High Water Read online

  “Owww! My head!” Liz moaned.

  “Liz, you gotta get off my arm,” he said, swallowing. “I can’t get up.” Sweat beaded on his forehead, which smarted terribly, and his stomach was swimming nauseating laps.

  “I can’t see, Pete! I can’t see anything!” she whined. It was the most pitiful thing that Pete had ever heard. He laughed at the same moment he puked, sending it directly through his nose.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever been that high before,” Pete said, remembering the vomit mixing together on the floor. It wasn’t really the type of fluid exchange he’d anticipated having with Liz that night.

  “I have,” Walter said through a mouthful of pizza, bringing Pete back to the present.

  “Yeah but… my high is like, subjective. You can’t experience what I experienced at my level, you know?”

  “What?”

  “Never mind.”

  The two couch-locked stoners ate with zeal, devouring the entire pizza in less than ten minutes. Walter sat back with Challenger and took another rip. They shared a moment of contented silence. Reaching over, Pete took the bong from Walter and remarked that he was going to miss Sal’s Pizza.

  “Dude, it sucks that you are moving,” said Walter.

  “Yeah, I know”, but I’m done with my thesis, so they’re cutting off my assistantship. “Gotta pay them bills, son!” Walter already knew Pete’s predicament. Pete’s thesis on novel techniques for combating infection by the single celled organism causing malaria had gotten him some great references. The only place hiring was Century Research Corporation, who had offered him a position in their microbiology division. He didn’t have much of a desire to move from South Jersey, but the commute was impossible from here.

  “What is Liz thinking?” Walter said, nonchalantly. It was a difficult question. Pete and Liz had been together for a year and a half. He had invited her to come with him to Philly, hoping to get Liz out of her dead end job at Tahitian Water Adventures. If he played his cards right, maybe they’d place her at Century Research Corporation. After all, her paralegal certificate was on the wall in her room, unused and unappreciated. Liz’s career situation was the modern condition for his generation: heaps of education, crippling student loans, and weak job prospects. Everything about the move felt so right that Pete expected their cohabitation to be a no brainer. But she hadn’t committed and waffled every time they talked about it.

  Today was moving day.

  “Ahhh, dude, you know how I feel about this. She’s equivocated every time I bring it up.” Pete sighed. “I don’t know, man.”

  Walter nodded. “Maybe ya’ll can do the long distance thing.” Pete nodded too, but he had a feeling about how that would turn out.

  “I hope you can keep training, but I don’t know if you can find a Sifu like Kyle out there,” Walter continued, wisely changing the subject. “It’s a shame, I thought you were real close.”

  “I thought I’d finish the degree and my black belt at the same time,” Pete said, sadly. “Guess it didn’t work out that way.”

  “You’re one of the best Pete, and they’re all going to miss you. Sifu probably the most,” Walter said. Kyle’s pedagogy had done a lot for Pete’s self-confidence, molding him into a different person. He’d come to the studio overweight from years of university dining hall food. Kung fu had gotten Pete into the best physical shape of his life and he knew it was equally important in attaining his graduate degree. His current expertise in the nature of parasitic infectious diseases was the result of hard work and discipline. Martial arts sharpened mind and body equally.

  Pete looked over at Walter before saying, “You’ve got to be pretty close at this point, though.”

  Walter grinned and nodded. “Yeah, he hasn’t said anything, but I wonder if he was going to test us both at the same time. Guess I’m going it alone.” Pete wondered whether Walter resented him for leaving, but disregarded the thought. His best friend wasn’t the kind to hold grudges because Walter would have to remember them first.

  Pete’s hip vibrated, and he pulled his phone out to see Liz’s face. The picture he’d set for her number was his favorite. She sat casually in a meadow, wearing a light green dress. Her smile was sublime. The goldenrod surrounding her made Liz look radiant.

  Pete was crazy about her.

  “Do you mind, Walter?” Pete asked, holding up the phone.

  “Liz? Stop playing, of course not,” said Walter, making a dismissive gesture with his hand.

  “Hey baby, what’s up?” Pete said, his ear sweat making the screen of the phone sticky.

  “Heyyyy! I almost didn’t expect to get you. How’s the moving going?” Liz’s voice was bright and had an echo that made him think she was still at work.

  “Well, we’re taking a pizza and smoke break. Walter tore the bumper off my fucking car, but other than that we’re fine,” Pete said as Walter took another hit. Walter threw his arms up in indignation without stopping his bong hit, only to start coughing violently. Pete helpfully slapped him on the back.

  “Say what?”

  “I’ll have to show you. What’s up, though?”

  “I want to see you. What are you doing tonight?” Liz asked. Pete imagined her brushing her fingers against her neck, which she tended to do when on the phone.

  “Walter and I are going to pack up the truck. I’m free after that.” he replied, heart rising.

  “That sounds great. I’ll come over there. Work was a nightmare. It got real weird up in here,” she said, suddenly getting serious.

  “Like how?” asked Pete, amused, knowing that her job was privy to all kinds of scandal.

  “Let me tell you tonight. I’ll see you at like, 6:30,” Liz promised. They exchanged their love and hung up. Walter had already put the bong on the floor to stand up.

  “Looks like you’re on a schedule son. Let’s get to work,” he said, hands on his hips.

  Pete looked up at him, doubtful at his sudden motivation. “Since when did you care about my schedule?”

  “Pete, you don’t know shit about me. Let’s move some boxes.”

  Pete decided to start in the office. A large stack of liquor boxes sat in the corner. He was still moving most of his undergraduate biology textbooks, even though some of them were out of date and dead weight. .

  One of his boxes held his computer. Truthfully, Pete kind of wanted it to break in transit. The device was a massive waste of his time, a machine he couldn’t trust to operate. Too many lab reports and paper drafts had committed hari kari all over his hard drive too many times. It deserved nothing less than complete destruction. On the other hand…

  “I was thinking that we’d start with the heavy shit.” The computer was more likely to survive if he kept it above the books at the front of the truck.

  “Sure, whatever,” said Walter.

  They got to work. Pete took the boxes two at a time and hustled, stacking them carefully in the back corner of the truck. It was doubtful that they’d use all the capacity, but he did it anyway. On his second trip back to the house, he saw a lone box set part of the way over the lip of the truck bed. Pete looked for Walter as he reached down to pick up the box. Barely touching it, he watched as it fell in slow motion to the ground. The drop caused the box to fold in on itself, creating a minor explosion of pens, pencils, highlighters, and other office supplies. Paperclips scattered into the gravel, the two almost the same color. His laptop, one he had mentally cursed only a minute ago, sat at the bottom of the carnage. The screen had detached from the body of the laptop with several keys acrobatically fleeing the keyboard in the explosion.

  “What the fuck?” Pete whispered, baffled. Walter walked back out of the house carrying a large box.

  “Walter, when did you put this box here?” Pete pointed at the wreckage on the ground.

  “What?” Walter asked from behind his box.

  “The box, you put it here. When I picked it up it fell right off the edge and exploded,” Pete said, trying to
keep his cool. It wasn’t working. “My computer is broken.” He shouldn’t have been pissed, but it was a computer. His computer.

  “Looks like you should have packed your shit better,” Walter replied, flippant. He stood and looked Pete in the eye, frowning. Pete now saw that Walter’s box was marked OFFICE and FRAGILE.

  “Listen, it’s not about how I packed my shit. Why do you keep putting boxes at the edge of the truck?”

  “I thought we were doing like ah, you know that thing they do with sandbags when it floods.”

  Pete slapped his forehead for the second time that day. “Jesus fucking Christ,” Pete said loudly.

  “You mean Moses.”

  “What? No I don’t. You mean Moses.”

  Walter gave him an incredulous look, “I think you need to read the Bible again, Pete.”

  “Go fuck yourself, Walt.”

  “What did I tell you about cursing, Pete?” Walter said, setting the box on the edge of the truck bed.

  Upchucks

  “Hey baby!” Pete said to Liz when he opened the door.

  Liz Boyer was a few inches shorter than Pete, with a toothy, glowing smile she wore often and that reached all the way to her eyes. All curves from top to bottom, she had hips Pete liked to put his hands around and a smooth neck he liked to kiss. Liz had changed out of her work uniform and was wearing dark brown khaki shorts and a maroon t-shirt with a trippy print of an ancient god. The shirt was a souvenir from a great afrobeat show they’d seen a few years back. His girlfriend’s shoulder length strawberry blonde hair was slightly disheveled after a full shift, but he thought she still looked stunning.

  “Hey Pete,” Liz greeted him, her mouth breaking into a grin that likely matched the one he came to the door wearing.

  “Come on in, do I have something for you,” he said, moving aside to let her walk past him.

  “You always know what I need” she said, hugging him to her. As usual, she felt right in his arms. Over the fragrant smell of her hair, Pete detected a faint odor of chlorine.

  “You want to talk about your day?” he said, breaking away and leading her to a setup he had prepared for her visit. She joined him in the center of the living room floor, next to a stray box, on top of which was a glass bowl, an ashtray, and Pete’s herb grinder. The couch was in the truck, ready to be moved. Taking a seat on the wood floor, Liz curled her legs up and propped herself up with the opposite arm. She brushed her hair over her shoulder and gave him a cute frown.

  “Oh good lord, no, not yet, anyway.”

  “Let me tell you about the move, then.”

  “Why, what happened?” she said, a cautious smile appearing at the corner of her lips. “Let me guess.” Vapor danced in sensuous wisps on unseen air currents as she smoked.

  “Don’t bother, I’ll tell you. Walter had no idea what he was doing. I thought he was going to move things back into the house.”

  She laughed, bouncing a little as she did so. “That’s Walter for you, nothing, if not predictable.”

  “That’s what I was about to say. You two are like twins, if twins weren’t both the same color. And if you needed glasses.”

  “Yeah, twins,” Pete chuckled.

  “I have no idea what he’d be doing if he wasn’t friends with you.”

  “I tell you what. He wouldn’t be in the moving industry!”

  They took a hit each, the medical grade herb hitting back very quickly. “You know you could have hired professionals,” Liz pointed out.

  “On my salary? That’s why I’m moving,” Pete said.

  “Sounds like you got what you paid for,” she replied.

  “And less, yeah, you’re not wrong.”

  “Maybe you should take him with you,” she said. “Lord knows you guys spend more money on weed together than you do on anything but rent.” Pete nodded and made an affirmative expression. “Besides, Pete, you lived with him once.”

  “Oh no, never doing that again,” Pete said, waving his hands in front of him, a warding gesture. “Never again! You have no fucking idea.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “You can try. I don’t recommend it,” he said, and they shared a laugh. “Besides, you know, I was hoping you’d come with me,” Pete offered nervously. There was no point in letting it remain unsaid.

  “Yeah…” Liz trailed off. She cleared her throat. “I don’t know.” Pete felt the moment slipping away, wanting to say something clever. He’d told himself earlier that he wasn’t going to guilt her. It was her choice whether to stay or move with him. Pete just nodded, remaining silent.

  She spoke up, “Yeah, I mean, my parents are around here. Kind of feel responsible.”

  “Sure, I understand,” Pete replied, nodding stiffly at her reply. They sat for a moment in strained silence. Feelings welled in his chest, but he couldn’t find words for them.

  Pete decided to break the silence with something else that was on his mind, avoiding any touchy subjects. “Anyway, Walt destroyed the Corolla’s bumper.”

  “You mentioned that. What happened?” Some of the tension in the room bled away. He was glad since he didn’t want to spend the night in an argument.

  “Come on, I’ll show you.”

  They walked outside. The sun had slid lower in the sky, the warmest part of the day past them. The family of sparrows flew off as Liz cackled with laughter, pointing at the bumper resting on the ground in front of the Corolla. She continued laughing hard, as he walked over to it, holding it up for her to view the damage. Leaning over in breathless mirth, Liz was slapping her knee, her hair convulsed with each laugh. Chuckling, Pete shook his head at the jagged piece of metal in his hand. It was pretty absurd.

  “Oh my god,” she got out between laughs. “That’s the funniest thing I’ve seen in my entire life.” She walked over and put her hand on his shoulder, head leaning against him. Liz still snickered as she wiped away a tear.

  “I’m glad that this was amusing to you,” Pete said, throwing the bumper on the ground with a metallic clank.

  “Sorry Pete, it was just so funny,” she said, leaning her head into his chest. “I’m glad you can laugh about it too, that’s why I like you.”

  He put an arm around her waist, and she looked up at him. Liz’s eyes were large, endless oceans of blue and had struck him dumb the first time he saw them. Once, early when they were dating, he’d been explaining the recessive genes responsible for giving humans blue eyes and how animals rarely had blue irises. “So you’re dating me because I’m not an animal?” she’d responded playfully, sitting on his lap. “I have standards,” he’d responded, and she’d thrown her arms around him, sliding up his lap sensuously. Smiling at the memory, Pete leaned down, kissing her softly. She responded, gently, but with growing insistence. Pulling away, Pete saw longing in her eyes.

  “I love you,” she whispered.

  “I love you too,” he said, his heart beating quickly.

  A noise behind them caused the pair to turn. Mrs. Tremont was walking away, peering over her shoulder. Disgust was clear on her face.

  “Oh hey Missus – uhh,” Liz trailed off as Mrs. Tremont continued to walk, ignoring Liz. When Pete’s neighbor had rounded the corner, Pete exhaled loudly.

  “Goddamnit,” he said.

  “You know, I never liked that lady,” Liz said.

  “I don’t think she likes us either,” Pete agreed.

  “Now that we scandalized the neighborhood, you want to go upstairs?” she offered.

  “The bed’s the only piece of furniture left in the house,” he said, eliciting a giggle. They walked into the house, his arm touching her waist and guiding her inside. Pausing, Pete gingerly opened the screen door, being careful to avoid another splinter. Liz led the way, hips swaying slightly, taking his hand as they walked upstairs.

  The bedroom was a tiny loft, his bed taking up most of the room. Liz threw herself onto the mattress headfirst. Totally splayed out, she turned her head to look at him. Running as if to jump
onto the bed, Pete made her shriek and then lay down gently next to her.

  “Could I get a massage, please?” she asked. “I’ll love you for it.”

  “Anytime, all the time,” he said, kneeling over her. Pete gently brushed his fingertips on Liz’s back, then back up to massage her shoulder blades. She let out a long sigh.

  “So, work,” Liz said.

  “Yeah, work. What happened?”

  “You wouldn’t believe the things I have to put up with,” she sighed.

  “At Tahitian? Try me.” Pete replied.

  “Well picture this, because it was my afternoon: big fat guy on the ground, purple face beaten into pulp, obviously drowned, covered in vomit and blood. Next to him is this lady in a bikini whose boob has popped out. Her eyes are all oozing pus and blood, having a seizure. They’d been duking it out in the pool before someone decked the one eyed lady. Dave, you remember Dave?”

  “Sure, yeah.”

  “He goes to drag her feet out of the pool, and the crazy lady vomits blood all over Dave. Everyone screams. Crazy lady starts screaming about her cat. Then Dave upchucks, they close the pool, and suddenly half the staff is on cleanup duty.”

  Despite the grim story, Pete chuckled at the word ‘upchuck’. The last time he heard that word was second grade. He renewed his efforts on her shoulder blades, her favorite spot. She gasped in pleasure, a noise that made him smile.

  “Upchuck, right. What happened after that?” he asked.

  “Mmmmm…” she murmured, a satisfied sound. “Right, upchuck. Well, someone had called the ambulance and they dragged those two out. I asked one of the medics what was wrong with the lady and he said he’d never seen anything like her eye before. I know what I saw though. Her eye had brown crud on it, like it was rotting or something. Someone said that she tore up the fat guy with her fingernails.”