Fireball

by Tyler Keevil

  ‘That’s right,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, boy. You’re a better man than I am. That must have been crazy!’

  A few diehards in the audience chuckled and coughed. Chris didn’t say anything.

  ‘Sooooo,’ Crazy Dan said, totally oblivious, ‘have you seen her since?’

  We looked at each other. I asked, ‘Seen who since?’

  ‘Mrs Reever.’

  I don’t know who’d forgotten to tell him. It was a pretty big mistake to make.

  ‘She died in the hospital,’ Jules muttered.

  When he said that, the whole place went totally silent – like a movie theatre just before the curtains open. Anybody else would have known to let it go. Not Crazy Dan. It was as if he didn’t even have a brain beneath that helmet. He was just an oversized doll in a white jumpsuit, a doll programmemed to make lame jokes and laugh at itself.

  ‘Hey,’ he called, as if he was talking to somebody backstage. ‘We got the wrong heroes out here. You didn’t tell me she died!’

  Nobody laughed, except him. I remember thinking how badly I wanted to smash that stupid smile off his face. I wanted to smash it with a fist or a foot or a chair or anything. Even as I thought that, from the corner of my eye I saw Chris push himself out of his seat. He was wearing his jeans – the pair that he’d slashed up for Halloween. His eyes were half-closed, almost sleepy. I remember thinking: If this happens, it’s going to be the craziest thing ever…

  Afterwards, tons and tons of people crowded onto the stage. First came these security guards – two huge guys with shaved heads and matching bomber jackets. They sort of stormed around the set, looking tough, but neither of them really knew what was happening or what they were supposed to do. Crazy Dan’s assistant rushed out after them. She had a first aid kit and made a big fuss over his bloody nose – stuffing cotton up his nostril and patting down his face with a towel wipe. At the same time, about eight hundred audience members stood up and gathered at the front, ridiculously excited. There were a bunch of reporters, too. They’d been sent to do another article on us. You know – a follow-up article about how great it was that Crazy Dan had put us on his stupid show.

  Like always, most of what they wrote was total crap.

  Chris didn’t punch him, for one thing. That’s what they wrote, but it was a lie. He slapped him, two or three times, across the face. That’s different from punching him. Plus, they didn’t hear what he said. I heard. I was right there so I know exactly what he said.

  He said, ‘Hey – shut the fuck up, okay?’

  And that was all. He said it after he slapped him, or maybe just before. I can’t really remember. But he definitely didn’t say anything else. He just walked off stage. I did, too. I mean, I didn’t want to hang around with Crazy Dan and all those treats. So I went to find Chris. Not Julian. He stayed out there and tried to smooth things over for us.

  ‘Don’t mind him,’ he said. ‘He’s always been volatile.’

  That was the first time I heard that word – the word everybody started using. It sounded pretty bizarre, coming from Jules like that. I don’t know if he was defending Chris, or blaming him, or what. I just know that he spent about half an hour trying to convince Crazy Dan to keep going with the interview. It didn’t work, though. Crazy Dan was finished with us. They couldn’t air the show, and Chris almost got charged with assault. That’s what the cops said, at least. They phoned up his mom and laid it all out. Actually, they phoned our house, too. Not that I cared. My dad told me those network execs would rather swallow their own vomit than take a couple of kids to court. I mean, that kind of thing isn’t exactly great publicity. This way, they came across as the good guys. That’s how the papers wrote it up, anyways. Crazy Dan was this super tolerant guy who’d let us off the hook. Nobody mentioned all the stupid jokes he’d been making about Mrs Reever. They didn’t mention what happened backstage, either – in the darkness that smelled like dirt and piss. That’s where I found Chris, standing with that pot-bellied guy who chewed bubblegum.

  ‘That was radical, man,’ the guy said. ‘Totally radical.’

  He clapped Chris on the back, like they’d known each other for years. Then a frizzy-haired lady walked over, and a little runt with wire-rimmed glasses. They came out of nowhere – all these people who worked the lights and operated the cameras and assembled the backdrop and mopped the stage and flushed the toilet when Crazy Dan took a dump. There were dozens of them, and they all said the same thing.

  ‘You don’t know how long we’ve been waiting for somebody to do that.’

  To those people, we really were heroes.

  30

  ‘It’s how you cash out that matters. More than anything.’

  The smoke was everywhere, like a thick fog rolling in off the ocean. We’d locked ourselves in Karen’s basement suite. That’s where we smoked up at her house. Her parents hardly ever came down there, so we pretty much had free reign. I don’t know how she explained the smell. Maybe she covered it up with that perfume of hers. Or maybe her parents refused to believe that their little princess liked getting high. It’s hard to say. But basically, we were blazing in her basement when Chris started getting super philosophical.

  ‘When I die,’ he said, ‘there’s going to be some fucking fireworks.’

  Karen giggled. She loved hearing him say shit like that.

  Jules said, ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  Whenever Julian got too fried, his face turned white and he became totally paranoid. All night I’d been keeping an eye on him – sitting in his beanbag chair, smoking joint after joint, growing paler and paler. I knew he was getting close because every so often he ran his tongue over his lips, like a scared little lizard.

  ‘Fireworks, man. Fireworks for my dad to see. Fireworks so the whole world knows I don’t give a shit whether I live or die.’

  He was messing with us, obviously. At the same time, I could tell he sort of meant it.

  Jules laughed. ‘Why don’t you kill yourself, then?’

  ‘Maybe I will.’

  Karen reached over and passed the joint to Jules. For a second, I saw a sliver of brown belly as her shirt pulled up above her waist. Then she flopped back to the floor and sprawled out in a starfish position.

  She asked Chris, ‘Did you really slap Crazy Dan in the face?’

  ‘Sure. I slapped him a bunch of times.’

  Jules inhaled, held it, and coughed on his exhale. I caught him looking from Karen to Chris and back to Karen. He knew she loved how tough he was. He couldn’t stand it.

  He said, ‘If you killed yourself you’d go straight to hell.’

  ‘I don’t believe in hell, or heaven, or any of that bullshit.’

  ‘That’s your problem.’

  ‘No, it’s yours.’

  Jules licked his lips – totally paranoid – and handed the joint to me. The end was wet with spit from being passed around. I pinched it between my thumb and finger and toked as hard as I could. The smoke filled my chest, filled my head, filled the room. I could hardly see through all that smoke. It was like being in a steam bath. The others were just vague lumps amidst the haze. I stretched out beside Karen. The carpet in her basement was thick and soft – a little cloud that had settled to earth. I floated on the cloud, totally at peace.

  ‘This is heaven,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ Chris said. ‘It’s hell.’

  We thought about that.

  ‘It can’t be heaven,’ Jules said. ‘There aren’t any angels.’

  Chris pointed at Karen. ‘I see an angel.’

  ‘She’s not an angel.’

  ‘Sure she is. Show him, Karen. Show him you’re an angel.’

  Karen giggled and stood up. She flapped her arms and pranced around the room, moving on her tiptoes. At the same time, she started humming this weird music, the kind of music they sing in church choirs. It was eerie. She actually did remind me of an angel.

  ‘What’s an angel without wings?’ I asked
.

  ‘A whore,’ Chris said.

  Karen swooped over and slapped him, playfully, on the shoulder.

  ‘Bastard.’

  ‘Okay, you’re an angel.’

  ‘She’s not an angel!’ Jules said. I’d never seen him so stoned. He’d gone completely white and completely paranoid. Also, he was starting to sweat. ‘Real angels are invisible!’

  ‘Shut up about your angels,’ Chris said. ‘You’re just like that goddamned minister. All he talked about was angels. What angels? The only reason they invented angels is so God can have somebody to suck him off.’

  ‘You shouldn’t say that stuff, man.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Jules took another hit, a super big hit – almost inhaling the entire joint. In some ways, I actually understood why he was so upset. I mean, it’s one thing not to believe in God. It’s another to badmouth him like that. I don’t have the guts to do it. I always worry God might hear, even though he doesn’t exist. He’ll hear and hit me with a bolt of lightning, or flood our house, or make my heart explode like a water balloon.

  ‘It’s just not cool,’ Jules said.

  Chris started giggling. ‘Sure it is. There’s God, and all these angels kneeling in front of him. I bet God has a huge dick. Bigger than all of ours put together.’

  ‘Shut up, man. I’m serious.’

  ‘Or what?’

  Chris stared at him, waiting. Jules didn’t say anything. Instead he passed the joint off to Karen and started playing with his watch, pressing all these buttons and adjusting the dials. It was like their conversation hadn’t even happened. Meanwhile, the joint kept going around: from Karen to Chris to me to Jules and back to Karen. Pretty soon it felt like the whole room was turning around with it – as if we were on that ride at the amusement park that spins faster and faster until the floor drops out. It was arguably the most baked I’ve ever been.

  ‘I don’t believe in angels,’ Karen announced. ‘I believe in reincarnation.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You die, and you come back as somebody else. My mom has all these books on it. She’s already decided what she’s going to be in her next life and everything.’

  ‘Yeah. She’ll be a hooker.’

  ‘You can be such an asshole, Chris.’

  He could be, especially to her. It wasn’t totally one-sided, though. She had her tricks, too. One of them was Julian. After Chris said that, she rolled away from him and started talking to Jules. They discussed what they’d been in their previous lives. Jules had never believed in that stuff but for her he’d believe in anything.

  ‘I was a soldier in the First World War. I died at Vimy Ridge.’

  ‘I lived in England. I had a castle, and hundreds of handmaids.’

  ‘I sailed around the world on big, wooden ships.’

  ‘I danced for the National Ballet.’

  They went on and on like that, enough to make you puke. I ignored them and stared at the ceiling, trying to shake the spins. There were patterns in the plaster – yellow ripples that sort of looked like sand dunes. The dunes were endless, stretching on and on and on.

  ‘That’s crazy,’ I mumbled.

  ‘What’s crazy, Razor?’

  ‘I can see a desert up there.’

  Julian snickered. ‘Razor’s shrewing out.’

  ‘Shut up, Jules,’ Chris said. Then he asked, ‘What kind of desert?’

  ‘The biggest desert you’ve ever seen. It goes on forever. The sun is super bright, like an exploding star. There’s no snakes or cactuses. Nothing can survive except a few weeds.’

  ‘Am I there?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I sat up and started plucking at the carpet. I could still picture the desert in my head, though. ‘There’s this one set of footprints. Maybe that’s you.’

  Julian and Karen were both giggling, like they’d never heard anything so funny.

  I glared at them. ‘Whatever. I was only messing around, anyways.’

  That made them laugh even louder. Not Chris. He was rolling a joint, looking super thoughtful. He said, ‘Just because you were messing around doesn’t mean it’s not true.’

  That night she gave Chris gummers for the first time.

  Jules and I left early. We had to go early because our parents cared about us. Chris could stay because his dad was dead and his mom didn’t give a shit when he came home.

  Some guys have all the luck.

  Karen had a funny look in her eye when we left. I suspected something would happen. I knew what was going on between them, obviously. Jules didn’t. In front of us, they just acted like friends. She didn’t treat him any different than Jules or I. Not really different, anyways. I mean, it wasn’t as if they kissed or held hands or anything. Then again, they didn’t have to. It was like animals in the wild. All the wolves know who’s the leader of the pack, because he can take on any of the other wolves. It’s only natural that he also gets the she-wolf. That’s just how it is in the wild. Everybody knows that.

  Everybody but Julian.

  ‘Do you think they’re doing anything?’ I asked him.

  We were walking along the parkway. The air was super muggy and I started burning out, big time. I felt pretty miserable, actually – otherwise I wouldn’t have even mentioned it to him.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he said.

  ‘You know. Chris and Karen.’

  Jules stopped dead, like he’d run into a wall.

  ‘What are you talking about, man? They’re just friends.’

  I looked at him without saying anything.

  ‘We’re all just friends, okay? It’s not like that between them. Not at all.’

  ‘All right.’

  We started walking again. Jules was breathing hard.

  Later on, Chris filled me in. I phoned him, actually – at about midnight. I wasn’t perving out or anything. I just wanted to know what had happened.

  ‘First she put some music on. Pretty loud.’

  ‘What type of music?’

  ‘This chick singer with a super high voice.’

  I guess she wanted to set the mood or something. Until then he’d been sitting on the couch, but he told me she got him to stand up and take off his shirt. I’m not sure why. It wasn’t really necessary for what she had in mind. On the other hand, maybe she liked having him half-naked like that.

  ‘Then she started kissing my chest, and my stomach.’

  ‘She probably likes your six-pack.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘And after that she gave you gummers?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  I don’t know if she took off his belt or just undid his fly or what. Chris didn’t go into that. But according to him, she knew exactly what she was doing. He said it felt sort of wet and weird at first. Then it felt awesome. Ten times better than pulling your goalie.

  ‘What about the end?’

  ‘What about it?’

  Even I know you’re supposed to warn the girl when you’re almost ready. You know – to finish off or whatever. So he did. But apparently she didn’t care.

  ‘What do you mean she didn’t care?’

  ‘She just told me to go ahead. She was a bit annoyed I’d even mentioned it.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  I stood there, thinking about that. The phone felt hot against my ear.

  ‘Razor?’ I could hear him yawning. ‘I got to get some sleep, man.’

  ‘Okay. Sure. Thanks for telling me.’

  We hung up and I sat back on my bed. Then I stood up again. I couldn’t believe Karen had said that. What a harsh chick. I kept picturing her kneeling in front of him, like an angel. Except without the wings, obviously.

  31

  We hated the Avalon, but didn’t have any other options. It’s the only bar on the North Shore that serves to minors. Or it did. Apparently they’ve decided to gut the building and turn it into a fancy grill and steakhouse. But back when we went, they didn’t even bother to check your ID. I mean, there was a
bouncer at the door, but his main job was to break up fights. Chris fought him, two or three times, and he lost every time. Chris hardly ever lost fights but this bouncer was some kind of professional. He held his fists like a boxer and always took off his shirt to fight. He was a bit crazy like that. The funny thing is, after all those scraps he’d grown to like us a little – especially Chris. He was one of those guys who’d beat the shit out of you and then do something super bizarre, like help you up and buy you a beer.

  But basically, he never checked our ID.

  ‘You kids nineteen?’

  ‘Yessir. You got it.’

  ‘All right. Have a good time.’

  There were two sections to the Avalon. He guarded the back. Nobody guarded the front. The front was this raunchy restaurant where you only went if you wanted to get food poisoning. Julian made the mistake of eating there one time, and he found a fingernail in his soup. No joke. So for obvious reasons we steered clear of the front.

  The actual bar, where all the underage kids went, was around back. The only thing holding up the ceiling were these wooden beams that had gone all black and rotten, like an old man’s teeth. By the time we started drinking there, I’m pretty sure it had already been condemned. There was a bar at one end, a dance floor in the middle, and a bunch of rickety tables strewn along the walls. Also, it was dark. It was so dark you could hardly see anything. I mean, you could see some things – beefcakes boozing at the bar, dirty old men huddled around the tables, and girls shaking it on the dance floor – but you couldn’t see any of it too clearly. It was like being underwater in a fishtank that hadn’t been cleaned for months and months. Come to think of it, it kind of smelled like a fishtank, too.

  Anyways, that’s where we went to get hammered.

  A night at the Avalon was always the same.

  We’d find a table close to the dance floor and start drinking. Karen drank Canadian Club, usually with ginger ale. Me and Chris guzzled pitchers of watered-down Kokanee. Jules didn’t drink much. We always made him drive and like I said, he was super responsible about drinking and driving. So he’d stick to pop – Coke or Sprite or whatever. Nothing else.