Excavation: A Memoir by Ortiz Wendy C

Author:Ortiz, Wendy C. [Ortiz, Wendy C.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Future Tense Books
Published: 2014-09-16T16:00:00+00:00

LATE FALL

1987

One Saturday of many I arrived at his house. I timidly peered through the dusty screen.

“Come on in!”

I opened the screen door and saw him. My attention, my intuition, my conscious, my unconscious seemed entirely in service to this relationship as I stepped through the doorway. I became focused on Jeff’s movements, the words that came out of his mouth, what I felt or heard between the lines of conversation until I walked out the screen door again, hips purposely swinging, back to the boulevard.

“Bus stop Wendy, she’s here calling,” Jeff sang at me to the tune of a song on the oldies station. I stepped into the living room and smiled.

“Well, this time I hitchhiked,” I offered by way of conversation.

“You what? You what? What in the…”

His hands, which had been packing a tight little wad of pot into a slim pipe, suddenly stopped. I watched the scene unfold, still standing in his living room, letting my backpack drop to the carpet.

“The bus was…”

“No. No. No.” He paused. “You know what?” He looked down at the floor, then up at me. My face turned red, a heat I couldn’t control traveling from my cheeks and forehead to the tender parts of my ears. My mouth was open, readying for protest, but nothing came out.

“If you need to hitchhike to get here, I’d rather you not come over.”

I closed my mouth and swallowed quietly. I moved to pick up my bag. I felt my nostrils flare.

“No, no, wait a minute. Just stay.” Jeff’s face changed, and he patted the sofa seat next to him. “Here, look, I found a little something in this vial. You want some water? Wanna stay a bit?”

I threw my bag down and sat in one of the dining room chairs, far from the couch he was sitting on. I could see a scar on his knee, his leg hairs creeping out from underneath his shorts.

“Over here,” he sang apologetically. He went back to loading the pipe. I sighed loudly and moved to the couch. He set the pipe down and tipped a few drops of water from a glass into a small amber vial that sat on the table.

“Drink it,” he said. “It’s just a little coke. Probably won’t do much.”

I took the tiny vial and with the swiftness of a shot of hard liquor I tossed it back. The granules burned my throat. After two hits of pot, I was soothed, though my heart pounded. The anger I’d felt dissipated. I was intent on following the conversation, whether it was about cars or psychiatrists as portrayed on television or the writing of cheap romance novels or hiking the Santa Monica Mountains, the random and mysterious breadth of our conversations while high.

I never took in the details of each room in his house. I rarely ventured into the bedrooms: the risk of being in a room with him not in line of sight of the front door or window was too dangerous.

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