Peter and I came back from Ortega one Friday night at the end of March to find a message from R.J. on the machine, asking me to call him on his line at home. My roommate tossed his jacket on the bed and, with a perceptive nod, took off for Alex’s room to begin the all-night idiocy we’d been anticipating for days. I sat down on the bed and dialed the number that, until I’d moved out, had been mine all through high school, when Nadia and I would talk until 3 a.m. while R.J. was trying to sleep. He answered the phone after three rings, sounding relaxed.
“Hey Roy. What’s going on tonight?”
“Not much. Pete and I are just gonna stick around the dorms tonight. What’s up with you?”
“All kindsa things. Important shit, actually, so anything about Nadia can wai-”
“Nah,” I interrupt, “I’m gonna be okay about that.”
“Really? Well, okay, I guess. But hey- I told you I had to talk to the cops today, right?”
“Yeah,” I exhale, instantly bummed. “I’m due for it too. Gotta meet a detective from OC on Monday, but up here at the SB County Sherriff’s office.”
“Terrific. Nice April fool’s present, huh? Just tell him the truth, tell him what you told me, and you’ll be fine.”
“Tell her,” I corrected. “The detective’s name is Kelley.”
“No no, that’s his last name, Roy. Detective James Kelley. He’s pretty chill, believe it or not.”
“Oh, okay,” I said, a little thrown. “Real chill or fake chill?”
“Real, I guess. All he wanted to talk about was Liv’s party- who was there, when they left, stuff like that- and that was it. Didn’t give me any shit.”?
“Yeah, well, you’re not the one who blacked out and completely blanked on how he got from Dana Point to UCSB before sunrise the next day. That can’t look good. I’m still kinda freaking out over it.”
“Don’t worry, Roy. Just stay calm and tell the truth, or what you remember at least.”
“I can probably do without the nightmarish hallucination, though, right?”
“You’re still hung up on that? You’d better get over it, cause this guy Kelley ain’t stupid. I know it’s dumb to say ‘don’t look guilty,’ but just don’t, okay? Don’t give him any reason to peg you as unstable and confused or anything.”
“Um, okay,” I said, feeling suddenly unstable and confused, “but that’s all my life has been, R.J. Lately even more so, you know?”
“Yeah, I know- I was there too, remember? You’ve had worse, trust me.”
“Maybe so, but that Mexican skeleton shit was just as bad as anything that scared me as a kid.”
R.J. was silent for a few seconds before replying “I… kinda doubt that. You dealt with some pretty bizarre stuff back then.”
“How do you know that?” All I ever told him, as far as I knew, was admit that I had nightmares after he’d asked, out of nowhere, when we were kids. A knot began to grow in my stomach, the way it always did when I felt left out of things like inside jokes, or other bad experiences associated with the social leprosies of middle school, when the bad dreams had finally ended, but where my little brother had just now unceremoniously dumped me.
“Go on,” I said.
“Okay,” he replied, a little less sure of himself, “well, I saw the last nightmare you had, I think. I mean, the last one before I asked you about them and you admitted them.”
I didn’t say anything. I don’t usually do well in the face of astounding revelations.
“Yeah,” he continued, “the most I remember about it now is just being out in the living room, you know, late at night- you’d already gone to bed, and I was listening to the stero or something- and then I remember seeing you just sort of shuffling out of the bedroom with this faraway look in your eyes. You were walking really slow, and, like, mechanical, and you were mumbling something like ‘I need to find it.'”
I was floored. “What else?” I asked hoarsely.
“I asked you what you were doing, and you didn’t look at me, but said something about a bomb, and that you had to find it before it exploded. You weren’t making any sense at all, but you just kept walking right up to the front door, and then you opened it and went outside.”
“Holy shit, I was sleepwalking?”
“Yeah, I guess.” He sounded relieved that I’d kept up without exploding. Even so, my heart began to pound rapidly.
“I was totally terrified, Roy. Andrew was gone to some conference or other and, um, Mom was dead by them, so it was just us kids at home alone, like lots of times, but I didn’t know what to do, so I… I just followed you. I didn’t think I was supposed to wake you up, you know?” I heard that’s supposed to be the wrong thing to do, but I read later it was just the opposite. Anyway, I didn’t know it then, so all I did was try to steer you away from any trouble.”
“We went outside, and you did a few slow laps around the courtyard, still whispering that you had to find a bomb, that you had to defuse it. You opened the gate and, um, started down the driveway!” He half-laughed, half-sighed it, sounding both exasperated and scared all over again at the thought. “It was, like, 11:30 or something at night, okay, and I guess it was lucky for us that there wasn’t anyone on the street or driving around or anything, cause you kept on going, right across the street. You bent over one of the water meters, looked at it, then straightened up, and walked all the way to a mailbox three houses down.”
“Damn,” I whispered, appalled. “How in the world did I get back inside? How did I not hurt myself, or you?”
“I dunno Roy. We just got lucky. I kept prodding you every five seconds or so, to ‘try again later’ or something, and eventually you were okay with that and then you shuffled your way back home and into our room. It was fucking scary, man. I was terrified until I closed the bedroom door on you.”
“Yeah. Wow. Shit, well, thanks for watching out for me, R.J., I… I can’t believe it, you know? I had no idea you’d had to… well…” The knot in my stomach moved to my throat. I felt terrifyingly disembodied, like I couldn’t know myself anymore.
“Roy,” said my brother at length. “Roy, I’m sorry I never told you about any of this, okay? I’m sorry you had to find out this way, but I thought maybe it should be from me, you know, instead of like, a cop, or, hell, or Andrew.”
“Yeah, um, why didn’t you tell him?” I asked, suddenly curious.
“Are you kidding, man?” He almost laughed again. “Our stepfather, the psychiatrist? You know him. He would have loved another chance to try and figure you out, like you were just another patient. You’re my brother, Roy. I wouldn’t let that happen. I’m still sorta shocked that you never remembered any of it.”
I began to shudder, reflexively leaking tears of shock. “Yeah,” I said thickly. “Yeah… I…thanks for being straight with me, R.J. I’d rather know this way, you’re right.”
“Sure, Roy,” he answered back, a little soggy himself.
“Jesus, listen to us,” I choked, and I was glad when he laughed at my lame stab of false confidence. I didn’t want to analyze it or worry about it or go into another paranoid flight of fear after a goddamn bombshell like this. I lay back on the bed and tried to compose myself, but instead gave an allmighty snort, swallowing about a gallon of snot, and R.J. burst out laughing again at my blatant grotesquery.
The total silliness of it made me feel better instantly. “Well, shit,” I said. “Just call me the Great Narcoleptico or something.” I proceeded to turn on a dime and ask him what else was up; I wasn’t too keen on any more unearthed surprises.
R.J. answered me with nonchalance. “It’s probably not that big a deal, but I ran into that guy Kyle Addison again the other night. Remember him?”
“How could I forget? We acquainted him with the reality of violence that night, didn’t we?”
“Oh, I’m sure he already knew all about it, but yeah, same guy. Anyway, Alan and I were at the Spectrum, and-”
“Alan was there? Only the two of you? No Nadia?” My ex-girlfriend had snapped up R.J.’s best friend only days after dumping me. I must have shot my brother with this too harshly, because his reply was defensively resigned.
“Yeah, Alan told me he’d felt strange about Nadia coming on to him from, like, day one.”
“No shit?”
“Really. Alan said he thought maybe that she was rebounding off you to him, that she said a lotta stuff about being in love with him and everything, which he knew couldn’t really be true after ditching you so quick. That all their dates so far-”
“Their dates? As in, multiple incidents?”
“Yeah,” he sighed, sounding bored. “Roy, we’ve been through this already, too many times, okay? I don’t need to go over everything again with a fine-tooth comb like you do, all right?”
“Okay, okay. I was only gonna say that you can tell him again from me that I got over it already. It only took about a day.”
“Yeah, I remember you said that.”
“You don’t sound convinced, R.J. Look, I think I may have met someone else up here, okay, so just tell Alan that I’ve got no problems with anything he may or may not have done with or to my ex-girlfriend, all right? Let him know that he’s cool with me, and not to worry about anything like that. Oh, and if Kyle fucking Addison gets in your face anymore, I will personally come down there and cut his nuts off. I’ve had enough of people shoving their lame shit on you. I’m actually surprised that he got away with rattling you.”
“Yeah, well, we didn’t feel like getting in trouble. The security cops there have fuck-all else to do, so they love to try and bust anyone they can for curfew violations and other lame shit like that. Hell, one real cop almost took us away another night, but lucky for us his partner was Liv’s brother Michael, who let us off with a warning.”
“I didn’t know her brother was a cop.”
“Yep, turns out he works with that detective Kelley.”
I was still digesting the implications of that when R.J. switched gears. “Anyway,” he said, “it’s actually really cool that you’re okay with Alan, cause I had one other thing to ask you. Remember when, um, you were just dumped…uh, when you were feeling really terrible and finally went out and bought that bass guitar?”
“Look, I know it was impulsive, and I zapped my savings in one shot, but fuck, man, I wanted one forever, and I figured it was about time.”
“Right, and you’re pretty good at it by now, you know?”
“Well, Alan and I were hanging out with Mike Boehm one day- you remember Mike, right, he asked Robin to Homecoming.”
“Yeah, our sister sure likes the strong silent types, huh?”
“Uh-huh, but did you know he’s a drummer?”
I didn’t, so he continued, “Yeah, so one time when Alan had decided, to, uh, blow off a date with Nadia, he used us as an excuse- that he had band practice. Since he didn’t really want to be a liar, but he did want to play, we got together and jammed, and Roy, man, it was such a fucking blast. All we did was play instrumentals, like old sixties stuff- blues, surf, rock, whatever. Just really simple songs that we could play together right away, you know?”
“Oh, that’s rich,” I laughed, “the Class of ’97’s clown and straight man gettin’ down like, Paul Butterfield or whatever.”
“Well, Alan just started singing over this one slow waltzy-type blues we were playing, singing like he was, you know, eighty-five years old and black or something, and we ended up jamming that song for, like, five verses, and we wrote the best blues song ever.”
“Ever?” I said suspiciously. “Um, does this masterpiece have a name?”
“Thought you’d never ask,” he chortled. “It’s the ‘Eat Shit And Die Blues,’ Roy, and it’s fucking awesome, and the only thing that would make it better is if we had a bass player. Want in on this?”
“Fuck yes, of course I do! I’ll bring the bass next time I come down. I can confirm my shitty skills for all three of you.”
R.J. laughed again, like he knew how far away I was now from re-living horrible nightmares or worrying about police interrogations. “That was the second part of this, actually,” he said. “We’d need you to come down kinda soon, like maybe next weekend- cause we already have a gig.”
“What?” I felt a brief spasm of what I’d later recognize as stage fright.
“Yeah, man, a month from today. Mike and Robin pulled some strings with people they know on the activities board, and I went ahead and asked Liv too, cause she’s Senior Class, um, something-or-other, like Secretary or whatever, and she said yes right away. We can play in the main hall at lunch, for, I think, half an hour.”
“Wow. Do you- do we, I guess- have thirty minutes’ worth of songs? Do we even have a name?”
“Oh sure! Alan’s been calling us the…heh, the Blue Monkeynuts. It was the first thing he thought of, and it was pure fucking gold after playing that song. As for tunes, I can teach you all the surf instrumentals we’ve been doing, and keeping up with the blues jams will be easy- they’re only three chords. You’ll be fine and we’ll have plenty of stuff to play.”
“Awesome.” I relaxed for the first time in the whole conversation. “That’s awesome, R.J.” I smiled to myself and hoped there would never be a time when my little brother couldn’t bring me back from teetering on another brink of hopelessness.