It had taken a long time to get here from the Cape. They’d driven all day, and he hadn’t liked going from the car immediately into the dark of the bar with the noise from the jukebox filling the room, fuzzing up against the wood-paneled walls and thudding in his ears, and he hadn’t liked the noise of the people who laughed in rough, sparky barks. “We get it. We know you don’t like it,” Dave had finally said. “Quit saying so over and over.” But it really made him think he might puke, and at first he’d had to cup a hand over his nose to try to block the smells of spilled beer and old fry grease and sweaty bodies.
He told Dave he was going to wait outside, but Dave pointed him toward a barstool. “Just grab a seat. You’re okay.” And Dave turned out to be right as usual, because after a while his eyes adjusted and his ears and nose adjusted, and he saw that all the bottles on the shelves behind the bar, with their different colors of glass and their different shapes, were like a city, with a pretty skyline he could lose himself in, trace with his eyes, another kind of map. And he drank more Sprite and had some wings with bright orange sauce that wasn’t too spicy, and Dave and Umberto had some wings and some drinks that came from one of the pretty bottles behind the bar. They also had some more beers only this time they called them chasers.
Umberto’s friend who he had some business with still hadn’t come in, but three girls came in, and they seemed to know Umberto. They walked in a swirly way toward the bar and pressed themselves up close to it, somehow making room where there hadn’t been any, and now two of them were sitting on the stools that Dave and Umberto had been sitting on, with Dave and Umberto wedged in behind them like almost-right-but-not-quite jigsaw pieces.
The one girl with star-colored hair didn’t have a seat. She was standing tucked up close to Fred, and he didn’t want to give up his stool so he didn’t smile or look at her when she said hey Sailor to him, but after she turned to face the others he snuck looks at her short, pale hair that stuck out around her head just like the Little Prince.
He wanted to tell Dave about it, but he didn’t know if Dave would say, “Cool, Buddy,” or “Not now, man,” or worse, nothing at all, just eye him coldly like the owl man and swivel his head back around. Dave was capable of all three. Fred met Dave at Neel’s memorial service. Both Dave’s parents had been Batter Hollow students, and Dave said he himself had gone there as a little kid, right before the school closed. Fred’s first memory of Dave was actually at the gathering after Neel’s memorial service, a big party back at Batter Hollow that wound up stretching late into the night. Dave had been a skinny guy standing outside in the dark, leaning against the wall of the Shed, smoking with the lighted end of his cigarette cupped inside his palm. That’s when he came up with the name Buddy. “Hey, Buddy,” he’d said when Fred wandered by. “Sorry about your old man.”
He stuck around a few weeks after the memorial service, staying in the abandoned Shed and doing odd jobs for June, replacing the rotten wood on the front porch of the Office, fixing the gutters, patching the roof. Then he got a call to paint a house back on the Cape and he left. But later, when June got sick and had to lie in bed all the time, she called him. Well, first she had to call Dave’s mother to get his number, and then she called Dave on the Cape and they talked. She asked Fred to leave the room while they talked. When she hung up she called for him to come back, and he sat in a chair pulled up to the bed and she lay there with no hair and her skin the color of beeswax on the pillow, and she said Fred was going to have a job and a place to live on the Cape. He was going to help Dave paint houses and he was going to stay in Dave’s bungalow with him. And she would make sure Dave got some money every month and Dave would make sure Fred had clothes and food and whatever he needed. After she told him this she looked like she might fall asleep, but instead she reached her hand out from under the sheet and touched Fred on the knee.
“You always liked the Cape,” she said.
Then she closed her eyes for eleven seconds and just as he was counting twelve in his head she opened them again and said, “You always liked the ocean.”
Then her face sort of crumpled, and her yellow skin looked like a candle someone had taken a fork to, and she didn’t smell a thing like June.
“Hey!” The star-haired girl whipped her head around. Fred had leant in close to the girl’s hair; he’d been smelling it. It smelled like raisin cookies. Now he sat back quickly on his stool, careening his gaze over to the bottles behind the bar, tracing with his eyes the rise and fall of their glass silhouettes. Bumpity bumpity bump.
“Don’t think I don’t know your type,” the girl added more slowly, looking him up and down. But not like the owl man had looked him up and down. With her it was more like he was a path in the woods she was thinking she might go down. “You get me, Sailor?”
He didn’t know if he got her, but he nodded, which was something he’d learned to do whenever people asked him a question that didn’t make sense or spoke in riddles. Then he was afraid he might keep bobbing his head up and down the way that felt good but Dave had informed him was a little weird, Buddy, so he looked away again, back toward the skyline of colored bottles.
“You always this talkative?”
This was a joke and he knew to smile. “Ha ha,” he added after a moment.
When she smiled, one cheek got a dent in it, curvy and dark. It was a little like the dent in Kitty’s chin. He wanted to put his finger in the dent. He turned away from her and touched his glass of Sprite instead.
“You must have a secret, huh? That’s why you’re so quiet. So what is it? How come you won’t tell what you’re drinking?” She leaned over right in front of him and he could see, because she had not zipped her denim jumpsuit all the way, where a shadow slid down between the tops of her small breasts. She closed her hand around his glass and slid it toward herself, brought it to her own lips, slowly, slowly, and drank, keeping her eyes on him the whole time. “Hm.” Sounding surprised, she set the glass back on the bar, tipped her starry head to one side and narrowed her eyes at him.
His Adam’s apple slid up and down his throat. “Ah, have you-ah, ever read The Little Prince, by-ah, Ant-ah, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry?”
Her eyes popped big like in a cartoon. “It talks!” she screamed. She reached around and whacked her friend, on the next stool, with the back of her hand.
“Ow. Bitch.” The friend rubbed at her shoulder and looked over at them both. Her eyes, beneath heavy lids, had a mean look. They were the color of a bruise.
The third girl was busy laughing at something Umberto said.
“Sailor boy can talk!” announced the star-girl. “Listen to this.” And to him, “Repeat what you just said.”
“Ah . . .”
“Ask me that thing again.”
“Ah, are you-ah, familiar with-ah, that book? It’s-ah, a novel by-ah, by-ah, by-ah, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.”
“Dassant eggs-what?” She yelped the last word so high he flinched. “You are priceless. You kill me, what language is that?”
“S’ah not-ah a language,” he explained, and she let out a happy scream and gave her friend another whack. This time her friend shoved her back. She stumbled against Fred, who steadied her.
“He was-ah a writer,” Fred said. “And-ah a pilot. In Africa. You-ah, you-ah, look like the drawings of-ah the little prince.”
He talked on then, wanting to explain about the book, which he had never read through all by himself but which Ava had read to him long ago, and whose illustrations and sweet pervading sadness had made a lasting impression, so that now he liked to bring the book with him wherever he went, and sometimes he would flip through and read himself a line or two—he liked where the snake says, It is a little lonely among men—or just page through the pictures, and as he talked to the star-haired girl about the book he noticed it was unusual he wanted to talk so much; noticed, too, that as he went on the words began to slip mo
re effortlessly out of his mouth, following smoothly upon each other without needing those little pockets of air to come between so many of them. But he also noticed how his voice got lost in the surge of the jukebox and spikes of laughter throughout the bar, lost in the tumult of milling bodies that flashed in and out of the corners of his vision, heavy with sweat and muscles and fat; lost, too, in the glint of pint glasses bobbing along on trays held high, and in the glint of tongue studs and nose rings and the neon Genny Light sign over in the little box window, so that Fred had to look back at the bottle city again, rest his eyes by letting them travel the miniature glass skyline, and while all this was going on, the girl with the Little Prince hair leaned in and laid a hand on his crotch.
“Ah,” said Fred. He looked down. There were her fingers, idle and innocent.
“How you doing there, Buddy?” This was Dave, standing over him, breathing the smell of liquor against the back of his head. “Time to get going.” Dave rocked forward on his feet, stumbling against Fred’s stool, then straightened again. The girl’s fingers slid lower, worked into the crevice between Fred’s legs. Fred wondered if Dave saw it. Dave should see it. Then he could say Hey! if it wasn’t okay. He could say Hey, that’s a little weird! the way he did whenever Fred forgot and started bouncing his body or making sounds he didn’t realize he was making. Then Dave would just say in a bright friendly voice, Hey! or else more quietly but still friendly, Hey, quit that, quit doing the bobble-head thing, or quit humming, and Fred would quit.
“Ah . . .” said Fred. The girl’s hand grew heavier, massy and warm, and her fingers rippled against his thigh. He tried to see the girl’s face but she was turned away, talking to her friend with the mean eyes, as if she had no idea where her hand had gone or what it was doing, the fact that it was moving, kneading at his crotch and he felt like dough and the smell of yeast flooded his nose and made him sway on his stool. He shut his eyes.
He saw June in the kitchen, bent over the table, working a great mound of dough with the heels of both hands, a thin cloud of dust floating in the light above the table, pale flour stars, pale galaxies of flour dust revolving slowly about her.
He saw Neel coming upon him in the upstairs hall. Like stars, Neel said, understanding. Freddy just sitting with his arms loose at his sides, watching particles of dust in a slant of light, each tiny mote made gold as it passed through the shaft. They’re like the stars and the planets revolving in the universe, Neel said, squatting, and there without hurry they watched the galaxy ballet. Perhaps, said Neel, the dust in the air in the upstairs hall was another universe, every bit as complicated and populous and full of mysterious grandeur as their own. Freddy liked it when Neel spoke to him this way. The words he didn’t know had shapes and colors and he could taste them. Populous was white and puffed as popcorn. Grandeur was green velveteen, mossy on his tongue.
Perhaps, said Neel, one of those specks of dust was a planet like this one, with a little boy like Freddy on it. And to him, Freddy was a giant—so unimaginably large that he could not even be seen. Imagine, Neel said: too big to be seen.
Fred opened his eyes. There were the bottles, the anchoring rows of bottles behind the bar. He found it necessary to shift on the barstool, to give the star-girl’s hand more room, to give himself more room within the confines of his pants.
He looked at her again, at the back of her head all tufted with yellow. He did not think you could do the thing she was doing absentmindedly, or do it with your back turned, or while you were talking to someone else. But the star-girl didn’t seem to be paying him any attention. She was busy singing along with the song on the jukebox now, together with her friend, leaning her mouth toward the invisible microphone her friend was pretending to hold.
Fred let his eyes close again and pressed himself into the slow heat of her hand.
“Come on,” repeated Dave, “let’s go.” He gave Fred a poke between the shoulders.
“Ah-where?”
“Dude. Some address, I don’t know. Umberto’s friend.”
Fred had gone on road trips with friends of Dave’s before. They usually went in winter or when the weather was bad on the Cape and they knew they wouldn’t get any painting or roofing work. They would drive north to Maine or New Hampshire, or west to New York, and once all the way up to Canada. Always in a rattling car, radio stations coming in and out, noisy windshield wipers and Slim Jims and Combos from rest stops. Cold water in the gas station bathrooms, cigarette smoke in the houses and apartments, nights spent sleeping on somebody’s couch or floor or in the backseat. The car lighter forever getting pushed in and pulled out, its glowing orange spiral pressed to the ends of the cigarettes Dave and his friends smoked. Fred rode in back, where he’d crack a window when he started feeling sick and suck cold whistling air into his lungs until someone told him to shut it.
There was always a purpose to these trips, although Fred never usually understood exactly what. There was a destination they had to reach, something that had to get done once they arrived. Going to see a girl someone used to know, or to get some papers signed, or to visit some property or check out the product or pick up a delivery or sell a pair of skis. One time Umberto had been going to buy a painting. They drove all the way up to Lake Placid and the whole way there everyone kept mentioning the painting Umberto was going to buy, and then when they got there they met some people and went to a party and then to another party somewhere else and they all slept on the nubby orange carpet in someone’s basement, and then the next morning it was time to head back, and in all this time Fred never saw the painting.
On the drive home he’d asked what was the painting of?
Dude, what?
Fred said, The-ah painting you-ah, you-ah, went to buy. Like-ah, what-ah was it of?
Umberto said, Your mom.
And everybody laughed. And it had been a joke. And Fred had known to smile.
The first few times Dave had to do a road trip after Fred started living with him, Fred stayed on the Cape by himself, but that hadn’t gone too well, even though Dave had gotten him all set up with Campbell’s and Chef Boyardee and Dinty Moore, things that would be easy to heat in a pot on the stove. The first time, Fred hadn’t realized the gas was on even though the burner wasn’t lit and when Dave came home he kept saying Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, can’t you smell that? running around opening all the windows and both doors, saying Jesus Fuck, the whole place could have blown. Hell yeah, I’m mad, he’d said when Fred asked if he was mad.
The other time Fred stayed on the Cape alone, Dave went out and got Hot Pockets and Easy Mac and frozen pizza and they made a plan that Fred would just use the microwave and not even touch the stove, but for some reason Fred got the feeling that the gas had been left on; he kept checking the knobs on the stove but still he was scared, he kept thinking of Dave saying the whole place could blow, and his body started shaking so bad he had to run out of the house and not go back inside without Dave, which meant he had spent two whole days out in the cold, walking around the empty town with no tourists, waiting for Dave to return; two whole nights in the backyard wrapped up in a drop cloth he found in the shed, shaking with cold. The third day some cops and EMTs came to Dave’s house and found him huddled on the gravel. They said they’d gotten a call from a neighbor and they talked to Fred and checked out the house and told him it was safe to go inside, but he still wouldn’t go in, so they wound up calling Dave, somehow they got his cell number—Fred didn’t know it—and Dave had to come back early from his trip. Hell yeah, I’m mad, he’d said again that second time.
After that Dave said it was easier for Fred to come along on these road trips. Sometimes Fred had to wait in the car, especially when they were meeting someone somebody had business with. Fred figured that was probably what was going to happen now in Perdu. They would leave this bar that his eyes and nose and ears had gotten used to, and get back in the car and drive to some house on a da
rk road or some apartment complex with spray paint on the doors, and then Dave and Umberto would go inside and Fred would have to wait in the car, and it would be for a long time, he was pretty sure, and without the radio to keep him company, because Dave didn’t keep the keys in the ignition anymore since that time Fred had gotten tired of waiting and taken the car for a drive.
“No,” said Fred.
“What?”
“I-ah, I’ll ah-stay.”
“You can’t stay,” Dave began, putting a hand on Fred’s shoulder, pulling at his arm. But Fred knew how to make himself heavy on the stool, and then he heard the star-girl say, “Aw, Dave, let him stay, he’s having fun,” and Umberto say, “C’mon,” looking at Dave with eyes flat as coins, jerking his head toward the door, and the star-girl say, “What’s the matter, you jealous? ’Cause you know I’ll take good care of him.” Then the mean-eyed girl turned out to be crying, and Umberto and the other girl were already walking toward the exit, Umberto with both hands on her bottom, and Dave was sighing and the star-girl was saying, “Go. You have your fun, let us have ours. He can crash at our place tonight.”
Dave said, “What do you want to do, Buddy? You sure you don’t want to come with me?”
“Ah,” said Fred. “Ah . . .”
“He’s fine,” said the star-girl. “Aren’t you, Sailor?” Flashing her dimple, removing her hand from between his legs.
“Ah . . .”
“Just go,” said the other girl, sniffing. Her hair hung over her face and she was playing with a straw wrapper. Dave hesitated. Suddenly she turned and shoved his chest with both hands, hoarsely shouting, “Fucking leave.”
Dave went.
No Book but the World: A Novel Page 22