More reminscence from the wilds of the north:

“There’s this party up at Hermit Island, wanna go with me?”

“What’s that?”

“It’s this place that I used to be a camp counselor, a little island near Bath. It’s really cool. We all get together and have a party at the end of the season.”

“Yeah, I’d love to.”

He looked and behaved so like and unlike Chris, and it was hard to tell if it was the similarities or the differences that drove me crazier on any given day. Good crazy, like the grit in the proverbial oyster; I never knew what I wanted to do with him besides watch what he was going to do next.

“Ok, well, let’s do it then.”

In the car he’s excited and I don’t feel so self-conscious because Johnny just talks. The scenery moves by and it is a beautiful, wind tossed Maine summer day, every life form aching to get time in the sun. I smile, and I think Johnny likes to see me smiling.

The party is housed in a big A-frame type structure with a tremendous view of the pounding surf. Johnny introduces me to his friends, who are, without exception, several years older than me. It’s weird, because I am like a member of the family already, because of my friendship with Chris—even though Chris and I never dated, so the discomfort I feel about being presented as Johnny’s girlfriend is all in my imagination. Or is it?

I’m not just a shrinking violet though. I’m wearing tight black jeans, a motorcycle jacket, and for some inexplicable reason, black cowboy boots. I have a beer and loosen up a little. I make jokes, and both Johnny and I mingle. I’m having fun. He gets pretty drunk, but that’s okay; we’re staying overnight, after all.

I decide to go outside for some air and look at the house from the driveway; the windows glowing yellow, the fresh spray on the breeze.

“Hey.”

I turn around. One of Johnny’s friends is leaning against his car behind me.

“Oh, hey.”

“Want a smoke?”

“Huh? Oh, sure.”

“C’mere.”

He seemed alright, and Johnny knew him and he was here, so I’m ignoring the internal alarms that are already going off. He gets in his car, reaches over to the glove box and then opens the passenger side door.

“Get in.”

“Uh, okay? “

I’m a little buzzed. I’m wondering what this guy wants and I think back to talking to him earlier, inside the house. What could he do, I think to myself. Johnny and everyone else are right inside. Lots of people are wandering around.

I sit down. He lights up a joint, takes a puff, and hands it to me.

“Oh, that kind of smoke. Hey, I thought you meant a smoke smoke.”

“A cigarette? Why would we come out here for that?”

“I don’t know. I just came out here for some fresh air.”

“Oh, just have some. It’s not going to kill you. What, are you going to tell me you don’t smoke?”

“Well, a little…but I’m kind of buzzed, and I think I better pass.”

“Here, just a hit? No strings!”

He smiles warmly, and I feel silly for being so reluctant. I take the joint and inhale.

We sit there talking for a couple of minutes. He tells me that he is going into the military or law enforcement or something like that and then launches into an intensely personal diatribe. He reveals more than I am comfortable hearing, but I listen; at first politely, then with genuine concern for his numerous dilemmas, and then with the increasing urge to go back inside. I look up at the house, about to speak.

“Hey, I need to show you something! It’s in my trunk. Can you wait here a sec?”

I nod.

He exits, and I feel trapped. Get out of the car, I tell myself. Just leave and tell him you’ll see whatever it is later. But lie? Be rude and hurtful? I cringed at the thought, and before I had finished wrestling with my own personal demons, he was back.

He had a gray rectangular case, and I was still thinking to myself, well, whatever it is can’t be too much to look at when he opened it and picked up a thickish piece of black metal and plastic.

“Check it out.”

I looked at him, and the gun, and nodded my head, because I couldn’t do much else for a second or two.

“Uh, neat.” I was not sure what else to say. “Is it loaded?”

“Oh yeah. You know, with you and me here, and this? I could make you do whatever I wanted.”

He was looking at me, and his voice was different, almost a growl. I don’t know if he thought he was joking, but I didn’t feel like testing the notion. My heart was racing as I searched for the right response to his measured threat. I smiled tightly.

“Oh, you wouldn’t need that to make me do anything.”

I put my hand on his shoulder and squeezed it. His face contorted from gleeful to a grimace, and he put the gun back in the case.

“You’re fucking right about that.”

Some people came out the back door, releasing a shaft of yellow across the driveway for a brief instant before they straggled across the sand, away from us.

“Hey, I’ve got to pee really bad—why don’t we go back inside?”

“Oh, you go on ahead. I’ll put this away and maybe see you later. Thanks for talking to me.”

“Okay. Nice meeting you. Thanks for the pot.”

“You’re welcome.”

When I left him I waved. I had been terrified of what he was going to do, but looking at him sitting in the driver’s side of his car with his gray case on his lap, I felt sorry for him, and worried about his state of mind.

Inside the house, I found Johnny, passed out on a sofa. I felt a kind of regret that I didn’t get to spend more time with him, but snuggled up next to him and tried to sleep.

“Did you have a good time?”

We were driving back, and Johnny was looking over at me.

“Yeah.”

The clouds behind my eyes, obvious to anyone, are worrying Johnny. I keep replaying the whole scene from the night before, questioning my actions, chiding myself for being so foolish.

“Are you sure?”

Johnny wants me to have had a good time, no matter when either of us passed out or where.

“Your friend there…army boy,” I start, not sure where I’m going with the conversation.

“Did he say something to you?”

Haltingly, I tell Johnny the whole story. I’m a little nervous about it, because ostensibly they’ve been friends longer than we have. When I get to the part with the gun, and what his friend said, Johnny’s hands tighten on the steering wheel and his face turns a shade of gray I wouldn’t have thought possible over his dark complexion.

“He said that, to you?”

“Well, I’m not sure if he was going to do anything…”

“I’ll kill him.”

“What?”

He’s shaking his head as if he simply does not accept what his friend had done. I realize, suddenly, in a flash of reminiscence about something that once happened with Chris, that Johnny is not joking.

“Johnny, I’m fine.”

“It doesn’t matter. You just don’t do that.”

I stay quiet for awhile, just watching him. His intense anger both frightens and impresses me, that it is expressed on my behalf. No one ever has thought me worth protecting before.

At Johnny’s apartment, we relax for awhile before I have to go. He lives on Exchange Street, down by Fore, across from the Movie Exchange. It’s a great apartment, all brick and hanging wall tapestries. He plays a couple of CDs, one of which I ask about.

“Who is this? I really like it.”

“Oh, you’ve never heard these guys? It’s Morphine. Here, you can borrow it if you want when you leave.”

“Cool, thanks.”

“Are you chilly?”

“Yeah.”

“You want to get under the blanket?”

“Definitely.”

Mark Sandman whispered and groaned behind my ear along with his slinking slide bass and Dana’s tortured bari, making my chest feel tight and my belly heavy. On the sofa, under a tattered and worn blanket, I was able to forget Johnny’s last name. Kissing him is slow, tragic, and beautiful; and the memory of it is all I would ever have of him.