A Pack of Cigarettes, a Hole in the Ground, and a Cold Halloween
I was eighteen in October of 1986 when my Environmental Science class went on a field trip to the water treatment plant downtown.  The teacher led us off of the white, rusted bus, tying his brown trench coat tight and clutching his Borsalino fedora to his bald skull.  All the male students wore navy blue pants, white button-down oxfords, and blue neckties. All the girls wore navy blue skirts hemmed below the knees and white button-down oxfords.  Each student had the option of either the school's navy sweater or the school's navy sport coat for outerwear.  I buttoned my sport coat all the way to my neck and flipped the collar up and clamped it shut around my throat using my hand.
“And come on, come on.  Come on now,” Mr. O'Hara said.
We followed our teacher through the parking lot, all the while talking loudly and grabbing each other and adjusting our clothes to the weather.  Audrey, my girlfriend of six months, was walking ahead of me with her usual female cronies.  She and her friends walked semi-gracefully on long bronze legs.  I stared at their skirts and, with wide eyes, waited for the wind to reveal some thigh.  We came to the small door of the water plant and a machinist greeted us outside.
“Dis the class from Lawrence High School?”
“Yes.  I'm Theodore O'Hara.”
“Oh, uh, hullo mister Hairuh.”
“Yes, hello.”
“Well.  Let's go.”
All twenty-three of us students dripped through the narrow doorway and flooded into the large facility.  The teacher followed the machinist dumbly.  We waited and talked and pulled on each other's neckties and laughed and shivered. 
The facility was enormous and had no wall on its front side.  I could see out toward the rest of downtown Omaha.  There was a massive corporate building being constructed in the adjacent lot.  A huge crane lifted i-beams up into the air and a couple of men stood bravely on top of the steel beams and held on to the crane wires all the way up to the fiftieth floor. 
I coughed and rubbed my hands together.  Audrey looked at me, smiled, and turned toward her friends again and kept on talking.  My eyes focused at the front of her oxford shirt.  I could see a glimpse of skin and white bra in the bubble of the cloth between two buttons.  I stared at her shirt, wishing it would just burst open.  Meanwhile, the machinist had gotten his supervisor and told him the tour was ready to begin.
We walked to the middle of the facility toward some huge closed boxes and huge open boxes of water and the supervisor began telling us about the plant.  Audrey grabbed me by the wrist and we fell back into the rear of the crowd.  She looked all around at everything and everywhere except my eyes.
“Come on,” she said.
We ran around looking for a place to fuck.  We found a narrow space between two enormous humming pipes.  She began kissing my collar bone and pulling on my black hair.  But then some employees were walking by and we ran away.  The employees probably saw us but we didn't care.  We turned left, then right, then left and left again.  We found a tall cylindrical container and hid behind it.  The air was freezing cold but I let her lift my oxford and my undershirt and I let her kiss my pale pink chest.  I grabbed her by the ass.  Then we heard more machinists approaching.  One of them dropped his clipboard loudly on the cement floor and we took off running.
We found the employees-only bathroom and burst through the swinging door. The place was disgusting - full of trash and puddles of piss.  There were grey, box-like stalls everywhere – there were at least twenty of them.  We could hear grown men talking to each other somewhere.  A toilet was clogging up somewhere else.  Someone was washing his face somewhere else.  We ran between two rows of stalls and shoved ourselves into the first unlocked box we could find.  The toilet was moldy and covered in smears of blackened shit.  The floor was stained a brown-orange.  The metal walls boxing us in reminded me of a hot dog vendor's cart.  Audrey unbuttoned her oxford.  I grabbed at her thighs.  She slammed me against the metal wall and kissed me so hard it hurt.  Suddenly a man who had been walking by and heard us looked beneath the stall door and saw four feet and became confused.
“What the fuck?”
He approached.
“Who's in dah?”
We stopped kissing.  We looked at each other, then at the door.  There were no women who worked at that plant, so the employee must have thought us to be two gay guys pulling a quickie before we went back to work.
“Shit.” I said.
She looked at me.  She grabbed my crotch.
“No.  Stop.”
“Please, Alden.” she said.
“Who's in dah?”
“God dammit.”  I said.
She laughed.
“It's not funny.”
“Who the fuck's in dah?”
On the count of three, we burst out of the stall, pushing the machinist back, and ran away.  We ran out of the bathroom, past the jungle of metal boxes and pipes, and back toward our class.  We hovered at the rear of the tour and tried to catch our breath.  Audrey's shirt was buttoned up wrong.

That night, I was walking home from the grocery store around ten o'clock, having just bought a pack of Camel cigarettes. I held my face low inside the collar of my wool coat.  It was freezing cold and I was walking all the way home.  There was a railroad about forty feet away to my left and I could see the metal tracks glistening in the dewy night. 
I ripped off the plastic wrapper of the cigarette pack, tore out the gold leaf lining, and slid one of the cigarettes up and took it out with my lips.  I tossed the garbage on the ground and put the pack into my left pocket and took my lighter out of my right pocket and tried lighting up.  I had to stand still and use both hands to get it to light.  Then once I had the cigarette going I started walking real slow and with no real destination.  I listened to and felt the gravel smoosh and roll beneath my Converse shoes.  I blew the smoke out slowly.  Then I could hear a train coming and I turned around to look and I saw blinding white lights coming up the tracks.  I walked backwards for about twenty paces, watching the lights come closer and hearing the sound come closer.  Then when the train was right next to me, I turned forward again and walked side by side with it.
I looked at the wheels of the train and thought about being crushed beneath them.  I listened to the beat of the engine and thought about music.  I looked at the box cars and their handrails and platforms and thought about hitching a ride.  I could ride the rails just like people did in the movies or books.  I could hitch a ride clear to California or something.
Then I heard someone else's footsteps in the gravel and turned around to see who it was.  A skinny, bearded creep wearing nothing but a black trench coat and grey rain-boots was coming towards me fast.  He held a small knife in his right hand and he was staring straight into my eyes.
“Gimmeyerrmunie,” he rasped.
Dropping my cigarette on the ground, I turned toward the train tracks and ran.  I could hear him start to run after me.  Concentrating on one box car in particular, I ran as fast as I ever did.  When I was nearly three or less feet from the monstrous metal beast, I leaped up and threw my arms out and reached for the handrails.  I grabbed ahold of the cold metal and clutched it tight and pulled my body upwards and folded my knees underneath me and slid onto the platform.  The creep kept running.  He ran side-by-side with the train for about a twenty yards and then he bravely tried to leap onto the box car after me but he tripped in the gravel and fell.  I sat on the back of the box car and lit up another cigarette.
“Jesus fuckin' Christ.”
I dragged the cigarette slowly and watched the the streets of Omaha disappear.  Then suddenly the train rounded a corner near a forest and I fell right off of the platform and tumbled through some underbrush  When I got up and looked around I realized I was far from home.  There were tall cottonwood trees all around.  I was standing at the crest of a hill and below me I saw a huge prairie style house.  It was in the middle of the forest, in the bottom of a small valley, surrounded by trees and bushes and dewy grass.  There were a few yellow lights on inside of the house.
I hobbled quickly down the slope and toward the house.  My fingers had grown numb in the cold.  I reached out for the doorbell but as soon as I did someone opened the door for me and urged me inside.  He was a tall man with crazy eyebrows.  He wore a blue suit and blue tie with a yellow dress shirt.  He wore his dark hair back and looked like Jack Nicholson from The Shining.
“You're early,” he said.
“Huh?”
“But that ain't no problem, man.  Come come.”
And he turned and walked out of the foyer and into the kitchen without even looking back to see if I was following. I unbuttoned my double-breasted wool coat and let it flop open and I rubbed my hands together and shuddered.
In the kitchen, the man popped open the glass door to his liquor cabinet and leaned backwards and looked at me over the kitchen counter.
“What'll ya have, man?”
“Uh.”
He waited.
“Rum and coke,” I said.  That was something I had heard in a movie I think.
He took out some bottles and glasses and poured things and mixed things and put the bottles back and popped the glass door shut and took up the two glasses one in each hand and walked toward the kitchen counter – his footsteps were loud on the linoleum and echoed through the empty house.
“Here ya are, man,” he said.
I grabbed my glass and took a sip.  A bigger sip than I should have.
“So, man, are ya friends with the Leibowitzs?”
“Uh...  Yes,” I said.  I rubbed my fingers against my lips.  I had no idea who the Leibowitzs were.
“Ah, of course.  Tell Donnie that he owes me a hooker from last time.”  And he cackled loudly.
“Sure.”
The man sipped his drink, licked his lips, set the glass on the counter with a echoing clack, and rubbed a hand on his necktie.  Then he made a noise with his lips as if he were about to say something and he raised both arms to shoulder level and gestured toward the walls around us.
“What do ya think?”
“Huh?”
“The house, man.  What do ya think?”
“It's a nice house.”
“Shit, man!”  He smacked both hands together in front of his face.  His eyebrows were crazy.
I set my glass down on the counter.
“That's all you have to say?  Shit!” he said.
“Well it's a really great house... I've never seen anything like-”
“GREAT?  This house is GLORIOUS!”
“Yea it is.”
“You know this house, it's called the Frank Lloyd Wright house cause that's the man who architectured it whatever, this is a Frank Lloyd Wright house and it was built at the very turn-of-the-century, man.  It's ahead of it's time, back then anyway, it's a turn-of-the-century deal and this Frank Lloyd Wright was a genius, man.  Arthur Henley – that's the man who paid for this house to be made – he had it built it here in the valley of the TaHaZouka Park and he imported the materials from around the world.  He got stones from southern Egypt for the fireplace, a rare type of wood from Africa for the bedrooms, other wood from Belgium for the bathrooms, and he spared no expense, man.  He got a huge wall mirror from Germany and they had to build a special rail car just to transport it and he made this house magnificent.  It cost him a million and a half dollars and he impressed everyone, man.  This was at the turn-of-the-century, man.  He and his wife lived in this house until 1930 and then they donated it to the local church and they used it for education for about twenty-three years until the university came along, so then after that the house was privately owned by all sorts of different folks and they held huge amazing parties and wedding receptions here, man.”
“Wow.”
“WOW is right, man!  That's right!”
“That's amazing.”
“This house is the essence of amazing, man.”
We finished off our drinks and strolled into the living room to listen to the stereo.  The man put on some old Rat Pack record and sat in his chair and lit up a fat cigar.  He rolled it in his teeth and made crazy eyebrows at me.
“Yes, yes,” he said.
I scratched my fingers.  He puffed his cigar and looked at me.  He eyed my Converse high-tops curiously.
“How old are you, man?”
“Twenty-one.”
“Shit.”
“Leibowitz said you were a good man.”
“What?  Huh, oh, yea, yes, yes, Donnie.  The bastard.  Drunk, crazy bastard, man.”
Then their was a noise outside and the man set his cigar on the ash tray and got up and hurried off to the door.  “More guests are here for the party,” his voice echoed in the house.  The new guests were about the ring the doorbell but the host opened the door before they could.  They all said something to each other and came inside and shut the door and came to the living room to greet me.  It was a youngish couple, both looked like Hollywood folk too.  The man was shorter than his girl and wore his brown hair parted to one side and he had small-framed glasses and he wore a dark suit with straight seams.  The girl at  his side wore a low-cut blue dress with long, loose layers of fabric.  She had black high-heeled shoes and a white pearl necklace.
“Hello hello good evening and well how do you do how are you?” the short man in glasses said.
I stood up and took his hand vigorously.  “Hello I'm good.  Good, and you?”
The host cackled manically and beat the short man on the back.
“Oh the weather is just terrible,” said the woman in the blue dress.
“Yes yes and all that but really doesn't matter no it doesn't please let us get something to drink we will warm ourselves quickly and you'll forget all about the weather,” the short man with glasses spoke very fast.
We all followed the host into the kitchen. He popped open the glass door again and gave us all drinks, and I got a second Rum and Coke.  The woman played with her high-heeled shoes, leaning all her weight on the counter and slipping the shoes off her feet and spinning them around her toes and putting her foot inside of them backwards.  The short man in glasses lit up a cigar and puffed with the host and they talked very fast about politics and about Reaganomics and the free market and their voices echoed throughout the house. 
“So how do you know Mr. Friedman?”  said the woman.
“Huh?”
“What, did you two meet in the bank or something?”  She spoke very slowly and looked at nothing in particular.
“Oh.  No.  I'm just a friend of the Leibowitzs.”
“Oh, I see now.  So this is your first time with Mr. Friedman.  Do you like him?”
“Well of course.  He's a great man.”
“You're so full of shit.”
“Cigarette?”
“Please.”  She took a smoke from my pack with her scrawny fingers and gently put it between her lips and waited for me to light it.  Then she took a drag, held it, and started talking while she exhaled the smoke.  “Look at my husband - the hideous, disgusting oaf.  We've been married for six years now and he has never made me orgasm.”
I was sort of shocked.  Mr. Friedman and the husband were still in the kitchen, nearly ten feet in front of us, and yet this woman was talking openly.  I looked at the two men, but they were so indulged in each other that they wouldn't notice the roof if it fell on them.
“Are you married?,” she took a drag. “Don't ever get married.”
“How do you know I'm not already married?”
She looked at me for the first time.  She looked me straight in the eye.  “You're obviously a teenager.”
“I am twenty-one.”
“Oh, shut up.”
I lit up a cigarette for myself.  I dragged, held, and exhaled toward the ceiling.  “What's your name?”
“Michele.  What's yours?”
“Alden.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.  So.”
“So?”
“Do you love your husband?”
“What business is that of yours?”
“Well you were telling me about your lack of orgasms earlier, I only thought-”
“No.”
“No?”
“No, I don't love the bastard and I only married him for his money.  Obviously.”
She put her shoes back on correctly.  She hid her face in her long black hair for a moment.  I could see her left hand idly playing with her pearl necklace.  She lifted her head and took a drag off the cigarette. 
“I'm having an affair with Mr. Friedman.”  She smoked.  “I've been sleeping with him for the past three weeks,” she tipped the ash into the trashcan.  “My husband doesn't have a clue.  He's so far up his boss's ass that he can't see anything but corporate bullshit.”  She said all this slowly and deliberately, looking at her glass of vodka intently.
“Seems like your husband and Mr. Friedman are good friends.”
“Well  yea, that's how business works.”
I looked at her.  She was gorgeous.  Her porcelain-white cleavage was consuming my eyes.
“My husband's never gone grocery shopping in his entire life.  He has servants to do every little thing for him.  They even trim his grotesque, ungodly toe-nails.”
“Wow.”
“Yes.  That's why every Friday I go to the grocery store to meet Mr. Friedman.  We usually get the paper and some coffee or something and have a relaxing evening at this house.”  She looked up with a sudden burst of excitement.  “Did you know Friedman and I have fucked on this counter?  Right here, right here on this counter.”  She slid her thin fingers back and forth on the marble counter-top.
“Are you going to divorce your husband?” I said.
She calmed down a little and looked into her vodka glass again.  “Eventually.  The timing has to be right.”
“You're very beautiful.”
“What?”
“I'm just saying.  I mean – How old is Mr. Friedman?”
“Um, I don't...  Why are you asking?” 
“I just, I don't know, I mean...  Is sex with him really good?”
“Obviously.”
“Yea, but don't men start to lose their sexual drive when they get older?”
“I'm not going to fuck you, if that's what you're getting at.”
“I wasn't.  I wasn't saying that.  I mean, I was just saying – I mean...”
She put her cigarette out in my Rum and Coke and stood up straight and walked into the living room and sat on the couch by herself.  I put my cigarette out in my Rum and Coke too and then I grabbed Michele's vodka and chugged it down.  I gagged a little and wiped my sleeve across my mouth.  Then I turned around, buttoned up my coat, and walked out the front door and into the freezing forest.

It was Friday evening and Audrey and I were walking through the aisles of the grocery store, talking and giggling and tickling each other.  We passed between walls of canned goods.  We were both hanging on to the shopping cart and pushing it forward lazily.  The store was huge and yet the walls of cans made it seem so small.
Audrey pinched my collar bone.  “Go get the milk.  My mom said we're out.”
I turned around and chuted out of the corridor of cans.  I made my way past baking goods, snacks, cereals, condiments, and soft drinks.  I entered the refrigerator section at the back of the store where is was much cooler.  There were at least three or four glass doors filled with bottles and cartons of milk.  I walked to where the two-percent milk was and leaned forward to scrutinize the expiration dates.  11-03-86.  10-31-86.  11-01-86.  I saw a woman's vague reflection in the glass door next to me and I heard her voice bouncing into my ears.  It sounded familiar.
“...sandwich all over his flannel shirt, he was quite upset.  He didn't even seem care that both of the gay guys were dead.  He was cussin' like a farmer.”
I turned around to eavesdrop on this woman and then I realized it was Michele from the party in the woods.  She was standing with Mr. Friedman by a box of clearance-sale popcorn.  Her black hair was pulled up to the back of her head and she wore two small golden earrings.  She wore an aubergine cashmere v-neck with a black pea coat on top. Her legs were hidden in mystery beneath a long brown skirt.  Mr. Friedman held the day's newspaper beneath one arm.  He was wearing a brown suit with a red necktie and a crème dress shirt.  His hair fell onto his forehead when he talked and he was constantly smoothing the strands back with one hand.
“...the kind of men like that take it upon themselves to take action, man.  They think they's in the right but they ain't right worth a damn.  And none of the legal authorities reprimand these kind of men because the cops just as irresponsible and conceited.  Means there is no justice but what you make, man.  You can't get anything accomplished 'less you do it yourself, man.”  Mr. Friedman smoothed his hair back into place and exhaled laboriously.  Michele was twisting a finger around her left earring and trying to read the nutritional facts on the back of a bag of popcorn.  Mr. Friedman took the newspaper from his armpit and held it before him, looking for something.  When he found it, he jabbed a finger at it and made sure Michele saw it.  “Look at this.  This is just the type of irresponsible conceitedness I was tellin' you about, man.”
“Oh, yea.”  Michele dropped both her hands to her side and looked at the newspaper.  Then she looked up and saw me.  Her face suddenly transformed like a flash of light, like someone witnessing a horrific accident.  “I have to go to the bathroom,” she said.
“Okay,” said Mr. Friedman, looking at the newspaper.
Michele gave me a look as if she wanted me to follow her.  Then she turned quickly and walked to the other side of the store.  I hastened after her, forgetting the milk.
When we were both at the other side of the grocery store, Michele turned to me and said,
“What are you doing here?”
“Gettin' some milk.”
“What happened to you at the party?  I looked up and you were gone.”
“I wasn't feeling that well.”
“Friedman was asking about you.  None of us even saw you leave.  Donnie and his wife got there right after you left I think.”
“Oh.”
She scratched her collarbone beneath the v-neck. 
“Are you Okay?”  I said.
“Huh?”
“Just seemed like you weren't enjoying yourself with Mr. Friedman.”
“Oh.”
She looked at me.
“Friedman cheated on me.  He's a lying sleazy dirty bastard.”
“Oh.”
“Yea.  I went to Friedman's house and I saw him through the windows.  He was in bed with some slutty blond bitch.”
“Oh.”
“I think she was only fucking him for drugs.  Coke.”  She leaned into a whisper and I could feel her breath warming my neck.  “You wanna go somewhere?”
Breath turned into ice inside my lungs.  “Uh – yea.  Where?”
“Um.”  She buttoned up all three buttons of her pea coat carefully.  “I know a place.  Come on.”

Michele and I rode the public bus to the west end of the city where there were rich neighborhoods with huge houses that had horse-shoe driveways, rows of bur oaks and cottonwoods, huge front lawns blanketed in dead leaves, and shiny sport cars.   We got off at a stop on the corner of Pacific and 180th street.  I followed Michele closely, keeping my hands deep inside the pockets of my wool coat.  We came upon the entrance of a golf course.  In the center of the two-way driveway there was a large brick block that read: “Shadow Ridge Country Club.”  Flowers barely clinging to their petals hovered around the sign.
We walked across the soft greens of the golf course, sliding gently in the fresh night dew.  The crickets roared from all directions.  Soon we came upon a large, oval-shaped sand-trap.
“It's frickin' cold out,”  I said.
“Come here,”  she sat down in the bottom of the bunker.
I looked down at her and she held her arms up to me.
“I will warm you up,” she said.
We laid down together in the cold, soft sand.  We held each other briefly.  Then we started to kiss and rub each other.  Then she told me to do her.  I lifted up her skirt and undid my pants.  She laid there and didn't touch me.  We fucked; she kept her eyes closed the whole time.  Soon after it was done, I felt very blasé.  I rested atop her cashmere chest and breathed heavily.
“I'm hungry,” I said.
“Yea, that happens a lot.”
“I, heh, I've drained all my energy.  I'm starving.”
“Yea it's a lot of work, doing that.”
“Why do people smoke cigarettes after they do it?”
“No reason.  They just do it because people do it in the movies.  They think it's something they're supposed to do.”
“Sucks though.  Wouldn't it make your room smell?”
“Some people go outside.”
I rolled over and looked up into the cloudy sky.  I looked at Michele.  She glanced at me.
“What is it?”  she said.
“I don't know.  I mean...”
“Was it all that you imagined?”
“I think... well... now that... seems sex is kind of overrated.”
“Yea, a lot of things in life are overrated.”  She closed her eyes.
“Yea.”
We laid still for a moment.
“I'm pregnant,” she said.
“What?  Already?”
“No, no.  I mean, I was already pregnant before.  With Friedman's child.”
“Oh.”  I looked away into the distance.  “Shit.”
“Yep.”
“What are you going to do?”
“About what?”
“The baby.”
“Oh.  Figure I'll have to abort it.”
“Jeez.”
“Do you have a girlfriend?”
“Yea.  Well.  I guess.”
“Are you going to tell her about me?”
“No.”
“Have you and her slept together?”
“Not yet.  We've tried to.  A lot.  But things keep interrupting us.”
She laid still for a while and I thought she was going to sleep.  But when I looked over at her, she had her eyes wide open and was watching the clouds.  I reached out for her hand, but she wouldn't let me have it.  Instead, she rolled over and climbed out of the pit and dusted herself off vigorously.  I stood up and waited.
“I can't see you anymore,” she said.
“Oh...”  I wasn't upset.  I wanted to be, but I wasn't.  “Okay.”
“Are you really friends with Donnie?”
“Fuck.  I have no idea who Donnie is.”
“Figures.”
Then Michele turned away and walked across the golf course.  I walked in the opposite direction.  My Converses squeaked in the grass.  I lit a cigarette and smoked it very slowly.  When I left the golf course, I went to the bus stop and sat down.  A round man wearing a brown sport coat, which was too small for him, sat inside the kiosk with me.  He stared at the droning street lamps and tapped his boots on the ground lightly. 
I finished my first cigarette and lit up a second one using the butt from the first. I was deadly numb.

The following Friday was Halloween.  Early in the day I called Audrey but she said she couldn't go trick-or-treating with me because she was busy with her parents.  I got so damn bored that night; I went to her house without calling ahead of time.  I was freezing cold and I tried to keep my ears warm inside the flipped-up collar of my wool coat.  When I got to Audrey's house, I rang her doorbell but no one answered.  After a few seconds I rang again but still no one came.  I went and looked in through her bedroom window.  She was underneath some blond guy I didn't recognize and they were both in their underwear.
I turned around and walked down the block to the park in Audrey's neighborhood.  When I called her house from the pay phone at the park she didn't pick up.  But I felt relieved anyway.  I went and sat on a bench and watched the trees sway in the gusty autumn air.  A fountain of water sprayed upwards into a continuous shimmering dome behind me.  Reaching into my left pocket, I found the familiar pack of cigarettes.  I opened it and held it to my nose and smelled the cigarettes for the last time.  Then I tossed the pack into the fountain.  I felt, for the first time in a very long while, curiously content.