Read Flatscreen for Free Online

Pioneer PureVision HD plasma, surround sound, walls of DVDs, CDs, stereo equipment, old-school arcade games, pinball, Ping-Pong, air hockey; all that shit.
    Dan sat on his bed, shirtless in oversized B-ball shorts, bong ripping, relaxed as always. He wasn’t tense like other dealers. Born rich, felt untouchable the same way teenagers think they’re immortal because they’ve yet to feel death’s firsttwitches. I’d only begun to feel the twitches myself. Maybe, because of the newness of these sensations—chronic throat-tickle, morning chest-tightness, unmitigated afternoon headaches, occasional numbness in left big toe, rib pressure after walking more than a block, smoker’s black mucus, hairy ears, penile post-ejaculation pain, shoulder soreness, bony-butt-despite-chubby-gut-so-sitting-for-long-periods-sucks syndrome, etc.—they felt entirely overwhelming. They say you start dying on the day you’re born, but I think it’s later than that. I think it happens when all the other kids are at college and the toxins in the air have nowhere to replicate but your body.
    Dan was watching Dazed and Confused . I sat on the recliner, let the film evoke false nostalgia for a high school experience I hadn’t had but pretended to remember having. Dan passed me the bong.
    “This is new,” I said. “Indoor?”
    “Yeah. Captain Crunch. You taste that hint of blackberry?”
    Dan was a marijuana connoisseur, like a wine taster, holding the smoke in his mouth, moving it through his teeth to extract the subtle flavorings, finally exhaling through his nose like a cartoon rhino.
    “Not bad,” I said.
    “How much you interested in?”
    “Quarter.”
    Dan tossed me a Ziploc.
    “Word.”
    Handed over two fifties, the remains of my Daddy Guilt Fund stash. I was like the housewives—living off alimony, cooking alone in stainless steel solitude. Not for long. This was my last hundred, though I was planning to sell half to Kahn, earn a little profit. Beyond that, hadn’t considered.
    “Saw Jennifer Estes at temple.”
    “She’s not Jewish.”
    “She parks the cars.”
    “Fuckin’ A. That’s what I love about these high school girls: I get older, they stay the same age.”
    He was quoting from the movie we were presently watching.
    “She’s only a year younger than me.”
    “Hot?”
    “Yeah.”
    “True.”
    Dan had no interest in girls—strange for a dealer. Always thought they dealt so they could hook up with stoner chicks.
    “Why do you sell weed?”
    “Beats working.”
    “Can’t you just get money from your dad? That’s what I do.”
    “There’s no dignity there. What I do is important, man. I perform a service. I contribute to society. I’m great for the economy—all I do is spend money.”
    Walking out I could hear Dan’s dad in the golf room, “Mickelson on the tee…” Wanted to walk in, politely clap; myself, a willing spectator of imagined reality, binoculars in hand, watching that drive fly.
    As I was going up the stairs, someone else was coming down. At first I thought it was Wife Three, but this girl had face-obscuring, slanted bangs, pale/pimpled skin, and a slim frame drowned in wannabe-black-man bagginess. She pushed the hair from her eyes. Alison Ghee. Jeremy Shaw’s girlfriend, the one whose infidelity had supposedly led to his suicide. Another of Dan’s customers. Must have been legions of us: numb-seekers, still in town.
    Alison walked slowly, like it was hard to stay balanced with a body that weighed so little. Thought she hadn’t even noticed me, but after I stepped aside so we wouldn’t collide, she turned her neck, looked back, pointed her eyes right into mine, smiled, closed-mouthed. Imagined our lives moved in perpendicular lines as we wandered Quinosset, passing just once on these carpeted stairs. By the time I realized I should smile back, she’d made it to the bottom, disappeared into Dan’s room.
    Top of the stairs: looked out the window at the backyard pool. Black tarp over