Anthem of a Reluctant Prophet

by Joanne Proulx

  I was halfway out the door when he called out, “You know what?”

  I glanced over my shoulder.

  “You’re real lucky to have a girlfriend like that.”

  God. He looked so pathetic, crammed in behind the counter with the board of keys poking into his back, that for a second I actually felt for him. I just knew he’d been fat his whole life, probably crazy too, and that he’d be stuck in some tight, crappy little space for whatever was left of it.

  “Listen.” I rested my forehead against the door frame. The low ridge of snow that had collected against the bottom of the door collapsed onto the dirty linoleum inside. “She’s not my girlfriend. I hardly even know her.”

  “Oh yeah?” The guy’s face brightened at that. “So you haven’t screwed her yet? Well, if you need any help breakin’ her in, you give me a call. Just dial zero and I’ll be right—”

  I slammed the door, slip-slided my way back to the car without wiping out. Faith, having managed to tune in a station, already knew the highway was closed. She actually looked relieved when I showed her the key. Fang was still huddled under the blanket in the back, but his eyes were open and he was upright, and it took all of about thirty seconds for us to pile into Room 14.

  FOURTEEN

  The honeymoon suite was dank and cold and dirty brown. Except for the red velvet bedspreads. They really livened the place up. Faith left her coat and gloves on while she called home. Fang headed straight for the can. I settled myself in front of the heating unit and started working the knobs, but the thing was still blowing cool air when I heard water running and a rare edge of excitement in Fang’s voice. “Hey, Luke, check this out.” Curious, I went and stuck my head around the bathroom door. A sex-sized Jacuzzi tub, its taps blasting, took up 98.99 percent of the space, butting right up against the toilet—perfect for the legless or for those who like to soak their feet while taking a crap.

  Fang pushed the moldy shower curtain to one end of the tub and started unbuttoning his new shirt, already ragged after a couple hours on my buddy’s back. I squeezed inside and pulled the door shut behind me. When the shirt came off, I pretended not to notice Fang’s always-impressive six-pack and his iron arms—the remnants of his climbing days.

  “Do you have any cash?” I asked.

  “What for?”

  “For the room.”

  “How much is it?” Because he never had any, Fang hated discussing money.

  “Thirty-three bucks.”

  “For this dump?”

  “It’s got a Jacuzzi,” I said. He ignored me. “It’s not like we had a lot of options, Fang.”

  “Did you try to talk the guy down at least?”

  “No, Fang, I blew him instead and he gave it to me for, like, eight bucks. Now, do you have eight bucks? I don’t want to have to ask Faith for it.” I wormed into the small rectangle of space in front of the mirror where Fang was peeling off. My hair had gotten large from the snow, but for once my face was free of any major acne crops, and there were no chunks of food between my teeth. I tried my hood up, then pushed it down again. Fang was jammed in behind me, standing perfectly still. I just knew he was watching me check myself out. I pulled back from the mirror so I was no longer within zit-squeezing distance, but I didn’t turn around.

  Fang reached past me to put his neatly squared shirt on the counter beside the sink. Before his hand disappeared, I got another flash of his knuckles, all red and raw from being ground into the Palace floor by a black boot or two. I was going to ask him what the fuck had happened at the concert, but he got his question out first.

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “Why not what?”

  “Why not ask her for the money?” The way he said it, like he already knew the answer, completely pissed me off.

  I cleared a circle in the mist on the glass so I could meet the smirk on his face with the look of disgust I had ready for him. But in the mirror, Fang’s eyes were closed and he wasn’t smirking. His lips were parted and his face was all soft and pained-looking. He had, like, zero body fat, so every muscle was right there and I could see he was sort of shaking. With my back to him, he thought I couldn’t see him, I knew that. And seriously, I wished I hadn’t wiped off the mirror because it was really unsettling to catch Fang looking like that. I didn’t know if he was experiencing God or having some sort of erotic flashback or going into seizure again or what, but whatever it was, I wanted to put an end to it, fast.

  “Listen,” I said loudly. His eyes flew open and I saw his face harden up before he disappeared from the glass. “I don’t want to ask her for money because she gave us a ride, all right? She did us a favor. We’d be freezing to death on the side of the road right now if it wasn’t for her.”

  “We would not,” he said quietly. “We would have got a ride.”

  “Fang! You were a total mess. Huffing into your bag. Having a fucking panic attack? What’s with you, anyway?”

  “Nothing.” Then a long pause. “I’m just sleeping like shit.”

  “Are you on something that’s making you freak?”

  “Nope. I told you. I can’t sleep. It’s completely fucking me up.”

  I heard the zip of a fly and felt body parts—knees, elbows, shoulders—bumping against me as Fang started stripping off his jeans.

  “Jesus, could you get off of me, man.” I climbed around him and pressed myself against the door, struggling to stay cool in the hot, cramped quarters. “Listen,” I said, my voice all stern and shit so I ended up sounding just like my father, “Faith helped us out, okay?”

  Fang folded his jeans, then set them on top of his shirt. “Sure. Whatever. There’s money in my jacket. It’s on the bed.”

  “Great. Thanks for being so fucking cooperative.” I yanked the door open.

  “You like her,” Fang said in this real false-casual sort of way. I closed the door slowly and leaned up against it. The barely sanded, barely painted wood was rough against my palms.

  Fang was naked now, his hands resting on his narrow hips, his elbows wide. I could give a fairly vivid description of his genitals here, but I’d rather not. I grabbed a towel from the rack at the end of the tub and tossed it at him.

  “Would you get a life,” I said.

  He tossed the towel right back at me. “You like her.” He sounded less casual, more pissed, the second time.

  “What are you talking about?” The towel was thin and rough between my hands, a carpet burn of a cloth.

  “I can tell.”

  “You can tell! Since we hooked up with Faith, you’ve barely been alive.”

  “I wasn’t sleeping in the car.”

  Aiming for his head, I launched the towel again, but Fang grabbed it midair and dropped it to the floor. He did a rare thing then. Looked me head-on. The smirk I’d been expecting earlier slid across his face, but underneath it I thought there was a residue of the weird, wounded softness I’d seen in the mirror before. Fang kept his eyes on mine, but he raised his chin slowly, and if anything had been there, it was gone. Standing naked in the steamy bathroom, Fang looked like an unloved junkie rock star like he always had, but he looked different, too. A heelshaped bruise darkened one shoulder and his hand was all swollen and I guess he looked tougher than normal, or maybe just more damaged.

  “The money’s in my jacket,” he said, before stepping over the edge of the tub and lowering himself in. He stifled a gasp as his injured mitt hit the hot water, then he relaxed into the bath and began splashing water onto his chest and arms.

  I grabbed for the door handle.

  “Hey, Luke.” Fang sounded nastier than I ever remembered. “In case you forgot, she’s Stan’s girlfriend.”

  “I didn’t forget, Fang.”

  “Just making sure,” he said, to the slam of a door.

  On the other side of the slam, Faith was still on the phone. I tried not to eavesdrop on the call, which wasn’t easy given the size of the place. I went and checked on the heater, throbbing away, belting
out hot, dry air. I picked Fang’s jacket off the bed and started rummaging through it, keeping my back to Faith so she wouldn’t think I was the kind of guy who robbed his friends while they were out of the room. I imagined a mother lode of drug paraphernalia—pipes, needles, rubber tubing, a large bong perhaps—tumbling from Fang’s pockets onto the bed, but except for an empty Ziploc, which I worked around, the only things I found were a pack of gum and two five-dollar bills.

  I stuffed the bills into my wallet, and when the telephone receiver clattered onto its cradle I turned around holding nothing but a pack of Big Red. “So?” I said, casually sliding a stick of gum out of the pack and offering it to Faith, real gentlemanlike. She waved it off, started undoing her Docs.

  “Well,” she said. “My parents are happy I’m safe, not so happy I’m in a hotel room with two guys they don’t know, and are very, very unhappy Mia’s gone AWOL. She’s over. Anyway, the highways are definitely closed. If the weather’s okay, we’ll drive back in the morning. Otherwise, my parents will come and get us in my grandfather’s Jeep.” She glanced toward the bathroom. “How’s Fang?”

  “He’s okay. And listen.” I sat down on the opposite bed. “I wanted to say sorry about that creep in the office.”

  “You don’t have to apologize for him.” Unlike Fang, Faith had no fear of eye contact, which with her was gorgeous and green.

  “Well, I should have done something.”

  “You didn’t get mad. You got us a room. That’s something.”

  The honeymoon suite had tipped from fridge to furnace. Faith still had her jacket on and her cheeks were all red and her long dark hair spiraled around her face. There was only a couple feet of space between the beds, so our knees were practically touching, and with her staring at me, man, I felt like a sliver of ice in Fang’s Jacuzzi. I took off my jean jacket, then jerked my sweatshirt over my head, taking my T-shirt with it so that I was half-naked in front of her for the few seconds it took me to wrestle my hoodie off and my shirt on, and yeah, she still had her Emerald City eyes locked on me when I’d finished, and yeah, it was my cheeks that were burning.

  She picked up the phone and held the receiver out. Under the roar of the heater, the buzz of dial tone. “You want to call home?”

  I blabbed something about that not being necessary because no one was worried about me. Realizing I sounded a lot like a kid whose parents don’t give a shit about him, I backtracked to explain how I’d told them I was hanging at Fang’s for the night, going from unloved teen to liar in about two seconds flat.

  “So they don’t know you went to the concert?” Cradling the receiver in both hands, she rested it on her thighs, up high, close to her crotch.

  “Ahh … no. Not really. They would have made us take the bus or something.” I noticed my knees were jumping and I forced them to quit, tried to assume a relaxed posture, but when I did, visions of ultra-cool ultra-Stan popped into my head and my legs started bouncing again.

  “What about Fang?”

  “He’s having a bath.” As if on cue, a shudder of engine and a sputter of jets leaked from the bathroom. “There’s a Jacuzzi.”

  “Oh.” She tried not to look surprised at the news. “Should he call home?”

  “Nope. His mom’s definitely not worried about him.”

  “You sure?”

  “Positive.”

  She sighed and put the phone down and I started searching for a remote, located it under the bed next to someone’s forgotten sock. I zapped the TV. Hissing static greeted me on every channel. I tried to ignore the zip of Faith’s jacket.

  “Cable’s out.” I flicked the television on and off a couple times, then went over and gave it a smack, hoping to jump-start the entire central Michigan cable network with a well-delivered blow, but it wasn’t happening. There would be no media distraction to save me. I relinquished the remote and snuck a peek at Faith, stretched out on the other bed.

  “There’s a ghetto blaster,” she said, pointing to a beat-uplooking box chained to the dresser. I got up, squatted in front of it and gave the power button a hopeful push. A little red light glowed and the box emitted a low electrical hum. Faith rolled onto her stomach and rummaged through her purse. Pulled out a CD case. Extracted a disc. Held it up so I could take a look. “You a Peppers fan?”

  “I am.”

  She gave me a half smile then, just the one corner of her mouth curling up.

  And when the music started, I couldn’t help smiling back.

  Faith sat cross-legged on the bed, looking up at me through long dark lashes. “So, hey, what’s with your friend?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.” I jammed my hands into the pockets of my jeans, hoping my explanation would suffice, but Faith just sat there waiting, expecting more. “I haven’t been hanging out with him since … well … lately.”

  “You think he’s into something you don’t know about?”

  I shrugged.

  “I’ve heard some guys at Jefferson are into crack. That’ll freak you out. Maybe you should ask him about it.”

  “Yeah, maybe. Fang usually only smokes pot. He’s done acid a couple times. And Ecstasy. And ’shrooms. And Special K.” I had difficulty stopping the list of illegal substances “my friend” had partaken of. “He says he’s not sleeping,” I added feebly.

  She nodded and pushed herself off the bed. Smiling, she brushed past me and bent down to turn up the Peppers. The dank, dirty, brown room suddenly vibrated with sound and possibility and the sweet scent of Faith.

  “You smoke crack?” she asked, turning to face me, swinging her hips to the music.

  I shook my head, nervous. She felt close.

  “Good, because I don’t dance with guys who smoke crack. Ever.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t dance.” To prove my point, I grabbed two handfuls of red velvet and anchored myself to a bed.

  “Everyone likes to dance.” And to prove her point, she raised her arms above her head, closed her eyes and started swaying from side to side and singing real low, like I wasn’t even there. I sat perfectly still and watched her move into the music. Her black T-shirt crept up as she danced, leaving only a band of tight white undershirt ringing her belly, which lay smooth and flat and chocolaty brown above her faded, low-slung jeans.

  “I love dancing,” she said.

  “I don’t.” I said it as softly as I could, so nothing would shift or change or cause her eyes to open.

  “I bet you dance in your room,” she said finally.

  “I don’t,” I lied.

  She stopped moving. Her eyes opened. She stood motionless a couple inches from the bottom of the bed.

  She reached out and gave my shoulder a gentle push and offered me the other half of the smile she’d given me before. Her arm fell back to her side. Long fingers brushed the top of a slim thigh. “Come on. I’ve had a rotten night and it was supposed to be so good.” She took a deep breath. Her smile disappeared completely. “And I don’t like you sitting there watching me. Sooo, if you won’t dance, I’ll have to stop and that will bum me out and then the night will probably continue to be bad. But if we dance, well, it’s hard for things to be bad when you’re dancing.” She held her hand out to me. “So … are things going to be rotten or good?”

  And like that day in the library, I could see right into her.

  “It’s your choice,” she said.

  I didn’t move. I couldn’t move. The song ended. The laser crept toward the next track. Her hand hovered in front of me.

  “Come on. Rotten or good?”

  The first slow notes of “Under the Bridge” rolled through the room. Faith took a step back. And Stan dying on me, and Bernoffski dying on me, and Fang gasping for air on a stadium floor, and the pervert in the office, and how screwed up my life was—all of that moved through me as I sat frozen on that bed. But, there she was. Standing in front of me, beautiful and sad and full of grace. And I made my choice.

  She was right. It’s hard to feel bad wh
en you’re dancing.

  FIFTEEN

  When the CD ended, Fang exited the spa, hit me with a killer look, dove for cover under the red velvet and snapped off the rickety lamp between the beds. Either he faded out right away or he pretended to. I had no idea which and I really didn’t care. Faith and I were sitting on the floor in the landing strip of white light spilling from the bathroom, talking music. Who we were listening to. Who we weren’t. And man, the discussion rolled, smooth and easy as a Speed Creamed board on a freshly paved hill.

  Faith was into alt-rock like me, pretty much dug all the “the” bands—the Strokes, the Vines, the Hives, the Datsuns, the Zutons, etc., etc.—appreciated some of the fringe bands like the Flaming Lips, the Dandy Warhols and the Distillers, along with some of the local talent out of Detroit (Whirlwind Heat, the Go). She also dug some of the chick stuff like Dido and Faith Hill and Coldplay, but her current favorites were definitely the White Stripes, which didn’t surprise me. We were completely in sync, if I left out the thrashers like System of a Down and Rage Against the Machine and Papa Roach and all the death metal shit I listened to whenever I needed a satanic top-up. We were tight on the early influences too. Nirvana? Oh yeah. Green Day? Totally. The Smashing Pumpkins? You bet. I practically had a hard-on just sitting beside her on the floor swapping band names.

  “You like Marilyn Manson?” she asked. I wasn’t sure if it was a trick question, and seeing how I didn’t want to derail our rock-athon of love with a wrong answer, I kind of hedged, although what I said was true.

  “Some of his stuff. ‘Disposable Teens.’ ‘The Dope Show.’ Stuff like that.”

  She nodded and added a few to the list. “‘The Beautiful People.’ ‘mOBSCENE.’”

  “Yeah,” I said, suddenly grinning like a fool.

  “Hate his covers, though.”

  “Yeah. What’s with those? Maybe he ran out of things to rage against.”

  “In this lifetime? Not a chance.”

  By this time Faith was sprawled out on the floor, all lovely and lanky and loose. Her head resting against the end of the bed. Her long legs stretching practically to the wall. “Hey, you know who I really love right now?” she said. “Johnny Cash.”