Free Highways to Hell by Bryan Smith Page B

portrait emerged from our shared memories, that of a reckless young man who liked to put himself in harm’s way. He was self-destructive, but he sought his ruin in such colorful and interesting ways we didn’t think of it as self-destructiveness.
    Ah, the beautiful stupidity of youth.
    We pulled into the park entrance at 2:45. We drove more than a mile down a winding two-lane road, then, as we came around yet another bend, a sparsely populated parking lot came into view. The only other vehicle present was an old, weather-beaten VW van. I reached into the cooler for a long-necked bottle of Corona as Jenny guided my old Camaro into a parking space.
    Jenny smirked. “So where’s Lazarus?”
    “The lake. He said he’d be fishing off a pier.”
    Beyond the parking lot was a narrow footpath that wound down a hill. I followed Jenny down the path, watching her ass move in the white shorts. She was wearing a skimpy yellow bikini top, and I knew there was a matching bottom beneath the shorts. The shorts were low-slung and hugged her hips. Her long legs were toned and brown from the sun. She was wearing sunglasses and her blonde hair was pulled back in a scrunchy. She looked like a model in a tanning lotion ad.
    I’m trying to communicate a sense of lust here, okay?
    I’ve never desired a woman more than I desired Jenny.
    The ground leveled out as we stepped through a stand of trees and emerged again into the bright light of the sun. We saw picnic tables and plastic-lined trash cans. About twenty yards beyond the picnic area, a short pier extended over the water. I squinted and was able to make out a solitary figure at the end of the pier, a shirtless man with long, curly hair casting a line into the water.
    Jenny came to a stop, and I pulled up right beside her.
    I swallowed hard. “It’s him.”
    Jenny’s reply was a nervous whisper. “Yes.”
    “Let’s do this.”
    Jenny just nodded.
    I saw Mark set down his rod and reel and pick up a can of Heineken. He leaned against the railing and watched our approach behind inscrutable black sunglasses.

His voice boomed out to us. “McT! And is that the ever-lovely Jenny Hollis I see by your side?”
    Jenny was unable to suppress the smile that came to her lips. Mark had always been a charmer. “Hi, Mark.”
    Mark was remarkably fit for a man his age, with an abundance of toned muscles and barely a hint of flab anywhere on his body. But he wasn’t a dead-ringer for the twenty-year-old I remembered. There was a weathered quality to his face. He looked like a man who had spent the bulk of his life getting baked by the sun.
    Mark extended a hand. “Good to see you again, bro.”
    I shook his hand. “Yeah.”
    Mark drained the rest of his Heineken. “Let’s snag us a picnic table and commence to reminiscing.”
    Mark picked up his rod and reel, propped it over his shoulder, and began to make his way down the pier. We were right behind him. We parked ourselves at the nearest table, and I fished more beers out of the cooler.
    Mark popped open another Heineken. “So,” he said, “who wants to go first?”
    We sat there in silence for a while. We were a conglomeration of nervous smiles and fidgety hands. I looked at Mark. I looked at Jenny. I drank some beer. And I said, “That’s a no-brainer, pal. You’re the one who buggered off when Ronnie Raygun was still prez.”
    Mark set the Heineken can down. He sighed. “My parents did some fucked-up shit to me when I was a kid. The most perverse, ugly shit you could imagine.”
    I frowned. “Jesus.”
    “It stopped soon after I entered high school.” He smiled crookedly. “I was suddenly old enough and big enough to fight back, so they left me alone. Then when we got to college I started doing every drug known to man in mass quantities.” He smiled ruefully. “Kinda hard to keep up with your studies when you’re watching miniature marching bands prance across your dorm room floor.”
    Jenny laughed. “I can see how that