1503951243 by Laurel Saville Page B

with an easy après-ski social life, but once his friend left he wasn’t sure what to do with himself. Returning to college seemed retrograde.
    He started bartending—his sparkling blue eyes, aquiline nose, eraser-pink lips, and chestnut hair that rode in soft waves over his forehead made for good tips. He also bought a few grams of coke with the intention of cutting it and selling it, but instead blew it with the waitresses, who took furtive snorts from the fake fingernails they dipped into his plastic bag while they stood shivering on the back porch during a smoke break. Then his college friend called and said his parents were on their way to the condo to do some fly-fishing, so he’d better clear out and make sure he got rid of any evidence he’d been there. He spent two days doing laundry and cleaning but got his friend in trouble anyway over a pair of women’s lace underwear that had gotten kicked under the bed, a burn mark on the sofa from a dropped joint, and a grimy grill he’d forgotten to scrub.
    Darius didn’t know where to go next, so he spent a few weeks camped out on the lumpy sofa of a lifty he’d met. He went to the bank one day to get some beer money and found his account had been frozen. Apparently, parents had told parents. There was a serious phone call with his father where words like responsibility , accountability , and appreciation were used. Darius promised all of the above, as well as a return to UVM in the fall, with summer classes at a community college to catch up so he could graduate within the year. His account was reinstated and his monthly allowance reinstalled.
    But it was a balmy, brilliant April and summer sessions were not starting for a bit. So he loaded up his Saab and, instead of heading east, turned his car toward the setting sun. He thought he’d try Southern California, maybe score a modeling gig so he could distance himself from financial reliance on his parents, learn to surf, get a tan. Classes could wait. However, after just a few weeks of squinting in the sunshine and wiping sand from his feet, he had become disillusioned. He was surprised to find California inchoate and inhospitable. There were so many other handsome, young, unemployed men around that no one took any notice of him. His charms were too East Coast, preppy, snarky, and filled with lingo and code that carried no weight in the airy, sunny, dry atmosphere. Surfing was also much more difficult and physically demanding than he had anticipated. Instead of showing off easy grace, he continually slipped and fell. He left the water dazed and bruised, his lungs burning with inhaled salt water. The sun was harsher than he’d expected, and he freckled, burned, and peeled instead of bronzing. He couldn’t find the glassy, modern apartment on the beach he had imagined himself in, because his allowance wouldn’t cover the rent even if he shared with several others, so after a month or so camped out in a friend’s pool house, lying to his father during their occasional and uncomfortable phone calls, he repacked his car and headed back East.
    Thinking there was little to do or see in the middle of the country, he got on the highway and drove and drove, stopping at rest areas to snatch a few hours of sleep when he needed it, filling the passenger-side floor of the car with crumpled wrappers from his fast-food meals. As the blacktop whizzed by beneath his tires, he resigned himself to a return to Burlington, Vermont, where he figured he’d reconnect with some pals, see if there was a late-summer class at the community college he could take to rack up a few credits, apologize sincerely to his parents for his six months of truancy, and try to make his words and deeds begin to match each other.
    About an hour before he was to hit the dock of the ferry that would take him across Lake Champlain and back into the life he’d abandoned, he stopped. He’d left the highway hours earlier and had been driving along twisted