Where will it end pt. 4

"I don't have any wine glasses, and drinking straight out of the bottle is pretty ghetto. Anyways I got these two coffee cups from the kitchen. Which would you like? 'Gone fishin' or 'You should see me when I'm on the Rag?' My preference is for the one about PMS. My Aunt gave it to my mother as a gag gift for her birthday. When my parents split up, my father called my mother 'The queen bitch of the Universe.' She slapped him and then cried for two days. When my aunt gave her this mug she hid it in the back of the cupboard. I like to drink wine from it because it reminds me of how my mother isn't some nine to fiver who falls asleep in front of soap operas but rather is someone who can at least make someone mad."
"I guess I'll take 'Gone Fishin.'"
"Good choice, although I guess you didn't really have too much of a choice. Anyways do you want to watch that movie. Or maybe we could listen to some records. I have the collected works of Joy Division. Its a four cd set that I got from the mall last week..."

Rachel kept talking but I wasn't paying attention to what she was saying. Instead I stared at the Morrissey poster. Morrissey's youthful face is turned upwards. The shadow of his chin covers his chest. His red shirt contrasts with the blue background. He looks angelic. I took a big gulp of my wine. Its bitter and leaves a funny after taste. I don't drink much wine. One time Tom and I got pretty shitfaced off of boxed wine. I think we were playing Halo that night. His mother had had a small dinner party and we drank the left over wine. The next day hung over as shit Tom and I got yelled at. Tom said that he had to listen to his mother whine about how awful of a child was for a week. Whenever I go over there I always hear her complain about Tom so I don't really see what the big deal is.

"So what will it be? New Order? Joy Division? The Happy Mondays?" Rachel said. She was nervously tapping her front while diddling with her cd player. "I wish they would pay us a little more at work. I'm saving up for college but if I got an extra dollar or two per hour I could buy an ipod already. Its so stupid that we get minimum wage. Actually excuse me, we get $6 per hour, a quarter more than minimum wage. If I'm lucky I'll get an extra dime an hour in a month or two after my next evaluation. Hopefully Mr. Brokenberg won't try to hit on me during the evaluation. One of the girls in the pharmacy said that he asked her out like 5 times when she was doing her 90 day review. He is so fucking gross. I bet he has more hair on his back than on his head."
"He does seem like a pretty big loser. I don't understand why he drives from Albany to our shit hole town. You'd think that he could get a better job in Albany."
"He's also been working at the store for like a million years. How long have you worked there? I've been there nine months now, god what a fucking long nine months."
"I think its been eleven months, almost a year now."
"Oh god I've completely forgotten the music. Well if you have no objections I'm putting on New Order. Its good for the ambiance. Ambiance is an SAT word, that's what my english teacher Mr. Tulin said. Whenever someone says a word with more than two syllables its an 'SAT word.' Its a good thing I learned all this vocabulary, it helped me score well on the SAT. Now I can go to a decent college and not get stuck in this town. I don't know where I want to go yet. My mother doesn't really have the money to support me anywhere that's private. I want to go towards the city I think. Maybe I'll go to NYU. That will be soooo expensive though. I think I'm a cosmopolitan girl though. I read every issue of cosmo when it comes out. Sometimes I reread it when its slow at the store. Shit I'm babbling again. What are you going to do when you get out of school?"

Rachel looked at me and and then looked away. She took a long drink from her cup and then looked at the bottle nervously. Taking it she pulled off the cork and refilled her cup. My cup was empty as well. I'd been taking drinks from it during her soliloquy. Soliloquy that's an SAT word I thought to myself. She poured some wine into my cup. We'd already gone through half a bottle already. My head felt a little light. I'd have to stay here for a while if I was going to try and drive home. I looked at the clock on her stereo. It said 10:45. I could probably be okay to drive around one in the morning. The old man would be asleep already. He gave me a curfew but doesn't strictly enforce it. He probably gave it to me because one of the other guys on the crew gave their kid a curfew and so it seemed normal to give me one.

"I don't know what I want to do after school," I said after taking another drink from my cup. I felt drunk. "I don't want to stay here, in this town. I don't want to end up like my old man, breaking my back everyday doing construction. Going to college sounds like an alright idea. Most people don't do anything with their degrees though."
"Yeah, I know what you mean," Rachel agreed. She nodded her head with an excessive vigor. She must be drunk I thought. "I was out eating at this restaurant with my cousin in Albany. She's so nice, my cousin. Anyways the waitress went to University with my cousin. They talked about how they couldn't get jobs after graduating. The waitress laughed about how she was '40,000 in the hole to that bitch Sallie Mae for a piece of paper that would ensure her working in this crappy restaurant for another five years.' Going to school is a way out of here though. Even if its not far, where I end up going to school, at least its not here."
"Yeah anywhere but here."

Getting up from the floor where we'd been sitting cross legged Rachel went to her bed. She sat down and leaned against the wall. She patted the bed beside her. I got up and sat next to her.

"You like girls don't you?"
"Uh, yeah, why?"
"I don't know. I guess I was just wondering."

I stared at the Morrissey picture again. I followed his eyes up into the corner of the room. I thought I could make out a small cobweb. I wondered if that's what he was looking at. Rachel put down her cup on her bedstand and back against the wall. I looked at the clock it was 12:15. I still felt drunk. Rachel put her hand on mine and then leaned her head on my shoulder. I could smell her. She smelled like shampoo, not the cheap anti-dandruff shit that my father got but a more scented kind. I wondered if they ground up flowers for the shampoo. Her breath evened out and slowed down. I moved my hand a little and nothing happened. I was pretty sure she had passed out. I looked at the clock and willed myself to wake up at one am as I sank down onto her bed. As my body shifted horizontally Rachel's body followed.