You Don't Know Me

by David Klass

“Eight o’clock—three babes,” Billy Beezer announces in an excited whisper. Apparently, the sight of the girls has taken his mind off food. “They’re checking us out big time.”

  “No, they are looking at kittens,” Andy Pearce corrects him.

  “And why do you suppose they are pretending to pay so much attention to some scrawny kittens, doofus face?” Billy Beezer demands.

  “Maybe they’re thinking about buying a kitten,” Andy speculates logically. “They could be trying to decide which one to buy.”

  “They’re shopping all right,” Billy Beezer tells him, “but I guarantee you it’s not for pets.”

  “Then why are they looking in the window of a pet shop?”

  Billy Beezer is getting exasperated. “Because they don’t want us to know that they’re checking us out. Get it?”

  “Do I get what?”

  “Do you get tired of being such an idiot?”

  “No, it doesn’t make me tired.”

  Among the Lashasa Palulu, when a group of young men are going on a raiding party and an argument breaks out among them, one member of the raiding party takes it upon himself to restore order. This job usually falls to the son of the chief, or to some other young man of notable intelligence and dignity.

  Clearly, the time has come for me to intervene between Andy and Billy Beezer and create some order from the chaos. “They were studying those kittens before we got here, so it’s possible they’re thinking of buying one,” I say. “But they are also checking us out because they are trying to decide if we are worthy of them.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m trying to decide if they’re worthy of me,” Billy Beezer says. “I don’t see them winning any beauty contests. In fact, they better not stand too close to that pet store or someone may try to buy them.”

  At that moment, the three girls disappear inside the store. “Come on,” Billy Beezer says, “they want us to chase them.”

  We follow him over to Pete’s Pets and walk inside. It is not a big store. There are fish along one wall in tanks. Birds along the back wall in cages. Reptiles and turtles along the third wall in terrariums. And in a center section are little plastic apartments with glass doors and toy furniture, and puppies and kittens inside of them.

  The three girls are standing in front of the reptile section, looking in at a grass snake. The tallest of them is saying, “Oooh, look how slimy he is. I think he just munched on a fly. Is that a fly head hanging out of his mouth?”

  “I think maybe it’s a cockroach,” her friend who has braces says.

  “Oooh, gross, disgusting,” says the third one, stealing a quick look at the three of us. Hopefully, she is talking about the snake.

  We are pretending to look at a tank full of neon tetras. “They like us!” Billy Beezer whispers. “They’re into us, major league! We should go over and break the ice.”

  “I don’t see any ice,” Andy Pearce says.

  “We should go over there and talk to them, mud mind, before we lose our moment,” Billy Beezer says. He would like to go over and say something to them, but he is embarrassed because of his enormous beezer. No one has handed me the envelope with the correct opening line, so I also hang back. I tell myself I must remain loyal to Glory Hallelujah. I cannot wander around malls trying to strike up conversations with girls I don’t even know.

  “I’ll go talk to them,” Andy Pearce says. “It’s no big deal.” And he heads right over.

  Billy Beezer flashes me a look that says “God only knows what will happen now!” but he follows Andy. I trail along a short distance behind, trying to strike a difficult balance. If Andy Pearce is somehow successful, I want to be part of the group, but if he makes an ass out of himself, which seems more likely, I do not wish to be associated with him.

  Andy Pearce has no fear. He walks right up. “Hello,” he says to the three girls. ‘Are you thinking of buying that snake?”

  The tall girl looks at him. “No way. It’s gross. Why on earth do you think we would buy that thing?”

  “Because you are looking at it,” he tells her.

  The tall girl looks confounded for a second.

  “And this is a pet store,” Andy Pearce continues. “The animals here are all for sale.”

  Billy Beezer and I exchange a look. Perhaps Andy knows what he is doing. Or perhaps the girls will misinterpret his statements as sarcasm or cool charm. Or perhaps they will head for the hills.

  The girl with the braces jumps to the aid of her friend. “So what are you doing here?” she asks.

  “Talking to you,” Andy Pearce replies with Vulcan-like logic.

  The third girl gives Andy a flirtatious smile. “So, are you a snake?”

  “No, I am a human being,” Andy tells her.

  The three girls giggle and exchange worried looks at the same time. They cannot figure out what to make of Andy. “How come you three human beings came over to talk to us three human beings?” the third girl asks him.

  Andy Pearce hesitates for a second. “My friend said I should come over here and break the ice,” he finally says, “but I don’t see any ice.”

  Now the three girls look like they are starting to catch a bad scent. But they’re still not sure.

  “He’s joking. He’s a real kidder,” Billy Beezer says, trying to inject new life into the conversation. But his stomach chooses this moment to growl. It is a loud and disgusting sound. It is no longer the sound of a wolf cub in a snow cave. It is the sound of a ravenous polar bear in a penguin sanctuary. Billy Beezer puts his hand on his stomach as if to cap an explosion, and at the same time he looks to one side, as if to suggest that the sound came from one of the reptiles.

  The three girls do not know what to make of this intestinal eruption, and they still do not know what to make of Andy Pearce.

  “Were you being wise about that ice stuff?” the tall girl asks Andy.

  “No, I am not wise,” Andy tells her. There is an expectant lull. They are looking at Andy. Waiting for him to say something. I can tell that he doesn’t have a clue what to say next. “But I do know that the best place to find ice is an ice machine,” he finally says. “There are no ice machines in this store.” Now that he has found a topic he is comfortable with, Andy plunges on recklessly. “The best place to find ice machines is in hotels. People need ice to bring to their rooms. They fetch it in ice buckets.”

  Now the three girls have realized that Andy is not being cute or clever or sarcastic. He’s just being himself and they had better head for the hills. You can see it in their faces. “We have to go now,” the tall girl says.

  “Yeah,” her friend with braces says, “we have a ride waiting. Bye.”

  “If you find the ice, don’t fall through it,” the third one says to Andy, and they hurry out of Pete’s Pets, and burst into laughter as soon as they are outside.

  Now the three of us are by ourselves, staring at the grass snake. I believe the insect that is still hanging out of its mouth is a beetle. We can hear the girls laughing as they run away. Billy Beezer points a finger at Andy. “You are from Pluto. What did you think you were doing?”

  “Telling them about ice machines,” Andy Pearce replies.

  “Yes, you did a very good job of that,” Billy says. “You have the brains of an ice machine.”

  “Leave him alone,” I say. “At least he talked to them. That’s more than either of us would have done.”

  Billy Beezer doesn’t like hearing the truth. “I would have said something.”

  “No you wouldn’t,” I tell him. “Neither would I. We are both cowards, when it comes to that. So leave him alone.”

  “I am not a coward,” Billy Beezer responds. Apparently I have pricked his pride. “You’ll see how much not a coward I am tomorrow morning. Now I’m getting out of here.”

  The girls are gone. The coast is clear. We exit Pete’s Pets. Billy Beezer and I step onto the escalator. Andy Pearce rides up behind us.

  “What happens tomorrow?” I ask.

&n
bsp; Billy gives me a long look. There is a warning in his eyes. My friend who is not a friend is telling me that he is going to do something that I will not like. “Tickets to the Holiday Dance go on sale.”

  “So?”

  “I’m going to ask Gloria,” Billy Beezer announces.

  “You will never have the guts to ask her to the dance.”

  “True. But I don’t plan to ask her to the dance right away, doofus. I’m going to ask her to the basketball game Friday night against Fremont Valley High. And she’ll go because she loves basketball.”

  “What makes you think that?” I ask casually, but now I’m worried. Because Billy Beezer has a plan. A sly plan. An incremental plan.

  “Her brother was a star high school player, who now plays on a college team,” he says. “And I heard Gloria tell Valerie Voss that she wants to go to the game this Friday. So it’s a slam dunk.”

  I don’t say anything for several seconds to my friend who is not a friend. We just look at each other. I am thinking, “Gloria cannot go to the Holiday Dance with you because she will go with me.”

  “I’ll ask her tomorrow in homeroom,” he says. “You don’t see her till third-period math class. By then she and I will already be an item. Deal with it.”

  An item? It sounds like something stacked in a grocery, like a can of peas. “I liked Gloria first,” I say. “I talked about her to you first.”

  “Tough eggs,” Billy Beezer says as we step off the escalator. “All’s fair in love and war. And speaking of eggs, I’m going to get myself an egg roll from Wong Chong.”

  “You can’t,” Andy Pearce says, joining us. “You don’t have any money.”

  “There’s more than one way to get an egg roll,” Billy tells him. We are approaching the food court. Billy lowers his voice. “Now, here’s what you do,” he tells Andy. “Go up and ask the guy how much a Chop Suey Combo is.”

  “I don’t want a Chop Suey Combo,” Andy Pearce says.

  “But you might someday,” Billy points out.

  “That is true.”

  “And then ask him how much an Egg Foo Young Platter is. And keep asking questions. Do it now.”

  Among the Lashasa Palulu, the mere knowledge that an illegal act is taking place does not make a person guilty. One must participate in some way to be guilty. Therefore, innocent but curious, I watch the action unfold from a safe distance.

  Andy Pearce walks up to the cook in Wong Chong Panda Express and asks how much a Chop Suey Combo is. And while this is happening, Billy Beezer sidles up to the other side of the counter, where the egg rolls sit in a steamer tray.

  “Chop Suey Combo, four dollars,” the cook says.

  “And how much is an Egg Foo Young Platter?” Andy asks.

  “Four dollars. You want Egg Foo Young Platter?”

  “No,” Andy says. “But how much is Orange Chicken?”

  “No Orange Chicken.”

  “Do you call it Orange Chicken because of the color or the flavor?” Andy asks.

  “No Orange Chicken. You want General Tso’s Chicken?”

  While this illuminating discussion is taking place, Billy Beezer seizes his moment, reaches a long arm around the counter glass, and grabs an egg roll out of the steamer tray.

  Unfortunately for Billy Beezer, the heat on the steamer tray is cranked up pretty high. Which means that the egg roll is piping hot. Billy burns his hand and gasps, “Aaaah!”

  It’s not a loud gasp, but it’s loud enough for the cook at Wong Chong to pivot around and shout, “Stop! Thief! You steal my egg roll!”

  Caught in the act, Billy Beezer has only two sensible ways of proceeding. He can drop the hot egg roll on the counter and bolt. If he does this, I doubt the cook at Wong Chong will bother to chase him. Or he can pull out his wallet and pretend he meant to buy the egg roll all along. Of course, he has no money, but it is not a crime to forget that you have no money.

  Billy Beezer opts for a third course of action. Holding the hot egg roll in his right hand like a relay racer’s baton, he turns and flees.

  The Wong Chong cook vaults the counter with unexpected gymnastic ability and gives chase, yelling, “Stop! Thief!”

  Billy Beezer is not particularly fast, but the Wong Chong cook does not possess world-class speed either. They both appear to be running in slow motion as they race around the food court. They vault tables. They upset chairs. They nearly knock over an old woman, who screams and pulls a fire alarm.

  Billy Beezer is heading for a service elevator. The doors to the service elevator begin to close. If he makes it, he will get away. If he doesn’t, he will be cornered. He is pumping his arms. He throws himself forward. I think he is going to make it. But just as he reaches the elevator, the doors shut tight. He pounds his fist against them.

  The cook from Wong Chong grabs him by the arm. Billy struggles and kicks him in the leg, but the cook spends all day hacking up ducks and dicing pork, and he has a grip of iron.

  I am fifteen feet away. Despite the fact that Billy Beezer said “Tough eggs” to me a few minutes ago, I might try to help him, if I could think of a way. But I cannot. And at that second, a big, fat, bald mall cop waddles up. “What’s going on here?”

  “He stole my egg roll,” the Wong Chong cook shouts.

  “No way,” Billy shouts back. “I did not.”

  The mall cop looks down at Billy’s hand, which is still clutching the egg roll. “Did you pay for it?”

  “Not exactly,” Billy says.

  “Then how did you get it?”

  Billy is stuck. “I don’t know,” he says. “I just got it. I mean, now it’s in my hand. But I don’t want it.” He tries to hand the egg roll to the mall cop. “Here, take it.”

  The mall cop glances down at the egg roll. Judging by his girth and the look on his face, he wouldn’t mind a quick snack. But of course he is in his official capacity. “Do you want to press charges?” he asks the Wong Chong cook.

  “Yes. He kick me. I press charges.”

  And at that moment the old woman walks up. “This boy ran me over,” she says. “I saw the whole thing. He’s nothing but a juvenile hoodlum. I want to press charges, too.”

  The mall cop takes out some handcuffs. Billy Beezer begins to cry. The mall cop puts Billy up against the closed service elevator door and begins to cuff him.

  Poor Billy Beezer. Even though he is turned away from me, I can tell that he is suddenly very scared. His knees are knocking against the elevator doors. If he had been one step faster, he would have made it through those doors, and gotten away with his crime.

  But he didn’t make it. He lost. By a snout.

  6

  Dinner Theater

  I am sitting at our table that is not a table, trying to eat a turkey dinner that is not a dinner, and ignore the mayhem. “The mayhem” is my name for our Tuesday dinner entertainment, which the man who is not my father has selected for our enjoyment and edification, whatever that means. He is seated to my right, sawing away at a turkey leg that is not a turkey leg, his eyes never straying from the TV screen.

  The food on his plate and, sadly, my own plate can in no way be classified as a turkey dinner because it fulfills none of the basic requirements of a true turkey dinner: it does not taste like turkey; it does not look or smell like turkey; it does not even have the consistency of turkey. Nor does it taste like chicken. Nor does it taste like any member of the fowl family. Nor does it taste like beef, pork, or lamb. It also does not taste like a vegetarian dish cleverly flavored and decorated to resemble turkey. I do not believe that what I am eating has ever experienced life as we understand it in any form, animal or vegetable, bacterial, or even viral. I suspect that what sits on our table that is not a table may in fact be a rare whitish-gray mineral masquerading as turkey.

  Our table is not a real dining room table because real tables are flat, whereas ours lists to one side like the deck of a slowly sinking ship. Every week or two the man who is not my father will get his big tool ki
t out and prop up one leg, or saw off another, and then use a marble to show that the table is finally level. “There,” he says, “solved that problem. Hah!” But since it is not a real table, but rather a ship that is slowly sinking into our dining room floor, it will soon be tilted again.

  There is a roar from the TV The mayhem is intensifying.

  The TV has become a royal figure in our house since the man who is not my father moved in six months ago. We used to have a small TV that sat on a crate in a corner of the living room. When the man who is not my father arrived, his one contribution in terms of furnishings was a brand-new widescreen color TV with its own oak stand—a king presiding on a dark wooden throne.

  I am sitting next to the man who is not my father, trying to gulp down a few bites of our turkey dinner that is not a turkey dinner, and trying to ignore the fact that Tiger Jones has just broken the nose of Vinny the Fox.

  “Yup, it’s broken,” the announcer says with apparent satisfaction. “I could hear the bones snap. His cornermen really have their work cut out for them. Lucky he’s got Doc Whittaker in there—one of the best cut men in the East. And he’s gonna need him, because blood is now gushing from the nose and eyes of Vinny the Fox!”

  Now, since you don’t know me at all, even though you are starting to get a picture of the ridiculous world in which I live, I will reveal a surprising secret about myself. Despite my many drawbacks and human frailties, I am not particularly squeamish. I do not grow faint at the sight of blood, unless it is my own. I am not troubled by images of stark violence, unless that violence is heading in my direction. But that being said, I hold this truth to be self-evident: no one, while eating dinner, should be forced to watch a fellow human being get his nose broken.

  The bell sounds for the end of round five. Poor Vinny the Fox staggers back to his corner, where he is stitched and glued back together by Doc Whittaker. The camera moves in close on Vinny’s nose and eyes.

  I try not to watch, but there are a limited number of places that I can focus my gaze on in our dining room that is not a dining room. It is not a dining room because no good meals are ever eaten in it. If you will excuse a gross word, I believe it may be a vomitorium masquerading as a dining room. I say this because I frequently feel nauseous during meals. And I am feeling nauseous now, as I try not to look at the screen, and consider my other options.