souls of black | fever in, fever out

chapter 111: the house of skolnick

"I see the skyline!" Alex declared as he peeked over the top of his mirrored sunglasses.
"Welcome home, Alexander," Sam told him with a smile on her face.
A usual three hour ride down from the rugged mountains and down through the northern end of the valley had taken them four hours given the sheer amount of snow on everything and the state of Donner Pass all the while. Once they had reached the bottom of the valley, right around Sacramento, the tule fog had long settled in over them in the form of a big heavy bank. The road led them all the way towards that sparkling capitol city, still alight despite the daybreak all around them.
She followed her way over the interchange and all the while, Alex sank down in the seat next to her with one hand on the handle over his head, or the "oh, shit" handle as he referred to it on the way down the hill. Eric and Greg came up behind them in the other car given they were about to record yet another brand new album to unleash upon the world.
All the while, she kept on thinking about that letter that Joey had written her: she tucked it inside of that courier bag, right next to her journal. But she could feel Joey's drunken presence with them, even as they wound their way through the hills and towards the very outside rim of San Francisco.
He was drunk when he wrote it, but apparently he wasn't that drunk given he wrote the first part so well and he was able to fess up to her in writing. But then again, he was drunk when he wrote it. Whenever she thought about it, she couldn't help but shake her head. Her heart wanted him but her head told her that it wasn't worth the trouble of a return to him. There was no way she could return to him after he had promised her to stop it and after he had been doing so good all the while.
"I can't believe we've gone so long and gone so far with all of this," she remarked.
"And it was just the two of us fueling each other, too," he added as he reached into the bag of cheesy bread. "You know what I can't believe is the fact the Cherry Suicides got to play in a casino on New Year's Eve."
"Right? I hope they can go far with their new album and then some."
Alex pushed his sunglasses up the bridge of his nose with the knuckle of his index finger.
"We went up the spine of California and then some," he said as he took a bite of the cheesy bread.
"I'd like to go up another spine of sorts," she blurted out, to which he looked on at her, stunned.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, because the secret about me is out to you—I'm an artist—I'd like to draw someone again."
"Oh, no, you're not suggesting..." He stopped. "You're not drawing me."
"Well, two things, Alex. First off, I never implied that I was going to draw you—but I would like to draw someone for you."
"Oh?"
"I did it for Frankie and Charlie when I lived back East. I drew them as children as part of my way into school and they absolutely loved it. But it's almost like a friendship ritual for me now."
He took another bite of cheesy bread and nodded in response to that.
"And what's the second thing?" he asked her once he swallowed.
"Why do you not want me to draw you?"
He swallowed down the rest of the cheesy bread and rubbed his hands together.
"My body is ugly," he told her.
"What!" She gaped at him.
"It is. I have an ugly body."
"You do not!"
He shifted his weight in his seat.
"Alex, you're not ugly," she insisted.
"I am," he stated, hurt.
"If you're ugly, would you have such a sweet heart inside of you?"
"A sweet heart filled with veins and shit..."
"Maybe your ass but not your heart," she confessed.
"So if I slap my own ass, it's considered an expression of love?"
"If you so wish," Sam couldn't help but laugh at that.
"What if I slap your ass?" he asked her.
"What if you slap my ass?" she teased him.
"If I slap your ass, would you hold it against me?"
"Depends."
"On what?"
"If you're willing to tell me how we got to this point in our relationship," she told him.
"I think it's because you're a girl—and an older one to boot—and I'm a guy and we've been in a car together for the better part of the past day and a half. I also think it's because I mentioned Georgia O'Keeffe to you at one point, too, with all her—her—her works and whatnot, and my picturing you doing the same thing."
"You want me to go all naughty on our asses?"
"No, just on my ass."
Sam froze in place and Alex raised an eyebrow at her.
"You want me to go all—sexy on you?" She was baffled by that.
"If those autobiographical drawings you showed me earlier when we got up are anything to go by, it's that you can do it. You can go in that intimate direction and the right people will love you for it. But do it only because you want to, not because I told you to do it, though." He reached for another piece of the cheesy bread. "Although if I'm being perfectly honest with you, Samantha, I really don't know how we got here."
She drummed her fingers along the rim of the steering wheel.
Right before them, the San Francisco fog had began to clear out from the entire valley. The freeway widened out and she took to the lane in the middle; all the while, the pair of headlights on the car behind them flashed in and out of darkness.
"Why's Eric flashing his lights at us?" she wondered aloud.
"Pull over?" he asked her.
"We're on the freeway, Alex—there is no place to pull over."
She slowed up a bit and Eric and Greg merged over into the next lane left of them. They met up with her and Greg pointed to the signs up the road from there.
"Next exit!" Alex declared with a point.
Sam nodded at them and flashed them the okay sign. She flicked on the turn signal and she and Alex merged to the right.
"What's over here?" she asked him as they rode off of the freeway: a handful of scraggly dark trees lined their way, all the way to the next wide four lane patch of freeway. To the right stood the harbor. The San Francisco fog lingered all around the place, right over those dark waters out there.
"A couple of things, actually," he told her. "The first thing is important to the bunch of us while the next thing is important to me."
"What's the thing that's important to you?"
"Well, you know—I'd really hate for you to have come all this way only to pitch a tent somewhere."
She glanced over at him with her eyebrows raised behind her sunglasses.
"Your house is over this way?"
"My parents' house, yeah," he replied. "Thing is I don't know if they're home, though. But I don't want to see you not have a good place to stay for the time being, though."
"And what's the other thing?"
"Right over here—"
He guided her off of the freeway onto University Avenue, right away from the marina and the vast park right next door to it. They cleared the first three stoplights and halted at one before she wondered exactly it was he wanted her to go to.
"So where am I going?" she asked him.
"Right up here," he pointed to the next block up.
"Right or left?"
"Left."
She pulled over to the turn lane, and Eric and Greg followed suit right behind them.
"It's a ways up from here," he began in a soft voice, "but up the block from here is my old high school. I'll have to show it to you when we get the chance."
The light turned green and they turned left up the street.
"Right up there, Samantha." He pointed out the windshield; the car behind them pulled over to the curb and she followed suit right before them. There behind the sidewalk stood a low white brick building with a narrow wooden doorway. It reminded her of the place where Anthrax and Stormtroopers of Death always congregated at back in New York City. It didn't look like much, but as Eric climbed out from the car behind them, she wondered what was the story there.
"What is it?"
"It's our new home for a bit starting the first of February," he told her, to which he lowered his sunglasses so she could see his flashing her a wink.
"Oh, yeah!" she declared with a clap of her hands.
"This is where we're supposed to be recording the new album. At least, that's according to Chuck."
Eric unlocked the door and she peered into the front there before him. All she could see was a lush deep violet carpet that made up the entire floor and a little painting up on the wall, one that was framed with heavy dark wood.
"Fancy," she said.
"I've only seen the first part of it all," he told her, "like from the doorway there. I can't really go in until about a week later."
Eric doubled back outside and he rounded the front end of the car; Sam rolled down the window and a cold gust of wind blew her hair back from her face. Alex clasped his hands to the crown of his head.
"What's up?" she asked Eric, and his long inky black hair streamed in front of his face like the plumes of smoke.
"Place is open, but—"
"But what?"
"I have to fill in some paperwork, though," he told them.
"What do you think we should do?" she asked him.
"What do you wanna do, Alex?" Eric asked past her.
"Kinda wanna do what she did for me and show her my roots."
"Greg was wanting some lunch, too."
"C'mon over to my parents' house, my mom'll make us a full dish of meatloaf," Alex assured him.
"Meatloaf and not matzo?"
"Hanukkah's over, my man," Alex retorted, "and Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur both aren't for months on end."
"What about Passover?" Sam asked him.
"No clue when that is," he confessed, and Eric burst out laughing at that.
"Anyways, I'll do that and then he and I'll be up the street here to the bar."
"We might pop in at some point," Sam told him, "that is if they sell food."
"Oh, they do," he assured her and he patted the car's rooftop with one hand and then he stepped away from them.
"So where's your parents' place?" she asked Alex as she rolled the window back up again.
"It's back the way we came and we're gonna go all the way up. About three blocks from my old high school—my brother and I always walked to school together when I first started. I'll show you."
Indeed, he did, and they soon arrived in that sweet little neighborhood not too far from that vast high school in question. To that cute little house surrounded by a few little oak trees and two small jacaranda trees. The windows were as dark as the night from which they came and there appeared to be not a single sign of life on the outside there. The front lawn needed mowing but she could tell that they had a garden out front there, right underneath the two front windows.
She parked up at the curb and he led her up to the front step.
"I don't think anyone's home, Alex," she confessed to him as they came closer to the door.
"I do have the key, though," he pointed out.
"Where?"
"Here."
"Where here?"
He crouched down to the doormat and lifted the corner, and he picked the key off of the concrete.
"Here—" he told her, and he stuck the key into the dead bolt right above the doorknob. There was a slight click and he pushed the door open before her. A soft musty feeling emerged from the foyer and she shivered from the contrast of the cold sensation in there.
"Welcome to the house of Skolnick, Samantha," he announced.
"The house of Skolnick," she chuckled at that.
"Yeah, welcome to the house of Skolnick—my name's Alex, can I take your stinkin' order?"
She giggled at him some more.
He peeled off his windbreaker and hung it up on the hook right behind the door. His shirt sleeve rolled up a bit and showed off a dark mark on his right shoulder.
"What's that?" she asked him.
"What?" He froze in place, and she raised up his shirt sleeve for a better look at the darkly colored skull with a forked tongue out of its mouth and a crown upon its head. It reminded her of the skull on the cover for the Legacy.
"Is that new?" she asked him, especially since the dark colors that made up the ink still looked fresh to her.
"What, that?"
"Yeah."
"Nah, I've actually had this tat for about a year now. Louie, Eric, Greg, and Chuck all got ones, too. Does it look familiar to you?"
"It's the Legacy skull," she said. "What, was it like a pact or something?"
"A pact?" he chuckled. "Nah, we were like, 'we're all in this together—we should show off the fact that we are, too.' It's almost like a bonding of sorts between the five of us."
She showed him a little smile as she let go of his sleeve and then shut the door behind her. She peeled off her jacket as well and then he took off his shoes. She did the same for him and then he led her down the hallway to the back room and he reached around the other side of the doorway. He flicked on the ceiling light, and they were met with a small warmly lit office with a couple of pure white tables and a small amplifier pressed up against the wall: a small board with pedals rested on the floor right underneath that table in question. That familiar small red guitar was propped up on a spindly black metal stand right next to the amp.
He picked up the guitar and then he sat down on the rickety chair right in the middle of the floor with it on his lap. Sam stood right before him as he nudged his jet black hair back from his neck and shoulders.
"Check this out," he told her, and he plugged that guitar into the amp, about the size of a jug of milk.
"That's the tiniest amp I've ever seen," she confessed.
"Eric has a tinier one," he said with a straight face. "Let's see—what was that riff he wrote the other night? It had a nice li'l groove to it."
He strummed a bit and then he stopped right in place. He closed his eyes and lifted his right hand from the strings, and he turned around to the pedal board.
"What was it," he muttered, "what the hell was it?"
"I'm sure it'll come back to you," she assured him.
"I wanted to write it right in front of you, though," he told her in a small voice.
"One thing I've wanted to do for a long time is make art while someone's making music," she told him.
"Really?"
"Yeah, like during one of Anthrax's recording sessions or one of Metallica's sessions. Just sit in with a pad of paper and a palette and maybe follow them around on tour."
"You did come close with that, though," he pointed out as he tucked his pick right in between his index and middle fingers.
"Oh, yeah with the drawings I made for Charlie."
"Exactly!"
He returned to his guitar strings and he softly plucked the heavier of the six to make sure it was plugged in.
"Let me ask you something," he started again.
"Go ahead."
"Do you ever feel alone in your artistic endeavors? Like, when you show someone a drawing or something you made, you ever get remarks like 'I wish I could do that'."
"Feeling alone, all the time," she replied. "I also feel like people just don't get it. As for remarks, not really."
"Huh. Well, I ask you this because my parents don't seem to understand it themselves. Creativity isn't really a thing with my family—you know, it's the whole thing about how it's something you're supposedly born with. I don't think anyone is born into that."
"You know, I don't think so, either," she told him as she leaned back against the second table in there. "Actually if anything, I feel everyone on earth is an artist. Like, when I really stop for a second and come to think of it, everyone is in fact an artist and can become one. The problem is whether or not people choose to act on it."
"I definitely acted on it," he said with a sly smirk upon his face.
"Hell yeah, you did!" she laughed at that.
"I mean, you have to have some level of creativity to teach a collegiate level course," he pointed out. "You have to have some level of it to practice these things." He stopped in his tracks and then he snapped his fingers. "Just remembered it!"
He turned around for a tap of his foot on one of his pedals. He rotated around so as to face her and began playing the riff, that riff that Eric had come up with that night after their show down in Reseda. He added a bit of distortion to the sound of it and he let his fingers guide his way all the way around the guitar's neck.
"I kind of want to shake my hips to it," Sam confessed to him, and he stuck out his tongue at that.
"It's the kind of riff that makes you wanna run away from home," he recalled, which in turn made her laugh.
The door nudged open and an older bald heavyset man poked his head into the room. He had the same deep eyes as Alex as well as his prominent features and his nose.
"Alex, you crazy boy, what you coming up with now—"
He froze when he saw Sam standing there next to him.
"Oh. Oh, hello."
"Dad, this is Samantha," he introduced her, "she was Cliff's girlfriend."
"Cliff Burton, the boy from Metallica who got killed in Sweden."
"Yeah..." Alex ran his fingers through his black hair; the black hair dye was all but clinging to his gray hair, so it had a bit of a golden glow to it from the overhead lights. "She was his girlfriend." He then turned to her with a soft blush right across his face. "Samantha, this is my dad, Jerry."
"Nice to meet you, Mr. Skolnick," Sam declared as she extended her hand to him and he showed her a thoughtful little smile along with his own extended hand in return.
"Why, thank you, young lady—also, Alex?"
"Yes?"
"Your mother needs a bit of help in bringing her old textbooks in. She's moving office back home."
"Oh, really?"
"A new year and so a new place and a new change of pace to boot."
A woman's voice floated in from down the hall right then, and he turned his head back to the hallway behind him.
"Yes, dear!" Jerry declared out to the front of the house; Alex began playing again, albeit with less volume. "Yes—also, Arlene, our son finally brought a girl home!"
"No, Dad!" Alex called after him and he bowed his head once his father bowed out of there.
"I'm guessing this never happens," she said to him as she tucked her hands into her jeans pockets.
"Yeah, it's not really a thing that happens with me," he confessed as he lifted his head; "sometimes, you know when I was growing up around here, I'd bring friends home but never a lot of girls, though."
"Everyone is an artist and no one gets that," she said, and Jerry poked his head back into the room.
"I assume that's your jacket and your shoes up front here?"
"Yes!" she replied with a nod of his head.
He bowed back out to the hall.
"They're all hers, dear!" he called back down towards the front of the house. "Our little boy is officially meshuggah!"
Alex fetched up a sigh and rolled his eyes, but Sam couldn't help but chuckle.
"I think it's adorable, Alex," she confessed to him, and he rubbed his eyes at that.
"I gotta help my mom," he told her as he picked the guitar off of his lap and returned it to the stand next to the table.
"I'll come with you," she offered him.
"Please!"
He led her back to the front of the house where Alex's mother lugged in a big open box of textbooks from outside. He hurried up to her to help her out.
"Mother—Mother—Mom—Mommy—Mommy dearest—Mama—Maternal Unit—Ma—"
"Baby," she said to him in a hushed voice. She kissed the side of his face and he almost tumbled back at the feeling. He took the box from her and once again almost tumbled from holding onto those handles. He looked back at Sam with a big of blush across his face, and she chuckled at him. She ducked back outside to the driveway and she fetched some more stray textbooks out of the back part of their car, and she returned to the house with a few of them cradled in her arms.
She made two more trips out there, and each time she carried those books in her arms as if she was returning to school.
Sam set them down on the kitchen table when she heard Alex's voice in the next room. She returned to the front foyer where he had buried his face in his hands.
"Ma, would ya stop!" he insisted right then. "She's not my girlfriend! She was Cliff's girlfriend and I think she's got a new relationship already."
"She's such a nice girl, though, Alex!" she told him. "Look how helpful she is. Look at her helpin' us."
"I just wanna help you out, Mrs. Skolnick," Sam admitted with a shrug. "Something about helping out little old ladies."
"Oh, bubbeleh, call me Arlene."
"I can't," she insisted with a shake of her head. "I just—I just can't."
"Just like our baby." She put her arm around Alex's shoulders even though he dwarfed her: he leaned to the side so she could give him another kiss on the cheek before she brushed past Sam. She returned her attention to him and the deep red blush across his face.
"Are you okay?" she asked him, and he chuckled and buried his face in his hands once more.
"I just have to laugh," he confessed with a shake of his head. "I really do! If I don't laugh at all this, I'd melt right here on the floor."
Of course, once she and Alex showered off in the bathroom on the other side of the house, she had to join in on tea time as well as dinner with them: it was nothing like staying with Joey, even with as much as she loved him and as much as she wanted to meet his parents at one point. Whenever either of Alex's parents asked her about herself, Alex himself bowed his head a bit and paid more attention to his plate or his cup. But Sam was happy to converse with them however, even when she mentioned the fact that she was an artist fresh out of school.
She had a bit of difficulty saying that she was out of school because she swore that she had another year left and within a few days she should've been starting her last semester, but Bill never told her anything more about it. And she never had any notice from either Marla or Belinda about her still receiving mail from the school itself.
She said it anyways. It was almost strange speaking to his father in particular given he looked so much like his son, but without the head of rich black hair and the little tuft of gray over the brow.
"Have you ever thought of continuing your education?" Jerry asked her at one point.
"I haven't, no. I feel like that's something you do when you really feel it in your bones."
"Indeed, you do!" he said as he sipped on his tea. "Well, Samantha—I love that name, by the way, it's so rich sounding—I should tell you that, if you ever do decide on that, on continuing your education in the arts, come to me any time. Any questions you might have, any way you can keep in touch with us or our boy here—"
"Dad!" Alex gaped at him and then he bowed his head to hide his laughter.
"Oh, no, Mr. Skolnick, I can't do that," Sam told him off with a shake of her head. "I might be going back across country."
"So? Before Alex's older brother was born, his mother and I were based out of New York City. Out of Sheep's Head, Brooklyn to be specific. We made the cross country trek here to San Francisco as if it were nothin'. The only thing holding us back is we're both old and we can't really do that anymore. But that doesn't stop our minds, though. So any question or concern you might have, call me or send me a carrier pigeon, whatever you kids do these days—I'll pick up for you."
"Aw, thank you," she said, and then she returned to Alex and the blush on his face, which never really went away, even by the time the four of them turned in for the night. There was one extra room but that was the room that Alex and Sam had gone into before, where he had made it into his own safe haven away from his bedroom.
"I'll take the couch," she volunteered.
"Oh, no, bubbeleh, you don't wanna sleep on this couch," his mother told her. "Trust me—you do not wanna sleep on that couch."
"You really don't," Alex joined in from behind them. "I've tried taking naps on it when I was in school and I just—I just couldn't."
"Let her sleep with you, baby," she told him with a twinkle in her eye.
"Yeah, show me your room, Alex," Sam joined in with her hands pressed to her hips. "I just realized I haven't gotten to see your room."
He closed his eyes and sighed.
"Okay—come with me."
"Good night, kids—" She gave Alex a kiss good night and Sam a hug good night, and then the two of them made their way down the hallway to his little bedroom, right across the floor from the spare.
"That was actually my brother's room behind us," he explained as he flicked on the overhead light.
"But then he moved out and you made it your own!"
"Exactly! Anyways, this is my room."
Tucked in the far corner was his bed and right next to that was a small wooden dresser as well as a desk. On the side opposite from the door was a small window with a set of faded Venetian blinds. Over his bed were several posters, namely one of the Beatles and another one of Kiss, as well as a small magazine cutout of Eddie Van Halen over his headboard.
"Exactly how you'd picture a boy's room to be," she remarked as she spotted the little wooden acoustic guitar leaned up against the side of his desk.
"And I like your parents, too—they're cute," she told him.
"That's non traditional Jewish for ya," he said as he peeled off his shirt right in front of her: he had that pale white skin all over his body, and even though his waist had slimmed down a great deal, he was still a little round at the front there.
"Yeah, see, Alex? You have a nice body."
But he shrugged his shoulders and shook his head at that.
"So how're we doing this?" he asked her in a low voice as he folded up his shirt and placed it in the second drawer of the dresser.
"Well, I slept next to you in a car," she said, "I think we could sleep next to one another in your bed."
He nibbled on his bottom lip at that.
"It'd be a tight fit, though," he pointed out.
"Compared to the car?"
He froze and then he dropped his pants. He left them there on the floor as he put on his flannel pajama bottoms, and then he slid under the covers. He pressed himself close to the wall, right underneath Van Halen and the Beatles, and then he patted on the side of the mattress for her to join him.
"Clean sheets, by the way," he assured her.
"I would hope so." She took off her jeans as well but she unhooked her bra and tugged it out from under her shirt's hem all the while.
"Wow, that was smart," he remarked as she hung it over the back of the desk chair.
"My mom taught me that," she told him as she made her way to his bed. He inched back as far as he could and she climbed into the bed next to him. Given they lay in a twin bed, they were nestled up against each other with both of their heads rested upon his pillow.
"This is awkward," he confessed.
"Why's that?" she asked him. "Because—we're in your bed?"
"I mean—it's better than the car, isn't it, though?" he pointed out.
"Significantly better."
He swallowed. Even though he lay on his side, she could tell that he wasn't comfortable, such that she shook her head.
"Alex—" she started, and he raised his eyebrows at her. She climbed out of bed. "Alex, I can't."
"Why not?"
She headed towards the door. Regardless of whether the couch was uncomfortable or not, she didn't want to sleep there if he was going to be uncomfortable all night long.
"I—I dunno," she admitted.
"Don't do this to me," he begged her.
"Don't do what?"
"Be indecisive."
"I just don't feel right doing it."
"But you did it just fine in the car, though!"
"But that was in the car, though," she pointed out. "We were all alone and we were both exhausted from driving so much."
"We're still exhausted, aren't we?" he asked her in a small voice. "I mean, I know I am."
"I dunno, Alex. I just—I just don't feel right doing it."
"So—all those little moments of you touching me and feeling me—were all a lie?"
"No," she assured him. "No, no, no. I meant every part of those, Alex. But—we're in a different spot now."
He sighed through his nose and rolled over onto his back, and rested his hands upon his thighs.
"Here—let me get the light."
She turned off the ceiling light which in turn engulfed the bedroom in darkness: the sole light came from a little night light down the hall as well as the harbor lights off in the distance. She fondled her way back to the bed and she climbed back in next to him. She lay on her left side so she was right on the edge of the bed. Even in the darkness, Sam could tell that she had crossed a line with him. She nibbled on her bottom lip as she strove to find the right words.
"I will say this, though—I like the way your body feels," she told him in a whisper. "Nice and soft."
He never said anything. She sighed through her nose and closed her eyes, and went to sleep right next to him.