The Deadenders

by Bruce Jones

  “Not really. It was a long time ago.”

  “Was she?”

  He had to think about it again. “I don’t think so. Not the first time, no.”

  “No? When, then?”

  “Are you enjoying this?”

  “It has its charms. When?”

  “After I taught her.”

  His wife turned her head to him swinging curls, and a sudden cruel wedge of sunlight from this angle revealed lines at her mouth the luxury of youthful baby fat would have hidden, as it did Laurie’s mouth in the photo, even in the badly lit picture. “How could you teach her if she was your first?”

  “Read it in a book.” Richard paused to yawn. “Lady Chatterley, I think, or Peyton Place. Something big and hot at the time.”

  Allie nodded at the square of Polaroid in her hand. “ ‘Big and hot’.”

  Richard smiled comfortably and rolled over on his back to watch the morning ceiling dreamily, spotting a small corner cobweb Allie had missed. He drummed his fingers rhythmically over his sternum. The new angle didn’t improve his memory any.

  “So,” Allie pursued with unhurried doggedness, “did she learn well, Bubbles?”

  He turned to look at her. “Who’s this ‘Bubbles’?

  She held up the photo for him--not so close he could take it—and turned it over between her long fingers to let him see. The gray plastic back had been etched in long-ago red ballpoint: I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles—Love, Laurie Seasons.

  Richard let his head drop back, chuckling before it hit the mattress. “Oh, Christ…I’d forgotten that!”

  “Sure you had.”

  “I had. Truly.”

  Allie grinned disingenuously. “Nice of her to include her last name…just so you’d keep your blowjobs straight.”

  Richard snorted. “I can’t imagine how I ended up with it. Where was it in my center drawer?”

  Allie made a smacking matter-of-fact sound with her lips. “Right there in the very center, dear.”

  Richard shook his head slowly again at the ceiling, tightened the cinch of his bathrobe. “I can’t believe—I’ve opened that drawer a thousand times and never noticed it.”

  “Sure you haven’t.”

  “Allie, stop it. We were kids. Obviously.”

  “Not completely kids—‘obviously’.”

  “Hey.”

  “It’s okay, I’m not jealous. Well, a little maybe, but it’s fun--fun being a little jealous now after all these years, all safe here in the future. And it is a sweet picture!”

  “I was in terror her dad would find it.”

  “Bullshit. She had your balls in her pocket already. Some dolly, this Laurie girl.”

  He shrugged a sigh. “I suppose. First love and all that.”

  “Don’t tell me how old you were.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “Don’t. It would…spoil the innocence, I think. It’s so disarming. Did she suck you a lot?”

  He tried to picture it again. One image did gain focus, though still grainy. “We walked in dread of pregnancy. Yes, she did it a lot, I suppose.”

  “And you liked it a lot, I suppose.”

  “No, Allie, it was torture.”

  “Sweet torture. Lucky little bitch.”

  Her face beamed with the excitement of childish gossip. Like they were having a sleepover, sharing intimacies. “Go on. And some details, please, you’re holding back.”

  He thought a moment, decided he was enjoying this nonsense harmlessly enough, and made a what-the-hell smile that dimpled one cheek. “We did it the back way once.”

  Allie turned to him in open mouth delight. “She let you talk her into that?”

  “Not…exactly talk her…”

  “She asked you! No!”

  He made an affirmative sound, arms behind his head, more of it coming back now: the color of her eyes, the sweet, hungry musk of her. “Right in the middle of it—of doing it the regular way--she looked up, gave me this wonderful doe-eyed, excited but sacred. ‘Put it up my ass,’ she whispered. Like ‘ass’ was the dirtiest word on the face of the planet.” He chuckled. “The dirtiest word she’d ever said. Can you imagine? Now you can turn on the TV…”

  “Wow. Gee. Was it very exciting for you?”

  “Yes…”

  Allie shook her head. “Some girl!”

  Richard said nothing for a moment. “Not a girl, sweetie. Not anymore. Older than you are now.”

  Allie watched him for a quiet time. “It broke your heart, didn’t it--her asking for that. It bound you to her, didn’t it? ”

  He nodded. “It did. For years.”

  “Ow. Now I am jealous.” She waggled the photo in her hand, nodded at it as if addressing ghosts. “Smart. Smart sexy little girl…”

  “Smart?”

  “There’s nothing that binds a man to a woman like exotic sex.”

  He’d never thought of it. Not once in all those years. And Allie saw it just like that. Another mysterious connectivity between females men can’t grasp?

  “Richard!”

  He jumped, both startled and slightly embarrassed by her tone, like a boy caught looking at Playboy by his mother.

  His wife’s mouth hung open again, like before—but not like before; with more astonishment than delight. She was staring wide-eyed at his bathrobe. He didn’t actually feel it until he looked down and saw it--“My God! How in hell?”—peeking out between the terrycloth lining, nodding up at full attention.

  Richard kept saying it throughout the morning in just that same wondrous, clueless way. “How in hell?… how in hell?”

  Until Maser finally got back from Saturday shopping or washing the car or whatever the hell he was doing over there that made him forget to take his cellular along, and answered his ringing phone.

  TEN

  Something was happening.

  Richard was sure of it.

  * * *

  “Something is happening to me,” Richard told Maser at his office half an hour later, “I’m sure of it!”

  Maser looked out of place in the officious confines of the medical facility in his weekend grungies. “Yeah, you’re wrecking my weekend.”

  “In the space of little over a week I suddenly regain the hearing in my deaf ear, the hair grows back on my bald spot—without Rogaine I might add—and now, after months of no sex drive whatsoever, I pop a boner out of the blue!”

  Maser was rummaging though his cabinet drawer, grunting from his gut as he bent in his swivel chair. “’A boner out of the blue.’ Only a writer would say that.”

  He handed Richard a plastic specimen cup from the steel cabinet, slid shut the metal drawer with the toe of his shoe and another gut-level grunt and regained his seat. “Gotta lose this spare tire,” he sighed behind the plastic Frankenstein.

  “What’s this?”

  “A plastic cup,” Maser told him, digging through his desk drawer now, “you piss in it.”

  “I know what it is,” Richard replied dryly, “why am I doing this shit again?”

  Richard ignored him, digging, finally finding what he was looking for, withdrew it from the drawer and plopped it on the messy desktop before him: Richard’s manila file folder. The green one from the lab, not the fatter manila one in the steel file drawer.

  “Maze, I didn’t make it up, you know! Talk to me, man!”

  Maser pushed shut the desk drawer with maddening professional calm, opening the green folder before him. “I didn’t say you made it up. You got a hard-on. Good for you.”

  Richard wanted very much to throw the cup at him. “’Good for me’? ‘Good for frackin’ me’? Isn’t that kind of…significant? Wood after six months of macaroni?”

  Maser shrugged, refusing to look up, leafing through the green folder. “Maybe. Go piss in the cup, Rich.”

  Richard became aware he was sweating mildly, just a damp film of it on forehead and brow.

  Chill out, champ. He doesn’t want to give you false hope is all. He nodde
d to himself, stood erect and forced a calming breath into his lungs. He looked at the cup in his hand. “What about my latest blood work, what’s the deal with that?”

  Maser held up the green file for an instant. “This is part of it. The rest on Monday.”

  Richard fought down exasperation. He looked down at the little translucent cup. “How about this—how long will it take to test?”

  “All the longer if you don’t start pissing in it.”

  Richard turned an uncertain half circle, craning about, trying to remember where the little bathroom with the sliding wall panel was.

  “It’s locked,” Maser said, still not looking, still leafing, “everything’s locked, it’s Saturday, and I’m not going to go hunting through Kimberly’s drawer for the fucking keys. Take out your ugly wang and pee in that thing. Stand in the corner if you’re embarrassed.”

  Not likely; they had—all the Enders—pissed into so many woodland streams, tree trunks, lawns and cow pastures together, it was a wonder anything remained green and growing in the greater Topeka area. Richard unzipped and went to work.

  “And watch the Berber carpeting,” Maser added, “it’s new.” He shuffled paper. ‘And the bastards at Carpets Plus robbed me…”

  Richard took the admonishment seriously; it was easier to urinate these days since the removal of the little walnut sized tumor surrounding his urethra, nearly as easy as when he was a child; the fire hose force of his stream was back. Unfortunately such force was not intended for the middle-aged as the muscles controlling the flow testified. He had moved into the landscape of the incontinent.

  When he looked up, Maser was watching him. “Kind of yellow, Richo. You been drinking lots of water like I said?”

  Richard shrugged, zipped up and set the half-filled translucent cup on the edge of the desk beside the Frankenstein. “When I think about it.”

  Maser went back to looking at the files.

  “What the hell are you looking for?”

  Dr. Bobby Maser turned a page soberly. “White blood cells. Yours.”

  Richard stood there, hands on his hips, feeling strange about not washing his hands: a ritual broken here. “And?”

  Maser finally slapped the folder closed, leaned back and looked up; he pursed his lips and laced his fingers in his lap and rocked a bit in his swivel chair. “I’ve been through it already…several times, actually. It’s your latest lab report.”

  “I’m standing right here waiting, Dr. Seuss.”

  Maser seemed almost hesitant to spill it. “Your white count is down.”

  Richard had to think about it for a second. “But that’s a good thing, right?”

  “Way down.”

  “And that’s a bad thing?”

  Maser tilted further back in his swivel chair and crossed his arms. Clearly he wasn’t ready to talk about the rest of the lab report. But neither did he look especially discouraged. He had his poker face on. And The Maze—of the four of them—was by far the best at poker. He stared calmly at Richard now, as if he were used to patients demanding instant answers. “You really lose the bald spot, Rich? Let me look…”

  Richard rolled his eyes, turned around.

  Maser raised up half an inch and peered at the back of his friend’s head. “Huh.”

  Richard turned to face him again. “So? What do you think?”

  Maser shrugged. “Looks the same to me. No Rogaine, huh?”

  “About me getting hard, goddamnit! And would you stop with the easy going bedside manner please, ya fuckin’ quack!”

  Maser made a patient sucking sound with his mouth. “So tell me about your erection.”

  Richard held up what’s-to-tell palms. “It was a hard-on. You must have seen one before, maybe even had one yourself occasionally over the past thirty years.”

  Maser made a wry face. “Look, Rich. Erections can be caused by simple urine retention. The old morning boner? Standing there before the porcelain bowl with your bladder on fire, waiting for the damn thing to go down? You’ve experienced that.”

  “Not lately I haven’t. Pissed-in pajamas, yes. No boners, urine retained or otherwise. Not until this morning.”

  Maser nodded absently, considering it. “What were you doing?”

  “What was I doing?”

  “Were you attempting to masturbate?”

  Richard sighed. “Jesus, Maze. No. Mary Five Fingers was nowhere near my poor, forgotten little wang-doodle.”

  “What about Allie, was she near your poor, forgotten little wang-doodle?”

  Richard thought a moment. “Near it. Not touching it.”

  “But she was with you. Aware you were naked. Which, in turn, could have aroused you.”

  Richard shook his head, impatiently. “No, no--I was lying there in my bathrobe. We were just talking. Just shooting the breeze. And suddenly out pops his master’s little bald head to say hi, in full salute.”

  Maser nodded, chewing his lip, rolling it over in his mind. “Was Allie dressed?”

  “Yes.”

  “In what?”

  Richard’s turn to fold his arms now. “You’re a voyeuristic prick, you know that?”

  Maser grinned. “Well, I have a voyeuristic prick. But mine is not the member in question. Which I’d appreciate you’re answering—the question, that is.”

  Richard looked away, puffing a sigh. He supposed he knew where this was headed, had been afraid it might come to this part. “Allie was completely dressed. Like a—in regular street clothes--she wasn’t trying to turn me on, Rich.”

  Maser said nothing.

  When the silence went on a beat too long, Richard turned back to meet his friend’s eyes again; and found a twinkle of sad irony behind them.

  * * *

  They left the officious feeling office and grabbed a Coke float at Bo-Bo’s Drive-In.

  The exact same Bo-Bo’s Drive-In they’d drunk countless Coke floats at from grade seven to grade nine at nearby Boswell Jr. High, except that Boswell Jr. High was no longer there, just a blank field of weeds and clumps of mortar looking anxiously forlorn in anticipation of a strip mall. Sitting there across from Maser at one of the boomerang tables with the familiar salt shakers, and napkins dispensers and even the same chrome table jukebox menu with the same Fifties and Sixties rock hits (nostalgia was in) and the same hole at the top for your quarter (only three quarters now, not one) Richard thought—despite the current plight of his life—this was kind of fun and exciting, reminiscing here with his old childhood pal on the same plastic booth cushion his teenage butt had occupied all those years ago, but that it was also kind of sad, in its way, that Bo-Bo’s had stayed the distance and the venerable, weather-worn brick façade and bike racks of Boswell were no more, gone from all but memory.

  And not even that after the likes of me is gone, Richard sat ruminating.

  “What?” Maser asked, accessing his expression.

  Richard shrugged above his float, straw just hitting the ‘screeching cat’ gurgle at the bottom, as Shivers used to call it. “Just thinking.” He glanced out the long picture window at the cars moving up and down Huntoon Street beyond the little burger joint parking lot—new cars now (no tailfins, no chrome) and more of them. “You know, I never really liked old Boswell that much when we were there--something dark and solemn about it—I used to wish they’d tear it down.”

  Maser smiled around his cheeseburger. “Junior high’s a tough time for kids.”

  “But now that it’s gone I’d like one more chance to roam those strange-smelling halls, see my old locker.” He made the float chirp again. “What was that weird smell anyway?”

  “Antiseptic,” Maser said. “Industrial strength. Postwar vintage.”

  Richard shook his head. “Jesus, the stuff we breathed.”

  “The stuff we ate! White bread, meat every day, sugar by the truckload. That and our parents’ secondhand smoke while they put away the scotch and tonics. Remember those Canasta parties our moms used to have—coming in afte
r school to find all those white bread ladies puffing away under a cloudbank of Salems and Kents, the curtains and drapes stinking with it?”

  Richard smiled, shaking his head wistfully. “A miracle we didn’t all end up with cancer,” he winked.

  Maser returned a patient look.

  Followed by a look Richard couldn’t quite nail down, a penetrating kind of look—like he was the microbe and Maser the eye above the microscope.

  “What are you looking at? Okay, I’ll knock off the bad cancer references—it’s just bravado anyway.”

  Maser shook his head. “No, I was just sitting here thinking. You look better than any cancer patient I’ve ever seen. Better than most healthy patients I see. You’re older than me, right?”

  Richard nodded, putting down the float with a contented burp. “Three months.”

  Maser nodded, almost mistily. “So how come you look three years younger? Hell…ten years younger.”

  “Yeah. Right.”

  “Hey. I wouldn’t waste time flattering your skinny ass. Looked in the mirror lately? At something other than your vanishing bald spot? I wouldn’t have said that a few months ago.”

  Richard stole one of Maser’s french-fries. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean when you looked like shit--when you and Allie first got back from California. You, not Allie--she always looks great.”

  “He said, desperately trying to salvage his faux pas.”

  “Faux pas my ass. “

  Maser had on that searching face again. “I wonder...”

  Something in his tone made Richard’s eyes flick up to his friend’s. “What the hell’s going on, Maze?”

  Maser sat staring at him, just string quietly and slowly shaking his head. “I don’t really know. That’s the truth, Rich.”

  “Is it my lab report? You holding back on me?”

  Maser stared. Making Richard feel even more like a bug. “Just a feeling, a premonition. Something doctors aren’t suppose to have. Or depend on, anyway. Jesus. Look at you. What do you weigh now?”

  Richard shrugged, stealing another fry. “It got so depressing after the first ten pounds I stayed away from the bathroom scale.”