Alex, Approximately
Page 38

“I think we should go see a doctor.”
“It’s fine.”
“You’re being ridiculous. Pull over at the first store you see and I’ll get something to clean your wound.”
He cranes his neck and appraises the damage in the rearview mirror. Yep. Listen to the smart person in the vehicle. Instead of turning right on the paved road to head back home, he turns left. Should he even be driving? Davy did punch him in the head a few times. Or maybe he knows something I don’t. Now the road is going uphill. We’re winding up some coastal cliffs, and the rain’s coming down. And I see a sign that says SCENIC OVERLOOK. He slows the van and turns into one of those pull-over areas for tourists to park. It’s got a couple of Monterey cypress trees and a redwood sign with a carving of the central coast of California and all the points of interest marked. It’s also got a jaw-dropping view of the Pacific, which we might enjoy if it weren’t overcast and drizzling, and he weren’t bleeding all over the seat.
“This doesn’t look like a store to me,” I say anxiously when he opens up his door.
“We don’t need no stinking store,” he says in a way that almost reminds me of a line from a Mel Brooks movie, Blazing Saddles. I never liked that one as much as Brooks’s other comedy classic Young Frankenstein, which I’ve watched online with Alex a couple of times. But it makes me a little guilty to think about that when I’m here with Porter.
Porter the animal. I’m still rattled over the insane amount of raw violence I just witnessed. And I’m not sure how I feel about it.
He jumps out, groaning, and heads around the van to a sliding side door, where he retrieves a small box. Then he comes back and slips back into the front seat and opens the treasure he’s collected: a plastic first-aid kit covered in stickers.
“Surfers always carry supplies,” he explains, rooting around the box with one finger. “We get banged up all the time.”
After several seconds of watching him struggle, I realize his other hand is too busted up to use, and pity overrides whatever lingering shock I’m still experiencing. I snatch the kit away from him. “Let me see that. You can’t nurse yourself, dummy.”
“Oh, good. I did all this as an excuse for you to put your hands on me.”
“Not funny.”
“A little funny.”
I find some alcohol swabs and a bunch of butterfly bandages, along with a couple of condoms, which I try not to think about too hard. “You scared the bejesus out of me. Look, here’s a packet of Tylenol. It’s been expired for a few months, but better than nothing. You have something to drink it with?”
“You need to work on your bedside manner, Nurse Bailey,” he says, groaning as he leans to pick up a half-empty bottle of water wedged in the seat. He pretends to be irritated with me when I pretend to be mad at him as I hand him the pills. He swallows them and grunts.
I kneel on the seat and tear open a swab. The sharp scent of alcohol fills the van. We both make faces. He swings his door open, and the fresh air feels good. The sound of waves crashing against the rocks below is calming. Sort of.
Too chicken to start on his face, I tentatively pull back the collar of his shirt and swipe the cool swab over the dried blood on his neck. He shudders. “Cold.”
“Sorry,” I murmur. I make quick work of the trail of blood, but it’s harder when I get to all his scruff. I unfold the swab, rearrange the first-aid kit in my lap, and get serious about cleaning him up. If I focus on this, then my mind will stop jumping back to frightening images of him ripping Davy apart like a wild beast. He leans his head back against the seat and closes his eyes.
“Porter?”
“Mmm?”
“Remember that time you saw Davy talking to me outside the vintage clothing store on the boardwalk?”
“Yeah.”
“He didn’t know I was listening, but I saw him come in the store and ask the girl at the counter, Julie, to help him out because he was going down to Monterey and needed something.”
Porter’s eyes fly open. “What? That’s not what he told me.”
“He was lying. And when he was talking to her inside the store, she said, ‘I thought you were chipping.’ And he told her that he was, but he just needed something for today, and that he promised it was only once, and she said she’d try to help him.”
“I knew it.” Porter hits the steering wheel.
I put a hand on his arm. He’s going to reopen the gash on his cheek if he’s not careful, and I haven’t even gotten to clean it yet. “What’s chipping?”
“He’s such an embarrassment.”
“Yeah, get that. Just tell me. Girl with the alcohol, remember? If you don’t tell me, I will make you burn.”
A sigh gusts out of his chest as he sinks into the seat, lazily propping one knee against the dash between us, making my knees press against his leg. I absently wonder if he did that on purpose—he’s always closer than I’m comfortable being—but he’s baring his cheek for me now, so I get back to work while he talks.
“Davy jacked up his leg surfing somewhere he shouldn’t have been surfing three years ago. He wasn’t watching the weather, and he took a risk. He had two surgeries. When the oxycodone prescriptions ran out, he started buying it from a kid at school. And when that ran out, he started looking for anything else—vodka, coke . . . but nothing kills the pain quite like opiates. And what’s a better opiate than heroin?”
My hand stills. “Please tell me you’re joking.”
“It’s surfing’s dirty little secret.”
“Like, shooting up?”
“As far as I know, he smokes it, but I’m not really around when he’s doing it. I’m just going by what I’ve heard, and I’ve never seen any needle marks. That really, really stings, Bailey.”
“I’m sorry. You probably need stitches. It’s bleeding a little again.” I push his hair back and see a nasty bump on his temple. He’s lucky that chair didn’t smash any bones in his face. I’m not entirely convinced it didn’t, actually.
He winces. “Keep cleaning it, just be kind. Anyway, ‘chipping’ is something people do when they think they can outsmart heroin. They do just enough to get high for a weekend, or whatever, but don’t allow themselves to have any more until the next weekend—cold turkey all week, so they don’t go through withdrawals. If they aren’t addicted, they’re in charge, right?”
“That doesn’t sound like it would work so well,” I say.
“It doesn’t. Because there’s always that one holiday weekend that turns into three days, or they’re having a bad week and need to blow off steam on a Wednesday. And before they know it, they’re backsliding, and their conservative plan is busted. They’re lying to themselves, thinking that they’ve got it under control. Like Philip Seymour Hoffman. People say that’s what killed him.”
I’m stunned. I know Wanda said Davy was into serious narcotics, but heroin? That sounds like something out of a movie. It doesn’t happen in real life. Not to people my age, anyway. “Does this hurt?” I ask, lightly dabbing antibiotic ointment on his wound. It looks like a crevice in a dry desert, red and angry, cracked open.
“Nothing hurts when you’re touching me,” he says in a faraway voice.