"Hey," Ray says, and turns to go south. "Turn this shit off, Fraser."

Fraser looks at him sharply. "Fleetwood Mac is --"

"I hate Fleetwood Mac. I don't care what they are. Turn it off. You wanted to be in charge of the radio, you change it." Ray wants to stare Fraser down, but he can't, because the light is green and he has to drive.

**

Fleetwood Mac is all caught up with college, for Ray. He remembers exactly when he started college, to the day, because it was September 1978, right between that plane crash in California and the Italian Pope dying, and he remembers exactly when Stella called him from her swanky private college to tell him about her first college party, because it was when the Polish Pope got elected the next month. He hung up the phone with Stella Sunday morning, and then went to church with his parents for the first time since Easter.

That was the year Stella wanted him to take off from school and drive with her to San Francisco to go marching in the street or something, which sounded stupid to him, and he couldn't take the time off work anyway. And the December when all Stella wanted for Christmas was the Susan B. Anthony dollar, so he got her two -- one to keep and one to wear on a chain around her neck. He drilled the hole through it himself, and got the clasp of the necklace caught in her hair.

He started hating Fleetwood Mac in Stella's dorm room.

He'd taken the Friday off work and drove all the way to see her, and he wanted to take her out for a nice dinner and then watch that Star Wars thing on television, but instead they went to a big house that all her friends lived in all together, five or ten people to a room or something, and ate rabbit food -- all different kinds of salads, but no potato salad or pasta salad and nothing with meat or mayonnaise, fucking hippies -- and then all crowded into a room with no couches, just pillows on the floor, and put on Fleetwood Mac and sang along to "The Chain" while they got stoned.

Ray didn't mind the getting stoned so much; he could roll a pretty passable joint and after a couple of tokes always felt a little more mellow. And he had Stella on his lap, her hair in his face, so he just ignored the other shit, the hippie singalong -- at least it wasn't "Kumbaya" or something -- and listened to her talk about Ghandi and India and Britain.

Stella was so smart, what was she doing with a loser like him? He wasn't gonna bring that up to her, though, give her ideas about leaving him to find someone smart instead of brave -- or smart and brave.

He pressed his forehead into Stella's back, the place in her back where it dipped into her spine, and her spine bone pressed back against his forehead. He didn't fit in with all of Stella's friends who were offended by his leather jacket and didn't listen to the Sex Pistols and they all had a lot of money and went to a fancy school where they learned about shit Ray didn't know about and didn't care about.

Ray breathed in the smell of Stella and felt dizzy, felt himself leaning to the side. Stella leaned with him.

"Ray, you okay?" she said, turning over. She put one leg over his, the other in between his, and slid her arm under him.

"I just -- uh -- feel --" Ray blinked and Stella's face swam in front of his eyes.

"I know," said Stella, and she sounded happy. Her lips were shiny, like the whole world was going to fall into the light on them. Ray leaned forward and kissed her, and kissed her, licked all the stuff off her mouth, raspberries and plastic, purple, a lot of purple --

Stella was naked and soft under his hands, and when he blinked, everyone else was naked too.

"This is what you do without me?" he asked her, but his words didn't come out right, like a record played backwards, and Stella was touching him, on top of him. His head was on something -- it moved, it pulsed, she was so tight and wet, but his head was on something.

He twisted his neck to see, and it was black, all black, and dark. Then Stella fell forward onto him, shrieking, and he started yelling, but she was laughing, and she said, "Raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay," in a really deep voice, and maybe something else too, but he wasn't sure.

Behind her was another guy, his fingers on her nipples, and Ray wanted to punch him in the face, but he couldn't, because his fingers were glued to Stella's hips, and he was stuck inside her, thrusting up into her, and she was leaning back against the other guy, and something was on Ray's foot, like a jellyfish, like a fish eating his toes --

A fish is eating my toes! he thought, and then someone was kissing him, someone not purple, someone yellow, yellow, green, orange, rainbow, someone biting him, sucking on his tongue, licking at him, Ray did not like this at all, he hated this, he hated this, he didn't want someone who wasn't Stella touching him, but someone was, and Ray didn't think it was even a girl.

Stella was gone, only pink smears in her place, not even purple, and Ray was still hard, and suddenly he wanted to fuck, he wanted to eat someone, rip Stella's lungs out and fuck her until she screamed.

She kissed him, pushed the other guy away, and kissed him, kissed his eyelids, moving back and forth, someone else fucking her while she kissed Ray. That's not right, that's not right, he thought, that is not right.

The other guy disappeared and Ray still wanted to fuck, wanted Stella back on him, away from -- someone touched him, and it hurt, and then it tickled, it was bad, it wasn't good.

"Stella," he gasped, and Stella smiled into his mouth, put her fingers on his neck and he reached for her with fingers that felt like lead, and she put all her weight on one of his wrists and kept kissing him while it hurt and it hurt and it hurt, and someone was biting his nipples while Stella was kissing him, and it hurt, and all he could hear was YOOOOU YOU MAKE LOVING FUN YOOOOU YOU MAKE LOVING FUN YOOOOU YOU MAKE LOVING FUN

Ray woke up with a dry mouth and a sore throat, really slowly, so slow he didn't even realize he was awake. All the colors were back to being the way they were supposed to be, but he was still naked and people were pressed on him everywhere. He stood up unsteadily, not sure if his knees would support him, and the room whirled around him. He closed his eyes until he was standing, then opened them again. Stella had been curled next to him, her hair over her face, her body shiny where -- stuff -- had dried on her.

It was worse than the worst hangover he ever had, worse than anything, because he didn't feel like puking, he just wanted to cut off his head, and his arms were shaking, and he barely made it to the bathroom on time, sat down on the toilet and started to shit, and shake, and shit, and shake.

He didn't look at the blood in the toilet when he flushed it, and didn't look in the mirror when he washed his face.

It was still dark out, so he couldn't have slept for too long, and he still felt a little high, and the edges of things were fuzzy.

He got dressed and woke up Stella and dressed her. The record player was still spinning, around and around and around, static, and Ray sang in his head, to the tune of the static YOOOOU YOU MAKE LOVING FUN IT'S ALL I WANNA DOOOOOO YOOOOOOU until he and Stella were outta there and into his car.

It hurt to sit, but he did it anyway, and lit a cigarette, a regular smoke, with his shaky hands, and then drove back to Stella's dorm.

"Hey, Ray," she said sleepily when he parked the car. "Hey, Ray. Hey hey hey, Ray."

"Hey hey hey, Stella," he said. He unbuckled her seatbelt and lifted her up, and almost dropped her, but was careful, leaned against the car until he got his balance, closed the door with his foot.

"Good party, huh?" Her head lolled into his neck, into a bruise, and he winced.

"Not my scene, Stell," he replied. If she was sober and awake, he knew, she'd be rolling her eyes and telling him not to be so immature, that they were adults now and should act like it, but Ray didn't feel very adult. "Maybe next time you could come see me, huh? We'll drink some beer and play some darts."

"Hate beer," she said into his neck.

He collapsed next to her on her tiny dorm bed, her roommate glaring at him when he turned on the light so he didn't kill himself. He stripped Stella down to her pretty purple underpants, then took off his boots, but not his jeans or his T-shirt.

When he woke up again, Stella was awake and brushing her hair at her desk.

"Crazy party, huh, Ray?" She beamed at him. "There's another one tonight --"

He blinked. He wanted a cup of coffee, and to use the bathroom again. "Maybe," he said, and yawned. "Maybe we can stay in? Listen to The Clash? I brought --"

Stella sighed heavily and rolled her eyes. "Whatever you want, Ray. If you just want to do the same old stuff--"

"Yeah," said Ray. "I want to do the same old stuff. I like the same old stuff, that's why we do it. And --" He stopped and scowled. "And I hate that Fleetwood Mac shit."

She sighed again, the kind of sigh that meant he did something wrong and would have to fix it some how, with a lot of going down on her, or driving her around, or something. "Fine."

He stared at her. She was wearing the plastic lip stuff again, the stuff that tasted like raspberries.

"Okay," he said, and rolled out of her bed and headed for the bathroom.

**

Fraser takes less than a second to change the station. "How's this?" he asks at the pop music station, which he could not possibly like at all. Ray grits his teeth.

"Just let me do it, and no shit about my driving either," he says impatiently, and pushes through stations until he finds one playing classical music.

Fraser smiles at him, carefully, at the next red light; Ray shows his teeth.

"I just really don't like that band. I -- uh, you know, that song must've been playing in the bank or something. I got a lot of trauma from the bank thing."

Fraser stares at him queerly for a minute, stares at him like there's something wrong with what Ray said, which Ray knows can't be true, since trauma makes people hate shit all the time.

"Understood, Ray," says Fraser, finally, and Ray nods.