More Things I Don’t Understand

Out of all the drunken, misguided people Vanessa introduced me to in the fall, Miles felt the most far-gone.  For starters, he wore a pair of dark sunglasses to an already barely visible house party.  Something had happened to him.  Something beyond the world’s ability to wave a magic wand and turn him into something.  In the darkest corners of her mind, Vanessa felt so drawn to him for the exact quality I sensed. 

            As he approached me, the arrangement became clear.  Someone approached him half-way through the room asking for the glasses back which Miles made a chore when taking off his face. 

            “You have to give me the glasses back,” someone had said to him with outstretched palm.  The man talking to Miles looked of a slight build but sober enough where he could handle Miles should he disagree.  Even in an inebriated state though Miles didn’t strike her as a fighter.  Maybe a wrestler—but could Miles throw a punch at someone?  She shook her head.

            “Yeah, man,” he laughed a little too loud.  He handed back the sunglasses and the other person stormed away.  Girls around him gave a strange look as if to condemn the person who let Miles in the party.  Vanessa grabbed him by the wrist and trudged him towards me.  The only reason Vanessa knows anything about music—I, her little sister--- taught her.  Everything from the difference between a minor and major chord to basic chord progressions, she has me to thank.  

            “Hey, Iz, meet Miles,” Vanessa said towards me.  I poured myself another shot into a red plastic cup and stuck out my hand.  I could tell Miles sobered up the second I offered to shake. 

            “Miles,” he said, introducing himself to no one.  “Enjoy the party?”  his drunken eyes floated away as I opened my mouth to respond.  Looking back, I don’t even remember what I had said in response to his innocuous inquiry.  For a moment, I felt a connection to him. 

            “Come now,” Vanessa said, pulling on his wrist once again towards the kitchen.  I didn’t understand the situation, considering Vanessa had told me only a few days ago about another boy whom she liked—not Miles.  Someone on the club basketball team who served as the social chair of another frat.  Miles didn’t belong with the college folk.  He went to college for two years if one could even believe such a thing.

            “Can you act sober… around my sister for two goddamn seconds?”  she looked up at Miles in something past anger and before disappointment.  Only Vanessa had such strange states of emotion where one could regard her as both vehement and downtrodden at the same time.  She looked him dead in the eyes. 

            “What did you want me to say….” Miles said.  I approached the kitchen but over the rest of the noise in adjacent rooms I couldn’t hear much of their conversation.  The kitchen had an old wooden door which Vanessa’s friends had kept three quarters shut in case anybody besides her got the fun idea to sneak around the party house.  How had I found myself in a party house again? I should practice my guitar or write songs.  I stared at my cup once again, realizing I had to relish the opportunity of getting drunk away from the house.  When I later went to college people would regard me as the only person to have never gotten drunk—which I didn’t mind.  Vanessa brought me to places, hoping I would assimilate.  She brought me to places, hoping people like Miles wouldn’t show, so she wouldn’t have to introduce them.

About thirty minutes later, I saw Miles leave alone after saying something to Vanessa.  Neither of them looked mad at each other.  In fact, I thought I saw Miles kind of waltz out of the door after saying goodbye.  I said a small prayer for the person who had to pick him up.  All the sudden, one of my bandmates, Belle peered around the corner.  Besides myself, Belle and I only attended Vanessa’s weird parties for the sake of getting drunk.   

            “Want to go back to my place?  My parents don’t come back until tomorrow and we can watch something in the main room,” she asked me.  Belle had blue eyes and wore a short black dress which showed off the small tattoo of a witch’s crystal ball she had on her shoulder.  At the tender age of 18, Belle had multiple tattoos. 

            “Have you ever met the Miles guy?”  she asked Belle as Belle stuck her keys into an ignition.  The 2009 Toyota Rav 4 purred into gear.  “The guy Vanessa brings around sometimes.  I just don’t… like know what to think,” she said.  Belle stared at her before backing the car around a traffic cone.

            “Miles Lerner.  Pretty cute.  My older friends tell me your sister only hangs with him because next year he has a new album coming.  I think her kind of gets around, Iz,” Belle said.  I just know noticed how people only referred to me as Iz.  The night went on the normal way things happen as she fell asleep in a quiet way on somebody else’s couch.  Around noon the next day, I would meet Vanessa for coffee and the whole weekend shenanigan would perhaps start again.  The days Vanessa had work; she didn’t talk to me much the days she worked. 

            Two years go by, before I ever hear from the Miles guy again.  Most people know him now as the artist Miles Lerner.  However, the night Vanessa introduced us lingers.  I felt a darkness in both.  He had a sort of uncontrolled side which he tried to hide more around her yet failed to every time.  She had a desperate attachment to his negative qualities because she wanted to cultivate a brilliance.  I wonder how far Vanessa had come going for a guy who didn’t care about her safety—much less his own. 

Miles had his faced plastered on every Instagram indie page and even a full page spread in the L.A Times Sunday edition.  The day we interacted again (on Instagram), marked the two-year anniversary of my band: Cardigan of Carl.  We had a special show planned in my home neighborhood at my home theatre.  $10 tickets, and we had a band after us.  Vanessa, as my sister, got two people she could invite free of charge from the venue.   

And not like she would want to, but she could with ease bother us backstage and take our booze.  The booze I had more started to enjoy before gigs to cure my terrible stage fright.  None of us could get too drunk though because my parents would show up somewhere around our third song of the night.  They would come in separate cars and while my dad would hang in the front my mom would look sullen in the back.  I liked them both in different situations after the divorce a year ago.  Vanessa shouldered much of the strain of the breakup (like any big sister would try).   

            Miles Lerner with a small blue check next to his name had enjoyed a piece of content I put out about my show.  The whole thing came not as a certification but more as a warning.  I told Vanessa with a screenshot of the exchange.  She responded, LOL.  Sorry.  and from the day forward I never heard from Miles again.  I wonder what she had said to him.  What kinds of harsh things she could have not already said to such a manic person.  For the first time in my life, I got the sense of my sister as a kind of evil.  However, I don’t believe in evil because like most philosophers would suggest, the belief in an evil implies the belief in an inherent good.

            After the show and brief mention of the Miles incident to Vanessa, I added the relationship he and she had shared to a list of things I didn’t understand.  I continued to see Miles name in the press and he even did an interview about a sobriety retreat he had attended in Mexico which “changed his life”.  I needed a sobriety retreat after just being around him the night we met.

            Another summer passed before Vanessa talked about the night again.  She asked me a series of questions about what had happened.  She interrogated me about the exchange as if she herself had not orchestrated the whole thing.  I wondered if she had forgotten the whole situation.  Vanessa had graduated in the Spring and had begun her new job downtown at the law firm as an administrative assistant.    

As a sister, I worried about Vanessa’s mental health.  She had a diagnosis and medication but only I and my dad knew the exact lengths things went.  Vanessa scared people off in a way she didn’t mean because of how scary emotions came and left her.  Some of her energy had rubbed on me over the years, but I used the passion to pursue music and the band.  We had made a name for ourselves, and with everyone I knew at the time playing didn’t feel like work.  Playing the band felt like a vacation.    

            “Did he say anything to you during the party… anything off-putting?”  she asked me point blank.

            “Vanessa, you introduced us.” I laughed at her.  The whole exchange took place at one of our normal coffee dates.  Vanessa treated me every week or so, and as of late I would bring her little gifts like a vinyl record or a candle.  She looked at me more serious than she ever had when things came to boys—romance.  Romance with boys.   

            “I don’t get the joke,” she said, taking a sip of her matcha latte.  She continued with the questioning as I explained to her how I had watched Miles leave after they talked.  He looked happy in his drunkenness I explained.  Vanessa had no reaction.  She looked at me for five seconds with a blank stare. 

elsewhere.  Like she had painted a house in the 80s and just now felt the effects.  After a while of us sitting in silence, drinking coffee she chimed in: “I have to go,” she said.  Before, I could respond at all I watched as she strolled down the sidewalk and put her head in her hands.  I looked out the window harder in another direction as Vanessa walked two streets over towards her car. 

            “Can I have another espresso, please?”  I turned towards the barista wiping the table next to me in a now empty café.  Vanessa and I’s favorite café for the past two years because in the back they had a whole record section and old playboys to look at while drinking coffee.  All the sudden, I heard one of Miles’ songs on the store radio.  He only had about 7 songs and the lady wiping tables had chosen his most popular: Anybody else?  I gestured towards the ceiling speaker, “I used to know Miles,” I said.

            The barista put in extra effort to bring me the single espresso shot with ice and a little seltzer water as quick as possible.  “8.75,” she said.  I tapped my card.  As soon as the card reader’s beep stopped, she began to address me again—as if the transaction between us had broken a spell.  “He comes in all the time,” she said to me. 

            “You don’t say?”  I followed up—more than horrified.  “Tell him I said, ‘hi’ then.”  I darted out of the small café and never returned.