“Damn,” says the more enormous escaped convict. “Kevin. You gotta hate him.”
“Suther,” sprays the rumpled drunk, his first attempt at words yet. “You are the king. You really are. Are you religious, Suther? You look religious.”
It’s an odd question considering the circumstances but I go with it. “Of course I’m religious. I’m God’s own drunk.”
He cranes back his head. “Whooo-weee!” And then in the next second he’s clutching my arm and staring at me bleary-eyed and mournful. “You got your whole life ahead of you,” he says.
“So do you,” I say, holding my arm steady in his grip. It’s the only thing keeping him from toppling to the floor.
“No,” he says. “All my friends are dead and my life is over.”
“Your friends aren’t dead,” I tell him. “We’re your friends.”
“Whooo-weee!”
By the time the last Jimmy Buffett song plays, everyone’s having a blast. The gloom of the Hawaiian Breeze has lifted. When I announce that it’s time to go, no one wants me to leave. “Sorry, boys,” I say. “The night awaits. More adventures are in store.”
Outside, the streetlight shines on the gravel parking lot. I feel like I’m on the surface of the moon. With painted palm trees in the background. The night is glorious. I’m overflowing with the thrill of having saved the souls of the boys of the Hawaiian Breeze. Maybe Marcus was wrong. Maybe a single person can save the world. I’ll bet I could. I could save the whole world—for a night.
And what does Cassidy know about the way I feel? Of course I can feel loved. I open my arms wide and let the wind flow over me. I love the universe and the universe loves me. That’s the one-two punch right there, wanting to love and wanting to be loved. Everything else is pure idiocy—shiny fancy outfits, Geech-green Cadillacs, sixty-dollar haircuts, schlock radio, celebrity-rehab idiots, and most of all, the atomic vampires with their de-soul-inators, and flag-draped coffins.
Goodbye to all that, I say. And goodbye to Mr. Asterhole and the Red Death of algebra and to the likes of Geech and Keeeevin. Goodbye to Mom’s rented tan and my sister’s chargecard boobs. Goodbye to Dad for the second and last time. Goodbye to black spells and jagged hangovers, divorces, and Fort Worth nightmares. To high school and Bob Lewis and once-upon-a-time Ricky. Goodbye to the future and the past and, most of all, to Aimee and Cassidy and all the other girls who came and went and came and went.
Goodbye. Goodbye. I can’t feel you anymore. The night is almost too beautifully pure for my soul to contain. I walk with my arms spread open under the big fat moon. Heroic weeds rise up from the cracks in the sidewalk, and the colored lights of the Hawaiian Breeze ignite the broken glass in the gutter. Goodbye, I say, goodbye, as I disappear little by little into the middle of the middle of my own spectacular now.