The Sunshine Crust Baking Factory. Stacy Wakefield
“Let’s show Veronica upstairs,” I suggested.
The third floor was the best part of the house. Jimmy’s room was in front, right above the street, and Mitch’s room was way in back against the far wall. Between their rooms was a loft-like space with big windows overlooking the BQE. Mitch had installed his woodstove back by the kitchen near his room. At the kitchen table, Mitch, shirtless, was drinking from an orange juice box.
“This would make a better art space than downstairs!” Veronica said. “All those windows! The high ceiling!”
“But the artists should work in the center of the house,” Skip insisted.
“What’s this, an inspection?” Mitch asked.
Skip laughed nervously. “Veronica’s from 19th Street Squat.”
“It’s actually 9th—” I started.
“Whatever.” Mitch turned to head into his room. “Maybe she should go back there and tell them how to run their building.” His pale, naked back was an accusation.
Downstairs, Skip kept apologizing to Veronica for Mitch, making it worse by not letting it go. Veronica crossed her arms and looked bored. In my discomfort, I took the bong Stumps handed me and dragged a long toke. Pot was supposed to relax you, right? Then I passed it to Skip, who, like me, rarely smoked. But I guess he was trying to be cool too. He breathed in and collapsed in a coughing fit.
No one noticed. Jimmy lounged with Lorenzo on Lorenzo’s mattress, their eyes heavy and stoned. Raven’s girlfriends were dancing to a techno tape, bumping each other and giggling. Stumps mocked them, holding his beer over his head. In the time Veronica and I had been upstairs, everyone had managed to get shit-faced.
“Come on, Lorenzo!” Abby reached down to his bed for him, her voice slurred, ignoring Jimmy.
Raven sat cross-legged on my braided rug, rifling through my box of zines. “You have Squat Beautiful!” She waved it at me. “I took pictures in this one, did you see?”
She opened it to portraits of girl train hoppers. I touched the paper and saw from the way it shimmered that I was totally stoned. “These are amazing! I forgot you were a photographer!”
I tried to focus on what Raven was telling me about going to art school and how she’d quit and the photographers she liked, and she seemed utterly beautiful and smart and I loved how her long beaded dreads bobbed around and how her tongue piercing clicked against her lip ring. But I couldn’t follow; I was distracted by something bad in my peripheral vision. Skip was telling Veronica about selling books on the street, his voice stumbling all over itself. It must be my ears. I shook my head to make it stop, but I still couldn’t concentrate. I worried he was going to recite his poem. The mattress groaned and I jumped.
It was Veronica, moving away from Skip and sinking down next to me, her legs crossed at the knee like an adult in her heeled shoes. She pointed at Lorenzo’s mattress where the boys were sprawled. “You and Lorenzo share the room?”
“Well, it’s a big space . . .” I glanced at Skip, but he was rubbing his eyes and didn’t seem to be listening.
She raised an eyebrow. “You need a wall.”
“I guess . . .” I looked up at the ceiling. I had no idea how to build a wall. I’d talked to Lorenzo about the idea, but he dismissed it. I was secretly pleased that he didn’t think it was urgent to separate our spaces.
Abby had Lorenzo on his feet now. He did a comic mosh in a circle around the girls, stomping with his head down. They cheered him on.
Veronica raised her voice over the music: “Seriously, you need a wall.”
Raven jumped in: “I’ve shared spaces with guys before!”
I didn’t know everyone was listening but Abby yelled, “You were screwing them all, you slut!” and Jimmy whooped from the bed, like he approved of the turn the conversation was taking.
“We don’t know what Sid and Lo-ren-zo get up to in here,” the dog-collar girl sang. She stumbled and grabbed onto Stump’s bullet belt for support.
Stumps bumped her hips. “Give you three guesses!”
“Cowabunga!” Jimmy held up his beer like a frat boy.
“Siiiiid,” Abby sang. She reached down to me on my bed, her necklaces dancing into my face. “Come on, girl!” I shook my head and tried to smile in a relaxed way. I moshed sometimes at shows, but even watching this sexy-girl techno-thing made me feel like a hippopotamus.
Jimmy made a megaphone with his hands and hooted, “Sid! Sid! Sid!”
Lorenzo had been moshing around like he wasn’t hearing any of this, but now he kicked Jimmy’s boot where it was hanging off the bed.
“Oh shiiit,” Abby grinned, like things were getting fun. “Fight!”
“They’s fightin’ over yoooou.” Stumps pointed at me, his narrow eyes just slits in his round face.
“You trippin’,” Lorenzo growled, and threw his beer bottle at the wall where it shattered near Jimmy’s head. The violence of it made everyone jump.
“Jeez, dude! Sorry!” Jimmy held his hands up in playful surrender.
Lorenzo kicked glass out of the way and threw himself down on his mattress, his face angry and dark.
Raven leaned her cheek against my leg and rubbed my knee like she wanted to console me, which only made Lorenzo’s anger seem more humiliating.
Veronica stood up. “I gotta go,” she said. “These guys can take the train back or whatever.”
Skip jumped up. “I’ll get the door for you.”
In a moment he was back, leaning down to me, his face rippled with tension. “Sid,” he hissed, “the door was open!”
The pot had made him paranoid; his eyes were really red.
“Did you shut it?”
“Yes! But why was it open?” He looked around hysterically for intruders. “It’s really late! This music is too loud!” He scurried to the boom box.
Raven and I went outside and found the dark-haired Rot-Squat girl around the corner slouched against the building. Her head was buried in her bare knees and her optimistic pink pom-poms looked gray in the dark.
“What happened?” I asked. “Are you sick?”
She nodded and groaned.
Skip came dashing outside and grabbed my arm. “We’ve got to go inside! The neighbors!”
I looked around, exasperated. Our house was the last on the block and over here around the corner, we were just facing the park and the highway. “No one can see us here!”
Skip put his hands in his hair. “Sid, I need your help!”
“Everything’s fine! Give us a sec, will you?”
“Fine? Fine?”
“You’re freaking out!”
“Oh!” he cried. “Oh! I’m the problem?”
A retching sound made us look down.
“Can you get Stumps?” Raven asked me.
I hurried inside, happy to get away from Skip. Now Abby was sitting on Jimmy’s lap on Lorenzo’s bed, their faces hidden by the cloud of her hair. The dog-collar girl was sprawled on my bed with her sneakers on my pillow. Stumps sat on the floor near her.
“Um, Stumps?” I gestured at the door.
He looked around hazily, noting the absence of his girlfriend, then staggered up, sloshing beer on my bed. “On it, captain!” He