by Ron Savage
“I know you can’t win.” A smile crept into the corners of Eddy’s mouth, barely noticeable, as if it was trying to hide. “You really think you’ll please Daddy? Ever?”
“…no.”
“So let me ask the question again. What would you like to do, or be?”
Jonathan knew, and the answer nestled in him comfortably, a just-right fit. But why hadn’t he thought of it before now? Maybe no one had bothered to ask, or maybe talking to Eddy let the idea come to mind. He wasn’t sure. Eddy seemed to have a way of making you think about stuff.
“A…lawyer,” Jonathan said quietly, leery over the possible response.
“Nice choice.”
“But I want to be, you know…a congressman, or a senator. Something like that.” He glanced at the flame decals on the Harley’s gas pan, waiting for the ridicule, the “pin in his balloon”—his mother’s saying—Randolph Clayman had a closet full of pins.
“Even better,” said Eddy, nodding and serious, brushing away a few Elvis hairs.
Jonathan had to ask: “Before—when we were on the bike and all—you touched my forehead. I felt…a shock, the kind you get rubbing your feet on a carpet.”
“I gave you what you need.”
“Like a present?”
“Yes.”
“To be a lawyer?”
“Anything,” Eddy whispered.
“Am I different now? I don’t feel changed, or whatever.”
Eddy turned around on the Harley, flipping the kickstand with his boot. The engine brought a earsplitting blast. Clouds had thickened across the face of the moon, and the bike’s vibration was in sync to the rumble of a beginning storm.
“I wanna know,” Jonathan yelled above the noise.
“Hold on…”
FOUR
1981
Philadelphia
I
Simon woke up screaming, a short, Ahhaa!, yet a scream nonetheless. Sweating, too; his hair matted, his blue and white checked pajama top soaked, as if the sandman or whoever had snuck in and sprayed him with a garden hose.
He’d been having the same dream for close to three years. Okay, not the same dream, more like different events, same place, and not every night, maybe a couple of times a month, but always with the same person.
—A dream.
That’s all, only a stupid dream.
He heard a faint tapping sound.
“I’m okay, Dad. Honest.”
The bedroom door opened slightly. Light from a small lamp on the nightstand washed the man’s round, ruddy-cheeked face in a glow.
“You sure?”
“I’m fine,” said Simon, the air turning his wet pajama top cold, and he snugged back under the warm sheet and blanket.
“You want to talk, champ?”
“No.”
“I don’t mind. Your mother and I are…well…concerned about you.”
“Tell her I’ll try to make some friends.”
Simon imagined her giving his father the usual routine.
The boy HIDES in his hair.
And he’s got no friends, Max. Who’s he got? That fat one, Virgil What-His-Name?
“Forget your mother, alright?” The man’s voice soft, reassuring: “Some people enjoy solitude. I wouldn’t mind a little of it from time to time myself. But still, you don’t have to keep everything all bottled up inside, you know.”
It’s not normal. We’re raising a recluse.
Simon didn’t want to march out his fears and crap; no dad and son bonding in the middle of the night, thanks. He loved his father—I mean, the man IS my father, for God’s sake—but you let Max have an inch and pretty soon you’d have to go to ballgames with him and listen to sex lectures.
The boy’s simply NOT well-rounded.
He looked up at the man, shadows and dull yellow light webbing his face: Max Arron, fifty-seven last September—“We’re too old for a teenage son,” mother once said—rust-colored hair becoming white, bald on top. A kind face, Simon had always thought, full and open to his feelings, lines on the cheeks, along with a dusting of freckles (mostly in the summer), not handsome, but okay, friendly.
“Go on back to bed,” said Simon. “Tell Mom I’m alight. I think the dream’s done for tonight.”
“It’s your birthday, you know.”
The boy forced a smile, nodding.
“How does it feel to be sixteen, champ?”
“Pretty good, I guess.” He didn’t noticed a difference.
“Got a surprise for you later.”
Simon had known about his present for a week. That was the problem, wasn’t it? Ever since he’d met Benjamin at the Institute, the two of them alone in the giant heart, his life had turned into total shit. There were no surprises. Worse: the thoughts and feelings of people overwhelmed him so badly he had left school, his skimpy list of friends—all but Virgil— a part-time job, hell, everything.
Simon now shared his mother’s nightmare.
We’re raising a recluse.
“If you need us—” Max hesitated; seemed momentarily lost or helpless.
Simon finished his sentence: “…give us a holler? I will, yes.”
That he could do; and if practice made perfect, he ought to have been a better screamer than Jamie Lee Curtis, the girl in Halloween—absolutely, the scariest movie on the planet, even after you’ve seen it six times—but Halloween paled to his own horror show, those creepy dreams, the sweats, the cries when he awoke, his loud heartbeat reminding him of Benjamin.
Max sat on the bed, crossing his large, fatty, white legs at the knee, tucking the blanket about his son’s shoulders. “You know what we’re gonna give you, huh? Your present?”
“Sort of.”
“How…how can you—”
“I dunno.” God, here he goes again.
“You see…other things?”
“Sometimes.”
“And you say it has to do with this man? What’s his name? Benjamin?”
“Yes.”
“You see my thoughts, too?”
Yeah, Dad, more than I really want to know. “Sometimes.”
Simon looked away from him, staring out the window. Snow stuck to the glass panes. The stuff had been coming down for three days, stopping just long enough to melt in the afternoon, freezing up at night and starting again. Channel Six’s Wanda the Weather Woman said it wouldn’t be ending until Saturday evening. Maybe. “Another bad hair day,” she’d said, and giggled. Wanda thought she was pretty funny.
Philadelphia winters completely sucked.
“The future?” his father asked. “You also see the future?”
“Once in a while.” That, the truth, thank God.
Simon hated Benjamin’s “gifts.” Last week, Thursday, he got caught on the subway during the five-thirty rush hour—an incredibly dumb move, but he needed to get out of the house and away from his mother, if only for a few hours—and there, amid the smells of perfumes and aftershaves, amid the graffiti and the ads for Marlboro cigarettes and loan companies—Call 1-800-Hot-Loan—the thoughts and feelings of a hundred or more people flooded his brain. Sex, mostly. This one wanting to fuck that one, the women worse than the men, and that surprised him:…wonder how big he is…and…I’d love to have HIM inside me…and…what if I just walked up and unzipped his…talk about embarrassing. Jesus. He’d felt his face go warm; gazed at the floor. More of their thoughts entered him, different thoughts, ones having to do with hurting others: bosses, ex-wives, ex-husbands, current wives and husbands, parents, betraying-rejecting-inattentive lovers, neighbors whose dogs kept taking dumps on their lawns, grocery clerks who’d mix the receipt with the change instead of putting it in the bag, rude clerks, cashiers, secretaries, receptionists, waiters, telephone salespeople (lots of feelings here), an almost endless list. Punishments also seemed endless and graphic, the accused stomped on, shot, stabbed, limbs torn from sockets, private parts removed, eyes gouged. Blah blah blah. Unbelievable. Along with all of this, Simon h
eard—no, sensed—a general, underlying buzz: Oh, Christ, I forgot our anniversary…and…think milk, milk, remember the goddamn milk…and…If they fire me, what am I gonna do? Where am I gonna go?…and…Just tell her the truth. It’s not like I SLEPT with the woman, for God’s sake…and…The problem is, my mother doesn’t have a life. If she HAD a life, she’d leave me the hell alone…and…Shit, did I turn off the gas?…and…I think Marvin ENJOYS driving me crazy, the sadistic fuck…and…Aren’t there ANY straight men, anymore?
“Simon?”
No answer.
“Son?”
The thoughts and images fluttered briefly, then grew thready and faded.
Now Simon turned back to his father; saw the apprehension in his eyes and knew what was on his mind. Max wanted and didn’t want to know—the questions, always the same questions. Will I live a long time? How long? Will your mother die first or will I? Will death be painful for us? But his father didn’t ask. He got up from the bed, tightening the brown corduroy robe around his formidable waist, and he leaned over Simon and kissed him on the forehead.
“Get some rest, Sy.”
“I don’t know.”
“Pardon?”
“The question you were thinking, I don’t know. I can’t see the future. I’m not very good at it yet. I have pictures, occasionally. But nothing clear, and never when or how people are gonna die.”
“Just as well,” said Max.
“Don’t want to know, I guess.”
“You have a choice?”
“No.”
“Would you tell us if you got one of those things? ‘Bout your mom and me, I mean.”
“I’m…not sure.”
“Situations we might avoid. Like Kennedy going into Dallas, that sort of stuff.”
“Yes,” the boy said quietly.
“Alright.”
“…Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“I truly despise this shit.”
His father smiled, a tiny serious one. “Don’t think I’d like the shit, either. But there might be a reason.”
Simon shut his eyes, and he heard the bedroom door close.
Where are you, Benjamin?
He remembered what had been said in the giant heart, that day so distant, and as sleep took him away, the words unfolded like the rush of wings.
I won’t leave you ‘til the job is done. I promise, Simon.
What job?
Why didn’t you tell me…
What job?
II
Twice in one night—Simon couldn’t escape the dream—that hot darkness, the odor of oil and gasoline, the skyline a luminous orange, all those empty buildings, flames lapping steadily at the broken windows. New York, he thought. Maybe after a war. No people, no cars, no buses or taxies: nothing. Junk, though. Crumpled pages of newspapers whirled down black streets, caught by the wind. Cellophane, candy wrappers, old pizza boxes, skidding, twirling—junk, just lots of junk. Little fires dotted the cracks in the curbs and pavement. Trash bounced into the burning snares, igniting.
whoosh
whoosh
Simon had taken a train to New York with his parents, the summer of ‘73—age eight—a weekend vacation, and the images of that visit seemed the same as the ones in the dream, Times Square, the Village, Central Park. Yet something had changed. Or…was out of shape—closer to that—as though the place had an ever-so-flimsy warp to it, the buildings taffy-like and stretched slightly, the spaces between them larger, the darkness giving the city a wider, longer appearance, an infinite feeling…
…but candy wrappers?
Pizza boxes?
People had to be here, didn’t they?
He’d wandered these streets for three years—heat bad enough to occasionally singe the hair on his arms, barely able to breath—walked down the middle of Broadway, rested on the benches in Washington Square. Alone, always alone. He heard sounds, though: the wind racing around the buildings probably, shrieking sounds, far-off, or—and this was weird—below him, shouts and cries beneath his feet.
How did the wind travel under the city?
The subways?
Simon had not gone down there.
Tonight he decided on another route, heading to Central Park, staying on the main path, where the carriages used to ride, the tree tops backlit by the orange blush of the night and the skyscrapers speckled with flames.
When Simon saw the restaurant, he ran past the empty parking lot, toward the patio. His parents had brought him here during that summer of ‘73: Tavern on the Green, the sign with the green stag still attached to a now-charred wooden post; the manicured hedges grown wild, choked by briars; and the vines and flowers, once flourishing along tall lattices in the garden had all but disappeared, exchanged for gnarled reedy things, hanging there, dead and forgotten. The massive window over-looking the garden and Central Park had been shattered, brown weeds partially hiding bits of glass.
Simon climbed inside, careful not to cut himself on pointed shards. Crystal chandeliers reflected the dim, outside fires. A huge, vacant room; and except for the tables stacked against the walls, a clean room. Then a familiar aroma wafted up to meet him.
…pizza?
WHERE would you get—
Awww, shit, shit. Simon knelt, studying the three inch scrape the glass had made on his calf. He should’ve worn pants instead of a pajama top. Right, I think I’ll get dressed for bed now, Mom. Jeans and sneakers ought to do it. GODdamn. He touched the blood, and put the finger to his tongue. I cut myself. You don’t CUT yourself in a dream. But Simon wasn’t sure. He’d never been in this part of the dream. Caution might be a very good idea. His mouth felt dry from the heat, upper lip sticking to teeth. You don’t know this place. What did that sergaent say to his team in the movie Alien?
“‘Keep frosty’,” he muttered. Yeah, when you start bleeding and smelling pizza, you better keep frosty.
Simon squinted, gazing into the shadows and the dull orange reflections. Though his vision hadn’t completely adapted, the room appeared empty. He went behind the long mahogany bar to his right, found a beige coffee cup that wasn’t too grungey, but the tap water didn’t work. Then he saw an aluminum nozzle attached to a hose. Brown carbonated liquid sprayed into the cup. He sniffed it, a hesitant taste.
…Coke?
They’ve got Coke?
“To go with the pizza,” said an amused voice.
Immediately, Simon ducked, bumping his forehead on the edge of the bar on the way down. Whatah bite! He heard laughter, soft, brief, and not just from the one who’d spoken.
Two of them. Terrific. Like I really need to deal with these retards.
He glanced at the bar shelves, searching for a weapon, something; felt his heart pressing beats at the sides of his neck Grabbing a rusted corkscrew, Simon peered over the mahogany rim.
A young guy and a boy sat at the opposite end of the room near the shattered window—bodies vague, but definitely present, his eyes adjusting to them— the red-orange glow of the outside fires haloed their shapes.
The guy had propped his hobnail boots on the table, crossed at the ankles, his black hair giving him a greaser look, Elvis hair, as though he’d stepped out of what ole Virgil liked to call, the Fabulous Faggot Fifties.
That fat one, Virgil What’s-His-Name.
But the greaser’s companion took Simon’s attention, a boy his age, a skinny kid with a bad-ass purple scar on his cheek.
“Want some?” asked Elvis, nudging the pizza box an inch or two on the stained white table cloth. “Go ahead, mu’man. Help yourself. It’s Mama Leon’s. They deliver.”
The boy with the scar snickered, biting into the pizza wedge he was holding, using a back-hand to wipe tomato sauce from his chin.
“I’m Eddy. This is Jonathan.”
Simon thought the they seemed friendly enough, just two buddies spending time in a truly bug-fucked version of Tavern on the Green.
…keep frosty.
Right, Sarge, a
little pizza now; a little monster with battery acid for blood in a minute. Keep it frosty, babe.
“Don’t be afraid,” said Eddy, wide-open smile, perfect white teeth. “We’re the good guys, kid. Aren’t we, Jonathan? Tell mu’man…what’s the name?
“…Simon.”
“Tell mu-man Sy here that we’re the good guys.”
Jonathan nodded, a mouth-filled grin, tomato sauce on the upper lip, waving his fingers and muttering, “…gwood guys.”
“See?”
Simon walked to the table, staring down at the Mama Leon box.
Pepperoni…
…double-cheese.
Eddy winked. “Your fav, huh?”
Steam rose off the crust and sauce, the fresh smell rumbled Simon’s stomach.
Then something moved.
Something tiny.
…roaches?
The bugs crawled up from the gooey double-cheese; over the thin slices of pepperoni, making swiggles and tracks. Simon felt his stomach abruptly cramp; nausea drifted to his throat in a lazy full sweep.
Jonathan looked at him and grinned. Roaches were on his chin, touring the length of his ragged purple scar.
…keep frosty.
III
“Roaches?”
“Yeah.”
“Yuck.” Virgil shivered. “That’s like the most disgusting shit I’ve ever heard, man.”
“I threw up,” said Simon.
“In the dream?”
“Yeah. But for real, too.”
Simon had decided not to tell him about the scrape on his right calf, the one from the glass shard. He wanted Virgil to believe in the dream, and how could his friend do that if he said the cut hadn’t gone away? And it hadn’t: the scrape was still just as fresh and real as last night when he’d climbed through the broken window. Even the sheets on his bed had been bloody. You can’t tell people everything, not a stranger, not a best friend. These weren’t your ordinary-but-boring nightmares, either—Simon had suspected that from the get-go—but after last night, you could be totally brain dead and know Benjamin and his creepy pals were starting to rearrange your world.