That was the night...

...the band didn't play and she wasted her virginity on a college student who said he wanted to be a painter except he hadn’t painted a single thing in his entire life and he bored her with the names of famous painters and he numbed her with his dreams of Italy and Spain and France and all the European countries where romance was thought to be found and she listened through an alcohol haze as his travels brought him to the peaks of the Himalayas and then she didn't listen anymore and instead wound up with him on the laundry room floor, naked and breathing into his mouth, trying to be quiet as footsteps crossed back and forth outside the door.

Afterward, she put all her clothes back on and left the college student behind still trying to find his left shoe, which had somehow gotten wedged behind the dryer, and she swam through the sea of bodies into the kitchen where the lead singer had tucked himself away into a safe corner and stared out at a scene of bodies huddled around the kitchen table making sloppy work of a drinking game whose rules deteriorated with every loss/win.

"I need the keys," she says, holding out her hand and trying to keep it steady even as the world tilts slightly to the right and threatens to sweep her away with it.

"I don't have them," he says.

He watches her movements as she brings her hand slowly back to her side and she steps close into him as someone brushes past behind her and for a second her mouth is really close to his and he can smell whatever she has been drinking and she closes her eyes and moves back when there was room enough to move.

"Where are the keys? I need the keys."

The keys are in the jacket that used to be his jacket but is her jacket now and the jacket's been lost, but he finds it after five minutes of searching slung over a potted plant and the cuff of one sleeve damp with what is unmistakably urine and he takes the keys out of the pocket and carries the jacket back to her and lets her put it on without saying a word. She sniffs the cuff of the jacket and stares at the keys in his hand and she thinks about making a dive for them but she knows that dive could potentially turn into a spill and she just waits until the look in his eyes says that he's not going to hand them over.

"Give me the keys," she says.

"I need to talk to you."

"So talk." She puts a finger in the middle of his forehead and runs it down until she reaches the tip of his nose. "What do you want to talk about?"

They go out to the van, which is parked up against the curb directly in front of the house where the party's being held, and she goes around to the driver's side and gets in as he climbs in on the passenger's side. He still has the keys but she a fingernail into the ignition and gently tries to turn it without success and without the belief of success.

"So talk," she says, and waits, and adjusts the mirror until she can see his eyes staring out of the passenger side window and for a second his reflection looks back at her but not for long and she can't tell what he's thinking.

When he doesn't say anything she places both hands on the steering wheel and makes engine noises and steps down on the pedals so that they wheeze and the street flashes red behind them. Eventually pressure builds up behind the brake pedal and locks it firmly into place and she taps it with one foot and stares out at the street ahead of her and all the sounds die from her throat and they can hear a pounding coming from the house where someone is using a wooden cooking spoon to bang on the drums as the drummer pushes her way through the crowd to make him stop. Soon the lead guitar player joins her, hugging his guitar like an infant and carrying it back to the first floor landing where it becomes like an anchor as couples slip past upstairs and don't come down again.

The lead singer hands her the keys even though she hadn't asked for them since they were in the kitchen and she just stares at them like they're something that appeared out of nowhere into her hand and for a moment she just attaches destinations to each piece of metal and fingers the moose head key fob that came from somewhere but she can't remember where from anymore.

"Aren't you going to talk?" she asks.

"No."

She doesn't turn to look at him but when she finally puts the key in the ignition and goes to adjust the mirror she can see that the corners of his eyes are wet and the irises stare out brightly betraying the roiling energy that she can now feel spilling over the edge of his seat and lapping onto hers. She sets the mirror so that she can see just the roof of the car parked behind her and then takes her time as she brings the van from park to drive.

She breathes as she cranks the wheel all the way to the left and eases up on the brake pedal until the van begins creeping away from the curb and out into the street until she's far away enough from the cars parked on either side to ease up completely.

"So, where are we going?" she asks.

"You're the one who's driving."

"But you came along. I thought you might want to go somewhere in particular."

"No."

She follows the streets unable to to figure out in which direction they're going in and unwilling to look at the MapQuest directions she used to get here. They end up downtown where most of the doors are shut and locked up tight but lights still burn inside giving some kind of semblance of life still going on behind the scenes and he tells her to turn right at the next street corner and keep going until they hit the highway where he tells her to turn left. She lets the speedometer get up to seventy before leveling out and letting the needle dip slightly before it settles at sixty-eight. The van's entire frame shakes and rattles but she doesn't let up, wanting him to say the first word but he never does and they're in the darkness between towns with the road unfurling in front of them and reflective signs glowing in the distance.

"So what was his name? Did you even learn his name?" He tries not to sound bitter but his voice is alien even to his own ears now and he can't quite pick up on the vague nuances that should be so familiar by now.

"Brett. He said his name was Brett when he came up to me," she says. "Or Brent, I wasn't really listening."

Old country roads lead off the highway at ninety-degree angles and street signs appear too quickly to be read and when he tells her to turn off onto one of them she doesn't see it until it comes racing out of the dark at her.

She knows it's already too late but her body responds before her mind reacts, pressing slightly on the brake and cranking the wheel all the way over, and for a second that could've lasted much longer there's the sickening wave of sweat and fear as the van's weight begins to shift and the light cast ahead dances across long blades of grass that blur into a sea. Everything comes apart in her head, shatters, and the fragments fly loose and sting the backs of her eyes and somewhere between now and now-before her foot's sunk all the way down and the wheels have locked into position dragging gravel and dust and flinging it into the air.

The van takes a nosedive into the ditch and crumples a bit on one corner, leaving the engine jerked and shuddering until it shudders to a stop. Then silence that won't filled but any other sound for the next five minutes, except for the sounds of their breathing.

"It's over, isn't it?" he asks.

She reaches for the key and turns it, but it comes up dead every time.

"The engine won't start," she says. "I think I killed it."

His hand finds the handle on the door and jerks it open and his body spills out into the cool night air. He moves around through the long grass far enough to see that one headlight's smashed and the other remains lit and the van's tipped at such an angle that it would but impossible to get it out without the help of a tow truck.

A few seconds later she gets out of the van as well, but walks back onto the road instead of joining him in the grass.

"How bad is it?" she calls.

"Not too bad. Just some dents and a broken headlight as far as I can see."

"But the engine won't start."

"I know."

He looks back at the highway, which lies just twenty feet away, through the dust that still hangs in the air, and he looks the other way where the country road fades into darkness, and he pushes his way through the grass around to the driver's side of the van and pulls the keys from the ignition. She almost doesn't catch the keys when he throws them at her, unready for them to come flying at her, and the slap of metal on skin sounds uncertain.

"Where are we going?" she asks.

He walks in the other direction, away from the highway and into the darkness, and she follows behind him putting the keys in the jacket's pocket and zipping up the zipper. The van falls away behind them where it probably won't be seen or messed with until the sun's up and sends sharp sparks off the side mirrors. He doesn't say anything and their footfalls shift the gravel beneath them and the stars in the sky only provide enough light to send the shadows, thick like water, into wherever the road dips enough to give sanctuary.

It's only fifteen minutes before the shape of the house begins to draw itself out of the black and its size remains an illusion until they get near it because it's only when they're at the front door that she can see its height is the only immense thing about it.

The house used to belong to one of his uncles, married and divorced twice, no kids, always going on excursions whose details were muddy to everyone but him. The lead singer had only been out here once or twice as a kid, and then again after the funeral when anything of value was being hauled away, but its location somehow remained firm in his mind and it was only a sudden turn in his inner compass that brought them here. He honestly couldn't remember a single detail about the uncle's face or the way he spoke or at one point he hovered around at on the scale of drunkenness at family get-togethers but his house remained almost unchanged from the way that the lead singer remembered it.

He doesn't say any of this to her and when he goes to touch the door it pushes inward from someone already having broken in once looking for any pawnable items the might've got left behind.

He leads the way and he leads it a bit too fast because she loses him as he turns through a doorway and the sound of his footsteps fall away from her. She keeps one hand feeling along the wall and the toe of her shoe crunches on glass from fallen and shattered picture frame and she picks it up but can't make out the shapes within it into any knowable form and she finds the nail where it once hung and she hangs it back up again. Then she passes through the doorway he passed through but she doesn't see him there and she can't hear him anymore and in the darkness there is what must be a table with chairs around it and on the table is a number of small vases arranged in no particular order and she sits down in one of the chairs and picks up one of the vases, none of which hold any flowers, and sniffs the mouth of it.

There's a chugging sound from somewhere deep within the house and the light bulb set in the ceiling above her head flickers and glows and lights up and the beer bottle in her hand is coated with dust and the last drops inside of long since evaporated leaving behind the smell that's already on its way out.

He enters the room from a second doorway and she puts the bottle back down on the table into the ring it left behind and she stares at him and he just says, "Gas-powered generator. Don't know how long it'll hold out, though."

He comes over and sits down in a chair across from her and begins pushing bottles away so he can see her more clearly.

"My uncle killed himself in this room," he says.

"Oh." She looks around and tries to pretend like she's interested. "Is that supposed to be the beginning of a ghost story?"

"Why? Do you think this house is haunted?"

"Maybe." She looks around some more. "Is that where he did it?" She points to the phantom of a stain set into the wallpaper and washed a hundred times over to no avail.

"Yeah. He sat in that chair." He points to the chair at the head of the table. "Shotgun."

"Cliche"

He doesn't know how to respond to that, so he just shrugs and doesn't say anything.

"You're kinda starting to piss me off," she says.

The light in the room dims for a few moments and then retrieves its previous lustre.

"Why?"

"Why the fuck did you bring me out here for?"

"I didn't bring you, you came along."

"You said you wanted to talk."

"I did want to talk. We're talking now. We're talking."

She closes her eyes. "Don't pull this bullshit with me right now. Please. I don't need it."

"I'm not trying to pull anything."

Again, the light dims, but it doesn't return this time.

"Okay," he says, "why did you sleep with guy?"

A smile crosses her lips and he can hear a just audible snicker exit through her nose and her entire face is filled with the pain that she's trying to hold back.

The smile falls away. "No. That's not fair. You can't ask me that."

"Yes. I can. Why?"

She looks away. "I don't know."

"You don't know?"

"He was kinda there and I was kinda there and... I really don't want to talk about this right now."

Her eyes drift along the edge of the table where the wood's been scarred and chipped by years of abuse and now, in the light bulb's dim glow, she can see initials and names and profane poetry carved shallowly into its surface and she reads all the initials and names and poetry but it barely makes sense to her and she tries to bring her eyes back up to meet his gaze but can't quite seem to make it and there's a cushioned chair in the corner with a white cloth thrown over it like a make-believe ghost and she thinks how nice it would be just to hide underneath it.

She does meet his gaze, and his eyes are hard, harder than she thought they could ever be.

"So it was just a proximity thing," he says. "It really could've been anyone."

He waits a few moments to allow her to answer before he says, "Right? Am I right?"

And she begins to laugh, but her laughter turns to tears and the tears run out of her eyes and leave dark trails across her face.

"Don't do this to me. Please. Can't we just...? I don't want to be here anymore."

Something is trying to break inside him and he won't let it. The generator finally fails and the light dies, easing them back into the darkness of before where her face becomes just another shadow in a room full of them and even the sound of her sobs seem muted by the black.

"You haven't told me why yet," he says.

There's the sound of breaking glass and for a second he believes that one of the bottles must've fallen off the table but slowly he begins to feel a stinging along the side of his arm and when he looks down in the faint light he can just make out the glitter of tiny fragments set into the surface of the skin. He looks around to see in what direction the bottle was aimed at but it's too dark and when he looks back he can see the outline of her standing up and the glint of another bottle sailing straight for his head.

It catches him on the cheekbone but doesn't break, instead glancing off onto the floor where still it doesn't break and it rolls away until it reaches the wall.

"Why couldn't you do it?" she asks, suddenly calm. "Why at the last fucking possible second did you decide that you couldn't do it?"

That was the night that was supposed to be bigger than all the other nights because that was night when they were supposed to play in front of an actual audience. That was supposed to be the first gig in a string of gigs that would take them out of the basements and living rooms and into the clubs where their music would be heard by those who had a little bit of swing in the music business and from there it would be record deals and private jets and crowded stadiums that would vibrate with the reverberations of their instruments. But only if they could get through that first gig.

They started the opening song twice before it became apparent that his voice refused to join the melody and they made a few more attempts after that, their eyes staring into the back of his skull and urging him to make some kind of noise that they could push forward on but after five minutes he abandoned the microphone and slipped off into the crowd that was already beginning to disband and drift away into the other corners of the house. Watching him go she wanted to call out to him but feedback was already starting to whine loud through the amps the sound of it bore into her head and made it hard to think and when she turned it off it left the room too quiet and by that time she couldn't see where he had went.

One by one, they abandoned their posts as well and went their separate ways, none of them wishing to be around the other two and as she moved away between the waves of bodies someone place an unopened can of beer into her hand which she popped open and began to drink greedily from.

She saw him again then, keeping his head low as he moved into the kitchen, but she decided that she didn't want to follow.

"You want to know why I slept with him?" she asks. "Someone was supposed to get lucky tonight and you made it very clear that it wasn't going to be you."

She wasted her virginity on a college student whose face she could no longer remember but already long before that night she had made the decision it was the lead singer's to take once they had performed their first live set.

She says, "You could've mumbled the lyrics to all the songs, I wouldn't of given a flying fuck. Because at least then we could've gotten to play our songs."

Her voice cracks on the last sentence and she sits down again. Every muscle in her body screams at her to run from room but her mind tells her there's nowhere to run to. He listens as her tears resume, only quieter now as she tries to hold them in.

It feels like someone's pushed a skewer into his chest and is applying light, rhythmic pressure on it with the beating of his heart.

"I'm sorry," he whispers, but the corners of his mind have melted away and he's not so sure what he's sorry about and every time he tries to grab onto what it could be it keeps sinking away from him.

He moves from the table and through the doorway out into the hall and outside where he stands in the dusty driveway staring at the trees that move on the other side of the road and he feels the breeze that they move with and lets it cool the sweat that has appeared on the back of his neck.

She comes out as well a few minutes later but doesn't move much beyond the front doorway and he pretends not to know that she's there and when he begins walking she follows far enough and quietly enough behind him to maintain the illusion. She watches his body for any signs of anger but she can't find any and when they reach the broken down van he passes right by it like he doesn't see it and she gives it glance and then forgets about it too. But when he reaches the highway he stops right before stepping onto its shoulder and stands there looking across its expanse that seems to flow like a dark, motionless river.

"I'm not sure we could make it back before the party dies down," he says. "Tamara and Jonathan will probably take off in her car and we'll be stranded anyway."

He pauses for a moment to wipe his nose and to give her time to think over what he's just said. She doesn't think she understands.

He turns around and walks back to the van and opens one of its back doors and climbs inside. It's only from a look that he gives her that she decides to climb inside too and from that look she can find nothing neither friendly nor hateful and because of the angle the van sits at they lay with their feet planted against the backs of the seats and the blankets they use are the ones used to wrap up the pieces of Tamara's drum kit so that they don't shift and move and clash together as the vehicle makes its way to its destination.

He's the one who falls asleep first, his breathing disappearing into the drone of bugs moving around outside through the grass and through the air and she stays awake a long time beside him trying not to move in case she might wake him up again. At some point during the early morning before the birds begin to sing their waking song she starts crying silently and falls asleep crying so that the tears dry salty on her face and leave her with a mask of fitful sleep.

When they wake again they move without saying a word and by the time the police cruiser arrives, having gotten a report of a stranded vehicle just twenty minutes before, they're already half a mile down the road.

Chapter 4: When it Rains (Excerpt) [Edited]

By Light’s Last Dawn was my father’s last book before he died and is considered by many of his scholars to be the first and only hard-backed four-hundred page suicide letter ever written by anyone. The narrator remains nameless and most of his accounts are jumbled in a strange stream-of-consciousness style that jumps, without warning, back and forth between dates and locations, sometimes for a only a sentence or two. But there are certain similarities and an overwhelming nakedness to the voice that leads most critics to believe that it is his most autobiographical work to date. Many people wanting to know more about my father as he was in real life read the book like canon law and have pored over every exclamation point and chapter break as if their life depended on it.

A light drizzle patters against the window as I pull the book out from the pile in front of me and try to correlate it to the letters written in the same period, but except for a few letters of complaint to magazines in relation to their high subscription costs all of his correspondence seems to have died off by that point in his life. The only real letter of any importance I can find is one written to his sister who lives in Ohio asking her if he could come and stay with her family for an indefinite period of time. I have the sister’s reply paper clipped to the back of the letter and she cites hard times in one of her children’s lives and lack of spare room in her house as her reasons for declining his request, though I imagine it was much more than that.

It’s this period of his life that the publishers are interested in the most because so little is known about him during this time. In fact, I’m the only one who saw him regularly up to the very end. I lived down in the town at the time working the cash register at the convenience store and sweeping the aisles when it wasn’t busy and I would drive up to the cabin every weekend to bring his mail to him and sort through it, paying the bills that he would otherwise ignore and denying invitations to speak at universities and literary conferences that he would only be too drunk to speak coherently in front of. Most of the time he couldn’t be found anywhere in the house and I would rummage through the refrigerator throwing out anything stale or spoiled and stocking it up with fresh groceries again that I bought from the convenience store. Then I would wander into his study and sit at the big desk where he did all his writing and begin to go through all the drawers, searching around in the stacks of paper and thumbtacks and paperclips and corrective ribbon and ink pens gone completely dry for anything and for nothing.

Sometimes I would just sit there, touching the keys of the typewriter and listening for the deep, satisfying clack that filled so many days of my childhood. I had given him an electric a few Christmases ago but he refused to write with anything but a manual and the machine in its plastic case was stashed in a closet somewhere gathering dust. If the spirit took me I would sometimes roll in a fresh sheet of paper and begin to type out whole passages from one of his books, poring over the words like I imagine he pored over them as he wrote them. I tried to get a real feeling of his craft and a real feeling of himself as he was when he was alone with nothing but a blank page in front of him and endless hours to think.

When I began first typing out his books I began with the first book he had ever written and by the time of his death I had hit the final period of his last.