with my parents while driving a 13-year old car to a grave shift that paid less than half what he earned, but I just said “it’s nice, man.”
Martin led us through the garage into the living room, a collection of bright white walls with modern dark brown shelving from Ikea. A brand new 4K smart television was mounted onto the wall and the dining room had a large mahogany table with a floral centerpiece.
I couldn’t stand it anymore. I had to know. “Hey, man. I know it’s not my business, but like, what’s your cut of the rent here?”
“I pay $1,100 a month.”
“Shit, maybe *I* should enlist…”
Martin led us to the dining room and sat us down at the mahogany table as he removed the centerpiece and placed it upon the marble countertop in the kitchen. He said “wait right here” and went upstairs to commandeer a bottle of raspberry vodka from his sister Abby and came back with the bottle and four shot glasses. Tommy pulled the deck of Uno cards out of his pocket and began to deal the cards as Martin slid the shot glasses around the table and opened the bottle. He poured a shot for Iggy.
“Oh, no thank you. I don’t drink.”
Martin smiled before taking the shot glass and sucking it back, placing it upside down in front of Iggy. “Your loss. Bottles of water are by Jake.”
I examined the cards in my hand and looked beside my foot to see a case of plastic water bottles against the wall. I took two bottles out, tossed one to Iggy, opened the other and took a healthy drink to stall the inevitable hangover before sucking back my first shot to even the playing field. I looked at Tommy and he sucked back his own shot as Martin sat down at the head of the table.
After a bit of deliberation, we agreed on a loose set of rules:
-Take a shot if a Reverse is played on you
-Take a shot if you have one card left
-Take two if you forget to say Uno
-Take a shot if you feel like it
And there were a few more rules that for some reason, I can’t remember.
The first five or so turns went rather diplomatically, a few shots here and there, but we soon found ourselves stumped by a card thrown upon the table with a blank portrait in the center.
“What is it?”
“I think it’s a factory defect.”
“No no, check the rules.”
So Tommy pulled the Uno box out of his pocket and produced a slip of paper explaining that this is a brand new card that the players write a rule on before the game and it has to be enforced when played. Somehow, between four drunk 20-somethings none of us had a pencil, so we agreed to make an impromptu rule that whoever plays the card can declare whatever the rule is for that turn.
Iggy, who drew the card, nodded, picked it back up, tossed it back on the pile, and pointed at Tommy. “Pick up that whole deck.”
The table erupts into drunken shouting and laughter as we decide to make an amendment to the rule: The rule-to-be has to be approved by at least two out of three of the other players before it can be played. We agreed, drank to that (except Iggy, who took sips of water to keep up) and went back to the game.
I started to fade a bit from the vodka when Martin and Tommy played their stockpile of reverse cards on each other, Martin eventually saving himself the trouble of pouring shots repeatedly by drinking straight from the bottle while Iggy and I cackled and sang the “Jeopardy” theme.
The game in total took an hour of our time and half of the bottle. All I remember is Iggy (somehow) won and at some point I said to Martin “hey, I’m sorry in advance if I hit on your sister.”
We all stumbled into the living room as Iggy hooked up his Switch to the brand new TV. Tommy and I flopped on the couch as Martin walked around the living room stretching out. He finally sat down on a loveseat adjacent to Tommy and I and stared at the three of us intensely smiling. Finally, he chuckled.
“I don’t get it. How do you guys just... never get laid?”
I raised an eyebrow at that one. “You’re making a very bold assumption there, friend.”
Tommy, swaying from the booze, looked just as annoyed as I did.. “Yeah, man...”
Iggy spoke up, plugging in the Switch. “I’m waiting for marriage.”
“Pfffft. Whatever. Ready to get your ass beat?”
The TV and Switch came to life as Iggy handed out the JoyCons for a match of Smash Bros, but since we only had the two, we had to pair up for fights.
First up was Tommy v. Martin. Tommy put up a decent fight, but it ended with a 1-4 loss to Martin, who let it get to his head instantly. “I fuckin’ TOLD you I’d win! Who’s next?”
Next up was Iggy v. Martin. Iggy having the homefield advantage of using his own console and his own controller somewhat boosted his play, but still lost to Martin 2-4. As Iggy leaned over to hand me his JoyCon, Martin looked me dead in the eye with a shit-eating grin and asked “are you ready to get your ass beat?”
So it culminated in Jake v. Martin. With a winning combination of having had less to drink than him, intense focus, and Martin getting cocky, I was able to score the winning point in the last ten seconds of the match, putting me at a 3-2 win against him. Martin at least had enough decency to tell me “good game” before walking back to the dining room and grabbing the vodka bottle, starting to chug.
Martin had become unstable by now and was pacing the living room like a caged animal, taking heavy pulls from the bottle and muttering. Tommy and I were on the couch trying to get as close to the wall as possible to stay out of his path. Martin stumbled into his room and could be heard rustling around in a closet and just a moment later came out wearing a black expressionless human face mask. He jittered towards me like a demented Kabuki dance, swaying in front of me on the couch for a brief moment before jumping into my face and roaring. I, naturally, tried to get away and Martin chuckled as he pulled back.
He swayed in front of the couch for a bit longer before shushing us all and saying “wa– watch this.” He began to creep upstairs and we could hear his soft footsteps ascending towards Abby’s room. A door creaking. Silence. Then, Martin could be heard roaring as Abby screamed in fear.
Martin came barrelling down the stairs cackling up a storm before dashing into his bedroom by the front door and slamming it shut, locking it right behind him. Abby came halfway down the stairs wearing a t-shirt and panties, her make-up off for the night, and looked right at me with a furious expression.
“If he tries coming back up here, bodyblock him! I’ve got work in the morning!”
“Yes, ma’am…”
She stormed back upstairs and slammed the door behind her.
I whispered to Tommy “okay, he’s starting to really worry me” as Martin came back out from his room mask-less and finished the bottle off. He swayed in front of the couch for a bit before he insisted that we watch a movie. I nodded in agreement figuring it’d keep Martin distracted (and hopefully docile) for however long it’d take me to sober up.
Tommy leaned over to me and whispered “I was really wanting more of that vodka” as Martin turned the light off and began to fidget with the Smart TV. He was able to get the Netflix app pulled up, but it struggled to connect. It’d load, load, load and all the while I kept working my way through water bottle after water bottle and staying as still and silent as possible, praying I wouldn’t get his attention again, while Tommy looked bored and Iggy leaned back on the couch playing his Switch.
Finally, after five minutes of the TV failing to connect, Martin solemnly announced we wouldn’t be able to watch a movie. Tepid response from the room, since I was trying to avoid getting his attention, Tommy was bored, and Iggy was beginning to doze off. Tommy spoke up.
“Hey, I’m getting kinda hungry.”
Martin began to walk to the kitchen. “We got plenty of snacks, man.”
“Nah, nah. I’m thinking more like pizza.”
“Oh, fuck yeah!”
Unfortunately for us, it was 11:30 and every pizza place was closed for the night. Undeterred, I took to Google Maps and managed to find one Domino’s that closed at 11:45. I placed an order in the app anyway to try my luck in the hopes the grease could sober me up. I know the trick is to eat the greasy food BEFORE you drink, but I can’t stress just how badly I wanted to get away from Martin.
I place the order and we wait. We looked over to see Iggy had dozed off, his Switch falling out of his hands and into his lap while he’s snoring loudly. Tommy groaned.
“He’s kinda killing the mood…”
Then, my phone began ringing and it was an unknown number with a local area code. I answer the call and place the phone to my ear.
“Hello?”
“Hi, is this Jake?”
“Yeah?”
“Sorry, we actually closed five minutes ago and can’t make your order, so we just canceled it and issued a refund.”
“Ah, well. Thank you anyways! Have a good one!”
We hung up and I turned to the room to give the bad news.
“App’s wrong. They’re closed.”
Martin and Tommy groaned in disapproval.
Tommy cried out “The TV is broken, the PIZZA is broken!”
With the lights off, it being midnight, and Iggy already passed out, we decided the night was over. Martin set up an air mattress on the floor and I agreed to sleep on the floor with a few blankets and pillows since it reminded me fondly of my band days.
Martin chatted with Tommy while he set up the air mattress.
“So what are you going to be doing tomorrow?”
“Uhhhhhh I’m going to visit with my mom and then go to the Mandrake Cafe and say hi to my old coworkers.”
Martin stopped inflating the mattress and turned to Tommy looking deeply offended. “Don’t do that, Tommy. They don’t care about you the way I care about you.”
I’d heard him say that to quite a few people he manipulated back in high school, mostly the freshman girls he dated. I realized then that Martin never changed as a person after high school. Sure, he gained muscle, got a good job, rented a house and had a nice car, but that didn’t change who he was deep down. He was still the same self-absorbed jerk he was two years prior when we graduated.
Hell, what about Logan and Taylor? They got married, had a kid, got a house, a car, and a motorcycle, but all at the expense of any decency or financial security Logan could have offered Taylor. The American Dream for Logan was just the grease he used to slick back his hair; for Martin, it was but another loan that the possibility of paying off would be anybody’s guess.
How many more Logans and Martins could there be? How many other people in high school simply got older but never really grew up? Hell, had I grown up? I work a dead-end job and live with my parents, but at least I’m debt-free. I wondered if I’d changed at all after high school, and if so, for better or for worse.
Finally the mattress was inflated and Martin wished us good night. He let us know “there’s snacks in the pantry” and went to his room and flopped on the bed, leaving his door open.
I crawled over to lay down beside Tommy’s air mattress and tried chatting with him.
“Man. What the fuck was all THAT?”
“Dude, he drank the rest of the bottle!”
Martin could hear us and was trying to butt in on the conversation from his room.
“WHAT? I CAN HEAR YOU GUYS TALKING!”
“Nothing!”
“OKAY.”
We tried keeping our voices down.
“Did you see him drink the whole bottle?”
“Man, that pissed me off. I only got like seven shots.”
“WHAT ARE YOU GUYS TALKING ABOUT?”
I spoke up. “I WAS ASKING TOMMY WHAT IT WAS YOU GOT FOR LUNCH. IT WAS THE CHICKEN ZITI.”
“...oh... THAT ZITA WAS GOOD!”
We sighed and decided to wait until Martin fell asleep to talk. I went to take a piss, went to the kitchen, procured a bag of Corn Nuts, and flopped on the floor beside Tommy’s mattress again. I looked over at Iggy and got an idea.
“Pst! Tommy. Watch this. I wanna see how many Corn Nuts it’ll take to wake him up.”
I pulled out a Corn Nut and tossed it at Iggy. I overshot and it went right over him. I tossed another one and it bounced right off his chin, and, still asleep, he turned his head to the side. I tossed another, and it bounced off his chest. I tossed one more Corn Nut and it landed right in his ear cavity. Tommy and I stifled our laughter like school boys hearing a dirty joke.
We laid there in silence looking at our phones until we heard snoring coming from Martin’s room. Finally, he had fallen asleep. I shook Tommy’s mattress a bit.
“You still awake?”
“Yeah.”
“So what are you planning to do when you finish with the Military?”
“I dunno. I guess I’ll go where the wind takes me. You gonna keep doing security?”
“I guess. Honestly, for the last year, I was kinda hoping you’d move back to Albuquerque so we could be roommates and maybe start the band again.”
Tommy didn’t respond. I assumed he fell asleep so I just rolled back to my blanket pile and stared at the ceiling while waiting to fall asleep.
Maybe that’s where I went wrong; It wasn’t just that I had a dead-end job, it was that I wasn’t looking for a better one. It wasn’t the fact that I was living with my parents, it was the fear of falling flat on my face out of the nest, not to mention the dead-end job meant I couldn’t afford anywhere safe to land on my own anyways. I was complacent. I wanted the world to spin just for me.
*****
I awoke the next morning around 8 when thin slivers of the rising sun bled through the curtains onto my face. I stirred softly and rolled over wondering how I ended up on the floor THIS time. I sat up just in time to see Abby coming down the stairs made up for her job as a saleswoman. She looked at me bemused.
“Oh. You’re still here?”
I nodded and she went to the garage. I stood up, went to the bathroom to piss out my hangover, and walked over to see Tommy stirring out of bed.
“You awake?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Ready to go?”
“Yeah.”
Tommy deflated the mattress and folded it up while I neatly organized the blankets and pillows and placed them on the couch. As we were cleaning up, Iggy stirred long enough to watch us clean. I noticed he was awake and got his attention.
“Do you know how many Corn Nuts I threw at you last night?”
Iggy shook his head.
“Four!”
Iggy blinked and rolled over to fall back asleep.
Tommy and I gathered our belongings and crept quietly past Martin’s room for the front door. His door was still open and I peaked in to see that he was wide awake and watching us.
In a passive-aggressive tone, he said “bye.”
“See ya.”
We got in the car and sped out of the gated suburban sprawl, a world I’d hopefully never see again.
“You’re going to have lunch with your mom at the Mandrake, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Can I tag along?”
*****
I dropped Tommy off at his mom’s house so he could pack, stopped at Whole Foods to grab a microwavable meal for an overtime shift I agreed to take at work that night, and went home to change and drop off the Green Day record I’d bought before going back out into the world to meet Tommy and his mom at the Mandrake Cafe tucked in the corner of a strip mall of San Mateo and Montgomery.
Once again, my company was 30 minutes late and I leaned against my car in the parking lot observing my surroundings. Across the street was a wide open field made of dirt and sand with a track that belonged to a high school. To my right, the back of a CVS, and to my left, another strip mall with an event center that’d been out of business for half a decade and a dollar theater whose life support had been pulled just a month prior and finally went out of business. As I was examining the CVS, a patrol car for the Highland Security company passed through the parking lot to deter thieves and reminded me that I gotta be at work in eight hours.
Finally, Tommy and his mom, Jessica, pulled up in her black Volkswagen and got out. Jessica was a young mother that got married to her high school sweetheart right after graduation, so she was only about 18 years older than Tommy. She dressed young for her age in gothic makeup and a black dress over black leggings.
We went inside and got a table for three. Faux vines ran around the furniture and the walls were painted yellow and brown to give it a natural Earthy tone. Their whole appeal was they used natural ingredients, which Tommy confirmed the cost of such was partially why it struggled to stay afloat.
We sat at the table and shared polite banter, mostly discussing our mutual love for Green Day and My Chemical Romance and towards the end of the meal, I asked Jessica if I could give Tommy a ride to the airport.
“Um, sure. I thought he was just gonna take an Uber.”
Jessica didn’t know that when Tommy left for New York a year earlier, I had dropped him off at the airport to send him off, so I wanted to drop him off for boot camp and see it all come full circle.
We paid for our meals, Tommy got his backpack out of Jessica’s trunk, and we loaded into my car.
“Dookie?”
“Fuck yeah.”
I cranked the radio and sped 100mph all the way to the airport across town. When the timing was right, I jumped to track 14, “F.O.D” and we sang along, dedicating the song to the city of Albuquerque:
“I’m taking pleasure in announcing this to you!
So listen up cause you might miss,
You’re just!
A fuck!
I can’t explain it ‘cause I think you suck!
I’m take-
-ing pride!
In telling you to fuck off and die!”
I pulled into a space at the top of the parking garage right at the end of the song, us relishing in screaming a lyric we’d always misheard as “GOOOOOOOOOOOD BYEEEEEEEEEEEE!”
*****
I followed Tommy inside the Albuquerque Sunport right up to the security checkpoint and he pointed at the gift shop nearby.
“Hey, I wanna grab a souvenir real quick.”
“Ooh, lemme get one for ya!”
We step inside and I scan the contents as Tommy lazily flips through the nick-nacks. I contemplated my options and found most weren’t to my satisfaction.
A t-shirt? He’d never wear it.
A hat? Too tacky.
A rubber-band gun? He couldn’t take it on base.
Finally, I got a brilliant idea. There was a wooden stand with smoothed-out colored pebbles by the register, so I walked up to it and scanned it very carefully before finding two brown stones that matched Tommy’s skin tone. On a rack nearby were leather pouches that also matched Tommy’s skin tone with carvings of wolves in them saying “ALBUQUERQUE PROUD!” I grabbed a small pouch and purchased it with the rocks.
I walked up and tapped Tommy on the shoulder.
“Yeah?”
I held up the stones for him to see. “These are your balls.” I dropped them in the leather pouch. “And this is to store your balls in until you get out of boot camp.” Tommy didn’t seem very impressed, but grabbed the pouch and stuffed it in his pocket.
I walked him up to the long winding line for the security checkpoint. We shook hands and I grabbed his shoulder.
“Good luck, you crazy bastard.”
“Thanks. Guess I’ll see you later.”
As Tommy got in line, I watched and smiled before I cupped my hands around my mouth and shouted “GOODBYE, DADDY! YOU WERE SO GOOD TO ME!” Tommy turned, smiled, and flipped me off as I turned and walked back to my car.
I got in my car, worked my way out of the garage, paid the $10 fee for the space, and went back home to get in a quick nap before my shift that night.
*****
I felt apathy bordering on melancholy as I drove to the office for my shift that evening. I had agreed to come in a few hours earlier than normal and I wasn’t used to seeing the tall office made from reinforced concrete and dark glass in the sunlight. It stuck out like a 350-foot sore thumb among a sea of broken fingers.
I parked in my usual spot in the subterranean garage, went to the lobby to relieve the day shift guard, grabbed my keyset, went straight to the roof, unhooked a panel for the window cleaners’ access, and sat on the edge of the roof to watch the sun set behind the New Mexican mountains as the sky went from a baby blue to a bright orange.
I stayed an hour or two and watched the sun until it sank completely behind the mountains, leaving me in darkness. Somewhere in that sky is Tommy heading off to a brave new world while I’m still here on the ground waiting to learn how to fly, but I didn’t know how or where I’d even go. Any day now I’d realize that all I had to do was get a running start and jump like Tommy did, but in that moment, all I could do was look at the ground and ask–
“Shit. Now what?”