‘What if I call the cops?’
‘Go right ahead. Oh, wait. On second thought, you don’t have to waste the quarter. Here he comes now.’
Joe slams the sheriff’s cruiser in park and jumps out, it doesn’t take a mind reader to see he’s upset.
‘If we’re done here I’ve got to tend to my man,’ says Deb and the lady spews out a string of outdated cuss words and looks at the gold ring in the glass case there as lost and tarnished as the way she feels about the plot of her own life, the present state of the USA. Then she skirts round the approaching Joe Two-Feathers and gets in her Mercury Sable and drives away.
‘What was that about?’ says Joe.
‘Nothing,’ says Deb. ‘What happened at the old folks home? Are they gonna let your mom out?’
‘That Director Steve is a real son of a bitch.’
‘I guess that means no.’
‘Did you know he’s a sexual weirdo? Yeah. He talked about it like he was telling me the scores to a Mets game. Orgasmic liberation. Anal. Bisexuality. Butt beads. Orgies. Sat yapping at me in his office for half an hour. I shit you not. Told me he’s tired of his wife. Go figure. Told me how he’s filed for divorce on the grounds that she tried to poison him with an ambrosia salad.’
‘Is that the one with fruit and marshmallows?’
‘I thought it was whip cream!’ shouts Black Jesus, oddly passionate about this single ingredient.
‘Beats the hell out of me,’ continues Joe. ‘It’s not important. The important piece of info is that this guy is fucked-up. Mental. And this is who we got taking care of our parents in their twilight years? He bit and sucked on his pencil and told me now he’s got the hots for the divorce attorney he hired. Terry Lipbaum.’
‘A man?’
‘Yes, Black Jesus. A man. Can you believe that freaky shit?’
‘So what’s the big deal about letting your mom go watch a drive-in movie?’
‘He says her day trip privileges have been suspended till the staff review her case.’
‘What the hell for this time?’
‘Gambling.’
‘Shit, bingo again?’
‘Horses.’
Debbie can’t help but laugh. And by now Gloria has abandoned the chest of drawers and crept closer with her National Geographic and taken a seat on the ground next to Lionel’s rocker so as to be sure not to miss a word.
‘She’s got a friend at the OTB who’s been feeding her the inside dirt on races, doped-up thoroughbreds, hot jockeys, etc.,’ says Joe. ‘Come to find out she’s been making a killing on the other residents in the TV room after dessert and coffee.’
Gloria raises her hand like a kid in class and waits to be called upon.
Joe sees her and nods to Debbie and Debbie turns and sees the hand up and says, ‘What, Gloria?’
‘I want to meet your mom, Joe. She sounds incredible.’
‘Visiting hours stop at four,’ says the Deputy. ‘Just watch out for that pervert. His office is on the ground floor.’
‘Can I bring Lionel?’
‘Black Jesus,’ says the blind boy.
‘I don’t know,’ says Debbie. ‘He hasn’t gone anywhere on his own since he’s been home.’
‘He won’t be on his own if he’s with her,’ says Joe.
‘You really think it’s a good idea, honey?’ Deb squints at Joe.
‘I think she’d like it if some young people came to see her. She still thinks she’s a teenager anyhow by the crazy shit she gets into. And she’s gonna need cheering up after I drop this no-drive-in-movie bomb on her.’
‘How’m I gonna get there?’ Lionel wants to know.
‘First things first is you gotta get up from that chair,’ says Gloria rising to her feet.
‘But I like my chair. It’s close to the ground if I fall.’
‘You’re not gonna fall.’
‘You never know. I’m S-T-O-N-E-D,’ he says, drawing out each letter slower than the last.
‘Stoned?’
‘Stone Cold Steve Austin, Ma. I took three pills with a Mountain Dew right when I woke up.’
‘You’re supposed to just have half a one in the morning and the other half with dinner, pumpkin,’ says Deb, a little scared to upset him.
‘Yeah, but you didn’t see what I dreamed last night.’
Everyone is quiet after that. His declaration hangs in the air like burnt brakes on the mountain road. The radio plays. He makes a mark in the gravel with his work boot. Down at the stoplight someone lays on their horn.
Then Gloria says, ‘So I guess that’s a yes? Great. It’s the big cement building with all the windows, right Joe?’
‘Yeah. Just down the road behind all those trees in the back of the field past Shakespeare’s. It’s an easy walk.’
‘I ain’t walkin’ nowhere,’ says Lionel, his big black glasses gleaming.
‘That’s what I thought you’d say,’ smiles Gloria. ‘Debbie, is it okay if I use that yarn?’ she asks, pointing to a plastic box full of jean patches and thread and balls of wool.
‘Not the aqua-blue stuff.’
‘How ’bout the gold one?’
‘Go ahead,’ says Deb, newly enthused by the idea of Gloria and Lionel’s visit to Serenity Grove if it helps her prospects of getting some alone-time with her warrior poet. ‘Just bring it back,’ she says. ‘Good yarn don’t grow on trees.’
‘Thanks,’ says the dancer. Then to Lionel, ‘It’s time you got outta that friggin’ chair. There’s a big world out there.’
‘Yeah, look what good it’s done me.’
Without answering she moves and squats and grabs the yarn and walks back to the Marine.
‘Hold still,’ she says and bends and begins wrapping it around his torso, tight around his sweatshirt.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Taking your sorry ass for a walk.’
Normally his mom would object to any of this nonsense relating to her son’s happiness and general security, but love’s got her by the cash register locked with the tall Indian in what looks like a pro-wrestling hold. And they’re whispering dirty things, tongues in ears.
Now Gloria trots over to her trusty moped, the ball of gold yarn unraveling behind her, and ties the last of it to the rusted bar above the back tire. Then she deftly straddles the machine and throws her helmet on and turns the key and lurches forward, pulling Black Jesus from his rocker, as obedient as any sleepwalker, arms out and his legs dancing a rusty two-step.
And off they go, out of the parking lot and onto the waiting roadside, two kids, nothing much to lose, tied to each other by more than just yarn somehow.
By this hour of day Bebop Billy is certainly high as a News 10 helicopter. Out at the far end of the boardwalk he sways to and fro studying the wide blue living emptiness that rolls out before him. After a while, he lifts the plastic recorder to his mouth and blows a slow lament for the world he lives in, the country he stands at the edge of.
What are we headed toward? he wonders as he fingers the holes, lifting, landing, lifting again. How will it all play out?
When the tune is through he breathes and closes his eyes, feels the warm drugs inside him, the warm ocean air on his face. Turning his head slowly to one side he sees he’s got company. It’s the junky transvestite everybody calls Lady Di. Bebop’s seen her plenty of times round the speedway but oddly the two have never shared a word, a needle. No telling how long she’s been standing here, watching, listening. Wearing a purple boa about her brown neck and a green see-through sun visor on her head and a t-shirt that says cancer above a big red smiling cartoon crab, she purses her lips and claps a soft little clap, the kind commonly mustered by aristocracy after they’ve been mildly entertained, maybe a yawn would follow, maybe a paper
fan in this heat.
‘You in showbiz?’ asks Lady Di.
‘No,’ says Bebop. ‘I’m camera shy.’
‘Shit, that makes you one in a million in this tacky ass jungle nine oh two one oh.’
‘How ’bout you?’
‘Showbiz? Shit, I was almost a big eff-in’ star one time. Had a record deal and all that. Opened up for Fester Pussycat.’
‘What happened?’
‘I don’t know. I guess you could say it went down the tubes. That’s the easy way to say it. Who can ever really pinpoint the moves that lead us to our own disaster? Shit, that would make a hot chorus. You could use that in one of your songs, man. Just cut me in on the royalties.’
‘Do you miss it?’
The tranny takes a moment to reflect. She’s tall. The three-day-old make-up on her face makes her look like a rodeo clown who just checked himself into a hospital after a significant bender.
‘I miss the show,’ says the tranny. ‘The roar of the crowd. When they scream for you it’s like nothing else on earth. You’re God for an hour and a half. You know how you know you’re doing a good show?’
‘How?’
‘It’s when the girls start throwing their panties at the stage. You know how you know when you’re doing a fabulous show?’
‘No.’
‘It’s when they throw the panties and the panties stick to you like glue. That’s how you know you’re really on fire. Why’d you choose the recorder, man? Kinda gay, don’t you think?’
‘Look who’s talking.’
‘Take that back! This creature you see before you is not gay by any stretch of the imagination. He’s just caught between two worlds, baby. But never mind that. All I’m saying is I’d love to see you pick up a Flying V or something. Something with some balls.’
Bebop looks down at the blue recorder in his hands. What are we headed toward? Then he looks out to the sea. How does it all play out? His high is waning, his stomach a little uneasy.
‘I’ve gotta go,’ he tells the tranny. ‘So long,’ he says and turns away and starts down the boardwalk.
‘Hey, I’m sorry, baby,’ calls Lady Di.
Billy doesn’t hear him because he’s blowing on the recorder again. A tune to fix the evening. A tune to bring a scary rain. Just a tune to fill the emptiness that gnaws.
‘I didn’t mean it, man! That flute’s the perfect thing for you. Let’s be friends, okay? You’re beautiful in every way! Look at you. You’re like the Pied Piper with that thing. Fooling all the rats. Leading all the rats out to drown!’
Half an hour later Bebop’s lying in the speedway. Spine on the asphalt. Happy eyes on a sick sky. A red balloon in his grimy pocket, his poison, his medicine. Half the contents of that balloon in his bloodstream once again and he strikes the piper’s pose and blows a hapless prayer into the warm wind.
‘Do you hear that, sweets?’ says Tracy on the black sofa. ‘I think it’s coming from down on the street,’ she says and gets up and prances to the window. ‘I heard it once or twice before. I think you were sleeping. It’s really pretty. But it’s just as sad. Isn’t that weird?’
‘Oh you pretty things,’ croaks a nude Ross Klein off-key, smoldering on the other side of the apartment. ‘Don’t you know you’re driving your mommas and poppas insane?’
‘Umm, baby? All these lyrics are really brilliant, and enlightening and everything, but sometimes I just wanna talk to you. The real you. I’m sorry. Don’t be mad. It’s my fault. Maybe I’m missing the point.’
‘Let’s give them something to talk about. A little mystery to figure out. How about love?’
‘Really?’ says the girl, turning from the window to face him. ‘You wanna talk about love?’
‘Sure. Why not? But first I need you to do something for me.’
‘Anything.’
‘Where’s your cell phone?’
‘I turned it off like you told me to. And threw the battery out the window.’
‘You don’t have to lie to me. I saw you sending a text yesterday. It’s okay. Just go get it. I want you to make a phone call for me.’
The girl lowers her strawberry blonde head like a shamed child and walks back over to the sofa and squats in her sundress and fishes under the leather cushions for her Nokia. There it is.
‘Who am I calling?’ she says once the flip-top’s open to her view.
‘Three two three, seven seven nine, four four four six.’
‘Is it a takeout place? I really hope so. We haven’t really eaten anything for a while.’
‘Don‘t worry. Just call and ask for Desiree.’
The girl looks at him there by the stove. His ragged beard. His wild eyes. Don’t argue with him, she thinks. He must have some greater plan in store. Like those TV preachers back home, she decides.
‘Three two three, seven seven nine . . . ?’ She dials and waits for the last bit.
‘Four four four six,’ he says and steps backwards and hoists himself up onto the big iron stovetop like some prehistoric gymnast and watches her dial the rest.
‘Cat House, Brown Shugah at your beck and call,’ says a woman’s voice, loud music in the background.
‘Hi, is Desiree there?’
Nothing from the other end, just a guitar solo screaming.
‘Hello? I’m looking for someone named Desiree.’
‘Yeah, you and everybody else down here,’ says Brown Shugah. ‘We ain’t seen her since just after Easter. She covered my shift so I could take my mom to church. You know where she is? You best to tell me if you do.’
‘Umm . . . no. I’m calling on behalf of a friend,’ says Tracy, glancing up at Ross to find a wretched smile on his mouth.
‘Oh. Now I get it,’ says the voice.
‘Get what?’
‘I know exactly what friend you callin’ on behalf of. Put him on the phone.’
‘I’m sorry,’ says the girl, her free hand pinching her dress material, twisting it tight. ‘I must have the wrong number.’
‘No, you got the right number, bitch. He knows it by heart. Used to call down here every night askin’ for her. You tell that creepy motherfucker I know he did somethin’ to my girl. Shit, he probably got her hanging in a meat locker downtown. No, better yet, had her hacked up in a million pieces for shark bait when he takes his friends out on Daddy’s yacht.’
Tracy from Florida is speechless. She looks at Ross Klein and lifts her cell phone aloft, a searching ripple in her forehead. But he just smiles that poltergeist smile. And crosses his pale legs in a provocative sweep while Brown Shugah’s tirade spews quietly into the stale air.
‘Best to pack your bags right now if you know what’s good for you, baby. Silver spoon motherfucker. Lyin’ ass motherfucker. You tell him Brown Shugah’s got his number. Freddy Krueger motherfucker.’
And all Tracy wanted to do today was talk about love.
‘Are you seein’ what I’m seein’?’ says the alcoholic.
‘Does a bear shit in the woods?’ says his buddy.
The two of them squint in the late morning sun on Shakespeare’s porch, a can of Coors Lite in each of their hands, a cigarette dangling from the tall one’s mouth.
‘I’ll be damned, that’s that war hero kid of fat Debbie White.’
‘War hero my ass. Look at that skinny pussy, getting drug along Route 23A by some skank on a Vespa.’
‘You be careful what you say, Dennis. I don’t have to remind you how I went to Nam and got shot at for six hundred days by a bunch of crazy little rice farmers on speed when you went to Canada to live on some Harry Krishna sex commune. That kid there,’ he points to Black Jesus by the roadside, stumbling with his arms out, as if the mounted stranger he’s tied to were some witch or healer guiding him down to the river in
his dark shades and sorrow, hellbent to get him in the water and wash away the terror so that once again he might see. ‘That kid lost his friggin’ sight in the godforsaken desert so that you can sit around in this piece-a-shit town and drink yourself shitty and go to Wal-Mart and buy a steak and jerk off to American Idol at night on your couch without fear some towel-headed dune-coon’s lookin’ in yer window with a RPG. That kid might be a few cards shy of a full house but you can bet yer bottom dollar he’s got twice the set of balls you got.’
‘How do you know, faggot? You been watchin’ me at the urinal?’
Here the tall man patiently bends and squats and sits his beer can on the concrete stoop. On his way back up he pivots and strikes with his fist and catches the draft dodger square in the mouth.
Now blood runs down his eagle t-shirt. Now he retaliates. Now they’re rolling and kicking in the sandy lot. One jabs his finger in the other’s eye. They curse. They grunt. This is not a new fight. Nothing new about blood and sand.
*
The lady at the front desk looks at them warily and chews her sugarless gum. Then she hands them the clipboard to sign and tells them where they can find Bea Two-Feathers: Room 11, 2nd floor.
Gloria knocks at the door. The knock produces a single muted word in the small room beyond, ‘Shit’ by the sound of it. The visitors hear movement, light footfalls, the sound of an aerosol can. After a little while Bea turns the knob and stands there in her nightgown, the long white braid falling down her breast, an uncanny look upon her face, as if she might have expected these strays to come calling.
‘Bea?’
‘You must be the ballerina Joe Boy told me about.’
‘Gloria,’ says Gloria, the white lie surrounding her life and livelihood sounding stranger to her ears by the day.
‘And Black Jesus, I presume?’
‘At your service,’ says the soldier, high as a kite and oddly invigorated by the forced march he just endured.
‘Well, do come in,’ says Bea. And as they smile their awkward smiles and slip past her into the room, she lingers to shoot a suspicious glance down the empty hall, now to the left, now to the right, eyeing the vicinity for spies. None there, so slowly she backs into her world and shuts the door.
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