Kim asked me to housesit for her parents while they took her on a Hawaiian vacation. They were personal friends to a celebrity shooting a movie there. She promised me: no houseplants to water, and their hound\u2019s anal fissures had cleared up.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 When Kim put her hand on my forearm, two things happened: Everything under my skin turned rotten and sweet, and I knew Kim could ask me anything for anything. All she had to do was be everything I wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I hated dogs. But Kim\u2019s didn\u2019t know that, and her parents paid up front. I was broke because I was always broke. Rent was twice my parent\u2019s mortgage before they lost their house and moved into a motel.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The dog\u2019s named was Bundy. She barked for no reason. Kim\u2019s parents lived on a street where nothing happened. But Bundy barked at a moth giving itself to the porch light. I walked her along empty, immaculate sidewalks. No crickets sowing songs in the grass. I left her shits where she made them, if only to show that something there was alive.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The house was nice in a boring way rich people like. The couch and carpet and curtains were comfortable and gray. Within thirty minutes, I\u2019d found a garage full of craft beer and about three grand in bad hiding places. I debated renting a nice car, dialing up some people to drive around and drink with, but I couldn\u2019t think of anyone to call.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I didn\u2019t have friends, except Kim. The bar where we\u2019d met was a dimly lit refuge for the unloved. Her sorority had planned a \u201cdive-bar crawl\u201d and accidently ended up at a real dive. You could feel the avarice of spirit hanging onto the place. I was drinking the last of my last paycheck from a scammy sales gig when they came in on a gust of colorful noise. They ordered drinks no bartender in that shithole had ever made.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Kim\u2019s earring fell and twinkled between a barstool\u2019s legs. Real diamond I could\u2019ve hawked and kept drinking for a week. Instead, I tapped her on the shoulder.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Kim bought me a grasshopper\u2014my \u201cgood-deed reward.\u201d For her own opaque reasons, she asked me over to her Kappa-Theta sisters\u2019 corner booth. They smiled like I was something to eat\u2014all teeth and small, small talk. Sales had been an easy job because I was good at lying about myself: I told her I loved<\/em> animals, volunteered at a dog shelter; my parents hadn\u2019t<\/em> died last year in a cheap motel; Kim and I shared a birthday. What wild chance\u2014us both wandering into this rattletrap. If I hadn\u2019t loved her immediately, I wouldn\u2019t\u2019ve gone to the trouble of inventing someone worth knowing. But that\u2019s how we became friends.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Kim whispered to me that a man at the bar was dying; she\u2019d eavesdropped on his death-wheeze and sneaked a pic on her phone.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cThis place is great. We\u2019ll have way better stories than those Omega bitches.\u201d Kim composed her face for a selfie and said \u201cYou don\u2019t need to come back here.\u201d There were classier ways to die, if that\u2019s what I wanted. Then she leaned in and sniffed my neck. \u201cNo,\u201d she said. \u201cAs my grandma would say, \u2018there\u2019s still some vinegar in you.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And I didn\u2019t go back. Because after meeting Kim, I didn\u2019t want to die. From then on, she never let me go too long without a visit. We got ice cream; we did drugs she paid for; we threw coins into public fountains, making the most absurd wishes we could think of. Each time, I got a little farther from where she\u2019d found me.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Now, her parent\u2019s hound shit on the carpet, baying like she knew something awful had happened. Kim didn\u2019t respond when I texted that Bundy\u2019s annal fissures had flared up.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Her return date came and went. My calls, straight to voicemail. Bundy snuffled my knees, trying to tell me an accident had occurred on their celebrity friend\u2019s movie set, and the family had been mauled by Bengal tigers.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I drank beers in their hot tub until steam worked into my skull and fogged over the night sky. Brown bottles littered the back yard like abstract dog turds.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Somewhat outside myself, I rummaged through Kim\u2019s childhood bedroom. Everything she owned smelled like crushed-up Smarties. Leafing through her yearbooks showed me a teen-horror film scrubbed clean of blood and misery, where the serial killer is never even born. Friends signed the back pages with such professions of love, I felt embarrassed for them.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Tucked into the back of senior year, were rubberbanded Polaroids: Kim, all cheekbones, elan, and flammable youth. She carried a chalice. Another girl, a knife. A circle holding hands. They murdered someone\u2019s hamster and wrote blood-oaths of friendship on one another\u2019s backs. Downstairs, Bundy moaned that Kim was gone, drowned beneath a Hawaiian riptide.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Days passed. Bundy had started grief-chewing the furniture. She licked my knuckles. Her droopy brow wrinkled like sadness kept going in waves. Didn\u2019t I understand? Kim\u2019s heart had stopped with a nosebleed on a plush hotel carpet.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 After a week, the silence took on a mournful density. I sat still for hours without hearing a car go by. The next time Bundy cried, I cried too.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I held onto her neck and asked where were life-long friendships? Where was black magic as Kim floated up from her body? Did she meet my parents, passing into the firmament? Did she tell them how she\u2019d fished me from a slow death\u2019s pocket?<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But Bundy only whimpered and licked her bleeding asshole.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The stars came out. But I couldn\u2019t configure familiar constellations. The planet wobbled around the sun, shedding a million or two mothers, fathers, and friends, along the way. The rest of us poor suckers bobbed in the long wake, staring up at diamond fields too distant and bright to console us of anything.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Kim asked me to housesit for her parents while they took her on a Hawaiian vacation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":7675,"template":"","categories":[9,48,49],"tags":[889,1902,1903],"class_list":["post-7674","article","type-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aquifer","category-fiction","category-literary-features","tag-aquifer","tag-desmond-everest-fuller","tag-house-sitting"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n