by Luke Geddes
He swigged his drink, a sugary old-fashioned. A man at the end of the bar who exuded a lifetime of loneliness was trying to pick up women on their way out of the restroom by offering candy from a jumbo-sized bag. Surprisingly few declined but all walked briskly away after selecting a Saf-T-Pop or Tootsie Roll. There was so much sadness in this world, Seymour thought; there were discontinued candy bars, sweet morsels redolent of childhood, that no online petition would ever bring back.
That relaxed drunk feeling began to set in, like the first tenuous bubbles on the surface of near-boiling water, making him thoughtful but not yet gregarious. The muted television on the wall played endless local news coverage of the Lindy Bobo case, the closed captions frequently reminding the viewer that there had been no significant developments in the case. Below it, at a claw machine next to an internet jukebox, one man manipulated the joystick while another looked in from the side giving directions: “North. A little more—stop. Now west about three clicks. Give it a moment to steady itself—now.” The crane dropped, the prongs of the claw closed on a teddy bear with the Wichita Wild logo sewn on its chest, but its limp grip did not even ruffle it. Undeterred, the men pounded more quarters into the coin slot.
Seymour thought of the low-rent carnival he and Lee had stumbled upon in the parking lot of the Towne West Square shopping mall when they’d first arrived in Wichita. They’d gone to pick up a few things for the house and here was this scene out of a Diane Arbus photograph: a rickety Ferris wheel, its joints squealing with every strained rotation; an out-of-order SPOOK HOUSE with a surprisingly ornate painted marquee, an art brut tribute to Hieronymus Bosch; a carousel spinning to the tune of Meat Loaf’s “You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth” ridden only by a girl in a plastic princess crown, screaming in inscrutable terror; and a row of precariously tented games of chance and skill. Seymour dragged Lee away from the car to get a closer look, thinking for a moment that there could be something fun, in an ironic sort of way, about living in Kansas, an undiscovered or at least underexplored grotesquerie; he had already been planning a road trip to visit the farmhouse from In Cold Blood. They came upon a game simply labeled RAT WHEEL. When Seymour asked how to play, an unsmiling woman with bruise-colored eyes and tobacco-stained teeth told him to pay ten dollars and pick one of about a dozen different-colored holes along the rim of a tabletop roulette-style wheel. Seymour handed her a bill from Lee’s wallet and picked blue. It was not until the woman reached under the table and brought up a large, quivering rat that Seymour discerned the bite marks on her wrist. She placed it in a container in the middle of the wheel and spun. The wheel settled, the woman released the container’s door mechanism, and the terrified rat scurried into the nearest hole: yellow. “You lose,” the woman said. Normally Seymour loved this kind of thing—bizarre, horrifying, and hilarious at once—but now it only made him sad. Maybe if he didn’t have to live here, maybe if he and Lee were just passing through on one of their road trips, he’d have been able to enjoy it. But they weren’t just passing through, much as Seymour tried to convince himself otherwise. As they walked back to the car, Seymour attempted to diffuse the tension by saying with a sigh, “That poor rat.” But it had gotten to him, to the both of them, he didn’t know why. It was a bummer—simple as that.
Seymour hadn’t exchanged a word with Lee all day. After waiting out the CHAANT meeting and walking home last night, he found Lee had locked himself in the record room. He was still in there when Seymour woke up around noon, refusing to answer when Seymour knocked or called his name. At first he figured Lee was still stewing about his innocent gaffe with Veronica and her task forcers, but when he put his ear to the door, he knew it was much worse than that. Lee was listening to the first side of The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society on repeat, which meant he was going through another bout of what Seymour had taken to calling over the years, with decreasing affection, his vapors. Something would set Lee off—hearing a certain song on the radio, coming across an old photo on Facebook, finding his first gray hair—and he’d sulk around for days, agonizing over the career in music that never was. At the end of each bout, Lee indulged in selective amnesia and acted as if it had never happened before. The last time it struck, back in Boston, Seymour had had to chase the garbage man down and dig Lee’s saxophone out of the back of the truck. For better or worse, what drew him out of the pits of depression then was the idea to open Tragic Treasures.
It hit Seymour with the last gulp of his drink. “Two Faces Have I” was an old Lou Christie song, one Lee’s band used to cover, a cacophonous post-punk version. Seymour was lonely for Lee, would have been even if Lee were sitting next to him at the bar. People changed so slowly—or refused to change—that it was surprisingly easy to stay with someone you no longer even liked. He wasn’t sure if this was how he felt about Lee or how Lee felt about him. He was drunk.
Then he was feeding the jukebox a five-dollar bill, searching for the song. No Results Found. They didn’t have it or maybe he spelled it wrong. He searched again and again as if it would appear if he kept trying, then gave up and returned to his seat. He removed Jimmy’s card and set it on the bar top. How much would he pay him for his whole collection, for everything he owned? he wondered.
Seymour signaled to order another drink, but the bartender ignored him, the bar suddenly unnervingly quiet. The men at the claw machine, now down to their last credit, were the focus of all eyes. “It’s more about timing than position,” said one to the other. “We got this.” Seymour was capable of expounding on the metaphor of the claw machine as it pertained to man’s eternal hunt, be it for a cheap stuffed toy, rare records, or life-sustaining meat. But he said nothing.
The men finally got hold of the teddy bear. They held their breath and stood dead-still as the claw journeyed tenuously to the prize slot. When it opened, they screamed. One man held the bear in the air while the man who had been guiding him gave him a hug. The entire bar, save Seymour, broke into applause. The men slapped high five and rejoined groups seated at separate tables. They were strangers, drawn together by the pursuit of a cute little toy. It was a beautiful moment, genuine and unironic. Seymour’s face felt heavy; he was giving them the Wichita Scowl.
* * *
And then, an indeterminate amount of time and drinks later, Seymour was dodging the CHAANT procession’s headlights as he crept up the street to Ronald’s house. Of all the offenses Wichita had committed, perhaps the worst was that he now had the lyrics to “Dancing on the Ceiling” memorized. He was relatively sure he’d think this was a good idea even were he sober, as sure that Lee would not agree. The idea, generated in the haze of his fourth strong drink, being to steal Ronald’s Heatherstone. The geriatric idiot didn’t deserve it. What did he know of its delicious camp value? He was terminally earnest. And Seymour, despite the awful onset of middle age, still had punk blood throbbing anarchically through his veins. This would prove it, that he wasn’t just some old fart who used to be cool. He’d be punk till the day he died.
But there beyond the silhouette of the jockey and giraffe, a shadowy figure knelt in the dirt, fiddling with the storm window. Obscured by darkness, the object in its hand was surely some deadly burgling device, a gun or crowbar. Great, Seymour thought, peeking over the hedge that bordered Ronald’s yard. Now he was going to have to be a Samaritan or else risk having the poor guy’s murder on his conscience. He mulled his options: Run home and call the police or try to take on the perpetrator himself. The latter was the more glamorous option, and if he died in the midst of the struggle, it would be a very punk death. Or would it? On the one hand, violence was definitely punk. On the other, protecting private property was not.
The figure stood and whispered to an unseen accomplice, “I told you, it’s not working. It doesn’t open from the outside… Yes, I know. There aren’t any rocks heavy enough. And now I’ve broken a nail. Maybe we should try—” The figure headed straight for Seymour. “You!” it shrieked, the aural equivalent of t
he Wichita Scowl.
Before Seymour could react, a lagging CHAANT car blaring “Hello” turned the corner, its headlights illuminating—why, it was that batty broad from Heart, Delores Kovacs! And that was no gun but just one of her dolls. Together they ducked behind the hedge and waited for it to pass.
Delores held the doll to her ear like a telephone. “What’re you doing here?”
“Oh, just out for an evening walk,” he said. He could not have picked a more suspicious answer. It didn’t help that his breath reeked of whiskey. “I don’t want to intrude on you calling on your friend Ronald Marsh, so—”
“Ronald Marsh? The man who lives here?” Delores’s forehead seemed to throb with thought as she stared into the unblinking eyes of her doll.
“Um, yes. Anyway, I think I’ll be— Oh neat. Growing Up Skipper.” He reached out, but Delores pulled it away and held it to her breast like a swaddled baby.
She smiled, though Seymour could tell she was trying not to. “Not just any Growing Up Skipper.” She lifted the skirt and triggered the breast-growing mechanism. A red stain appeared on the doll’s undergarment.
“I thought it was just a rumor!”
Seymour spoke too loudly. Inside the house a dog began to bark, and a light flickered on. Delores skulked back over to the storm window. On instinct Seymour followed. She crouched and put her ear against the glass, Skipper’s, too. The shades were drawn so you couldn’t see inside. Delores rapped her fist on the window. A wordless cry from deep within sounded back. A small voice, but not small like Ronald’s. A child’s voice.
Seymour’s run-in with the old man the day before—the toys, the Happy Meals—it all made sense now. “Do you have a cell phone? We can call—”
Delores grabbed Seymour’s wrist imploringly, her nails sharp but her fingertips pleasantly warm. “There’s no time! Who knows what he’s doing to her down there?”
“Even if you got this window open, the only one of us who could fit is Skipper.”
Delores pressed Skipper’s head to her lips like a thoughtful finger. “We must get inside.”
Seymour followed her up the porch steps. She shook the knob—locked—and put Skipper against her lips again. She was breathing heavily—or whispering. To Seymour she said, “Do something! Before it’s too late!”
This was going to make a good story. It was a shame he had no friends anymore to tell it to. Already Seymour was watching himself from a distance, narrating his actions. Whatever happened, he was sure Lee would find a way to make himself embarrassed about it. Nervously Delores chewed the doll’s plastic foot. She was crazy, that thing had to be priceless. “Kick down the door if you have to.”
It seemed like a great idea. Instantly he felt useful, tough, heteronormatively masculine. A rush of endorphins or lingering whiskey sent him into action. He gave the door a few hard kicks—Red Ball Jets be damned—but it repelled any force he drove at it.
From deep within the recesses of his mind a bit of wisdom from a spy novel he’d once read sprang forth. The trick to kicking a door down, the buff pulp hero had explained to his buxom companion, was to hit precisely below the knob where the lock was.
All right, Seymour would try it that way. He steadied himself on the railing and aimed below the knob. This time the door shook, something seemed to give, but still it would not open. Delores raised the Skipper doll encouragingly. Seymour’s leg would be sore in the morning. He braced himself for another kick.
18 RONALD
My gosh, Ronald thought. They were going to batter the door down. Who “they” were he did not know, and it didn’t matter. They were determined, and Ronald was in trouble. Gable let loose the howl he used on mail carriers and garbagemen. In a frenzy he ran circles around Ronald, who leaned into his knees and practiced the breathing exercises from Dr. Oz Melinda had taught him. He was known to become, as Melinda put it, easily flustered.
Meanwhile, Lindy was working herself into a fit. “Who’s there?” she screamed. He wanted to tell both Gable and her—gently—to just button their lips for a moment. He needed quiet to think this through. He was going to do the right thing, if only he could think of what it was.
A hinge flew loose and rattled on the floor. They were coming in, Ronald couldn’t stop them. He’d have to hide Lindy. Yes, that’s what he’d have to do. If she could keep quiet until they were alone again, he’d repay her with all the sweets and toys she wanted before he set her free. Yes, indeed. He raced to the landing at the top of the basement stairs, Gable trailing him. All he needed was a suitable hiding place—the crawl space, of course! Lindy’s kennel could just about fit. Gable bit his ankle and Ronald tried to shake loose, taking his hand off the railing to feign giving the dog a smack. Lindy was still screaming. “Please, dear. Be quiet,” Ronald said. Gable snarled and weaved about Ronald’s legs, taking quick little nips. “Darn it, Gable, I’ll—” The wood-splintering crack of the door bursting open shot terror into Ronald’s heart. Everything went quiet and he heard Melinda’s voice as quiet as a whisper: It’s over. He hardly flinched as he tripped over Gable’s sinewy body and landed with a thud on his back.
Though the circumstances could have been better, he couldn’t help but feel pleased that his dear friends from the Heart of America had come to visit him. “Delores! Seymour! How unexpected.” The two looked like trick-or-treaters, Seymour with an unctuous grin and Delores clutching her dolly. “I’m afraid the time is a teeny bit inconvenient.”
Lindy shrieked, “I’m down here!” and Gable helpfully pointed his snout in the direction of the stairs. Who did that mutt think he was, Lassie?
Ronald sat up. “I’m sure you’re wondering what the commotion is. I can assure you it’s all—”
Delores toppled him. The face of the doll appeared an angel welcoming him to heaven as the hammy fist that held it collided again and again with his chin. Sometime during the unrelenting stream of blows, the angel’s face was cast in a sinister red light and Ronald began to think she was not an angel at all and was instead beckoning him to the other place. It was then he understood the ringing in his ears to be the wailing of police sirens.
19 LEE
It had been a strange night already before the call. Through the locked record room door, Lee had heard Seymour leave for Jimmy’s sale in the early afternoon and he still hadn’t returned. Probably on another bender—he’d always been a drinker, but since the move he was loaded more often than not. “I can’t help if there’s nowhere to go and nothing else to do in this town. I’m not going to stay shut up in this hole like you,” he’d said when Lee gently remarked that at least he could save some money by drinking at home.
It was true that a surfeit of free time could be a burden. Without a store to run or a job to report to—or, Lee thought sadly, Seymour to talk to—days in Wichita stretched interminably. To distract himself from the crushing depression of his wasted life he began a listless project of re-cataloging his doo-wop 45s by geographical origin rather than release date. Hours later, when he was almost finished, an insistent knock drew him to the front door. He assumed Seymour had locked himself out again or was too drunk to work the knob, but awaiting him on the porch were two CHAANT members whose names Lee could not remember.
“We got ’im, Veronica,” said the woman into a walkie-talkie. “See you soon.” Lee recognized her as the one who’d brought the ice cream to the last meeting.
The man—her husband, Lee guessed—gazed over Lee’s shoulder. “Have you talked to him yet? Do you know when the police will be done with him?”
“Who?” Lee said, his throat dry. It was the first word he’d spoken aloud all day.
“Seymour!” the two said in unison.
“He’s… what?” Was Seymour in trouble? Was Lee? The crazed, cultish look in their eyes was not reassuring. Perhaps Veronica had dispatched her lackeys to capture and punish CHAANT’s excommunicated.
“Of course. Tell him to catch up later.” They each grabbed Lee by a shoulder and pulled hi
m onto the porch. Lee acquiesced as they led him to their car, still running and playing Lionel Richie at such volume they didn’t hear when Lee asked where the hell they were taking him. He got into the backseat and when the doors automatically locked he wondered if he was under citizen’s arrest.
They drove two blocks and parked in front of Veronica Samples’s powder-blue A-frame. The party-like atmosphere, discernible through the wide-open front door and the Lionel Richie tunes blasting from inside the house, helped to dispel his dread.
Inside, absent were the sad, perfunctory ice-cream cups, the polite chatter, the serious frowns. Instead, the task forcers reclined on Veronica’s Eames-era furniture holding low-end craft beer bottles, gesturing animatedly, laughing, and even—Lee searched for the word—whooping? Whooping it up? Where was Veronica to put the damper on it all, to remind everyone of poor defenseless Lindy, to paint the grisly picture of the worst-case scenario even as she stoked the coals of hope for a safe recovery?
The occasion was obvious. Lindy had been found. Alive and well enough. But that didn’t explain why Lee had been dragged here. Neighbors with whom he’d barely exchanged a few words clapped him on the back, put their hands out for shakes and high fives, pinched him tenderly on the shoulder. People he was sure did not know his name (Lee didn’t know theirs) said, “Lee’s here,” said, “The man of the hour!” said, “How you doin’, Lee, buddy?” as if he’d arrived at his own surprise party.
A group was gathered around the television watching the local news. Lee couldn’t quite make out the words over the chatter. Veronica emerged from the huddle and sought Lee with open arms. Her soft cheek brushing his, leaving, he was sure, makeup residue, she said, “It must be so exciting!”