Let's Get it Wet

“Madeline likes you.”

Ali’s words were like an ice pick plunging into his jugular. Repercussions were involved, especially when he heard the answer:

“Madeline likes me? As in. . .that Madeline?”

“Yeah. That Madeline. She likes you.”

Alexander could say nothing more. She turned on her heel, leaving him to stand there and wallow. Madeline liked him. Sweet Jesus, what had he done to get to this point? And what was he going to do now? First, he would smoke a cigarette. He marched immediately to his truck, parked at the far side of the lot across the street (he had been late to school that morning), climbed in, and located his pack of Marlboro Ultra Lights. The wispy smoke trailed out through the window, and he now thought.

That Madeline referred to Madeline Jones, who should have been the laughing stock of the school. He couldn’t see how anyone would want to hang out with her, judging by the amount she pissed her pants. That alone would be sufficient to alienate her in his mind, well before reaching the fact that she liked it. What a case. He had a class
with her, and every day she would walk in with wet patches of varying size and
freshness, flaunting it with nary a care on Earth. This was a feature of much of his memories concerning her, dating back to when he first moved to Indigo in sixth grade.

He never paid much attention to her aside from what he couldn’t help. . .although. . .most of his first-hand experience with her seemed all right. She seemed polite, amicable, and fairly studious, customarily turning out good marks and keeping her opinions among teachers high. Perhaps that was why she had that little pentagon of friends that surrounded her in the back of fourth-hour financial math. None of them, as near as he could remember, ever showed up for class with pants soaked to the floor. A few boyfriends had also passed in and out of her relationship doors, so perhaps there were likeable qualities of her. . .or maybe they just all had a wet-clothes fetish. Reaching for another cigarette, Alexander decided that, aside from all that, she was rather cute, with her sizeable mane of bushy brown hair, cool nerdy glasses, and bright eyes. It seemed he was truly caught between a rock and a hard place, unsure of what to do, and unsure of what to feel.




“Madeline likes you? You mean, the Madeline who likes to piss her pants?”

Night had long since fallen, and Alexander was just off work. His friend James handed him a light. He set the tip of a fresh cigarette ablaze and took a deep puff, giving the nicotine plenty of time to do its job before setting the smoke free.

“Yeah, Her friend – Ali or whatever-her-face-is – told me.”

Smoke poured from James’ mouth.

“Well, damn, man, what are you going to do?” he asked.

Alexander took another puff.

“I don’t know. I’m torn.”

“Is it like not wanting to read a book because of the naked guy on the cover, but not turned off from the subject matter?”

“Something like that.”

“Mmm. I’m sure it can’t be all that bad. You aren’t eye level with her piss jeans, after all.” James let the smoke leave with his words. “She is pretty hot. I’d fuck her.”

“Thanks, James, I feel so much better having known that,” Alexander replied dryly.

“Anytime, brother,” James laughed, dropping his completed cigarette to the ground.

“Well, hell, I guess I better go ahead and start working. Catch you tomorrow, if I haven’t passed out.”

They shook hands. James went toward the brightly-lit entrance of the store, where he worked as a night stocker (Alexander was also a cashier there), leaving Alexander to finish smoking next to James’ car. He wasn’t sure what tomorrow would hold, but he was sure to have an awkward go of it.




He was so far into the habit of smoking that he had long since forgotten what provoked him to start. Some combination of peer pressure and stress was sure to blame. It no longer mattered, really. It was a habit that he probably couldn’t break, and his dependency on them for relief increased exponentially as stress ensued.

Like now.

He was up a bit earlier than usual, so he stopped at a BP on North Canelthon, halfway between his house and school, for a new pack of cigarettes and a cup of coffee. He frowned deeply as he discarded the spent pack, then the wrapper from the new one, and didn’t even bother to resist pulling the first cigarette out and sticking it in his mouth. His heart felt warm and annoyed beneath his shirt and jacket, becoming more so the closer the got to school. His brain swam with a hundred thousand possibilities at once. None of them made sense, and none would work. It should be a simple case: Either accept her offer of more-than-friendship, or don’t. In his mind, it just didn’t seem that way.

Estuary High School was on Farris Road, within view of Interstate 50, which he generally used as the last leg of his commute, depending on traffic. The sprawling cherry-coloured brick complex, replete with four sports fields and three parking lots, seemed rather incongruous there right next to the interchange. Per a metropolitan high school, it even had a little ramp that led to the freeway. Directly across the street was a large glass bank building, and next door was a large construction site at which a free clinic was being built. Alexander wasn’t a big fan of this placement, but perhaps that was his medium-town origins talking; making him old-fashioned. It was 2011, after all.

That; however, was well beside the point. He had decided what course of action he wanted to take concerning Madeline and his crush on him.

He would do nothing.

He would simply ignore her.

Ignore her, her friends, the queries, and even his own feelings about it. It was so simple that he couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of it before. He nosed his Chevrolet Silverado into an unoccupied parking space, lifted the column shifter into park, and cut the engine. Everything’ll be fine, he reassured himself, just ignore it all.

But, oh, how some things get lost from paper to reality.

News spread like wildfire round here, and from the moment his presence in the building was known, he was bombarded to the point where he thought he would change to a different element. The hundred thousand different opinions formed an incomprehensible scatterplot, with no particular pattern and no particular meaning. Some people thought it repulsive to the point of physical illness; that they wondered why Madeline wasn’t in a self-contained class or something. Others thought it roll-on-the-floor hilarious; asking him if he knew about the “pee blog” on her MySpace or how she cam-whored her “interest” like some odd model. Still others told him that it was adorable, drowning in a chorus of “awwww” at his silence and the few details he gave. His nicotine alarm blared painfully before school even started.

He approached one of the few places he normally saw Madeline aside from class with his tongue clamped between his teeth and his heart thrumming like an amplifier in his throat. His stomach turned over. No. He hung a left at a stairway and took a long way to class. He didn’t think he could deal with it.

They still shared a class, and unless he wanted to risk being slapped with detention for skipping, there was no possible way he could avoid her. He felt ill, and never looked up from the shiny floor as he walked into class. A burning sensation on the back of his neck told him that Madeline had walked in. He shivered and his stomach turned over again. A single bead of sweat slid down his cheek. The teacher passed out the chapter test. Alexander looked at it for a moment. He had completely forgotten about the test. Recent events had kept him slightly occupied. It was going to be a rough hour.

It turned out to be an even rougher week. Alexander must have gone through a thousand cigarettes, but it didn’t help. It was terrible, attempting to avoid the questions from every single person who knew (by then, damn near everyone), Madeline’s staring at him, and his own feelings for her, which, far beyond the capacity of his logic, were growing by the day. He hadn’t done anything with anybody for five days, slept every afternoon he wasn’t working, and kept to himself when he was. His plan was failing, and he was paying the price for it.

After school on Friday, he went for his truck at top speed, and put the campus behind him well before the rush even started. Interstate 50 went all the way to Davis Island, so that’s where he decided to go, smoking heavily and attempting to drown his thoughts out with loud music and high speeds. It was strange that in seven and a half years of living here that he had never seen the city’s skyline this close before, even if it was separated by a few miles of land and water. The way it sprawled from the distant horizon right to the shores of the estuary was captivating in the way unique to very large cities. It traveled with him for a while, growing smaller and larger as the highway wound toward its destination. He felt himself relax. Past the I-99 interchange, the city began to shrink in the rearview mirror until it was barely visible again.

Then, the interstate lifted into a massive bridge over a majestic channel. For a long time, he floated above an endless expanse of water, with the mainland dropping away behind him. He had never been to Davis Island before, either, for in the holidays of seven and a half years, his family had always returned to their previous hometown. It was all a wonderful learning experience, sixty miles away from school, Madeline, and her crush on him. He let off the accelerator and watched the speedometer drop. The island was in sight, its houses slightly greywashed in comparison to the glare-streaked water.

Suddenly, he noticed that his phone was going off in his pocket. He fumbled for it. James was calling him. Why the hell was James calling him this early? He flipped the phone open and hit the speakerphone button.

“Aren’t you supposed to be asleep?”

“I’ve evolved to where I don’t need sleep anymore. Where on God’s green Earth are you?” James said.

“I’m on Davis Island,” Alexander replied.

“Why the fuck are you on Davis Island? Decided to take a little guilt trip?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know what I’m talking about. I’ll head over there. Know where Zoso’s is?”

“Eh?”

“Zoso’s. It’s, like, the only reason you should even be near Davis Island. It’s on Seawall. Can’t miss it. Great big guitar on the roof. We can meet up there.”

“. . .Okay. See you there, I guess.”

“Yeah, I’m on the south side, so it’ll be a little bit.”

“Okay.”

“Peace.”

There was a click, and the call ended. Why did James want to talk to him now?

Alexander shuddered a little bit. Did James know about what he had decided to do, and how he felt about it? He could never be sure with James. That man had his methods, Alexander had to give him that.

Seawall Boulevard, fortunately, was pretty self-explanatory, and well labeled. All he had to do was keep going straight when the interstate suddenly made a turn into Highway 1, then follow the wide palm-tree-lined road that ensued until he found the place described. The Les Paul on the roof was at least twice as large as the hamburger joint beneath it. Alexander pulled into the parking lot, got out of his truck, and took in the sights. The ocean stretched past the horizon, its waves gently crashing onto the wide white beach. A breeze hit him, blowing his lengthy hair back and the smell of salt into his nose. It felt wonderful, and made him debate why he had never experienced this.

He had already eaten, and was enjoying the cheesecake when James finally arrived, wearing his favourite Led Zeppelin semi-dress shirt and looking a bit amused.

“Took you damn long enough,” Alexander said.

“Some dumbass was too busy looking at a cop pulling some guy over, and ended up making a cop-car sandwich,” James said, taking a slice of the cheesecake. “Blocked half the damn lanes.”

“Oh.”

“But what’s up with you?”

“I think I’m still here.”

“So, even though I’m twenty years old now – Jesus with tits, time flies, doesn’t it – in college, and working nights for $9,15 an hour, I still keep in touch with the ol’ Estuary High rumour mill, and guess who I’ve been hearing all about.”

“Fuck. . .”

“Half the damn school thinks its either just awesome or just hilarious – there are a few who think it’s appalling, too – and you haven’t said a word about it. Now, even though my body has accustomed itself to operating with less and less sleep every day, and my mental capacity isn’t what it once was, that tells me that you are attempting to ignore her.”

“Can’t I just get you drunk instead?”

James looked at him for a moment, then reared his head back and barked with laughter.

“Well, you can give me all the Samuel Adams you want, but I’ll still be able to drive,” he said. “But that isn’t my point. Have you been attempting to ignore her?”

Alexander was silent for a full twenty seconds.

“Yeah. What of it?”

“Are you having trouble figuring out what to do?”

“A little bit. It should be a cut-and-go deal, but it just isn’t working out that way.”

A waiter appeared. “Is everything okay?”

James turned to her. “It’ll be even better, if you can get me a bacon cheeseburger with your axe fries and a Dr. Pepper.”

“All right, I can do that. I’ll refill your drink, too, honey.”

“Thanks.” Alexander said. The waiter took his drink and walked briskly off.

“Anyway,” James said, adjusting his glasses, “it probably should. Everything looks way better on paper than it does in real life, except maybe Playboy models.”

“I think you’re right there.”

“I’m always right. But that isn’t the point. I don’t think anyone likes being given the cold shoulder. Not even telemarketers.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“Talk to her.”

“Talk to her?”

“Talk to her. I think you’ll find that it might make it all better, and it’s better for you. How many packs of cigarettes have you gone through this week?”

Alexander thought about it for a moment.

“A lot.”

“See? Now, if you have a fairly interesting and fairly attractive girl to talk to, you’ll be a bit healthier. It’s like the best cigarette you’ve never smoked.”

“James, she likes to piss her pants.”

James settled back.

“What does that have to do with anything? It’s something she likes to do. Hell, I’m obsessed with music from the Seventies, and I don’t think a girl would beat the shit out of herself with confusion for a week and a half if I told her I liked her.

“You forget, I went there too, and I saw the same things you did. Well, not all of it. From what I hear, she’s gone a bit more boho, but I don’t know. Two years does a lot to your experience.”

“Well, I do have something there for her. . .”

The waiter arrived with James’ order, and Alexander’s drink. James immediately went to work devouring the sizeable burger and the guitar-shaped French fries.

“Now, isn’t this the coolest fucking place in the world? A Jimmy Page-themed burger joint? I wonder if he ever actually came in here.”




Where would Alexander be without James Harrell? The advice he gave him at Zoso’s blew everything Alexander might have thought up on his own completely out of the water. It was like having a new set of eyes through which to see. He was a bit nervous as he went through school – strangely, to very few questions – and a bit more nervous as he waited for her in fifth hour. When she did walk in, she did a noticeable double-take at the fact that Alexander was looking directly at her, not at her pants, and not in the other direction, but at her face, which then split into a very broad and very pretty smile, at which Alexander’s heart did its own double-take. It was very difficult for him to concentrate on anything else. A single bead of sweat rolled down his cheek. He gave up on attempting concentration. His feelings for Madeline had suddenly found their place, and he found it impossible to resist.

“Madeline, can I talk to you?”

She turned around, her face flooding with colour. “Uh, sure.”

It took him several seconds to get his bearings.

“Would-you-like-to-go-out-somewhere-sometime?”

Alexander’s vocal cords quit working. Madeline’s face was now roughly the colour of James’ car. “Um. . .sure. . .that w. . .” She trailed off. Neither one of them could say anything more. Madeline gave him a weak smile and walked off. He just stood there.

The rest of the day melted into the rest of the week with such speed that he barely noticed it. Somewhere in the middle of the blur, he and Madeline had decided on a place to go, and a time. So, at 19.12 on Friday night, the two were pulling into the parking lot of Zoso’s, with the sun far enough below the horizon to darken the sea and provide an even more stunning view.

“We would go to the beach all the time when I was little,” she said fondly. “Go there early in the morning and stay there all night. It got to where we never sunburned again.”

Alexander laughed. “I’ve been to the beach, like, once. We’re from the interior, and my mother is not a big fan of the water, so we’ve always gone back to Grant for holidays and summers and what-have-you.”

“That’s no fun,” she said. “You’ve gotta go to the beach at least once during the summer. These beaches are a bit nasty, but if you go to, like, Kittering, it’s really, really nice.”

“Maybe one of these days.”

There was a moment of silence. A new song began playing on the radio, an upbeat piano-driven beat. Madeline smiled.

“I love this song.”

Alexander took a very deep drink of his soda. “So, er. . .” he asked, almost unwilling to go forth with the wave of the desire for knowledge, “when did you start, uh. . .”

“Peeing my pants?” she filled in.

“Yeah,” he said very quickly.

“I get asked that a lot,” she said, settling back. “I guess people think that I’m incontinent or something like that. Not that I would like it if I was, but whatever. Anyway, I don’t mind being asked about it. It’s been a really long time, now, since I was, like, five or six. My father locks the door when he takes a shower, and he likes to take long showers, and back then, we were living in this house in Groton that only had one bathroom.

“One day, I had to go really bad. We’d been on a field trip or something, and I hadn’t had the chance to take a piss, so I get home, run to the bathroom, and it’s locked. I banged on the door for, like, ten minutes, but I don’t think he heard me, and the next thing I know, I was soaking my pants in front of the door.”

“Damn. I bet that was fun,” Alexander said without really thinking.

“Well, not at first. I ran into my bedroom so no one would see me, and then I noticed that I liked it. I ended up standing in this great puddle thinking, like, ‘This is awesome. I think I’ll do this all the time.’”

“And you’ve been doing it ever since?”

“Yep. I didn’t start doing it in public until about fifth grade, when I sort of did it accidentally-on purpose at school. It took a little while for people to get used to it, but there were a few who thought it pretty cool. Some of my friends do it now.”

Alexander took a sip of his drink. “I’ve never seen them.”

“Well, they do it when we all hang out, but I guess they just don’t want to do it at school. I dunno.”

There was silence. Madeline lip-synced the rest of the song, then stared at her lap for a moment. Alexander thought he knew what she was doing.

“So what else do you like?” she said, looking up.

“I like old-school music. You know, Zeppelin, Floyd, so on,” he said. “Working is usually fun, at least the money is. There are a lot of cool people where I work, though.”

“Where do you work?”

“ALPS on Innsbruck Drive?”

“Oh, yeah. We shop there. I think I’ve seen you there before.”

A pause, then: “Do you have any Zeppelin bootlegs?”

He stopped for a full second. “Bootlegs? Well, er. . .yeah. . . Why?”

Which ones do you have?”

“Well, I have a lot, actually. . .everything from Gonzaga ’68 to their last show, with some gaps in the middle.”

“Have you got Earl’s Court on DVD?”

“Yeah.”

“Think you could burn me up a copy?”

“I think I can do that. I’ll see if I have some blank discs round the house.”

“Wonderful.” She stretched and ran a hand through her hair. “Ah, that felt good.”

Alexander didn’t know what to think. She liked Led Zeppelin. He suddenly liked her even more. His heart rate increased, and his mind wondered what other interests they shared. He swallowed.

“What else do you like?”

“A whole bunch of stuff,” she said. “Playing in the rain, listening to music, reading, watching movies, just hanging around, all sorts of things. I like to. . .stay away from the norm. It doesn’t interest me anymore.”

“Who needs normal, anyway?” he said.

They both laughed. All seemed to be going very well.

As they finished their dessert, a thunderclap rolled over the sea, and it began to rain heavily. Alexander decided that it would be a good idea to try to wait the storm out as long as possible, so they hung around there for a while, talking more comfortably than they had all night. As the rain relaxed in volume, Madeline’s phone played the opening notes to “Achilles Last Stand.” She opened it and put it to her ear. There was a brief exchange.

“All right, we’ll leave now,” she said. She closed her phone. “My mom wants me to be home soon.”

“Okay,” he said. “That’s fine. We can leave now.”

They got up in unison. He picked up the check and turned it over, showing the $16,13 tab. Not too bad for a great night at a great place. She walked up to him and slipped her arm in his. “I hope they don’t mind their seat being a bit wet,” she whispered dryly to him.

Alexander laughed quietly. “They shouldn’t notice.”

He paid the tab and they left together. She took extra care to trod in every puddle on the way to his truck. At some other point, he might have cared about it, but he didn’t. He got on the highway and headed home.

Just as the bridge ended, a matte-black Saab appeared behind his truck and began flashing red and blue LEDs at him.

“Oh, hell. . .” he muttered.

He activated his turn signal and pulled over to the side of the road near the end of the guardrail. The police officer came to a stop a few meters behind him. Its driver’s door opened, and a short, stocky man in a Day-Glo rain hood and vest stepped out and walked toward Alexander’s truck. He rolled down the window.

“Evening,” the officer said in an officious voice. “Can I see your licence and registration, please.”

“Yes, officer,” Alexander said in a controlled voice, extracting his licence from his wallet, then the insurance papers from the glove compartment. The officer scrutinized the papers.

“Now,” the officer said, “the reason I stopped you is—”

But a blaring horn and a violent screeching of tires cut him off. The officer’s head jerked to the right. A massive explosion of crushing metal ensued as the police car was plowed into, then beneath Alexander’s truck, catapulting the officer away and sending the cars into an enormous road sign. Madeline screamed, Alexander was hurled forward into the exploding airbag, and then there was suddenly silence.

His ears rang at a painfully loud frequency.

His mouth tasted of copper.

There was finally a noise.

“Holy shit!” the officer yelled in a strangled voice. “Dispatch, dispatch, we have a huge 10-0 on 50 eastbound, one mile from Exit 11! Send EMT immediately!”

Alexander was looking through a cloud of acrid smoke, over the crumpled hood of his truck, at the ground, burned by one working headlight. He kicked the door open and found that the door sill was now four feet off the ground. The decimated police car was underneath, its strobe lights still blaring. Everything seemed to be smoking. The police officer ran up to him.

“You guys okay?” he said.

“I—I think so,” Alexander said, wiping his mouth. Blood was on his hand, and his front teeth were killing him.

“Yeah. . .” Madeline piped up in a barely audible voice.

“All right, get out of the truck,” the officer ordered. “Shut the engine off.”

Alexander turned the key to OFF, and then helped Madeline out of the truck.
Meanwhile, the officer had gone to help the driver of the car that hit them, which had been completely destroyed from the B-pillar forward, trapping the young man between the dashboard and the seats. Alexander asked Madeline to step to the side of the road, away from traffic, while he and the policeman opened the back door of the car and checked the man for signs of life. He was alive, but badly injured and unconscious.

“There’s no way we’re prying this guy out like this,” the policeman said, cradling the man’s head. “We’ll have to wait for the EMTs to get here.”

Alexander could say nothing. Traffic around them had slowed to a near stop; several people had gotten out of their own vehicles to lend a hand.

“What happened?” one man in an argyle sweater vest asked concernedly. “Is everyone all right?”

“Not everyone,” the officer said sternly. “This guy came up from the shoulder and damn near ran me over. He’s not in too good of a way. Everyone else is fine. Hold this guy for me while I get some stuff out of my car.”

The policeman went to his car. Its rear section had been forced into the backseat and through the rear windscreen with enough force to open the back doors. The roof, windscreen, and hood were all badly mangled by Alexander’s truck. The sirens were much closer now.

“Dash cam was still rolling,” the policeman said. “Caught the whole thing. That’ll be one helluva tape to see when we get back.”

Alexander stumbled briefly on the spot, then doubled over and vomited on the highway. Wisps of scarlet blood accentuated the beige puddle. It helped a little bit. He stood back up, unsteady, but now able to see the ambulance approaching fast from the emergency lane. A second police car was also coming up behind the ambulance. Alexander still wasn’t sure if he was okay or not.

The emergency vehicles stopped a few meters away from the chaotic wreck. Paramedics rushed out to attend to the man in the car. Alexander refused assistance. He had to find Madeline.

“Officer,” he said, “have you seen my—” he paused for a moment “—girlfriend?”

The policeman turned to him. “She’s over there, in the ditch. I think you might want to give her some comfort. We all could have been burnt toast.”

She was standing in the ditch, up to her shins in the water. As Alexander got closer, he noticed that she was shivering and crying. His heart sank. He stepped into the chilly water and put his arm around her. She immediately buried herself into his chest, holding him tightly. He felt his eyes burn.

There they stood for several long moments, until Madeline stopped crying. She looked up into his eyes, then drew a long breath and embraced him again. Then, she wiped her face and walked off, leaving him standing there in the water.

“Oi!” the officer called. “Come up here, the both of you! The EMTs want to check you out real quick.”

Alexander stood next to the ambulance and stared at his truck. The paramedics were patching up a rather nasty cut that Madeline had on her arm. He had once again refused treatment, a decision that he was starting to regret as the adrenaline slowly flowed out of his system, revealing one by one the aches that came from being in a car accident at nearly eighty miles per hour. His mouth still tasted of copper. One of his front teeth was worryingly loose. His dad had some good muscle relaxers at home, so he figured he could just take those and get Madeline home. That was all he cared about.

Both of their parents were already worried to the point of illness. He had reassured his father that they were fine (“a bit sore, but I think we’re still in one piece”), and that the police had already offered to ferry them both back to Indigo. Maybe then they could get some sleep. He would figure out what to do about his truck in the morning. It had suffered a lot of damage that would be terribly expensive to repair.

A full twenty minutes after the accident, he and Madeline were finally able to get into a fresh police car and make the long return trip home. She held him very close as the officer carefully navigated the wet highways, wary of being involved in (or causing) another disaster like the one they had just left. They were all very silent nearly all the way home, when, while Alexander was staring at the sparkling buildings across the estuary, Madeline was touching his leg.

“You’re wet,” she said.

“Well, yeah. . .it was raining, then we were standing in the ditch. . .” he replied.

“No,” she insisted. “You’ve wet yourself.”

“I did?”

“Yeah, you did.”

He hadn’t even noticed, but there it was. A wet spot the size of a turkey platter on his lap. Before he even figured out what to say, Madeline was kissing him. His heart leapt, and after overcoming the initial blast of surprise, he wrapped his arms tightly around her and returned the kiss with fire that he thought he never had before. It was wonderful.

But the policeman had noticed. “Hey, now,” he said, his tone amused, “it’s a violation of city ordinance to be doing that in a police vehicle.”

They stopped. “Sorry. . .” Alexander said, his face bright red. He felt Madeline take his hand in hers and set it in her own lap.

"I had a great night,” she said quietly, resting her head against his shoulder.

She was asleep by the time they got to her house.





“Now where are my favourite two lovebirds?”

James strode across the beach toward them, his Led Zeppelin shirt flapping about in the brisk wind. The sun flashed off his glasses. Alexander and Madeline stood up and looked at him.

“I’m sort of like a signal flare,” Madeline said.

“Well, it depends on the light,” James replied. “Sometimes, I can’t miss it. Unless you’re wearing, like, pants that glow whenever you piss in them or something.”

They all laughed heartily.

“So, would we all like to go to the Church of Zeppelin concert at iBuypower Arena?” James said. “I’m actually not working, so we can all go to it.”

“Well, we don’t have tickets,” Alexander said.

James looked at him like he was a sea-slug. “D’you really think I’d be offering for the lot of us to go somewhere if I didn’t have—” he procured three white and green tickets from his pocket and fanned them “—tickets to the aforementioned event?”

Alexander took one.

IBUYPOWER ARENA
265 FRONT STREET
WHITE CITY, VR 53152
[phone]

MYSTERY TRAIN PRODUCTIONS AND VERDANA EVENT SOCIETY PRESENT

AN EVENING WITH

CHURCH OF ZEPPELIN

SAT 29 OCT 2011 8.15 PM GENERAL ADMISSION $54.00

SEC 2 ROW 4 SEAT 6

“Damn, James,” Alexander said in awe. “How much did you pay for these?”

“Enough,” James replied simply. “I figured that since we can’t see the real Zeppelin, we might as well see the next best thing.”

“I’m so bringing my tape recorder,” Madeline said.

“We’ll call the bootleg ‘Let’s Get it Wet,’” Alexander said.

“Now there’s a plan. But I don’t think you want to go in that,” James said. “Find something that would make it a little more noticeable.”

“I’ve got something that’ll be perfect,” Madeline said.

They walked back toward the seawall. James took a cigarette out of his pocket and put it in his mouth. He offered one to Alexander.

“Nah, I think I’ll quit. I don’t really need them anymore.”

James looked astonished for a moment, and then his expression cooled. “Then that proves that I’m always right.”

“I suppose so.”

James took them back to Madeline’s house, where she changed clothes, then drove them up to the arena. The sun was well behind the city now, and the lights that surrounded the vaguely oval-shaped stadium were already glowing. They found a decent parking space and were able to get in well before the crush started. Alexander had never been here, either, and he was again awed by the expanse of the place, with its thirty-thousand seats expanding into the darkness, and another thousand or so set up on the floor. A massive, powerfully-lit stage was at one end. Right now, only a transparent drum set and several large amplifiers and speaker cabinets were on it.

James said, “We won’t be on the floor, but we’ll be on the right wing of the stage, so we’ll still get a pretty good view.”

They found their seats and waited more than forty minutes while more people streamed into the arena and found their own seats. Soon, the place was nearly packed and buzzing with energy. The band members were on stage now, and a great cheer erupted from the floor and spread upward as a young man in a blue shirt and white slacks picked up a double necked guitar.

“Here goes,” James said. “These guys kick major ass.”

There was some random drum banging and guitar picking, then the slow opening notes to “Tangerine” began. The audience exploded into a cheer. Alexander and Madeline held each other more closely as James whooped.

Time to make a good memory, hopefully the first of many.