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"You're Casey McCall?" Dan asked, looking the guy over. He was tall, probably six feet, with light brown, over-styled hair and very little taste in clothing. He wore a dark blue flannel button-down over a black t-shirt, and jeans that looked like they'd lost a paint fight.
"Yeah," he said, returning the examination. "And you would be...?"
Dan stuck out his hand. "Dan Rydell. I called about your ad, left a message on the machine?"
"Yeah, okay. Nice to meet you." Casey's grip was warm and his brown eyes were friendly. "I had my machine call your machine back."
"Don't get any ideas," Dan warned seriously. "Mine's a Bell South. Utter tramp. She'll break the heart of anything less than a Sony."
For a split second, Casey just looked at Dan, and Dan could almost see the contrails forming as the joke sped over his head. Casey didn't even blink. In the bottom half of that second, his expression grew more serious. Anguished, even.
"It wouldn't be the first time," he intoned mournfully. "Mine drinks."
Some of the tension eased out of the muscles in Dan's neck. He stepped through the door into the apartment he was thinking about moving into. His first and second semesters at SMU -- the parts he'd been around for, anyway -- he'd lived in an on-campus residence hall. Nine months of that had been more than enough to convince Dan he wasn't cut out for dorm life. Too many kids, too much noise, too many chemical methods of altering one's consciousness. Mostly, the dorm was just a little bit too much like high school.
The unit wasn't bad, as outdoor-entry apartments went. It still felt weird to be able to walk right up to a door and through it into somebody's living room. Dan was used to doormen in tasteful uniforms, security cameras and long hallways. He was used to elevators with mirrored doors. At the very bottom of things, Dan was used to the City.
He shoved his hands into his pockets because he couldn't think of anything else to do with them, and tried not to feel horribly exposed. At least he was indoors. He didn't care how long he stayed in Texas, he was never going to get used to seeing that much sky. It wasn't decent. Most of the time he felt in imminent danger of falling off the planet.
"Nice place," he said, looking first at the walls. There were a couple of utterly predictable prints that looked like they'd been ripped out of a calendar and framed. He recognized Van Gogh's Starry Night, an Escher he'd never seen before, and something that looked like Bosch, only with more ick and less edge. All of it went perfectly with the artificially eclectic, modular furniture, the high-tech entertainment center, and the low-tech, knock-off oriental rug. "Your girlfriend do the decorating?" he asked.
Casey grinned widely, examining the walls himself like he'd never paid attention to them before. "Yeah," he said. "She did all of it, top to --" the sweep of his eyes ended up on Dan's face. He paused. "You didn't mean that as a compliment, did you," he said.
Dan grinned without looking at Casey and went into the kitchen without asking permission. Definitely a woman's touch; the dish towels were dark green and matched the oven mitts hanging decoratively near the sink. There was a Braun coffee maker next to a Braun coffee mill, both white.
Oh, yeah. This guy was owned.
"You don't have a dishwasher," Dan called over his shoulder.
"Contrary to popular belief," Casey said right behind him, "Palmolive does not actually sap one's manhood."
Dan glanced back over his shoulder to meet a grin that invited him to share it. "That's not what I'm afraid of," Dan said.
"What are you afraid of?"
"I'm afraid it'll put hair on my chest."
"That's possible," Casey said. His eyes widened, and he grinned. "That would explain Madge. You want to see your room?"
Score. Dan raised his eyebrows. "'My' room?" he said, tilting the statement into a question.
"Your prospective room," Casey corrected. "The room I mentioned in the ad."
"With all the windows."
"And the walk-in closet."
"I should tell you, the windows are not a selling point. I fear the light of day."
"We'll hang curtains," Casey said easily. "Do you fear curtains?"
"No. But mini-blinds give me hives."
Nodding with much more gravity than was warranted, Casey lowered his voice. "I believe mini-blinds are the work of the devil."
"Then we should get along fine."
For a minute Dan just looked at him. There was the overall niceness of the apartment on one hand and the fact that he actually liked this guy on the other. There wasn't a lot of room for liking people in Dan's schedule for the next few years. There wasn't really a lot of room for noticing people at all. The last thing Dan needed was to move in with a guy who'd make him get involved.
Still. It was a fairly nice apartment.
"So," Casey said. He grinned, and Dan smiled back in spite of his best intentions. "You want to see your room?"
Dan shook his head. "Not today. I'm sold, and I've got a class in fifteen minutes."
"You're going to be late."
"It's kind of expected," Dan said. "You want to have the money conversation now?"
Casey spread his hands wide. "Half the rent, half the utilities. Common areas stay clean, you do what you want with your room. Any wild, drunken revels--"
"Unlikely."
"--I have to be invited. And there's a Cowboys game tomorrow night, if you're up for it."
"I'm actually kind of a Niner's fan."
Casey's eyebrows went up. "And yet you're here."
"I'm trained to defend myself."
"Cool," Casey said. "You bring the beer."
Dan nodded in a way completely devoid of any sense of commitment. He could just look at it as a gesture. Housewarming, that kind of thing. Watching a game together didn't make you buddies. It just made you sports fans.
"You said you were in the business program," Dan said. "Graduate?"
Casey looked away quickly. "Yes," he said. "The espresso version." He looked abruptly dimmer, less 'on' than he'd been before. His shoulders sagged a little; the guy actually lost some height.
Dan whistled. "One year. That's tough."
"That's -- not the word I would've chosen."
Casey still wasn't looking at him. Dan wasn't sure why that should bother him, but it did. He squared his own shoulders and stopped looking at Casey so that they were both not looking at each other, and an appropriate distance could be maintained. "Okay. Whatever," Dan said, nodding. "Just so you know. I'm in my second year as an undergrad --"
"You said that on the machine."
"--but I'm a serious student. I'm not here for drunken revels and I'm not here to make friends."
"Hey, seriously, you can have your friends over. It's not a problem. I plan to have my girlfriend -- fiancée, actually, at this point -- over a couple of nights a week. And I'll be over at her place some nights."
"Seriously," Dan said, holding Casey's eyes with his. "I won't be having any friends over. I'm not here to make friends."
"Okay, that's cool too."
Dan nodded again, then laid out the rest of it. "I'm not here to make friends, either," he said. "I'm looking for a roof, not somebody to grow old with."
Casey looked thoughtful, but he held up both his hands, palms out. "Hey," he said quietly. "You pay your bills on time, I'll nail your room shut and slip notes under the door. If that's the way you want it..."
"That's the way I want it," Dan said bluntly. "You do that, and I'll return the favor."
"Minus the nails, please," Casey said. "I like the whole apartment."
Watching the game with Casey had been a tactical error. Dan had known that from the start. It had been a great game, the Niner's had ruled the field, the receiver had been practically telepathic. There'd been beer and peanuts and an awful lot of yelling. It was cathartic, in a testosterone-intensive kind of way. They missed the kickoff trying to get a distinctly non-Euclidean easy chair through a geometrically conservative doorway, then lost two minutes of the first quarter deciding who to blame.
That was the good part.
The bad part was, now Casey thought they were bonding. Thought they had bonded to be exact, thought they had formed some sort of emotional connection that gave Casey the right to knock on Dan's door whenever the hell he wanted to. And in Dan's expert opinion on the topic, Casey wanted to knock on his door way too damn often, thanks very much.
"I appreciate the gesture," Dan said. The face poked through his door was smiling in a way that was friendly and not nearly resigned enough. "But."
"But you're not going," Casey finished for him.
"I'm not going."
"It'll be fun. You'll have a great time, Danny. You'll meet people, you'll have some laughs, you'll wonder why you ever didn't want to go to this party. You'll finally get to meet Lisa. And Lisa's friend. I really think you're going to like Lisa's friend."
"I think you mean well, Casey, and I think everything you just said would be true except for one thing."
"Which is?"
"That I'm not going."
Dan moved to shut the door to his bedroom. Casey stuck his foot in the way. Looking up, Dan blinked several times. He couldn't believe the man actually had his foot in the door. Nobody really did that. It only happened on TV. Dan was of the very firm opinion that Casey watched far too much TV, and that it was affecting him in extremely negative ways. This was just further evidence of the erosion of Casey's ability to tell fantasy from reality.
"You're going," Casey said. "Get your coat."
"Are you listening in another language? I think I just told you I wasn't going. And then you put your foot in my door. Any other guy would've shut the door anyway, breaking said foot in the process. And yet I haven't. What does this tell you?"
"That you really do want to go to the party."
"No. What it should tell you is that I really don't want to go to the party, but I've decided you're annoying me for philanthropic purposes. Should I insist again that I don't want to go and should you then continue to annoy me, I'll have to review that decision."
"Are you the only one who makes decisions in this world?"
"In some of my better fantasies, yes."
"I've made a decision too, Danny."
"I hope it has something to do with not calling me Danny any more."
Casey shook his head. His smile was less funny now. Still warm, but disturbingly intense, unpleasantly intense if Dan were honest with himself. It was a smile that made him want to press himself up against the headboard of his bed and pull the covers up over him.
Dan's sparkling wit deserted him, and for a long moment of silence neither of them said anything and the air in the room got far too heavy to breathe. He felt he should be saying something, he felt like it was a moment that called for an incisive comment that would cut the tension between them and get things back on an even keel.
He didn't have anything in the line of incisive close at hand, and Casey solved the problem anyway by talking as soon as Dan opened his mouth.
"It's time," Casey said. He had his eyes on Dan like searchlights.
"Casey."
"I'm not kidding, Dan. You've got to get out of the house. Class, home. Class, home. Day after day. I'm seeing some serious warping of your social skills."
"I never had any social skills to start with."
"And now you have warped ones. See what I mean? It's definitely time for you to come to this party with me."
Clutching at a flimsy last straw, Dan said, "You're just scared to go by yourself."
"I'm completely scared to go by myself, but that's not why you need to come with me."
The straw broke. Dan had a feeling that was the last straw he was going to see for quite some time. He sighed, and it felt like he was expelling air that had been in his lungs for --
About a year. About exactly almost one year. He took another breath to replace it, and when he let this one out, words came with it. "Okay," he said, and Casey grinned. Some predators can sense the fear of their prey; just like that it seemed Casey McCall could sense victory. "Why do I need to come with you?"
"Because it's time." Casey pushed the door all the way open and leaned into the frame.
"It's not time."
"It's absolutely time."
Dan sighed again. "I'm not changing my clothes."
Danny was having a rotten time. His jacket itched, his neck was sweating, and Cocoon was playing on cable right before a pretty good game. All of Casey's promises were nothing but dust in the wind. Painful, stinging dust, the kind that gets in your hair on the beach and continues to fall out of it for exactly sixteen days thereafter. He almost said something about how miserable he was, but decided words couldn't encompass it and settled for a dark glare, directed mainly at his shoes.
Casey ignored him, and rang the doorbell.
"I'm having a really rotten time," Dan told his feet.
"Shut up," Casey said. "You're having a great time. You're just mixed up because you don't remember what having a great time feels like."
"I remember it feeling almost exactly opposite to the way I'm feeling right now."
"Did I tell you Lisa has a friend?"
Dan redirected the glare. Casey's eyes were wide with carefully constructed innocence. "Did I tell you that if you even look like trying to fix me up I'm going to steal your car and head for the coast for the weekend?"
"I'd never try to fix you up," Casey assured him.
"Oh, I believe you, Casey, I do."
Casey sighed, looked up at the sky, and rang the bell again.
There were any number of bad things Dan could see happening over the course of an evening spent with Casey's girlfriend's crowd. He could feel those things hovering around him. He was pretty sure they were laughing in maleficent glee. None of them, however, topped the very worst thing that happened that night -- which was that as soon as Casey rang the bell that time, somebody answered it.
Somebody blonde and fast. In a pastel sweater. Blue, he thought, but the human eye doesn't track color well at those speeds.
She was kind of petite. She hit Casey at about chest-level and changed direction, latching onto his mouth with hers. The momentum flattened her out against Casey, which was followed immediately with extremely leech-like behavior. Dan could see she had a ponytail, a narrow waist, a nice ass, and absolutely no shame whatsoever. Forget stripping down; she was trying to climb into Casey's clothes.
Casey didn't seem to be complaining, which meant either the woman was Lisa or Casey was possessed of unforeseen depths of duplicity. Dan was banking on the former.
He waited. He peered in through the door, but the interior of the house was dark. The music coming out wasn't really his kind of thing. He looked at his shoes, waited some more. Thought about whistling, just to pass the time.
"Have you guys seen Aliens, by any chance?" he asked after counting off a full minute.
Casey started to show signs of struggling.
"Uh...Lisa..." he said, disentangling himself with difficulty. She pouted up at him when he got her detached; Dan noted that she was quite beautiful at the same time he noted that her hair and make up hadn't suffered from the clinch at all.
"Lisa Barrett," she said smoothly, taking a step toward Dan and holding out her hand. She smiled in a way that immediately put Dan on edge.
"Lisa, this is Dan," Casey said. Dan glanced over at him, a quick acknowledgement of the introduction and its utter lameness.
"Dan Rydell," he added, taking her hand. "I'm Casey's new room mate."
Lisa's eyes snapped over to Casey instantly, and her lips relaxed out of the plastic smile into something tight and angry. "Are you," she said, not taking her eyes off Casey.
"Lisa," Casey said. "Listen, I was going to tell you about it as soon as Dan got settled in."
"I was under the impression we'd come to a decision here," she said softly.
"We talked about it, we discussed it, but in the end it came down to finances. I needed help or I'd lose the place. Come on, you knew that. Let's not talk about it now--"
"I have a better idea," Lisa said. "Let's not talk." She turned back to Dan and ran her eyes up and down his body. He felt like a bug in a display case. "Casey's a serious student," she continued in that same soft, sweet voice. "He's in a tough program."
Dan looked from Casey's misery to Lisa's anger, and frowned. "Casey and I discussed that before I moved in," he said calmly. "I don't think he's going to let anyone interfere with his academic career."
"What exactly is that supposed to mean?" she said, taking a step closer. She was tiny, but Dan still wanted to back away from her. She was putting out vibes that made his teeth itch.
He raised his hands, eyebrows going up. "I just think he's an extremely dedicated guy," Dan lied. "He knows where he's going and he's not going to let anybody slow him down."
"Are you even a graduate student?"
"No," Dan snapped. "But I am housetrained and I don't run with scissors."
"Small favors," she shot back.
"Lisa." Casey stepped between them, facing her; Dan had to take a step back, and did so without even thinking about it.
She looked at Casey. Her eyes were very big. "You could've talked to me about this," she said in low, unhappy voice.
"We did talk," he said. "I made a decision, and that's the way it's going to be. Dan's cool. You're gonna like him, Leese." He put a hand on her cheek. Dan felt like recoiling in sympathy. "He's a friend."
"Your friend," she said.
"Our friend. Let's just chill, okay, and go inside for a while. You've got guests."
That was the magic word. The transformation was instantaneous. Her smile came back, her eyes cleared, and her voice resumed its natural register. "Of course," she said. "I'm really sorry, I'm just so tense before a party. I don't know why I'm so edgy."
She gave Dan a brilliant smile. He smiled back, or at least tensed the right muscles for it. She nodded, took a breath, and headed back into the house. She departed with the air of someone who would return with large automatic weapons and other tools of wanton destruction. The silence she left behind had a quality of morbid anticipation about it.
"Oh, yeah," Dan said on a long, tired breath. "I'm having a great time."
Casey stuck his hands in his pocket and avoided Dan's eyes. "Sorry," he said quietly.
"Yeah," Dan said. He put a hand on Casey's shoulder and steered him through the door.
The inside was as dark as it had looked from the outside, and Dan instantly recognized several things about Lisa's party: There was too much French perfume in attendance relative to the area of human skin it covered; smoking was apparently mandatory; and there were drugs in use, just about everywhere around him.
It wasn't a smell he was ever going to forget. The small hairs at the back of his neck tingled as they stood on end. His concerns shifted from how long he had to stay for the sake of politeness to how quickly he could get out without breaking anything Pier 1 might not take back.
He and Casey stood side by side in the short entry hallway. Somewhere deeper in, music was blaring; it sounded like Joan Jett, if she were from El Paso and in a lot of pain.
"Lots of people," Casey said. He didn't look at Dan, but Dan was looking at him. It occurred to him that he really didn't know Casey very well for all that they'd been living together for two weeks. He didn't know if this was the kind of party Casey liked, or if getting high was the kind of thing Casey liked, or if maybe Casey wanted out as bad as Dan did. An hour ago he wouldn't have thought Lisa would be the kind of girl Casey liked. It'd been a pretty instructive hour.
"Yeah," Dan said. "Lots of people."
He would've said more -- he was finding he maybe had quite a bit to say -- but Lisa materialized beside them like a modern Barbara Eden and latched lacquered fingertips over Casey's wrist. "Come on," she said, and pulled, and on his way Casey managed to grab Dan and they were both officially members of the revel.
It was the place where wicker went to die. The Heaven of wicker, the place all wicker dreamed of. Pastel was apparently part of the religion. Pastel and beige.
Lisa pulled Casey down onto a couch and Casey pulled Dan with him. The overstressed frame creaked alarmingly, but held. The music was louder here, and if possible, even more offensive to hearing unimpaired.
"You have a lot of deaf friends, Lisa?" Dan shouted over the noise.
"What? No!"
Casey shouted, "Wait a few years!" and Dan laughed.
Lisa didn't.
People were dancing on the far side of the room, close together and far too slow for the song that was playing, wrapped around each other like really affectionate blankets. The love seat next to the wall was occupied by a similarly entwined group, but it looked like there were three of them. Smoke hovered at eye-level in a thick haze, and nobody seemed to be talking. There was noise coming from the kitchen, a lot of it, but Dan couldn't make out any words.
Five minutes, he decided. Five minutes, and he'd walk back if Casey wouldn't come with him.
Beside him, Casey leaned over and said something to Lisa that Dan couldn't make out. It made her laugh, whatever it was, and it made her slide her hand over Casey's lap and nudge Dan's knee.
"Got somebody I want you to meet," she said. Dan read her lips and yanked back out of reach.
"Casey, I told you --"
"She's cool, Danny," Casey said into his ear. Proximity won over the stereo that time. "You'll like her."
"I'm leaving."
"You're not leaving."
"Oh, I beg to differ." Dan stood up, and shook Casey's hand off his arm. Five minutes was too long to stick around for this. The sweet, sticky smell of marijuana was overwhelming, like maybe somebody was burning the stuff for incense. A year ago Dan could've gotten behind that. Not today.
He almost made it to the door. Casey was behind him, so maybe he could talk him out of the keys to his car when they got outside. His fingers were on the handle when a hand came down on his shoulder that didn't belong to Casey and he had a full length of Lisa pressed up against him, breathing smoky breath into his face.
"This is Dana," she said, and hauled another girl up close and personal.
She was as tiny as Lisa, with longish blonde hair and, like Lisa, just a little too much war paint. It was like looking at twin Barbies, only Dana was playing the role of Distinctly Uncomfortable Barbie for this tea party. Her eyes refused to meet Dan's and she was fidgeting, pushing hair behind her ears that was already back there to begin with.
She was pretty. Not so pretty as Lisa, maybe, but Dan suspected Lisa was from another planet.
"Hi," Dan said. "I was just leaving."
"Hey, Dana. His name's Danny, and he's not leaving." Casey reached out and ruffled her hair, grinning widely. She glared up at him and swatted his arm, but she didn't say anything and she didn't move out of his reach. After a second, she smiled back at him -- kind of a sad smile, Dan thought. Her eyes weren't in it.
"Dan," Dan said.
"Hi, Dan." Dana stretched out her hand and Dan took it in his. He was a little surprised by the strength of her grip, and he smiled at her. When she smiled back, it wasn't the sad smile she'd given Casey.
"Dan and Dana," Lisa said brightly. "Isn't that sweet?"
Casey rolled his eyes and made a disgusted sound, which got him smacked in the arm by Lisa. Guy was taking a lot of abuse tonight, and he didn't look all that surprised by it. Dan pulled Dana closer, turning a handshake into holding hands. "I think we're going to have to get married."
"There's a chapel next to the Union," Dana said, "but I don't have anything to wear."
Dan squeezed her hand, and smiled back at her. Five minutes, right? Five minutes might not be so bad.
The four of them went to the kitchen, which was blue to an extreme the sky would weep for. Tile counters and wood cabinets and linoleum tile on the floor, all of it the color of Lisa's eyes. It was not, Dan decided, a coincidence.
He didn't turn down the beer Lisa offered him. It was cold and bitter and smooth. The bottle in his hands was wet, fresh from an ice chest on the floor beside the fridge. The room was past its capacity by about ten people, which left the four of them pressed together against the sink in a space that could've comfortably held two.
He was pretty thoroughly miserable, but Dana was kind of cute and besides, she looked about as thrilled to be there as he was. Her eyes had this endearing habit of ending up on Casey's face, which told Dan the way things were going in her head and helped him loosen up a little. He was doing fine until Lisa passed him a beer for Dana and then passed him something else right after.
He held it in his fingertips by the end that wasn't lit. He looked at it for half a second before handing it right back. "No, thanks," he said. He brushed his hands off on the legs of his jeans; they were damp.
He looked straight ahead and waited for it, because he knew it was coming, because he'd played her part himself.
"Come on, Dan," Lisa said. "Lighten up a little. It's a party."
"I'm light," he said. "I'm air. I've lost three pounds since last week."
She shifted her baby blues to Casey and grinned. "You brought a narc to my party, Case?"
"Lay off, Leese."
Dan watched her curiously. For about a second, it looked like she might actually do it. It was only when she looked at him that her eyes went nasty and her smile came up to match it, and it was only then that Dan realized five minutes was a long time after all, and those minutes were up.
"I have an early class in the morning," he said. He still had Dana's hand, so he squeezed it again and tried to smile at her like a normal guy. His heart was pounding and his face was starting to sweat, and it wasn't even warm in the kitchen. "I'm gonna go. Is that okay with you?"
"Sure, Dan," she said. Her eyebrows pulled together and there was a vertical crease right between them that said she was worried. That was really sweet, she'd known him five minutes and she was worried. Unless maybe she was just worried he was going to freak out while he still had hold of her hand, which wasn't that sweet but was somewhat more rational than altruistic concern at that point.
He let go of her and took a step back, but it wasn't far enough.
"Come on, Dan," Lisa said. She held out the joint again, smiling brightly and ignoring Casey, who was trying to get her attention. "Don't tell me you've never done it before."
Some predators can sense the fear of their prey, Dan thought for the second time in as many hours.
"Not tonight," he said. And glancing up at Casey, whose face had arranged itself into a perfect mask of helpless misery, he forced out another word. "Thanks."
"Jesus, Casey, he's just a kid," she said.
There was a moment there, when she was lowering her hand and starting to turn away, when Dan could've let it go. He would've let it go, if it hadn't been that she was right, that to her and Casey and Dana he probably was just a kid, as much of a kid as Sam had been to him, and when that thought crossed his mind he reached up and stopped her wrist on its downward arc and was very, very careful not to squeeze.
"You're right," he said. "I am just a kid. I'm only twenty, and I'm not the youngest kid at this party, and I'll tell you another thing, Lisa. There's no fucking way I'm going to stand here and let other kids watch me get pressured into getting high by a law student with fake nails and fake prints on her walls."
His voice was rising. He didn't care. Casey was moving between him and Lisa now but he didn't care about that either. He just stepped a little to the side and kept hold of her wrist and kept talking. "I said no," he said. "I said no three times. You pick one of those times and you listen to it, Lisa, because if you ask me again I'm leaving here and while I'm not a narc on general principles, I'll be tempted to do it just because you're pissing me off."
He let go of her wrist. Her eyes were big as dinner plates. "Now," he said. "Is this conversation over? 'Cause I have an early class."
Nobody said anything. Nobody in the entire room was saying anything.
He looked over at Casey and gave him half a smile. "I'm leaving," he said. "I'll catch you guys tomorrow."
He went for the door to the hallway, and for the second time that night he got stopped just as freedom was within reach. Lisa again, and Casey right behind her with a look on his face Dan didn't want to mess with.
"Dan," she said. "Listen. I'm sorry."
She was pale under the make-up, and her hand was tight on his. "I'm not going to call anybody, Lisa," he said.
"I know. I'm still sorry."
He looked at her, then looked over at Casey. "I'm still leaving," he said, and pulled his hand away from Lisa's. "This party kind of sucks."
"Casey," Lisa said, "I said I was --"
"Shut up, Leese." Casey nodded at Dan, and put a hand on his shoulder. "Wait in the car," he said. "I'll catch up."
He only made it a block when Casey's Toyota pulled up alongside him. It was a warm night, lots of stars and not a lot of noise out on the streets. Casey leaned across the passenger seat and pushed the door open without a word; Dan got in, put on his seat belt, and leaned back against the headrest.
"You were supposed to wait up," Casey said, pulling away from the curb.
"I did wait up."
"Waiting up means waiting. You were walking home."
"You caught up, didn't you?" Dan said. "I was waiting and walking at the same time."
"Nice night for it," Casey said.
"It's supposed to get cold later."
Casey drove. His hands were loose on the wheel, and it occurred to Dan that he knew Casey liked to drive. It wasn't much, but it was a thing he knew. When they passed the turn-off to their own apartment building, Dan sank a little lower in his seat.
"I told you it wasn't time," he said.
Casey didn't say anything. They got farther away from campus, then farther away from the city, and still Casey didn't say anything. A few miles past the city limits Casey took a right, and then a left onto a road that wasn't meant for Toyotas.
Dan started to feel just the slightest bit claustrophobic. "Look," he said. "I'm sorry I yelled at your girlfriend."
"She's not my girlfriend," Casey said. "She's my fiancée."
"I'm sorry I yelled at your fiancée. I'll apologize tomorrow."
"Shut up," Casey said, and kept driving.
The road was just a suggestion by the time the car rolled to a stop. Casey shut off the ignition and got out of the car. "Come on, " he said. "It's not like we've got all night. You've got an early class."
"I don't have classes on Saturdays," Dan said. He climbed out and walked around the car.
"Nobody has classes on Saturdays, Danny. The university doesn't offer classes on Saturdays."
"You think they saw through my clever cover story?"
"I think your clever cover story sucks."
Out here, Dan figured he could see just about every star there ever was. He was kind of impressed by the view, if not the locale. They were parked in the center of a circle made of gravel, and there was a tall cylindrical building off to one side, a dark shape against the trees and sky. The gravel was white, and it looked like the ground was glowing. The air smelled like trees and gasoline. It was like Central Park, without the criminal element.
He hoped.
Casey climbed up onto the hood of his car and lay back against the windshield. He looked like he was there to stay.
"Is this going to take long?" Dan asked.
"Depends."
"What does it depend on?"
"It depends," Casey said, "on how long it takes you to say whatever it is we came out here for you to say."
"I wasn't the one who brought us out here."
"Sure you were."
"Are you medicated in some way?"
"Danny?" Casey turned his head without lifting it. Dan could barely see him, just shadows where his eyes were.
"Yeah?"
Casey's voice was annoyingly kind. "You don't have to apologize to Lisa."
Dan looked at Casey, and looked up at the sky. It was way quiet out here if you didn't count the crickets, and Dan didn't. He was a city boy.
He wanted to talk to Casey, with a quick and hard longing he didn't understand. He wanted to say things he hadn't said to anybody before, but in the back of his head he heard his dad's voice, rough and strong.
Men don't talk.
He swallowed back the first words that came to him and walked around to the other side of the hood. "Can I sit?"
"Sure."
Casey scooted over to make room. Dan slid onto the hood and leaned back. The view was amazing in that way Dan only thought special effects could achieve. He didn't say anything, and didn't say anything, until he opened his mouth and said, "This is way cooler than a planetarium," just to get rid of the silence.
"On Planet Texas, we call this nature."
Dan grinned in the darkness. "I like it. You should sell tickets."
Casey didn't laugh. He did turn his head, though, and look at Dan, and now Dan could actually see his eyes. They were patient and intensely curious at the same time, like he thought Dan might turn into something interesting but was willing to wait for it if he had to. "Danny, is this going to take long?"
It was starting to look like it might.
The plan was to get away from home and every place that reminded him of stuff he didn't want to think about. He wanted to get away from the curious looks and the pity and the pressure to get himself into therapy. Mostly he wanted to get away from his friends, who weren't any good for him, and his family, who weren't any good for each other.
Funny how he'd run all the way from New York City to Dallas, Texas, and still ended up getting his head shrunk. On the bright side, Casey wasn't charging four hundred dollars an hour.
"I had a brother," Dan said. The past tense hurt coming out, and his eyes ached when he said it. The voice of his father got quiet as soon as the words were out. "His name was Sam. He died."
Casey turned his head; Dan could feel the eyes on him, but he couldn't face whatever he'd see if he looked back. After a few seconds, Casey turned away. "When?" he said simply, his voice even and calm.
"Last year."
"Jesus, Danny."
"It was my fault. Don't -- say anything."
Silence from the other side of the hood. The wind was getting colder and Dan didn't have a jacket. He wasn't supposed to need one in Texas.
"It was my fault," Dan said again. "I was heavy into drinking and getting high when I was in high school. Sam kind of followed in my footsteps. I left for college and spent my first semester setting a bad example for everybody who gave a damn about me. Sam got his driver's license on his birthday."
Casey winced. "An accident?"
"He ran a red light at the wrong time."
"He was high?"
Dan sat up and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. "He was in orbit."
"Jesus."
There was a pain in Dan's throat that was halfway pressure. It grew until he could hardly stand it, but he swallowed it back and eventually, like always, it went away. Dan climbed off the hood of the car and into the passenger side and waited. After a minute, Casey joined him. He didn't start the car. They sat there in the dark for a long time without saying anything. Dan listened to himself breathe and listened to the engine tick slowly as it cooled down and wished he were home.
"Don't say anything, Case," Dan said.
Casey nodded. "Put on your seat belt."
Dan did. Casey started the engine, and started them back toward town. The path became a trail and then a dirt road, and finally they found their way onto asphalt.
Halfway back to town, Casey said, "I'm sorry about Lisa." He didn't take his eyes off the road, and his knuckles were white where they gripped the wheel. "She was out of line."
"I wouldn't have thought that was your kind of thing."
Casey threw him an annoyed glance. "It's not my kind of thing. It's not even Lisa's kind of thing. She just did it to get under your skin."
"She invited twenty people to her house to get drunk and smoke pot because she thought maybe it would get under the skin of a guy she didn't know existed until tonight? When's she due back at Witch Mountain?"
"They're her friends, Dan. What's she supposed to do, throw them out?"
"For a start, she could try having better friends," Dan said. "Of course, failing that, she could just refrain from forcing their drugs onto people who might not be strong enough to handle saying no. It's not right, Casey, and you know it."
"Look, you don't know anything about what I know, okay?"
"Maybe not," Dan said. He looked out his window and shut up. Maybe not.
Casey shook his head. When he was angry, his face tightened up, turned into a wall. Dan could respect that. He felt colder, but maybe feeling cold wasn't a bad thing. He was expecting something utterly different, he was braced for it, when Casey said, "I like you, Danny."
Dan blinked. And recovered, beautifully. He was in practice. "Everybody does," he said. "I've got a talent."
"I mean it. I do. But I'm going to be marrying Lisa and she's going to be around a lot. Can you handle that?"
"She's a vampire. You know that, don't you? I don't want to burst your bubble or anything, Case, but one of these nights you're going to wake up and find her drinking your blood."
Casey didn't react to that at first. He just kept driving. Maybe his breathing got a little faster, maybe his mouth turned down a little at the corners; it was dark in the car, and the orange lights from the dashboard cast weird shadows on Casey's face. Dan couldn't say for sure; he just had a feeling he'd drawn some blood of his own. If it had been physically possible, he would've kicked himself in the teeth. As it was, he was thinking about outsourcing the job.
Dan looked out of his window at the shoulder of the road sliding by, faster and faster. "I think I get a flag on that," he said. "Sorry, Case."
The plastic went out of Casey's skin, and he nodded once, never looking at Dan. "She's had a rough year. And I honestly don't give a shit what you think of her. You don't have to come to the wedding."
"I'll come," Dan said. "But I won't wear white."
Casey pulled the car over to the side of the road and stopped so fast gravel flew. "Could you maybe just cut the bullshit for a second and have a conversation with me here?" He looked at Dan and it was like nothing Dan put between them had any substance or color; it was all transparent as glass, thin as air. "I like you, Dan, and I would really appreciate it if you'd quit acting like some kind of Stepford Sophomore for a minute and talk to me like a human being."
"This is the way I talk."
"It's the way you keep from talking."
"Usually it's the way I keep other people from talking."
"I don't care," Casey said. "Cut it out."
Dan swallowed hard. His chest felt tight and hot. "I don't think I can."
"You're going to have to if this is going to work," Casey said.
And Dan nodded. Because he knew that, he really knew that, and more than that -- he really did want this to work. He liked Casey, and it was still a really nice apartment and maybe he'd come here to make friends after all. Maybe he just didn't know it.
Across the gear shift from him, Casey had started grinning.
"What are you so psyched about?" Dan demanded.
"Us being friends," Casey said. "What are you so psyched about?"
Dan took a deep breath, and felt a little bit light-headed. "I guess I'm pretty psyched about us being friends."
"I know it's not what you came here for, but geez, Danny. You really need one."
Dan laughed. He put his head against the headrest and stretched his throat out and laughed and felt better. "You think you could do something for me?" he said a few seconds later.
"What?"
"You think you could not call me Danny so much?"
"Does it have some disturbing inner meaning for you that I'm not currently aware of?"
"No," Dan said. "It just makes me feel like I still have zits and braces."
Casey grinned. "In that case," he said, "No. I don't think I could do that for you." He started the car, not looking at Dan, but Dan could see his smile reflected in the windshield.
"I'll lay off Lisa," Dan said. His voice ached in his throat. "If that's the way you want it."
"That's the way I want it."
So that was rule number one. Dan nodded. Boundaries were good things. "I don't...really like to talk about Sam."
Casey signaled and pulled out onto the highway. "We won't."
"And no more parties. I'm not budging on that, Case. I can't stand country music."
The headlights cut through the darkness and lit up the road ahead. Casey flipped on the high beams, and pushed the car into fifth gear. "Dana's kind of nice, don't you think?" he said.
"Don't you think seventy's a little fast for a two-lane blacktop?"
"You only met her for five minutes and she said you were really nice. Do you have any idea how many people there are in the world Dana Whitaker doesn't like?"
"One less than there was this morning?"
"Exactly one less," Casey said. "I have her number, if you want to call her."
"She wants you to call her, Casey. Not me."
"Dana? You think?" Casey grinned, like he liked that idea, and pushed the speedometer up to eighty.
Dan tilted his seat back. He was tired, he'd had half a beer, and the buzz was fading into a quiet, easy exhaustion. "Case?" he said.
"Yeah?"
"No more stops, okay? Let's go home."
"Cool," Casey said. "I think there's a game on."
"You think we can make the kickoff?"
For just a second, Casey looked over at him and Dan felt something click, so solid and real he almost heard it. He felt hooked in, and for the first time in a very long time, that felt good.
When Casey turned back to the road, he was grinning. "I think we already did that," he said. "Don't you?"