by Joe Meno
“That’s OK.”
“Well, then, it’s OK by me. I’ve only got ten bucks so don’t go ordering no lobster or anything.”
“OK.”
“OK. Stay right here while I get Bobby’s keys.” Tony let go of her hand and strode off, back toward the corner of the parking lot where Bobby B. was smoking.
“OK, Tony,” she sighed, nodding, standing obliviously beside me.
The mix-tape disintegrated in my front shirt pocket. “OK, Tony.”
thirty-one
Bad-ass songs about the Devil to play while stabbing somebody like, I dunno, Tony fucking Degan maybe, as you offer his soul up to fucking Satan for all eternity:
1. Twist of Cain by Danzig
2. Black Magic by Slayer
3. Jesus Saves by Slayer
4. Number of the Beast by Iron Maiden
5. Shout at the Devil by Mötley Crüe
6. Helter Skelter by the Beatles
7. Children of the Beast by Mötley Crüe
8. South of Heaven by Slayer
9. Jump in the Fire by Metallica
10. Mr. Crowley by Ozzy
11. Soul on Fire by Danzig
12. Behind the Crooked Cross by Slayer
13. The Anti-Christ again by fucking Slayer
thirty-two
OK, for fun sometimes, Gretchen and Kim would have these conversations while I was sitting there in the backseat and it was like they would just do whatever they could to fuck with me. We would drive around after school, killing time before Kim had to go to work, and they would sit up front and I would sit in the back and they would have their own fucking conversations and make fun of how lame I was and I would just sit there and fucking take it. Why? Because, well, you know why already.
“Hey, Brian, do you know if your hand is bigger than your face, that means you’ll get cancer?” And I’d put my hand up to measure my face and—BAM!—Kim would make me smack myself.
Or:
“Hey, Brian, what’s a dikkfur?” Kim would ask.
“I dunno,” I’d say. “What’s a dikkfur?”
“What’s a dick for? What are you, retarded?” and she’d laugh.
Or outright stupid insults like:
“Hey, Brian,” Kim would ask. “Did you hear they’re making these machines in Germany you can have sex with. These wanking machines?”
“So?”
“So, there you go. You can finally get laid,” she’d laugh. “Get it? Because you are a fairy-virgin. And you would need a machine to get laid.” She punched my leg hard and started snorting and laughing.
“Why don’t you go blow, slut?” I asked.
“So anyway,” Kim said, turning around again, facing Gretchen. “I heard somebody was out doing something nasty with somebody in somebody else’s van.”
“What?” Gretchen asked.
“I heard somebody was out doing something nasty with somebody in somebody else’s van.”
“I dunno,” Gretchen whispered.
“Well, Bobby said he gave Tony Degan the keys and then the two of you just disappeared. So, what do you got to say for yourself?”
“Nothing. I dunno.”
“You’re turning into a big fucking slut.”
“No. Nobody … well, nobody looks at me the way he does.”
“What?”
“Nobody else looks at me like that. Like he’s going to … I dunno, tear my clothes off or something.”
“Well, you should go hang out at the fucking Aladdin’s Castle sometime, you know, the arcade in the mall? I was supposed to meet Bobby there and he was late as fucking usual and so I was the only girl in there and you would have thought I was Heather Locklear or something—fucking geeks.”
“He didn’t even say anything to me. He just looked at me, you know? He looked me over like they do in movies. Then he came over and put his hand on my face, like this.” Gretchen placed the palm of her hand gently against the side of Kim’s face. “And then he said, ‘Do you want to go do something?’ and I said, ‘OK.’”
“Well, you better watch out. You know. Maybe he’s just trying to use you for your sweet little pussy.”
Gretchen sat up in the hard plastic seat, nervous. “Why? Why’d you say that?”
“What?”
“What you just said? Why’d you say that?”
“What? I didn’t say anything. I was fucking around,” Kim said.
“What you said, about him using me? How come you said that?”
“I dunno. I was just saying; I was just fucking around.”
“What? That he has to be using me because he actually likes me? Is that it?”
“No, I just meant how he, well, you know, tried to get you to …”
“You don’t know what it’s like, Kim. You don’t.”
“Oh, fuck. Here we go again.” Kim pushed her seat back and rolled her eyes.
“No, fuck you. You never were fat. You don’t know what it’s like. Boys won’t even talk to me unless, you know, I happen to be with you, you know, so they can find out if you’re single or not and try to fuck you or whatever. You don’t even know. You’ve never felt ugly a day in your life. You get very fucking lonely.”
“What the fuck? I know what it’s like. Boys are afraid of me!”
“Well, that’s just because you want them to be. I mean, you like it when boys are scared of you. I mean, I didn’t fucking ask to be born a size 12, you know. Fuck it. It doesn’t even matter. It’s always gonna be like this, even in like a hundred years. People don’t like ugly people, you know. It’s like the last real prejudice.”
“Yeah, that and being fucking white.”
“I dunno. You know what I mean,” Gretchen said.
“Boys are all fucking jerks. All they want is to fuck you up anyway. You know that guy Mike, from the mall, with the mohawk? He won’t return my calls now.”
“Because he jizzed on your skirt?” Gretchen asked.
“How the fuck should I know. I mean, fuck, he’s not even cool. He’s like a dweeb, you know? He’s not even punk rock, he just dresses like it. I mean, he’s like into comic books and shit like that. I mean, the only good thing about him is that he’s got a car. So that’s, like, the trade-off.”
“Bobby has a van,” Gretchen said.
“But Bobby is a fucking asshole. I mean, he fucking told that girl Laura that she is his ‘ideal woman.’ Can you even believe that shit? I was the first girl to ever give him fucking head.”
“Well, she must have given him head too.”
“Sometimes I wish there was no such thing as fucking boys, for real. Fucking assholes. Except you, Brian,” she said, and then, “No, no, including you too.”
“Remember in junior high when we told everyone we were from outer space? From Planet Nav-o-nod?” Gretchen asked.
“Because Nav-o-nod was Jon Donovan’s last name backwards,” Kim said.
“I was so in love with Jon Donovan.”
“Me too. Now he drives an El Camino—douche-bag.”
Both girls groaned, making stinky faces. I laughed too, remembering Jon Donovan, who was tall and handsome with this massive blond head of exquisitely styled hair, like a game-show host.
“What was your name?” Gretchen asked.
“Xanadu. Like the Olivia Newton John song.”
“See, that’s what gave us away. When you told Mrs. Pinchi that at the beginning of seventh grade, she couldn’t take us seriously.”
“Yeah, well, what the hell, I tried. What was your name again? I forget.”
“I was Queen Spellbinder,” Gretchen said with a smile.
“That doesn’t even make sense.”
“I know. That’s why it was so awesome.”
“I guess.”
“Remember when we had Brian scared shitless?”
I sat up and leaned my head forward. “What? What did you say about me?”
“Remember when we told you we had no men on our planet and we were gonna breed with you so
we could continue our earth race?” Gretchen asked.
“Dude, you ran out of her bedroom and fell down the front stairs. I thought you were going to fucking puke,” Kim said.
“Yeah,” I said. “That was really fucking great.”
“Hey Brian,” Kim asked. “Are you still a fucking virgin?”
“He’s always gonna be a virgin, even if he loses his virginity,” Gretchen answered for me.
“Are you sure you’re not, you know, a faggot?” Kim asked.
“I’m not a faggot,” I said.
“He’s not a faggot,” Gretchen answered again. “He just has this ‘I’m going to live in my mom’s basement and work as a janitor for the rest of my life’ kind of thing going on.”
“Shit, once I caught Brian making kissy faces at me,” Kim said. “Do you remember that?” she asked me.
“What! When?” I asked.
“A couple of summers ago, like in eighth grade, when we had the tent up in Gretchen’s backyard. Remember when we had the math team sleepover?” she turned to Gretchen and smiled, “and your mom made us popcorn and hot dogs and your dad tried telling us a ghost story and his fly was totally undone?”
“Yeah,” Gretchen said with a smile.
“Well, I woke up in the middle of the night and I saw Brian staring at me and he was pretending to kiss me.”
“That didn’t happen,” I said.
“What did you say to him?” Gretchen asked.
“I said, ‘Stop being gross, you fucker.’”
“What did he say?” Gretchen asked.
“He said he was just practicing. He said I was gonna come to my senses and that I’d want to make out with him someday.”
“That never fucking happened,” I said again. It was quiet for a minute and then Gretchen spoke up.
“I wish we didn’t ever have to grow up. Yuck.”
“Me too. But shit, then I think of Bobby and his dick it makes me never want to be a kid again.”
“I guess. Maybe it’s just easier for you. Don’t you wish you were a kid again, just sometimes?”
“No, being a kid sucked. I want to be on my own as soon as possible. You should too. I mean, you gotta grow up sometime, right? isten, before you drop me off, can I borrow your geometry homework?”
“Yeah, I’m done with it.” Kim reached into Gretchen’s bag, fumbled around, and dug her geometry homework out.
“I’ll get it back to you in the morning, OK?” Kim asked.
“OK.”
We pulled up in front of the Chicago Ridge Mall, right by the entrance to the food court where Kim worked at the Orange Julius, and Kim got out. “See you,” she said to Gretchen, then turned to me and pressed her hefty chest against the car window. “Bye, lover,” she said, huffy, breathy, laughing, as she spat a loogie and disappeared behind the thick glass doors.
“Are you going to come up front?” Gretchen asked.
“Not if you keep making fun of me,” I said.
“Well, then stay back there, homo,” she said and took off, laughing.
thirty-three
In the afternoon, Gretchen and I would still drive by Stacy Bensen’s.
I dunno why. To kill time, maybe, or because Gretchen was still feeling guilty for busting up her face, to torture her—who knows, really. It was about three-thirty, right after school, and, well, after cruising past three or four times Gretchen actually parked the car and got out. I followed, not knowing what the hell she was doing. Gretchen walked on up to the cement front porch and rang the doorbell and I looked at her, wondering, and asked, “What the heck are you doing?” and Gretchen just shrugged, blowing some hair out of her face.
Like that, Stacy answered the door, still wearing her school uniform which fit her long body perfectly, and she had on a pink sweatshirt, her blond hair done up in a ponytail. She was drinking a Diet Coke, leaning against the door, and if her eyes weren’t still so very black and blue and her nose still covered with the white gauze bandage, she might’ve seemed hot, maybe. She was smoking, exhaling from the corner of her mouth with flair, and I thought I could see it there—that look, as busted-up as her face was, that sense that no matter what, she would always be better than us, maybe.
“Yeah?” Stacy asked. “Brian Oswald? What do you people want?”
“Is this really where you live?” Gretchen asked, peeking in at the huge silver and mirrored front room. I thought her question was kind of weird considering how many times we had already been there.
“Yeah,” Stacy said, exhaling.
“It’s pretty,” Gretchen said.
“Yeah, it is,” I said, and decided that would be it for me trying to speak to Stacy Bensen.
“Yeah. I guess it’s OK,” she said. “I saw you two drive by yesterday. What do you want?”
“I dunno. We just came by to see how you were feeling.”
“My face still feels like shit. I think you gave me a deviated septum.”
“Yeah, well, sorry about that,“ Gretchen whispered, nodding. “So. So are you really fucking pregnant?”
Stacy looked at Gretchen, then at me, and blew out a mouthfull of smoke. “Why do you care?”
“I dunno,” Gretchen said, shrugging her shoulders. “I thought, I dunno, maybe we could do something for you.”
“Well, I’m not pregnant. I got my period yesterday,” Stacy said, letting out a breath. She took another drag on her smoke and nodded to herself.
“Oh,” Gretchen said, nodding back. “Well, that’s good, huh?”
“Yeah. Now Mark Dayton can go back to fucking whoever else he wants.”
“Mark Dayton? That kid from Marist? He was the guy?” Gretchen asked.
“Yeah. You know him?”
“I guess,” Gretchen said. “He’s a fucker.”
“He really is,” Stacy said.
The two girls looked at each other—Stacy with her arms crossed, Gretchen nodding—in a way that was like, Maybe you’re OK, maybe.
“So were you the ones who did that with the animals?” Stacy Bensen asked.
“The animals?” Gretchen asked.
“The lawn animals, having sex.”
“Yeah. That was us,” Gretchen said.
“How come?”
“I dunno,” she whispered. “To cheer you up, I guess.”
“It didn’t cheer me up. It freaked me out.”
“Sorry about that,” Gretchen said.
“Yeah. It was pretty funny, though.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, thanks for coming by, I guess.”
“Yeah.” On the porch, we all stood for a moment, the faraway sound of laughter from a sitcom on the TV rising. Was it Charles in Charge? Was she watching TV? She’s just as lonely as us, I thought suddenly.
“Do you guys want to come in or something?” Stacy asked, holding the side of her bandaged nose. There were tiny red flecks of blood along the edge.
“I dunno. Can I bum a smoke?” Gretchen asked.
Stacy nodded, dug into her sweatshirt pocket, and handed Gretchen the pack. Gretchen fumbled nervously for a cigarette, placed it in her mouth, noticed it was a menthol, asked, “Is this menthol?” to which Stacy nodded, but Gretchen lit it anyway.
“Does Brian want one?” Stacy asked.
“No, he doesn’t smoke,” Gretchen said.
“Nope,” I said. “My pipes are clean,” I said, and then definitely decided there would be no more talking for me.
“So,” Gretchen whispered, nodding again.
“So,” Stacy whispered back. “So. So you ever been to a tanning salon?”
“Who me?” Gretchen asked. “Nah.”
“I got a tanning bed in the basement. You guys want to look at it?”
“I dunno. Not really,” Gretchen said with a shrug.
“Well, do you guys want to help me make cookies? I promised my little brother I’d make him some.”
“Yeah, I dunno. But thanks for asking. We gotta be going, Brian’s got to be home.�
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“OK,” she said.
“OK.”
“So see you around, though.”
“Yeah, see you around,” Gretchen said, starting down the steps. As soon as we heard the door shut, Gretchen turned and grabbed the first blue bunny from the garden, put it up right behind a garden gnome like it was humping it, and then ran to her car, started it up, and began honking. Stacy Bensen came to the door, holding her nose, and nodded, looking at the poor rabbit and gnome, just standing there. I could not tell whether she was laughing or crying.
After that, we drove over to Marist High School’s football field where Gretchen said Stacy Bensen’s boyfriend would probably be practicing. All the sport-os and jocks had their red practice football uniforms on and were doing drills and throwing passes and smacking each other’s asses after every fucking play. Gretchen and I sat in the Escort listening to it idle hard, and cranked up “Wasted” by Black Flag when it came on.
“So what are we doing here?” I asked, finally.
“We’re gonna fuck that guy up.”
“Are you gonna run him down or something?” I asked.
“No. I dunno. Do you got any ideas?”
“No.”
“We could throw something at him and then drive off.”
“Like what?”
“How about a brick?”
“I don’t know about that. How about some sloppy food, like chili?”
“No, no, I got it,” she said. “How about a bag of shit?”
“Where are you gonna get a bag of shit?”
“I dunno,” she said. “Do you need to take a crap?”
“Nope,” I said, shaking my head.
“How about a bag of piss? Do you have to pee at all?”
“I could pee,” I said. “I could definitely pee. Where do we get a bag?”
We drove over to the Jewel on 103rd, bought the largest size of Ziplock bag we could find, and doubled back, parking in front of the football field in exactly the same spot. I thought if I did all this Gretchen would think I was kind of bad-ass—you know, unconcerned with getting busted and all—and I was fine with it until we were there in the Marist High School parking lot and she said, “OK, go pee.”
“Right here?”
“Yeah, I don’t care.”