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walk. Kissed like I knew how to kiss.
“But not in the same way. Ben and I are superficial in the same way. You
don’t give a shit if people like you.”
Which was both true and not. “I care more than I’d like to,” I said.
“Everything sucks without Margo,” she said. She was drunk, too, but I didn’t
mind her variety of drunk.
“Yeah,” I said.
“I want you to take me to that place,” she said. “That strip mall. Ben told me
about it.”
“Yeah, we can go whenever you want,” I said. I told her I’d been there all
night, that I’d found Margo’s nail polish and her blanket.
Lacey was quiet for a while, breathing through her open mouth. When she
finally said it, she almost whispered it. Worded like a question and spoken like a
statement: “She’s dead, isn’t she.”
“I don’t know, Lacey. I thought so until tonight, but now I don’t know.”
“She’s dead and we’re all . . . doing this.”
I thought of the highlighted Whitman: “If no other in the world be aware I sit
content, / And if each and all be aware I sit content.” I said, “Maybe that’s what
she wanted, for life to go on.”
“That doesn’t sound like my Margo,” she said, and I thought of my Margo,
and Lacey’s Margo, and Mrs. Spiegelman’s Margo, and all of us looking at her
reflection in different fun house mirrors. I was going to say something, but
Lacey’s open mouth became truly slack-jawed, and she leaned her head against
the cold gray tile of the bathroom wall, asleep.
It wasn’t until after two people had come into the bathroom to pee that I decided
to wake her up. It was almost 5 A.M., and I needed to take Ben home.
“Lace, wake up,” I said, touching her flip-flop with my shoe.
She shook her head. “I like being called that,” she said. “You know that
you’re, like, currently my best friend?”
“I’m thrilled,” I said, even though she was drunk and tired and lying. “So
listen, we’re going to go upstairs together, and if anybody says anything about
you, I will defend your honor.”
“Okay,” she said. And so we went upstairs together, and the party had

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thinned out a little, but there were still some baseball players, including Jase,
over by the keg. Mostly there were people sleeping in sleeping bags all over the
floor; some of them were squeezed onto the pullout couch. Angela and Radar
were lying together on a love seat, Radar’s legs dangling over the side. They
were sleeping over.
Just as I was about to ask the guys by the keg if they’d seen Ben, he ran into
the living room. He wore a blue baby bonnet on his head and was wielding a
sword made out of eight empty cans of Milwaukee’s Best Light, which had, I
assumed, been glued together.
“I SEE YOU!” Ben shouted, pointing at me with the sword. “I SPY
QUENTIN JACOBSEN! YESSS! Come here! Get on your knees!” he shouted.
“What? Ben, calm down.”
“KNEES!”
I obediently knelt, looking up at him.
He lowered the beer sword and tapped me on each shoulder. “By the power
of the superglue beer sword, I hereby designate you my driver!”
“Thanks,” I said. “Don’t puke in the minivan.”
“YES!” he shouted. And then when I tried to get up, he pushed me back
down with his non-beer-sworded hand, and he tapped me again with the beer
sword, and he said, “By the power of the superglue beer sword, I hereby
announce that you will be naked under your robe at graduation.”
“What?” I stood then.
“YES! Me and you and Radar! Naked under our robes! At graduation! It will
be so awesome!”
“Well,” I said, “it will be really hot.”
“YES!” he said. “Swear you will do it! I already made Radar swear.
RADAR, DIDN’T YOU SWEAR?”
Radar turned his head ever so slightly, and opened his eyes a slit. “I swore,”
he mumbled.
“Well then, I swear, too,” I said.
“YES!” Then Ben turned to Lacey. “I love you.”
“I love you, too, Ben.”
“No, I love you. Not like a sister loves a brother or like a friend loves a
friend. I love you like a really drunk guy loves the best girl ever.” She smiled.
I took a step forward, trying to save him from further embarrassment, and
placed a hand on his shoulder. “If we’re gonna get you home by six, we should
be leaving,” I said.

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“Okay,” he said. “I just gotta thank Becca for this awesome party.”
So Lacey and I followed Ben downstairs, where he opened the door to
Becca’s room and said, “Your party kicked so much ass! Even though you suck
so much! It’s like instead of blood, your heart pumps liquid suck! But thanks for
the beer!” Becca was alone, lying on top of her covers, staring at the ceiling. She
didn’t even glance over at him. She just mumbled, “Oh, go to hell, shit-face. I
hope your date gives you her crabs.”
Without a hint of irony in his voice, Ben answered, “Great talking to you!”
and then closed the door. I don’t think he had the faintest idea he’d just been
insulted.
And then we were upstairs again and getting ready to walk out the door.
“Ben,” I said, “you’re going to have to leave the beer sword here.”
“Right,” he said, and then I grabbed the sword’s tip and tugged, but Ben
refused to relinquish it. I was about to start screaming at his drunk ass when I
realized he couldn’t let go of the sword.
Lacey laughed. “Ben, did you glue yourself to the beer sword?”
“No,” Ben answered. “I superglued. That way no one can steal it from me!”
“Good thinking,” Lacey deadpanned.
Lacey and I managed to break off all the beer cans except the one that was
superglued directly to Ben’s hand. No matter how hard I pulled, Ben’s hand just
limply followed along, like the beer was the string and his hand the puppet.
Finally, Lacey just said, “We gotta go.” So we did. We strapped Ben into the
backseat of the minivan. Lacey sat next to him, because “I should make sure he
doesn’t puke or beat himself to death with his beer hand or whatever.”
But he was far enough gone for Lacey to feel comfortable talking about him.
As I drove down the interstate, she said, “There’s something to be said for trying
hard, you know? I mean, I know he tries too hard, but why is that such a bad
thing? And he’s sweet, isn’t he?”
“I guess so,” I said. Ben’s head was lolling around, seemingly unconnected to
a spine. He didn’t strike me as particularly sweet, but whatever.
I dropped Lacey off first on the other side of Jefferson Park. When she leaned
over and pecked him on the mouth, he perked up enough to mumble, “Yes.” She
walked up to the driver’s-side door on the way to her condo. “Thanks,” she said.
I just nodded.
I drove across the subdivision. It wasn’t night and it wasn’t morning. Ben
snored quietly in the back. I pulled up in front of his house, got out, opened the
sliding door of the minivan, and unfastened his seat belt.

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“Time to go home, Benners.”
He sniffed and shook his head, then awoke. He reached up to rub his eyes
and seemed surprised to find an empty can of Milwaukee’s Best Light attached
to his right hand. He tried to make a fist and dented the can some, but did not
dislodge it. He looked at it for a minute, and then nodded. “The Beast is stuck to
me,” he noted.
He climbed out of the minivan and staggered up the sidewalk to his house,
and when he was standing on the front porch, he turned around, smiling. I waved
at him. The beer waved back.

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