by Sloane Tanen
“Do you hear that?” Eve suddenly asked, unleashing a particularly vicious branch right in my face.
“The plane! The plane!” Chaz shouted, jumping up and down.
We all looked into the air and saw two white lights and a small red one. Without a word we instinctively turned around and started running back to the spot where we’d left Joe with the signal fire. The “path” was a blur of trees and moonshine. I’d never run so fast in my life.
It quickly became obvious that we weren’t going in any particular direction. It was too dark, and for some reason we couldn’t see the signal fire. All we could do was hope that the plane had seen it.
“I think we’re walking in circles,” Chaz moaned.
“No we’re not,” Jonah pronounced. “I’m following Polaris. We’re heading north.”
“What’s a Polaris?” Milan asked.
“It’s a star,” he said, pointing to the sky. “Just above the Big Dipper. See it? That means we’re definitely heading north.”
“But we’re not in the Northern Hemisphere,” I corrected him. “That can’t be Polaris.”
“For real?” Jonah asked in a tone that belied all sense of authority and leadership.
“I mean, I’m not 100 percent, but I think so. And I’m pretty sure that’s not the Big Dipper.”
Silence.
“So your whole rock and stick routine was crap too?” Chaz asked Jonah.
“I must be really tired,” he said, rubbing his eyes, as if that were some kind of an excuse.
“Look,” I suggested, trying to ease Jonah’s embarrassment, “none of us know exactly where we are. I’m just assuming we’re in the Southern Hemisphere based on our having flown out of Johannesburg. I could be wrong,” I offered, knowing that I wasn’t.
“Well, this is just great,” Chaz spat. “Astronomy lessons from Beavis and Butthead.”
“Who cares?” Cisco said. “We’re out of here anyway.”
When we finally found Joe, about an hour and a half later, he was asleep.
“Well look at that,” Jonah seethed, staring at the orange ashes and sticking his heel in Joe’s back to rouse him. “He’s sleeping.”
“Not. Not asleep,” Joe mumbled, waking up and scrambling unsteadily to his feet.
“What’s going on? Dear God, what happened to you?” he asked, looking at my scratched-up, bleeding face.
“You let the fire go out?” I asked. “Does that mean the plane didn’t see it? That they don’t know we’re here?” It was all I could do not to burst out into tears.
“What plane? What are you talking about?” he asked, rubbing the sleep from his red, puffy eyes and massaging his head.
“Why don’t you just shoot us all?” Milan shrieked, yanking out an extension with her left hand. “What the hell is the matter with you? Do you like it here or something?” She threw the hairpiece on the smoky embers. They sparked enthusiastically. “A plane came looking for me, and now it’s gone because you needed a goddamn nap!”
“Not you, Milan, us, a plane came looking for us,” Cisco corrected.
Joe’s face suddenly took on an expression of profound sadness. It was as if this second mistake had deepened his uncertainty. And there was no publicist or manager to protect him from the indignity of his failure.
“Whatever. Now we’re stuck here all night because this antique necrophiliac can’t keep his eyes open,” Milan said.
Chaz let out a depressed snort.
“Narcoleptic,” Eve corrected.
“Oh shut up, you cow!”
“I’m so sorry. I must have nodded off,” Joe apologized.
“Nodded off? You nodded off?” Milan shouted, her face about two inches away from Joe.
“Oh get away from me,” he pleaded, giving her a gentle push back on the shoulder. “You exhaust me.”
“Well, get used to my face, you dumb ass, since you just blew our ride out of here.”
We all made it to the beach in a bleak forty-five minutes. At the risk of offending Jonah’s survival skills, I nonetheless suggested tying cotton to a bunch of branches so that we could easily keep a guide light going. Jonah reluctantly agreed to give it a try, and Milan enthusiastically offered her shirt for material. Who needed a shirt with those hooters, right?
In any event, it looked like we were definitely spending the night. Joe trailed behind us like a chastised dog. Pissed off as we all were, we were still confident that it was just a matter of time until the next plane showed up. The key was to get to the beach, build a big fire, and just wait.
After thirty minutes or so, the beach made its abrupt appearance from the knotty jungle.
“Oh,” Eve cried, taken by the swift change of scenery. I imagined it was how a bug must feel after being released from a glass jar. It was like taking a deep breath after holding your breath in an overcrowded elevator. The moonlit beach itself was a boomerang-shaped disc of white sand, punctuated with building-sized boulders. The openness was like nothing I’d ever seen. The suddenness of such beauty would have been mesmerizing had we not been so tired and hungry.
After Jonah got a fire going, we banked up against one of the huge rocks for warmth. I started “texting” Jordan in an attempt to not think about food.
“It’s super queer that you’re texting messages to somebody who isn’t getting them. You know that, right?” Milan asked.
“I’m not actually in need of your approval, but I appreciate your thoughts on the subject.”
“I’m just saying.”
“What are you writing?” Chaz asked me.
“None of your business.”
“It better not be about me,” Milan added.
“Don’t worry.”
“I wasn’t. I’m just saying.”
“I’m parched,” Eve whined. “I’m so tired. I need a pillow.”
“Here, use this,” Chaz said, pulling a wig off his head and throwing it at Eve, who swatted the wiglet away like a flying cockroach.
“Oh my God, you’re bald!” she cried.
“Oh my Gaaaawd,” Chaz responded mockingly, rubbing the perfectly shiny dome where his “hair” had been.
Milan was beaming.
“Ahhhh,” Chaz moaned, massaging his head. “That is soooo much better!”
“How did it stay on in the water?” I asked incredulously.
“God, you ask the dumbest questions, Francesca.”
“You look way better without that thing,” Milan said without a beat. Chaz smiled. I could tell these two were destined to be great friends. Oddly, Chaz did look better without the piece. His face suddenly looked witty and distinguished rather than fat and dope-ish.
“I am never going to fall asleep,” Milan complained, staring transfixed at Chaz’s head while simultaneously fingering her empty prescription bottle. Jonah was on fire patrol, and the rest of us were preparing to bed down on the beach.
“I mean,” Milan continued, glaring at Eve, “there’s seriously like no way I’ll ever fall asleep.” She slapped around spastically at a mosquito.
“For the thousandth time, there were no pills in there,” Eve groaned.
“Um, yeah, I wasn’t talking to you.”
“I won’t be able to sleep either,” I said, trying to empathize.
“I wasn’t talking to you either.”
I guess she was still mad about the underwear comment.
She reached out absently to stroke Chaz’s head. He leaned in like a loyal cat.
“What were they anyway?” Cisco asked.
“What?”
“The pills?”
“Klonopin,” she twitched. “And metabolism pills.”
“Drugs are bad news,” Cisco announced, “I don’t do drugs.”
“Um, they weren’t drugs. My doctor gave them to me.”
I noticed Joe stiffen, but he didn’t say anything.
“I’m a weed man,” Cisco clarified, contradicting his earlier statement that he didn’t do drugs. “It’s the natu
ral way to fly.”
“Pot’s great too,” Milan nodded at Cisco pleasantly. “I just don’t like trashing my lungs.”
“But don’t you smoke like five packs of cigarettes a day?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said, popping a soggy Froot Loop in her mouth before offering them exclusively to Chaz. “That’s why I need to be extra careful.”
“Klonopin is for anxiety,” Jonah said, looking at the Loops. “They’re not even sleeping pills.”
“What do you know about it, Floaty Toes? Isn’t your body a holy vessel?”
Jonah laughed. “I was addicted to Xanax. Benzos are killers.”
“You were addicted to drugs?” Chaz asked. His head was now in Milan’s lap, which she was rubbing like a crystal ball. She was looking at Jonah with a newfound respect.
“Yeah. But I’d appreciate not reading about it on your blog,” he said to Chaz.
“My readers don’t care about you.”
“Well, let’s keep it that way.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem,” Chaz sneered, licking the sugar powder off the inside of the Froot Loop bag.
“What’s a benzo?” Eve asked
“Benzodiazepines,” Jonah answered, looking pleased that the conversation hadn’t been abandoned. “It’s a class of drugs. Central nervous system depressants.” The crackling fire spotlighted his face. His blond hair and pale skin made him look like a tall, white Crayola crayon. The effect was a little spooky.
“I never knew you were a drug addict,” I said, stupidly revealing both my interest and my familiarity with tabloid journalism.
“I didn’t either,” Eve added, tucking her knees under her T-shirt. With a little push, I thought to myself, she’d roll down the beach like a ball.
“It was all before I got famous, so nobody knows.”
“Not to be rude, but maybe you’re just not famous enough for anyone to bother digging up your past or writing a book about you,” Milan suggested with a smile. Chaz nodded in agreement.
“I thought your mother wrote that book about you?” Eve asked Milan.
“For someone who doesn’t own a television, you really do know a lot about me,” Milan quipped, rolling her eyes. “Are you a lesbian? Are you, like, in love with me or something?”
“Oh yes, my Sapphic sister. I’m in love with you,” Eve said.
“I thought so,” Milan said dryly.
“Really, though,” Eve scowled, “I’d go ballistic if my parents betrayed me like that. Not that they would dare. I’d have them skinned and turned into boots first.”
“Classy,” Chaz said with a look of disgust.
“You don’t know anything about it,” Milan snapped. “And why would anybody want to read, let alone write, a book about you, anyway?”
“You may have a point, Milan. Professionalism and talent aren’t salacious.”
Milan looked thrown. “Do you ever just speak English?”
“Um, like totally, yeah,” Eve said, slipping into a Valley girl twang. The impression was awkward and a little cringe-y. Chaz made a face. Milan tucked her head into her big shirt (which Chaz had given her after she offered up her own for the torch) and laughed so hard her whole body was shaking.
“Anyway,” Eve said, trying to ignore them and turning to Jonah like a schoolmarm, “you were addicted to psychotropic drugs?”
Jonah nodded. “I don’t talk about it to the press because it feels exploitative.”
Joe let out a loud snicker.
“You mean you were a little junkie until your mother convinced you that being religious was a more effective way to jump-start your career,” Joe suddenly said. It was the first time he’d said anything since we left the landing site. “Using Christianity isn’t exploitative as long as you lie about your unsavory past? Is that right?”
“I suppose if you didn’t understand you could look at it that way.”
“Didn’t understand what, Jonah?”
“What it was like growing up your bastard son and watching Mom drink herself into oblivion every night to numb the pain of your abandoning us.”
I dug my fingers into the sand and prepared myself for another speech from Joe. And boy, did we get one.
“I hate to be the one to burst your cloud of delusion, Jonah,” Joe snarled, squashing an enormous mosquito on his forehead, “but Beverly was a drunk the day I met her. The only reason she’s sober now is because I refused to give her a dime of child support unless she cleaned up her act.” He smeared the bug off his forehead, leaving a rather tribal-looking trail of red blood in its wake.
“And the real reason she became a Christian,” Joe continued, “is because she saw it as the most vicious way she could think of to drive a wedge between us. And, of course,” he added, holding up his finger, “being the perennial stage mother, she saw an opportunity in the born-again business. She’s nothing if not a star fucker.” Joe laughed to himself. “And all the better if she could prostitute her son out rather than herself! It’s time to grow up, Jonah.”
“How dare you talk about her like that,” Jonah seethed. “She’s been there for me, which is more than I can say for you!”
“You know damn well I’ve tried to have a relationship with you, despite all of my lawyers, managers, agents, and therapists telling me to just let it go. You’re the one who rejected me over and over again, Jonah. It’s a real sad story the two of you have concocted, but if you’re going to talk about our family to the press, you should at least get the facts straight.”
“Oh, so now we’re a family? You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Really? I think maybe it’s you who doesn’t know what he’s talking about, Jonah. All your mother wanted from me was my checkbook. I don’t want to offend your virgin sensibilities, but did Bev ever mention that she’d also slept with Mick Jagger and Bill Irwin? My only distinction was that I got her pregnant. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think you were catching a draft in the two-million-dollar house I bought for the two of you to drown your sorrows in after she told me she was pregnant.”
“You’re blaming me?” Jonah laughed. “I was a fetus.”
“I don’t blame you, but I take offense at being painted as this monster. Two short weeks your mother and I were together,” Joe continued. “Two weeks. I’ve paid my dues, Jonah. I tried to be there for you, but you were too busy getting high to notice. Who do you think paid for the thirty-thousand-dollar-a-week rehab facilities you were in and out of four times from the age of thirteen to fifteen? God?” he asked. “Really, Jonah, I’m glad you finally made it to step twelve, but couldn’t you have found Jesus at step two or three?”
“This actually is kind of blogworthy,” Chaz whispered to Milan. She nodded, half-smiling. I was frozen. I couldn’t believe Joe and Jonah spoke to each other with such hatred.
Joe paused and then continued berating his son.
“And when your wise old mother did convince you that your singing career wasn’t gonna happen until you found a niche market, isn’t that when you really saw the light, Jonah? Hallelujah!” Joe raised his hands in mock enlightenment.
“Praise the Lord!” Chaz chirped, applauding as he absorbed the show. Everybody ignored him.
“And the irony,” Joe continued, getting into Jonah’s face, “is how quickly Beverly herself found Jesus when that first check came in. Little Beverly Frumovitz, a born-again! What a joke! That’s all very religious, Jonah, but why don’t you just can it? Nobody’s shopping for your brand of bullshit here. We’ve got enough problems.”
I was definitely texting Jordan on this one. Somebody had to record this conversation, right? Joe was shaking, he was so angry.
“Anyway, Milan,” Jonah said calmly, looking at my phone suspiciously and picking up where he left off, “benzos are the devil’s candy. It took me almost a year to get clean of that junk. But I did have help.”
“From the Lord, no doubt?’ Milan asked facetiously.
“And my mom,”
Jonah said, looking at Joe.
“Do you ever stop talking?” Joe asked, rubbing his head still. “Some people benefit from drug therapy, Jonah. Just because you misused them doesn’t mean they aren’t helpful to people who take them responsibly.”
“Do you ever stop judging me…and Mom?” Jonah asked Joe, his shrill tone betraying a hurt he’d obviously been trying to hide.
“And Jesus? Do you ever stop judging Jesus?” Chaz asked Joe mischievously.
“I’m not judging Jesus, for Christ’s sake, I’m Jewish.”
“Well, so am I, but I don’t get my panties in a ruffle over a little Jesus banter.”
“You’re about as Jewish as a ham and cheese sandwich on Wonder Bread,” I said. I didn’t like Chaz much, but he did seem to have a gift for lightening a mood.
“I am Jewish!” Chaz insisted. “Born-again. Like Jonah, only I was addicted to the pork dumplings at Szechwan Palace until Abraham at Katz’s Deli showed me the way.” Chaz rubbed his fat stomach, “I’m already 110 pounds lighter since I started my all–gefilte fish diet. It’s delicious!” he shouted, smacking his lips together.
“I thought you loved crab cakes?” I said, laughing despite myself. “Not a kosher foodstuff.”
“No?” Chaz asked, feigning concern. “Well,” he said, wiping his hand over his bald head, “I’m not a Hasid, for God’s sake! I’m a dabbler.”
“Jesus was a Jew,” Jonah added humorlessly.
“If you say the word ‘Jesus’ one more time, I’ll never speak to you again,” Joe said.
“Jesus,” Jonah said.
Without a word, Joe got up and moved away from the fire. We all settled down uncomfortably in the sand for the night. And I thought my relationship with my father was bad.
Little Homer and the Odyssey Back Home
The morning sun, reflecting off the white beach, was almost blinding. I squinted as my tired eyes adjusted to the light. The dreamlike quality of the night before was vanquished by the bright sunshine. This was no dream. All of it was real. Where was the rescue plane? Why were we still here? Where were we going to get water and food? How were we going to get home? Why was Cisco Parker’s face buried in my armpit?